mpantone

Zero surprise with this rumor.

As I have mentioned previously in other discussions, Home Hub is a much lower priority than Apple Intelligence and will require the latter to be extremely reliable to be of any use to Joe Consumer (the mainstream public, not geeky tinkerers).

Note that Home Hub is only useful at home (or other similar static locations) for a limited range of tasks. Apple Intelligence has a vastly wider scope since it will eventually be available to anyone with a modern/recent iPhone and thus useful on the go.

I still believe the touchpanel device makes zero sense. Everyone loves being attached to their iPhones (and to a lesser extent their Apple Watches). The smart home must be able to be controlled by a phone or maybe a watch. It makes far less sense to have to get up to fiddle around in some menu system hanging on a wall, especially if you live in a larger property where the touchpanel may be far away from where you are located (or worse, on a different floor).

We have seen this in the failure of home theater tablet control panels. Normal people don't want them.

A reliable Siri with Apple Intelligence takes top priority. And by reliable, we mean something like 99.99% reliable, not just 66%, 75%, 90% or 95% of the time. Trust me, if you or someone in your family has to get up to adjust the lights once out of four attempts, the smart home hub will be decommissioned and sent to the e-waste recycling center real quick.

And no one should be spending 10-15 minutes to configure a smartphone light socket or electrical outlet. This stuff needs to work nearly effortlessly for widespread adoption by Joe Consumer.

A truly useful "Home Hub" will eventually get here, probably 5 years after Apple Intelligence reaches release status. Remember that all consumer-facing AI is still alpha quality software here in Q2 2025.

Consumers always get saddled with the costs ultimately whether it's a direct tax or something like a tariff.

Publicly traded companies aren't going to the absorb the charge and give up gross margin.

This should be perfectly clear to anyone who has any money in the stock market. And that includes any American with a retirement account or pension plan. That includes anyone who voted for the person currently occupying the Oval Office.

This is not a complicated scenario. It's very simple.

Computer scientists have an acronym for this: GIGO. Garbage In, Garbage Out.

Tomorrow Americans of all political leanings will experience this truth.

I'm sure Cook was smart enough to see this transaction result in cash. I liquidated half of my bull positions two days ago. I will get slaughtered tomorrow but not as much as if I had stayed in this clown show. But it's not all gloom-and-doom for me. I bought some 3x tech inverse funds in a tax-free retirement account. Gonna ease the pain a bit tomorrow.

But god damn, it is going to be a sh!t storm that we never saw during the previous administration.

For sure AMEX acceptance at merchants has grown over the years especially in the past ten years. While it is easy to pick out a specific exception of a large retailer like Costco, I've noticed that I can use an AMEX with very few exceptions especially with smaller merchants. Ten years ago -- especially when travelling abroad -- this was not the case.

AMEX acceptance has also accelerated in post-pandemic international travel. Anyone who owns an AMEX card has other plastic as well so it's not like it's much of a barrier these days. If Apple and American Express negotiate to some sort of agreement I don't expect that to much impact on most purchases for most people.

I already have a VISA card that gives me back 2% everywhere and another one that gives me back 3% at a merchant category of my choice (I picked restaurants). So if Apple switched from MC to AMEX as payment processors, it really won't affect me. I have been an AMEX cardholder since the Nineties anyhow.

macOS Sonoma 14.7.5 is available for those on the older operating system as well as the newest Sequoia 15.4. I was offered both (Sequoia and Sonoma) on my Mac mini M2 Pro that was running 14.7.4.

There was also a Pro Video formats update as well as a standalone update.

As always Apple typically staggers the availability of software updates to lessen the load on their servers. If you don't see the update available right now, try again tomorrow or the day after. 

There is nothing new about this, it has been like this for years and years (long before the pandemic).

People, the live presentations in front of a theater audience are long gone. Let it go. It's time to move on.

Apple are control freaks anyhow, the canned videos dovetail perfectly into how Apple likes to operate in 2025.

The live presentations originate from an era of tradeshows (like Macworld Expo) and when video streaming to people's smartphones wasn't a thing. The COVID-19 pandemic was the final nail in the coffin but they were headed this direction years before coronavirus.