tmay

avon b7 said:

mknelson said:

avon b7 said:

ssfe11 said:

The problem with everything market related is the lack of patience. As Buffett often said “no one wants get rich slowly”. Lack of patience causes irrational wild stock price fluctuations. Lack of patience causes crazy headlines. “Apple is falling behind in AI!” What the heck does that even mean? How does Wall Street even know lol?. It’s like they are saying last weekend was AI and Apple missed it! AI like internet will take decades to mature. Calm down Wall Street/financial media just relax and have some patience….please. 

You are missing an important point. 

The product isn't the end of the value chain. The consumer is. 

Consumers are impatient and often fickle.

If analysts think consumers will put off purchases or switch to other brands because they believe Apple isn't offering enough value for their needs (be it in hardware, software or price) it will logically have a negative impact on the stock price. 

If Apple weren't currently behind we wouldn't be seeing and endless line of rumours concerning what is supposedly coming. We wouldn't be seeing Apple itself making such a big deal about what is coming. 

No. They would be pushing solutions which already exist. 

The fact that they aren't doing that at all says a lot. 

WWDC will be vital in terms of taking a gulp of air but the most logical scenario is that whatever gets announced won't actually ship until very late this year or next year. 

That's definitely a Yikes! moment if ever there is one. 

What are the odds that they try what they did last year? Deliberately refuse to mention AI and try to sell ML instead. 

Absolutely zero because what is currently shipping from multiple vendors are the kind of solutions that consumers have been convinced they need and it is the consumers that drive sales. 

Beyond that, and something many here simply refuse to acknowledge, there are literally hundreds of AI solutions being shipped across every industry you can think off which will also impact consumers' lives. 

Well, considering most current "AI" is just a form of machine learning - no actual understanding or intelligence in your Large Language Models or Image Generators.

If that were truly the case Apple wouldn't be in the prickly situation it currently is. 

It would be announcing all the things that can be done right now with its current devices and ignoring what other players are offering. 

Like I said, that isn't happening because it is behind current shipping solutions. 

If you want to call it all ML that is fine but reality is right there if we want to see it.

Apple isn't offering equivalent solutions and recently the rumours have tended to lean towards them licencing solutions from others. 

It isn't simply LLM's. It's now tiny LLMs. Multi-modal AI. AI on IoT. AI describing images and video as opposed to just identifying them.

For better or worse there has been an avalanche of progress over the last two years and it's now front and centre while Apple hasn't offered anything similar to the products which are generating all the buzz.

No one doubts that all those shortcomings will be dealt with at WWDC although there is doubt about if they will be dealt with through 'announcements' for future solutions or if they will feel the need to release something for the user base immediately. 

cropr said:

rob53 said:

As I've said many times before, people have plenty of choices on what products they want to buy. If you don't like Apple's way of doing things go with an Android platform or demand a company in the EU to build a new platform. Just because Apple's platform is the one many people want to use doesn't mean the EU has any right to tell Apple what to do. If you don't like what Apple is doing, find another platform. It's just like wine. If you don't want to pay for wine made in the EU, then grow your own, which the USA has done. 

As I've said many times before, the current issue is not about users having choice, it is about  the ant-competitive laws that are applicable in the EU.  These laws are one of the cornerstones of EU, going back to the founding of the EU.   The anti-competitve laws are mainly there to protect smaller companies from the power abuse of larger companies.

And the ant-steering rule that Apple was imposing in its App Store guidelines to tthe app developers, is without discussion (even Apple acknowledges it now) a schoolbook example of anti-competitive behaviour.

It remains a big question mark whether the 27% cut rule Apple is using now iso. the anti-steering rule, will not be considered as anti-competitive.

In case you wonder, the EU anti-competitive laws are applied evenly strictly to large EU companies.  AB Inbev, the Belgian brewer who owns Budweiser, got also a huge fine for anti-competitive behaviour.   If Apple want to do business in the EU, it must comply to these EU laws.

avon b7 said:

tmay said:

avon b7 said:

beowulfschmidt said:

AppleInsider said:

Apple at the time objected, saying that the EU had failed "to uncover any credible evidence of consumer harm."

Why would they bother to provide such evidence? The law isn't about preventing "consumer harm", because there isn't any.  It's about bringing Apple to heel, and making them answer to their rightful masters.

There is definitely consumer harm: Anti-steering.

Also, never allowing competition to exist in certain areas. Alternative app stores, NFC, being the sole voice on what is and isn't acceptable... 

The 'no credible evidence' is simply Apple's opinion. A PR blurb to say something that actually means little. 

Obviously the EU thought differently and the anti-steering related fine, AFAIK, wasn't DMA/DSA related.

It was also open to appeal so I'm surprised that Apple is now rumoured to have just swallowed the decision. 

As for their being nothing in the DMA against Apple imposing a 27% commission on transactions outside its realm, I'd argue that there doesn't need to be, as the whole point was to stimulate competition and Apple taking a cut from everywhere there is app related business going on flies directly in the face of that so I doubt it will pass the sniff test again. 

I understand that the EU wants to "stimulate competition" through regulation, but the truth of the matter is that the EU has set itself up to fail in technological innovation. outside of some industrial niches. Regulation isn't now, and won't ever, increase the EU market, and it is ultimately just an attempt to shift the revenues to some homegrown companies, a zero sum solution.

Perhaps it's a a culture of risk aversion, and likely as much, the high taxation that discourages investment, or even the inability to scale across various languages and borders. Whatever the cause, the EU is uncompetitive in the technology sector.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TcKzantanX0

None of that has anything to do with Apple and consumer harm. 

Apple is far from dominating streaming as the EU says it is, and the company has to have concluded that it simply isn't being heard. Or perhaps that Europe-based firm Spotify is being heard more, since Apple has made a point of noting how Spotify has met with EU regulators 65 times.

slow n easy said:

There is a massive night and day difference between FSD from 2018 and now. He is proving everyone wrong. All the experts and every major company said that it was impossible for his approach to work, and yet the cars drive by themselves with only minor mistakes here and there. The car still doesn’t understand hand signals yet. I just got back from a 3 ½ hour trip to Indianapolis today and there was a traffic cop waving cars through a red light. That is still one of the situations that the car can’t handle yet. But for the vast majority of situations, the car does fine. I still feel that this will be a finished product by the end of 2026 and most car manufacturers will get Tesla licenses for Honda to use FSD for example and Ford to license FSD, and so on. Tesla is just too far ahead for others to catch up. 

Of the 14 systems rated, 11 were found to be "poor," including Tesla's Autopilot and its Full Self-Driving version, which is in beta testing, along with Nissan's ProPILOT Assist 2.0, Mercedes-Benz's Active Distance Assist DISTRONIC with Active Steering Assist, Ford's BlueCruise and BMW's Active Driving Assistant.

SAE Level 5

Full Self-Driving (FSD) is Tesla's branding for its beta testing program to achieve fully autonomous driving (SAE Level 5). The naming is controversial, because vehicles operating under FSD remain at Level 2 automation and are therefore not "fully self-driving" and require active driver supervision.

rob53 said:

phillyfanatic09 said:

Market share is not the whole story; to show an illegal monopoly, the DOJ will have to prove that Apple maintains that market share by coercion, market manipulation or price manipulation. If US consumers simply prefer iPhones by a 2 to 1 margin, that’s not illegal. The case, as filed, faces some real challenges.

This happens in every market and rarely anything happens. Ford sells more trucks than any other company. Has the DOJ looked into any market manipulation by Ford? What about all their, and GM’s, manipulation of the truth? Even Microsoft just got off with a hand slap while they continue to coerce and manipulate the PC market. The US government is the largest user of Microsoft products, forcing everyone to use their server products with expensive client licenses yet nothing from the DOJ.