mpantone

mike1 said:

eightzero said:

First: boo hoo hoo for GS. 

Second: how does a credit card actually lose money for the issuer? I get that some people simply welch, and that the card issuer offers incentives in cash back, but AC is no different that any other card in this regard. GS gets the usual swipe fees, and I'm guessing AAPL gets a cut. The article cites a $350 cost for each customer, but wgi did they pay that to? AAPL? Or is this some sort of aggregate overhead cost cited to bring out the pity party for GS "losses?"

Third: boo hoo hoo for any credit card company.

Actually, part of the issue might be having customers that are too good. They pay their bills in full each month and therefore never pay interest or late fees.

The consumer credit industry has a nickname for these people: they're known as "deadbeats."

I am a longtime representative of this group.

Lenders basically loathe consumers with 800+ FICO scores. It's the people around 700 who comprise the sweet spot of the credit industry.

My guess is that Goldman Sachs aimed a little too high with Apple users and amassed a clientele that has less revolving debt that they had hoped. Combine that with a package of benefits and high marketing costs, GS ended up short.

I will never pay a dime in interest or finance charges. Goldman Sachs will basically never recoup that $350 they spent to acquire my business.

Worse, GS pissed me off with their lousy customer service just a month after the card's August 2019 launch and I haven't used the Apple Card since. The physical card has never left the drawer I threw it in and the electronic one sits unused in the Apple Pay app. Theoretically GS should just send me packing due to account inactivity but I have a $0.15 balance in Apple Cash which is my legal property. They would have to snail mail me a check for fifteen cents and then eat whatever administrative costs to close my account (which is probably twenty or thirty dollars).

DT36MT said:

mpantone said:

racerhomie3 said:

Isnt it obvious that Apple faces competition in all sectors in operates in?

That's not the point. No one has denied the existence of competition in any of the sectors that Apple operates in.

Apple says that they have intense competition in their market sectors. The operative word here is intense.

Apple is saying that so government agencies don't take steps to curtail what some perceive to be an unfair advantage namely Apple's various App Stores and media stores (music, movie, video, book, whatever). You haven't noticed but Apple has received ongoing scrutiny about their overwhelming dominance in these business operations.

For example, how many other app stores can you buy apps for your iPhone? Apple also takes their own cut of content sales and forbids alternative payment mechanisms, something that has been declared illegal in some jurisdictions.

So Timmy is trying to put on his nicest PR face to the Japanese PM so Japan's various agencies don't start dogging Apple to open up their tight fisted control.

"Oh, no, we don't have an unfair advantage. We have lots of very serious competitors. No need for oversight. Really!"

That's what is happening here.

All big companies do this not just Apple.

AT&T said the same thing in the Seventies. Coca-Cola continues to do so all around the world, particularly regarding soda fountain operations (where they own like 90% of the worldwide market).

Nothing new here, just big business as usual.

Well, yes and NO.
Apple App Store is part of what makes the iPhone an iPhone. It is an integral part of how the iPhone operates (simplicity of updates, security, ..). So, saying there is no competing App stores for the iPhone is not a valid arguments. Me, and the absolute majority of Apple customers/iPhone owners bought (and keep upgrading) our iPhones with the perfect understanding that we are committing to Apples "walled gardens" which Apple critics and competition despise but Apple customers are happy with. iPhones have a lot of competition from other phone makers, including significantly cheaper alternatives. Customers have a chance to leave the iPhone for an Android handset at least once a year when carriers offer a free phone and some people do (there are available statistics on switchers) but only a small minority does this every year. You know why? Because Apple customers are happy with the way things are working with the iPhone. Many of those complaining about the App Store want only to dismantle the way the iPhone work, introduce flood us with crappy apps and spyware/malware for which everyone will blame the iPhone and Apple for it. If you can't get your products up to Apple standards, why not bring Apple products down to yours, right? This App Store thing has nothing to do with giving the consumers what they want or promote competition and innovation.

That's not how many regulatory agencies are viewing Apple's stranglehold, "walled garden", or whatever anyone wants to call it.

Apple is being heavily and justly scrutinized by various government bodies around the world. As we already know, at least one jurisdiction has declared Apple's App Store payment system monopoly to be illegal. The smart guess is that more and more places on this planet will deem Apple's restrictive policies to be unfair.

We've also seen high profile Apple partners also call Apple out on their practices. One very notable episode was Taylor Swift's displeasure with Apple's streaming royalty payout structure. She clearly pointed out that her proposed change would not affect her income but she was campaigning for smaller artists. And guess what? Apple eventually relented and changed their streaming payouts to artists.

Apple -- like all companies -- need to be monitored so they don't start running unchecked.

Trust me, I'm mostly happy with Apple's products and services. I appreciate their stance on user privacy. Like most Americans with a retirement account, I'm also an indirect shareholder as well. I materially benefit from Apple's continued success. But then again I materially benefit from the continued success of most Fortune 500 components as well as probably 150-200 foreign corporations.

But Apple should not be excused from consumer or government review. Nor should any other company on the planet. You don't get this.

Why do you think there are food safety laws today? For fun?!?

I've worked at companies ranging from Fortune 500 to tiny outfits and there are always moments where I don't agree with what management is doing. Hell, even if I ran my own company, I'd probably end up having to do some things a different way than what I'd want simply due to market conditions or business regulations. 

Do you think any American winery or distillery wants to pay the TTB to run a bonded facility? Automobile manufacturers could save some money by not installing airbags or seatbeats.

Just face it: increased scrutiny for Apple's business practices is a good thing for the consumer. And the government should also be scrutinizing Intel, Google, PG&E, Qualcomm, Georgia-Pacific, McDonald's, ExxonMobil, the cable company, the phone company, etc.

History has repeatedly shown that unchecked dominance by one company eventually leads to bad things. Ever hear of Standard Oil?

It's more imperative than ever for various agencies around the world to keep an eye on companies like Apple, Amazon, Google, Facebook, Alibaba, Baidu, Netflix, etc.

This is never going to trial. Apple and the plaintiffs will settle out of court for an undisclosed sum.

It should be noted that Apple Store Palo Alto had stanchions installed several years ago (before the pandemic) due to an auto-assisted burglary attempt.

Clearly Apple could have done more to prevent the Derby Street incident.

Marvin said:

mpantone said:

blastdoor said:

The M2 in the MBA gets a single core score of 1899, so these results seem ballpark reasonable to me -- within the range of testing reliability. 

This makes zero sense. The two scores are nearly identical.

The purported benchmark is for an M2 Max. If the score and name of the processor are to be believed then there is no performance improvement with the M2 Max. And Apple most certainly will not release a new SoC that has the identical performance as a predecessor.

Remember: M_ < M_ Pro < M_ Max < M_ Ultra

This Geekbench score is likely fake or maybe the SoC's name was incorrectly reported.

My belief is that an M2 Max will need a 15-30% performance uplift over an M2 Pro to make it marketable.

Assuming Apple does not jump process nodes with the M2 Max, I'm guessing that the performance boost on standard integer and floating point tests will be more modest with greater improvements for machine learning tasks.

The M2 is very similar to the M1 in Geekbench:

https://browser.geekbench.com/mac-benchmarks

It is however much faster for GPU (40%) and some video encoding.

These tests would suggest M2 Pro/Max might be the worst outcome expected for an upgrade - delayed to 2023 and using the same N5P process as M2 so the better N3 upgrade might not come until 2024.

There's a possibility they could make the GPU cores on N3 and the CPU cores on N5P but it's more likely they will do N5P.

It's highly unlikely that Apple will do this. After all the CPU and GPU cores are on the same die, right? And using split process nodes might end up as a cost increase. How much is Apple willing to pass onto the consumer? There are already plenty of other factors driving price up right now.

Again, this is all ignoring the fact that the purported M2 Max is running the same as the vanilla M2, with no accommodation for the M2 Pro.

It is pretty far fetched to think that Apple will release three M2 SoCs with identical single core performance.

I'm not saying that it can't be done. I'm just saying that the likelihood of this happening is extremely low. And doing so would also put them at risk of being the laughingstock of the semiconductor industry for years to come. I'm thinking that Johny Sroudji wouldn't care for that very much.

Apple has done some bizarre stuff before but I just don't see the business case in Apple releasing an M2 Max SoC that's supposed to be two tiers above the vanilla M2 with an identical Geekbench score, despite the fact that Geekbench is a seriously flawed measurement.

blastdoor said:

The M2 in the MBA gets a single core score of 1899, so these results seem ballpark reasonable to me -- within the range of testing reliability. 

This makes zero sense. The two scores are nearly identical.

The purported benchmark is for an M2 Max. If the score and name of the processor are to be believed then there is no performance improvement with the M2 Max. And Apple most certainly will not release a new SoC that has the identical performance as a predecessor.

Remember: M_ < M_ Pro < M_ Max < M_ Ultra

This Geekbench score is likely fake or maybe the SoC's name was incorrectly reported.

My belief is that an M2 Max will need a 15-30% performance uplift over an M2 Pro to make it marketable.

Assuming Apple does not jump process nodes with the M2 Max, I'm guessing that the performance boost on standard integer and floating point tests will be more modest with greater improvements for machine learning tasks.