discountopinion

Overall it makes eminent sense for Apple to invest in its largest market in the world similar to how it is investing in other markets to ensure market penetration and traction.

Texas is becoming/is a vibrant hub of innovation and looks like more and more tech companies want to diversify out of California.

Hmm some of these specs seem odd and potential unforced errors. Releasing something now that will eat into Iphone 16 base model sales seems odd or they have seen that most of their customers go for the 16 Pro or Pro Max and perhaps Chinese competitors are undercutting them on their base model.

Any SE4 upgrade will be designed to drive iCloud consumption as they won't make much on the device sale.

Is an oled screen really cheap enough these days compared to the other screens and will it be the bump that people will want?

Personally I think that Apple indeed will want to ensure that all devices are AI capable so whatever BOM budget they have they will use towards the SoC rather than screen upgrade and also a camera upgrade. Camera improvements are likely one of the main upgrade reasons and may help drive iCloud consumption and tie in with some of the AI feature sets.

FaceID is not a given and it may be that they go for TouchID in the power button instead if increasing the screen real estate. They have mass manufacturing for both scenarios.

Be still my heart but honestly Mac Studio is still on M2 Ultra so would not Apple be better off rolling out scaled socs for the high margin devices?

Perhaps they are skipping generations due to observ d ai related market trends