A fair bit of news following the rollout of more iPhones worldwide as well as some other Apple changes and some local items. This week's main item looks at the new iPods as they were shown at that recent press briefing here.

Bangkok Press Briefing: iPods and iTunes 8

I was setting up my web page of the Bangkok Post article for this week and saw, to my horror that I opened the article by writing that Tony Li introduced iPhoto. The rest of the article made it clear that it was really iTunes, but I am going to put that down to pressure of work. This week, the semester ends and I can relax a bit.

I had hoped that I would have some of the new iPods in my hands by now, but here we are about two weeks after the press briefing and three weeks since the US release, since which plenty of publications have had their review machines. Is it worth it at this late stage?

I made another major mistake last week when I decided to create new directories for the podcast and start uploading immediately: the whole lot in one fell swoop. I did not take account of the rigidity of the RSS feed system that the podcast relies on for its distribution.

I put out the podcast late Wednesday afternoon with that new location and at the same time I updated my RSS newsfeed; but come 8PM when the Feedburner link was not updating, I knew it was time for a retreat on the podcast so reorganised the directories, rewrote some files and uploaded and moved other files on the website, then resent both the podcast feed and the eXtensions newsfeed. By about 10PM the Feedburner link had updated, so I knew that everything was correct.

iTunes did not update, even though I tried to refresh several times. Nor did the newsfeed. It was the same early the next morning and I double checked the files and the site: all correct. it was not until I got to work and had been online for a while that the newsfeed updated (closed ports at the office mean that the podcast will not update there).

The problem? Caches. Not mine, but either True or CAT, which suggests that at times -- perhaps overnight, when the rest of the world IS awake -- there is a delay for some incoming web materials. Mine is hardly contentious; and there is nothing explicit on there -- not even the odd bit of cussing. This only seems to affect the XML files and then only sometimes. I guess we just have to grin and bear it.

One of the rumours that circulated this month was for something called The Brick. Someone speculated that this was something to break Windows?

Leander Kahney added this to his wish list and suggested, or rather hoped, that this would be a new type of Mac that had no keyboard and a twin screen, if the mock-up is to be believed. He repeated the smash Windows idea.

Late Monday afternoon, which I guess is early morning in Apple-land, The Unofficial Apple Weblog put out information centred round an email from a reseller who had been told to "remove all Apple TV displays and literature and to destroy them." The reseller was told that there was to be a "webcast" kickoff on Tuesday, which being 30 September is the end of a financial quarter. What this turned into was . . . nothing. We are back to that rumoured October date for the next product release.

Spreading the goodness?

This a box that EA Games is beginning to regret that they opened.

Late last week we had Java updates for Leopard and Tiger with the usual, "improves reliability and security." Get this via Software Update on your Mac or direct from the Apple website.

What goes around, comes around? Back in the early days of computing, a certain Steven P. Jobs worked at Atari computers where, according to MacDaily News, he got a certain Steven Wozniak to create a circuit board for the Atari game, Breakout.

Now, Super Breakout is being offered for the iPhone and the touch on the App store with another Atari game, Missile Command, both at $4.99. Phil Harrison of Atari is saying that the iPhone and App Shop are "changing the way we consume and interact with media".

A Beta of iPhone 2.2 is doing the rounds of developers and one thing apparently in the package is an update to Safari. There is apparently a Safari 4 coming for OS X too, if reports on patent filings are accurate.

Related to this are tales about the webkit browser: a work in waiting. This has hit a perfect score on the Acid3 Test and is the first browser to do so. It is widely anticipated that what we see in WebKit will be Safari 4.

Following the Google release of its browser and my less than successful look at the Crossover version of this Windows only software, another browser was released using WebKit as its basis and this is slim, trim and fast. Called Stainless, it really is just an exercise at the moment and there is no way to save bookmarks, or deal with many of the other complexities of modern browsers. What it does have are a clean interface -- perhaps that is where the Stainless name came from -- and tabbed browsing, but with each tab accessing the processor separately, so if one page plays up (such as happens when we access certain poorly written websites) instead of the browser crashing, only the single tab will close. The main webpage is fairly clear that this is just a basic test version, but it is certainly usable in a limited way.

China is apparently asking Apple to ship the iPhone with 3g and wifi disabled. No wifi or 3g? I don't know what the point of that is except Bling. It will work with the Chinese phone system but much of the point of this device is its multi-system availability.

Dennis Sellers thinks this is not going to happen. Having spoken to journalists from China earlier this year in San Francisco, I do. It was thought then that Apple had underestimated the Chinese style and ability to dig heels in concerning the fee-sharing. That hurdle may have been overcome and what is disabling a network or two when the market has over 1,321,851,888 souls?

But the unlocked iPhone did go on sale in HK last week with a price reportedly at $HK5,400 and that is almost 24,000 baht.

The low price we have been seeing for the iPhone on the US website for example, is only when it comes with a plan -- such as one might sign up for with DTAC or another carrier, if that should ever occur here. Sadly, and I am being at my most cynical, with the way local markets try to squeeze every satang out of the consumer, we might well see that almost 25,000 price here: after all, that is what people are paying now in Mahboonkrong for unlocked phones.

But then, unlocked phones in HK may be Apple outmaneuvering China as it is suggested that these will simply be ordered from Hong Kong and taken in to mainland China; and other countries in the region. We noted a couple of weeks ago that someone from Singapore had already done this before the phone was released there and even then it was just a quick SIM card swap.

Apple changed the App Store in a couple of ways this week and one cut was the ability to browse all free apps. The iPhone and iPod touch categories are now gone too. What is left is that all aps are in their basic categories like Education, News or Utilities. You know, that is going to make it much harder to track down the new stuff as it arrives or to download apps on the spur of the moment like I have done.

Another change which I do agree with is that users may not write a review of an app unless they have first downloaded it. That may cut down some of those unreasonably favourable (or perhaps UNfavourable) reviews.

But now, here's a trick I found. If you enter the Power Search page and select the iPod touch in the devices button, then click the Free Apps box, but leave the app name space blank, that will bring up a list and then we can click on More Apps. What is missing is the date added.

That Apple country map was changed quite quickly on Friday morning Thai time and the Coming Soon section reduced to 29 countries: none near here. Mind you, with the insistence that the government system is used, China is not on the Apple map either. A couple of days later the list of icons for those "coming soon" had been reduced to 24 and that Russia is now included. As yet, no country from this immediate part of the world apart from Singapore.

I think that prospects for Thailand having the iPhone officially took a beating this week when DTAC announced that it was putting back its 3G rollout by a few months. Another article indicating that ToT was about to expand its 3G system did nothing to revise my depression.

There may be some good news in telecomms this week for us after it was revealed that that trans-Pacific cable that is being built by a consortium of companies has been completed. There was no information about when it actually comes into use, but if that is the one that local companies have an interest in, the sooner the better.

We have not had a moan about the local internet provider, True, for a long time, so let's fix that right away. A local user wrote me email and told me that, although I had written a while back about successfully getting connected using the True service, when he went to inquire, brochures and the staff informed him it was Windows only and Mac users were out of luck.

The reply I gave him would require me to have an "explicit" tag for this podcast, but he got the idea that this was not so. He persevered and I will use his words to explain what happened after in some exasperation, he phoned a True operative. She gave him a True number that was shown nowhere else -- 02 900 9898 -- the technicians. Excellent English, he writes; and a website address made up of only numbers, which I presume are IP numbers, so there is no URL. After a few clicks he was connected with the ZyXel router they had supplied as he was directed over the phone.

He ends that he was connected easily although at the moment is only daring to try the ethernet cable. The brochure, which said Macs weren't supported is wrong. They have the information at their fingertips to connect a Mac. As I have on top of one of my web pages, Nescia sinistra quid faciat dextra: the right hand does not know what the left hand is doing.

On another Thai note, I read a message in the Apple forums this week from someone in the Land of Smiles who had bought a computer from a dealer here and was worried in case it ever had to go in for repair as his Mac had been set up for him in the shop and he did not have to use a password. The smart ones among you will realise that Macs do need a password but that the automatic login was allowed, and the password was probably the weakest one that there could be.

Apple's shares took a real beating at the beginning of this week. On the other hand, Apple's share of the laptop market was higher with revenue growing by something like 30%.

And NeoOffice, was updated this week as well to version 2.5.5.

The iPod and iTunes were recently updated to improve assistance. I will be covering a related idea next week when I report on Speech preferences in Leopard, but Apple is working with the Association for the Blind and with the Attorney General of Massachusetts to make the online store more accessible for all.

Too Good to Miss

He makes a good argument as usual, making the point that this would be a cross-platform and competing runtime environment, but I am not so sure. Steve Jobs himself criticised Flash a while back, but Slash Lane of Apple Insider who also reports on this, seems a touch more positive than Gruber.

When Microsoft introduced the Zune, all those customers and other ocmpanies signed up to the Plays for Sure were almost instantly removed to a Doesn't Play for Sure service when Redmond shut down the service not long after. Walmart, one of the largest retailers of music and video also have an online service that thousands (maybe) signed up for. Walmart was obviously intent, like MS in challenging Apple's iTunes online store.

This week, Walmart announced that come October 9th it will shut down the DRM server. After that, the tunes can no longer be transferred to new computers or devices; Wal-Mart suggests that customers burn CDs to prevent the music from becoming unusable, long-term. What, pray, was the point of DRM?

No money back, Ya'all. Save 'em or lose 'em. Harry McCracken on Technologizer is suitably acid with what Walmart is doing to these customers: just like MS did.

Mind you, Apple appear to be threatening to put the shutters up at the iTMS if some negotiations on royalties go sour. Fortune was the original poster of this tale, and Greg Sandoval of CNET has a follow up to the rumour. The iTMSA is there to make money (of course) and playing about with the margins may affect this. I hope this is sabre rattling, but it does not affect users in Thailand anyway.

Apple's share drop may be partly as a result of the US financial crisis and analysts want to be seen to be prudent, but whatever the reason (and Jim Goldman of CNBC had a good examination of the causes, the shares were down to $105 fairly quickly knocking almost 15% off the price.

When Wall Street opened on Tuesday, Apple immediately picked up some $5, which in a way shows what a crock it was when people fall for the analysts' tricks each and every time. And one commentator suggested that Mike Abramsky, one of the offenders, has been wrong far more often than he has been right when it comes to Apple. Shares were back up to $113 by the end of trading.

The specific recommendation was based on a survey which, in itself suggests that, like a lot of companies in the sector, things are not quite so hot, but nonetheless signs were that Apple was not going to suffer as badly as some others. Bad timing there.

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