By Graham K. Rogers

Opening Gambit

Apple Stuff

It starts of course with China and the increasing attacks on Apple which, with the way the government there controls all media, would not be happening without the approval (at the very least) of the authorities.

A summary of the recent events was put together by Philip Elmer-DeWitt who comes up with 5 theories: Apple is behaving badly; Apple hasn't courted the right officials; China is trying to bolster its domestic smartphone makers; China is trying to strengthen the hand of its state-owned mobile phone operators; and China is retaliating for Congress' treatment of Huawei and ZTE. There is a 6th: that CCTV having been caught trying to set Apple up a couple of weeks ago, the authorities are trying to over-compensate. I like the last two.

One of the Chinese criticisms concerns Apple after sales service, which was mentioned last week with the apparently different way repairs are dealt with, except that most Chinese consumers have older iPhones so are more likely to be given refurbished units than those with the iPhone 5. Nonetheless, Mikey Campbell reports on the Chinese outrage, the buildup and the implications.

Hot on the heels of this comes news from Kevin Bostic on Appleinsider that a Chinese state-run film studio is suing Apple over downloads from the iTunes App store. Shanghai Animation Film Studio wants $500,000 claiming that Apple is providing unauthorized download services in the App Store.

Commentators often make speculative comments on what Apple is going to do next, but most are wild and do not base their ideas on facts: what we know, not what we hope. Daniel Eran Dilger on AppleInsider has a look at "what we know" as we must expect iOS 7 sooner or later and with the Developers' Conference coming in June, sooner is likely. We may also think about OS X and hardware, like the iPhone as that wild March speculation date is now past. Dilger, discusses some possibilities and expresses a few hopes too.

Actually, Electronista is now suggesting 20 June as an announcement date and that the device will be with the first customers in July. The article rehashes a lot of the same old rumours we have been reading for months, but late June could be about right.

Another rumour reported by Seth Weintraub on 9to5 Mac concerns a game controller that Apple is supposed to be developing and it will look something like a Nintendo box according to an illustration in a patent from 2010. I am sceptical.

Also speculative, but with a flavour of the possible is the death of the iPod. Product lines come and go of course, and as Apple is now focussed on the iOS devices it does make some sense to consider that the music player might be let go. Steve Guttenberg has a few comments on this. He thinks only the Classic would be declared end of line, but the nano and Shuffle might follow soon after.

The patents office makes some odd decisions sometimes as does the trademark office. While Apple has had some problems with both the US and such offices in other countries, Patently Apple reports that the USPTO has turned down Cupertino's application for the iPad mini name.

There are rumours (and have been for a while) about something that is being called iRadio: a streaming radio project. Seth Weintraub on 9to5 Mac outlines some of the recent finds in iOS device app code this year and speculates a little on the risks to Apple.

With all the noises coming from North Korea of late about attacks and invasions, a picture of the leader was released with him poring over plans and signing papers next to a bank of dated telephones and an iMac. The image accompaies an item by Victor Agreda Jr on TUAW and shows the iMac to the right. At firt I thought it was a clone as the disk drive is positioned higher than on my iMac, but a local Twitter user pointed out that it was probably a 2010 version with the SD port. I downloaded the manual from Apple and he was right.

There are often a number of problems - usually minor - with any version of an operating system, but some tend to linger. Ted Landau on MacWorld has a number of these small problems thathe comments on like a dock menu glitch with TextEdit and Preview.

Also having problems, at least with developer versions, is the Messages app as Mikey Campbell on AppleInsider reports that a number of developers have been experiencing DoS attacks and this reveals something about limitations with the way Apple handles messaging.

A tweet a week or so ago from Jason Snell from Macworld asked about improving GarageBand for podcasting and I suggested an RSS feature, so that the whole app could be a workflow from input to the web. Jason has a number of ideas concerning GarageBand, but not mine. When he asked further, I am not sure he saw things in the same way I did, and 140 characters is not really enough to get all ideas over.

We are also aware from announcements last week that Final Cut Pro is being updated and improved. Johnny Evans on ComputerWorld speculates that this hints at the imminent release of a new Mac Pro. That would please a lot of people of course, and Tim Cook did sort of make a promise last year. [My link for this article was MacDaily News.]

Slightly less serious was an ad that a cider company (actually owned by Heineken) put out that had all the hallmarks of an Apple product release ad. This is hilarious and Chris Matyszczyk links to the ad on YouTube plus has his own comments.

Another video (with some salty language) was put out as a spoof this week concerning what the cable companies will give us. This is supposed to be an honest version and my link was by Peter Cohen on the Loop.

Half and Half

There are reports this week that Facebook is to launch a competitor for iOS this month. As I found this at the end of the week in an AppleInsider article I do not think this is an April Fool's prank. Apparently, the Facebook OS will be a platform built on Android, which suggests to me further fragmentation of that OS.

Other Matters

• Rene Ritchie on iMore in an article that YouTube announced it was to shut down and had a couple more links to earlier pranks;
• A Cesar Chavez doodle on Google (I checked, there isn't) from Eric Mack with the addition that this was infuriating Christians as it was Easter;
• I am not sure about this one - Steven Musil reports that an IBM supercomputer, Roadrunner, is to be shut down and dismantled, starting today.

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.