The announcements from Apple last week certainly produced lots of information and I am trying to balance this podcast, next week's Post article which concentrates mainly on iTunes, and the Bangkok press briefing which is Thursday this week. Most of that information will go towards the week after, which will deal with iPods in the main I hope.

System Preferences Software Update and Sound

Let's see if this week I can remember the podcast number and not just leave the date on for everyone to guess.

On Tuesday morning here, the OS X 10.5.5 update arrived. It was pretty big with Software Update reporting 136MB while the download from the Apple site was 316MB for the normal update (I wonder if that was a mistyping) and 601MB for the Combo. And if you are still running Tiger there is a Security Update that you might want: it is part of the 1.5.5 update.

A note that if you were waiting for Windows 7, the beta has been delayed until December. I will give MS one thing, they are consistent and you can almost guarantee that a deadline will not be met. Maybe this is where my students get it from.

On the other hand, a story a couple of days later suggested that this would be available early in October. My gut feeling tells me to go with the first.

And another item suggested that Windows 7 (if there are no delays of course) might be released at the same time as the next version of OS X, 10.6, Snow Leopard in June 2009, months ahead of schedule.

Now back to current events. . . .

Before I get my hands on the iPods, however, there were some interesting images released last week that I found via MacNN concerning the dIssection of the devices. One interesting discovery was the existence of a Bluetooth chip in the new iPod touch.

I must say that mail sending has improved no end on the touch and there is apparently something in the new iTunes that sends error messages if someone tries to hack the iPhone. That will upset some people. Wait till next week's Post.

The most interesting feature of iTunes is the new Genius icon which, when clicked, produces a playlist from tunes related somehow to one that is highlighted. It also makes suggestions on possible purchases if the sidebar on the right it used. I tried this first, and was told that it was not available in Thailand, so was a bit annoyed as the rest of the feature was certainly usable. I tried the left bar, where the playlists are, a while later and was able to activate it then. It is the sidebar that links to iTunes store suggestions that is not available although even this came up once after I updated some lists, but I still could not buy and it disappeared pretty swiftly.

We still have to register with the store to make this work which I am sure will bring some commentators to near apoplexy when they realise that Apple is collecting information from us. Not that they raise even a whisper when MS does this, nor Adobe, nor anyone else. Apple claims that the data is anonymous and, until I have any proof to the contrary, I will accept that at face value.

The activation process is first, that iTunes collects information about the tunes we use, then sends that data to the cloud. Apple then sends back information to iTunes to use in creating lists. Steve Jobs was slightly red faced when demonstrating this as one of his library items was from Dean Martin. I guess this just shows he has eclectic tastes and we all need reaxing music sometimes.

Once the Genius feature is turned on in iTunes, it is then available on the iPod although it has a 25 tune limit. The one on the computer can have 25, 50, 75 or 100 entries. There are times on the bus that I have finished the podcasts and want to listen to, ummmm . . . something. . . . I scan the playlists and the artists and hit on some choices but it never works properly: my lists are in much need of reworking. This may save me the job and be like the iPod shuffle I like because of its randomness.

Another update to iTunes is the settings for podcasts: these are now individualised and it is not one size fits all. As there are some I never delete and some I listen to once only, I have been deleting manually. That can now change. Nice one there.

One of the items in the list was a Pink Floyd number and it was sad to see this week that one of the founding members of this group, Richard Wright had died at the age of 65.

Some rumours have begun to appear. The first concerns that 14 October date that has been floated before but adds a new product to the expected notebook releases. This is something that has been codenamed, Brick, which could be a replacement Mac mini, a tablet or simply a power source. It could of course be that desirable sub-notebook.

One of the other favourite rumours is that the MacBooks are going to have a considerable drop in price and be available below $1,000.

Another rumour suggests these new computers are already being shipped out.

And we are already on the countdown for next January's MacWorld conference and show. Dennis Sellers of Macsimum News tells us it runs from January 5 through 9 and registration has just opened.

The new iPods that were released last week by Apple in Cupertino were in Bangkok's outlets by the end of the same week with pricing that was fairly comparable once taxes and VAT were factored in [See below].

Now some boring stuff. We were critical of the first new advertising video in its campaign that Microsoft put out last week. This week there is a second video and I promise not to put the link on the web page this time. Inane is one of the words that comes into mind. The long version is 4 minutes 30 seconds and I squirmed through most of it it was that bad. If you feel that you must check this out in order to apply your own critical judgement, there is a link to the Mac Daily News page; but don't say I didn't warn you.

On the other hand, Chris Matyszczyk of CNET thinks it was wonderful and brings in terms like Kafka-esque and "an aura of underdoggery", finally wondering if it will be a new Smart and Smarter (which I guess is a joke on Dumb and Dumber).

errrr. . . . No.

Apple is getting a lot of flak as we mentioned last week over the sudden exclusion of some apps, after the development has been done and only when the app is submitted, complete, to the App store for distribution. Indeed, a couple have been pulled after sales have begun.

There was criticism when a couple of dubious apps were pulled before, and also some comments when certain apps were possibly abusing the location data in the iPhone, but deleting an app called Podcaster, which appears to compete with iTunes in the way it handles podcasts has now upset a lot of people because first, it is apparently a good app; second it provides features that some people want, while third, it wasn't until the development was complete -- all those hours spent working on this -- that Podcaster author Alex Sokiryansky received his red card.

He explains at length about the steps on a Rixstep page; while John Gruber of Daring Fireball who is usually fairly pro-Apple, has strong words for what he also sees as unfair practices. The policy is broken or the approval process is. Daniel Eran Dilger takes issue with this and suggests that Gruber is wrong.

Whatever it is, Apple need to close this gap, or fix this misconception, before they lose some developers who might not want to waste their time with such a risk held over their heads.

I moaned last week about not being able to download the Windows version of Gogle's Chrome so that I could play with it in Crossover, but now Crossover have released their own version of Chrome. See, there are nice guys in the world.

They also have Chrome for Linux distributions too. I downloaded it but am not over-impressed as it failed to find my eXtensions site while Safari did immediately, and then the page started following the cursor around the screen. A second attempt brought the same result, and it was all so slow. Later at home it was far better behaved so I guess the University's draconian network restrictions struck again. But it still follows the cursor around the screen.

To me it looks wrong with all those old-fashioned Windows-like menus too. OK, so it is a try out -- a concept that does what I failed to do last week -- but I am yet to be convinced that this is the way of the future. Into the Trash with it.

Something that I am sure to keep is the new version of VLC, something that so many Mac users make use of as it will play pretty much everything you throw at it.

This one is cross-platform and is free. Merci beaucoup to the French creators of what is now version 0.9.2..

We mentioned last week about the Digital Rights Management, or DRM, on the new game of Spore from EA Games and I also mentioned that I was disappointed with their site which failed to recogniose Asia at all. The game Spore Origins is now available from the App Store, however, at $9.99. There is some more on the DRM this week.

I was not the only one miffed by its restrictions apparently, and while I can shrug this off as games are not my forte, others are not able to. A room in my house has been taken over by a PC-owning game player who sits there for hours with the total existence being controlled by a screen.

Some are so annoyed by EA that it has a one-star rating on Amazon and it is a listed application on Bit Torrent with so many downloading it that EA seem to have levered open the very door they intended to keep shut. This should be a lesson, not only to EA but to the recording industries, but of coure it won't be anything of the sort, they will just seek more and stronger DRM which will just be broken and the downloads will continue.

Making downloads easy does not necessarily mean it is open season. A few might get away, but a good example is Apple's software business: no copy protection on it yet Apple makes a lot of money each year on sales of software. It also gives a way a lot to link people with the hardware, for example iTunes. Sure it is a limited market compared with Windows users, but they are not losing from it.

And this is a similar approach to that of Dave Rosenberg whose comments appeared Monday evening Thai time. He uses the term, Botched, to describe this aspect of the Spore launch.

Although I have known about the feature to save screenshots on the iPod touch, Macsimum News tells us that it is also possible to save images in mail or from Safari. Tap and hold the image for a couple of seconds and, like the screenshot, a dialogue panel appears. Even that tiny little blue apple icon on my Mac web pages can be saved using this.

An item I saw on Mac Daily News that caught my eye was comment on a new Apple patent concerning a "Smart Garment." Part of the description that I found interesting was "Apple describes the invention as, "a sensor authenticated to a garment transfers information, either wirelessly or wired, to an external data processing device."

At work I have been looking at project proposals in the last month or so, helping my Thai students produce these in reasonable English -- hard work for them and for me. One of the projects is an antenna made from a button on a pair of jeans: a wearable antenna.

If you were only to read certain publications, or listen to certain commentators it would be quite a surprise to find that Apple was number 6 desktop computer vendor in the world last year with some 3 million computers, some 26 percent higher than 2005. With only 1% of sales coming from emerging markets, there is a lot more to gain by focussing on them. Us.

Too Good to Miss?

There are new colours for the iPod shuffle both 1G and 2G, for $49 and $69 (1700 and 2396 baht), which are available at 2290 and 3190 baht in Bangkok; and a consolidation to the iPod Classic which now comes in a single 120G size ($249, 8645 baht). It is available in black or white and I saw it for 9990 baht.

The iPhone 3G began with sales of 50,000 a week in the UK but it still holding some 27,000 per week a couple of months into its life.

Another story on the iPhone concerns the next update to the hardware and the idea that the ARM chip may be used. According to some sources this is almost a done deal. Not surprising considering Apple owns the company. What seems to be most surprising is that someone from Apple actually admitted this.

Daniel Eran Dilger who is usually pro-Mac, has an interesting comparison between Microsoft and John McCain. He goes through with 10 major points and, while there is a certain amount of tongue in cheek, this does hit home neatly.

I read a headline in the Insanely Great Mac newsfeed that caught my eye on Friday: Firefox 3.1 to gain "Porn" mode, which sounded interesting. Were they going to make it easy for some people to track this stuff down; or was it for hockey mums to be able to keep better tabs of their teenage sons and daughters. Neither really, it is the same feature that Safari has had for a long time now and that Apple calls "Private Browsing." This is intended for those who visit sites they want to keep away from others, like banking or stock dealing. I tried this once with Paypal and that failed to load as does the Mobile Me service if it is active.

OS X also had a new language localisation released: for Hebrew. Will we ever see Thai? The link to the Israel distributor is on the web page for academic interest as the pages are almost totally in Hebrew. I cannot read them.

Here's something really frightening to end on. If you thought torture and other methods to get the supposed truth out of terrorists was OK, you are going to love the new device that India has used to convict someone of a crime. This is so Orwellian. When I first read this, in the Herald Tribune, I had to make sure it was not 1 April, or that there was not a comic hint or two to let me know this was a spoof.

The device scans the brain of a suspect and produces images of the human mind in action . This is too fantastic for words and far too dangerous. We all know full well that the brain carries loads of images of things that are not real -- that is why some dreams please or frighten us. Here, when questioned, memories stimulate certain parts of the brain and the printout is used to confirm guilty knowledge. The same story, same Indian author too came up on a couple of websites. I hope this is a con.

Whatever the current legality in other countries, we are told that law enforcement officials from several countries, including Israel and Singapore, have shown interest the Herald Tribune tells us. Somehow I am dismayed but not at all surprised.

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