This week the long-awaited 10.5.6 update to Leopard was released, and a Security Update for those still on Tiger. I am looking this week at the classroom, when I had to take the instruction on OS X to another level.
Giving Students some more Insight into OS X
When I first wrote that, the text was just under 1,000 words, but with the limits I have, I had to reduce it to just over 800. This really hones my editing skills and makes me ruthless in deciding what is and what is not necessary. I must admit, I could do with a bit more elbow-room.
Appropriately for this week's main article, a story emerged in the US about a teacher who caught her kids distributing free copies of Linux and then wrote to the person doing the distribution. Her ideas seem as if they are coming from the Windows only sphere when she attacked HeliOS for "misleading" students about Linux and holding them back. Ken Starks who is in charge of the project put her comments online. Now he has apologised to her for throwing her to the wolves as he says.
Now I am incredulous on two points: the one was her initial reaction; and the other is that Starks has the politeness to apologise. I still think he was right and am pleased that in a so-called 3rd world country, my students are well aware of alternatives and do use them.
I will be following this up later as more information becomes available, but I was hunting round the shops last week and bumped into a couple of people. One was a retailer and we had a flowing chat about all manner of things until I mentioned the iPhone in Thailand. Everything stopped dead. He could not tell me anything, he said. Everyone had signed non-disclosure agreements which in itself told me volumes concerning the imminent arrival.
I mentioned last week about a med school in the US that was giving each of its students an iPod touch. Now I read that a British med school in Derby is giving its students iPods with medical information on them for a period of 2 years. From the look of the image with the BBC article, the iPods are out of date as I am sure that is the previous nano. The most recent nano is shown as 107 pounds, although there may be a small education discount. Trust the British system to go at something and get half a result.
In Taiwan where the iPhone has been released, users are finding that the SIM is unlocked and the device works on networks other than Chungwa Telecom. The subsidised device used by the operator is not overly expensive but there is a hefty deposit.
The 10.5.6 update arrived at last on Tuesday morning and, as expected was on the large side: The standard version is over 370MB and the combo issue is 688MB. When using Software Update, the Delta download that I put on was shown as 190MB. That also came down fairly fast at under 5 seconds for each MB. There are several major fixes: Airport, Graphics, MobileMe, Time Machine, Safari and Networking are all mentioned. As always, I repair permissions, install, restart, then repair permissions and restart again. When I am up and running, I download the combo version to keep. Apparently one of the many features of the update was that it deliberately broke the unlocked iPhones with a new kernel extension.
There were also Security Updates for those running Tiger and a Windows Bonjour update.
There were improvements to MobileMe and one included the facility to add contacts to mail messages. Earlier these had to be done from the contacts list and the feature to add was disabled. Another improvement was with the time delay of synchronisation which I am told is now down to a minute.
There were some persistent rumours this week about something people are calling the iPhone nano? This came first from a Chinese site of course as most of Apple's products are currently made there. With all the leaks, I wonder just how long that will be. Another Chinese site followed up with basically the same story later, but it struck me that perhaps this is where the idea of a $99 Wal-Mart phone came from and the idea I picked up here that the iPhone will most certainly be affordable. Actually, I don't want a nano version, I want the same one (basically) I held in my hands two years ago. Mind you, this might be something different and something that addresses the needs of pre-paid users here. Although when we see the rumoured dimensions, depending on capacity, this does not look that bad, which may be gauged from images of cases Electronista have online.
There is an online document that has information about iPhone carriers and this has a column to show if the carrier offers authorized unlocking.
On Friday the rumours started about the possibility of Steve Jobs missing the keynote speech at MacWorld in January. I see this as unlikely, especially with the share price unusually low at the moment, like so many others. [See below: it is now confirmed that Phil Schiller is to give the keynote.]
As ever, there are likely to be new products and while the iPhone will almost certainly feature, at least in distribution announcements, if not more, there is the question of other hardware. We already have iMac rumours, not unexpectedly, and the Mac mini has figured a number of times. Steven Musil comments on this after a new desktop rumour appeared, with no further details, but some speculation. At least there may be a processor upgrade of this underrated little device.
In all the stories of gloom surrounding the worldwide banking system and the US motor industry, with the threat of massive job losses, there was a glimmer of light last weekend, when Macsimum News carried an item on the number of jobs that the iPod has created. Only small at just over 41,000 worldwide, but it shows the potential and what must be done as major economies shift from traditional industries and on to softer ones. I would actually expect that figure to be a little low, using the parallel of the car industry: that creates downstream employment for the makers of parts and accessories, and the same is true for the iPod, the iPhone and for computers. Indeed, every time that someone buys something from Apple, there is a good chance that they are buying parts made in Samut Prakan.
I am not going to put the links on the following two stories, but Goldman has downgraded Apple shares, while S & P has upgraded to Strong buy.
And despite the mess of the economy, and a general turndown in PC sales, Apple is apparently doing nicely. Odd that: people want quality and name products when a supposed lack of cash suggests we should be looking downmarket. Dan Frommer in Silicon Alley Insider comments on words from John Gruber of Daring Fireball.
I will leave the link to the Frommer article as that pulls the original links together.
We are told that iPod touch sales are high: close to the level of the nano. And MacBooks are selling really well. I also hear that locally there are quite a few sales of the MacBook Pro too.
Gruber's page also linked to a blog entry by the erudite, Stephen Fry, whom we last saw writing for the Guardian. He has a lot more space here and this is an object lesson for what I should be doing, although more people take notice of him than me. This is well worth subscribing to as the ideas from this proto-polymath are often worth considering: besides, he is an unashamed Apple fan. Surprisingly, he uses Flash player rather than QuickTime.
Not even Microsoft is immune to the lure of the iPhone. We knew that anyway: they are green with envy up at Redmond. Now someone from Microsoft has released an app for the IPhone that was originally intended for their own mobile platform. I expect that they found the iPhone software developer kit made it easier to do this than for their own. Seadragon is an app that creates 3D images from a bunch of others and it is free, so of course I have it on my iPod touch now. I did notice that when I linked to the Seadragon page which happened about the same time the App Store appeared, I was informed of an update to Silverlight, bringing it to version 2.0, which I also downloaded.
Those iPod in-ear headphones are about to arrive here. They are on the Apple store site pages, but not yet in the shops. I did see a review in the Sunday Bangkok Post and early in the week there was also comment on them (and the delay) in AppleInsider.
Companies need all the help they can get and there has been considerable criticism of the heads of the US car companies, starting with asking for a bailout but arriving separately in corporate jets. If you have seen anything of Michael Moore recently, he is of the mind that the government should bail the manufacturers out but sack the bosses.
The same might apply to Sony that used to be one of my favourite companies: I had stereo, Walkman, digital camera, TV and other stuff; but then they did that root-kit trick. Without telling anyone they installed root-kits on the computers of people buying their music disks. The fallout from that was great in terms of public opinion. And I haven't bought anything to replace those devices as they wear out: OK the Walkman was replaced years ago by the iPod anyway.
Now we hear they are at it again, but not with ordinary users' computers: this time children's computers, and the children are below 13 years of age. Apart from any legal implications here, Sony clearly doesn't get it and Greg Sandoval expresses a sort of sadness rather than anger. Sony just doesn't get it, he says, and provides this and other gauche examples.
Actually, go back and look at that Stephen Fry article and see what he wrote about Apple and good taste, although you will have to scroll down a bit. As we see with the hardware that no longer appears on the cutting edge, the PR side suggests Sony is no longer a top player.
As well as the Apple updates this week, Adobe has put out an update to its respectable Lightroom which is now on version 2.2.
And for a nice change, if you have Flash, try Shell for an interactive look at how they claim they are protecting the environment: nice try.
In a press release, Apple announced this week that this year is the last year the company will exhibit at Macworld Expo. Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing, will deliver the opening keynote for this year’s Macworld Conference & Expo, and it will be Apple’s last keynote at the show. And my last trip to San Francisco. . . . Although MacWorld itself will still be running in 2010.
Needless to say, the press at all levels was in a dizzy fit all day about what this means. Mean? Evolution.
There were updates on Wednesday to Final Cut Pro, Shake and Compressor;
and the University of Cologne is considering ordering 45,000 iPhones: one for each student. . . .
