AppleZulu

If they’re building a phone in the US to sell in a couple of months, they should be able to provide tours of the factory that would have to be up and running right now, right?

I’m sure @9secondkox2 can fill us in on how all this has to be part of the well thought out plan. 

9secondkox2 said:

avon b7 said:

9secondkox2 said:

As I said a long time ago, intelligent people are in charge snd apple will be ok. The president will have a way to navigate Apple through some difficult decidd add jobs. And it has come to pass. 

Cook was wise to open the door of discussion dnd thr president has been wise in response. 

I know it’s popular in this particular online space to detract from the president no matter what he does, but the fact is tarriffs are necessary -yet it’s sldd add o necessary to protect Americans and American companies. The idea is to put the pressure on other countries, particularly China - and not on American companies. 

It’s not changing mindset. It’s continuing forward motion, msnuevering as needed. That’s only good stuff snd Apple is the better for it. As this year marks time for my iPhone upgrade and early next is my next Mac purchase, I am a pretty happy potential customer right about now. 

If intelligent people were involved, surely none of this would have been necessary. 

He imposed tariffs. There were little to no exceptions. He let that situation sit while markets collapsed everywhere. He doubled down on there being no change of thought and barely hours after saying there would be no backing down, he did just that, suspending 'reciprocal' tariffs for 90 days. 

Then, late Friday exemptions were put in place.

By late Sunday we were being told there were no real exemptions (according to Lutnick) but a sort of pause within a pause and everyone was 'on the hook' (according to Trump) and that new tariffs were being devised to replace the original ones but they simply weren't ready and we know no one will even dare explain them (because they are being cooked up as we speak and don't exist). 

Even within the administration mixed messaging is emerging and now we are to believe Trump is 'flexible'?

It is nice to hear about walls and going over or below them, or even around them but the US decided to crash straight into them. 

There is no intelligence on show here. It's the complete opposite. Chaos and reaction to the problems chaos brings. 

Intelligence would never have seen this mess get to this point. 

Intelligence would not have seen Trump congratulating his pals for stock market gains hours before he announced another walk back (opening him up to valid insider trading accusations). 


Tim Cook and every CEO and small business owner in the US would know what trade policy is and be acting on it. That isn't happening because there is NO stable trade policy.

Everyone is running blind. 

Incorrect. It’s because of intelligent and good people that we are finally addressing long-standing abuses and doing so in a way that is benefitting Americans as much as possible and sparing collateral damage where possible. It’s not changing your mind when you planned to do something already. Trump hinted at this previously and we saw precedent in his first term. And that El Salvador president sure seemed to respect him tremendously. 

The right thing to do isn’t to continue to be ripped off. Nor is it to apply tarriffs without concern for American companies. 

People elected the president in a number of issues. This is one. The previous admin let American get bullied around. We saw a microcosm of that with Apple and the EU. That era is over. All of a sudden we hear the eu saying they’re willing to deal. We hear them second guessing their ridiculously exorbitant fees charged against Apple for stuff they make up as they go along. America is strong again. And as a result, so are Americans and our companies. This is good. A lot of mental acrobatics to try to spin it any other way. 

Your sycophancy is an embarrassment. The collateral damage is huge. Americans will be paying higher prices for cars, food, lumber, and the majority of every day items they buy online and at big box stores. None of this will yield in influx of new, high-paying jobs to offset the costs, certainly not anytime soon, and with continued flip-flops and insouciance from this administration, the jobs won't come later, either. Nobody makes major investments in an unstable market. The article above demonstrates how the exemptions for Apple that may or may not be exemptions and may or may not last, were an afterthought, not part of any plan. The collateral damage with our own allies means we are in a much weaker position to negotiate anything with China. A year ago, our European allies were strongly aligned with us and rapidly distancing themselves from China because of its overt support for Russia. Now, those European countries are re-examining their relationship with China, because at least it represents a more stable trading partner than the United States. So you go ahead and enjoy your maybe-tariff-exempted new iPhone upgrade, because it's coming at an enormous cost to all Americans. 

The El Salvadoran president likes Trump because Trump is paying him to like him, and offering to pay him a lot more to build gulags for US citizens as well. Like all of Trump's relationships this is entirely transactional.

You're the one engaging in mental acrobatics as you try to spin any of this as good for anyone but Donald Trump.

In a nutshell, this explains why Apple is “behind” with AI, but actually isn’t. 

It’s remarkable the consistency with which this pattern repeats, yet even people who consider themselves Apple enthusiasts don’t see it. Tech competitors “race ahead” with an iteration of some technology, while Apple seemingly languishes. Apple is doomed. Then Apple comes out “late” with their version of it, and the initial peanut gallery reception pronounces it too little, too late.

Then within a couple of years, Apple’s version is the gold standard and the others -those cutting-edge innovators- race to catch up, because “first” is often also “half-baked.”

In the news this week, it was exposed that RFK Jr’s “Make America Healthy Again” report was evidently an AI-produced document, replete with hallucinations, most notably in the bibliography, and of course it was. This is what happens when the current cohort of AI models are uncritically used to produce a desired result, without any understanding of how profoundly bad these AI models are. When I read about this in the news, I decided to experiment with it myself. Using MS Copilot -in commercial release as part of MS Word- I picked a subject and asked for a report taking a specific, dubious position on it, with citations and a bibliography. After it dutifully produced the report, I started checking the bibliography, and one after another, failed to find the research papers that Copilot used to back the position taken. I didn’t check all the references, so it’s possible some citations were real, but finding several that weren’t was sufficient to bin the whole thing. It’s bad enough when humans intentionally produce false and misleading information, but when a stock office product will do it for you with no disclaimers or warnings, should that product really be on the market? I also once asked ChatGPT to write a story about green eggs and ham, in the style of Dr. Seuss. It then plaigerized the actual Seuss story, almost verbatim, in a clear abuse of copyright law. This is the stuff that Apple is supposedly trailing behind.

So the report here that Apple is developing AI but, unlike their “cutting edge” competitors, not releasing something that produces unreliable garbage, suggests that no, they’re not behind. They’re just repeating the same pattern again of carefully producing something of high quality and reliability, and in a form that is intuitively useful, rather than a gimmicky demonstration that they can do a thing, whether it’s useful or not. Eventually they’ll release something that consistently produces reliable information, and likely does so while respecting copyright and other intellectual property rights. The test will be that not only will it be unlikely to hallucinate in ways that mislead or embarrass its honest users, it will actually disappoint those with more nefarious intent. When asked to produce a report with dubious or false conclusions, it won’t comply like a sociopathic sycophant. It will respond by telling the user that the reliable data not only doesn’t support the requested position, but actually refutes it. Hopefully this will be a feature that Apple uses to market their AI when it’s released.

TomPMRI said:

AppleZulu said:

Actually, Time Machine actually has been having problems since Sequoia’s release. On MacBook Pros at least, there has been an issue getting Time Machine backups to complete when the Mac goes to “sleep.” There is some sort of issue with accessing certain files during sleep mode. I’m assuming this is some sort of security measure bumping up against Time Machine. Previously, as long as it was connected to power, you could close the notebook and set it aside, and it would continue to do wireless backups to NAS devices. Not any more, or at least not without adjusting some settings I haven’t figured out yet. I’ve been able to get backups to happen if the machine remains ‘awake,’ but just letting it happen in the background has been significantly diminished. I plan to set aside some time to take it up with Apple support, but haven’t yet done so. I was sort of hoping it would just get resolved in an update, but not so far.  

The Time Machine problem occurs on both my MacBook Air M2 and one of my two MacMinis that I upgraded to Sonoma. I have held off upgrading my other MacMini, waiting for the problem to be fixed in 15.2…which didn't happen.

This has occupied numerous threads in the Apple Communities, so, for now, Apple has broken any way to create a bootable (I have used SuperDuper! for years) or a Time Machine reliable backup.

One solution that does fix the Time Machine bug is to turn off the firewall (suggested by Apple), which is a very insecure/stupid fix. No idea if this also allows SuperDuper! to function properly…

I have successfully gotten it to do Time Machine backups without messing with the firewall. The problem seems to have something to do with file restrictions during "sleep mode." I wasn't methodical enough to isolate actions, but I fiddled with sleep/wake settings under battery and lock screen. There also is a simple app called "caffeine" that will keep your computer awake, which maybe is what has kept things open for backups to complete. I still get failures when I close the MBP (at least without "caffeine" activated) and leave it plugged in overnight. 

9secondkox2 said:

StrangeDays said:

9secondkox2 said:

Business-wise, makes sense for the family organization to do this. Capitalize on popularity and make some money. 

No, it doesn’t make sense, because that’s unethical and wrong. It’s why we ask presidents to divest prior to coming into office. It only makes sense if one is void of ethics and doesn’t mind doing wrong. 

Is the president involved? I thought his family took it over in 2017. Or is the family not allowed to make a marketing connection to the fact that their father was and is the President? Donald Trump Jr. is not Donald Trump Sr. 

You thought wrong. Yes, the president is involved. He is enriching himself while in office, profiting from the very same industries which he affects with tariffs, executive orders and social media posts. He is doing crypto currency deals with foreign countries while making state visits. 

https://www.forbes.com/sites/danalexander/2025/05/06/trump-organization-admits-president-still-controls-his-business-in-new-filing/

9secondkox2 said:

Interesting article. 

As we’ve seen in this admin, things are always in motion and never stuck in the mud. 

So we will see how these deals turn out for the long term benefit of America. 

But one thing is for certain: something msjor had to be done. Constantly losing ground to other nations was not sustainable. Sure, you might get a cheaper iPhone today, but you may not even be able to get an iPhone tomorrow. 

I’ll take long term over short term any day. 

Creating chaos, flip-flopping through incoherent policy positions and then declaring victory after negotiating back some of the damage they’ve done are all one hundred percent “short term” actions. 

Mike Wuerthele said:

metalcase said:

This is an APPLEINSIDER top story?  What does this have to do with Apple? Are there not already enough websites spreading political division and hate?

Short answer: We can cover anything we'd like. Ink by the barrel and so forth.

Longer answer: Apple and Trump intersect in about 10 different ways. If you can't see the connection to Apple because, charitably, his sons decided to do this and license the name, launching in SEPTEMBER, you know, iPhone release season, while their father shit-talks Apple for not manufacturing in the US, while they at the same time try to pull a fast one about US manufacturing, I don't know what to tell you.

We do not require you to read everything we write. If you don't like something, move on to the next piece, or the 10 before that, or the 50,000 before that.

If there's hate to be had here, it's the Trump sons that are doing it in this case. Pointing out the lies is hardly that. Facts don't care about your feelings or political side.

A common retreat in the MAGA playbook when unpleasant facts are pointed out is the pearl-clutching "stay in your lane" lament. The same people who voted a D-list TV celebrity into office will tell every actor, musician, comedian, or athlete to stick to entertaining and keep their opinions to themselves if they don't subscribe to the cult, or in this case, will tell an Apple-centric publication to shut up about this Trump Phone grift even as Trump has targeted Apple, now effectively a business competitor, with government fiats that have already no doubt cost Apple millions of dollars. Your answer that this is your lane is correct and fully justified.

9secondkox2 said:

Come on apple! Get it moving!

In addition, the EU has got fire breathing on them in a major way. 

This is all talk at the moment. As we have seen, Trump has a playbook. He will make a strong demand. If there is no effort or negotiation, he will  execute on that promise. Then, when stubborn parties have softened, he will negotiate again, or pivot as needed. This administration is very agile and can turn on a dime. And with Scott bessent factoring so heavily, it’s going to turn out well. 

Trump got criticized for helping apple with exemptions and he will surely get criticized for this. Dude can’t win with some people. 

And there it is, as I predicted. 

charles1 said:

This is the reason the Apple app store exists: to restrain greedy and fraudulent software developers.

charles1 said:

This is the reason the Apple app store exists: to restrain greedy and fraudulent software developers.

That's worth saying twice.

9secondkox2 said:

pianoman1962 said:

The guy is lying through his teeth... again. Well, no surprise there. He's not fit to run a boy scouts group, let alone a country.

Lying about what? Have you heard him speak about this at all? 

It's fascinating, if a bit sad, to watch you pivot right here in this thread from acknowledging that this is junk and 'not a good look' to trying really hard to pretend like Donald Trump has nothing to do with it.