Back in 1996 when the first “web applications” emerged at the apex of the client-server era, one common frame for looking at the tradeoffs of the web browser was talking about the “richness” of an interface like Lotus Notes or Microsoft Outlook against the “reach” of one like Hotmail or eGroups. While the productivity purists would bemoan the latency of the browser’s limited rendering capabilities handicapped by an Internet that was too slow, they would jealously look on as the ...

I’ve been looking for the past year for a suitable programming environment for my two boys (10 & 7) that moves them beyond graphical environments like Scratch and Lego Mindstorms and into the land of real programming (a few years ago we had great success with Scratch). In my mind, the target has always been something like the Apple ][ BASIC ROM that shipped with the machine: easy to grasp and when paired with the GR (low resolution graphics), ...

The other major number that caught people's attention in the recent Apple earnings call was the drop in gross margin (47% to 38% YoY) which is mostly explained by the iPad mini but definitively hints at lower margins in their future. This is a normal part of any suitably competitive market and should be expected; what might not be however, is why the post PC components of Apple's future might not currently be as well insulated from margin pressure as ...