The Spy has it on good authority
that on Monday next week after the markets close, Apple will announce the takeover of one-time rival IBM for a cash and stock package valued at $162B, just under a 25% premium over where the latter’s stock was trading this week.
Given that Apple’s own market cap at nearly $3T is some 23 times that of the company that once dominated the tech world, Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO brushes the purchase off in as to-be-released presser acquired on the sly by the Spy as a “minor acquisition designed to somewhat enhance our enterprise footprint”. Elsewhere he comments, “We were actually more interested in certain of the IBM subsidiaries, particularly Red Hat, but in the end, decided that buying the parent company, extracting what we wanted, then selling off or closing down the rest, was our best strategy. Their brand, though somewhat tarnished, still has value, so perhaps a careful re-packaging of some assets under the IBM name might make a sufficiently attractive buy for someone else, allowing us to both satisfy regulatory authorities on anti-trust matters, recoup most of our investment, and keep the pieces we really want, for a net win-win bargain.”
Another source informed the Spy that in view of supply chain difficulties with Chinese sources, and the loss of Russian markets, Apple was considering purchasing several unnamed small countries and setting up manufacturing in locations that would be entirely under Cupertino’s control, but intensive focus sessions with influencers, including a certain unnamed futurist/author/columnist subsequently drove the conclusion that such actions might not be well received because of potential concerns about the affected populations becoming captive markets.
The Spy can report that even the suggestion that Apple move all manufacturing to North America, assist with the immigration of and then hire a couple of million Ukranian refugees raised focus group concerns over possible accusations of labour exploitation, so corporate executives reluctantly dropped or at least temporarily shelved the plan. However, the company’s on-the-quiet purchase of thousands of square kilometres of Canadian tundra as a separate hedge against global warming rendering its current Texas and California locations uninhabitable has, according to unimpeachable sources, now successfully closed.
The eight locations in question could each one day house and provide work for the corporate giant for up to ten million people. The plan is to install heat harvesting farms in the by-that-time- uninhabitable south and pump both heat and electricity to the north where people could by then actually live. Apple’s new cities a century hence would in that thinking have become models for many other corporate imitators as most of the Southern States empty of people and Canada inherits the mantle of the world’s major superpower.
The potential fly in the ointment, however, is by that time Canada may, being by then predominantly Ukrainian-speaking, have become a target for Vlad the invader who regards all such people as renegade Russians whom he has the right-by-might to place under his personal and absolute rule. The Western world, having established its reluctance to defend the old Ukraine in 2022, would no doubt be equally supine before an invasion of the new Ukraine to its north in 2050. When the unnamed futurist/author/columnist previously introduced above mentioned this in a focus group, the suggestion then advanced was that Apple purchase Greenland and claim Antartica for its future settlements as a hedge against said possible Russian expansion to its far north.
As last month, we indeed live in “interesting times”. Have a good April 1. Again, if the present does have a future, see you next month.
–The Northern Spy
Opinions expressed here are entirely the author’s own, and no endorsement is implied by any community or organization to which he may be attached. Rick Sutcliffe, (a.k.a. The Northern Spy) is professor of Computing Science and Mathematics and Assistant Dean of Science at Canada’s Trinity Western University. He completed his fifty-first year as a high school and university teacher in 2021. He has been involved as a member of or consultant with the boards of several organizations, and participated in developing industry standards at the national and international level. He was co-author of the Modula-2 programming language R10 dialect. He is a long time technology author and has written two textbooks and ten alternate history SF novels, one named best ePublished SF novel for 2003. His various columns have appeared in numerous magazines and newspapers (dead tree and online formats), since the early 1980s, and he’s been a regular speaker at churches, schools, academic meetings, and conferences. He and his wife Joyce celebrated their fiftieth anniversary in 2019 and lived in the Aldergrove/Bradner area of B.C. from 1972 to 2021, where he now continues alone, depending heavily on family to manage.
URLs for Rick Sutcliffe’s Arjay Enterprises:
- The Northern Spy Home Page: http://www.TheNorthernSpy.com
- opundo : http://opundo.com
- Sheaves Christian Resources : http://sheaves.org
- WebNameHost : http://www.WebNameHost.net
- WebNameSource : http://www.WebNameSource.net
- nameman : http://nameman.net
General URLs for Rick Sutcliffe’s Books:
- Author Site: http://www.arjay.ca
- Publisher’s Site: http://www.writers-exchange.com/Richard-Sutcliffe.html
- The Fourth Civilization–Ethics, Society, and Technology (4th 2003 ed. ): http://www.arjay.bc.ca/EthTech/Text/index.html
Other URLs of relevant interest:
- BC Government COVID site: http://www.bccdc.ca/health-info/diseases-conditions/covid-19
- TWU COVID Info: https://www.twu.ca/covid-19-information
