By Graham K. Rogers

Opening Gambit:

Apple Stuff

Also released was a Digital RAW Accessibility update (4.02)

According to information in the Mac App Store page for the update and Apple's Downloads pages,

• Completely Redesigned. iTunes makes it more fun to explore and enjoy your music, movies, and TV shows. You'll love the beautiful edge-to-edge design, custom designs for each album, movie, or TV show in your library, and getting personal recommendations any time you click In the Store.
• A New Store. The iTunes Store has been completely redesigned and now features a clean look that makes it simpler than ever to see what's hot and discover new favorites.
• Play purchases from iCloud. Your music, movie, and TV show purchases in iCloud now appear inside your library. Just sign-in with your Apple ID to see them. Double-click to play them directly from iCloud or download a copy you can sync to a device or play while offline.
• Up Next. It's now simple to see which songs are playing next, all from a single place. Just click the Up Next icon in the center display and they'll instantly appear. You can even reorder, add, or skip songs whenever you like.
• New MiniPlayer. You can now do a whole lot more with a lot less space. In addition to showing what's playing, MiniPlayer now includes album art, adds Up Next, and makes it easy to search for something new to play-all from a smaller and more elegant design.
• Improved search. It's never been easier to find what you're looking for in iTunes. Just type in the search field and you'll instantly see results from across your entire library. Select any result and iTunes takes you right to it.
• Playback syncing. iCloud now remembers your place in a movie or TV show for you. Whenever you play the same movie or episode from your iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, or Apple TV, it will continue right where you left off.

There is a "first look" at this new release by Dan Moren and Lex Friedman on MacWorld: "It's going to feel awfully different . . . because it is awfully different". And it has a new icon: the first for a while. The one in the Dock changes the first time the new version is started. They are right, heavens it IS different. Oh, and if you want the Sidebar, look in the View menu.

You should read this in context with the item immediately after. According to Electronista, while the iPad is still selling, its market share (let me italicise that as we have discussed before the way Apple does not seem to pay this much heed) dropped by 14% in Q3. It still has 55% of the market, and as we saw earlier in the week, 84% of the online sales are made via iOS devices, so it is not all bad. And the writers of the report that was drawn on here expect Android to continue to grow its share: with how many manufacturers? But then as one of my students reported to me this week, he tried Android before buying an iPhone and found it too confusing; so the iPad will keep selling while other makers keep trying different devices to cut into that lucrative market. Bonne chance. And just wait for Q4.

With confusing sales figures and market shares being released all the time, we read in an item by Katie Marsal on AppleInsider that sales of tablets in China are growing with Apple reported to have 71.4% of the figures of 2.6 million sales.

And while we are on China, Michael Kan on MacWorld reports that the iPhone 5 has been cleared by regulatory authorities for sale there.

I have yet to try Passbook, but Steven Sande on TUAW reports that several more airlines are joining that club and "Air Canada, ANA (domestic flights only), Malaysian Airlines, Porter Airlines, Qantas, Turkish Airlines and Virgin Australia are now Passbook-friendly."

He also reports that British Airways and Delta should be supporting Passbook soon. But not Thai airlines.

With the boss of Maps now canned by Eddy Cue, there is more information on what is going on behind the scenes in that part of Cupertino and Sam Oliver reports for AppleInsider how Cue is expected to enhance his Mr Fixit reputation. While we are on changes at Apple, Tony Fadell who came up with the original idea for the iPod, told the BBC that Scott Forstall got what he deserved, Charlie Osborne writes.

As Samsung keeps on at Apple, Cupertino has apparently finally got round to beginning to sever connections with the South Korean company. Patently Apple reports that it is probably that Samsung will not be used for the CPUs used in iOS devices next year and that, as has been rumoured a number of times, it is "likely that TSMC will start producing chips for Apple's next iOS devices in 2013"

A further article on this by Sam Oliver on AppleInsider suggests that any move in this direction is likely to have a number of serious effects on the industry. Mainly, I would think, panic.

While we are on processors, an item by Loyd Case on MacWorld suggests that, despite the rumours of in-house chips, Apple is beginning to look to the Intel next generation, Haswell: "a new architecture that focuses more on improving efficiency than on raw CPU performance." The article has a number of interesting points about the way performance is likely to be enhanced if these processors are adopted, especially with the transition from an apparent sleep state to fully active.

A note in an article from AppleInsider reports that Adobe is expected to release a Retina display version of Photoshop CS6 on 11 December at a conference (Create Now Live). The event was originally scheduled for 5 December but was pushed back a week.

We were sort of surprised last year when Apple (post-Steve Jobs) finally relented and a dividend was paid to shareholders, since which the share price has gone down. Now, with some financial deadlines looming -- what people have been calling a cliff -- there is a pressure for Apple to pay a much larger dividend to ease the tax burden on the shareholders, as after a certain date, their liabilities will rise. That sounds a bit to me like sucking the money out of Apple (and other companies) so that the rich can squeeze as much as they can out of the system, but avoid paying taxes on incomings. Is that right?

An article by Tom Bernis on Market Watch explains some of the pressure, but fails to note that of the $120 billion, most is outside the US and that if Apple brings it back in under current laws, it will lose 30% to the tax man. Much better to invest lots of that overseas, like in better retail outlets in countries that don't have these yet. My link for that was from MacDaily News.

Another article making the case for the special dividend for Apple shareholders -- and remember these are sites that specialise in investment opportunities; a sort of amoral approach to what companies are -- comes from Kofi Bofah on Seeking Alpha who also fingers the $121 billion but forgets to mention the overseas component, but does explain a bit more of the context surrounding these tax changes which were apparently delayed by sunset legislation introduced by President Bush: for the current administration this gives then a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation, and using the term Financial Cliff (a cliff for certain members of the population only it seems) there is an added hysterical soundbite to suggest peril for all.

And then this, "Amid recent volatility, Apple shareholders are now well within their rights to advocate for a one-time $30 special dividend to be authorized and paid out at some point during the next eighteen months." Within their rights, eh? Well, I am within my rights to ask every person who reads a page on the site to contribute $10 to the make Graham rich campaign. There: right exercised. Whether or not I (or they) will get anything is a different matter.

Immediately after that, he writes that Apple would "risk significant losses to its own investment portfolio" which is what I said earlier without a degree in economics. Investment creates jobs, and makes more money if done properly. Investors in shares should not join the party unless they are willing to lose all and taking more than their fair share of the pot, is not to be encouraged.

Another useful hint this week from OS X Daily concerns the way that some ought to behave in meetings if they are not willing to turn off their iPhones. I despair of being in a group of people who are for ever checking their messages or leaving the room to take phone calls. To me that indicates a contempt for the others in the meeting and the meeting itself. It has got a little better now that most are able to find the sound off setting, although the OFF switch would obviously be too much to ask. With iOS 6 there is a feature that allows a message to be sent with a simple one tap action, only it has to be set up first and the article explains how.

I am continually surprised by what those suing Apple keep coming up with for the next troll. This week, Steven Musil reports, a shell company is suing Apple for "an interface for sending and receiving audio signals from a phone": the headphones. This was described in a 2008 patent that was granted, "to Varia Mobil, a Seattle-based company". With two connectors, it does not look like what I use on my iPhone.

Half and Half

In one of the ongoing patent disputes between Apple and Samsung, in Holland, there was a small victory for Cupertino when the court banned the Galaxy S, SII and Ace, Brid-Aine Parnell reports on the Register.

While we are on Samsung, we were reminded of allegations against Huawei concerning backdoors that were considered so serious that certain Western governments have put an embargo on the purchase or use of the equipment in certain circumstances. Now we read in an item by Lucian Constantin on PCWorld that certain printers that Samsung makes, "have a backdoor administrator account hard coded in their firmware". There are all manner of implications here, but Samsung will apparently be releasing a patch for this, later this year.

Other Matters

And not just the mobile world as anyone who has seen the recent Macs will have noticed that exactly the same has been happening there too, and this may be what Intel is following. While repairers have complained bitterly about the inability to fix such assembled boards, the repair is quicker (perhaps more expensive if not under warranty) but the process of making the computer is completely controlled, cutting costs and ensuring a better finished product. Mind you (see above) the Intel change may not affect Apple at all.

Earlier in the week, we covered a news item concerning Samsung and a frustrated Ericsson. The Scandinavian company has decided to sue Samsung after two years of unsuccessful negotiations, Kevin J. O'Brien explains in the NYTimes, adding some more useful information to the mix.

With HP receiving a lot of flak over its acquisition of Autonomy that has brought on a write down of $8.8 billion, Brooke Crothers reports that Moody's has cut its rating of HP to "Baa1, three levels above junk, from A3." Where were you when HP started to go wrong?

As expected, the Leveson report on the Press was released and there are recommendations for legislation, but to control the independent regulation that already exists: not government control, but more teeth. Kelly Fiveash on The Register has information on this that includes a number of direct uses of the text of the Leveson Inquiry report including a warning about what might happen if the Press fails to heed the writing on the wall.

As expected the British Press itself did a lot of commenting on this, but the Prime Minister rejected the key findings, the Independent in a multi-authored article reports. In this, as well as the comments on the major findings, I was surprised to see that Leveson thinks there was no undue influence on politicians and that the News International bid for a TV channel was likewise not affected. Murdoch (son) was criticised, but not the father.

While the Independent Editorial agreed with much of what was in the report, it is not a surprise to find that it disagreed with the need for any legislation, but although this IS a dangerous path, public opinion may not agree as many are sick of the cavalier way in which some journalists go about their work.

Local Items

The setup of the shops was a sort of legacy from the distributor system of the 1980s and 1990s when a few held the keys. Some of the names that figured back then -- with Microsoft distribution too, as well as other companies like Logitech, Acer et al are the same families that are now in charge of some of those shiny iStudio outlets. Only comseven broke the mould a little by being its own distributor and shipping Apple things straight from Singapore, although they were still locked into the same prices that others were able to charge (controlled by Apple).

Now, an Apple store: a real one? There will be some weeping and wringing of hands this week. The location of this rumoured store (opening 30 March) is to be the new Central Embassy which is that plot of land on the corner of Chidlom and Wireless Road where Queen Victoria's statue held sway for many years.

Graham K. Rogers teaches at the Faculty of Engineering, Mahidol University in Thailand. He wrote in the Bangkok Post, Database supplement on IT subjects. For the last seven years of Database he wrote a column on Apple and Macs.