Gifs, the TRS-80, the last blockbuster movie, Apple, and more - This Geek in Review for 2022-04-01

By goz

Featured image courtesy of Frank Okay on Unsplash

Don’t worry Stephen, I’ll always pronounce it ‘jif’

Last week we lost two very influential people in the world of technology, Stephen Wilhite and John Roach. Stephen Wilhite was the creator of the GIF picture format, which gave us a way to share images, along with short animations. One of it’s best features was interlace mode, which gave the computer a way to preview the image as it was downloaded. It did this by sending alternating lines of the image and gave you a chance to abort the download if you didn’t like what you saw. This was big in a time when you may have taken you several minutes to download one picture.

John Roach was the Radio Shack employee behind the TRS-80 computer. In the late 70s, the TRS-80 was part of the triumvirate of the first set of 8-bit home computers, joining the Commodore Pet and the Apple ][. I started out with a TRS-80 Color Computer later, teaching myself BASIC on that bad boy.

The last blockbuster

The Hunger Games came out ten years ago, and, as it turns out, was the last ’new to cinema’ franchise we’ve seen since then. There’s always the feeling that Hollywood relies more on sequels than originals nowadays, but I didn’t realize it’s been 10 years since we had something new.

At least we have Chip ’n Dale: Rescue Rangers and the Bob’s Burgers movies coming out. I know they’re based on current properties, but they are ’new to cinema'.

‘And finally, monsieur, a wafer-thin mint’

Apple and the cellphone companies have done a brilliant job of getting people to pay thousands of dollars for a device that they don’t need but they want. I see people toting around a iPhone 13 Pro Max for which they use it for texting and Facebook. How does Apple and the cellphone companies do this? By offering a monthly payment option and exploiting the lack of mathematical abilities of the buyer.

The difference in monthly payment between the iPhone 13 Pro and the Pro Max is approximately a measly $4 dollars. If I’m already going to pay $42 dollars a month, why wouldn’t I go to $46 and get the Max? The kicker for me is that people don’t realize they’re spending over a thousand dollars for their phone.

But, what really gets me is that these same people won’t spend more than $300 for a laptop. A device that is pretty useful in its own right but because they see the full price up front, it’s a no go.

And that is why turning iPhone purchases into a subscription is a brilliant plan from Apple. People will be more likely to subscribe through Apple than they’re cellphone provider, and these same people will then always have the newest iPhone. Apple can receive the users old iPhones and sell them on the refurbished store, increasing the profit made from each phone.

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