blastdoor

I think the scenario in which Apple might move manufacturing to the US is one in which they get substantial incentives to do so. 

What would those incentives be? Well... how about

1. a massive tax cut that would allow them to repatriate foreign taxes
2. a massive increase in tariffs on the imports of competing products
3. zero enforcement of anti-trust laws against Apple
4. long term federal government contracts for Macs, iPhones, and iPads

Those things could enable Apple to become the US monopolist (or near-monopolist) in smartphones and tablets, and would give them the opportunity to significantly expand Mac marketshare in the US. 

Such a deal would be terrible for consumers. It would create some jobs, and that would be great publicity for Trump. The loss to consumers would be far greater than the gains to workers, but that wouldn't be obvious, certainly not right away. 

Yes, there would be a trade war, and that would probably lock Apple out of China. But from Apple's point of view, that tradeoff might be acceptable -- even desirable. China is a risky place to do business for an American company, even in the best of times. Giving up China in exchange for a near-monopoly in the US might be a good deal. 

Note -- I'm not happy about the scenario I'm describing here. Not at all. I'm just trying to figure out what might happen. 

There's a lot to like about these, but the overall sense I get from reviews is that sound quality falls noticeably short of Bose wireless products.

So then it's really a tradeoff between audio quality and UI elegance. That's a tough choice because both are important. 

I'm leaning towards Bose, myself, but I can understand why people would pick the AirPods. 

I think I'll wait until BeatsX comes out and see how all of these W1 products compare both to each other and to the Bose bluetooth products. 

techprod1gy said:

I am curious if Swift is as big of a deal as Apple suggests...can anyone with experience and knowledge of the programming world comment?

In terms of popularity, it's in the top 20 and moving up:

http://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/

My impression (but I hope someone else can confirm or correct this) is that the thing that makes Swift a legitimately big deal is that it is a very pragmatic, non-ideological language. It attempts to take the best aspects of multiple different approaches and combine them. For example, it has the speed of a compiled language but the human-friendliness and portability of a scripting language. There are no free lunches, though, so it does have to give up some things. I doubt it will ever be as fast as Fortran, for example (though I'd be happy to be proven wrong).

If my impression is correct, then I think Swift represents Apple at its very best -- a very carefully designed product that strikes exactly the right balance in order to help people get a job done.

I just hope Swift represents the future of Apple and isn't just a remnant of the past.  

Mike Wuerthele said:

The_Martini_Cat said:

 Wow, talk about burying the lede.  Mac Pro is alive! 

That would be good, but hoping that just based on this is a slim hope indeed.

Wasn't there also a story a while back about somebody finding references to an A10 or A10X in macOS code? And of course people found references to x86 for years (And years and years) before Apple switched. 

Maybe this just means that Apple tests a wider range of hardware options than they actually release as products.