aspenboy1

AppleInsider said:

While vague, the statement strongly suggests stock holders will benefit from existing programs. Tellingly, Maestri said Apple intends to "make the best decisions in the interest of our long term shareholders."

I wonder if there's anything they can do to target benefits to "long-term shareholders" rather than day-traders.  Can they issue dividends to only long-term (>1 yr) owners (kind of like long-term capital gains).    

this is a bit confusing.  I can't tell whether the Hertz thing is just apple renting a few cars to test Autonomous driving on (internally), or if these vehicles will be in the Hertz fleet for other customers to try out.  There's no indication of what this means, except the first sentence ends with "giving Apple the ability to put its technology to the test in a highly public way."  That would maybe imply that these would be public vehicles?

I would say that having a mid-cycle phone makes a ton of sense for Apple, but also that maybe it should be a top tier version.  No reason not to have 3 sizes that are more or less equivalent in features rather than an "old" phone.  People can buy the "old" phone the next year when it's also sold but there's still a new, top end smaller phone being sold.

Having the 4" phone that has all or most of the 6S features (live photos, 3D touch, etc) but is sold starting 5-6 months later will help smooth out the peaks and valleys of the iphone calendar and probably make it easier to maintain production and meet demand since you aren't trying to build three different phone version all before the sep launch.  Also, you don't have to predict the phone size mix perfectly if you stagger the launches.  

Maybe the 4" phone could sell for $50-70 less than the 6S, $579 or $599 for the 16gb version.