Author: Toby Shapshak

The good news in the budget – apart from it actually happening – is that there will finally be a decrease in tax on smartphones. As always with government tax breaks, there are some conditions. Budget smartphones should get cheaper “Government proposes that as of 1 April 2025 this duty rate be applied only to smartphones with a price paid greater than R2,500 at the time of export to South Africa,” the treasury’s budget statement reads.  This will “enhance smartphone affordability at the lower end of the price spectrum and support efforts to promote digital inclusion for low-income households”, it…

Next time you vote, you might be using an electronic machine instead of making your mark on a paper ballot. The Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC) is investigating electronic voting in the country and how it might improve the election process. This week, the IEC held a three-day conference in Cape Town about e-voting systems, which – not surprisingly – have been hugely positive for the countries which have used them. Will you cast your electronic vote? Estonia, Namibia and the Democratic Republic of Congo all gave enthusiastic reports of how much easier – and, significantly, cheaper – electronic…

Google must sell Chrome, says the US Department of Justice (DoJ), but is not pushing for the search giant to give up its AI services. Yet. “Google’s illegal conduct has created an economic goliath, one that wreaks havoc over the marketplace to ensure that – no matter what occurs – Google always wins,” the DOJ wrote to the court, which last year found the tech giant was a “monopolist”. “The American people thus are forced to accept the unbridled demands and shifting, ideological preferences of an economic leviathan in return for a search engine the public may enjoy,” the DoJ…

If you’ve noticed your iPhone and MacBook operating systems are increasingly looking the same, then you’ll be pleased to know they’re all getting a new look this year. While macOS has increasingly begun resembling iOS – and the tablet got its own iPadOS that looks a bit like both – Apple has clearly decided to rationalise this even more. It’s also conscious of a new generation of computer users, who have grown up on Instagram and TikTok – not desktop computers and 2G cellphones. (I had to teach Microsoft Word that “cellphones” was not a spelling mistake, kinda making my…

YouTube King MrBeast hopes to raise $200m, which will value his company Beast Industries at over $5bn. In a weird inversion of the fictional family empire owned by Batman’s alter ego, Jimmy Donaldson has built his alter ego – MrBeast – into a real-world empire. Next up for Beast Industries – about which The Verge has a fascinating article by Alex Heath based on an investor pitch – is selling things. MrBeast awakens “To justify that eye-popping valuation of at least $5 billion, investors are betting that the future of MrBeast’s business will be selling physical products, not making videos,”…

Apple announced a slew of new products last week, at a pace of one a day. In this order, it launched the new budget iPhone 16e, new iPad Air M3, new entry-level iPads in two sizes, new iPad keyboards, new MacBook Air M4 (in pale blue), and a new Mac Studio with either the M4 Max chip or the newly releases M3 Ultra. Only Apple could release a product (in this case its own processor) a generation behind its current nomenclature and call it the “most powerful Apple chip ever made”. For the record, it can handle twice of pretty…

While the R5.4 billion data centre investment was the main headline in Microsoft’s big announcement this week, its digital skills training initiative is equally important. Having big servers is a huge boost for South Africa and Africa’s economy. Microsoft says it has already spent R20.4 billion in the last three years and that anyone who uses cloud services will have noticed. But the most important thing in the cloud these days is AI – and those new AI services need something to run on. If those servers are in the country, there’s less latency to contend with and the quality…

There’s a scene in SAS Rogue Heroes that is so outrageous, it strained the series’ claim to that “those events depicted, which seem most unbelievable… are mostly true.” Based on the brilliant book by historian Ben Macintyre, which I have just started listening to, the series recounts the formation of that famous special forces unit. The scene I found so implausible takes place in Cairo at the British Army headquarters. David Stirling (Connor Swindells) sneaks in on crutches, evades various guards and finds a general to propose his plan for what would ultimately become the SAS. It just seemed to…

In what reads more like an outlandish Hollywood movie plot, South Africa watched with morbid fascination as our very own Bonnie and Clyde played out. Convicted murdered Thabo Bester, known as the Facebook rapist for his trick of luring women on the social media platform, was busted out of jail by his celebrity doctor girlfriend Dr Nandipha Magudumana. The way she did it was outrageous, smuggling a dead body into a Bloemfontein jail, where a mysterious fire then “killed” Bester, who had already fled. Magudumana then collected this body and had it cremated. Meanwhile Bester and Magudumana were living their…

What started as a question by a journalist at an event organised by a human resources software company, quickly became a quintessential example of how crucial, yet frustrating, managing people can be. When an exasperated editor explained his frustrations at managing his newspaper’s employees before moving away from that role, Workday’s Gina Sheibley replied: “You don’t miss being a manager, do you?” It was a moment of levity from the HR software firm’s chief communications officer during a panel discussion about skills and the role of artificial intelligence (AI). Software, as the saying goes, has eaten the world, including how…