y2an

The message is clear if you understand the lyrics. 

The white iPhone 4 was delayed over 10 months because of the physics and chemistry of getting it right. The G5 processor never happened because physics got in the way. Maps was self-inflicted, from trusting too much in the team leader; similarly MobileMe. From the narrative it sounds like the development team has made large strides on Siri but it’s not yet ready for prime time and they don’t want another Maps or MobileMe repeat. That’s a good reason for not launching yet. I don’t recall Apple ever saying exactly when features would arrive, only that they would be delivered over time – and they are, I see small AI touches added to different parts of my phone operating system regularly and they are bleeding into my appreciation of the product. Bad news travels fast, good news rarely travels. Most of the people writing about this have never worked on complex software projects and assume the team is wringing their hands over what to do; the reality will be that they know what to do, they know how long it will take, and they know their capacity – do the math. In an earlier article it was mentioned that there are other higher internal priorities at Apple which also have to be met so this sounds more like a resource contention or a coordination of technologies matter; I’m looking forward to what is unveiled at WWDC.

The target market is businesses who need their employees to have iPhones to run whatever apps their business depends on, which is underscored by the really good all day and all night battery life. Those businesses will be able to buy at bulk prices yet Apple will be able to discount for them while still making acceptable margin given the bill of materials (especially the C1, which cuts maybe as much as $90 off the BOM). Cell phone carriers will love this as well as they will be able to offer it to their customers as a “true, Apple Intelligence” iPhone 16) and not just an iPhone SE, as a starter to get the customer in the door. Apple will sell this gladly to anyone but the retail price is deliberately chosen to encourage the individual consumer to look again at the next phone on the price ladder. I just don’t understand why none of the reviewers or Wall Street commentators ever manage to grasp Apple’s product and pricing strategy.

The roles are confusingly reversed here. Perhaps Google made the first put, and suggested paying Apple (and others) for making Google search default, But when you get into the roles each party really plays here the reality is that Apple (and others) are demanding payments from Google to send search traffic to Google as their default. Extortion by any other name! in the normal course of business Apple (and others) would actually be paying Google (or any other search engine) for the service they are providing to support the volume of traffic they are sending! What clouds, this view is that Google makes money of the advertisements they can serve while delivering search results; take those away and the business relationship is more clear. A proper remedy would have Google Price the search service then agree with the cell phone makers on a revenue split for advertising served, settled by deducting their search service costs. The implementation would involve every year reviewing the fairness of the service costs and the revenue split from advertising. Any other search service would be able to participate on similar terms.

Moving to a smaller feature size process node isn’t really necessary for a modem. It’s more expensive and would take away capacity from chips which need it, in other words the M4.