Matt Johnston – Page 3

Is it fair to make money (a markup) off selling stuff? Is it right?

So, lets say I spend 400 million to buy in some technology in the late 90s. I then spend millions refining it into a product, indeed a series of products. I spin one bit of it off and use that to miniaturise the technology meaning my big tech now runs on something in your pocket. It’s a substantial feat that requires the best engineers and the risk is huge. Everyone, especially incumbents, are saying I’ll fail. But I don’t fail and I then spend time building content and a store for other people to sell stuff on the platform I’ve literally invested billions to build.

Just like a brick and mortar store, my investment has created a place where people come to shop. Where they come to buy products, not just the ones I make, but others too. And just like a brick and mortar store, I charge a commission on every sale. Considering the markup on similar stores to mine in the early 2000s was 70%, I figure 30% across the board will make me super-competitive. And it does.

The combination of my stuff plus the stuff I’m selling on the store is a winner. Now….I’m not the biggest seller of stuff. I have competitors who own 90% of the market – one in particular who licensed out their tech and have dozens of manufacturers making stuff for them and they alone command about 70% of the total market – and they operate a store with millions more people.

But I’m doing ok. I built this platform from scratch, built the store from nothing, took the risks when everyone else was saying no and watched as the government let everyone steal from me. But it’s a dog eat dog world. I’ll just go on. I just want to know where the government was when I was struggling. Nowhere. As fecking usual.

But there’s trouble in paradise. A couple of the folks who sell on my store and on other stores want me to remove my commission. In fact, they actually want to take space in my store and build their own little concession stand to sell stuff….and I lose out on my commission and I don’t even get rent for the mini-store. And this is after they used my store to grow bigger, after they made my customers pay for their stuff. They’re calling it unfair that I make money off of the thing I built while, paradoxically, making money off the thing I built.

Someone please explain it to me, because I’ve removed one dude for literally setting up his mini-mart inside my store. I mean, these aren’t people who are struggling. They’re doing really well, even with my commission.

And now this….

EU Likely to Charge Apple With Anti-Competitive Behavior This Week

You see, the danger to innovation doesn’t come from not allowing folks to sell stuff for free on my store. And there’s no danger to competition because these folks are sharecropping on my store, they’re not building an entire platform for sales.

The danger comes from regulation like this meaning that I’ll be less likely invest the 400 million in the first place and the billions later. The danger is that we would then end up a world where the Blackberry was still viewed as the height of technology sophistication.

We aren’t in the 90s any more. The internet is a dangerous place, full of malware and scams. I struggle with keeping my own store clean, what’s the chances that others would do it better. I like to keep my store clean because it attracts in customers. What’s to stop bad guys from putting in their own mini-concessions once we open those doors?

Damn, my iPad Pro (2020) is so slow now….

Words…that I’ve never said.

In fact, the number of times I’ve given this iPad Pro the stink-eye and thought “This is so slow” is precisely zero. Now, I do a decent amount of video editing (LumaFusion is a dream) and a little bit of graphics so processor time is something I do stress the machine with. Sometimes.

Over the last year that I’ve been using the iPad Pro 12.9 (2020) model, I’ve been consistently amazed by it. Coupled with a Magic Keyboard case, it’s simply a thing of grace. It makes me wonder why Apple don’t make Macs with the same level of precision and hardware fit as this thing. It’s just dreamy.

And last night, Apple revealed they’re bringing the M1 processor to the iPad Pro.

To illustrate what that means – moving from the A12Z to the M1 (graphics courtesy of Barefeats)

It’s going to be even faster. At everything.

It already is pretty amazing at exporting 4K footage. It’s already cutting through any photo manipulation stuff (using Pixelmator) with ease. But…speed….

BEO raves about dateless drivel, ignores big obvious data

Business Eye Online are shouting at the sea with their latest article, “Eye View – Freedon (sic) is a state of mind”.

This is the problem with ignorance.

If we had been working from the data, we’d have been out of lockdown months ago. Instead, we worked in dates and didn’t bother to lock down properly. Photographs of Seapark and Newcastle show that these seaside destinations are packed. And if you don’t know how it works it means that in somewhere like that, with a single infected individual, the R-number (the transmission rate) can leap into the hundreds.

“To say that the business community around here was disappointed by the Executive’s much talked about ‘Pathway Out Of Restrictions’ – to give it its full snappy title – is a bit of understatement.
…
Except that a three-pack of underpants might just be preferable to the pile of directionless data-driven, dateless drivel that our political leaders served up for our delectation on Tuesday afternoon.
…
So they’ll be telling us when we can eat, drink and sh*** for the foreseeable. They even laid out, in humourless, tepid prose for their hapless but dutiful citizens what kind of delights they could look forward to.”

But this sort of drivel from a business publication highlights why we will still be living with Coronavirus in 2022. It’s the sort of mentality that would have us open our doors in a zombie apocalypse. It’s the sort of thinking that the bad person, Carter Burke, in James Camerons seminal ALIENS would have espoused. Go on, open the doors, don’t mind the problem, just as long as we have something to look forward to.

With a lack of a byline it’s hard to point the finger, but you have to wonder what mentality would create such a whiny article. The mentality that encourages people to break quarantine, to go ahead and have a house party on a birthday (a date) rather than waiting for covid-exposure results (the data).

At a time when we are desperate, rather than having journalism, we have death-cult prose from a business publication. Don’t pay attention to the dying, get the pubs open. Don’t mind those suffering from long covid, there’s a big steak in Commercial court waiting. Death cult? Is that a little strong? I don’t think so – the worst consumers to have to serve are dead ones. They aren’t great at repeat business.

“will not manage to disrupt the market overnight.”

According to Reuters, Volkswagen CEO Herbert Diess said that he’s “not afraid” of an ‌‌Apple Car‌‌ and that Apple will not be able to overtake the $2 trillion automobile industry overnight.

The problem with this thinking is that no industry is ever disrupted overnight. It takes years of preparation. The Palm CEO said much the same thing – and look what happened there.

And the car industry is incredibly diverse. Hundreds of manufacturers worldwide, and the “software” that they use, is the road so it’s open to anyone with the cash to produce.

Apple have never taken over the industry (with the possible exception of the iPod). They’ve always been happier as a niche player, making decent margins and shaping the direction of hardware and software.

Will they disrupt the industry? Of course. But not by selling the most. If they do their job right, cars will change.

Politics versus Public Health: we do not become stronger through lies

“You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end—which you can never afford to lose—with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.” — Admiral James Stockdale.

Stockdale was a prisoner of war. “I never lost faith in the end of the story. I never doubted not only that I would get out, but also that I would prevail in the end and turn the experience into the defining event of my life, which, in retrospect, I would not trade.”

Who didn’t make it out of the camps? “The optimists,” he replied. “Oh, they were the ones who said, ‘We’re going to be out by Christmas.’ And Christmas would come, and Christmas would go. Then they’d say, ‘We’re going to be out by Easter.’ And Easter would come, and Easter would go. And then Thanksgiving, and then it would be Christmas again. And they died of a broken heart …”

It’s plain that we will still be masking up and locking down for the remainder of 2021. In March 2020, I predicted that, no, the pandemic would not be over by January 2021. I did predict that the earliest we could expect vaccines would be the start of 2021 and that it would take months to roll them out – even if they were effective.

This isn’t pessimism, it’s reality.

The desire to have sweet lies whispered is anathema to the principles of public service and decency. Our elected officials and appointed bureaucrats must tell us truths rather than just telling us things that might make us sleep at night.

Business eye comments on the briefings by the Chief Medical Officer in Northern Ireland:

We’re not sure who gave Dr. Michael McBride a bit of bollocking on Tuesday night or Wednesday morning. But someone must have. Because the Dr. Doom who spoke to the media on Tuesday was very different to the Dr. Hope who appeared alongside Robin Swann yesterday.

And that’s the power of politics.

That it’s better to lie to people now because you can always lie to them later. For the love of everything sacred, give me harsh truths rather than honeyed lies.

As a medical professional, did he not see the damage this kind of grim pessimism can do to people… lonely people, people separated from family, vulnerable people, young people?

See, this is false equivalence from people who don’t know better. It’s been said repeatedly that telling people they will be having a hard time will lead to them having a worse time. This sort of ideation of lowered expectations causes more mental health issues than the pandemic itself.

There may never be a vaccine that gives guaranteed protection. We may be wearing masks for years. We need to prepare for continued fatalities, secondary health issues, long term Covid-legacy sickness, mass unemployment, the entire collapse of the entertainment, travel and tourism industries.

Those who survive are the ones who are resilient, who are stoic, those who are perceptive and adaptable. This has been the history of humanity since the very beginning. We were not the strongest, nor the fastest, but we were the smartest. And you don’t stay smart by being lied to.

Investment Underdogs

“… has a reputation as something of a bargain bucket for international investors. A relatively young tech ecosystem and a historic shortage of local VC money has led to smaller round sizes …, and plenty of space for opportunists from outside to swoop in.”

Sounds like Northern Ireland, doesn’t it? But it’s Spain, a country with a population of 47 million. This article is from Sifted.

We started Raise in 2018 because there was a need for someone to swoop in. The work that had been done in the past by the incumbent organisations was simply not working.

We’re entering the third year for Raise. Our portfolio has never been stronger and our startups are active and receiving investment and not just from Northern Ireland. Opening doors outside of Northern Ireland is vital to the growth of our ecosystem.

We’ve not had help from Invest NI, we’ve not had help from the incumbent government supported funds. We’ve had to go and source new investors from outside the region.

Forcing Serendipity: not the oxymoron you might imagine

13 years ago, while the economy was in the grips of the inexorable slide into recession, I wrote a short article about them need for entrepreneurship in the face of adversity. In this current world, restricted by pandemic conditions, this is probably needed more than ever.

Here’s a sub quote by John F Kennedy (the journalist, not the President):

Enterprise and entrepreneurship are the antidote for unemployment and recession. Encourage people to use computers and broadband to beat the recession, they can work for anyone from anywhere. They can create businesses based on anything from selling stuff on eBay to using their intelligence to write, provide consultancy services or develop technology. This is the way out. Failure to provide them with the tools is economic sabotage. Let’s hope intelligence prevails.

In a Covid-restricted world, none of this is surprising. We have had the technology, if not the means to provide everything that’s been asked for and with business leaders claiming that productivity is up when workers are working from home, this could be a rare opportunity.

But it’s not all roses.

One of the things I’ve noticed from working and studying from home exclusively for nearly a year is that there is a noticeable decimation of serendipity. Those moments which can be inspirational are not happening. The water cooler moments. The flashes of inspiration when two workers collide. We can do our best to emulate these however through direct intervention, even when the only facetime we get is over a videoconferencing call.

My solution when working with startups and larger companies is that serendipity can be forced. This isn’t like trying to force creativity – and yes – I’ve been in the room when a senior manager has walked in and demanded everyone be creative for the next two hours, as they’ve just brought in the sandwiches. You can’t force creativity (it’s a muscle, just like every other muscle, you need to exercise it regularly), but we can force….or engineer serendipity.

We can provide the grist for the mill of creativity by making sure everyone has the opportunity to mix up with everyone. That includes reducing the enforcement of unreasonable company policies about being “online all the time or forcing everyone to turn their cameras on for the company Zoom meeting. It is absolutely about engaging people when they’re in their comfort zone to speak and helping realise that their discomforts are the engine of change.

Are you going to do half a job, like last time?

The Internet is abuzz with the repercussions of the attack on the US State Capitol building by right wing, white supremacist terrorists armed with bombs. Governor Schwartzenegger (himself Austrian) compared it to the Nazi Kristallnacht action and he’s right to do so.

Twitter, Facebook have banned Trump and accomplices. Parler, the latest right wing social media cesspool has been denied AWS processing time from Amazon and Stripe has started to deny transactions from the Trump Campaign.

What took you?

And we have the New Bar Association ready to expel Rudy Giuliani. And the PGA of America and Scotlands R&A ready to exclude Trump and his properties from their future matches.

What took you?

As the attempted Nazi coup of the USA has failed due the will of the people, the continuing coup of the UK continues, faltering only due to the ineptitude of the Prime Minister and his cabinet. The Allies were definitely front and centre in the onslaught. But while we may joke that these idiots are bad people and deserve the odd punch in the face, we have to recognise that we didn’t deal with them properly in the first place.

Demagogues like Oswald Mosley and Enoch Powell in the UK were not put down the way we should have and their interns continue on. You’ll note that some of the young interns from Powells days still serve as MPs in Westminster. My own MP in Lisburn, served as Powells junior. Powell was selected in South Down where, unsurprisingly, the UKIP managed to find a seat as well. Is there a problem in County Down that we simply have not addressed?

And in the US, in 1939, a “Pro-Americanism” Nazi rally was held in Madison Square Garden. 20,000 people attended. That’s 20,000 loose ends who went on to have kids, who then had more kids, indoctrinating them into a way of life that resulted in deaths at the State Capitol.

We have never dealt with the pro-Nazi members of the aristocracy here in the UK, much as the US never dealt with the white supremacy movement or the tens of thousands of active Nazis in their midst. And this is what happens. These people are well organised in a way that the Left cannot comprehend. While the Left are continuing to fragment themselves over rejoining the EU, or whether the plastic bag tax was sufficient; these monsters are designing new ovens. People ovens. They seed dissent through disinformation (yup, anyone denying Covid doesn’t take a lot of scratching to find references to the “great replacement”).

Trump emboldened these people. He made it socially acceptable to be racist in public, with no fear of censure. Is that what we have become on the Left, so willing to accept everyone as an equal that we allow the Extreme Right to do whatever they want? How many people do they have to kill before we stop wringing our hands about whether we are hurting their feelings when we put them in jail forever.

So, what the hell took everyone?

Why did it take so long? And are we all going to let them scuttle back under their rocks to re-emerge with greater numbers in another 50 years?

Two Books on sale at DriveThruRPG

In an attempt to calm this raging passion I have for writing, I’ve begun to embark on putting my books on DriveThruRPG – the pre-eminent site for selling RPGs online.

Testament and Creed are two books of a trilogy of games. Both are set at the end of the world, in the Jude-Christian sense. The Rapture is upon us and in the first book, Testament, the players are witnesses to the Rapture. In the second, Creed, they are part of the problem with their sorcerous ways.

The third book, Rapture, where the player takes the role of an Angelic Being during the Rapture and the Apocalypse, will be written if the other two do ok.

A First For Apple

Much has been made of the new M1 processor-equipped Macs from Apple – the fabless MacBook Air, the diminutive Mac mini and the peerless MacBook Pro 13″. They’re currently wowing everyone with their power efficiency (and battery life in the laptops) and their heat characteristics (they’re silent or fanless) and lastly, and probably most relevantly, their speed. They’re toasting the vast majority of x86 (Intel and AMD)-based PCs out there and faster for most people than any previous Mac. And they’re available for new low prices which make it a no-brainier for businesses to invest in one for testing purposes.

The speed isn’t just about how quickly they can render video or process images, it’s all about the useful life of the device as well. My guess is that Apple just extended the useful life of a Mac by a couple of years – and this is a series of machines that routinely is a workhorse for 5-10 years.

I can’t give a better illustration than a render I did last night (I haven’t got my M1 Mac yet) from an 2016-vintage Intel MacBook Pro 13″. It took 2.5 times the length of the footage to render out (1080p). When I did a similar export from my iPad Pro 2020 model, it took a fifth of the length of the footage to render. These devices are a lot faster than the latest models and they’re even faster than the ones they’re intending to replace.

So, it’s great that Apple is currently vending the fastest laptops and micro-desktops on the market.

But that’s not the first I’m talking about.

Apple has always made great hay out of being a system designer. That the tight integration of their hardware and software makes for great computers. We were able to see this with iPhone and iPad – devices which are much lower specifications on paper, but which easily smoke the competition in benchmarks and real-world usage. And this is the thing – it’s only been a few years that Apple has been designing their own chips for the i-Devices. Before that they were like everyone else – using someone else’s chips.

They bought chips from Intel for the Intel Macs.

They bought chips from IBM for the PowerPC.

They bought chips from ARM and Intel for the Newtons.

And they bought the 68K processor series from Motorola for the original “classic” Macs.

This is the first time that Apple can honestly talk about an integrated system when it comes to the Mac. This is hardware designed for software. This is software designed for hardware. This is the dream that Apple has been flogging for nearly five decades. It came to light with the iPhone, it’s come to full truth with the M1 Macs.

Finally!

The M1 Processor is not designed for the high end. It’s fast, but look at that IO. Only one controller (for thunderbolt/USB) which means a limited pipe in. And it’s hardware wired for a maximum of 16 GB of RAM.
There’s room fo something else.

The next thing on the agenda is what happens with the higher-end Macs. Is there a need for an iMac Pro or is it just the “best” in Apple’s traditional Good/Better/Best product matrix? Will there now be room in the product roadmap for a thin and light return to the MacBook form factor? What’s a Mac Pro going to look like? Is there finally room for a Macintosh computer that’s got some expansion (like the Mac Pro) but sits on a desktop? Maybe for one Mac that can take an internal graphics card without having to buy a high end Workstation-class machine that consumes the power of a small mid-American town in winter.

Will this be like the i-Devices – with a M1X and an M1Z on the horizon? Or will Apple go all-in with a whole new no-holds-barred series (I’m calling them P1) which has multiple controllers, a special bridge to expandable RAM and up to 64GB of RAM on the SOC.

Will Apple be chasing the graphics market next? After decades of being poorly served by the graphics companies out there, isn’t it time they served themselves? They’ve been pushing Metal hard for exactly this reason. And Apple is always keen to provide a solution when the market has been providing something substandard and getting away with it.

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