CarmB

In the first place, you can't just impose a special tariff on one specific company. In the second place, even with such a tariff, it would still be cheaper to assemble iPhones abroad. This is more silliness from Trump but what matters here is that this silliness is no joke. Do it long enough, and Trump seems intent on doing it for a while, and it will have a negative impact on the economy. There has never been a more anti-business president than Trump 2.0. He's acting as if companies like Apple and Walmart are to do his bidding. That's not how it has worked and nor should it. Really, though, it's not that Trump can force Walmart to set prices to Trump's liking or just slap a tax on Apple because he doesn't like where they're making their product. It's that Trump is doing everything possible to disrupt economic activity. He wants headlines and says or posts  whatever he thinks will generate media attention. When that's the norm, doing business is turned into an ordeal. That will have real consequences and with Trump being as overbearing as he is being, trying to blame it on the Democrats just isn't going to work. Trump now gets everything he wants from the Republican Party and, often it seems, the Supreme Court. If the economy stumbles, he'll own it. Period. Honestly, I don't see how the US economy can do anything but stumble the way Trump is operating. It may take a few more months for many Americans to start feeling the impact of his incompetence but feel it they will. 

If one didn't know better, it would seem that Donald Trump is not knowledgable regarding anything. He doesn't know how stuff works and so he posts nonsense. In his first term his silliness was tempered but in his second term, we're getting the uncensured, unfettered Trump. There were moments in that first term when we kind of got a glimpse - bleach could maybe cure COVID, right?  - yet there was this false narrative that Trump is much smarter than he looks. I suspect that it's less that Trump is incapable of gaining insight into how everything works and more that he can't be bothered to find out. Reality can be bent to his will, it seems, so why bother figuring stuff out. Just declare what you want reality to be and make it so through sheer force of will. So we ge the Ukraine conflict resolved in 24 hours. Gaza is transformed into a resort. Canada becomes the 51st state. Threats of tariffs causes those wanting to do business in the US to obey Trump's commands. Taxes are slashed with no impact on services and the deficit is miraculously wiped out, all while dramatically increasing military spending. Utter nonsense, all of it. And it just keeps on coming. How did we get here? 

Could it be that Apple overestimated the initial interest in the iPhone 16 based on the addition of Apple Intelligence in the coming months? If so, shorter lead times does not automatically mean the iPhone 16 is not selling well. They may have set up for higher demand and are now seeing shorter lead times as a result. It's certainly reasonable to posit that we will not see a lot of demand for the new models as a result of AI at this time on account of the AI features are not yet available. It's also the case that those features, to be of interest, consumers have to feel there is a meaningful upgrade in the user experience. With few users in the wild having access to Apple Intelligence, how is that supposed to happen exactly.  Apple plays a long game, one that has proven effective yet isn't for those looking for dramatic instantaneous results. Take the Apple Watch as an example. Initially it didn't seem like it was all that big a deal but today many - myself included - regard the device as indispensable. Over time, Apple has enhanced the value of the product and afforded upgrades to products several years old. My fourth-generation watch only now is ineligible for any future upgrades but I've had it for several years and it still does what it does. I'll probably upgrade to a new one in the next year or so. AI will be like that. Start off modestly but evolve into an indispensable must-have that will motivate current long-time iPhone owners to upgrade. It's just not going to happen all at once. 

The $3,000 price point is utterly unworkable. That alone should have caused Apple to simply not release this device. When Apple launched the iPad, the genius of that product, the one element that launched widespread interest in tablets was an excellent price. There were tablets before the iPad but none that delivered a decent, useful product at the right price point. 

Simply put, $3,000 is not the right price point for any personal media consumption device. This thing is dead on arrival. 

In today's environment, if you can get years of service out of an expensive device, of course you would. I'm still using  an iPhone 11 Pro Max that I bought new in October of 2019. The original battery still has more than 80 per cent of its original capacity. It's quite capable. It still qualifies for the latest software. Great investment, really, which is not such a bad thing for Apple because I'm thrilled with my purchase. I'll gladly buy another iPhone probably next year. If I had instead spent more than $1,000 on the iPhone 11 and needed to replace sooner, I would have thought twice about sticking with Apple. Apparently there are many iPhone 11 owners out there and I'm betting many of them, like me, are going to be eying a new phone in the next year or two. A good thing for Apple and a good thing for Apple customers all around, from my perspective. 

nmemac said:

I realise I am probably an outlier on this, but I stopped watching much broadcast TV over a decade ago because I got tired of series being cancelled with no conclusion to a story at the end of a season, often ending with a cliffhanger for the next series that never came. I often waited for the end of a series to buy dvd complete series boxsets if they reached a satisfying conclusion.

Streaming has possibly made this even worse, with many shows cancelled across different platforms before they reached a natural ending in the storytelling. Streaming services are under pressure to see a return, but I think some patience is required and viewing figures cannot be judged on a single season - the advantage of streaming that should not be thrown away is that people can come to watch a series in its entirety years after it first started, with many people binge-watching an entire series from start to finish in one go. Evan now I rarely watch an Apple show unless it gets go ahead for at least a second series, or more... i'm not going to waste hours of my life each year on shows that get cancelled with no conclusion. Whilst growing rapidly, Apple's offering is still too thin to be judged properly, and with uncertainty still surrounding shows like Foundation.

Maybe try to address why they're not successfully reaching a wider audience before cutting their legs off below the knee...

At the least, if you end a season with a cliffhanger, put out one or two more episode to allow for the story to be completed properly. By not completing the story arc, it's as if Apple is comfortable with releasing an incomplete product. Very amateurish and lacking regard for the consumers. Even if the numbers are not what is desired, there are still thousands of consumers who choose to check out a show. Others might check in long after a show was first presented. They deserve better. It would be another matter if shows were more episodic along the lines of how shows were structured decades ago but if you have an ongoing story and you tease something more to come, it's unprofessional to simply not follow through. 

While I agree that 4K should be included in every tier, the truth is that even at 720p the picture looks decent on a good 4k TV. The set upconverts and as long as it’s a good quality set, that upconversion yields very good results. At least that’s my experience on my Sony 4k sets. The ads are not really all that much of a pain, either. As long as one is fine with a single feed, the ad-supported tier is a great deal. 

Trump can spin this all he likes but it hardly matters. What matters is just how much his embarrassing mismanagement will impact the lives of individual voters. Trump seems to think this is about convincing folks to let him do what he wants because they believe that's a good thing. Ironically, the more freedom he has, the deeper the hole he will dig for the country. At some point, the Republican Party will pay a price. His truly dedicated supporters will never abandon him. Yet they do not represent a majority. Democrats and swing voters will certainly be turned off by where this is headed. As well, some of his base will waver when their lives are directly impacted. Trump can certainly do this as he sees fit but it will get ugly simply because the economy faltering and inflation gaining traction is bound to come with consequences. That's especially the case when much of what Trump suggests will be the positive impact of his approach turns out to be so much nonsense. Oversimplifying everything may be effective when doing a political campaign. Voters love an easy-to-digest message. Yet it's a whole other matter to expect complex scenarios to conform to the stripped-down, shallow version of reality you are selling. Trump appears to be of the view that life is what he says it is and he makes stuff happen just because that's the way he wants it. The Ukraine conflict ended in one day? Of course. Lowering taxes and ending deficits. Sure. Absolutely. Stuff made in America like in the good old days. Well, heck, why not. Lowering prices? Sure. Add that one in. Banish all the undocumented asylum alumni and hardened criminals. Done. Believing this baloney? Priceless. To be fair, I doubt many of his supporters think everything will happen as he says it will. Yet they do seem to be of the view that Trump is fiscally competent, that he's playing some form of clever chess. It seems that many swing voters and the like picked Trump because they figured he'd tame inflation. If they really thought that, they must be wondering just how they could have gotten it so wrong. Inflation, it turns out, isn't something a man born into wealth loses much sleep over. 

It's a good thing that iPhones last for years considering how expensive they are. It's a win, really, for Apple in that if you get five or six years of quality performance out of an iPhone, there's a high probability you will replace it with another iPhone. Even better for Apple, you would also be inclined to buy other Apple products and services. With smart phones now costing as much as a decent big-screen TV it would be absurd if it was regarded by consumers as pretty much a one-year device. In today's inflation-ravaged environment, it's unrealistic to think you can convince consumers to invest in a product with pretty much a one-year lifespan costing in excess of $1,000. Rather than thinking you have to wow consumers enough to get a new phone every year, giving consumers value for their dollar is a sounder business model. Besides, what does it say about the quality of your offerings if within a year of being released, they are deemed to be inadequate measured against the latest versions. I want to believe that the phone I buy today will not be eclipsed by the capabilities of next year's model. Refinements annually, sure. But you don't want to do a product so weak that it looks poor measured against next year's model. 

Trump governs the way he campaigns, as if the two are indistinguishable. You can say whatever you like when you're not governing and it will matter not. You can claim that you can use tariffs to get US companies to build stuff in the US. In a very superficial way, it sounds like it could work. Yet in reality, the cost difference in building stuff in the US compared to certain other countries is enormous. The amount of tariff needed to wipe out the difference is such that imposing it would be catastrophic. We have products being sold in the US that are viable at that price point because of lower production costs abroad. Mess with that and the impact on the economy is seismic. If Trump had figured out a way to significantly lower the cost of making stuff in the US then combined it with tariffs to get production to shift to the US, that would be one thing. This isn't that. He's basically trying to end the days of making stuff at a cost that allows for products to be sold at an attractive price point. He might not be aware that that is what he's doing but it is what his approach would cause to happen. It's as if Trump hadn't worked out what the impact of his actions would be and instead conjured up what he wishes his actions would cause to happen, as if wishing it would make it so. It's hard to believe that Trump's grasp of such things is as disconnected from reality as it seems to be. Sometimes I think that this is all just an incredibly vivid dream and at some point I'll just wake up to find the past decade never really happened.