By Graham K. Rogers

Opening Gambit:

Apple Stuff

Digitimes has a hit and miss success rate; and there is no evidence that with current iPhone sales likely to pass previous records, that Apple would want to go down that mass market street: it is doing rather well so far without the need to enter handset pissing contests. Apple, we are told by CNN, released one phone in 2012 while Samsung released 37. Those who think that the Apple cheap-Phone is a given may not have been following Cupertino closely enough: the iPad mini is not a cheap iPad, it is a top level mid-range tablet.

This is also a clear example of how difficult it is getting nowadays to sift the wheat from the chaff. An idea becomes a rumour and develops into a fact (if you read some Tweets) by way of the sheer volume of repeats of an item with perhaps little basis.

A report that I saw Friday morning from Matthew Panzarino on TNW has some quotes from Phil Schiller (although this is never a 100% confirmation the way Apple sometimes works): this will "never be the future of Apple products". Parse that if you dare.

Another comment was also interesting in the light of the numbers game (above): "although Apple's market share of smartphones is just about 20%, we own the 75% of the profit (sic)." These comments were later carried in several other online sources.

And on that profit meme, Steven Sande, quoting ASYMCO research, reports that iTunes brings in some $12 billion each year. There are some other interesting points in the article.

Let's have some real news. On Wednesday it was reported that Tim Cook was on his way to China for the second time and that he was expected to meet with a high government official. Patently Apple confirms that the meeting with China's Minister of Industry and Information Technology Miao Wei did take place as planned, part of which was to discuss Apple's expansion in China: now that's a story with more legs than a cheap iPhone.

In that same report, Patently Apple tell readers about Broadcom licensing ARM's ARMv7 and ARMv8 architectures and there is some speculation that this may be the link between Apple and Taiwan Semiconductor who are expected to pick up the slack when Samsung is dropped as a supplier for Apple.

During the trip to China it was no surprise to hear that Cook stepped outside the meeting rooms: a private man he may be, but he understands the need to be seen in the right places. One right place is the Chinese reseller, Dragonstar and MacNN has an image of him chatting to staff. Phil Schiller is also there so the comments (above) about expansion in China would seem to have a lot more weight to them. A later report from Patently Apple has Tim Cook saying that "the number of its stores in China will far exceed 25", more than 3 times the current number. More to the point in that report is the comment about working with China Mobile, to an extent the Holy Grail for access to the Chinese market.

There is more: Josh Ong on TNW reports that Cook has said that the cellular version of the iPad mini will arrive on the mainland in late January. Apple has been waiting for approval which all countries need to provide before wireless devices can be sold. This is why the meeting with Miao Wei was so important, and why (joining the dots) that comment on China mobile is also exciting. [My source for that last item was MacDaily News.]

With this week-long trip coming a few days before the Q1 2013 earnings report, there is likely to be much to come in the next few months. Take for example sales of iPhones. There are estimates from some with figures ranging between 43 million to 63 million. Just look at those differences for a moment and ask yourself, who in their right mind would trust any analyst with such a wide variance as that? Philip Elmer-DeWitt (a messenger here, not to blame for the numbers at all) reports on the statistics that are being produced and also points out that the quarter has an extra week (14 instead of 13). There is no suggestion in the text as to where these numbers came from.

I tracked down Nicolae Mihalache on Traderhood. He is a Rumanian mathematician and has some unusual comments on Apple (plus a lot of errors).

Just a note on the graph of predictions that Philip Elmer-DeWitt shows. The professionals are in blue and the amateurs in green, with most of the green towards the top. However, over the last few years the professional analysts have been consistently wrong about Apple with the amateurs calling the right numbers most of the time.

I can't help thinking that Foxconn is one of those friends Apple needs but could sometimes do without. There is no suggestion as yet that the company itself is involved, but an AP report in the Jakarta Post picks up on news from Taiwan's "Next" weekly telling readers that the company is investigating several employees who may have taken bribes from an equipment maker. It is also reported that Hon Hai has suspended its purchases from the company.

In a flurry of news on Wednesday afternoon, it appears that Apple has changed some of the rules for app submissions; although judging from the reports this was a well-received change. One of the many reports I read was from Michael Grothaus on TUAW who outlined the point that "screenshots for submitted apps will be locked once an app is approved." He also outlines the scams that were being perpetrated that this change is expected to stop. I also looked at the comments of Juli Clover on MacRumors who adds, "The scam tricked people into buying fake apps with screenshots ripped from another, more popular game, or a game that has not been ported to iOS at all."

Some folks may remember the idea of the Negroponte Switch that Nicholas Negroponte, then of MIT Media Labs theorised: that mobile communications would move from cable to radio waves, while TV would move from through-air transmissions to cable. In general this happened a while back, apart from TrueVisions here who tried to focus on satellite service and ignored their part-installed cable facilities.

With a similar theme, a while back Steve Jobs put forward the idea that eventually users would switch away from traditional, desktop computers to tablet devices and he used the comparison of the truck and the car: the US was built on trucks but the move to urbanization meant that eventually more cars were in use than the workhorse truck.

Taking up recent figures of tablet sales in the US, John Paczkowski on All Things Digital, writes that Jobs was right; and he adds "At the time that remark was a bit contentious, but like many Jobs predictions, it would prove prescient a few years later" (this brings to mind the comments on Adobe Flash). It is expected that this year, tablet shipments will exceed those of PCs: we already saw that over the Xmas period there was a 11% drop of PC sales reported (6% for Macs). The article has some interesting comments and some useful facts to digest.

I was in class a few days ago when I saw some students looking at an iPhone. I need to make sure that this is productive (dictionary, for example, rather than Facebook) so wandered over to the group, only to see a sad looking iPhone with cracked glass. I have dropped my iPhone 4S more times than I want to admit, but was interested as to how this had happened. I was on a bike, he told me. He was tapping in a message. Somehow, he dropped it. Well, the phone still works and he is not bothered about getting it fixed, but there may be a couple of lessons in there for him.

In a useful coincidence, Derek Kessler reports on iMore about a test done by Corning on their new Gorilla 3 glass. The comments are that the toughness lives up to the announcements, and the video in the article tends to prove it, with some interesting tests (although the video focus is wanting in some parts).

Whether or not Gorilla Glass 3 is proof against texting students on bikes has yet to be proved.

We mentioned last week that Corning was to produce longer optical tech Thunderbolt cables (up to 30m), and it was noted then that the Apple copper versions are shorter and more expensive. Mike Wehner on TUAW reports this week (Wednesday) that Apple has reduced the price now (to $39.99) and that there is also a shorter cable available as well. That news may not have got through to the Thai store or its Singapore masters as the same 2.0m cable was shown as 1,650 baht when I checked Thursday which converts to about $53: with VAT that was about right for the $49 cable. Nor was there the 0.5m option that is shown in the US store. It was the same Friday morning, just before I uploaded this to the website.

We had heard that OS X 10.8.3 was in the process of being checked by developers, but everything went a bit quiet over the new year period. Now, however, MacNN reports, a new build of 10.8.3 has been seeded: "there were no changes to the release notes . . . [and] no known issues." By this I guess we may be seeing a release of the update within the next week or so.

Apple has released an update for the Firmware on the 2012 MacBook, Michael Grothaus reports on TUAW. The information from Apple included in the article tells us that this 2.6 Firmware update "fixes a color issue with HDMI displays connected to MacBook Air, resolves an issue with Windows which can prevent MacBook Air from booting properly, and also resolves an issue where unplugging a Thunderbolt device may cause the system to freeze when waking from standby."

Some weeks ago we mentioned that a Swiss photographer was unhappy with Apple over an image used in the advertisements for Retina display Macs, when she had been told that the image was not going to be used: for layout purposes only. Anyone seeing the ads will recognise the stunning image immediately. Josh Lowensohn reports that the case has been settled, but it does not appear that anyone is saying how, or for how much. MacNN also report on this and confirm that no one is saying how much.

Of course we understand that Apple does not innovate, and its motivation for filing patents, even when it creates new technology is to make sure others can get no commercial advantage out of it (Proves that Apple is just patent horny! Nothing more, nothing less! - that was actually on a Facebook entry). I guess it is OK for those like HP, Samsung, or Fisker to file patents, but not Apple. Well now even more stimulation is revealed by Jack Purcher of Patently Apple who writes about "a series of twenty patent applications from Apple." Some of these are refilings, but 4 are new, one of which relates to another industrial process. Innovation?

Other Matters

Now there is an allegation that agents from Iran have been attacking US banks via their computer systems (It would sort of serve them right if this were so), The Right Perspective reports. In the text there is a lovely quote that seems to have come straight out of the security reports that examined Stuxnet: "The attacks show a level of sophistication that rules out amateur hackers". The Symantec report on Stuxnet tells us, "Stuxnet is of such great complexity - requiring significant resources to develop - that few attackers will be capable of producing a similar threat. . ." See also the comments of Nate Anderson on Ars Technica.

Local News

Themasek seems to have regretted the decision and have reduced their holding bit by bit, this week selling 20.9 billion baht ($687 million) shares and their stake is now about 13.3%, down from 23.6%. In a reports from Joyce Koh and Klaus Wille on Bloomberg we also read that "About 80 percent of the shares were sold to Thai NVDR Co., and the rest to Thai investors".

True Visions TV Guide (2)

My comments have not gone unnoticed and a local user (one among many I suspect) reports that while I had problems with the print version of the TV Guide, the December issue encouraged people to sign up for their Green TV Guide where the TV listing was made available on-line via the iPad or iPhone. This would also cancel the printed version of the guide.

Apart from the over-use of Green as if that somehow makes all the world right again, this could not have been prominent, nor can there have been much publicity for us non-Thai customers - let me put that in italics to make sure everyone is clear that it is us doing True favours and not the other way round. Without its customers, whatever the family might think at CP Tower, True is nothing.

My contact thought it was a good idea. He linked to the App and downloaded the True app. So far so good (he writes). . . . Then he used it to try to sign up for the service. From the screen shots he attached, it appears that their servers have invalid certificates (note that forged certificates is a method Stuxnet uses) and the app would not let him continue. Heavens, that Apple walled garden did its job again.

As with many technical problems here, the user is presumed to know nothing. The world has moved on, but patrician attitudes have not.

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.