Hello from the Eldest Geek – Memorial Day. Future of Apple? and what is a Geek anyway?

A good day for reflection – on our country and on the various aspects of our lives!

And a good day to remember the veterans.  I see many at the Antique Center (we are open today btw) – and its hard to overstate the debt we as a nation owe to those willing to put on the uniform!

I’m having a sale – and if any of you know military folks who need help with their computers – its 25% off this week.

I’ve been thinking a lot of what Apple is going to do – without Steve Jobs as the driving force.  And I’m starting to conclude that they may be in some trouble.  Apple maybe like Polaroid after the death of Edward Land – or maybe even Cray after Seymour Cray died in a car crash.
Never heard of Cray Computers?  Check out the first paragraph from Wikipedia.

–snip–

Seymour Roger Cray (September 28, 1925^{[fusion_builder_container hundred_percent=”yes” overflow=”visible”][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”no” center_content=”no” min_height=”none”][1]} – October 5, 1996^[2]) was an American electrical engineer and supercomputer architect who designed a series of computers that were the fastest in the world for decades, and founded Cray Research which built many of these machines. Called “the father of supercomputing,”^[2] Cray has been credited with creating the supercomputer industry.^[3]Joel Birnbaum, then chief technology officer of Hewlett-Packard, said of him: “It seems impossible to exaggerate the effect he had on the industry; many of the things that high performance computers now do routinely were at the farthest edge of credibility when Seymour envisioned them.”^[4]

^{–snip–
Seymour literally invented whole new fields in computing, revolutionizing the computer field through new engineering techniques, using new materials (he was working on using gallium arsenide semiconductors in place of silicon that everyone else was using). He not ownly designed the computer – but even the chips inside it!  He created the first true super computer while working at Control Data Corporation (the CDC 6600) which – ahem – was one of the first computers I ever used.  the National Center for Atmospheric Research had one, and I had a job programming for it 🙂  He followed it with a series of faster and faster computers and went off and founded Cray Research (based in Colorado).  When someone went to Wall Street to raise some seed capital – they knew his name.  Money was not a problem!  He developed the Cray-1 and Cray-2 and kept angling for as fast a computer as possible.  (the Cray-2 ran at a whopping 500Mhz!)
However – Cray NEVER accepted the multi-processor approach.  He always though a faster cpu would beat a combination of slower ones.}

Then – one day in 1996 – he was killed in a car crash.  And his company failed almost immediately.  Cray was the driving force, the vision, the face of the company.  And without him it evaporated.

I go into this detail – because I fear Apple without Jobs may have lost its heart.  The continuing problems with El Capitan.  the USB C design (plain stupid in my mind).  Only minor improvements in the iPhone (the Samsung Galaxy now are massively better!).  Apple Watch?  Samsung had one 2 years ago.  All of this makes me fear for Apple’s future.

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