mpantone

avon b7 said:

A good move. Somewhat late but better late than never.

I can see a parallel with Huawei (and others) here when in late 2018 Huawei announced the Ascend line of chips and supporting frameworks and made it open source. 

They have Mindspore, CANN, Da Vinci Pangu etc and all the hardware to go with it. 

Ascend starts with Nano (for things like earbuds) and scales up to cluster systems with thousands of cores.

The question must be then if Apple intends to take that step too and produce (and possibly sell/lease?) a system similar to the Ascend 910 at some point?

It almost seems inevitable. 

It's a marathon not a sprint and there's no finish line anyhow.

Machine learning/AI is still very much in its infancy, there is plenty of space for multiple players in multiple segments of the market, from mobile devices all the way to supercomputing.

My guess is that Apple will not bring their ML technology as a standalone product to market. They will rather use it to eventually provide broad benefit to their customers and offer differentiation vis-a-vis the competition. They are not interested in selling rackmount devices to stuff into datacenters.

I could conceivably see them rolling their own custom ML silicon for their own servers, optimized for their applications and providing a performance-per-watt advantage over the competition. With the Apple Silicon M3 chip family, they made a major shift to a new GPU architecture that might be a harbinger of this.

Apple does not want to put their chip designs in their competitors' hands.

Remember that Apple's fundamental philosophy is that they are essentially a software company whose code runs best on their proprietary hardware platforms. They do not gain a competitive advantage by shipping trays of Apple Silicon SoCs from TSMC to others.

godofbiscuitssf said:

Where is this mythical land where confusion "reigns"?

Right here. The Internet.

blastdoor said:

mpantone said:

blastdoor said:

mpantone said:

michaelx74 said:

Apple:  Just buy a/the bank.

Nope.

Consumer banking is one of the most heavily regulated industries. Apple has zero interest becoming a bank. If this weren't the case, Apple would have started a bank a long time ago (before they partnered with Barclay Bank for the Apple Card predecessor), decades ago.

This is also why many companies have divested their consumer loan divisions. And with each passing year, there are more banking regulations, not less.

Apple doesn't want consumer debt as a liability.

And as it turns out, neither does Goldman Sachs.

  

I'm highly skeptical that consumer banking regulations are any more of an obstacle than the wide range of other obstacles Apple faces across their product lineup. For example, I'll bet the challenges of navigating the patent minefield of the cellular landscape is significantly harder (and explains the challenges Apple has had making a competitive 5g modem). I'm sure entering the TV/movie production business was no walk in the park either, what with the various union contracts and entrenched players. Getting approval for health related features of the Watch is also a challenge, but Apple is up to the challenge. If somebody were to give a detailed explanation of the challenges of EUV, you'd likely conclude that's impossible, too. The bottom line is that if you want to create any competitive product in the modern economy it is going to be "hard" and you can always come up with a long list of costs and obstacles to explain why nothing is possible. Quitters never win. 

I think it's quite possible that Apple will buy or start a bank on their own. I suspect the real issue with the GS partnership is that GS just doesn't have the long term vision and patience that Apple does. Apple was willing to run the App Store for a loss or at break even for a long time before turning a profit -- now 'services' are a huge profit center. I suspect Apple is perfectly happy to do the same thing with banking, realizing that once the volume is high enough and the business model refined enough, it will be profitable. And in the meantime, it creates more platform stickiness and customer good-will. 

Apple isn't going to buy/start a bank. They've had plenty of opportunity (and cash) for the past 10-15 years. There are easier ways to make money. Hell, Apple would be better off selling life insurance than running a consumer bank. 

They aren't going to buy or start a mobile network either.

Apple had plenty of time, cash, and motivation to develop their own silicon for Macs. Some people predicted it -- or at least yearned for it --  for years. Many said it wouldn't happen because it's just sooo hard, or if they were going to do it they would have already done it, or that they don't have the scale to do it profitably, etc etc. And now, guess what, they did it. 

ApplePay and AppleCard are very clear indicators that Apple is interested in participating in the market for financial services. Funny how so many people can't see what's right tin front of them. 

Remember, Apple does not jump into every industry they dabble with. And they have abandoned some markets. How many iPod MP3 players do they sell today? XServe computers? AirPort wifi routers? Pippins? 

There is a *LOT* of liability involved with consumer banking. So much so that Goldman Sachs themselves are bailing out of it (not just their Apple Card operations).

Is there a full-fledged Apple TV (i.e., with a large screen display) sitting in a lab somewhere in Cupertino? Probably. There are probably heaps of prototypes sitting in a warehouse earmarked to get recycled. Macbooks with cellular data modem chips?

Just because Apple can doesn't mean it will.

Apple's march to M-series SoCs and their liberation from Intel was pretty clear ages ago.

Remember that Apple faces many challenges concerning Apple Card. It's still a USA-only product. Their demands from their issuing bank partners is probably stifling their ability to expand to new markets because no one wants to make such great concessions. Look at what happened to GS.

One thing for sure, there will be more regulation in the consumer finance marketplace in ten years than today.

It will be interesting to see what happens to the Apple Card. I doubt any currently operating financial institution will agree to the same terms as Goldman Sachs did for the Apple Card launch. Too many concessions in revenue generating activities (late fees, interest, foreign transaction fees, etc.). Apple was fortunate to find a naive partner in Goldman Sachs (who were itching to dive into the consumer finance market five years ago). GS's exit will be a warning flag to other issuing banks about the perils of this particular setup.

Xed said:

mikethemartian said:

Apple ran ads claiming the Apple Card wasn’t issued by a bank?

I'd like to see these ads.

There were none.

Apple has never claimed that the Apple Card didn't have an issuing bank. Goldman Sachs USA, NA was buried in the fine print in the original announcement, I spend a few minutes tracking down the service agreement because that's where all the important details are.

Apple couldn't claim there was no issuing bank, that would have been fraudulent and deceptive. That would also invite a huge amount of liability and potential future legal action. They just said "visit this URL to learn more" and the fine print was lurking somewhere in a hyperlink.

As is so typical of any consumer finance discussion on the Internet these days, this thread is full of inaccuracies and incorrect assumptions by many participants.

It's worth pointing out that Apple has repeatedly stated that they are not an issuing bank and thus Apple Pay should not be subject to the same scrutiny as consumer financial institutions and payment networks. Even Apple Cash is operated by Green Bank NA.

blastdoor said:

mpantone said:

michaelx74 said:

Apple:  Just buy a/the bank.

Nope.

Consumer banking is one of the most heavily regulated industries. Apple has zero interest becoming a bank. If this weren't the case, Apple would have started a bank a long time ago (before they partnered with Barclay Bank for the Apple Card predecessor), decades ago.

This is also why many companies have divested their consumer loan divisions. And with each passing year, there are more banking regulations, not less.

Apple doesn't want consumer debt as a liability.

And as it turns out, neither does Goldman Sachs.

  

I'm highly skeptical that consumer banking regulations are any more of an obstacle than the wide range of other obstacles Apple faces across their product lineup. For example, I'll bet the challenges of navigating the patent minefield of the cellular landscape is significantly harder (and explains the challenges Apple has had making a competitive 5g modem). I'm sure entering the TV/movie production business was no walk in the park either, what with the various union contracts and entrenched players. Getting approval for health related features of the Watch is also a challenge, but Apple is up to the challenge. If somebody were to give a detailed explanation of the challenges of EUV, you'd likely conclude that's impossible, too. The bottom line is that if you want to create any competitive product in the modern economy it is going to be "hard" and you can always come up with a long list of costs and obstacles to explain why nothing is possible. Quitters never win. 

I think it's quite possible that Apple will buy or start a bank on their own. I suspect the real issue with the GS partnership is that GS just doesn't have the long term vision and patience that Apple does. Apple was willing to run the App Store for a loss or at break even for a long time before turning a profit -- now 'services' are a huge profit center. I suspect Apple is perfectly happy to do the same thing with banking, realizing that once the volume is high enough and the business model refined enough, it will be profitable. And in the meantime, it creates more platform stickiness and customer good-will. 

Apple isn't going to buy/start a bank. They've had plenty of opportunity (and cash) for the past 10-15 years. There are easier ways to make money. Hell, Apple would be better off selling life insurance than running a consumer bank. 

They aren't going to buy or start a mobile network either.