This week we catch up on last week's Apple music-related event and I took delivery of another new MacBook Pro, this time a 13". We will see if I have any more luck with that.

Choices Concerning a Dead MacBook Pro

Podcast listeners can have the answer now: it was the basic 13" MacBook Pro. As this computer came via DHL I was able to track its progress and was sure it was coming Monday morning after weekend spent in the airport. I was horrified then just after 12 noon on Monday to see that it had been signed for, but had not arrived, which was confirmed by our bright security staff: no DHL here, she said.

I phoned and there was a sort of 3-way conversation between me, the base and the driver. It had gone to a different part of the university whee I guess they were used to signing for things. The driver retrieved it and apologised to me when he came up to the class I was teaching.

I am in the process of bringing it up to speed.

This podcast is being made on the new Mac and although it all works well enough, the screen size means that the room I have to play with when GarageBand is running gives me too little screen space. To avoid the clicks when I change applications, we will need some careful editing.

The Apple event that occurred last week a few hours after the podcast had been sent out has generated a lot of news. As well as putting up a Bangkok Diary report on the basic announcements that I had gleaned from scores of sources that appeared last Thursday morning, Thai time, I later downloaded and watched the presentation from Steve Jobs. As soon as he came out it was clear how much better he was looking. At the Antennagate press conference he looked haggard and cross. Here he looked relaxed and, while still on the thin side, was carrying it much better with his shoulders not stopped like earlier.

I am going to use the original report I wrote which is online and insert extra comments as well as links to sources that have appeared since. The first reports are immediate while later reports have had time to digest the news and opinions are formed.

Steve Jobs started by outlining successes in Apple retail and displayed images of Paris and Shanghai stores, for which there was applause, and then the Covent Garden store in London. As a kid I can remember when this area was the major fruit and vegetable market for the capital, like Les Halles in Paris, and this vibrant addition to what is now a major cultural centre will fit well there. A statistic revealed that some days the stores have 1m visitors and that 80,000 a week attend classes at the stores. Apple can get more information across in this way than MacWorld ever allowed.

An update to iOS was announced bringing it to iOS4.1 which should be available this week: perhaps today or tomorrow. 8 Sep according to Apple in the UK. This update is not a surprise and does cover speed issues on the iPhone 3G as well as improvements to the camera (bracketing images for best exposure), as well as improvements to Bluetooth, WiFi and some bug fixes. There are also additional features that will not affect users in my area, like TV shows. The update also includes something called Game Center.

Apple has shipped 120m devices -- iPods, iPads, iPhones -- which makes 230,000 new devices per day, not including updates, which was taken as a dig in Google's direction. The barb hit home with Google's Eric Schmidt firing back with a complete denial and adding that their 200,000 activations were real ones too. Schmidt's mistake here was reacting.

As expected, the iPod nano is redesigned into a square shape. The scroll-wheel is gone and the screen itself is the control: a touch-screen for the nano. The video camera and features of the previous version are gone: not enough space. The device also includes the Nike system, plus VoiceOver and (FM) radio.

There were also some comments that got some laughter, for example when he showed the clock app on the nano and suggested that with a strap you could wear it as an iWatch, and later when he called the iPod touch an iPhone without the contract.

Image Courtesy of Apple

The nano is shown in the online store for Thailand for 5,400 baht for the 8G and 6600 baht for the 16G. For the first time the pricing includes a note as to the extra included: VAT, duty and levies (618 baht for the 8G and 739 baht for the 16G). Converting the $129 to baht and adding on these extras, there is still a slight difference and local customers are paying about 200 baht more than their US counterparts.

The iPod shuffle was also included in the announcements and it is slightly smaller. This is also shown in the online store at a price of 2,000 baht for the sole version (2G). The US price is $49 and here we are just 33 baht down. The shuffle comes in 5 colours and could hold up to 15 hours of music.

Image Courtesy of Apple

The iPod touch -- always one of my favourite devices -- has been completely rethought and has some of the technology that found its way into the iPhone 4, including Retina Display, the A4 processor, the gyroscope and FaceTime. The last means, of course, that it has a front facing camera.

Mark Reschke on 3-Guys and a Podcast picked up on this later and the way that he thinks Facetime is the major strength of the new device. I must say when I heard Steve announce this I gasped a bit.

The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) has an article by Michael Rose on this in which he shows images from the FCC dissection of the device. The article also links to a selection of PDFs.

There are three versions of this: 8G (7,900 baht), 32G (10,400) and 64G (13,900). The price difference for the 8G version again shows a few hundred baht higher here.

There is also a new iTunes which includes some special features that are only to be available in certain stores. The specific social networking service that has been added is called Ping (there is a Unix command with the same name) and this is available for the users in 23 countries, which I guess means those with an iTunes music store. Jobs mentioned that there were 160m credit card holders in 23 countries, so that was a focus on the music stores rather than the rest of us out here.

The new version of iTunes was live by about 9:15 am (Thai time) on Thursday, either via Software Update, the update check within iTunes or on Apple's own iTunes page. A first look showed a new logo as well as a new greyish interface. Ping, the new social networking featuree is not shown, but this appears to be store-specific, so users in Thailand are out of luck here.

I was amused to see name for the Apple social networking system on iTunes was called Ping, but perhaps even more surprised to see that Apple had entered into a licensing agreement with Ping Golf concerning the name. My surprise there was due to this being a well-known Unix command, even built into Apple's Network Utility. But what do I know?

The device called Apple TV which no one is ever sure if Apple has a real use for, at leat not yet, has had some significant changes, not the least of which concerns price: now $99. It is smaller and has wifi (802.11n), ethernet and an HDMI port, but now will be rental only for content, so Thai users can kiss goodbye to this. Needless to say it is not shown in the Thai online store.

As ever at an event like this there are some announcements for the future and included in these were an update to iOS4 (4.2) for the iPad, but not until November. That will be a free update for those of you that have this you will be pleased to hear.

The announcements of the iPods and future software changes (iOS, iTunes) tell us that Apple is continuing its evolutionary approach to its products lines with here, an eye to Xmas and New Year sales of course, but also to future content, in terms of the shift to TV rentals for the Apple TV which, we note, disappeared from most retail outlets and the online store here a while back. As regards teh question of consolidation several commentators note that, despite rumours of its demise, the iPod Classic is still with us. Apple knows a good thing when it has it.

Another little mention that almost dropped off the radar was AirPlay. This is an updated version of AirTunes and part of this will allow someone with an iPad, for example, streaming the content to a TV or to speakers; and to more than one room. Richard Gaywood who uses AirTunes has a look at this and the potential.

While most observers went along with the new smaller TV and its rental system, there were one or two noted abstentions. One of these was the anonymous Faultline whose columns appear on the Register and apart from a couple of fanboy-baiting barbs, made a good argument against this move by Apple, although iI am not convinced that this is Apple's big mistake. Over here we have no real chance to experience the delights of Apple TV, movie rentals or streamed TV shows. Wired liked it, with both Brian X. Chen and Dylan F. Tweney having a positive look.

There was also an interesting look at what Apple may be doing with its new data center in North Carolina which we mentioned several months ago. Recruitment has started and there is an impressive hardware lineup too, mcuh of which appears to be non-Apple, according to Rich Miller on Data Center Knowledge whose article has a fair amount of background as well as several useful links.

We are told that the first ever Macworld Mobile will be hosted next February at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, with keynote speakers shown as Randall Stephenson, CEO of AT&T, and Eric Schmidt of Google.

We saw that Apple is the only vendor showing increased notebook orders for July: everyone else had reduced figures.

Apple had an extra one out of me in September too.

I was a bit disturbed to see in a longish note by Rene Ritchie that Dataviz may have been bought by RIM. Dataviz makes that excellent Documents to Go app that I used on the Palm a few years ago to good effect and was delighted to be able to buy when it finally appeared for the iPhone. The makers of Blackberry would do well to keep it going for the Apple devices as this brings in a constant income. While who knows what they would need to make a killing with the Blackberry. Of coure, the resources could be redirected, but this usually ends up with tears all round.

There was more on this from Electronista who suggest that RIM may be dropping parts of the DataViz operation, although they may find there are legal problems if the Documents to Go app stops working for iPhone users: having paid (albeit a relatively small amount) users would not like to lose the function, even if there are replacements like the Byte Squared apps.

I have seen a few more uses of the iPad recently. Cathay Pacific are advertising an app they developed for the device and they do also have an iPhone app that does similar but without the scope that the iPad screen offers. Both of these are free and I also see they have one for the Dragonair subsidiary.

Lloyds of London, the insurance organisation, which started out as a coffee house, is also thinking about moving to iPads as a way to carry all the documents a broker needs. Another way, like AutoCad, that this device might replace paper. That article, by the way, was in the Financial Times but that needs registration so we will rely on the information provided for us by Mac Daily News. In the meantime, MacDaily News tell us that a Toyota dealer in New York state is giving away iPads when customers buy new cars. Great idea, but of course this sales trick, plus the Samurai giveaway and the iPads drifting into Mahboonkrong through the back door, may be why Singapore only gets 1,000 of the devices on release day and we still have no idea when the iPad will arrive in Thailand.

And we hear from Dave Caolo on TUAW that SAP, the Germany based business solutions company has distributed 1,000 iPads to its employees: the entire allocation of iPads at the Singapore launch.

With the launch of the iPhone 4 in Korea this week, we also hear that Taiwan is about to join the club. We can only keep our fingers crossed here.

We expected the new version of iLife last week at the big event, but there are rumours it will be with us soon as Amazon is listing an iLife 11 Family Pack according to AppleInsider.

Wired are reporting that Google, whose new HTML5 logo upset a lot of people early this week with the way it drew extra power from the CPUs of some computers, are about to set upa music store. Let me remind Schmidt and Co of something that was prominently displayed on a Facebook page this week: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it". I found the real quote by searching Google. But how many others have tried to go down this same road and challenge Apple, even some record companies -- the ones who own the artists -- have tried and failed. They hope to have this running by Xmas. Any bets on closure by June?

Late Items

The Safari update (39MB). . . contains improvements to compatibility and security, including an issue that could prevent users from submitting web forms, an issue that could cause web content to display incorrectly when viewing a Google Image result with Flash 10.1 installed<. It also establishes an encrypted, authenticated connection to the Safari Extensions Gallery.

There is also an update to Safari for Tiger.

And for those planning to upgrade to iOS4.1 this week, like me, there are some useful suggestions from Rene Ritchie.

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