folk fountain

Judge rejects Apple's bid to throw out China sales comment class-action lawsuit

June 2023

It's possible to read the transcript of the earnings call (I know, crazy, right?) and get more context for the comment. Here are two paragraphs of Tim Cook's response which reads bit different than how it is presented in the article. I think this is enough context but my understanding is that the tools for finding this information are available to all so you can get even more context if you would care to.

Tim Cook-

Sure. Great question. Starting with emerging markets. The emerging markets that we are seeing pressure in our markets like Turkey, India, Brazil, Russia. These are markets where currencies have weekend over the recent period, in some cases that resulted in us raising prices and those markets are not growing the way we would like to see. To give you a perspective at some detail, our business at India in Q4 was flat. Obviously, we would like to see that'd be a huge growth. Brazil was down somewhat compared to the previous year, and so I think at least the way that I see this is each one of the emerging markets has a bit of a different story. And I don't see it as a some sort of issue that is common between those for the most part. In relation to China specifically, I would not put China in that category. Our business in China was very strong last quarter. We grew 16%, which we're very happy with. iPhone in particular was very strong. Very strong double-digit growth there. Our other products category was also stronger, in fact a bit stronger than even the company, overall company number.
The App Store in China, we have seen a slowdown or a moratorium to be more accurate on new game approvals. There is a new regulatory setup in China and there are not moving the way they were moving previously. We did see a few games approved recently, but it's very far below the historic pace. And as you've probably seen some of the larger companies there that are public have talked about this, as they've announced their earnings as well. We don't know exactly when this will, the approvals will sort of return to a normal pace. So I would not want to predict that. I do not view -- just for avoidance of doubt here, I don't view that issue has anything to do with the trade related discussions between the countries. I think that is strictly a domestic issue in China.

Zuckerberg's Apple Vision Pro hot take just gave him a Ballmer iPhone moment

folk fountain

June 2023

Zuckerberg's point isn't valid. Even if the Quest headset is ". . . fundamentally social." it is only social THROUGH the headset. A room of 100 people in Quest headsets is not a social situation unless they are interacting THROUGH the headset, and if they are, then there is no benefit to them being in the same room. And if they aren't interacting through the headset with each other then even though they are physically located near 99 other humans they have no real perception of them. If that same 100 people had Vision Pro headsets on they actually could see each other if they want to and they could interact in the real world with each other.

I'm not all in the the Vision Pro. When the product shot appeared in the presentation I was disappointed. But by the end of the presentation I was impressed with how they solved the issues of its current form. If the question is "Do you want to wear a computer on your face?" I think the answer is no. But if the question is, "What would be the best interface for a computer I'm using for 8 hours a day?" I think the Vision Pro presents a very intriguing option. $3500 for the most ergonomic workspace in the word is a bargain.

Philips Hue smart bulb allows hackers to attack your network

folk fountain

February 2020

The firmware update 1935144040 is for the hub, not the bulbs, and mine updated 1/23/2020. It's already rolled out for those using automatic updates. The Check Point site says, "It should be noted that more recent hardware generations of Hue lightbulbs do not have the exploited vulnerability." but they don't say how to know which bulb is which, at least not yet, or what percentage of Hue bulbs are vulnerable in the first place. Everyone seems to be reporting this slightly differently which is frustrating.

Apple repair policy critic vows to fight 'counterfeit' battery seizure by U.S. customs

folk fountain

October 2018

There just isn't enough information here to know what happened. One form of what customs considers counterfeit is overruns. For instance, a contract battery manufacturer is contracted to make 10,000 batteries but makes 11,000. They fulfill the order and then sell the remaining 1,000 on their own. But they don't really own the batteries so they can't sell them as if there are original batteries. If it was this kind of situation Rossman would claim they are authentic batteries, and functionally they are, but legally they are not. The battery guy could have marked the 1,000 overrun in some other way but they wouldn't be worth as much which is why they don't. They are trading on the corporate name that they spent zero dollars or time building. A lot of the counterfeit material is this kind of counterfeit.