Can You tell?

That is the setting that I am faced with, a setting where we get the news and whether it is a story or a setting of wishful thinking (some might say fairy tale), when we cannot tell, is it on us, the lacking credibility of the news or something else? I have been to some degree Apple minded for over 20 years, I had hits, I had misses, and I was confronted with blunders (by Apple), yet overall, the Apple feeling is good, steering towards decent. That is set in a few stations, first is the iPod, when it came out I got the 20Gb and it was heaven, at some point I had to upgrade and I got the 80Gb classic, I still have it today, it never stopped working for close to 13 years, that is the setting I crave. I also had other Apple stuff, first the question mark, I had to get an Apple (partially for work and on the edge of Powermac, I ended up with the Performa 630, part of me was unhappy that Powermac was not compatible, yet the Performa did its work and it did it well. I learned a lot in those days. That was until the new updates were no longer helping me, but I could still use it to surf the web and a few other things, I was not unhappy. The next one in my route was a clear miss, the G4 MacBook, I was happy as anything the moment I had it and it did it work and got me through my Unix classes, but after 15 months the display had one line, then 5 then 30 lines and I had no Apple care, the laptop ($5,200) had cleaned me out and when the bad setting hit it was too late for me, I think I still have it somewhere in the box, it was a sad day for me. It was after I got the G5 Mac Pro which was an absolute delight, it still works (I think), it was one of the first 68020 and it never let me down, it could edit photos (25MP ones) in a heartbeat. So here I am now, listening to Jean Michel Jarre on my iPod, whilst typing on my MacBook, which is outdoing most of the expectations I have on it. I actually got some naughty 4K footage and the display was unbelievable, I don’t really have it for that, but I wanted to see if it could hold its own and it does. So here I am looking at Reuters giving us ‘Apple’s late iPhone launch temporarily wiped $100 billion off its stock value’ (at https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-results/apples-late-iphone-launch-temporarily-wiped-100-billion-off-its-stock-value-idUSKBN27E3FP), so is it wishful thinking? Let look at the quote “Since 2013, Apple has delivered new iPhones each September like clockwork. But pandemic-induced delays pushed the announcement back a month, with some devices still yet to ship. Even as booming sales of Macs and AirPods boosted overall revenue and profit above what analysts had expected, iPhone sales dropped 20.7% to $26.4 billion”, in this where am I? Well it started with the entire Coronavirus part and the fact that we were allowed to get some of our retirement funds early, I got the first one, but not the second one. It paid for a truckload of bills and there was enough left to get the iPad. You see, when I went to get my two graduate and master degrees, I treated myself to the iPad, the very first one and it has been working 24:7 since I got it in 2010. I got the 64GB version with cellular and I was happy, in classes as I watched everyone run to a powerpoint, my iPad got me my notes and I was happy. Even as most options will not work because support stopped for it long ago, some basic usage was working and earlier this year when I started to wind down more and more, I was sad, so with the cash, I went for an iPad Air in may 2020, my iPad would have worked 10 years a achievement well worth it. And that is where I am now, still waiting for my iPad Air, I had to resubmit the order, but the basic setting is that Apple cannot deliver, now the latest (partially unconfirmed) is that I will receive my iPad this coming month, after 6 months waiting (and not just me, others have this issue too). So as you might figure, the headline Reuter gives a warped setting. Is it true? The setting might be worse, in July I got a hold of information that the delay was ONLY the iPads with cellular, I have no decent sources to confirms that, but that would indicate a chip shortage, if that is so the iPhone has additional issues, as does any Apple mobile device with cellular. So when we see “But the flagship iPhone 12’s announcement was delayed until Oct. 13, several weeks later than usual, meaning no opening-weekend iPhone sales are included in the fourth-quarter results” and when we realise that some devices that were supposed to come out in the beginning of October are still not here and optionally not until the 15th of November, the damage is larger and worse. If there is a chip shortage (still unconfirmed), we are looking at a 4th quarter where it sucks to be an Apple (not that oranges have a better chance). Yet in all the hundreds of advertisements on the new iPad Air, who has seen any kind of article anywhere that these iPad Air are still delayed? When we seek it in Google, ‘iPad Air’ gives us 31,000,000 hits and the first few hundred links give nothing on delays, so why is that? And when we get to “Apple said revenue from its accessories segment was up 20.8% to $7.9 billion, compared with analyst estimates of a 13.5% rise to $7.4 billion, according to Refinitiv data. Mac and iPad sales rose to $9.0 billion and $6.8 billion, compared with estimates of $7.92 billion and $6.12 billion, according to Refinitiv data”, the question shapes. I paid for my device, I just haven’t received mine yet, so where are they? As far as I was able to tell, here in NSW there were 85 outstanding orders, so how many are missing and if they are all the cellular versions, what chip shortage is Apple facing and when we learn that part, how come Reuters did not have the goods (or pretty much any other newspaper). In this, I wonder what else we get to learn before the year ends and if that delay is the cellular chipset, where will we be when the year ends. Fortunately, my mobile is Android driven and for now I am in a good place for most matters technology based. And my mind goes on racing, even though it is more for the movies than real life (as one might hope), I just had an idea where the Fitbit could be part of a detonator, but then so could a Wear OS device, I merely need to test if I can silently ping the device, oh the inhumanity of it all. I got the idea as I was considering another chapter in my Rama story and when “This type of sub-dermal implant usually contains a unique ID number that can be linked to information contained in an external database, such as personal identification, law enforcement, medical history, medications, allergies, and contact information”, it is not merely that, the Fitbit has a similar path and when it is close enough, boom (big badaboom). Although the setting has been seen in the movie Wedlock, the implementation does not need to be that visible, you just need to person to pass the box and the result is gained (might be that Ubisoft Watchdogs Legion) got my devious side up and running, yet the station is there. And how does this affect Apple? It got to me whilst I was remembering the Guardian who gave us in 2018 ‘Fitness tracking app Strava gives away location of secret US army bases’, yet it does not need to be that simple, simpler settings are enough. Someone gives us “Find My Fitbit finder app for iOS and Android helps you find your lost Fitbit in minutes not days”, yet the setting of minutes lies with the provider, one app adjustment and we see seconds instead of minutes, now the only thing we need is the proper app. 

I am willing to bet that the CIA (and its counterpart on 2 Bolshaya Lubyanka Street) already have a version, and that is if we think simple, 5G allows a setting that is worse, it is targeted fund relief, lets face it kids love the big badaboom, the rest prefers the ka-ching sound, and why does it matter? You see when you help out a person like Jeff Bezos with the weight of 154,667,332 dollars in his wallet (one of his Credit-Cards), people will find you, unless you were never there, as a silent drone can be placed on that path to release a specific person of a number represented by 28 bits, we see that the Leo’s are at a loss, it is not their forte, yet the technology is already here. The thought of that made me create my dumb-smart device, but this stage is a lot larger than I gave it credit for, and as governments are bitching on what big-tech can do whilst they have larger issues than Section 230, it is time for them to smell the instant Waco, it is almost like coffee, but set to gunpowder tea (yes that really exists). 

So as we see the Apple setting, it is more than a see chip shortage, the question becomes, who has them and how can they possibly be used. All whilst you are thinking you have a cool foldable phone, I see it for what it is, it is a personal data server and I found three additional uses you were never aware of. So, how cool is that?

So when you run and you hear a large boom, it is not some explosive, it is the other shoe dropping.