Apple’s announced the iPad 4 (or, as it calls it, primarily to annoy copy editors the world over, the ‘iPad with Retina Display’) is to now include a 128 GB model. Predictably, there are already people moaning about this for various reasons, not least the inevitable price-hike over the 64 GB model, and that wonderful non-reason “I don’t need it and so I don’t see why anyone else would”, but I’m happy to see Apple acknowledge that at least some iPad owners need more storage space.

A 128 GB model isn’t for everyone, of course, but I’m increasingly seeing games (especially complex ones with Retina assets) clock in at well over 1 GB and individual issues of magazines sized at anything between 250 MB and 1 GB. Although Apple’s making reasonable efforts to provide on-demand access to your media content (iTunes Match enables you to access your music without keeping it all on your device, and TV shows and movies bought in certain iTunes Stores can be streamed rather than downloaded), it’s not enough. Until every piece of content you buy is stored securely in the cloud and internet access is so fast and unrestricted that you wouldn’t think twice about redownloading a 1 GB magazine and data for apps or games isn’t obliterated when you delete one, we’re increasingly going to need more capacity on tablets, not less.

Here’s hoping Apple follows this up with a 128 GB iPhone (despite the eye-watering price-tag that will then command) and a 128 GB iPod touch. As it stands, the new iPad model is a good start. I’d been wondering if Apple was beginning to promote a culture of disposal rather than collection on iOS, forced on users because of the lack of storage. Magazines, apps and games would have to fall by the wayside, simply due to devices filling up so fast. A larger iPad means this won’t be the case—at least not so quickly—for those lucky enough to own one.

My computer went a bit nuts earlier today, and I thought it was Time Machine going screwy. But it turns out my entire Mac briefly turned into a time machine, enabling me to log on to the web and access a news piece about Apple’s Q1—from 2014, next year. It makes for interesting reading…

Apple today announced its financial results for its fiscal 2014 first quarter ended December 28, 2013. The company generated record quarterly revenue of $63.2bn for the period ending 28 December, its highest figure to date, and a marked increase on the $54.5bn generated during the same quarter the previous year.

Apple enjoyed profits of $16.4bn, another record, although this was countered by the company’s average selling prices continuing to fall, and Tim Cook finally losing it and ordering “all the analysts to be shot or maimed in some horrible manner” shortly after the call.

For those paying attention to the figures, there was plenty of good news. iPhone sales rose from 47.8m to 62.2m, largely due to the phenomenally popular iPhone 6, although this fell dramatically short of analysts’ average prediction of 427 billion iPhones sold. iPad sales also rose, from 22.9m units to 36.1m units, spurred on by an across-the-line revamp that saw the iPad mini get a Retina screen and the iPad shed almost half its weight. However, in the wake of Samsung’s recent release of 700 new tablets, covering every possible screen size between one-inch and seventeen feet, Apple’s product line is, according to analysts, looking “very tired”. Additionally, there was disappointment that Apple’s average selling price for the iPad was well done on Q1 2013. “Apple’s just not making enough profit. It’s also pretty clear Apple doesn’t know how to compete—at the very least, Apple should be knocking iPad prices down by 97 per cent across the line,” said Alan Lyst, CEO of Bullish Wealth Management, without a hint of irony, reportedly prompting Cook’s call for the eradication of analysts.

Mostly, though, analysts, pundits and the market alike were spooked by the bad news, which one noted “rolled off of Tim Cook’s tongue a little like rancid butter off of a rusty knife”. Mac sales remained flat, with Apple only managing to sell 4.2m units, and iPod sales continued to fall, with only a single iPod being sold somewhere in Wales. The Apple TV refresh also disappointed the entire world, including members of undiscovered tribes in the rainforest, with the new $99 unit merely doubling in power, adding approximately 300 content partners, and providing the means to install apps, rather than being a massive new standalone television unit. “I’m totally bummed,” said Lyst. “I was hoping to spend all my money on a new TV, but all Apple did was iterate on an existing device. Steve Jobs would never have allowed that.”

Wall Street was unimpressed with the numbers, despite Tim Cook noting Apple had $137 billion in cash reserves, which it was planning to spend on buying “California”. In after-hours trading, AAPL fell to $152.11 per share, and analysts argued Apple was “done” and “doomed” and “failing to innovate”. They argued the company should “be more like Samsung, Microsoft, Google and Amazon,” especially noting Amazon’s “exciting manner of not actually making a profit, which shows they are doing something, rather than rolling around naked on $50 bills all day, which is how we imagine executive meetings at Apple to be”.

In a rare move for Apple, Cook within hours announced and broadcast an impromptu web keynote, unveiling a new product. “You want something new, eh?” snarled Cook, his lip visibly quivering. “Today I’m proud to unleash iNinja, a chip that can be implanted into anyone’s brain, turning them into crack assassins. We’ve already secretly placed these chips inside every Apple Store employee,” he added with a cackle and a “mwahaha”. Analysts were excited to hear Apple had “started innovating again”, shortly before deranged Apple employees in blue T-shirts kicked their faces off.

A curious piece on The Guardian today, by Richard Stallman. He mourns the loss of HMV, on the basis that what’s replaced physical music sales is a “disaster for freedom”. However, the arguments he makes are curious.

Once I had bought the records, I was free to give or lend them to friends. Under copyright law, I could even copy them, to audio tapes in the old days, and give those to my friends. All this without the state’s knowing anything about it.

Now, he was certainly free to give or lend records to his friends, and also to copy records to tape and give those away. However, he wasn’t acting within the law. Today, in the UK, you’re still not acting within the law regarding format-shifting; and even if copyright laws change in 2013, to introduce a measure of fair-use (as is fairly likely), it will be for purely personal collections only. In other words, it will no longer be illegal in the UK to rip a CD to MP3s (just as the CD format is dying off, usefully), as long as you’re making the MP3s for you, and not spreading them around the web or emailing them to your friends.

For those who love both music and freedom, today’s form of internet sales is out of the question, which leaves ever fewer opportunities for us to buy music.

From the previous quoted paragraph, the ‘freedom’ Stallman appears to be encouraging heavily involves rights infringement—unauthorised copying of purchased content. Such copying’s still perfectly simple with digital files, but that doesn’t make it any better. And if Stallman’s concerned about “fewer opportunities for us to buy music”, I’m more worried about fewer musicians able to make music, because people are making use of their ‘freedom’ to rip said artists off, copying their music rather than buying it—whatever the format.

Largely thanks to the recent WSJ story, the tech press has merrily been reporting that Apple has slashed iPhone 5 component orders, despite having literally no proof and a source known as Mr Familiar With The Matter (strange name, that). Apple’s share price has since tanked, and countless media organisations have copied and pasted bits of previous Apple articles they’ve published that include phrases such as “lost its edge” and “under threat from Android” and “we really don’t know what we’re talking about—man, we sure hope no-one notices”.

Next week, Apple will talk about its financials for the past quarter, which includes the festive season. Even with Apple’s problems during that time (late iMac shipments, relatively limited iPad mini and iPhone availability), you’d have to be an idiot to not predict Apple’s going to have a monster quarter. However, you’d merely need to be an analyst to argue Apple’s going to sell significantly more kit than its guidance went near (which is what’s now happening), and be hugely bullish about the iPhone 5 in the face of the WSJ story (which is also what’s now happening), leading to the tech press to, you’ve guessed it, also be bullish about the iPhone 5.

So the iPhone 5 is Schrödinger’s iPhone. It exists in two states at once: total disaster, failing under the mighty onslaught of Android device sales that no-one really qualifies because sales figures are never released, and massive success story. The first of those tanks Apple’s shares in the present; the latter potentially tanks Apple’s shares next week, when it’ll turn out the company’s massive profits won’t match made-up figures from analysts, and will therefore be called ‘disappointing’.

Because of this, let’s all demand a new rule from the tech press. Before reporting on any stories based on ‘sources’ (unnamed, naturally) or ‘analysts’ (unharmed, unfortunately) or ‘made-up bullshit’ (unacceptable, obviously), the following should be added:

THIS ARTICLE IS PROBABLY BULLSHIT AND YOU SHOULD IGNORE IT. SORRY ABOUT THAT.

That at least would stop people worrying about a problem that doesn’t exist, and free up space for technology stories that actually matter.

Last year’s Dredd movie bombed at the box office. This was a pity, for all kinds of reasons. It was a hugely ambitious British indie (and without a foppish Hugh Grant in sight), and, as covered by Laura Sneddon, two of its three main characters were very strong women—a huge contrast to, say, another British-oriented property about a certain secret agent. Also, Dredd was a ballsy, no-holds-barred action flick. Instead of being a sanitised production, it was gory and messy. When people got shot, you knew it. There was no ‘playing soldiers’, and at times, the body counts felt sickening. Which, of course, was the point, unlike in almost every other current action movie, desperate to pretend it’s riffing off of 1980s 18-rated action fare, but in reality designing a film also suitable for kids.

So: zero chance of a sequel, doom, gloom and goodnight, Joe Dredd, right? Not quite. One thing the film did get was widespread critical acclaim. Like the dire Stallone flick, Dredd made little money, but the property now has a sheen of coolness. People in the USA are recognising Dredd as a hard-as-nails action character and not some awful Stallone vehicle with too much spandex and a large cod-piece. The upshot has been surprisingly swift shiny disc sales, a number-one spot on the iTunes store, and, best of all, a bump in sales for Judge Dredd books. I’ve also seen people increasingly asking for recommendations—they liked the film, so what next?

That’s not so easy to answer. Dredd has a rich history. The character hasn’t been strutting his stuff for as long as certain US characters that have been rather more successful in cinemas, but there’s still 30 years of largely coherent backstory. Also, Dredd has aged in real-time, with no reboots, yet some pretty major evolution along the way. People sometimes argue Dredd never changes, but they are wrong—like creator John Wagner has said, Dredd’s opinions shift much like a glacier, and this is hugely rewarding for long-term fans, watching as the stoic character adjusts his worldview ever so slightly, which nonetheless often affects the strip itself significantly.

There are currently dozens of trade paperbacks available (this being merely the UK selection), which can be rather bewildering for a newcomer. Also, Dredd the comic is a different beast from Dredd the movie—the city in the comic is much bigger and wilder, although Dredd himself often remains as uncompromising as ever.

With such a wealth of material on offer, it’s not easy to pick just a few books to recommend, but some volumes stand out. Mandroid offers a neatly self-contained tale that gives you a good feel for the strip, and America offers a mature take from the citizens’ viewpoint about the near-fascist justice system in the future USA (or at least its east coast, half of which comprises Dredd’s city in the comic). The Pit showcases the police procedural aspect of the strip, with Dredd put in charge of a failing sector house, while The Art of Kenny Who? and Restricted Files 2 provide a bunch of shorter strips, some being wildly absurd. Dredd is, after all, often a blackly satirical strip, not just a future cop who stomps about and shoots people.

For anyone who really wants to jump all-in, the Complete Case Files collections are perhaps the way to go. These include every Dredd strip from 2000 AD and its sister title the Judge Dredd Megazine, in chronological order. Early on, Dredd isn’t really fully formed, being an action-cop for what was at the time a comic for kids. The stories have the seeds of something great, but can be a bit cringeworthy to modern eyes, in much the same way as revisiting early Marvel strips can make you wonder how the strips ever succeeded. But by the third volume you’ve the ghoulish Judge Death making an entrance, and the momentum after that point rarely stops. Many 2000 AD fans suggest starting with volume 5, which includes The Apocalypse War epic, but I prefer the volumes that deal with the fallout from that story, with volumes 6 and 7 offering some particularly strong early Dredd work. Some of the later volumes go off the boil a little, when co-creator John Wagner takes an extended leave of absence, leaving the character to a too-young Garth Ennis and the clearly indifferent Grant Morrison and Mark Millar. However, given the amount of available material to mine, you could happily read for months before you get to that point, and you’ll also perhaps understand why British comic geeks like myself were so excited to see Dredd done well on the big screen, after years of watching spandex-clad superheroes come and go!