Author: Toby Shapshak

A truly fascinating conflict is brewing in the two dominant app stores where the most popular gaming app, Fortnite, has staged a revolt against the 30% payments cut taken by Apple and Google. This requirement that apps pay almost a third to the relevant app store is a long-standing bone of contention. Last year streaming music service Spotify reported Apple to European competition authorities because of this fee. The maker of Fortnite, the now very appropriately named Epic Games, is taking on the two giants of the mobile software world. Much like the gaming inside the app, this fight is…

Even though the name and house number were wrong, the address was for an entirely different street and the electricity meter number was incorrect, City Power contractors tried to disconnect our electricity last Wednesday morning. The only way I could prevent them – because they refused to listen to common sense – was to get my private security firm, BeagleWatch, to send an armed guard to stand in their way. Without this, they would have disconnected the wrong house, in the wrong street, in the middle of winter – a mistake entirely of their own making. Welcome to Gangsta’s Paradise.…

The surprise ban last Thursday by US President Donald Trump on Chinese apps TikTok and WeChat is part of the ongoing, increasingly ugly trade war with China – but the ramifications are vastly different. TikTok has been in the spotlight most recently because of fears that its Beijing-based owner ByteDance could be compelled by the Chinese government to access data about the 100-million US users it has. The app is extremely popular with younger users who film themselves singing and dancing. Unlike TikTok, which is used for mostly amusement, WeChat is used for everything. Not just for communication, but for…

If Microsoft does end up buying video app TikTok, which is under threat of being banned in the US, it will mark a new tipping point in global trade and geopolitics. US President Donald Trump, never a man to shy away from a baseless untruth or from smearing a public opponent, has threatened to ban the Chinese-owned social media app. This prompted an offer from Microsoft, the one tech giant excluded from last week’s blistering hearing into anti-competitive behaviour by Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google. Obviously, this latest irrational attack on the cause of a personal slight is classic Trump.…

A bomb went off in the tech world last Friday when Intel’s CEO suggested the mighty microprocessor manufacturer might do the unthinkable and outsource the manufacturing of its chip. To call it the end of an era, as everyone immediately has, is no understatement. Intel’s silicon chips are the brains of our modern personal computers, in no small part because of Intel’s superior high-tech fabrication technology. Intel’s factories have been some of the most cutting edge in the world over the last 30 years of this remarkable 52-year-old company. But, fearing that its production plans for the next generation of…

Time to beef up your own security and delete anything you don’t want public. When Elon Musk tweeted last week that he would double the Bitcoin people sent to a cryptocurrency wallet number in his message, it just seemed like another one of the odd things the controversial billionaire inventor does. But it was part of an audacious hack of the 330-million user social network that has shaken the cybersecurity world. The accounts of Musk, Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Bill Gates, Kim Kardashian, Kanye West, Uber and Apple were part of the 130 users who were hacked. Of those, only…

I found myself in the bizarre situation last weekend of defending Eskom CEO André de Ruyter. “Give him a chance,” I heard myself say more than once. My wife quite rightly asked me if I was feeling unwell or had been taken by the body snatchers. I’m as angry as every other South African – except the smug, and hopefully soon to be incarcerated, “engineer” Matshela Koko – about the sudden resurgence of “load-shitting,” as I prefer to call it. On top of everything else we’re forced to survive during lockdown, it seems to add a Zuma-esque insult to our…

Last month Apple dropped a bombshell on the tech world when it announced it was ditching Intel’s chips in favour of its own processors. It’s monumental for a number of reasons, not least of which is the ending of the 13-year relationship with the world’s largest chipmaker which helped propel Apple on its decade-long stock market stratospheric run. When CEO Steve Jobs announced in 2005 that Apple would shift over to Intel’s processors, it was a strategic masterstroke. To understand why, we need a quick refresher on the nature of computer software development – which will become even more relevant…

Fifty-six billion dollars. That’s what Facebook’s share price lost on Friday after news that consumer giant Unilever would pull its advertising for the rest of the year. CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s personal wealth took a $7bn hit. After years of ignoring its biggest problem, Facebook is finally being confronted by its inability to control disinformation, hate speech and the insidious rise of white supremacy (and all its viciousness) on its platform. Years of promises to do better and to fix the problems, and initiatives like bringing in external fact-checkers and deleting malicious and bot accounts, haven’t stopped the innumerable controversies that…

While many tech manufacturers have paused their big product announcement, not everybody has. Sonos – makers of some of the finest audio equipment I have ever heard – thankfully haven’t. They announced their very fine Arc under-TV speaker, and two others. But a little background is necessary to understand the relevance. Sonos makes excellent streaming audio speakers, which use your WiFi instead of cables. They aren’t cheap but they are good, really good. And they work seamlessly. Plug a Sonos One in the first room, another in the second and a bigger setup in the TV room and they all…