BlueLightning

Semi fabs need not only large amounts of water and electricity, but also absence of earth tremors.  Therefore, fabs should be far away from hydrocarbon fracking locations.  Some fracking areas have hundreds of small earthquakes in a matter of days, which can ruin chips in process at the time of the quakes.  

Unless operated in air conditioned spaces, most laptops, desktops and cell phones would be out of the recommended operating temperature ranges if exposed to 110-120 ℉.  For some, that temperature range may be out of the storage range (powered off).  

With all of the high temperatures lately, suspect air conditioning manufactures will be replacing a LOT of compressors under warranty.  Semi fabs have to maintain narrow temperature ranges.  Suspect some of the AC units were not designed to maintain proper indoor temperatures when outdoor temperatures exceed 110-120 ℉.  Worked within a jet aircraft engine parts manufacturing facility for 16+ years.  After power failures, the AC had to run for a LONG time to condition machinery to the proper temperature to meet exact manufacturing tolerances.  As I recall, it could take 12 hours to condition the equipment.  Expect computer chip manufacturing would require even more exact controls on temperature.  

On the plus side, looks like demand for pc chips is on the decline for now.  Also, probably lots of units available used from all the high tech. layoffs (more than 10,000 at Microsoft alone, plus lots at Dell, Meta...)  
https://techcrunch.com/2023/07/20/tech-industry-layoffs-2023/  

China is imposing export restrictions on some materials needed for more advanced chip manufacturing (notably gallium and germanium), in retaliation for our export restrictions on advanced chips to China.  

Seems as if wealthy firms and individuals think white collar crime (including evading tax) is good, but they hate it when they experience blue collar crime, such as shoplifting, theft from employees, or smash and grabs.  I see no difference between the two, except the former is usually MUCH larger theft.  If they don't want blue collar crime, then pay the taxes and don't cheat customers.  

"Thunderbolt is the brand name of a hardware interface for the connection of external peripherals to a computer. It has been developed by Intel, in collaboration with Apple.[7][8] It was initially marketed under the name Light Peak, and first sold as part of an end-user product on 24 February 2011."  (Already 12+ years old.)  
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thunderbolt_(interface)  

TB was originally intended to be an optical-based interface (thus the original name "Light Peak").  

"On 24 May 2017, Intel announced that Thunderbolt 3 would become a royalty-free standard to OEMs and chip manufacturers in 2018, as part of an effort to boost the adoption of the protocol.[132] The Thunderbolt 3 specification was later released to the USB-IF on 4 March 2019, making it royalty-free, to be used to form USB4.[103][133][134] Intel says it will retain control over certification of all Thunderbolt 3 devices.[135] Intel also states it employs "mandatory certification for all Thunderbolt products".[136]"  
(same link as initial wiki)  

Part of the issue may be the daughter is autistic (according to early part of story)  Some autistic children are very adept at one or more activities.  Bill Gates is said to have a very minor type of autism (Asperger's Syndrome).  Some of the high functioning autistic folks are called savants.  Common areas of savant skills include music, arts, calendar calculating, medicine, statistics...  More rarely, they may be very good at multiple things.  Some easily pick-up multiple languages with good mastery.  
https://www.ssmhealth.com/treffert-center/conditions-treatments/savant-syndrome#:~:text=Savant%20syndrome%20is%20a%20rare,childhood%2C%20or%20even%20in%20adults.  

Many feel if Al Gore had been President, 9/11 would not have happened.  Bush Admin. was advised to carefully watch threats from Middle East, which they failed to do.  What a FUBAR of an administration.  

Maybe earlier speculation on refusal of price hike was wrong (like lots of other Apple-related "news").  

TSMC (TSM) likely provided data that price hike was justified.  Switching to Samsung would have set back development.  
Out five years, others are planning 2nm and 1.4nm processes.  

Gas is about $3.25-3.65 in Ohio, up due to a refinery fire last month.  
High gas prices are hastening the switch over to electric.  
Ohio has also developed a lot of renewable energy, one of the reasons Intel is planning 7 chip fabs in Ohio.  
I'm running on Ohio river area hydroelectric at a rate 75% that of natural gas (and far less than coal).  

In the past, buying all the parts of an automobile, rather than the assembled auto, has been estimated to cost at least 10x the cost of the assembled car.  Plus the cost of paying for assembly.  Wonder if extended warranty will be discounted in the future, as an incentive, once supply exceeds demand?  

My experience with 3rd party insurers has been they frequently go bankrupt, and often have major exclusions on what they cover.  Historically, this has often been true of firms that insure automobiles.  If the firm goes bankrupt, the policy is not worth the paper on which it is printed.  Sometimes, there are limits on payments from the policy, and you may be limited in which firms will accept the insurance (or which repair firms the insurance company will accept).  You may be limited by what the insurance firm considers the fair market value of the device.  For automobiles, frequent exclusions include batteries, tires, brakes and other wear items.  

Apple and Microsoft should cross-license their inventions.  Better yet, they should form a joint venture Apple-Soft.  

Microsoft has a new solid state lithium-sodium battery that drastically reduces need for lithium.  
Combine patent in this article with the lithium-sodium battery, and they can corner the battery market.  
Bye-bye Duracell, Rayovac, Panasonic, LG, Tesla, Johnson Controls...  

After some thought, realized many delivery folks are required to have blood drawn for drug testing on a recurring basis (sometimes randomly).  I assume finger prints are also taken.  Maybe with huge drop in cost of DNA testing, they should also have computerized DNA sequences, which may be useful for analysis of any DNA left on switched/pilfered packages.  Evidence could be left from sneezing, I'd think.  Unsure if breathing or dead skin cells could also leave trace amounts of DNA.  

Looks like another recent trend is for a mob of folks to rob delivery trucks while the driver is walking boxes to a home or business.  This may require less organization than substituting counterfeit devices for the real thing.  Maybe hidden high definition cameras need to be installed on trucks.  

I wonder if there may be honest but careless substitution of the wrong items during packaging or shipping.  I see this every year or two with Amazon.  A book ships instead of a sink strainer.  A kitchen organizer ships instead of something much less expensive.  Something ships when I've ordered nothing.  Something takes 4 months to arrive.  A less expensive version is shipped than what I ordered.  

cgWerks said:

BlueLightning said:
Remember that TSMC makes the majority of CPUs/GPUs for AMD, Apple and NVIDIA (and many others).  

Samsung makes most of the remaining leading edge chips.  
Intel is way behind, and any high performance chips they have are not good candidates for laptops that are GPU intensive.  
Intel laptops have to be plugged-in to achieve high GPU performance, with large amounts of heat and suck batteries dry rapidly.  

True, though this mainly means they'll just use more power while doing it... but at least they can do it.
Apple seems a bit ahead on the CPU front, but quite a way behind on the GPU end.

Like many home users, I use more CPU than GPU cycles.  
There are also hardware video coders and decoders, as well as the 16 neural/AI cores that are used for video functions.  
Apple is mostly a consumer electronics company.  
Compared to my former late 2013 13" i5 2-core mbp (with no dedicated gpu cores), the 2023 14" M2 Pro mbp (10/16/16 cores) kicks ass.  
4k video playback caused full fan speed on the 2013 i5 (and lagging video).  
Fans aren't even activated on the 2023 M2 Pro (and I see short parts of video that were skipped on the Intel chip).