By Graham K. Rogers

Opening Gambit

Apple Stuff

I keep hearing the same sounds from the same sources about future Apple products and I am not convinced. Neil Hughes, on AppleInsider writes about comments from Morgan Stanley who are saying that there will be multiple iPhone models this year. The rumours here are the 5S (and we still do not know if that is the name) and a cheap iPhone, although now this is being put forward as a low end phone aimed at users not interested in carrier subsidies (I am not and buy my phones full price). The comments are based on trips to tech suppliers and Tim Cook warned about this a while back. Apple does not put all its iPhone eggs in one basket.

On Frday morning I found a link to an article by John Brownlee on Cult of Mac who has evidence to confirm my view that calling the next iPhone the 5S as so many do, may be an error. My point is that we do not know. His evidence is a photo of a product listing from Vodaphone in the UK: 4G iPhone 6. Perhaps it is a placeholder he writes; but he also thinks that the numerical naming could change [My source for this was MacDaily News].

A note on the dying Apple with the loser iPhone. Kelly Hodgkins reports that T-mobile that recently added the iPhone to its stable (and not before time, we hear) sold 500,000 in less than a month: actually abut 3 weeks. And that is sales, not phones supplied to the carriers. Is that the sound of gnashed teeth from Samsung I hear? . . .

For those checking league tables, we also hear from Steven Sande on TUAW that Apple is now at number 5 in smartphone sales in China.
When I checked on Thursday evening that ticker was heading round to 49,200,000,000 apps downloaded, so the 50 billion will be coming in a day or so I guess. Josh Lowensohn reports that some app makers are making use of this and say that, if their app is number 50 billion, then they will add another $10,000 too. That would be interesting; while another, "Hike is putting in $100,000 worth of Apple products and accessories." 100k. Wow. Get clicking.

There was an odd juxtaposition of stories about Pegatron earlier this week when initially, using Bloomberg as source, several reports appeared about Pegatron with MacNN writing that Pegatron is predicting a drop in revenue for Q2 2013 because, it claims, the iPad mini is suffering from lower demand and Pegatron relies heavily on this. Not long after I read in a story by AppleInsider that Pegatron is hiring some 40,000 workers for a cheaper iPhone (again). That is apparently a 40% increase. Lance Whitney also had some comments on this.

And then late Thursday I began to see denial reports from the direction of Pegatron. One of the first I read was from Jordan Kahn, who included his own mea culpa when he wrote that the Bloomberg reporter made up the story.

The source - Bloomberg - is a by-word for reliability and if a reporter is there at the meeting, one expects that what is reported is true. Tim Culpan made the iPad mini angle up and even included a quote but part of that was apparently fabricated. Neil Hughes on AppleInsider also has news on this with the headline saying that the Pegatron chief executive, "refutes report about waning demand for Apple's iPad."

Both Neil Hughes and Jordan Kahn included the point that Jason Cheng had been asked about the iPad but had declined to say anything about specific products. They both cite Philip Elmer-DeWitt who actually did some investigative journalism. Not satisfied with the Bloomberg quote, he emailed Jason Cheng and the truth is different.

Not only did the investor conference report that profits are up 80% (profits from consumer electronics were expected to fall), but Philip Elmer-DeWitt picked up that the iPad mini reference was not in quotes and he wondered about the source. So he wrote an email and the reply confirmed that "almost every item is moving in a negative direction" not just iPads and Cheng added the point that he was specifically asked about the iPad and declined to answer. Bloomberg and Culpan have also been asked and as yet (the report has not been updated) there is nothing from them.

An unrelated comment on marketing (on the SEOMOZ blog) seems to be perfect for the situation noted above, "Content Isn't King. Trust Is King." I would expect some fallout from this in the next few days.

Another rumour concerns the iPad and Sam Oliver reports that there may be some design changes with the way the camera is installed on the motherboard, according to pictures out of France.

It is hardly a surprise really, but as WWDC approaches, so does iOS 7 and people at Apple are testing this out. Now. Electronista reports a surge in traffic that has been identified as coming from Cupertino (you know, all those 17.x.x.x IP numbers).

Also unsurprising is the news from Mark Gurman on 9to5Mac that another version of OS X 10.8.4 has been seeded to developers. I hope it arrives quicker than the 10.8.3 update. Or maybe not.

A year or so ago there was an article on how Apple's product photos were taken: not just one image but loads, moving the focus a little each time to make sure all parts were in focus. Very clever. This week, Michael Shane on The Verge has an interesting interview with Peter Belanger who is responsible for a lot of those product images we see from Apple. I liked the way he sets things up. I was also interested in the equipment. One camera in particular intrigues me and I followed a couple of links to the Phase One 645 camera which must be hideously expensive with its medium format: not so many of those these days. One thing I did find was that is is possible to rent these and also to have a trial run with one. The local agent is Krung Siam Enterprise Co.Ltd. in Dusit area.

Remember those floods in much of Bangkok and the central areas a couple of years back? I will never forget. Apart from the problems, people here showed such kindness. This week, Apple had its own flood as there was a burst pipe in the 5th Avenue store and the place was inundated, Jordan Kahn reports on 9to5Mac. The roof leaked as a result of construction that was done last year apparently. I guess someone is going to be facing a big bill.

Jim Dalrymple and his site, The Loop, are well known to anyone who follows Apple and this week his planned release of the Loop Magazine app has come true. It is on the app store here, and was not the 50 billionth app downloaded. As far as I can make out the content will be $1.99 a month. A small price to pay, perhaps. It was 49.6 billion when I went to bed and 49.64 when I woke up. Alost there.

On MacWorld this week, Lex Friedman has a look at Amazon's Kindle for iOS and why he thinks it is so good. He does make some good points, and I use this here in the absence of the iBookstore. Some of the readers' comments are useful too.

Also on MacWorld, Jonathan Seff reports on the Unarchiver, which he enthuses over as a free and robust file extraction utility. He prefers this to Apple's own OS X utility as it handles more formats.

I use the iPhone and the iPad and like the way they sync the images using Photostream and Aperture. It does however have some shortcomings and Peter Nixey writes a blog, open letter to Apple with a number of ways he thinks it could be improved.

Apple has apparently updated the Thunderbolt firmware to version 1.2, Jordan Kahn reports on 9to5Mac: "with small stability fixes for Target Disk Mode and Thunderbolt".

Half and Half

With all that fallout from the RAND and FRAND patent valuations, it seems that Google is under some pressure. Motorola was not the cheap gift that kept on giving that they thought it was going to be. Now Charles Arthur on The Guardian writes (in some detail) about the pressure Mountain View is getting from the EU, which I mentioned a few days ago, and there is the suggestion that Google may have to write down the value: hit that stock.

There have been reports that, despite still taking the lion's share of profits from the smartphone industry, Apple may be losing some of the lead to Samsung. For those who worry about share - mainly bloggers and columnists who have only been following Apple for a while and don't know squat, or Wall Street analysts who apparently also know nothing about Apple - this means nothing. Apple carries on, doing what it does and sells what it makes to those who buy. Share is a poor way to measure Apple. Chris Umiastowski, on iMore has some comments on the way Samsung is gaining and also thinks that this is not something anyone (apart from those I mention above) need care about although his point is that the market growth will make it good for everyone.

Other Matters

There was an interesting pice on TechDirt this week concerning a new type of keyboard. The QWERTY one was developed because metal keys were so slow. There was later the Dvorak keyboard and we can also split the keyboard on iOS devices. The reason is that most of us type with our thumbs on our iPhones. To use this point, Joyce Hung writes about the KALQ keyboard and describes how this works.

There is a familiar ring to an item of news on TechDirt this week, but I cannot quite put my finger on it. Timothy Geigner reports that despite being free, Iraq has begun to shutter certain TV stations that it does not like: 10 recently.

There have been lots of comments and rumours about Huawei whose equipment is used widely here in Thailand but is not trusted much in certain western counties, especially Australia, the UK and the US. Roger Cheng reports that the chairman, Ren Zhengfei, has come out in defence of his company and " denied that his company is involved with cybersecurity threats directed at the U.S" Well, he would, wouldn't he?

In a follow-up to items we have written about concerning reading of emails by the authorities in the USA, Declan McCullagh reports that a senator there claims that the FBI and others should first obtain a search warrant before carrying out such fishing expeditions. There is some useful bakground in the article.

Local Items

This week I strayed away from the computers for a few hours and jumped on the slow train to Mahachai. I did the trip a couple of times last year and wrote about it then, but this time, with a couple of cameras and a telephoto lens, I made it a photo trip and all the pictures I uploaded are in B&W and in square format. Because I can.

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.