WWDC

is coming up in early June. On the ninth, there will be an in-person event at Cupertino for those who were offered and won the lottery for select attendees. Ordinary mortals must attend on-line as in the other years since COVID. As a multiple-year (3 times, but…) on-the-spot attendee, the Spy is surely an expert (drip under pressure) on the event so offers to examine the entrails (loose livers) of the pundits, then agree, disagree, or both at once. Let his reader decide which.

As things currently appear, barring some rabbit being pulled from iCook's metaphorical hat, this will be primarily a software event, with upgrades (largely cosmetic and/or AI-related) to all its OS, so that iOS, iPadOS, and tvOS will bump to version 19, macOS to 16, watchOS to 13, and visionOS to 4. Most of this will simply bring the various OS a little closer in look and feel--changes in design, but not so much in de substance.

Some speculate there could be a new MacPro unveiled, but it the Spy were a betting man (he isn't; the house always wins, so gambling's a sucker's game) he'd predict "nada" on the hardware. Almost nothing in the company hardware lineup seems primed and ready (time-wise) for a hardware upgrade; meanwhile the nominally overdue MacPro has become a niche product. Why buy a tower, when you could set up as the Spy has (typing on it now) with a well decked out (loaded M2) MacBookPro, three external monitors, an under-the-desk keyboard tray, Kensington trackball, extra Apple trackpad, OWC multiport Thunderbolt (4) dock, Brio microphone, Logitech camera, ring light, multiple network connection options, power backup, external speaker, backup drives, plus the same attachments in his home office for when he transports the 'Book to it (and there, an additional network backup). So...he thinks not. And, were he Descartes, that answer undoubtedly would cause him to disappear, one hopes to his listener's dismay.

Thus the only piece of hardware likely to be introduced is the iPhone 17, but one shouldn't expect it to be an earth-shattering revision, unless you consider "slightly thinner" to fit that accolade. The Spy has a 12 Pro Max, and might begin to think about upgrading somewhere between 18 and 21.

Beyond all that, the contests, software demonstrations, lab experiences, and the opening speech drama, there will be plenty of bumpf, but perhaps little excitement other than the thrill of being there--which in the heady early days of the century were certainly something to write about. The Spy still has one of the limited number of black leather jackets handed out by iSteve in his heyday for the first few WWDC registrants. He doesn't wear it often because the big blue X on the back (for the then brand new OS X) could be dangerously misunderstood in today's rather more strained context. The online sessions can be mildly interesting, but lack the pizzaz of the pre-COVID in-person ones.

But, in the "what if" department...

Apple were to do something bride-like--something bold, something new, something borrowed, something blue-sky.

Partially seriously, partially in jest, the Spy has repeatedly noted that the company which otherwise controls its total eco-system with a tight fist, is missing out on one critical piece of infrastructure--a robust world-wide high-tech physical telecom network.

Now, see, there's this (legal?) immigrant chap down South of us who indirectly (through a space assets holding company) controls just such an entity, and who also has high stakes holdings in several other once highly-valued assets. However, this fellow's erratic personal behaviour, choice of friends, and the questionable quality of his manufactured products have tanked consumer confidence in that enterprise, plummeting sales, and causing his stock market evaluations to do likewise. The wheels are falling off his business, so to speak.

However, large-traffic network customers (big corporations, governments, universities, etc.) can't just trade their connection in for a Subaru model; decisions like that require long lead times, much research of alternates, and a potentially lengthy and complex change-over process. Consequently his satellite network, though the stock fluctuates wildly, retains most of its value for the moment.

So now...what can the boss man of the associated corporate menagerie do to DOGE an impending, perhaps inevitable financial catastrophe? Face it: under the circumstances, no bank should lend him money, unless a higher power issues an executive order on behalf of his bud forbidding loan denials on pain of his voiding their operating charter. His best move: sell his one still relatively sound asset before it too depreciates from lack of customers, and use the proceeds to attempt rescuing his far more distressed ones.

Now this elaborate multi-satellite routing system he owns is valued (at this writing) just over 73 Billion--not exactly chump change, but only about 10% of his losses elsewhere to date. Values are fluctuating all over the map at the moment, but this is in the same ballpark as half the amount of cash and other liquid assets Apple has lying around in assorted hide-y-holes. Timmy the CEO of the Cupertino fruit stand could iCook up an offer, say, 20 in cash, with the rest in his own company's stock, put some of the acquisition's stock on the market, and Apple shareholders scarcely notice. For Cupertino it's chump change. The distressed chap might thereby secure enough dough to bake his way out of a pending financial apocalypse, iCook would acquire Apple's missing puzzle piece without having to build it from scratch, and the new owner's reputation is such that said telecom's value and customer confidence would both sky-link-rocket, trumping the market, and creating at least one win-win-win situation.

Maybe there is something to this prognostication business. After all, in the eighties, the Spy was one of the few writers in the forecasting business saying no, Apple is actually not about to go bankrupt. The only fly in this possible ointment is that the satellites in said telecom's system repeatedly cross China, albeit fairly high up. Would each be tariffed each subsequent time it traversed over the terra incognito to the Spy's South? Hmmm.

Now, speaking of tariffs,

Apple and other electronics manufacturers are in a considerable bind if the anti-China tariff taxes go ahead, as it could at least double the price of items manufactured wholly and/or from parts originating in China. This would price such products so far out of the reach of individual buyers that only the obscenely rich could afford them. Meanwhile, as a second bellwether example, only a small portion of the tightly integrated Canadian-American auto industry is capable of being moved south on a dime as an immediate response to the same taxes, for large scale manufacturing moves like that take years to effect. The price of a typical new car or truck could rise by 20-40%, decimating the new car market and causing used prices to balloon.

A short term consequence could be large-scale smuggling (at least of electronics), but in the longer term, and after multiplying this effect over the North American economy and in consideration of the inevitable retaliations, over the entire world's, you have the classic well-tested 1920-1930s recipe not for a mere recession, but for complete economic collapse into a prolonged depression. The way out that time was via the allied economic necessities forced by World War II.

Add in the mass deaths by starvation and disease caused by the cessation of compassionate foreign aid from the United States for food and children's vaccines which no nations or groups thereof will be able to fully replace because their own existence will be threatened, and one can grimly prognosticate indeed. Is there an exit ramp from this rush over a fiscal and humanitarian cliff? Not in sight. The Spy's vision of a Fourth Civilization (see the book) based on universal access to information failed to sufficiently take into consideration the effects of governmental anti-information actions.

FINALLY

[The Spy employs all-caps orthography instinctively as FINALLY is a reserved word in the ISO Modula-2 programming notation, employed to handle specified clean-up operations on a per-module level. It can even have its own EXCEPTION clause if the program is also in exceptional execution mode when entering termination, or the termination routines themselves raise an exception. This info morsel is brought to you at no charge, courtesy of a small portion of one of his CMPT 360 (Programming Languages) lessons.]

He digresses, but now at the last (really) reprising his April role as advice columnist, "Dear Spy" offers gratis advice to the leader of the Canadian Conservative party who gained both popular votes and numerous seats in parliament, yet lost his once 25% polling lead, his own parliamentary seat, and the Federal election, resulting in a fourth (minority) term in government for the Liberal party. Here it is:

"You can run on anger alone only as long as disappointment with the government is ubiquitous. Once the chief target of that mass fury removed himself from the equation and was replaced as Prime Minister, even though by a close associate with essentially the same beliefs and policies, you needed to switch instantly to a positive and constructive message to resonate with us Canadian voters. Your continued attack-dog tactics seem to work temporarily in some countries, but Canadians are apparently polite enough even in extremis to forgive and forget a ten-year record of abject governmental failure once its most prominent architect was gone. Evidently, in the face of existential threats from other quarters they collectively distrusted the incumbents less than their putative replacements." How all this will play out remains to be seen, but despite its flaws, at least CIAG. There were, for evidence of same, no street riots despite some 41% of voters being seriously disappointed.

--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-fourth year as a high school and university teacher in 2024. He has been involved as a member of or consultant with the boards of several commercial and/or educational organizations and participated in developing industry standards both nationally and internationally. 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 (both dead tree and online formats) since the early 1980s, and he's been a regular participant and speaker at churches, schools, and academic meetings and conferences. He and his wife Joyce celebrated their fiftieth anniversary in 2019 and lived in the Langley/Aldergrove/Bradner area of B.C. from 1969 to 2021 when cancer happened, so he latterly continues alone, depending heavily on family and friends to manage. A shoutout to eleven-year-old grandson Gregory, for being baptized on Easter Sunday. Five dunked, two to go. Grandma would be so happy.

URL s for Rick Sutcliffe's Arjay Enterprises:

The Northern Spy Home Page: https://www.TheNorthernSpy.com

opundo : https://opundo.com

Sheaves Christian Resources : https://sheaves.org

WebNameHost : https://www.WebNameHost.net

WebNameSource : https://www.WebNameSource.net

nameman : https://nameman.net

General URLs for Rick Sutcliffe's Books:

Author Site: https://www.arjay.ca

TechEthics Site (Fourth edition of text; the fifth has been released; site to be redesigned real soon now) : https://www.arjaybooks.com/EthTech/index.htm

Publisher's Site: https://www.writers-exchange.com/Richard-Sutcliffe.html

URLs for a product mentioned last month:

Wipf&Stock site for his 4Civ textbook Volume One: https://wipfandstock.com/9798385226818/the-fourth-civilization-volume-one/

Wipf&Stock site for his 4Civ textbook Volume Two: https://wipfandstock.com/9798385232932/the-fourth-civilization-volume-two/