This Monday saw the US holiday of Labor Day in the US so the week started off a little slowly. That was fine as there was lots of news last week. The Bangkok Post article this week is another look at one of the System Preferences in OS X: Sharing. However, as there are so many -- eleven in my installation -- I have had to splt this into two. Some this week, some next.

Sharing Preferences (1) in OS X

Bloomberg who are normally to be relied on, put a lengthy obituary for Steve Jobs online this week. It apparently contained nice words from Bill Gates, which is unsurprising as Apple has given him many of the ideas that made Microsoft such a massive corporation.

Well, here's something novel. Microsoft has a new idea: they are going to sell applications, for phones that run Windows Mobile, online. It has already been called an App Shop. I wonder where they got that idea from? Indeed if you read the outline on the CNET News page by Steven Musil, it looks to be almost a carbon copy of another app store.

According to the good analysis of Prince McLean of ApplInsider, Microsoft is currently recruiting and hopes to launch Skymarket -- that's the name of this clone -- along with Windows 7 in late 2009. Or 2010. Or 2011.

Microsoft has been desperate to diversify recently and made a sow's ear of the attempt at the acquisition of Yahoo! a while back, but now they have grabbed a European shopping site, Greenfield Online, which is based in Munich and runs the online site, Ciao (which could be hello or goodbye depending on your point of view).

The deal is going to cost some $486 million: chump change really in the grand scheme of things.

One wonders, when Apple starts flexing its financial muscle, what it will use the cash for: it has several billion dollars apparently just gathering interest.

Talking of Microsoft, I see that the Bangkok Post Business section carried a wire report on the new beta of IE 8 which has some features that were introduced in Safari a couple of years back. One thing that caught my eye on a newsfeed on Friday was the way it might affect some XP users who had already installed SP3 -- which is something XP users are supposed to do if I understand this Windows stuff right.

Apparently, and I copy this from the Register article, to go back, users "uninstall XP SP3, then remove IE8 beta 1, reinstall XP SP3 and finally load up IE8 beta 2." Not so easy as putting it in the Trash is it?

Web Kit was the development of Open Source software that was initially used in Safari and is now also an Apple browser engine that some are beginning to use. There are some interesting tricks in there that should find their way into Safari and other browsers.

Google are also using WebKit in their browser under devleopment and Apple Insider has a lengthy description of this and on its possible impact.

Google have released some of the information in a comic book style.

I had to do a bit of a double-take this week when I saw that Low End Mac were having a comparison of 10 OS X browsers and they included IE. Actually, they are right, and if you can find a copy IE 5.2.3 which is when MS stopped developing it, will still work, basically, on Leopard; but then I had to copy the next bit which seems particularly suited to work in Thailand: ". . . stubborn web developers still lazily code only for Internet Explorer for Windows."

And we have mentioned those bank websites here in Thailand before.

It is an interesting test by Simon Royal, especially as he was using two browsers I did not know: Radon and Shiira.

While the Home Page icon did not set up in the way I like it in Radon, it is a slim and quick browser with different styles of icons that can be selected. I also miss the bottom progress bar.

Shiira, a Japanese development, is heavier but has some interesting features, including a full screen display which looks like kiosk mode. With no keyboard and only a mouse, that is basically what it would be. I have decided I do not like this, howver, for the way that it keeps asking to connect out: with Little Snitch installed I am informed each time and there seem to be way too many calls to other sites even when the browser is dormant.

Several websites carried a story concerning viruses on computers that were on the Space Station. Needless to say they were not Macs. NASA was at pains to point out that the computers in question were not mission critical, so I guess that makes it OK. I presume that these computers did not connect in any way shape or form to the computers that ARE mission critical. That, they are not saying.

In the end, I selected a brief but typically accurate and highly critical comment from Rixstep who also mention that this it not the first time that NASA have been so caught.

A couple of sites had comments on something that those who know no better rant about as part of their proof that Apple is turning into the Beast of Redmond. As " Apple Insider writes, "Apple works hard to manage its public appearance because its critics are similarly looking for any scrap of detail they can sensationalize to sell as news.

This comes from an explanation of just what Apple's Non Disclosure Agreement (NDA) is about: and, believe me having had to sign one once, Apple likes to enforce these. All of those who are under the current NDA about the iPhone SDK signed on early so that they could get their hands on the iPhone SDK and have a head start on development. That meant that, from day one of the App Store rollout, there were things to buy.

Apple Insider has a long and hard look at the ways of Apple here and does in the end wonder if there ought to be some relaxation particularly for academic purposes and (I would like this myself), Erica Sadun's book on development: that is on hold.

Coincidentally, I just downloaded an app that Erica Sadun wrote. She was the author of Modding Mac OS X and I reviewed this in February 2005. She has quite a résumé. The App is called To Do and is a simple note-taking utility which works quite well. The only problem for me was that once a lengthy note was written, the page could not be scrolled down for the addition of more. Still, for a free app, I have no real complaint.

During the week I completed the third look at Apps from the App store with another seven. These can all be seen in my Bangkok Diary pages.

And as another test, let's see how quickly the reports of Sony problems with batteries in the generation three Play Station Portable make it into the sage writings of Windows hacks who delight in Apple faults -- but never the good side. Apparently the new, bright display has shortened the battery life to around 30 minutes for some, which does not really sound long enough to me for a portable device: or is that portable from one power outlet to the next. Sony will of course sell you an extended battery.

Apple has released a couple of updates in the last week: one for Final Cut Express, which is now at 4.0.1 and the other for the ProRes QuickTime Decoder. These are both available via Software update or from the Apple downloads pages.

The update to Final Cut Express is for compatibility issues with some camcorders and it also improves stability when using certain plug-ins. It also covers a number of other minor issues. The ProRes update is for both OS X and Windows. The decoder allows both Mac and Windows users to play Apple ProRes files through QuickTime.

It has always been a hope of a lot of users that first there would be a return to a PDA, as was first seen in the long-dead Newton, without which Palm and Blackberry would not have come into being; and that the newer technology of the touch screen that we find on the iPhone would find its way onto a computer. I have more on this idea in a couple of moments. The tablet has been suggested as one form this development might take.

Sam Oliver in Apple Insider has news of a patent filing from Apple that would seem to be just such a tablet device. There are a number of diagrams on the page as well as a detailed description.

Denis Sellers, however, does not think that a tablet computer is coming from Apple at all, yet he does want a decent book reader. Although these days I tend to do most of my reading online, I would love to have the time to pick up a real book and gently leaf my way through that. I hate the idea of one more device and that, just for reading.

There could be more than a ripple if Daniel Eran Dilger of Roughly Drafted has it right about the new touch pad for expected notebook computers. We mentioned earlier that there might be a new touch pad that would allow mutiple gestures: there were SOME basics brought in with the MBAir. The Roughly Drafted article argues that not only will there be such a touch pad but by using the screen from the iPhone and iPod touch, there could be several other features liberated by what could also be a second screen.

It became clear this week that, while the 3G iPhone was not producing 100% reliability for some users, nor were other devices like the Blackberry, so the fault is not Apple's. In an effort to deflect some criticism, AT & T are claiming that the problem is a combined effect due to poorly written code on the iPhone and "a sometimes sketchy, sometimes overwhelmed network".

M. Sharp in Insanely Great Mac suggests that there is a degree of muddying the waters here. This source and the original Roughly Drafted article by Daniel Eran Dilger are worth looking at for some real information on the problem.

Having full details does not seem to worry AP (Associated Press) who upset Mac Daily News last week with what they (MDN) called a "hit piece." which missed the point and was short on facts. The item concerned two iPods in Japan that sparked and burst into flames: two out of several millions; and these were first generation iPod nanos: about two years old at best. AP's Jessica Mintz referrd to this and the previous iPhone price cuts as a "string of mishaps and missteps," which sounds to me more suited to describing the Beast of Redmond.

On the back of this comes that old chestnut that Apple must or at least should licence OS X to other computer makers. What's the matter: isn't Vista good enough for them? Don Reisinger thinks not and is another who rolls this idea out again. I think Apple knows what it is doing.

One of my intentions for the podcasts is to provide a source for Thai learners of English (and anyone else for that matter) which they can listen to and read at the same time.

Now the US military are using iPods as a way to talk to people in Iraq and Afghanistan using some hardware and a library of phrases for each of the four languages used. An interesting point here is that many Iraqis are not onkly familiar with the iPod but had their own and this actually became a way of breaking the ice between the two sides where there were not high levels of trust.

There was a ripple on the Mac Forums early this week when someone posted that AppleJack was back. This is an interesting utility that is installed at root level and, should anything goes wrong a user can start up in single-user mode (command + S) and instead of starting the usual file-system check (fsck -fy) types applejack and this does the hard work, and also more than the ordinary check includes. Some people swear by this. I have used it but prefer to do all that stuff myself: not that that happens very often.

Apple announced on Monday that there was to be a Special Event on 9 September at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco. As the image on the invitation has the outline of someone leaping and holding an iPhone, this is probably the recently-rumoured release of new iPods. But what do I know?

Too Good To Miss?

I see that in the US, COMCAST are about to update their user agreement and place a cap of 250G a month on user data transfers. The purpose is alleged to be part of the ongoing war against illegal downloads of music and video. There is also the point that those guys who use lots of bandwidth make it slower for the rest of us; but if a user signs up for an unlimited data service and the goalposts are moved, is there not here a case for a resolution process via court arbitration: or simply suing the pants off 'em?

Also concerning access, we have written in the past about the ways that the US Echelon system spies on communications from abroad. Now their department of homeland security seems to act as if anything is fair game. Which means that phone calls, faxes and now emails are liable to be examined, perhaps putting businesses from other coutries at a disadvantage if trade secrets were somehow revealed in this way. There is always VNC for point to point communication and encryption, but not everyone uses these (or even trusts the latter).

It was interesting to note a NYTimes headline that suggests that much more traffic than before is bypassing the US and that therefore these communications are outside the jurisdiction of those US agencies. I cannot link to the story as it is one of those that the NYTimes wants me to register for and I decline to put my name on Rupert Murdoch's databases.

Well Mobile Me had troubles getting off the ground, and Microsoft's new image cloud didn't even make the press briefing, while Amazon also had a blip last month. Now we have a report that human error was the main cause of a cloud computing outage in the UK when XCalibre's FlexiScale service lost the plot this week: an engineer accidentally deleted one of FlexiScale's main storage volumes.

We are always subject to this risk. A few years ago a skilled student was asked to update one of the Sun servers we had at the Engineering Faculty which was running the netowrk there at the time. Instead of an update, he managed to delete critical parts of the installation.

Apple, Amazon, Microsoft et al will all have to have multiple backup systems before we can dare trust all to the cloud. And some reporters need to put things into perspective rather than endlessly aiming at Apple.

Jasmine mentioned that it was involved in a new submarine cable that would give its operations into the country more bandwidth and it sort of passed the radar.

Now I am a little more intrigued as this may be part of a far larger international strategy that involves Google, among others. The Register reports that Eric Schmidt and others are linked to the new Southeast Asia Japan Cable (SJC) and is working with a number of telcos in the region.

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