I was expecting a quiet week this week with it being 4 July over in the US and a half week of holiday here: Friday to Thursday. This week I am looking at some information that might help new Mac users here.

Advantages for New Mac Users

Not one but two people sent me information about David Hockney and Brushes this week. My sister, who had gone with me to that gallery in London in May, and a podcast follower from Australia. I was able to download three of the Hockney images, and actually prefer that New Yorker cover.

Needless to say, when I tried to view The Bigger Picture, I had the BBC's standard, "Only in the UK, Dears" panel appear. Fortunately there is a link via MacWorld to the images, but not the TV show.

We mentioned a couple of weeks back the apparent restraint of customers lining up for the iPhone 3Gs while also mentioning that pre-orders had been higher. The apparent lack of people queuing had the usual The Sky is Falling, The Sky is Falling comments from some who attack Apple at every opportunity and then fail to retract later. We did report that Apple was happy with 1 million sales over that first weekend and now we read in Insanely Great Mac that AT&T had its biggest sales day ever for the release of this phone. Go figure.

However, we also read this week in MacNN that, as expected, the first iPhone 3Gs "jail-breaking" tool has been released. It is a beta. Dangerous stuff this. There is no real advantage it seems to me these days and a real iPhone is a far better bet in the long run.

As well as those good figures on the first weekend, the 4 July holiday in the US also proved to be a time when lots more iPhones were acquired. Gaurang Donovan in Macsimum News reports that the website that reports on the device was showing many areas with low availability. This only works for US stores, but the red squares indicate a lot of phones sold out.

As well as good sales for the iPhone, there are reports of excellent sales of Macs too and the figures, up 25% for April, are significantly above those for PCs at 1%, so perhaps today's main article was on cue.

One of the things I love about the iPhone and iPod touch is the way that apps have transformed these devices and I can do a lot of things I would never have imagined a couple of years back, like draw pictures, track wifi, play music (with Band), and record simple sound files. Now things are better as a group called The 88 in the US have recorded a single using the iPhone and an app called Four Track. The group thought it would be a good idea to put down ideas initially but ended up using it as the recording medium. They have a YouTube video to show how they did it.

In the last month or so we heard that computers being sold in China have to have special filtering software installed in case the population manages to get access to the Truth; and also to make sure the population cannot send out the Truth to the world. However, any computer that cannot install the software, is exempt. Talk about driving a horse and cart through the regulations. As the software is, unsurprisingly basic PCs only, Linux machines and Macs are not required to have the filtering program installed. Nor are Windows machines running 64-bit versions of that operating system.

I must really exercise restraint on Twitter. A writer who seems to specialise in Windows7 wrote on Twitter, ‘what will Apple's response be to Windows 7’. I nearly choked for one thing and without initially linking to the article replied "Snow Leopard, a month earlier, one version and cheaper."

When I had a look at Part 2, I was disappointed. If he thinks 7 and Snow Leopard are similar, he is only looking at the surface and not about how it works. The whole basis of the OS makes it utterly different. He speculates that the only response Apple can give is to be nasty in advertising and then projects this as if it is already a reality: "how behaviour such as this can possibly be in the best interests of consumers," he writes.

I suggest that such questions of behaviour be addressed to Ballmer particularly after the vomit marketing of IE8. To be fair, they did remove it pretty quickly, but the genie is out of the bottle. The link I have is for a CNET page but do not watch this if you are easily upset. This is one of the worst ads I have EVER seen and MS cannot now expunge this as it is forever on YouTube. (I archived a copy, just in case.)

Later, The Register reported that the removal of the video was (understandably) due to customer feedback -- unfortunate term here, eh? -- but one might have thought the good taste police at Redmond might have had a say BEFORE it went out, not after. This type of shock advertising is a sign of desperation -- the sort that Windows7 man thinks Apple will resort to: of flailing about not knowing which way to go.

Also in that Register article was mention of another act of copying Apple by the creation of the Family Pack for the release of Windows 7: original to the core, eh?

I then went to Part 1. Has he ever used OS X or just seen it with his nose pressed against a store window. Ye gods, and people moan about so-called Apple fanboys. Do a Google search for "viruses on Vista" and then another for "viruses on OS X". The one virus that was reported to be for OS X was a proof of concept and was not a virus: on OS X these need the Admin user to give permission. [I have some more on what was in Part 3 but space and time beat me.]

Somewhat apposite was the thumb drive in my iMac this week which a PC-using friend had put there. I used it to transfer data later between the MBP and the iMac. When I put it into the MBP Crossover started: a sure sign that it has a PC virus. When I pointed this out to my friend there was major panic when, sure enough, the virus was detected on the PC used for games. That, of course, explains why it experienced a slow down on Sunday. Not my Macs, of course.

Nvidia and Apple are at loggerheads if you read some news items and all happy if you read others. Too many items to link to online, so I will just link to one: Apple seem to have been unhappy with Nvidia and are rumoured to be dropping their graphics processors, while Nvidia says all is fine. We shall see.

[Another view on this was made available on Tuesday.]

Last week we mentioned the way hits on Google had caused their computers to suspect an attack was taking place and react accordingly. This week, McAfee have gone one better when an anti-virus scanner that installs updates automatically attacked several systems and caused chaos. I thought the virus scanners were meant to prevent attacks not cause them; but what do I know, I never use this sort of software. And I certainly would not allow such software automatic access to my computer. Every upgrade or download here needs me to say Yes first.

An expert witness in the UK is upset with the Crown Prosecution service who have been telling police to use Wikipedia as a source. As soon as I saw the headline, my heart fell, and the content confirmed my fears. As much as some people use this as a guide to finding out, it is not a reliable source and at my place of work students are not permitted to use it in references.

I am going round and round in circles with True again. They keep advertising their 8MP package which I would really like, but know that the cables won't handle that here, so there is a 5MB alternative. I asked a friend to phone and we were told, Yes, 5MB and you can do it yourself online. I finally got to the promotion page and see that the promotion ended on 30 June, but when I clicked anyway to try and find out some more information, all we have is the 8MB option and, despite coming from English pages with basic information, when there is critical information, it is all in Thai. I also note that on the page I linked from, it says, "For more information or apply for service, please visit True Shop, TrueMove Shop or call 02 900 8000" which is what we did, but the person on the phone did not offer to help, just directed us to the web. I need someone inside True to point these things out as I am sure they believe themselves to be perfect.

A lovely tip this week from Geek Stuff who tell us how to email full resolution photos from the iPhone. Usually, when you send pictures by email, the software "optimises" which I guess is code for makes them smaller. However, with the new 3.0 upgrade, we can use Copy and Paste which does use the full size image.

A rumour this week suggests that with the arrival of new cases with a hole for a lens, this feature might well be added to the new touch (whenever it comes). We remember a few months ago that cases for a smaller iPhone appeared and everyone nodded sagely about an iPhone nano. We never saw that, did we? The article, by Kirk Hiner in Appletell, in which this new idea appears, has some reasons why this might be a fake. Adding to that, Electronista, among other sites suggested that Apple had ordered enough cameras for all iPods. All except the shuffle of course which has no screen and perhaps the Classic.

On top of that -- this does get exciting -- there is a further suggestion reported by Dennis Sellers on Macsimum News, that says the iPod touch will get a camera and that other iPods and the iPhone will be equipped with projectors.

Another rumour which probably has more weight, concerns the next update for OS X Leopard, 10.5.8 which is, we are told, imminent. That may mean just after I send this podcast out of course. If it was before, you would not have heard (read) this.

We mentioned a couple of weeks back the rumour that Apple was going to be setting up a data centre in North Carolina and some incentives had been prepared for this. Mac Daily News confirms now that this centre will be built in Maiden, North Carolina on 200 acres of land.

I was forwarded a query on a MacBookPro this week by Wanda Sloan. A Post reader interested in buying the 13" version had asked her about the Mac and she sent this question to me. The specific point was on the SD card, and the reader wanted to know if the SDHC cards were usable. The short answer is, Yes, but that was not easy to find.

Looking at the basic information pages of the MBP only told us that the SD card could be used and not even in the tech specs pages was this expanded on. A couple of searches on the Apple site found me nothing, although that may have been the keywords I used as Google came up with several links, some of which said Yes to the SDHC while the Register said No. The Register is wrong.

Apple's own Knowledge Base has the answer and that confirms the SD card formats that can be used as well as providing a lot more information on the slots.

It was therefore perfect timing that an hour or so after replying to the email, I found a link online to a comprehensive review just published that concludes, "a package well deserving of a Recommended Award."

Late News

First is the announcement by Google that Chrome is to be developed as an operating system with Microsoft in the cross-hairs and others. In the official announcement, what caught my eye was the idea that "apps will run not only on Google Chrome OS, but on any standards-based browser on Windows, Mac and Linux thereby giving developers the largest user base of any platform."

Ina Fried on CNET suggests that the competition is being taken to a new level.

Despite that comment about apps, TUAW is not sure what it could all mean and asks for comments in the small item on their website.

Next big announcement concerns security and cyberattacks. AP reports that a massive attack begun on 4 July which is significant and that the attack actually knocked out some significant systems. As there was also a series of attacks on South Korean websites, does this suggest Pyongyang's involvement?

Oddly Mobile Me has been having problems for a few days, and the Find my iPhone service was off in several countries yesterday. It is back now. I am also getting problems as the artefacts -- those nice little icons -- aren't showing up on some of the service pages; and like several other users, my second computer (in my case the iMac) will not sync calendars right now. Everything else is fine: not calendars.

Last of the somewhat significant events builds on what we mentioned a couple of weeks ago concerning the interest of some senators into the exclusive deals that some mobile phone makers have with some carriers and was clearly aimed at Apple and AT&T. Now this has been cranked up a bit and the matter referred to the Justice Department which makes it look like a monopoly enquiry. As I wrote then, some of these deals are in the interests of consumers as linking the phone to an exclusive deal keeps the monthly costs down. We see what can happen here as this is one of the countries in which unlocked phones are legally available. That $199 phone turns instantly into a $750 device and not all people are able to run to that. There are some interesting comments by Bill Ray in the Register who also examines the issue as it pertains to UK consumers.

The app store turned one this week and there is a sort of flashy promo that you can get to by clicking the link on the page with the podcast.

While the launch of the iPhone 3Gs is set for 19 August, I saw one shop in Central Pinklao advertising the device. Highly dubious. I did not see the price, but it cannot be much different from the official one.

I was also told that the new iStudio in that center that has almost completed construction in Siam Square is due for opening in the middle of September. That centre is not yet on Google Maps but if you see it from a high elevation, it looks something like a Coke bottle.

This week, VLC, the popular video player on Macs, PCs and a host of Linux distributions, reached version 1.0.0. I have a link to the main page which links to the download and to those other systems, as well as information on what the latest version has for its feature set. The Mac version was a download of just under 18MB.

On Sunday I sent my next week's article to the Bangkok Post on the subject of OS X on a thumb drive: and you can also put OS X in the SD card. When I installed this, I also put on Disk Warrior as this is a rescue disk. On Monday morning I read in Macsimum News that the current Disk Warrior disks cannot work in the latest Macs. There you are: a solution before a solution was asked for.

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