Technology Futures

Smartphone zombies are such a hazard to themselves and others that in Warsaw, Poland the city is installing "sidewalk traffic lights," which project large red or green swatches of light onto the pavement at street crossings. The smartphone zombies have their heads down and don't look up before crossing the street.

We may not have reached maximum stupidity, but we seem to be getting closer, as it appears we have people more interested in their smartphone than actually staying alive.

Microsoft is developing a new glass-based storage technology that can hold many gigs of data on a small glass plate. We need something like this because all of the magnetic-based storage (e.g. hard drives) and DVD/CD disks eventually degrade and fail.

What is interesting is that this general concept dates back at least to the early eighties. Exxon, of all companies, had an office products division that was manufacturing a glass disk storage system that actually burned pits into the disk to create the ones and zeros of digital data. This was different from the slightly later 12" videodisks, which were the precursor of CDs and DVDs. That technology uses a thin aluminum substrate that has the data burned into it. The problem is that the aluminum substrate can degrade over time to the point of becoming unreadable.

Paper is still superior to any other storage medium, as it is long-lived if stored properly and does not require any hardware or software to access its data. Paper's bulk is its shortcoming.

I am a long time user of Apple computers, dating back to my first hand-on experience with the Apple Lisa in 1982. Ever since Steve Jobs died, it has been evident that software quality has not been a priority with the company.

• The Apple productivity software (Pages, Numbers, Keynote) were released with brilliant interface designs years ago, but the Mac versions have been dumbed down to match the less capable iPad versions of the software. The original Numbers had the best spreadsheet interface I've ever seen, but they ripped it out for a much clumsier Excel-style/iPad interface years ago.
• For at least a year and a half, I have not been able to use Apple's file sharing service between my desktop Mac mini and my older MacBook Air. I had assumed that it was due to the age of my laptop, but when I discovered recently that the same problem existing with a new MacBook Pro, I went searching online for a solution. What I discovered was that this is a problem that has existed for years and has been carried through numerous MacOS upgrades, without Apple ever bothering to fix a fundamental service.
• I recently upgraded my iPhone to iOS 13.1, only to notice immediately that battery life was terrible. A quick online search revealed that this was a huge problem for many people. For the first time ever, I have to keep my iPhone plugged in and charging at work. I have never had to do this before. The phone loses nearly half its charge overnight sitting in the dark doing nothing. This is incredible.

Apple hardware, for the most part, is excellent. My eight year old MacBook Air still runs just fine, but Apple no longer supports OS upgrades for it. And that has been our experience at the office generally--Apple hardware just runs and runs, and it reaches end of life artificially when Apple will no longer provide software upgrades.

Apple has the money to put more time and effort into providing quality software; it apparently just chooses not to.

As hard as some of the incumbents work to convince local elected officials that muni networks are a bad idea, more and more success stories are emerging over time.

Broadband Communities magazine has a great story about Fairlawn, Ohio's Gig fiber network.

It really is worth your time to read the whole article, as the network has been an enormous success, raising property values, attracting new residents to the city, and bringing new jobs and businesses into the community. And it is in the black--covering operating expenses and the steady increase in revenue is planned to start paying off the debt.