charlesn

I was thinking of trading in my M1 iMac, but the trade-in value that Apple is offering is ABYSMAL. Hard to figure how Apple offered $230 of trade-in value for an iPad Mini 6 from 2021 that originally sold for $499. But on a BTO iMac M1 from 2021 that sold for over $2100--with the higher spec'd chip, 16GB RAM and 1TB of storage--they're only offering $340. That's nuts. 

When is a court victory not a victory? When you've likely spent millions in legal costs and your "win" is $250. Essentially, Masimo got slapped with an NYC parking ticket. Likewise, Masimo spent $100+ million to essentially bloody Apple's nose with the blood ox ban in the U.S., but to no actual financial benefit for Masimo. 

Hard to say if this battle will end before Masimo's patents expire in (I believe) 2028, even with former CEO Kiani out of the picture. My guess is that the loss of blood oximetry in the U.S. has had no more than a rounding error effect on Apple Watch sales, so Apple may wait it out to avoid paying a license fee. The one thing that could force Apple's hand is if it needs blood oximetry working to achieve some other new health tracking feature.

I have yet to see even a speculative render of the rumored iPhone Slim or Air that's anything but a snooze. They all look like the current iPhone, just somewhat slimmer, and absolutely no one is clamoring for that--especially when it comes with a reduced feature/spec list and a premium price! If "slim" is going to generate real excitement and a desire to pay more for less phone, then it had better look more like Jony Ive's ideal of a single slab of glass--or something else that just blows you away when you see it. When even speculative render artists can't come up with something exciting, that's an indication of how tough the challenge is. 

I also don't see Apple jumping into the folding screen phone business. Five years after Samsung debuted the Galaxy Fold, and despite all the noise around folding screen phones, they remain a relatively niche business, especially at the higher end where Apple would compete. And Apple's gains would likely be minimal, coming mainly from cannibalizing existing iPhone Pro Max sales. As everyone should know by now, the consumer hardware game has mostly ceased being a competition of individual device supremacy and is all about whichever ecosystem you happen to be in. And Apple has the strongest ecosystem by far. So while an Android phone may top iPhone in this or that particular feature, it fails when it comes to integration within the Apple ecosystem. and that failure is of much greater consequence to Apple users than any feature advantage for Android, be it a folding screen or something else. Apple's main competition now is itself and figuring out ways to keep the upgrade cycle going when the compelling reasons to upgrade ANY particular piece of hardware have now become much harder to come by. 

Hazen said:

What a sensationalist pile of bull crap.
YES, SURGEONS AT UC SAN DIEGO AND THE HEAD OF GENERAL SURGERY AT CEDARS-SINAI ARE WELL KNOWN FOR SPOUTING SENSATIONALIST PILES OF BULL CRAP TO THE PRESS. HAPPENS ALL THE TIME. 

This is like when Apple introduced the first 5G iPhone and said that medical professionals could perform surgery from across the country which has never once happened.
LINK PLEASE TO APPLE SAYING THIS. I'LL WAIT....

Hospitals buy all sorts of junk because they have special interest groups to test new technologies.
NO SPECIAL INTEREST GROUP INVOLVED. YOU HAVE THE CENTER FOR FUTURE SURGERY AT UC SD WHICH, YOU KNOW, IS ALL ABOUT RESEARCHING THE EQUIPMENT THAT WILL ADVANCE THE STATE OF THE ART IN SURGERY. AND YOU HAVE THE HEAD OF GENERAL SURGERY AT CEDARS-SINAI... YOU KNOW, JUST A LOW RANKING POSITION AT SOME GLORIFIED URGENT CARE FACILITY. 

To think that a single product is going to inspire a wave of late retirement is laughable.
WHAT'S LAUGHABLE IS THAT YOU MADE THIS UP. THE ARTICLE DOESN'T SAY ANYTHING LIKE THIS AT ALL. THE ARTICLE FIRST ESTABLISHES THAT SOME EXPERIENCED SURGEONS CONSIDER EARLY RETIREMENT BECAUSE OF THE DISCOMFORT AND PAIN IN PERFORMING OPERATIONS FOR THE REASONS LISTED. THEN IT SPECIFIES HOW AVP SOLVES THE ISSUES RESPONSIBLE FOR THE DISCOMFORT AND PAIN. AND THEN IT SIMPLY SUGGESTS THE FOLLOWING: "IF IT CONTINUES TO KEEP EXPERIENCED SURGEONS WORKING, THE PRICE OF THE HEADSET IS MORE THAN WORTH IT." 

It's a shame that AppleInsider decided to publish half a story--I guess "Apple is failing at BLANK" is reliable click-bait--but the truth is that the whole story is a lot more interesting. You'd be forgiven for thinking that Amazon must be crushing it in the smart speaker space with over two-thirds of the market. Except it's not. Here's the lead sentence from the Wall Street Journal's article about Amazon's Alexa business that appeared this past July:

"Echo speakers are the type of business success companies don’t want: a widely purchased product that is also a giant money loser." https://www.wsj.com/tech/amazon-alexa-devices-echo-losses-strategy-25f2581a

The truth is that Amazon's whole Alexa hardware business has been a money-losing black hole since it debuted, with over $25 billion in losses just between 2017-21. The WSJ couldn't even assess losses before or after those years. It wasn't supposed to be this way. The idea was that Amazon would sell Alexa hardware at a loss, grab market share and--once Alexa was firmly entrenched in millions of American homes--make up those losses through Alexa becoming an indispensable shopping assistant and engine of additional purchases through suggestions, etc. This is what Amazon calls Downstream Impact or DSI. Well, Amazon got the market share it wanted by selling hardware at a loss, but the DSI never appeared. Now Amazon is rumored to be going to a paid Alexa subscription model to help recoup losses on future sales. Needless to say, this has never been nor will it ever be the Apple way: grabbing market share by selling hardware at a loss. Alexa hardware isn't a business--it's a loss leader that generates nothing to make up for its losses. It's what the Costco $1.50 hot dog would be if everyone just bought the hot dog and then left the store. 

But there's more to Apple's home speaker problem than this. I'm shocked that AI didn't call out the elephant in the room: Siri sucks. I'm a 100% Apple guy, except when it comes to smart speakers, where I have Alexa Dots scattered around my apartment. I'd happily replace them with HomePod Minis except that Siri sucks. And it now seems we'll have to wait til March to find out if the Apple Intelligence version of Siri doesn't suck anymore. We shall see.