By Graham K. Rogers

Opening Gambit:

Apple Stuff

A device that is related to the iPhone and iPad is the AppleTV - the black box thing, not the rumoured widescreen product that may never come. The device runs a version of iOS of course and also has an A-series chip inside, but here is the interesting thing: it was recently revised and because paperwork had to go to the FCC it was found that one of the changes was a smaller version of the A5 processor. This is causing some excitement, Andrew Cunningham writes on Ars Technica, as such an updated SoC would have the same features but consume less power and there is therefore potential for future iOS devices (like the iPhone 5S?).

I wrote earlier in the week about refurbished Mac Pro computers coming onto the market at low prices and wondered if this may be a beginning of the end of the frustration that Mac Pro users have been experiencing with no proper update to the line for a few years now. Josh Lowensohn writes about the lack of a Mac Pro and the way Apple's (traditional) secrecy is annoying those waiting for a new version of the top of the line computer for professionals. Josh quotes Lou Borella who is a video professional and the guy who started the Facebook group I mentioned. The group at least had a nod from Tim Cook last year - we are working on this - but apart from a processor upgrade, nothing has really happened since and patience is wearing thin. These professionals have too much invested in OS X and its related software, but there will come a time with some that they will cut the rope.

I had to revise my notes about Apple's overseas cash last week as an article I mentioned in Cassandra put forward the idea that some of the taxes on the money may have been already covered by Apple. That seems to have increased the pressure again, even though Apple does what other US corporations do. However, as we saw with the China labour issues, just because other companies have their products made by Foxconn means nothing when Apple is in the cross-hairs. Kevin Bostic on AppleInsider comments on a report in Wall Street Journal about the cash and what everyone thinks Apple should/will/must do.

Also looking at this in another article on AppleInsider is Neil Hughes with information from Brian White of Topeka and also mentioning Greenlight: these Wall Street guys are not interested in the company, they just have their eyes on the cash. A later report from Mikey Campbell on AppleInsider, cites a publication called Quartz that has some sources that say Apple will either issue extra dividends or use share buybacks to deal with the cash problem (problem in the minds of Wall Street, that is).

I mention Foxconn as another panic rumour that had all the tongues wagging not so long ago was that the company had stopped recruiting: ergo (everyone presumed) orders for the iPhone 5 were being reduced. It was nothing of the kind and production was being moved to another plant. Now, however, Kevin Bostic on AppleInsider reports, Foxconn are recruiting, and so are TSMC in Taiwan with 5,000 extra workers each. And what will the pundits suggest that this proves? Well, business is fine.

Not long ago it was reported that Apple lost a case in Brazil and did not own the iPhone name there. As in China with the iPad, it was believed that there would be a solution (probably involving cash) and Kevin Bostic on AppleInsider reports that this is a probable outcome with Apple close to reaching an agreement with the Brazilian entity,

As usual there are reports of new patents granted to Apple, the company that some believe never innovates. This time, Patently Apple reports that a number of patents for older devices, like the iPhone 4S and its metal band. There is also an iDevice component that is not shown and a graphical user interface layout: ten patents in all.

Earlier in the week I included a screen shot of Maps on the iPhone that clearly shows a bank in the middle of Bangkok's river. That has not been updated (not for months now, despite me reporting it a number of times) but Japanese users have been more lucky, Jordan Kahn reports on 9to5 Mac. The Maps data there was updated recently but unusually - we are told - this did not require an iOS update.

Some news from India that is reported by Patently Apple, tells us that QANTAS is to issue iPads to all customers flying between Sydney and Honolulu and that these will be able to stream more than 200 hours of movies, TV shows and music.

A recent malware infection that attacked Macs is reported to have somehow bypassed all the usual protections, including Gatekeeper. I cannot even run some legitimate apps on my computer unless I install these properly and confirm that I know what I am doing the first time. Dan Goodin reports on Pintsized.A which he reports is "a new family of Mac malware that uses an exploit to bypass Gatekeeper". This is the same one that hot Facebook and Apple as well as other companies. I expect Apple is looking into this right now.

I am often asked about disk repairs and have a stock list of responses, starting with some simple checks and building up to more powerful utilities. The Rescue partition that comes as part of OS X these days put a new twist on things, but this may not be able to repair everything and I usually suggest something like Disk Warrior. The response here though is usually something like "too expensive" or "Can I get that at Phantip" or "maybe I will try this later" (meaning not at all). Joe Kissell on MacWorld has a number of other suggestions to the problems of disk faults, adding Prosoft Engineering's Drive Genius ($99), and Micromat's TechTool Pro ($100) to my Disk Warrior suggestion ($100). Frankly, if you have a disk that is about to die and all your data is going with it (most of the fore-mentioned don't back up either) $100 is nothing compared with what you may lose. These powerful utilities are also insurance: fixing things before they become dangerous. And when my iMac hard disk was in self-destruct, the Disk Warrior process allowed me to rescue the data before all was lost.

Another regular contributor to user help is Topher Kessler and this time he looks at one of the things I advise when diagnosing disk problems: the Safe boot (start with the Shift key held down). However, he reports that some times this will not work - for example I have Firmware Password Utility active - and others may have encryption or wireless keyboards, all of which add something else to the equation, as well as system errors (which may be why you were checking in the first place). Some useful ideas here, as ever.

Having blamed Apple for increasing crime last year, with the main increase being caused by thieves (not Apple) who were after iPhones and iPads, and lost this week in his attempt to ban sugary drinks, Mayor Bloomberg of New York is after Apple again over the earphones (earphones?) that iPads use and the music volume that these can produce. This is an old chestnut and as before, there is no mention in the CBS article - critical of the Mayor - about any other in-ear device. Remember, these were invented by Sony, not by Apple. [My link for this item was MacDaily News.]

The long awaited updated to 10.8.3 for OS X is still in the pipeline and 9to5 Mac reports on another build (12D78) that has been seeded to developers, with focus on AirPlay, AirPort, Graphics Drivers, Safari, and Game Center.

Half and Half

SimCity has had some bad press recently because of decisions made by EA and by the lack of preparedness when new owners of the game logged into servers, mainkly because they had to and this cannot be a standalone game as it is currently configured: read that and weep. On a PC gaming site called Rock, Paper, Shotgun - this may load slowly - there is a an article by John Walker that is highly critical of just what has been done to SimCity and suggesting that fixing server queues is not fixing the basic problem with the game: "the artificial restrictions placed on the game just to make it run" and he concludes with an expansion of some of the points I made earlier in the week:

SimCity could be a very splendid single-player game, and one that could then be taken online for other funs. It's perfect laptop-on-the-train gaming (especially with such stupidly tiny cities), that's rendered impossible to play on a laptop on the train. It's ideal flight fodder, that no one can play on flights. It's a game that of course should be able to fill an evening when the internet's gone down, that shall fill no such evenings.

Microsoft has an odd relationship with Apple and with Mac users, sometimes making crass decisions (pricing was questioned recently) while at others being quite sensible. This week MacDaily News links to a ZDNet article that reports on changed licencing for Mac users of Office: "customers who have already purchased, or newly purchase, the WinOffice 2013 or MacOffice 2011 suites [can] transfer the software from one computer to another, effective immediately." This can apparently be done as many times as wanted but not more than once every 90 days.

A problem with trying to outdo Apple is that those who want to try this, aim and usually miss. As well as Microsoft with its heavyweight laptop without keyboard, that needs a keyboard, the Surface, there was that risible product called the Padphone (and later the Fonepad) from Asus: just too many details; overkill. Now we read on Patently Apple that Samsung is going down the same road with the possibility of a 3D camera for its upcoming Galaxy S4. This is a mistake, but let them learn the hard way. 3D has often been one of those Holy Grail ideas that looks good on paper, but (for example in movies) dies when put into practice. I think the last such movie I saw was Jaws 3D sometime in the early 1980s that was an effects movie that desperately needed a script.

And as a note, it is reported on Electronista that Samsung has taken top spot in the Chinese smartphone market for 2012 with 17.7% of the sales. Two cheers for that. Lenovo was second (eh?) and Apple third.

Other Matters

As I am teaching a class that looks at the ideas of Ethics and Morals, I am keeping an eye open for useful current ideas, especially as I am looking at public policy right now, with Bradley Manning and Wikileaks lined up for the start of class on Wednesday morning. I was intrigued to see an item by Declan McCullagh this week on Reporters Without Borders who list the five top "digital mercenaries": companies who sell surveillance packages, including dirty tricks, to governments.

The five are the U.K.'s Gamma Group, Germany's Trovicor, Italy's HackingTeam, France's Amesys, and Blue Coat Systems, based in Sunnyvale, Calif. I am sort of surprised that Huawei is not shown, but then some suggest that it is really an arm of the Chinese governments. Also named in the article are the worst countries for repression and I am surprised to see that Myanmar is not listed this year.

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.