blastdoor
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Trump's 'Liberation Day' tariffs hit every one of Apple's international manufacturing part...
The issue that's bigger than US workers being expensive is the massive uncertainty about future policy. Moving production to the US would require a huge investment that cannot easily be reversed. That investment would only make sense if firms could be sure these tariffs would be in place for a very long time. Even if Trump were to become dictator for life, firms cannot assume he will stick with his policy -- he's highly erratic. Also, he's an old man, so if "dictator for life" might not be very long anyway. So companies will conclude that their best bet is to just import and pass the tax on to consumers as best they can.nubus said:32% on TSMC, 34% or 24% on the camera modules, 25% on displays, and assembly is up by 26% to 46%.
There is no way to move production now = the next 5 years everything will be +30% or margins will take a hit.
Will production move to the U.S.? Not likely as U.S. workers are expensive.
It seems the choice stands between expensive and expensive.
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AAPL crumble: stock hit again, as White House clarifies 145% China tariff rate
“On Black Monday, October 28, 1929, the Dow declined nearly 13 percent. On the following day, Black Tuesday, the market dropped nearly 12 percent. By mid-November, the Dow had lost almost half of its value. The slide continued through the summer of 1932, when the Dow closed at 41.22, its lowest value of the twentieth century, 89 percent below its peak. The Dow did not return to its pre-crash heights until November 1954.“
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How Apple stockpiled iPhones to avoid tariffs and keep prices low for a while
Apple should provide transparency about the impact of tariffs on prices by breaking out the tariff cost on receipts, kind of like how the effects of a sales tax are presented.
If companies do that, it will clarify for customers the effects of Trump's tariffs. That might make it harder for Republicans to toe the line.
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Tim Cook's very light praise for DeepSeek is good politics, not endorsement
The thing about DeepSeek that might seem appealing to Apple is that DeepSeek's performance is due, in part, to NOT using CUDA.
CUDA is supposed to be the 'moat' that keeps Nvidia on top of a big pile of profit. One thing Apple has in common with DeepSeek is a desire to bridge that moat.
DeepSeek bridged the moat using Nvidia's own hardware, just bypassing CUDA (kind of embarrassing for Nvidia). As a company that controls a full stack from CPU and GPU silicon to developer tools to OS and frameworks, Apple is even better positioned to bridge the moat. That's something that Cook might genuinely describe as 'excellent'.
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Trump's tariffs could drive up iPhone prices by about 10%
I think it's important to understand that's not actually right. My grandparents were young adults who voted for FDR and their schooling ended at 8th grade. They had a lot of prejudices and misconceptions about the world. They voted for FDR not because they were geniuses, but because the alternative was Hoover.foregoneconclusion said:
The general population of the U.S. was smarter at that time. The current population still hasn't figured out that an anti-regulatory party isn't going to improve economic outcomes for anyone except the rich.blastdoor said: The Great Depression resulted in FDR
The real difference -- and it's critically important to understand-- between then and now is that back then there was a system for selecting presidential candidates that was mostly run by elites, not the masses. Candidates were selected by party machines in the proverbial smoky back room. That process eliminated radical candidates and presented the populace with two mostly sane and reasonable, though still importantly different, choices.
Our problem today is that the system for nominating candidates, especially (apparently) in the Republican Party, has broken down, and deeply flawed people are able to become nominees.
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Tim Cook won't get fired by Apple's board of directors -- and is likely to be chairman soo...
Becoming chair could be part of a sensible transition plan. As chair, cook can oversee the new guy to make sure they picked the right person and provide guidance/mentorship for the new CEO.
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Doom and gloom reporting on Apple Intelligence continues to ignore Apple's playbook
But you can't assess the difference between an EV and a combustion engine without ever driving the eV. It's a qualitatively different experience, and using ChatGPT is a qualitatively different thing than what Apple Intelligence is today. Actually, it's more like the difference between a go cart (Apple intelligence) and a Tesla Model S. If all you've done is drive go carts, you have zero clue what a Model S is like.Wesley_Hilliard said:
Someone can assess a vehicle is fast without driving it. What are you using the enterprise ChatGPT license for? What product are you using that you believe Apple should be offering?blastdoor said:
If the only AI you use is Apple Intelligence then you're in no position to assess whether Apple is behind. I use an enterprise license for ChatGPT almost every day. Apple offers nothing like it -- they absolutely are behind in terms of offering a product that competes with what ChatGPT can do today. In terms of raw technology I agree that Apple has a lot going for them. But they have yet to create an AI product that is as useful as ChatGPT.Wesley_Hilliard said:
I think there's some truth in the middle here. AI is a tool, and can be useful, in certain circumstances. I've never dismissed it as a passing fad, but I do think the hype around it is overblown nonsense from those seeking investment capital. I use AI every day (Apple Intelligence) and I benefit from it. Apple is leading the market in creating powerful, on-device, private, and secure models while also allowing users private access to leading AI platforms. It'll prove to be an incredible combination over time.
I do not subscribe to the idea that AI will take over or become sentient. It's going to make humans more efficient at certain things, and render some jobs redundant. But not because the AI is doing the job, but because it'll take less humans to do the same work. The writer worried about losing his job to AI shouldn't be, because even if you write with AI, you'll need human intervention to give it soul and reason -- which AI will never have.
That's why it's so funny to me that people see Apple as so behind. It's laying the groundwork for the future of a cooperative AI ecosystem built on Apple platforms with Apple's rules and values, and because it isn't complete this second, it somehow means they're lost in the woods. As with nearly every Apple endeavor in the past 30 years, I wouldn't bet against them.
Accurately recognizing that they are behind is not the same thing as betting against them. I also would not bet against them. But I can open my eyes and see that for the moment, they are absolutely behind in this market with respect to actual products that are useful to people and worth paying for.
I can ask the o3 model to write an R Shiny app (what I'm doing right now) with so-and-so features and it does it. I can then iterate productively to refine the app. I can ask it why it did things and explain to me how various aspects of the code work, so that I learn more (I've used R forever but I'm new to Shiny). This effectively replaces a research assistant or programmer for me. It's a huge productivity boost.
For another example -- earlier today I asked ChatGPT whether there's a connection between conducting a fixed effects meta-analysis using weights to account for error covariance and conducting a principal components analysis. It explained the connection and then, based on remembering an earlier conversation, suggested how this connection applied to some other work I was doing. If I asked Siri anything like that the answer would be "here's what I found on the web"
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Tantalizing details of Jony Ive's AI device leak after OpenAI meeting
The main devices from Star Trek were communicators, tablets, phasers, and tricorders. I’m guessing it’s not a phaser, so it must be a tricorder.
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Apple Product identifiers have leaked every Mac release through 2026
Though not new info, this is the part that excites me the most:
Separating the CPU and GPU into separate dies while retaining a very high speed connection within the same package opens up opportunities for valuable customizations that can better serve different user needs. For example, if you're a gamer (or anyone else who primarily needs GPU power), maybe you get a base CPU die but a couple of Max GPU dies. Alternatively, if your workloads benefit little from GPU but a lot from CPU, you could get a couple of Max CPU dies but a base GPU die. In other words, the kind of customization that was possible at the case level in a 2010 Mac Pro (ie, one or two CPU sockets with varying numbers of cores; one or more GPUs with varying number of cores) can now happen within the SOC package.One report says the M5 Pro and M5 Max "will use 2.5D packaging" that has "separate CPU and GPU designs," and which will "improve production yields and thermal performance." TSMC's latest chip packaging process, known as "System-in-Integrated-Chips-Molding-Horizontal (SoIC-mH)" puts together different chips into one package, and the M5 Pro may be the first Apple chip with these changes.
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Apple is probably stuck with iPhone manufacture in India
I read that in The Apprentice, they would just cobble together clips of film to support whatever capricious decision Trump made, all in order to make him look smart and decisive.I’m getting the sense that something similar is going on here with tariff deals. Trump just wants to appear smart and decisive, but he doesn’t truly care about the details (although nobody can say that to his face — they have to pretend he’s a serious person). But whatever nonsense he spouts doesn’t matter too much — the details will be cobbled together later. And then revised as powerful people push back.At the end of the day, the only people who will really be hurt by Trump are the little people, especially the ones with darker skin.
