blastdoor

Apple is well positioned to play this game. Because they are very secretive anyway, we have no idea what their plans were anyway. This might not be “new” investment relative to what they were doing anyway. But we might never know. 

VictorMortimer said:

No.  Just no.

Unless there are major advances in materials science, folding screens are a no-go.  They're more fragile, they're always going to have an ugly crease sooner or later, and they're ridiculously expensive.

At this point, my fear is that the way Apple is known to jump headfirst into things that they'll go all-folding.  And I think that would be my red line, I don't want one at any price.

I seriously doubt that Apple will go all folding. For many years now, they have kept around older iPhone form factors at lower price points. This started perhaps most noticeably when they released the iPhone 8 and iPhone X in the same year. Also, others have been selling folding phones for a few years now -- Apple has been very cautious about entering this market, for good reason. I just can't see Apple doing something super dumb here. 

I just asked ChatGPT to assess the trade offs in actual shopping products:

https://chatgpt.com/s/t_6890c18c2be0819186de51bee9505857

The trade offs are totally ridiculous. There’s no way I’d get a folding phone with those trade offs 

anthogag said:

It's easy to suspect Chinese companies because China isn't a democracy. China's government is always there planning for the long-term because they aren't going anywhere. A democracy is much more dynamic. The best route for China to get a long with the West is to become a democracy. 

I agree with this, but unfortunately if you replace "Chinese" with "American" and "China" with "US" the statement is equally true. 

The US is now the kind of country in which the dictator fires the head of a statistical agency because he doesn't like the numbers (even though, with supreme irony, the numbers actually support his preferred interest rate policy, but that's a whole other subject). 

I figured Apple senior executives were likely taking AI very seriously and working hard to catch up. I'm glad to see some confirmation that is correct. 

If Apple executives were as clueless regarding the importance of AI as some fanboys posting on this site, Apple would be in huge trouble. As it is, they are behind, and they are at risk, but with appropriate senior management attention (and their vast financial resources and all the good tech on their shelf), they can catch up.