By Graham K. Rogers

Opening Gambit:

Apple Stuff

On the theme of credibility (which we also look at on the shareholders meeting report), Florian Mueller on Foss Patents points out that one of the Appeals Court judges in the UK who wrote that humiliating judgement against Apple last year has been hired. By Samsung. In another patent case. This time against Ericsson. As Mueller points out, for someone who was so concerned about integrity, at least when it was applied to Apple, the move - while in no way illegal - has an odour of putrefaction about it. When I was a cop, I feared judges because of their realistic human qualities and the sense of the incorruptible: not only straight, but being seen to be straight.

In an update, Kevin Bostic on AppleInsider includes a statement from Samsung, in that the former judge was not contracted by Samsung, just by a law firm that represents Samsung. Well, that's all right then. . . .

Let me suggest the scenario here as in England there are two types of lawyers: solicitors and barristers. The former carry out most legal work, especially the documentation, while the barristers are the ones wo represent clients in the higher courts. So, suggesting that Samsung is not connected to the decision somehow, is disingenuous.

I first picked up on on this Thursday afternoon and retweeted the Florian Mueller text, but this morning (Friday) most of the sites I examine regularly are covering this with the opinion that something is not right. As I right above, they need to be seen to be clean.

Apple joined a number of companies this week, Joseph Keller reports on iMore, when it urged the U.S. Supreme Court to strike down Proposition 8. This is a law in California "that prohibits same-sex marriage by defining marriage as a union between one man and one woman" and Apple has supported the idea of same-sex marriage a number of times before.

This week Apple announced that iTunes movies in the cloud was to be made available in another 11 countries in Europe, Joseph Keller reports on AppleInsider.

Related to this, the almost invisible iTunes U - which Thai teachers for sure shy away from unwilling to share their materials with others and unwilling to access new materials with fertile ideas that are available for free - has passed the 1 billion downloads milestone, Kelly Hodgkins reports for TUAW. As a note, as far as I can see, no Thai institutes have uploaded any information to iTunes U.

There have been the usual number of articles this week that find Apple coming up short, and one even does so when the statistics prove the opposite. John Gruber has a number of comments on an item by Sam Gustin in Time. Gruber's headline - "When All You Have Is an "Apple Is Doomed Without Steve Jobs" Hammer, Everything Looks Like a Nail" - and points out a number of ways in which Gustin is conveniently missing some of the strong products that Apple has introduced.

Gruber also manages to bring in the Brooke Crothers comment on the Google Chrome Pixel thing ("Thank you, Google. For obsoleting my MacBook") While Crothers on CNET wrote that gushing review including, as I noted on Wednesday, some silly comments about the touch screen without reporting at all whether he used it, Gruber mentions that CNET deems certain MacBook Pro models to be "excellent". Before returning to the Gustin piece, Gruber also brings in some other comments that do not gush about the Pixel thing, then goes on the attack.

On Monday I looked at the weird interpretation of figures from Millenial Media by Electronista and was critical of the conclusions. In a similar vein, John Gruber examines a report by Amir Efrati, on Wall Street Journal (not the most pro-Apple publication in recent times) who suggests in his opening that the Apple grip on tablets has been reduced: more Samsung stuff and all that. But as Gruber points out, it is not until well into the text that Efrari reports that "Android's share grew from 2.7% in the first quarter to 6.8% by the fourth quarter, with the iPad grabbing nearly the entire rest of the market." There is more and Gruber ends with the article headline, "Report: Android Tablets Gain on iPads in Business Market." Some gain. . . .

As a way to confirm how bad Apple is these days, Electronista reports that the share of the corporate mobile market is growing and Apple now has eight of the top 10 mobile activations in the corporate sector. The iPhone has the top three slots, the iPad completes the top 5. Android? Wonderful Android, and the Samsung Galaxy S3, so beloved of those in the cheap seats took number 6. The article goes on, "Android devices performed so poorly in terms of new enterprise activations that even the iPad 4 (which debuted in the fourth quarter), the iPhone 3GS and the venerable original iPad boasted better numbers than the Droid Razr and Samsung's Galaxy S II, the only other Android models to appear in the top 10".

Also commenting on the way reality and headlines do not often match when it comes to Apple is Ben Bajaron on Tech Pinion, who outlines some recent articles he has written on this gulf between fact and some of the articles being put out, adding information about Fortune's list of Worlds Most Admired Companies on which Apple comes top of 4 categories. With massive cash reserves, record income and profits, excellent sales, he appears justified in pointing out that the reality distortion field is now outside Apple.

Despite being doomed in the eyes of many observers who have been following Apple for all of ten minutes, the outlook is good (as ever these days). AppleInsider reports that there may have been a priority switch and while the iPad was the big seller, the iPad mini is expected to take the lead soon with sales of 55 million, as opposed to 33 million for the iPad. Earlier plans had been for 40 million iPad minis and 60 million full-size iPads this year.

A decision by a court this week means that Apple will have to pay out more than $300 million as it was found to be infinging on a patent held by VirnetX with technology used in Facetime, Zack Whittacker reports. As a sting in the tail, Apple must also fork out $330,000 per day until a licensing agreement is worked out between the two.

But Great Scott, in Japan, AppleInsider reports, Samsung has lost a 3G wireless patent case against Apple. The claims were about "Samsung's assertion of data transmission patents against a number of iPhone models" Also reporting on this was Patently Apple who add the court's decision that Samsung has no rights over data transmission technology.

We also hear that Apple now has registered a trademark in China. This is a symbol for Retail Cables and I am sure Samsung lawyers would complain that Apple is registering straight lines and semi-circles. It is distinctive, however and Patently Apple has the details.

A news item a couple of weeks back that had many in a tailspin was when Foxconn reduced hiring at its iPhone plant. We noted at the time that migrations for new year there (and here) are unpredictable. Sometimes no one comes back. This year they all did. But there seems to be a lot more to it than that, Patently Apple reports, and may be concerned with supply chain (Tim Cook flexing his muscles?) and moves out of China. Jack Purcher ends with the comment, "it would appear that Wall Street jumped to conclusions over the rumor of the hiring Freeze at Foxconn." As usual.

When it first appeared, I did buy Adobe Photoshop Touch for the iPad, and that is the only Adobe product I have ever owned. Apart from the review I wrote at the time, I have hardly ever used it as just after it was release so was iPhoto for iOS. I don't actually use iPhoto that much as many of the apps I have can get the effects I want (if I do want) much easier but when I am using the iPad and the Nikon together, it is still worthwhile. Seth Weintraub on 9to5 Mac reports on the latest release of Adobe Photoshop Touch which will now work on the iPhone (that took a long time) and on Android. Unlike iPhoto, it is not universal so those who want it on the iPhone (why would anyone need this) have to buy a separate version, proving that Adobe still has its shoot myself in the foot department and have learned little from the way other developers distribute their apps.

We have reported before on the way certain professions have taken to the iPad and iPhone, most notably doctors. A report by Robert McMillan on Wired outlines the way that a group of doctors are using the Box.com file-sharing services to enable them to share procedures, journal articles and even conversations. There are a couple of examples in illustration. McMilland also discusses a service called Doximity that launched a kind of social network for doctors last year. This signals the beginning of a bigger shift that "as the medical profession takes a cue from everyone else on the Internet and becomes better about collaborating and sharing information".

And from the company that does not innovate, Patently Apple reports on three European patents filed (along with scores revealed in the US from Apple in the last couple of weeks) that refer to a Dynamic Smart Pen. Jack Purcher outlines the information and says that these patents are "chock full of ideas."

Autodesk which has come back to Apple in a big way, not just with its flagship AutoCAD but with a good collection of quality iOS apps is said to be about to release its Socialcam 5 Thursday, Electronista reports. I already have an app called Socialcam (by Justin TV) that has been in my collection since the iPhone 3GS. The Electronista article tells me that this was actually bought from Justin TV last year. So I can look forward to an update to the current version (4.6). Not there yet: just Vintique 2.0.0 and Kindle 3.6.2 (see below). Apparently YouTube for iOS has also been updated (Joseph Keller, iMore) and you can now send video to your TV or game console.

Now here's a problem I have not encountered before (as I have a Mac a couple of years old): those with newer Macs seem to be unable to reinstall a version of OS X, Mountain Lion, MacNN reports. The cause appears to be some system corruption, but the solution is fairly simple in repairing permissions on the recovery partition.

Over the last day or so, many reports have been written concerning outages at iCloud. Jacqui Chang on Ars Technica writes that the Apple status page indicates that only 3% of users are suffering problems, but this seems to be wider than that. As I am working at home this week, this has affected me less, but as this is apparently going on a little longer than usual, let us hope the techies are hard at work.

Half and Half

The first report I saw on this was from Jordan Kahn on 9to5 Mac with the headline, "Samsung steals Apple's wallet. Michael Grothaus on TUAW seems to think that "Samsung steals Apple's wallet" and he used the term, "looks to be an exact ripoff" when comparing it to Apple's Passbook. He also makes the interesting point that, while Samsung uses NFC, something that created considerable comment when Apple did not introduce this with its more recent iOS devices, "Wallet doesn't offer NFC support, [again] just like Passbook."

Gee thanks Amazon. The company updates the Kindle app to version 3.6.1 and sends it out, only to find that a glitch in the update is erasing the users' libraries from their iOS devices, Kelly Hodgkins reports on TUAW. Needless to say, lots of other articles had this. Too late. I saw it on the iPhone when I was at work and downloaded it directly. I have not used it as yet and this morning saw that version 3.6.2 was waiting. Do I dare? In the absence of an iBookstore here (apart from copyright free works) and a few problems with Barnes & Noble, Amazon at least lets me download books, if nothing else. Unlike the iBookstore downloads, however, it is not possible to copy text from the works, which pays havoc when I want to review books.

I have often covered the patent litigation that Apple and others have endured, many times from what are basically patent trolls. These exist only to acquire and use patents to make a living: a sort of parasite. Charles Cooper reports that there are more moves afoot in the US Congress to deal with these as a bill sponsored by Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) and Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) has a better chance of passing than previous attempts to rein these guys in.

Other Matters

I expect that as this concerns a well-loved teacher who has been at the school for 30 years, there are some unusual circumstances that we do not know of and she may well be treated lightly in the end; but I am amazed by the attitude of the principal who, when informed, told (not asked) the student to delete the video. As Chris Matyszczyk suggests, this would be deleting evidence and perhaps such an order contravenes US Federal laws. As she had already sent a copy to her father, there was no loss and the video found its way onto local news.

Local Items

Cassandra comments and links on the shareholders' meeting this week, are also available online as a separate page.

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.