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IN THE battle between David Einhorn and Apple over the latter's $137 billion cash hoard lies a deeper lesson about the outlook for the economy. Mr Einhorn, an activist investor, says Apple clings to its money out of a “Depression mentality”. Perhaps. But the more mundane explanation is that Apple, like many of the world's big companies today, is generating more cash from its existing product line than it can usefully plough back into new projects.

Today, we all know Apple’s products, and a lot of us own one. Yet it is hard to identify the impact they or any of today's social-media giants have had on productivity. I was at first delighted with the convenience and freedom to read documents, check Twitter and search the web on the iPad mini I got in December, but it occurred to me recently that this was at best an incremental improvement over doing it on my BlackBerry or laptop. It also provides me with many more ways to waste time. As Tom Toles, the Washington Post’s cartoonist, puts it:

No doubt some of those YouTube videos were being watched over Apple products. Not that I blame Apple for Penney’s culture (after all, Google owns YouTube), but it is a reminder that the social-media revolution has been a mixed blessing. Yahoo at one time stood atop the Internet but the ability of its workers to do their job from anywhere may be backfiring on productivity

are genuine benefits of social media and the related hardware. In its first few decades the computer/internet revolution re-engineered business processes, enabling companies to interact with each other and customers in more ways at lower cost than ever, producing measurable, bankable results. Now, it’s leading to brand-new consumer products, many of whose  benefits are unmeasured or unmeasurable.