By Graham K. Rogers

Opening Gambit:

Apple Stuff

The last quarterly financial report caused quite an upset as Apple exceeded its own guidance but missed Wall Street's wild guesses and much of the world started churning out its Apple is doomed articles. Mind you, I didn't see one from Rob Enderle who in the past has come up with some gems like "Apple will not benefit from iPhone". I found an interview with Lou Dobbs on Fox who immediately got it wrong concerning Apple missing targets. This gave Enderle a lead in to take his anti-Cook stance: Tim is not Steve Jobs so everything he does is wrong. Enderle suggests Apple was missing deadlines specifically the iPhone 5 which was not due for at least a couple of months: his thesis is that Tim Cook must go otherwise it will get worse. Fourth quarter of the year: not thinking it is going to end well for Apple. What utter crap.

Better perhaps is Bret Kenwell on Seeking Alpha, but he still suggests that Apple had a miss last quarter. These people do look at the actual figures of units sold do they? Perhaps, as Dee Gill on Seeking Alpha suggests that even in a weakened state (not my opinion, but let it ride for now) Apple's businesses are kicking tail (polite of course). He also produces a graph of the disappointing figures which show a continuing upward gradient over the last 6 years, with the gradient becoming even steeper in the most recent year or so.

Rumours about the iPhone appear regularly of course, especially since that 12 September date for a possible announcement was floated. AppleBitch tells us that information from a French site about the new (itself rumoured) smaller dock connector suggests this could be magnetized, a la MagSafe. That makes sense.

Another rumour from AppleBitch, this time originating on 9to5 Mac is that there could be 6 rows of apps on the iPhone screen instead of the current 5. This is speculation rising from a simulation, and this depends on the screen size which is the subject of another rumour concerning size. If this is true, I hope the execution is better than the simulation which looks cramped and just wrong.

More details about the new iPhone appear to be appearing and Katie Marsal on AppleInsider writes that information from a site in Taiwan suggests it is to be 18% thinner and confirms (if that is the right term with all this speculation) the moving of the headphone jack and the smaller SIM card tray as well as some other new design features.

As a sort of confirmation that something is coming to the boil, with perhaps the iPhone included, is a report from iPoDNN concerning suppliers and their growth, with an increase of some 14% shown: the biggest for the last 7 years. This suggests that more than one product is being prepared.

A report Wednesday morning, from Daniel Eran Dilger on AppleInsider, is related to the idea of new products with the information about coding within OS X, 10.8, Mountain Lion that refers to new Macs: iMac and Mac Pro. A significant part of the discovery is that these will have bootable USB drives and may lack optical drives, which appears to be something Apple is working towards for all machines.

There was quite a bit of controversy when it was found just how unrepairable the new MacBook Pro retina display was with its new internal design; but there was a previous move towards exclusivity when the screws for the iPhone were changed so that repairs were only possible by using a special Apple-designed (and sold) screwdriver. Now we are told by John Brownlee on Cult of Mac of a new screw design and the photograph shows the head to be of a quite complex pattern. My tool of choice -- a kitchen knife -- would not work with this for sure. It may also mean the end of the small repairers (already limited to older Macs) and home fixers.

While some are still teetering on the edge waiting to find out all the problems in the new OS X, I am just carrying on with a few adjustments, but with no real problems. Apart from missing RSS feeds, this has been the most painless of all the updates to OS X I have done and Kate McKenzie on Pixobebo is of the same mind.

We mentioned earlier in the week the way some are not happy with what Save As has become in OS X and there have been several criticisms of this. Matt Neuberg on TidBits has a really close analysis of the feature and explains in great detail how this now works: both in good ways and less than perfect.

Not everyone loves all of the parts of OS X and Topher Kessler has an item for those who do not really like the Notifications Center: quit it, he suggests. It is a bit more than that and his article examines what it does and also suggests a couple of ways to turn it off if wanted. The settings can be fine-tuned as well and I just turned off the sounds for Monotony -- the app I am using to bring back my news feeds -- as the tone is jarring when several articles arrive within the space of a short time.

I am slowly retrieving some of my favourite news feeds and one of these is OS X Daily which this week has a grouse about the font used for the Notes app and explains how this can be changed.

Alternatively, the standard Apple Command + T will bring up a font panel and a lot more can be done with that.

Half and Half

A lot was made of the disclosure during the Apple v Samsung trial of a PowerPoint presentation that Samsung made as a comparison between the iPhone and their own products. Was this the smoking gun? A lot of people think so, and in context of other revelations and expert testimony this could prove to be a bit of a liability, but longtime Apple aficionado Andy Ihnatko writes on his blog that he is not 100% convinced that this proves guilt. It would be an irresponsible company that did not assess the competition and a compare-contrast presentation is a fair way to go about this. As I suggest, I am not entirely convinced, but Andy's own examination and salient comments are worth considering in context.

This would appear to be the approach that Samsung is taking and a statement has been issued to that effect, the Wall Street Journal blog, Digits, reports. Now will the jury believe them?

Some of that context is highlighted by John Paczkowski on All Things Digital who outlines one of the documents made available to the court in which the document, which appears to be the same one Andy Ihnatko refers to, suggests that "the Galaxy . . . would be better if it behaved more like the iPhone and featured a similar user interface." Which is pretty much Apple's case.

Meanwhile over in Seoul, home of Samsung, there is another Apple-Samsung case and MacDaily News reports that eyebrows were raised when the decision was postponed. Speculation is that the case in California may be connected and there may be a knock on effect with the one in Australia too.

As part of the trial in California lots of documents have become available, even though attorneys for both sides tried to have some blocked, and succeeded in some cases. One of these shows that "from June 2010 through June 2012, Samsung sold 21.25 million phones, generating $7.5 billion in revenue. On the tablet side, the company sold 1.4 million Galaxy Tab and Galaxy Tab 10.1 devices, producing $644 million in revenue," Ina Fried reports on All Things Digital adding some useful charts and a host of links to other interesting information about both Samsung and Apple.

We did mention a report on Samsung's alleged use of child labour earlier in the week and an item on Electronista puts this in a better context, providing much more detail. Samsung is in a similar position to Apple here and there may be some violations by sub-contractors, but these are often the hardest for the company to deal with.

Other Matters

We had been following stories about Zynga and its rumours of insider trading recently, but Michael McWhertor on The Verge reports that their Chief Operating Officer (COO) has suddenly resigned, adding the resignation comes a week after Schappert was reportedly stripped of his duties in overseeing Zynga's game development. Much more to come here.

HP is making some changes and a restructuring charge of some $8 billion may well be used to put the company back on track, sort of, Arik Hesseldahl reports on All Things Digital.

Local Items

Another True story occurred to me this week when I had a letter (in Thai) about an outstanding amount of around 1200 baht. This is from when I cancelled the True Visions service in late November. There was apparently a half bill left. I told them the connecting device was at home and was told someone would be in touch. A long time later, someone was in touch but by then the device was at my office and I asked the man to call me about an hour later when I would be there. No call.

A month or two went by and a letter arrived at the office from a debt collection company, all in Thai of course. A colleague phoned for me but the person concerned was out, so we were told she would call back. No call.

This week a letter from a legal firm. That much was in English although the entire letter content was in Thai apart from my name. I talked about it with another colleague who offered to phone True. The amount of around 1200 was confirmed, and (at last) the reason why. The figure is small beer but the lack of a realistic service is not.

I paid the bill Thursday at a counter in True's Pinklao office, but the handing back of the device needed to be done at another counter: twice the wait, half the fun. For some reason handing the thing back also needed my passport.

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.