charlesn
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Trump blinks: Floats suggestion that Apple might get a tariff exemption
Really? Headline story from The Economist, Oct 2024: "The American Economy: The Envy of the World." Subhead:9secondkox2 said: The status quo is not sustainable without ceding our economy and leading status in the world."The American economy has left other rich nations in the dust." THAT was our economy's story six months ago. Record high stock market, strong GDP growth, near record low unemployment, no recession is sight and inflation steadily easing per the benchmarks set by the Fed. If by "status quo," you mean Trump's insanity that not only tanked the stock market, but rocked the market for US Treasuries as of yesterday--yes, I totally agree, THAT is not sustainable! Do you have ANY idea what happens if T-bills are no longer seen as such a safe haven and we have to start paying higher interest rates on them to attract buyers (as was happening yesterday) to finance our national debt and deficit spending? It's game over, my friend. Point, set, match--the US is screwed. But Trump and his staff are so incompetent, they hadn't thought that through and didn't see it coming until it happened.
And here's the thing: I would have no argument had Trump made a reasoned case to get better trade agreements with a tightly targeted set of countries. And then set about negotiations to make that happen, retaliating with tariffs if necessary. China would certainly lead that list. But what did he do? First, he prematurely tore up and refused to abide by the USMCA agreement that HE, himself, negotiated as a supposedly "much better deal" than NAFTA--in reality, it barely changed NAFTA, but whatever--and then he proceeded to knife both of our closest and most important trading partners in the back, no negotiations. But that was just the appetizer. Trump's main course was declaring a trade war on the entire world at once, including uninhabited islands, putting America in the untenable negotiating position of suddenly being alone as the global supervillain. If your goal is to drive better trade deals, and especially if your goal is to force China to the table, there couldn't be a more dumb and moronic way to go about that than turning the whole world against you at once, And that's exactly what Trump did.
Here in NYC, I've had a lifelong front row seat to Trump and none of this surprises me. This is who he has always been. An equal opportunity con man and grifter who has screwed over blue collar workers, investors, students to his bogus university, banks and even donors to his now legally shuttered Donald J. Trump Foundation charity. What kind of self-proclaimed multi-billionaire steals and spends charity donations on himself? It's mind-boggling to me that the aggrieved working class sees him as their savior, when he just sees them as an endless source of grift, shamelessly selling them literally anything from gold lamé high-tops to bibles to meme coins to watches, etc, etc. Like any good con man--and he may well be the best who ever lived--he talks a good game and sounds like he's on your side while he's turning you upside down and shaking the last coins from your pocket. Most if not all of the high profile billionaires in this country have built businesses of real significance of one type or another that have made many people rich and given many, many more people than that good jobs and comfortable lives. Trump has built nothing and done nothing to spread the wealth he has enjoyed, devoting his life only to the enrichment of himself and his family at the expense of everyone else he has screwed along the way.
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Apple doesn't appear to have plans to revive the iPhone mini
Anytime you'd like to present your "evidence," I'm ready! My evidence is based on a few simple points: 1) Publicly owned, for profit companies don't cancel profitable products that are selling well. 2) Research companies like CIRP that purport to track sales of specific products reported that the Mini was not selling well compared to the rest of the iPhone lineup. 3) No major phone maker is offering a premium mini phone--if the market for such a phone was there, either Samsung, Google or Apple would pursue it.mattinoz said:
Your assumption here is it was a sales problem but evidence says otherwise.charlesn said:
Please. Stop your descent into the conspiracy theory rabbit hole. It's really pretty simple: Apple is a publicly owned, for profit company that is in the business of making products that sell well enough to generate sufficient profit to justify keeping them in the product lineup. It keeps making the products that earn their keep and stops making the ones that don't. End of story, The Mini would still be in the lineup if it sold in sufficient numbers, and the story of what one dealer told you for a product that sells globally is absolutely meaningless. Do you think Apple is happy about EOL'ing a new product after just two cycles? Absolutely not. It's questionable if they even made back their costs for research and development of the Mini, costs for tooling and production, design, marketing, etc. after just two years. This isn't to say that the Mini didn't have its fans, and a lot of them, just not enough to make it worthwhile to keep around. Notice also that no major Android manufacturer, even though they seem to run with every new gimmick feature they can dream up, has stepped in to produce a truly premium mini phone--there's no high end Galaxy or Pixel Mini. That's further confirmation that a sufficiently big market for a premium mini phone is simply not there. It's also worth noting that Apple's low-priced and smaller iPhone SE was always the worst selling model in the whole iPhone lineup.prof said:hmlongco said:
People say they want one. Apple makes one. People don't buy one. Apple stops making one.
Rinse. Repeat.
People did buy it, one dealer I know told me that they sold more iPhone Minis months for months than any other non-Apple or Samsung brand model. Sometimes it's not entirely clear why Apple ditches a product; all bad sales rumours are only unconfirmed speculation.
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Apple doesn't appear to have plans to revive the iPhone mini
The Mini was available for two model years and Apple is famously driven by its vaunted customer data, so I'm sure its sales projections for the Mini took into account upgrade cycle timelines and that not everyone who might want one would be willing to buy it during that period. When you consider what a painful and expensive decision it had to be to cancel the Mini after just two years, you can only conclude that the phone so badly missed its sales projections, with no sign that things would improve, that Apple decided to take the hit rather than continue with it. For a new product to get axed this quickly is a VERY rare occurrence for Apple. Honestly the last one I can remember was the infamous "toilet seat" iBook which lasted only two years from July 1999 to August 2001. The original HomePod lasted three years. And although there was only one model ever released of the "trash can" Mac Pro, it remained in the lineup for six years.hmlongco said:
On a serious note, if Apple makes one they need to commit to making one for more than just a year. People are on multi-year upgrade cycles, and even people who might want one might be off-cycle and unable to buy at that point in time.
Secondarily, they also need to make sure it has adequate battery life, something that's plagued mini phones for years now.
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John Giannandrea out as Siri chief, Apple Vision Pro lead in
Totally not surprised this happened although I didn't expect it to take this long. Tim Cook is the proverbial iron fist in a velvet glove. It's worth recounting this tale from an urgent meeting Cook had called:"One day back then, he convened a meeting with his team, and the discussion turned to a particular problem in Asia. “This is really bad,” Cook told the group. “Someone should be in China driving this.” Thirty minutes into that meeting Cook looked at Sabih Khan, a key operations executive, and abruptly asked, without a trace of emotion, “Why are you still here?”
Khan, who remains one of Cook’s top lieutenants to this day, immediately stood up, drove to San Francisco International Airport, and, without a change of clothes, booked a flight to China with no return date, according to people familiar with the episode. The story is vintage Cook: demanding and unemotional."
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Siri may only get minor Apple Intelligence improvements before iOS 19
Another Apple vet here, using Macs at work and home since the Macintosh Classic in 1991. It's not that I disagree, per se, with this assessment, but it's a reminder that perceptions in the tech press and by commenters on tech message boards like this one are often completely disconnected from the reality of how Apple is actually doing as a company. In three words: "Better than ever" by any of the usual metrics by which the performance of companies is measured. Something astonishing, almost unthinkable a short time ago just happened when Apple reported earnings for the holiday quarter: its iPhone numbers were a little soft, which would have normally tanked the stock, but this time, it didn't matter. Why? Because its insanely profitable Services business is growing so rapidly and is essentially a license to print money. Under Tim Cook, Apple has transitioned from a one-legged company whose fortunes rose and fell with iPhone, to a company with three sturdy legs: iPhone, Services (which will surpass iPhone in profit and revenues sooner than later) and Hardware, including Macs, iPads and wearables. Fun fact: even with numbers that were a little soft, iPhone 16 is the best-selling smartphone in the world, while Pro Max, Pro and Plus occupy 3 more spots in the top ten rankings in that order. So you might ask yourself how a phone that is supposedly "an embarrassment" compared to competitors becomes the best-selling smartphone on the planet, especially at a relatively high price point.ApplePoor said:Not a surprise really that Apple got caught with their pants down. Too much time and money wasted on the "never saw the light of day" car. The "googles" have consumed untold resources, too and have not been a runaway success in terms of sales. Frankly, usable Apple's AI is years away and could become a serious concern financially as investors loose confidence.
Apple has morphed from a small and fast Navy Destroyer to a more than cumbersome Battleship. The latter finally gets up to speed and requires vast space to change course or turn around let alone stop.
The incremental changes or improvements in their "core" revenue source, the iPhone, are an embarrassment when one sees what the competitors are pushing out.
The comments here in the peanut gallery should be a five alarm file in the Board of Directors meetings such as the lack of more and more folks upgrading annually as there is just not enough change to justify a $2,000 expenditure for the top model with full memory - their most profitable model.
The incremental change of their most popular laptop (MacBook Air) is a chip change from the M3 to the M4. Wow! ???????
Just observations of an Apple user since1990 into computers since the early 1970s.
YMMV
Did I mention that this past holiday quarter was yet another all-time record? Kind of a yawn, for Apple, I know, because it keeps setting new records like this, but: this only happens because buyers are voting with their wallets to choose Apple products. Here in the technosphere echo chamber, it's the constant sound of doom and complaints about the glacial pace of Apple evolving its products. But the real world of mass market buyers keeps disagreeing.
Apple does face the problem of being more cumbersome battleship than nimble destroyer--that is the inevitable challenge all companies face when they grow to the enormous size of Apple. Even more difficult: Wall Street continues to price Apple stock like a growth company, so even as it keeps breaking records for revenue and profit, the challenge of continuing to grow those huge numbers just gets exponentially harder... but Apple keeps doing it thus far. Tech message boards have been predicting doom just around the corner for Apple for as long as the company has been in business. It has weirdly become the always-present background noise to Apple's continued success. Just how much more successful does Apple have to be before the doom-saying gets a rest?
