Category: rant
-
Five myths about Apple’s tax avoidance
Tuesday’s hearing on Apple’s tax avoidance schemes made for pretty good Washington, D.C. theater. Apple CEO Tim Cook was friendly and forthcoming and most of the senators went out of their way to proffer their love of Apple products. So I doubt the hearing will help advance the much needed cause of corporate tax reform…
-
The iPhone has lost its lead and needs a rethink, not a retread
“iPhone is a revolutionary and magical product that is literally five years ahead of any other mobile phone,” Steve Jobs, Jan 9, 2007 Introducing the iPhone From the first version of the iPhone through at least a couple of revisions of its hardware and software, the thing stood so far ahead of any other phone…
-
Yikes, Microsoft’s Time Machine clone leaves out tons of important stuff
(Updated to include a way to unhide files and add them to a “library” for backup) Basically, this post is a warning to anyone using the new File History backup program in Windows 8. The program is severely limited because it will only back up files in a few preset locations that can’t be expanded.…
-
The agony and the irony of Tim Cook
When Tim Cook took over as permanent CEO of Apple in 2011, he brought his unmatched, incredible decade-long track record as the Mozart of supply chain management. Under Jobs II, Apple got rid of its factories and outsourced all its manufacturing to quicker, cheaper Asian builders. Overhead was slashed, flexibility enhanced. As the iPod business…
-
I know Apple, Apple is a friend of mine. Lenovo, you’re no Apple
Lenovo CEO Yang Yuanqing made an interest declaration the other day. He’s going to split their PC business into two units, one that does basic stuff aimed at consumers and businesses and another one that will get the Thinkpad brand and shoot for the higher end. The “Think” brand is needed to better compete with Apple, he said.…
-
Fail Fail Fail iPad
“If the heap of new products that Microsoft showed here Sunday is any indication of the future of computing, the desktop PC is old news,” or so read the lead story from the annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Yeah, desktop sales are tanking. Tablet sales are exploding. Yeah, desktops are old news, right…
-
Putting a close on a great 2012, blogwise
As 2012 winds to a close, I’m looking back at another year on Gravitational Pull dot net, my eighth writing this blog. This year, I suspended my experimental commentary blog, The Orange View, in an effort to write fewer and better stories here. Some months worked out better than others — I had no posts…
-
Amazon is discounting ebooks, whenever it’s allowed to, unlike Apple
Some really silly journalism covering the ebook marketplace today. It starts with this really bad, no good article in the New York Times by David Streitfeld. The headline gets off to a completely wrong start — “Little Sign of predicted E-Book Price War” — and it goes down hill from there, as Streitfeld asserts there…
-
One of these things is not like the other: Apple store, Microsoft store
I was an hour early for dinner with fabulous wife Whitney Connaughton and friends last Friday so I thought I’d tool around the local Apple store for a bit. The Back Bay Apple store in Boston is a thing of beauty — and it only took two years to get Boston’s historical commission to approve…