mpantone

AppleZulu said:

mpantone said:

Nobody sane really thought that Apple Car was going to ship. If you looked at Apple's publicly available autonomous vehicle driving logs available on the California DMV website, they were hardly doing any testing at all. There was a long span of several months when they didn't log a single mile.

Only some of the tech media turned Apple Car into a done deal. Yeah, Apple probably learned something from it, both what to pursue and what not to. For sure some of the gained knowledge would be applicable in other parts of the company. For sure they burned through a lot of R&D dollars on Apple Car/Project Titan/whatever.

Let's remember that the way any Apple Car would be marketed and priced would exclude 99.9% of the planet. Hell, look at Apple Vision Pro at $3500.

The biggest problem with all the Apple Car discussions online was the fact that most people were looking at the project through American blinders, seeing it only from the myopic perspective of the number one car culture on the planet. We know you love walking to your garage, planting your big fat ass in your big fat SUV, attach your iPhone to its MagSafe holder, drive to your company's big fat ass parking lot, and bitch and moan when you have to park more than 50 feet from the front door of your office. We get it. 

The rest of the world does not have a car culture like the USA. Plain and simple. Sure, most people want them but for a lot of people, even in technologically advanced countries like Japan, the personal auto is more of a leisure device. Construction workers in Tokyo go to job sites on the subway, not in Ford F-150s or GMC Sierras. In Europe getting a driver's license can be very expensive. It's not like the USA. I think a California driver's license today is $40. Forty years ago it was $2, about the same as three gallons of gasoline.

In the USA, getting your driver's license is a rite of passage for teens. It is not the case anywhere else. ONLY HERE.

Uhhh. O.K. What does that have to do with CarPlay?

Some people online think that CarPlay is a really, Really, REALLY important feature in a car purchase decision. It's not because the rest of the world doesn't have the same car culture as the USA. It's unlikely that CarPlay Ultra will trickle down to mass-market models. Even regular CarPlay won't make to many of these. We've already seen some auto manufacturers pull back from CarPlay or decide not to pursue it. Full integration makes more sense for premium models, trim lines, and EVs that are essentially computers on wheels.

But the average Honda or GM sold in Indonesia or Bangladesh really doesn't need it that much.

Many of these automobile manufacturers are looking at shaving costs from a global perspective. Putting in the extra engineering effort to address a benefit that really benefits a handful of markets isn't a great value proposition, especially when they aren't making money off of it. Infotainment systems are a cost center. Most companies would prefer to put in the least amount of effort without coming in dead last amongst the competition especially on basic trim levels.

Nobody really needs album art thumbnails on their dashboard.

I realize that many of these basic concepts, particularly how different US car culture is compared to the rest of the world is beyond the comprehension of many people online.

In the end, whatever infotainment/UX standard the Chinese (or possibly Indian) car companies come up with will dominate. Not tomorrow, not next months, but give it 10 years.

As Charlesn mentions, having your own proprietary infotainment system gives you the luxury of monetizing driver data and/or upselling subscription services. There's nothing inherently new about this. Car navi systems requires paid upgrades. Even standalone GPS devices (Garmin, TomTom et al.) required payment for new map data. Even early iPhone GPS navi apps had add-on features like lane guidance.

Most companies would like user data under their own TOS not Apple's. I expect more car companies to follow GM's lead and abandon CarPlay and Android Auto in the next few years.

Apple's greatest innovation in the 21st century is the iPhone. Anyone who thinks otherwise is still living in 2005-2010.

Steve introduced the iPhone in 2007 as "the computer for the rest of us" then went on to remove Computer from the name of his own company. Today the revenue from the iPhone, iPad, and wearables dwarfs the Mac business unit.

Pretty much every single consumer-facing technology we have today has been driven by smartphones because they are the primary computing modality of today's consumers and have been for 10+ years. We've gone over this before, things like NFC contactless payment systems (which actually started on Japanese featurephones a few years before smartphones), biometric identification systems, computational photography, touchscreen displays, et cetera ad nauseam. Not all of these originated on the smartphone but mainstream popularity was pushed by smartphones.

Even today, you have macOS trailing iOS in features (this is particularly notable in biometric ID, Apple Intelligence feature rollout). Apple even debuted the M4 SoC on a handheld device (iPad Pro) rather than sticking it in first in a MacBook. The Retina Display showed up first on an iPhone. There are countless examples of where the iPhone leads the Mac, where iPhoneOS/iOS leads OS X/macOS.

Like clockwork Apple releases new iPhones every fall and lets the high-end Mac Pro fester years and years (where one might expect PC innovation to occur). What has Apple done on the Mac side in recent years? Let's see, they've removed the Touchbar, released a jumbo Mac mini called the Studio, and finally released a long-overdue Mac mini in a smaller form factor thirteen years after they discontinued their last model with a built-in 5.25" optical drive (which was the main reason for the old size).

Meanwhile, Apple spends far more time, effort, and resources on iOS than macOS. This is completely obvious if you pay attention to WWDC.

iPhone/iOS is where to see where Mac/macOS is going.

Some tech journalists and pundits hold on tightly to their "personal computers are king" mentality but those days are long gone. Staying in the past just ends up being less relevant as time goes by. I'm a longtime Apple computer user (i.e., pre-1984) and I still own a Mac. But I don't look at my Mac as where the innovation is happening.

Time to stick a fork in this petrified paradigm because the rest of the (sane) world already did a decade ago. This article might have sounded less nutty in 2010. Today it's like an SNL parody of a tech article.

Look, the topic of reciprocal tariffs has been beaten to death. Before the current administration, a lot of tariffs weren't reciprocal.

Here's a TIME article from mid February on the topic:

https://time.com/7222082/what-are-reciprocal-tariffs-who-might-be-impacted-by-trump-plan/

Not only did the current administration apply reciprocal tariffs, it subsequently also increased them in many markets. And then escalated tariff wars with certain countries.

Like I have repeatedly said, these tariffs aren't really beneficial from a global economy perspective. And the reasoning behind them is even more debatable. But the calculation itself isn't pulled out of thin air. The logic behind using that particular formula is not sound but that's what the current administration has decided on. They aren't picking percentages randomly out of a fishbowl.

However the main point the Pegatron CEO is making is that the flow of goods between borders will be constrained to the point where American consumers will see some empty shelves. Not every product but for some things yet. My guess is that we'll start to see it in August/September with some back-to-school supplies becoming harder to find, followed by Halloween costumes/decorations, then Christmas decorations will likely get hit hard. The lead time for these wholesale orders is like six months so the Christmas merchandise will be the first major wave under the higher tariffs just due to timing.

Mike Wuerthele said:

sdw2001 said:

Oh, look, calling his tariffs “nonsensical” and using scare quotes.  Shocker.

That's because they literally are nonsensical.

They aren't based on anything, they aren't reciprocal by any definition of the word, and the math that they used to derive them makes no sense at all.

And, worst of all, they injure US consumers more than they do anything at all to foreign interests.

They are called reciprocal because when one country applies a tariff to another, in almost all cases, that other country will apply the same tariff. So if Country A levies a 15% tariff on Country B's imports, Country B reciprocates with a 15% tariff on Country A's imports.

There's nothing new about reciprocity between governments. Hell, even interstate wine shipments are governed by reciprocal shipping laws. California wineries can ship directly to consumers in most other states because those states' wineries can do the same and direct ship wine to California consumers.

As for the tariff calculation, there is a formula. It's based on trade balance between imports and exports to a country.

For example, the US imports $136B in products, yet only exports $13 so the trade imbalance is -$123B which equates to 90% (123 divided by 136). The Trump tariff formula just halves that trade balance percentage: 90% / 2 = 45%. So the Trump tariff on Vietnam is 46%.

Thailand: $63B imports, $17B exports, balance -$46B, 72% imbalance pct. Tariff is thus 36%, half of that 72%.

So there is some rudimentary calculation, very crude and basic. Economists don't think it will actually provide any advantage for the US economy. In that sense, yes they are nonsense but the calculation isn't random. It's based on something even if the reasoning for it is defective.

But for sure, US consumers will be paying more for things next year than this year.

The damage to the US dollar's reputation as a reserve currency is by far the more grave effect of these tariffs. Even if all the tariffs were rolled back to more reasonable levels, there's still far less trust by foreign investors in the US dollar and Treasury notes. There has been a significant swing into gold and European bonds, something that will not swing back for years; it will likely happen when a new administration takes over and instills more trust in foreign investors. And let's face it, the rest of the world knows that the current White House administration is very, uh, capricious. There's no stability at all with the current administration, things can be flipped at any given hour. Not being able to plan ahead for the long term will slam the brakes on a lot of dealings with the USA.

The Pegatron CEO is probably right that American consumers will see tightening availability for some items but not all. There's a dropoff in container ship arrivals in the Port of Los Angeles for the upcoming weeks indicating fewer imports from Southeast Asia. A week ago I read some article reporting that Christmas decoration factories in China were idle and some companies hadn't received a single wholesale order from the US during what should be their busiest time for wholesale orders.

Even the service industry (travel, hospitality) is seeing a dropoff in bookings for this summer, including overseas visitors, so growth may come to a full halt. It won't happen overnight but for sure we will be looking at a vastly different economic climate a year from now.