How Apple Might be Our Last Hope Before the Internet Dies

There is a famous adage: Those who abuse their freedoms will lose them.

In this rather unconventional and alarming essay, John Dvorak suggests that that’s exactly what’s going to happen with the Internet in the U.S. While informed dissent, commerce, community and communication are positive elements, the self-serving, fanatic, undisciplined (or hateful) use of the Internet is, more and more, recognized by governments as dangerous to them and their citizens. We all may come to not appreciate the government’s emerging perspectives. And so, you won’t like what John says here, but his missive is something to ponder. “The False Promises of the Internet.”

Business Insider recently provided some additional data on all this.

Question. Are there social and enterprise forces that can be marshaled to counteract the downsides of total Internet freedom? Are there opportunities for companies of good faith, like Apple, to make a difference? Or does a free society and free enterprise have within them the seeds of destruction when the Internet and the ugliest variations of social media are added to the mix and unleashed?

Our TMO Contributor, Charlotte Henry weighs in with “Social Networks Can Learn from Apple to Solve ‘Fake News’.”

Continuing…. The next story adds some fuel to and punctuates this ongoing fire.

One of the byproducts of the Internet and digital technology is the affordance to create and introduce new products and services that appear to serve the customer but, also have a hidden (or not so hidden) mischievous agenda. Examples range from collecting detailed information about customers (to exploit and trick them) to maliciously squeezing out the competition. This is a cautionary tale about how, without sensible government regulation on behalf of the consumers, any company can be tempted to go astray. “AT&T just declared war on an open internet (and us).”

In other words, to put it delicately, if the government doesn’t use its regulatory power wisely, as it does with the SEC, FCC, EPA and FDA to protect its citizens from malicious corporate behavior, what will be the final outcome?

Next page: A bit more news debris for the week of Nov 28th. The “Horn effect.”

Page 2 – News Debris for the Week of Nov 28th

The Horn Effect and Apple’s $23B Mac Business

Last summer, Apple discontinued its 27-inch Thunderbolt display. Recent rumors have suggested that Apple will soon discontinue its AirPort products, the Extreme, Express and Time Capsule. Rene Ritchie at iMore argues that even though displays and routers/wi-fi base stations are a niche market for Apple, the danger is that once Apple starts to send its customers shopping elsewhere, away from the Apple camp, they’ll be enticed into buying other non-Apple products. It’s the opposite of the halo effect; Rene calls it the Horn Effect. Here’s the editorial: “The Horn Effect: Why Apple should keep making displays and routers!”

Apple’s Mac business is worth $23B annually. Not something to ignore.

Along those lines, it’s fashionable to talk about how much money Apple makes from the iPhone and how little it makes from the Mac. But Jean-Louis Gassée in a recent Monday Note reminds us that Apple’s Mac US$23B business is on par with the total annual revenue of Northrop Grumman or Time Warner cable. Mr. Gassée, having been an Apple executive in charge of the Mac in the past, always has interesting insights. “The Macintosh Endgame.”

{UPDATE:] Thanks to considerable feedback, on December 5th, Jean-Louis Gassée continued the discussion. The Operating System Fountain of Youth: iOS.

More Debris….

There’s been some discussion in the news lately about the nature and preservation of the U.S. workforce. Recently, I argued on Jeff Gamet’s TMO Daily Observations podcast that the U.S. workforce is increasingly white collar, and will become more so as robots continue to replace certain kinds of jobs. That means being able to do jobs robots cannot yet do. Here’s an interesting punctuation of that thesis. “The New Workplace Is Agile, and Nonstop. Can You Keep Up?” The first paragraph:

Whether you like it or not, your boss may want you to start acting more like a programmer.

Students take note.

One of the tenants of modern technology is that you either compete with the other company on day one or else fall hopelessly behind as the competition seizes all the mindshare and accelerates its technical lead. (Apple did that to Microsoft a few years ago with the iPad.) We know from Tim Cook that Apple believes AI should be mobile, not stationary. And so we haven’t seen an analogous Apple product corresponding to the Amazon Echo.

Now Amazon is pouring on the coals with a second generation model. “Amazon reportedly planning all-new Alexa device with massive touchscreen.” Make of that what you will.

I’ve written a lot about Artificial Intelligence in this column. Here’s a recent addition to the discussion worth your time. “Google, Facebook, and Microsoft Are Remaking Themselves Around AI.”

Finally, the ominous exploit described here appeared in iOS 9.3 and has long been patched. But the story, just published at Vanity Fair is a cautionary tale: always, and I mean always, upgrade to the latest version of iOS when it’s released by Apple. Here’s the scary scoop. “How A Grad Student Found Spyware That Could Control Anybody’s iPhone From Anywhere In The World.” Are you paranoid yet?

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Teaser graphic via Shutterstock.

Particle Debris is a generally a mix of John Martellaro’s observations and opinions about a standout event or article of the week (preamble on page one) followed on page two by a discussion of articles that didn’t make the TMO headlines, the technical news debris. The column is published most every Friday except for holidays.

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