I wanted to scream late last Wednesday evening. Having put the podcast out because of a lack of news, just coming up to bedtime, I had another look round the Internet and saw that Thailand had been added to the "coming soon" list for iPhone using countries. More on that later.

This week, we slow the pace for the column and have a book review on OS X for Geeks.

Book Review: Mac OS X for Unix Geeks

That book of course is exactly the sort of thing I use often, as do some of my colleagues and students. Someone has to know what happens underneath.

Let me start with that iPhone release. I did think -- for all of 5 seconds -- about redoing the podcast, but the complexities of uploading a second feed file, as well as the recording and editing of a sound file stopped that. I immediately put out something on my RSS feed: and if you don't know how to access that, when you load a page from my site, to the right of the address bar there will be the RSS icon. Click on that and the feed will load: then you have to subscribe. I far prefer the way Safari does this to the Firefox display.

After the feed, I decided to put out a Bangkok Diary item and once that was finished, I sent a copy to Dennis Sellers of Macsimum News. He made one or two minor changes -- good editing actually -- and that also went online.

With the Time Machine article and the page that links to the PDF files on preferences, plus the podcast text and sound files, and the Diary article on top, Wednesday was a busy day for me and I slept like a log.

As far as we can see, the iPhone is to be handled only by True and this is an object lesson in trying to speculate when Apple is concerned.

I had imagined that the big two -- AIS and DTAC -- would be first in line. My preference was for DTAC as I have had an account there for almost 10 years. I also imagined around March would be the time of release next year. I got it wrong on both those counts, although there is no actual date announcement as yet. I do read that there are apparently talks with the other operators, so I may yet be in luck and be able to stay with DTAC.

On Friday, I was in the city and made my way home via Central Pinklao which now has an iStudio. I had already passed a True shop and saw nothing, but at the door was a poster for the iPhone 3G with the True logo clearly displayed: it was clear this is Apple advertising. I asked about dates and price but the polite guy was unable to help me on either: to be notified he told me.

We also read that the iPhone is destined for Indonesia some time in the early part of next year. Again, I am a bit surprised: not because Indonesia is getting it -- massive population there, of course -- but because there is nothing about Malaysia as yet.

But what of the iPhone in Thailand? It is not rare in Thailand at the moment of course. I see several in central Bangkok as well as at work: some colleagues and students have them. The device is openly on sale at places like the Mahboonkrong Shopping Center and the Central Pinklao shopping mall (among many others), these are unlocked devices that have mainly come from the USA and more recently from Hong Kong.

We did see that with the 2.2 firmware update, there was a Thai localisation, but no keyboard as yet. If the iPhone is coming here, that will be essential, but I wonder if Apple is running a little late now with a consequent loss of sales.

Also coming soon, but perhaps late, is Snow Leopard, the next version of OS X, which I was sort of hoping might be released at the MacWorld conference. Although in retrospect, with all the execs there, this is unlikely because they need to be on hand in their various regions when distribution starts.

However, Justin Berka in Ars Technica senses that it is still an unfinished work and it is more likely to be after April before this comes on sale.

Just to prove that the service IS working, I had email from Apple in my Mobile Me account telling me that the trial period is coming to a close. It should have been 30 days but with the terrible start it had, even trial users accounts were extended and I have been using this since July. Now I have to pay and the bill quotes the amount in Singapore Dollars. I used calculator to convert and it comes to 3222 baht. It is actually shown as 3190 baht in the Thai Apple online store and that is the boxed version.

iPod sales are expected to be high at this time of year, but there are some conflicting signals coming from US analysts. Some question whether people are going to replace their devices, particularly if they are working well. I see some point to this as my iPod touch is going strong after almost a year in daily use: and that is several hours a day with music, software and videos as well as other file use. In my bag I have a generation 2 iPod nano and even an older iPod shuffle both of which are click and play. There is also a 30G iPod in the house: this uses a disk while the others use solid state memory. That also gets regular workouts with video: a friend alternates movie viewing with this and a generation 3 nano: all work faultlessly.

Piper Jaffray are predicting a fall to 48 million units: around 12%. However, retailers are reporting shortages currently, so the devices are still highly desirable. These observations are reported by Erica Sadun in Ars Technica, but she seems to be focussing only on the US market: a whole lot of world out there apart from America.

On the other hand, Shaw Wu, who has been wrong in the past, takes up that point about retailers running out and suggests that the iPod is holding its own, and that also some consumers are switching to higher end products like the iPhone or even Macs.

And talking of iPod sales, here is something unlikely to happen at Mahidol University where I work and which has a major medical program. Ohio State University Medical Center is issuing the iPod touch to all med students as this device can have installed a lot of medical software. On mine, for example, as a test I have MimVista which displays coloured composite images from sources such as scans. There are also flash cards and lots of other text-based information for medics available. A third year student had the idea and the university decided to run with it. It is also useful as the students can access the university's own podcasts: another technology not really used here by academic institutions.

Here's one that I missed, perhaps in my enthusiasm to get up and running with the Thai iTunes app store. It has been well known for a while that to set up an account we needed to enter credit card details; but some people do not have these. I must say there are times when I wish I didn't. Apple has a way to get round this for the App Store: not the Music Store. The full information on how to do it is given in a KB article, number HT2534. Step One: try to buy a free app. . . .

Among rumours this week concern the idea of the iPhone at Wal-Mart, but in a $99 4GB version although most think it will be in the standard $199 and $299 for 8 and 16G versions. Remember these prices for a comparison with what the iPhone may be when it arrives here.

Other rumours concern OS X: both the 10.5.6 update and the next version, Snow Leopard, 10.6. The update ought to be out before Xmas, while 10.6 is progressing.

Best rumour concerning new products is the idea of a smaller Apple computer and this is one that would find particular favour in my house. MacNN has some information on this, particularly concerning the ARM chips which I seem to remember are used in the new Nintendo DSi. Tom Krazit also looks at this and the idea of a new category of products for Apple next year.

The touch and the iPhone have the touch screen: how about the hover screen? Apple has filed a patent for input from fingers or from other input sources nearby. The screens are sensitive to touch now, so with some other technologies, such as IR or sensors, there could be extra ways to accept gestures: if the touch screen is 2-dimensional, the new idea could have -dimensional input.

There was a nasty rumour last week about Barak Obama, with several sources repeating the idea that he had a Zune. Look at the guy: he loves his Blackberry, he has a MacBook and so do his daughters; would anyone like this seriously consider the Zune? Even George Bush has an iPod.

And so does Barack Obama. According to a Barack Obama spokesman.

We mentioned last week the criticisms levelled at the new Blackberry Storm. Most were acid and there has been something of a firmware fix put out although I am not sure that covers the main points.

Only the Post had a nice one, from AP, but on Friday, I saw another: from the BBC's Slick: their nod towards modern consumer technology. The point about the keyboard could not be missed however: you do not know what you are typing until you have typed it.

Pogue followed up with comments on his criticisms: group 1 included those who agreed with him, including at least one who was sending it back; group 2 was those who disagreed; while those who had not even handled the device and were mortified that anyone would be even remotely negative, made up a third group. Pogue was so shocked by the fierceness of some of the comments that he claims they are even worse than Apple FanBoys, and coined the term, "the BlackBerry nuts". I cannot put the direct link to the NYTimes as it failed to stay live.

Last week I noted a new Apple patent concerning water-cooling for a laptop computer. This week there is news of another patent filed by Apple concerning a cooling system, but this time using diamond-based technology. It is the material used in a heat-sink that is the key, coupled to the way it works with the cooling fins, usually made with aluminium. Both could be coated with a thermal paste made from diamonds.

The phishers have taken a new tack by sending out emails with false information suggesting an account holder has been charged for a service or a purchase and if not right, please click here. Here in this case, takes one to a spoof account with the name "paypal.confirm-data-update.com" which is linked to a Comcast address this time in Pennsylvania. I had some paypal phishing from Comcast in Wisconsin not so long ago. The email also had a return address which was a dead give away. The address to send this stuff to is spoof@paypal.com and let them deal with it.

And it was 40 years ago this week that the first demonstration of the mouse took place in San Francisco, when Douglas Engelbart of Stamford showed the work that he and Bill English had been doing. For the first time, a user was able to interact with the computer: something we take for granted these days.

There are no software updates; and Apple's share price has just edged over $100.

Too Good to Miss?

In answer to a forum question on Google, Jamis Buck who developed Capistrano, a utility for database work online, gave the following answer as to why he was cutting some support:

"Something has to give. In this case (and among other things), it's Windows. Microsoft may be an 800lb gorilla, but it's not _my_ gorilla, and it's not in _my_ room. If you need to appease the gorilla, that is (with all due respect) not my problem."

He goes on and has some strong words for those using Windows by choice. His decision has a lot to do with his own peace of mind.

With that in mind, we turn to Ron Galloway in the Huffington Post who castigates Ballmer for what he has done to Microsoft. He uses some ballmer quotes and some figures to show what has happened to Redmond over the last few years in comparison to others in the market. He ends with the following:

"One last Ballmer quote, "I think our leadership team is a highly accountable leadership team." If it is, Mr. Ballmer, then after decimating shareholder wealth as you have, the honorable thing to do is clear. Just please don't go to work at an American car company."

With that in mind (2), the NZ Herald, is suggesting that, with the way MS is losing money -- and they compare MS here with Apple in the 90s -- perhaps Steve Jobs should be invited to take over although the article still implies Ballmer should be in control as it would be him who does the hiring. Not a chance, methinks: not till Ballmer is gone anyway. Once bitten, twice shy.

Something that I cannot see happening here is the failure of an entire computing class of 29 students because the school forgot to tell the kids and the exams were submitted in Word format.

Later reports suggested the examiners were being pragmatic about the students efforts. Less is known about the teachers who advised them in the first place.

And Microsoft has updated Office for Mac this week.

Along with the Honda Formula One team, the US motor manufacturing industry and a host of other companies, we see that Sony is about to slash 8,000 jobs. Why is it that all the workers get to walk but the top bosses keep not just their jobs but their perks too? . . .

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