twolf2919

In essence, Trump is going to hold court and whoever kisses his aXX the best gets the exemption.  Better pucker up Tim - take one for the shareholders.

This, if it comes to pass, is the President of the United States getting to decide who are the winners and who are the losers.  I guess letting the 'free market' decide is not required in this new Banana Republic.

For what it's worth, I challenge the assumption that Apple is most deserving of protection because it "is so reliant on China".  There are 34 MILLION small and medium sized businesses in the US, many of which are just as reliant - if not more so - on parts and/or products from China.  And this 145% tariff is going to have a much more immediate devastating effect on them than it does on a giant corporation like AAPL.  Little dollar stores don't have the 39% margin cushion Apple enjoys with its devices and, more importantly, they don't have $50+b in cash they can rely on to weather this tariff storm.

Apple Pay itself has always been a joy to use - but Apple Wallet is annoying to no end.  Once again today, I see a notification badge with a number in it on the wallet icon.  But the  app is so poorly written that, once you go into the Wallet, you have no idea which card caused the notification!   This poor user interface has been there forever :-(  And where is the global search?  I realize Wallet is for more than just credit cards, but come on! - why can't I do a keyword search across all cards?  E.g. if I recall buying a pair of jeans but can't remember which credit card I used, I have to manually go into each card and search individual transaction histories (usually by scrolling as none of the credit cards I have, other than Apple Card,  even has a search function!)

Other than that - I'm a happy camper with Apple Pay.

Apple doesn't need an iPhone SE to make Apple Intelligence a hit - it needs Apple Intelligence to have a killer feature!  But so far, it's been utterly disappointing in this regard.  Sure,  summaries of your notifications or emails are useful and so is the object removal in Photos and the writing aids.  But none of these things would be reason for someone to either buy a new iPhone or even upgrade from their current one.   The only thing that I can think of that would move the needle is a much improved Siri.  If she could finally get closer to being the assistant we were promised a dozen years ago, THAT would really help the most people - and, thus, lead to more iPhone sales.  Alas, I'm on the 7th beta of iOS and Siri - while mildly improved (it can now answer some basic questions in the context of a previous one) - still haven't gotten much better.  There are just so many areas where it's so utterly retarded.  Case in point from just yesterday: I was driving and asked, Siri, through CarPlay, to "Play the album 'It's OK to not be ok" - and it played the last album I listened to before :-(  I don't have an accent and spoke very clearly - yet Siri didn't have a clue.  I even repeated the command.  Still the wrong response.  That album is in my music library and bought within the last year!  I ended up manually selecting it.

My point is that Siri is still more frustrating than helpful on most occasion.  The slight improvements I've seen since iOS 18.1 betas have certainly not been ground shaking.

Anecdotally - my wife and I upgraded from iPhone 15 Pro Maxes 8 days ago - the 16 Pro Max is actually doing worse.  Regularly now, by bed time our phones are 30% full whereas our 15 Pro Maxes were around 50% under same usage.  At first I thought it’s the usual initial battery drain as the data/apps/etc get downloaded again - and, maybe this time, some AI stuff gets initialized with data on our phones, but it’s now day 8 - and battery use still hasn’t recovered on either of our phones.  Ergo, battery is worse - at least for us - on the new phones.

" ...but that could be less about CarPlay, and more about how owners are so unhappy with infotainment systems provided by car makers" - I don't think that's the case.  By all accounts, Rivian's and Tesla's infotainment systems are very nice.  The problem with all manufacturers' infotainment systems is that they fundamentally can't provide the same level of service as either CarPlay or Android Auto because they don't have access to all the information contained on our phones!  How will Rivian ever manage to automatically suggest directions to the dental appointment I have in my calendar?   The difference is only going to get more stark as Apple rolls out its AI to Siri.  As stupid as Siri currently is, it's already way better than the car's "assistant" - and once Siri becomes more conversational and be able to draw on even more user data (via the models being run on-device), there will be no contest.

Tesla claims to be on the AI bandwagon as well - but it, nor any of the other car manufacturers, have free access to the data on our phones.  Only CarPlay and Android Auto do.   I especially wish Rivian's CEO was more customer-centric as I really like their vehicles.  The guy is smart and should understand this basic issue - his counterpart at Ford has summarized it quite nicely "...the train [of who should provide the infotainment system] has left the station years ago."  Rivian and Tesla (and now GM) just can't see past their greed (future revenue from tying their customers to in-car subscription services).