By Graham K. Rogers

Opening Gambit:

Apple Stuff

Apple was first and Simon Sharwood reporting on the Register was favourable: I take that as a good sign as the Register is normally first to crank out slanted headlines if Apple is involved and tend to make negative noises at the beginning of an article, before coming to the good parts late on (by which time most have forgotten). Not this time. "Apple's Tony King . . . acquitted himself well." That was it. No details, no mention of the differences: "acquitted himself well". Don't want the Register to break the habits of a lifetime do we?

Not getting off so lightly were Adobe's Paul Robson (rather more flustered) or Microsoft's Pip Marlow, who "didn't hold up quite as well". Reading the article it seems that both Robson and Marlowe (shall we be kind) prevaricated: they may have been economical with the truth, with Marlowe also refusing to accept the committee's calculations of price differences. Both Adobe and Microsoft seem to fall back on the market forces argument, but ignore the point for many that there is no alternative to the products they sell, although that argument is beginning to wear a little thin these days.

Also reporting on this was Sharif Sakr on Engadget whose headline was slightly misleading, but did have a little more detail on the Apple presentation with summaries of all three. This article had an overview of King's comments: "some Apple products were similarly priced in the US and Australia" (which is the same here, in many cases); while "there were serious price disparities on iTunes, but blamed them on copyright holders".

As I have mentioned before, as regards music and apps, these (or those I have seen) are priced identically here as in the US. I am not sure about movies as there is not much in there I am interested in. Books? Forget books. Apple provides only copyright free books here along with a couple of specials, so users in Thailand would need to try Barnes & Noble or Amazon. With Amazon I have done OK as far as I know, but you may want to look at an item by Richard Barrow who wrote on pricing last August with, "Why are Kindle books more expensive in Thailand than the US?" Amazon claimed it was the publishers, while publishers thought it was tax or VAT, but on investigation it was found to be a "whispernet surcharge": a $2 surcharge per book for downloaded material, although a later reply from Amazon contradicted other information concerning taxes.

I often comment about the knee-jerk articles that many write about Apple that show to me that they have no real understanding of the company; and yet many beieve these and follow up with their own cloned versions, then the analysts join in. Good recent examples are the iWatch and the cheap iPhone. Apart from a few rumours, there is nothing concrete on either product, but one may read many articles that report as if these are hard fact.

John Martellaro of The MacObserver posted a link on Twitter to an article by Michael Hiltzik: "How Apple invites facile analysis". I am pleased to see that here we have another pragmatic view of what Apple is and that most of what is churned out these days is speculative garbage.

There are a couple of interesting quotes. Let us start with, "I don't know. You don't know. Nobody on CNBC knows. And if they try to tell you they do know, run for the hills with your hand on your wallet" and he follows this with the sharp comment that "the sentiment and stock action related to Apple offer a perfect study in how conjecture and misunderstanding can trump actual knowledge when it comes to evaluating a company."

Also making some sensible comments on the next big thing from Apple is Larry Magid on Silicon Valley who re-examines the history and how Apple has operated in the past.

I guess it is about time to look at some rumour news and we will start with the iPhone 5S or 6 or something. Kevin Bostic on AppleInsider examines reports from a Japanese forum that purport to show the new home button and a vibrational unit. The circuitry for the home button is much changed and shows a cleaner, more integrated design, but it is not possible to confirm which product these are for.

Another rumour, which I find quite interesting, concerns a new type of MacBook that will run iOS. This seems to be a hybrid rumour that takes the idea of the Microsoft Surface but would produce a far better (and lighter) solution. The idea comes in an article by E. Werner Reschke on T-GAAP. It is an interesting idea but has little to back it up in terms of outside sources. Nonetheless, almost everything is in place for Apple to create such a device. [My source for this was MacDaily News who make no comment.]

A further prediction about the iPhone 5S (see - talk about a rumour often enough and it becomes real) comes from Christopher Versace on Forbes who adds the idea of a mobile payments system into the mix. We might cast our minds back to the arrival of the iPhone 5 for which we were told over and over again that a payments system and NFC would be part of the device package. Nope. Like others, the Versace article is recycled speculation based on little but a few rumours and a filed patent. The only people who know the What, When and How are those inside Apple and we will know when the next device is anounced. [My link for this froth was MacDaily News.]

Also looking at the analysts and their predictions is an item on Electronista. In brief: multiple iPhones, including that cheap one again. Nothing new here, move along please. These are not the droids you are looking for.

All that money that Apple has laying about worries the Wall Street guys so much, but bit by bit Apple does spend some and AppleInsider report that a recent company purchase was made. Apple spent about $20 million to acquire WifiSLAM, a firm focused on technology that provides indoor positioning datas. There was also a report on this on Saturday from Mark Gurman on 9to5 Mac. Over the course of Sunday another half a dozen or so articles appeared with the same news (including iMore, CNET, Patently Apple, MacDaily News, MacNN, and TUAW).

Apple was criticised by parents who gave their kids the passwords to their App Store accounts when their children ran up some hefty bills for in-app purchases. Not that it will stop these cases, but Apple has added warning labels to apps in the App Store, Chris Oldroyd reports on iMore. Chris does not like the "Freemium" model: download the app, and buy in-app add-ons, but I rather do as at least it gets the app out to those who want a look, something like a shareware model. There was also a comment on this from Jordan Kahn on 9to5 Mac.

When it was first started, iTunes was supposed to be a break-even business, However, it was the glue with the iOS devices and has now been opened in several other countries apart from US, EU, Japan and Australia (even if prices there are not quite the same). Ben Lovejoy on 9to5 Mac, commenting on some analysis by Horace Dediu raveals that this "break even" business is now worth around $2 billion a year.

Last week we reported on the new 2-stage password confirmation that Apple had introduced and over the weekend a new bug was found in the system for resetting passwords for iCloud and iTunes. Apple took the password reset page offline, Dan Goodin reports on Ars Technica. A few hours later, AppleInsider reports with an updated article on the initial problem, Apple brought it back with a fix.

In another security matter, we also looked last week at some malware that had been injected into some web pages, but now 9to5 Mac reports that Apple has now blocked this by updating its XProtect files.

I saw that the Podcasts app was updated at the weekend to version 1.2; and one of the changes caused a ripple in the blogosphere as the tape reels disappeared from the app. Some saw this immediately as a sign that Scott Forestall skeuomorphism was dead and that Jony Ive was firmly in control; but many ignore the point that the one most in favour of such eye-candy was Steve Jobs. Was Steve wrong? Look at the Calendar app and Contacts and the answer might be, Yes. I hated the unnecessary details in those apps but was rather fond of the tape reels as was Iljitsch van Beijnum who writes on Ars Technica about the update. Then it was updated again on Saturday to version 1.2.1 which fixes a problem with refreshing some podcasts and with updating the app that some people experienced. No reappearance of the tapes, though.

Although I do not like his politics at all, Rush Limbaugh is a long time Mac user and endorses the products (without payment) from time to time. Recently he was talking about some of his favourite sources for Apple news and, I guess, we have similar tastes. Rene Ritchie was pleased to report that iMore was one; while MacDaily News was apparently thought of as "fabulous". Also rated highly were Jim Dalrymple's site, The Loop, and John Gruber's Daring Fireball. The MDN article had a comment that they had had an unexpected traffic surge and finding Limbaugh's comments explained that.

Half and Half

According to information from Dorna Sports, their app will be out before the first race in Qatar, but I am more interested this year in the live TV feed to computer, iPad and iPhone. I tried it on a one-race basis last year and was impressed. This year? Can I justify €99.99?

Other Matters

Also commenting on this is an item by Electronista which names Hjallis Harkimo as the unfortunate iPhone owner. He wanted to talk about a Lumia 928 and Elop was only focussed on a 620. The iPhone was apparently not damaged, which itself is an advertisement if you watch the way Elop threw it.

A later criticism by Chris Matyszczyk also questioned the wisdom of the action by Elop and brought in the earlier criticisms of the iPhone by Blackberry boss, Thorsten Heins and comments that these two in particular (and their products) are themselves with their backs to the wall.

I came across a field test of the new Nikon D7100 that was done by Scott Kelby with the AF-S Nikon 80-400mm f/4.5 - f/5.6 ED VR Lens. In the video he reported that with high ISO numbers, even full screen on his laptop, there was no noise, then added the point that I have made when creating images on the iPhone, that most of the output is not full screen, but with small images on the web: even professional photographers who are shooting with expensive cameras are aware of this. Zoomed up to 100% full screen on the computer there is some noise, he said, but this is the noise champion in the $1200 range for him. Even at 6400 there was little noise, but who notices noise: "the public don't notice noise but as photographers, we notice noise like mad", recognising again the market for most news photography output.

As for the lens, he loved it. Compact and quite heavy it is about $2600 which sounds expensive but is cheaper than many top end 400mm lenses. I guess that the weight is due to the number of elements (glass lenses) within the body. That gives it the sharpness (and it worked better on his D4) and allows the lens to be shorter than many other 400mm ones.

I often counter the point that many make that the iPhone cannot be a good camera, by the comments of Chase Jarvis that the best camera is the one you have with you, but now I have another useful comparison with a further item by Scott Kelby - I looked at his site after finding that video. He has a gorgeous photo of clouds pictured below the level of a road that several people would say is not good because. . . . And he lists several technical reasons why this great shot fails for some (narrow minded) people.

While we are on cameras, I also found last Friday an interesting examination of the camera sensor in which Simon Crisp tells us that size does matter. In the article he looks at what the sensor is and the myth that some people believe: more pixels means a better picture: "a 16 MP compact isn't ever going to be as good as a 12 MP Full Frame DSLR."

Local Items

Showing a lack of understanding, he was reported to have said, "the Web won't allow Myanmar to "go back" to its time as a nation that was closed off from the rest of the world." I don't think it ever left that, and I would not want to bet on freedom of speech (or internet access) over the border. Schmidt also tried his hand in China - that worked out well - and recently in North Korea where I don't think I have noticed any relaxing of the draconian laws on communication with the outside world.

I was able to follow up last week's message from DTAC on Friday. They had told me after 3 weeks complaints, that the engineers had tested the 3G signal in Siam Discovery and found nothing wrong. I noted particularly that the 3G was working in a number of places yesterday lunchtime, such as Siam Paragon, but when I went into Siam Discovery and sat on floor 4 outside the iStudio, once again I was only able to see an EDGE signal. And outside, of course, there was 3G again. Bye bye DTAC.

Of course, it is not just DTAC and not just here as a Tweet from Steven Sande reveals: "Really wish we had Verizon FIOS here. I'd drop Comcast in a big fat hurry."

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.