By Graham K. Rogers

Opening Gambit:

Apple Stuff

There are comments along these lines from Kate MacKenzie on PixoBebo who is clearly not impressed by what happens on Wall Street, and refers particularly to Apple stock rises and falls. Her views on where analysts get their data is refreshing: "the overuse of suppositories and the result of hallucinogenic pharmaceuticals". I wonder how close to reality this is with the frequent rumours of a certain white powder in use at all the best gatherings. Apple reports facts, analysts make up estimates and if Apple reaches the facts, but not the analysts' estimates, Apple is wrong. On the other hand, she mentions Amazon which loses money, yet is a Wall Street darling. Take no notice: buy the stock, buy the products.

With Apple stock hitting a 5-month low, Jim Cramer on CNBC's Mad Money Recap says this is a time to sell. While he took some flak a couple of years back for talking Apple down, there is a certain amount of logic to his words this time directed as they are towards investors. My original link for this was MacDaily News.

And yet, a few hours later, Notable Calls has a report from Peter Misek of Jefferies & Co who says Apple stock is a "buy". My original source for this was Seeking Alpha.

Of particular note in news this week was the doubt that the President will allow a "tax holiday" for those companies like Apple and Microsoft which have large amounts of cash overseas. Under current laws, bringing that home would entail massive taxes. Better to leave it where it is, buy some toys, like Sharp, and save it all for a rainy day; or at least when taxes are more reasonable. Eric Savitz on Forbes has a number of thoughts on this question and displays some impressive figures in the article.

On that note about Sharp, Neil Hughes on AppleInsider reports that is it possible that Apple has indeed invested in Sharp and perhaps to the tune of more than $2 billion. Save Sharp, dump Samsung? Sounds like a fair strategy from where I sit.

An interesting piece of news came from AppleInsider this week and was also carried by other outlets: Eddy Cue is joining the board of Ferrari. he already has his own (somewhat in contradiction to the quiet man image) and I would too if I could. He will "aid with his experience in Internet-based commerce."

Let's play with this. I do not imagine for one moment that there will be a Ferrari Mac. Acer played with that that idea when it was an official Ferrari sponsor and the CNET review of the Netbook is online. One comment stuck out: "Red lid is rather garish" so I am sure that Jony Ive would be the first in line to veto any such idea.

However, the use of technology is something different. On one of the trips to San Francisco, a couple of the journalists (including me) made our Apple handlers a bit edgy with ideas of Apple sponsoring McLaren: Mac in Mac for example. A slightly lower key approach in terms of internal technology and information systems may pay dividends and would certainly look good, but not with red covers. Luca di Montezemolo has met with Tim Cook and Apple already has some automotive connections according to the article. We should keep our eyes on this one.

And indeed, Friday morning Daniel Eran Dilger on AppleInsider had a follow-up piece in which a number of transportation initiatives and how Apple is entering that market are discussed in a lengthy (3-page) item

I have had some emails from Apple lately: not putting me back in their good books (I guess that has gone forever) but as a registered customer. So last week I had an emails about the new iPods and the iPhone 5, as well as something on the iPad mini. This week, it was the turn of the 13" MacBook Pro with Retina display with link in the email that took me straight to the 13" MacBook Pro and the Online store for Thailand. That 2.9 GHz model does look interesting.

In another email I was told that my iCloud email address could be used now. I had wondered why it was on my iPhone and on the Mac. I was sure I had not put the information in. I guess as I use iCloud for a lot of work on a day to day basis, that has been done for me.

A local user put out a Twitter link on Tuesday which caught my eye after all the articles on users returning the Surface. A user was returning the iPad mini; and as I read the first paragraph of Rocky Agrawal's guest post on Venture Beat, it took a moment for it to sink in: he owns Macs and iOS devices already. The problem? He loves it so much, he is returning the 16 GB Wi-Fi version for a 32 GB LTE one.

There may be problems at Hon Hai, Patently Apple reports, as there is still massive demand for the iPhone 5 (that failure from Apple according to so many commentators) and the Foxconn factories are falling behind. Patently Apple takes this a little further and speculates about whether the supply chain problems are due to its re-positioning with Samsung after all that legal stuff.

Further to this, Katie Marsal on AppleInsider writes that it is expected that Samsung will lose more orders for chips from Apple and as a result may have to put off construction of a new facility. A number of sites carried similar information

However, by Friday morning, Neil Hughes on AppleInsider suggests that the situation is improving and that there is a forecast that 46.5 million iPhones will be sold in the quarter. Maybe the Hon Hai chairman should say less.

Apple's use of Foxconn/Hon Hai and other manufacturers in China particularly has become a bit of a political football. It has been reported by Electronsita that there is a rumour on Foxconn that they could bring some manufacturing to the US which would quiet some critics of Apple. Whether there are lots of jobs or if this is a robot production line, it would still be of political benefit to Apple.

And talking of legal stuff, Apple had another loss reported this week (by Jon Brodkin on Ars Technica) when a court ordered Apple to pay VirnetX $368.2 million for technology used in FaceTime. This is not finished as a lawyer for the patent troll wants to force Apple to stop using the patented technology. In other words they want more money which sounds like a legal form of blackmail to me and if a federal judge has already decided on a figure, could that not be a form of contempt?

Earlier I carried several links to articles that suggest the A-series processors could eventually (let me emphasise that "eventually") be scaled up so that Apple might at some time in the future be able to replace Intel chips in Macs. I just love the idea, despite problems with compatibility. Having gone through two transitions (Motorola - PowerPC - Intel) there are always some losses. Nonetheless, for a long-term view, I find this attractive.

Not likely says Loyd Case on MacWorld. He looks at those earlier transitions and shows how a move to ARM processors (like in the iPad) has critical differences and suggests a number of options including (I think he is wrong) letting the Mac line die out as the iPads are scaled up power-wise. Here I would take the Microsoft path -- at least part of the way - for some things users just prefer a keyboard. I know it is possible to link one to an iPad and to connect an iPad to a large screen, but for the amount of processing that is needed for some tasks, the Mac is here for the foreseeable future.

There have been some rumours about a possible iOS version of Microsoft Office again, and there is a possibility that 2013 will see a release. But for heavens sake, why bother? The iPads have been with us for a couple of years and Redmond has just dilly-dallied on this while there have been a number of alternatives released, including Apple's iWork suite as separate units for the iPad (and iPhone). By the time (or if) it arrives, will anyone be interested?

This is compounded by a rumour on pricing that was reported in AppleBitch this week. The app itself would be free -- all good so far -- but there is a massive sting in the tail: "Anyone wishing to edit an MS Office document would be required to place an in-app purchase for a membership to Office 365, which is currently priced at around $6 per month per user."

Does anyone at Microsoft understand the market they would be entering? As the article reports, Pages has a one-off fee of $9.99 and there are other apps that allow editing as well. Late again to the party and with the wrong clothes too.

No innovation, eh? Apple done, eh? Three patent ideas hit my eyes as I started up on Friday morning:

• Patently Apple writes about a new streamlined cooling system for the iPhone (this is as well as that ionized cooling we mentioned earlier in the week);
• Another example also comes from Patently Apple and is a set of dual-mode headphones: to "provide audio directly to a user's ears in an in-ear mode, and can provide audio as speakers in a speaker mode"
• While a third from the same source is a use of packaging for further uses -- Transformer-style it can be altered for another function such as a dock for a phone.

I spent some time looking at 1 TB disk drives on Tuesday afternoon. The 500 GB one I use for TimeMachine backups is full and although I have a spare 500 GB one in a drawer, I have some data on that I think I might keep for now. What prompted me to look in the store was an item by Christopher Breen on MacWorld in which he answers a reader's question: how to move from one Time Machine backup disk to another. One of the comments does also remind us that there is now support for using more than one disk but for some users it might just be better to move all on to a single disk.

There were a couple of updates for Developers this week: iTunes Producer (2.8.0) and Application Loader (2.8.0). I reported on these on Tuesday.

Half and Half

While Android use is far greater than the distribution of iOS for several good reasons, starting with the number of handset makers using the free OS -- we are told in an item by Chris Hauk on MacTrast in an item that was originally on the site of Horace Dediu of ASYMCO, that iOS growth is increasing while Android is beginning to slow.

Other Matters

Graham K. Rogers teaches at the Faculty of Engineering, Mahidol University in Thailand. He wrote in the Bangkok Post, Database supplement on IT subjects. For the last seven years of Database he wrote a column on Apple and Macs.