From Ma Si and Cheng Yu's "China Daily talks with Apple CEO Tim Cook on AR, Chinese developers and more" posted last week on China Daily:
In the interview, Cook also spoke highly about Chinese app developers' innovation capabilities. "Chinese developers have always been at the cutting-edge, and continue to grow. I can't wait to see what they are going to do next."
Currently, Apple's iOS app ecosystem has more than 5 million third-party developers in China, up from 4.4 million about a year ago.
The double-digit growth showcases the resilience and enthusiasm of Chinese app developers who embrace the App Store to seek mobile growth opportunities amid the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic.
App developers from China continue creating new businesses and innovating in the fast-changing environment of the past two years, and are helping to build one of the most prosperous global markets today, experts said.
My take: Imagine that! Tim Cook also mentioned how excited he is about AR. Those remarks got pretty widely covered.
And they’ll upgrade their Macs, increasing the user base as older models go to friends, family, or resale market.
Few analysts see the value of the Mac franchise.
I don’t know how that compares to android, but there are so many news articles like this that shows that what we know versus what the company is working on is just the tip of the iceberg.
An iceberg of good news.
The issue you raise is one of the many small increments that Apple makes all the time.
Analysts can’t see or report on these, because each one is tiny compared to Apple’s $400B annual revenue. (Yahoo Finance says FY ’22 is $393.)
China, like Russia, is bifurcated by the oligarch power base that rules it with an iron fist and its integral dependence on the free trade contingent. Russia thinks it can successfully “partner” with just other oligarchies and ignore the free trade contingent, but it’s fooling itself, because those other oligarchies themselves depend on that free trade.
There can be no “cold war” with China unless China makes the decision to follow Russia’s disastrous lead into imperialism. Might that happen? Of course. But it would be the end of the peace and prosperity the Chinese people have experienced, which itself would have immeasurable consequences, just as is happening in Russia.
Communism has always been able to score points with the downtrodden. But again, China’s success there is a direct function of its involvement with the free trade contingent; that is, it’s largely due to the bucks it has to spend.
The second China flips the switch to a true cold war, then, like Russia, they will be dependent on their own resources or the resources of other oligarchies. All those dependent on China’s largess will then find out the price of that dependence.
As regards theft, it’s at best a crutch, and is just another kind of dependency on the free thinking ( and free trade) contingent.
Bottom line: Cutting the cord of dependency while simultaneously stifling independent citizenry is an invitation to a disastrous result, just like is happening with Russia.
I appreciate your perspective and agree that China would be foolish to go down the Cold War path but that doesn’t mean that they won’t do it.
China has far more economic leverage over the world than Russia (who has a GDP roughly equivalent to Italy). As China encounters very real and very major headwinds,, such as a population plummet, over the next several years and decades they will seek bogeymen to blame. And we will inevitably “bump into” them a lot more in places like Africa, the Middle East and, of course, the South China Sea. They certainly like economic prosperity a lot more than the Soviets did but the Chinese Community Party do not like pesky things like free speech or elections – those are antithetical to their existence. And those in the party care only about the survivability of the Chinese Communist Party, not of the Chinese people.
China is not building a blue water navy and an advanced, enlarged strategic missile force for the hell of it. They certainly think a cold war, with the opportunity to go hot, is coming or already here.
Well said. On the “gripping hand”….
China’s authoritarian takeover of Hong Kong is not going all that well. Caging folks who are used to being free is creating undercurrents of unrest that may only be in check from spreading far and wide because of the draconian pandemic shutdown – and that’s a cakewalk compared to taking over Taiwan. Putin’s scorched earth “solution” to the Ukraine fiasco won’t work there.
Yes, all that wealth is letting them modernize their war machine – but nobody’s attacking! Instead, that buildup is creating a response in kind, including deeper cooperation between those feeling threatened by it.
Again, the bifurcation in China is very real, and makes for a far more ticklish situation than existed in the old cold war days. China’s leadership can’t help but be conflicted on the way forward.
Well said. I agree on all points.