Back to Bangkok this week with the iPhone release coming this Friday and the keynote and MacWorld behind me. With the amount of news still coming, I may have to run this longer than my standard 20 minutes.

Keynote 2009: The Best is Yet to Come

Normal service is resumed this week, sort of, with a larger main item than usual. The Post lets me have more space for MacWorld usually, so I write much more to start with. Indeed, I came out of the keynote presentation, grabbed a bite to eat with some Apple people and some journalists from the region, then I head back to the hotel and write from the pages of notes I take during the keynote.

My usual plan is then to take a sweep of the show and write some more, plus finish the podcast, but something I ate at lunch took its toll and I stayed in the room, even missing one of the meals Apple provides for us that evening. As I wrote in the report that I did produce for my first look at the show, the next day, there is something ironic about travelling from Asia to the US to suffer from the effects of dodgy food.

I started reporting the day before the conference with a quick look at the venue in the rain, then put a keynote report online, and in the next days followed up with some more writing and several photographs. The whole lot can be accessed from a single index page.

I really enjoyed seeing Tony Bennett performing live at the keynote -- last year it was a great performance from Randy Newman -- and the two numbers he gave us were superb: The Best is Yet to Come, and I left my Heart in San Francisco; a signature tune. Mind you, on the way back, I could not help thinking of Sinatra and It's Nice to go Travelling, which my Dad had in the late 50s.

According to Bono in a new NYTimes blog, Sinatra is not to be missed and I wonder how many kids will think about that and have a listen. Bono is right and some of the work Sinatra did with Nelson Riddle has superb timing: something that U2 give as well.

I hadn't realised until the Bono comments that Sinatra had recorded My Way twice: that song ruined by so many drunks since.

I gave the students a run of the keynote presentation this week as I want them to see professionals at work. I concentrated on the way Phil Schiller looked at iPhoto, including his Demo, as he clearly knew the product, something I am keen for my kids to work on. They were clearly impressed with the product, particularly with the idea of Geotagging and how Places works. We have been told that those people in the US and Canada who bought new Macs between Jan 6 and March 28 this year, will be able to upgrade for free. Let us hope this extends to worldwide purchases.

AIS has turned down the iPhone apparently while, I was told in SF, True went after it aggressively. Like the old ladies in a market, who lay out their produce, sit down and wait for someone to come along, AIS still thinks that their position as top provider in Thailand is secure and the iPhone is not something they need: here's what we have, buy it if you want or leave me to get on with my knitting. MacDaily News suggested that Vikrom Sriprataks whom Reuters cite as Chief Exec, "flunked out of the same business school as Verizon's former CEO, when he said, "We don't accept Apple's proposal to bring iPhone to the Thai market because we don't think it will be good for us in terms of business." More on that later.

Read, Not enough money. A lot of Thai businesses have never grasped the lesson that 10% of 100,000 is less than 5% of 1m. Not that I can really be counted among the fans of True, but good for them: once they get the conditions and credit card business worked out.

I mentioned some ideas about the sign-up procedure for the iPhone in Thailand to some Apple personnel I was in contact with last week and they listened carefully to what I said. After the conversation, as they asked, I sent email detailing the four areas that I see as grey and in need of improvement:

• Number portability, which is not in Apple's control of course, but they can bring this to True's attention and with the other service providers press the authorities on this which is long overdue. It is in their interests: I see it as a deterrent for some users.

• Terms and Conditions need to be in English as well as Thai. True is never very good on this. Even if the Thai version is the one that is used in any dispute -- normal for anyone who has worked with contracts here -- it would be nice to have a fair idea of what you are signing up for.

• Signing up itself is also a problem as, like the terms and conditions, the online application is partly in Thai and needs a Thai character version of your western name. A lot of us have Thai friends who are used to helping, but I am a big boy now and should be able to do this myself.

The credit card problem is also going to prevent a lot of people singing up. I know that Thai banking regulations are involved, but with the sign up limited to only holders of Bangkok Bank or Kassikorn Thai cards, then the operative word IS "limited."

Mind you, I hear that this is phase one and this was because of the limited response from banking organisations in Thailand. True, who would otherwise have to carry the whole credit line themselves, are apparently working on bringing other credit cards into the fold.

I had an email on Tuesday from a user in Pattaya who pointed me at some changes on the True pages and now one can buy the phone outright. If this is the same as happened in Hong Kong, this could well be unlocked, although the prices are not exactly cheap and way out of my range. The Silver Service is the best option for me, but it still needs one of those two credit cards at this stage. The price plan page does mention any bank, but this seems to be for the outright purchase and I think that I would prefer to eat, especially as the University has admin problems and parts of my monthly income are delayed until who knows when.

I also hear that True is likely to remain number one player with the iPhone for quite a while to come. They went for it enthusiastically probably as a way to position themselves better than the other main service providers, but Apple is not an easy partner to work with apparently and the others will be used to having their own way: not this time.

Any bets on an update to iPhone and touch firmware this week?

Apple Asia provided a lovely dinner as way of thank you to journalists as they did last year and it is a pleasant affair with a lot of chat and exchanges of ideas. It was at this dinner last year that I suggested the 2-tier iTunes store to Tony Li and we joked about this. While there is a certain line that I cannot cross when asking about future products, in conversation Tony and a lot of the others are keen to engage in discussion and sometimes to put me right. I am not pro-Microsoft, particularly for the way that it handles fonts, especially Thai fonts; and the price in Thailand is another matter. During the show a releases from Redmond was claiming 77% of Mac users have Microsoft Office and I expect the figure is higher in Thailand. I wondered why Apple did nothing to change this and Tony suggested that Apple was quite happy that users buy the Microsoft product. Pause here for consideration of the implications. . . .

As well as that 2nd tier of the App store in Thailand, which has been online since July, and now also an online store, which I was most pleased to see arrive, I did push the 2-tier aspect a bit more and suggested that it is overdue for the podcast facility to be moved to a more open environment instead of having these linked to the main stores. With this, one cannot update using the iPod feature for this.

The expanding iStudio store in Central World should be ready to open on 17 February when there is likely to be a small celebration. I have been invited.

Now most people know I am not the biggest fan of Microsoft, but once in a while, they do press the right buttons. With almost zero fanfare, they released a second app for the iPhone that was apparently bought in for a very reasonable price, called Tag. With this users can create their own 2D coloured barcodes (I have seen something like this before) and it becomes interactive. And that includes posters and business cards.

It is a free download and to make it work fully, a user needs to create a Tag account and this seems then to turn into some form of networking system. Early days at the moment but it will be interesting to see how this develops. And it is just for the iPhone. It declined to sync with the iPod touch.

Remember that the iPhone is not even universally available in the US as yet.

We may not see another MacWorld with Apple but there have been persistent rumours that there may be some form of display next year at CES. A lot of sense here. Several of the journalists I met, for example, were covering both and there has been some comment over the last few years about the proximity (timewise) of the two.

A patent filed in 2007, but which recently came to light, suggests that Apple may be looking at cameras embedded in the monitor screen, so instead of looking above the screen, which always confuses me, we are able to look at the screen and camera at the same time. According to the information I looked at, this could also work for the iPhone.

The Zune is not working for Microsoft. With low sales, and only being sold in a few areas anyway, the debacle of the software being unable to work when there were 366 days in the last year must have been an embarrassment: many Zunes stopped on day 365. Now Ballmer has apparently had enough and there are suggestions that the Zune's days are numbered. Microsoft is apparently going to stick to what it does best: software. Well, as long as they remember to check the number of days in each month and year.

Part of that software, software approach, may well be apps for the iPhone. We already have two and perhaps more are to come.

Perhaps connected with the apparent death of the Zune and its desire to conquer the world with its software, much of which it buys in or copies -- at least the concepts -- Ballmer has perked up again about Yahoo!. With Jerry Yang gone, maybe the new head, Carol Bartz, will be more compliant.

In next week's main item I make passing mention of the troubles of Lenovo and Dell, as a contrast to Apple. I have been reading an analysis of the Dell move from Limerick in Ireland to a new factory in Poland and two things come to mind: the main reason for the move was the lower cost of semi-skilled labour, of which Thailand has an abundance; and the need of some companies for workers with high skills -- to the degree level.

Here too, Thailand could have a great chance of drawing jobs to the region, as long as one or two hurdles could be dealt with: we remember the idealistic software region that Phuket never became mainly because of red tape -- immigration and work permits -- coupled with poor communications infrastructure: something that still disturbs people down there.

Another thing mentioned in the Register's analysis was the decision by Dell to downgrade from the flaky Vista to XP, then charge another $150 for the privilege. Ballmer economics in pay there, particularly when the latest OS X is only $129.

And on top of these problems, I read that Sony too is to report losses this year of $1.1 billion, while Apple's first quarter results are to be announced next Thursday (21st).

The same person who picked up $10,000 for breaking into a Mac, has found another vulnerability, this time in Safari for those who use RSS feeds, like me. The way to deal with this, until Apple fixes the problem, is to select another newsreader in Safari preferences.

While LG has its own way of synchronising data on phones which does not work well with Macs, the company seems to be happy to deal with Apple as far as displays are concerned and the two have just signed a 5-year deal for displays which could indicate a new Cinema Display.

One of my colleagues is now on his second Mac. He still has his early Intel 17" iMac but now has one of the new MacBooks as well. He loves to use Coverflow and scrolling through the lists that the Finder gives us, but says he would really like the rubber-banding feature we see on the iPhone to be used as well.

Mike Huckabee, the former Republican Governor, has switched to Macs after 22 years of "suffering" from PCs we are told and we hear this week that Nebraska State senators are all being equipped with MacBook Air computers.

A sharp policeman in the US foiled a child kidnapping last week by tracking the kid's mobile phone with the help of a colleague in the Fire Department. Calls were being made to the phone and the service provider provided the co-ordinates. Using Google Maps, the area was surveyed and the likeliest location seemed to be a motel. Bingo. The local police were brought in and the kidnapping ended.

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