mpantone

Good for the CFPB the fine is justly assigned.

While I wasn't the victim of fraud I have certainly suffered poor customer service using Apple Card.

I made two small transactions when I got my card (September 2019) and when I tried to pay, the app was unable to process my linked checking account (the same one I use to pay off other cards, my property tax bill, healthcare premiums, utilities, etc.). Ultimately I ended up on a 45+ minute phone call with Goldman Sucks customer service which included me verbally reciting my bank's routing and account number to pay off the balance due. I have never had to do that before in three plus decades of owning credit cards.

I ended up with an Apple Cash Rewards balance of $0.15. I never made a single transaction after.

Then a year ago Goldman Sucks cancelled my Apple Card yet left my account open. And then bizarrely they started snail mailing monthly statements. God knows what it costs to do this but paper, printing, envelopes and postage aren't free.

Obviously I am not the only person who has received poor customer service from Goldman Sucks and the CFPB's findings uncovered even worse transgressions. This is why we have consumer protection laws.

Shame on Apple for picking such a poor financial institution as a partner. It's no surprise that Goldman Sucks is in the midst of exiting the entire consumer finance business.

Of course no financial institution is perfect, they have all made mistakes. Well, some mistakes aren't free. There are regulations that prevent banks from being slobs.

The rest of the consumer finance world (and not just US domestic) is probably well aware of Apple and Goldman Sucks' struggles. It may be a contributor as to why Apple Card -- after five years -- is still a US-only service. No other bank in the world has agreed to partner with Apple to bring Apple Card to their market.

Anyhow, I look forward to receiving my next mailed paper statement from GS in a couple of weeks. Keep draining your bank account sending me deadtrees documents. Loving it!

Dead_Pool said:

But I thought Macs were so efficient that they needed only 8 GBs?

It was pre-Apple Intelligence.

Many closely watching Apple’s AI efforts expect their LLM to take up around 6GB of RAM leaving little for applications. Increasing RAM to 16GB provides far more headroom which will be crucial if the user enables Apple Intelligence.

This has been heavily covered by tech media despite the fact AppleInsider failed to mention it in this particular article.

In my personal experience it is impossible to definitely state that Apple Maps or Google Maps is superior. It really depends on the location. Apple Maps is the better map in some places than Google Maps and vice versa in other locations.

Also, neither map service offers superior data on locations (stores, local attractions, etc.). A little mom-and-pop store might show up on one mapping service but not the other.

As for navigation directions, that's spotty as well. I find myself using Google Maps more frequently in Japan than Apple Maps (the Japanese themselves have very frequently used their own GPS navi tools) but Apple Maps is very good where I live (California).

There's a lot of variability in quality between different transit modes. If we stay on the Japan example, I'd say Google Maps provides better pedestrian navigation than Apple Maps. Neither Apple Maps nor Google Maps is as good as native Japanese apps for transit planning. The JapanTravel iOS app is far superior than both if you are planning a trip between public transit stops as it will rank the trip options by best connections. Even if you can change lines at multiple stations, it will rank the options by the best connection (least time + shortest distance) and give fare information.

Kyoto has weird street addresses and if you cut-and-paste the kanji (not translated English) in both Google Maps and Apple Maps, the search results can be very uneven. Sometimes one service may not correctly identify the location. Major attractions, stores and eateries might be fine on both but a lot of the little stores do poorly. If you are looking for a particular restaurant, it's better to look it up on Tabelog (Japanese restaurant index service) as the map locations are almost always correct. Tabelog also provides specific information (like subway exit numbers) and walking distance (number of meters from subway entrance to restaurant entrance) that neither Apple Maps nor Google Maps provide accurately.

As for Europe, it depends. I often end up checking things on both services because it is clear there is no definite winner, or at least nothing that is obvious when one first arrives. That's a bummer because sometimes it takes far more time looking up things. Hopefully Apple Intelligence will speed things up by sampling both.

Back to the original topic, Waze has offered hazard reporting from its inception, before it was acquired by Google in 2013. As mentioned by someone else, Waze works best in places where there is an active base of Waze users. I've used Waze in places where it is apparently unpopular with locals which renders the hazard reporting system almost useless (like Tokyo). So a lot of the map service quality has to do with the adoption rate and quality of information on local points of interest.

decoderring said:

Wow, I think this is the first time I’ve ever not wanted to install an update.

I’ll do it because there are likely some security updates, but I wish it were possible to not have all the AI stuff that, for me, just creates bloat.

The storage change between iOS 18.3.2 and 18.4 is very minor.

On an iPhone 16 that was factory reset, there was 232.74 GB free space available on iOS 18.3.2 (Apple Intelligence off, iCloud off).

I installed iOS 18.4, ensured that both Apple Intelligence was off (the iOS 18.4 upgrade did *NOT* enable Apple Intelligence) and iCloud remained unconfigured, and shut down the phone. I rebooted and the iPhone 16 had 232.18 GB free space left.

So we're really talking about a 560 MB delta between 18.3.2 and 18.4. If you already have iOS 18.3.x on your phone, you might as well upgrade to 18.4 regardless of whether or not you use Apple Intelligence features.

My hunch is that Apple's board of directors discreetly employs a high-level government relations consultant who provides suitable guidance in how Apple handles the current administration. I doubt if Tim himself (or anyone else in the senior management team) came up with the idea of this particular plaque and presentation.

It's worth noting that two board directors were former CEOs of aerospace/military industry corporations who would be well versed in dealing with senior Washington D.C. officials to score big government contracts. There are also two directors from the healthcare/biotech industry. And there is another director from BlackRock.

For sure the BOD would have to be in general agreement in how/what Tim interacts with the White House, Congress, etc. He would definitely need their backing in his actions with POTUS 47. Tim Cook is not acting rogue or blindly shooting from the hip.

In a similar way I'm sure Apple engages the services of diplomatic relations consultants when Tim meets with foreign dignitaries.

Tim is smart enough to know this is how Tim Apple has to play the game for the next 3.5 years.

randominternetperson said:

That scrutiny led to the CDTFA's 2023 audit. The agency concluded that tax revenue from Apple's online transactions should be distributed across the state based on where purchases were actually made or delivered -- not where the company is headquartered.

So, why is the money refunded to Apple, and not those other municipalities across the state?

The previous linked article from October 2024:

https://appleinsider.com/articles/24/10/04/cupertino-wins-and-loses-millions-over-californias-apple-tax-ruling?utm_medium=social&utm_source=ai_forums

explains that in a little more detail.

Basically the City of Cupertino gets to keep the tax revenue from 2023 (when the investigation started) until now (2025). A new system will be put into place by the State of California where digital sales tax revenue is collected will go into a new system designed to spread the revenue statewide based on where the digital buyer placed the transaction.

This is just a short term reprieve for the City of Cupertino. They need to figure out fairly quickly how to set their budget accordingly due to a change in expected sales tax revenue from 2025 onward. Apart from Apple, Cupertino is basically a bedroom community with very little retail. It doesn't even have a proper legacy downtown district and its one shopping mall, Vallco failed and is mostly dead.

Read the other article carefully. But the basic gist is that the state has not yet set up the process to disperse that tax revenue yet. As the other article mentions, the ruling affects other California companies with digital retail sales. I'm guessing that companies like Meta (Menlo Park), Alphabet (Mountain View), Netflix (Los Gatos) will be affected as well as maybe others such as Sony Interactive Entertainment (a.k.a. PlayStation) which is headquartered in Redwood City.

Note that for physical goods, there is a long standing system in place that collects sales tax calculated at the point of sale (defined as where the buyer takes possession of the purchased goods). California has a base sales tax however many counties and some municipalities have add-on taxes that increase that amount. So someone buying Gadget A in San Francisco will pay a different sales tax rate than someone in Mendocino County.

This ruling is for digital sales so there is no localized sales tax collection system yet in place. This probably means additional work for Apple (and other digital merchants) who will need to use things like FIPS county codes, ZIP codes, etc. to determine exact sales taxes to be collected just as they do for physical goods (like buying AirPods from store.apple.com).

Until now Apple just collected sales tax based on their location in Cupertino, CA (Santa Clara County) and remitted what was required to the state and county. They did not collect anything more or less. The CDTFA's decision is not retroactive.

Let's remember that John Giannandrea was the former head of AI at Google. It's not like he was unqualified for his post at Apple. However being a good researcher and shipping product are two very different disciplines.

Unfortunately Apple took its sweet time to make this change, just like letting Project Titan fester for years.

Let's also remember that consumer-facing AI is new technology still in its infancy. It's not like there's any (consumer) company that has been doing this for 20+ years. Apple only started including machine learning silicon in their chips in 2017.

Everyone is pretty new to AI which is why not a single consumer-facing AI assistant is head-and-shoulders better than the competition. It's all alpha quality right now. And it doesn't look like whoever has the most datacenter Nvidia GPUs wins either.

Like most Americans with a retirement plan, I am an indirect investor in almost all of the major players. I have a vested interest in seeing some level of success from all of them. Competition is good, it drives quality, innovation and value. I also appreciate Apple's commitment to privacy. This reason itself makes me want Apple to be a top competitor in this field.

Stabitha_Christie said:

I appreciate the irony of an objectively bad businessman, multiple bankruptcies, multiple failed business ventures) is trying to tell one of the most successful CEOs how to run a business.  

Yes, it would make a great gameshow I reckon. Maybe it could be called "The Felon."

Alas, this is real life.

And I was under the impression that Foxconn has other customers than Apple. Am I wrong?

JinTech said:

So, how many offices does Apple currently have in Cupertino? Legit question.

Short answer: no one here knows.

Longer answer: Apple has many properties in Cupertino. The leases are staggered and don't come up for renewal at the same moment. Apple periodically moves out of old locations and moves into new ones based on their needs. So the correct answer six months ago may well be incorrect today.

I would expect Apple to have some unmarked, clandestine properties in Cupertino with their long history of corporate secrecy. So driving around Cupertino and counting the obviously marked buildings (with logos) likely won't be a complete tally. We know that Project Titan was allegedly occupying unlabeled property(ies) in neighboring Sunnyvale. It is likely that Apple will have some locations that they don't want to advertise as theirs. This might include some small warehouses (not for shipping retail products to customers) but rather storage of their own property and supplies for internal use.

The people who really know the answer are all in the administration division at Apple, certainly not the engineering division, retail or marketing people. Some of the legal and finance staff (like the Accounts Payable people who get the utility bills, the controller), security personnel, facilities & maintenance planners, corporate IT staff, etc.

This is pretty typical for any larger organization (beyond the Fortune 500) not just Apple. The typical line employee and even mid-level managers probably don't know the answer, especially in engineering driven organizations like tech corporations.

Even amongst senior management I bet most of them don't know exactly. It doesn't really matter to guys like Srouji, Federighi, Alan Dye, etc. It matters to the CEO, COO, maybe the CFO, SVP of HR, general counsel, etc.

Strictly speaking, Apple did NOT move out of 1 Infinite Loop. It continues to use that campus. What they did do was move the HQ to Apple Park (the spaceship) in 2017 when that property came online. Apple has divisions that don't need to be at Apple Park and thus needs property elsewhere including (but not limited to) 1 Infinite Loop. It's believed that some senior management have desks at both locations because some meetings take place at 1 Infinite Loop. A lot of the admin teams are based at the old campus plus some non-core engineering teams.

No one can be the best at everything. Clearly Giannandrea wasn't. Neither is Cook. Neither was Jobs. Neither are you. Neither am I.

It's important to point out that Services revenue has grown massively under the current leadership.

I think Cook is smart enough to know that when brainstorming future software roadmaps, there might be someone else in the room who should be holding the whiteboard marker for the majority of time.

Tim isn't writing code for Apple, he relies on his direct reports to say "Yes, we can make ____ happen by ____." This is not unique, this happens in all sorts of businesses all around the world every single minute. Somewhere on this planet, there is a restaurant kitchen getting slammed. Some line cook is telling their chef "I got this" or "I could use a hand here".

Clearly some deadlines were missed concerning AI-powered Siri hence the change. However it's also important to point out that Siri is not a P&L center unlike Apple TV+ or iCloud or Fitness+ or the Apple Watch hardware division.

A person can make all the snarky armchair CEO comments they want. But doing so risks unveiling how much that person knows about working in a business, whether it be some mom-and-pop shop, a Fortune 10 megacorp or somewhere in between.