It’s Apple’s big day in the spotlight with their annual WWDC developers event, but it’s Microsoft’s latest acquisition that’s making headlines. Redmond confirmed today that it will acquire GitHub, a locus for computer software developers, coders, and even whole companies working on and testing super-technical projects. Think of it as a sort of super-nerdy Dropbox.
Satya Nadella and company reportedly dropped $7.5 billion on the deal, even though GitHub was valued at only about $2 billion just three years ago. So what changed? For one, Microsoft’s GitHub competitor, Codeplex, was a non-starter and died late last year, and Microsoft is currently one of the largest users of GitHub, so it kind of makes sense.
Some GitHub users have said the deal is the beginning of the end of GitHub, but Satya Nadella says they will work to preserve its geek cred and be “stewards” of the hallowed service, which is just over 10 years old. GitHub CEO and co-founder Chris Wanstrath will also remain involved with a position as Technical Fellow at Microsoft. It’s another high profile buy for Redmond, which snapped up LinkedIn in 2016, as well as Skype and Nokia’s cell phone business, which it recently shed for a big loss.
Connect anything, do anything
Apple’s WWDC gets rolling today with a keynote from CEO Tim Cook and hopefully a lot of announcements about updates to things like AR Kit, iOS 12 and the next version of MacOS – be sure to check out our full wrap-up. But we’re also taking a look back today at some classic Apple kit, specifically, the friendly line of white Apple MacBook laptops.
DT Computing sage Jayce Wagner gathered up a few surviving examples of the classic machines, which weren’t thin, fancy, or especially noteworthy, even when they were new. But they were affordable, and Apple sold a gazillion of them to students and many others who had never owned a laptop before, and back in the late-2000’s you couldn’t go into any coffeeshop without seeing a dozen or more of them in front of latte-sipping college students cramming for finals, or a DJ rocking a set at the club. Oh, and the ads, who can forget those. Anyway, take a trip back in time when the Macbook was phat, loaded with connection ports of every kind, and stood out against all those grey, black and boring PCs. Good times.
Jane, Xavier is here
Chipmaker Nvidia has just debuted a new CPU specifically designed for robotics, and it’s called the Jetson Xavier. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang unveiled the new system-on-a-chip (SoC) device at Computex and the development stats are impressive: He says 8,000 people have been working on it for three years, and it’ll crush through 30 trillion operations per second.
That’s the kind of horsepower self-driving cars, smart homes, and what Huang says the next generation of automatons will need as the robot revolution gets underway. And the cost? Just $1,300 for the chip – and the software to run it. It’s heading for developers in August.
We’ve got more news on our Facebook page and YouTube channel, and be sure to tune in to this week’s DT podcasts: Trends with Benefits (general tech shenanigans) on Thursdays, and Between the Streams (movie and TV topics) every Friday.
