Category: The Northern Spy
Applewas the first corporation to reach a stock valuation of $1 Trillion. Spectacular latest earnings results have pushed that to $1.85T, putting the company back in first place worldwide and poised to become the first to surpass $2T. Not bad for the little outfit from Cupertino that all the pundits once forecast would fail. Earnings were up in all categories, including its somewhat neglected computer business. Look for the antitrust and breakup vultures to circle. The Spy is still happy…
Somethings new at WWDCdelivered a spate of announcements across the board about Apple products. The big one had long been predicted here, and the timeline was roughly as forecast when the Spy first mentioned it a few years back. Apple will now abandon Intel chips for the Macintosh line and switch to its in-house design, the A12Z chip. Indeed, the WWDC demonstrations were done on a machine running with the new chip. Developers will be seeded with MacMinis that have…
Will we?Yes, eventually, but as said repeatedly here, the Pandemic is far from over, and this particularly so in the rush by governments, corporations and unions to “return to business”. We cannot and we will not return to the way it was last Fall.We cannot because many of those employers are no longer in business and/or could not be viable if they were to re-open. Why? because for some old era businesses the customers have departed for good. Ordering online…
Technology News and Views Since 1983May 2020 The Spy is a little latewith his meanderings and prognostications this month. The two weeks of year end meetings and activities lacked an actual graduation ceremony–a great disappointment for students to be sure, who have to wait till November or later for their walk across the stage and handshake–but were replete with lengthy meetings around “how did we do this term?” and “What are we going to do next?” The consensus on the…
Technology News and Views Since 1983 April 2020 Alas the Spy with this column breaks a many years’ long tradition, for there will be no levity (or levitation for that matter) this foolish month. There are more serious matters of the techie and wider world to ponder. Velocity, as the Spy’s regular geeky reader surely well knows, is defined as a measure of change per unit of time. Directionality matters (it is a vector) and we usually use it for…
Technology News and Views Since 1983 March 2020 Our long time reader will recall the Spy’s having many moons ago differed sharply from the majority view that the “global village” created by what we today call the Internet that many of us saw coming in the heady early 80s when this column was first started, would promote world peace and understanding and usher in a new era of understanding and co-operation. The Spy was rather criticized for his emphatic “not”,…
Technology News and Views Since 1983 First Impressions of the Spy’s brand new MacBookPro sixteen inch machine from a strictly hardware point of view are mixed but generally positive as it stacks up very well in comparison to his older 2015 portable–the one he is now wary about taking into any airport in case the employees are too lazy or uninformed to verify that its batteries have indeed been changed. He will keep that machine for some purposes, as explained…
Our reader has enjoyed the appearance of many predictions and forecasts in this space. Many were laughed at. Of those, some (rise of Apple from the ashes, fall of the Berlin Wall) came true, and others (demise of MS) have not (in its case, forestalled by a change of management and direction). Others (various automation forecasts and social changes) are still pending. Punditry is easy and widely practiced, because few people are likely remember the predictions that go wrong, whereas…
The Spy went out on a limb in October concerning the MacBook Pro 16″ model that had been the subject of so many rumours. How did his predictions and preferences do? – He implied it. would be out by the end of October. Missed it by a few weeks. Chinese trade war and Trump tariffs? – Comes with Catalina installed (pretty much certain). Done. no bezel for the screen (likely) There is very little bezel, and the size of the…
Why is Hallowe’en like Christmas? Because both have become commercialized to the point of morphing into insanely materialistic binges fueled by greed maintained by non-stop advertising? Because both, having lost all meaning as holy times, have become holidays with no more true significance than a ski weekend? Because 25 (Dec) = 31 (Oct)? Or, to morph from the trivialized to the philosophical, is this the real end game of empiricism–a Solomonesque pursuit of meaningless pleasure with no thought for the…
The Biggest Change to the society of the Fourth Civilization will not be pervasive computing technology per se. Certainly, the compound, sliding, dual bevel mitre saw we call the computing appliance, whether in big iron, small iron, desktop, laptop, pocket, or embedded form, is already ubiquitous. One assumes the embedded form will soon also be so. Indeed, to the younger of our world, computing technology is such an integral of the physical, social, and intellectual landscape that they cannot wrap…
Technology News and Views Since 1983 The Future–Not What It Used To Be August 2019 The usual bunch of idiots will be no longer. Mad magazine, which gored everyone’s ox in ways that ranged from hilarious to despicable (depending on whose ox) but were always in exquisitely wretched taste will cease publishing new material. One supposes that after a few retrospective collections, the whole thing will fold up like a deck of jokers. “What has this to do with a…
July 2019 The news of Jony Ives’ Departure from Apple to lead his own design company cannot, despite iCook’s comments, have a positive spin put on it for Apple’s future. Each industry, each profession, each discipline has its practitioners and its leaders. A few of these have iconic founders–people who made themselves the sine qua non of an entire school of thought and practice. Modern technology design has Jony Ive’s signature all over it. His designs for computers, pads, phones,…
This column is a little late because the Spy placed it on hold until after the June 3 announcements at the annual keynote WWDC speech. Items put on the table by iCook include those of modest importance to the Spy, but of more note to some people, including: the expected (and leaked) replacement of iTunes in MacOS by Apple Music, AppleTV and Apple Podcasts. This will certainly make it easier to find things. The three functions have been joined in…
It was the best of sheds… until it became the worst of sheds. Oh, wait. Introductory sentences structured that way are yesterday’s news. Well, what the Dickens… The Spy has a small shed used to store his garden technology–tools, fertilizers, a very few chemicals, pots, fencing, poles, rototiller, etc. All of it is low tech. Built some five and twenty years ago out of scrap lumber, the underpinnings have proven susceptible to rot, so he decided to replace it. The…
The next great thing has, for some time now, been wearables. Smart watches haven’t made much of their time on the market, though. After all is hard to expect people to buy a smart watch when so few wear watches. And, how many people really need smart T-shirts or running shoes? These are all interesting, even geeky ideas, but like smart refrigerators, fit in the category of devices earnestly seeking for an application, but not finding much. Fitness and health,…
The Spy’s Fourth Law reminds us Marketshare Lags Mindshare by two to five years. Long before the Internet was invented but was detailed here as the Metalibrary, the Spy warned that bringing people closer together electronically, far from creating the other pundits’ global village, would exacerbate old prejudices, hatreds, and uninformed beliefs, thus promoting division, not unity. This is exactly what the Internet has delivered–an echo-chamber platform for reinforcing differences rather than enabling dialog, much less promoting true tolerance. The…
The stock market has begun to speak about overpriced valuations, and its coming year looks growly. Much of the recent inflation in prices can be ascribed to the American tax cuts for corporations and the rich, who used their spare income to bid up equities, an option not available to most people, whose incomes have been static in the face of slow and steady inflation. The effect of this government cash injection into the American market has now run its…
Further On Apple’s latest iterations The Spy notes that Apple parts suppliers have been notifying shareholders of massive reductions in their order books. Stocks have fallen, and Apple shares in turn have led the whole premium high tech stock sector into a deep downward spiral. Indeed at this writing, Apples market cap, having lost some 20% was below that of Microsoft for the first time in many moons. Should anyone be astonished? Christmas buying season is well advanced and Apple…
by Rick Sutcliffe Technology News and Views Since 1983 November 2018 Apple’s latest iterations are anything but Halloween scary, much less insanely great. Rather they are mere steps along an already well-worn path of mediocrity–by dint of a loyal installed base temporarily insanely profitable in a strictly stock value-enhancing way, but not industry-leading in any sense. Consider: Phones The Spy opined on these last month. Apple tweaked its line somewhat, but debuted no groundbreaking technologies in either hardware or software….
