gregg thurman

maestro64 said:

Need to put Ming and Zhang in the same room and let the duke it out and see who win in the anal war.

It's easy to post projections that are correct when you post both sides of the same coin.

"Kuo's report seems contradictory to one published earlier on Monday, that claimed that iPhone sales were "weak," also citing supply channel checks. "

rob55 said:

I think some people, even an Apple Store employee, can't wrap their heads around paying $1,449 for a smartphone. I say, if you can, then more power to you.

The same as with automobiles, the number of iPhone buyers that plunk down the price in cash is almost nil when compared to the total units sold.  The monthly cost of my iPhone XS Max 256Gb using Apple's upgrade program is $60.33 plus sales tax.  That is without a trade-in.

DAalseth said:

The question though, is will this hold true if there is another 10%-25% on top of the list prices. Tariffs throw a whole different complication into the mix.

The question of tariffs is a red herring.  China will come to a trade agreement with the US because it's in their best interest to do so.  China suffers far greater in a trade war than does the US.  China sells much more to the US than the US sells to China.

China NEEDS access to the US market (still the world's largest).  The US does not NEED Chinese manufacturers.  The products the US buys from China most (apparel and commodities) can be sourced from other countries (Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan, Vietnam, Philipines, Mexico, etc.).

SpamSandwich said:

This looks sort of like an effort to get Cue fired. I support that effort because to me he seems like dead weight.

My post on another site.

"You can’t have it both ways. Cook is a genius, the best person for the job and his lieutenants are not up to the job.

melgross said:

Apple needs to improve the international functions of this and that of Maps.

The first thing I do after reading "Apple needs to do this" is to stop reading.  Pointing out deficiencies is easy, anybody can do that.  What the "Apple needs to do" crowd fail to do is offer solutions.  They can't because they don't have any.  If they did they'd have their own development firm offering such a solution, or they'd be working for Apple.  They don't so their opinions are worthless.

The truth is that products only get improved when they are hindering sales.  SIRI and Maps are not hindering sales.

Could SIRI be better?  Of course, but so could Google's 85% accurate voice assistant.  The delta between 78.5% accuracy and 85% accuracy is 6.5 errors out of 100 attempts.  This is not a deal breaker when you consider the alternative: buying an Android smartphone with Google Voice vs buying an iPhone with SIRI.

Will SIRI and Maps get better?  Undoubtedly, but improvements from 78.5% to 85% are hardly noticeable in the real world, and even less so as accuracy goes above 85%.