doggone

The ability to upgrade a Mac would definitely be useful. I understand that this is a cash cow for Apple since it means people have to choose the model that will meant not only their current needs but possibly their future needs too. 
In many ways it would be good to buy a base model and overtime upgrade the memory and SSD if that is all you can afford at the time.  I've certainly done that in the past for Mac desktops, minis and even MBPs and its extended the usability of the device for several more years.
With Macs now being extremely powerful, the CPUs are able to handle OS upgrades for years.  There used to be a time where a new OS upgrade would significantly slow down a machine.  This M1 MBP that I got in 2021 is still speedy and will last several more years.  I purposely got a model with 512GB SSD because I know that 256 can be very limiting.  I also got 16MB of RAM which though less important for me, 8GB could become a bottleneck.

I would like to see Apple be more competitive in pricing.  Not for the high end Macs like MBP, Studio etc but for the low end Mini's and Air.  They could do this by having an M2 version available at the lowest price (i.e. 499 for a mini) and have the regular pricing for the M4 versions.  This would pressure other PC makers to lower their prices and make them less competitive.
Apple did this very successfully with the MP3 player market.  First the mini enabled them to dominate the market and then the shuffle killed it off.  

charlesn said:

A miniaturized Mac Mini could also pave the way (finally) for a "chin-less" iMac. The learnings of the Mac Mini revision could be applied toward relocating the computer portion of an iMac from the chin to the base on which an iMac now sits. It would have to be somewhat thicker, no doubt, but not excessively so. 

yes chinless is the way to go.  Use that real estate for the screen.  Have connectors at the bottom, sides, and back for convenience.

Also what about wider screens?  I got a widescreen monitor 6 months ago and it is much better than having 2 screens next to each other.  Granted I don't do any graphics work etc., but it is good to have such a wide canvas to play with.

Mango Mussolini - that's a good one. Hope it's okay to use that in the future.

Sadly I suspect he will win the election in Nov.  Correction he will win the electoral college but will lose the actual vote tally.

On taxes - Trump's policies will reduce the tax burden for the wealthy whilst the poor sods that voted him in will get shafted.  

On the meandering comment, I wonder if the media or Democrats can may some hay with that.  It is possible to convince the electorate that Trump is simply self obsessed and has no real idea how to make the US great again.

ramanpfaff said:

Rather pathetic dividend increase. I really am surprised it wasn't $0.02/share. Let's just say my retirement isn't going as planned. 

I don't consider Apple to be a good dividend yielding stock.  At $1 a year the yield is ~0.6%.  There are FDIC insured interest accounts that are yielding 4-5% at the moment.  So if you are looking to live off interest those are good bets.  E.g. I put spare cash into Apple's savings account.  That is also where Apple Cash goes.

There are plenty of stocks that have high yields.  Their problem is that their value does not grow.

I see Apple as a long term growth stock.  Since I bought into the stock in the early naughties, the value has increased 42000%.  That rescued my 401K for sure.  I have started to divest out of Apple but still hold a good amount.  The dividend is a bonus and by reinvesting it in AAPL I increase my holdings by 0.5-1% annually.  So probably since 2012, the dividend has increased my stock by 10%.