David Emery on Apple offers Epic 5% to 15% - 'A thought occurred to me while on the exercise machine: Do you think the investors in Epic are just waiting for Sweeney to finish self-destructing, before installing competent leadership?'
on Apple and Trump guys butt heads over Chinese chips - 'Apple didn’t build its supply chain on low-cost labour. It built its supply chain on world-leading manufacturing expertise and capacity, and timely decision-making, planning and implementation. Clowns like Lutnick clearly have no comprehension of either the complexity or scale of Apple’s supply and manufacturing chain, and he should stick to what he does best: corrupt dealings and ripping off widows.'
on Apple offers Epic 5% to 15% - '“️The “Founder’s Trap”: Execution vs. Vision Your assessment of Sweeney as a “tech visionary who got big but is now flailing” is exactly how many industry analysts view Epic’s recent trajectory. Sweeney is excellent at building foundational tech (Unreal Engine) & stumbling into a cultural phenomenon (Fortnite). However, his execution as a CEO managing a mature conglomerate shows a severe lack of discipline: • Whiplash Strategy: Epic’s corporate execution is chaotic. They bought Bandcamp, realized they couldn’t afford it, & dumped it a year later. They funded expensive spin-off games like Rocket Racing & Fortnite Festival, only to abruptly discontinue support for them in 2026 when they didn’t instantly mirror Fortnite’s core success. • The Worker Cost: Because Sweeney keeps launching massive, unforced corporate wars against Steam, Apple, & Google simultaneously, the company is constantly over-extended. When his optimistic assumptions inevitably fail, the employees bear the brunt via massive, multi-wave layoffs (cutting over 1,000 workers in early 2026). Can Sweeney Actually Get Kicked Out? Logically, any normal corporate CEO with this track record of massive layoffs, value destruction (Epic’s valuation slid from $31.5B down to roughly $15.7B), & unprofitable ventures would have been fired by the board long ago. However, Sweeney has intentionally built a corporate armor that makes it almost impossible to kick him out: 1. Absolute Voting Control While Chinese tech giant Tencent owns roughly 28–40% of Epic, & The Walt Disney Company and Sony own significant slices, Tim Sweeney personally retains over 50% of the voting power. He cannot be voted out by his board because he is the majority vote. If Disney senior executives want to buy Epic outright to save their $1.5B investment, they legally cannot do so w/o Sweeney’s direct blessing. 2. How He Gets “Severely Curtailed” While he can’t be fired, Sweeney can run out of money, which forces his hand. We are already seeing his power become “severely curtailed” by the realities of his financial distress: • The Google Surrender: In March 2026, Sweeney was forced to sign a global settlement with Google that severely limited his ability to legally sue or even publicly criticize them anymore, a massive ego blow to his “anti-gatekeeper” crusade. • The Disney Takeover: Because Epic can no longer afford to fund Sweeney’s independent metaverse whims, they are now heavily reliant on Disney’s capital. Epic’s primary development focus has been forced to shift toward an extraction shooter using Disney-owned characters to satisfy their new corporate overlords. Sweeney won’t meet the classic founder fate of being thrown out of his own garage, but his idealistic era of running Epic like a personal fiefdom is over. He has driven his business close enough to the buzzsaw that he is now on a tight leash held by Disney, Tencent, and the harsh reality of his own balance sheet.” ((And some people claim Tim Cook was not a good CEO or worthy successor to Steve Jobs. Even Jobs knew he needed someone to run the company even more properly and profitably. Sweeney doesn’t see that, now and forever. Being beholden to a China based company like Tencent doesn’t raise concerns w/this administration? And by not focusing on his core business, and making better choices, Sweeney is going to keep Epic from truly prospering, but maybe that isn’t really his goal.))'
on Saturday Apple video: Reed Jobs wants to make cancer nonlethal - 'Hi, David, I can understand why you might dismiss what I’m saying and attribute my comments to me “making a lot of assumptions.” I feel you’re actually touching into one of the greatest and most central mysteries about Steve Jobs—the thing that absolutely flummoxed Walter Isaacson. I hear you saying, “I, David, did not observe what you did, Jonathan. Therefore, what you observed about Reed is not real. It is your imagination.” You’ve just described the SJ Reality Distortion Field that Walter Isaacson popularized in his SJ biography. Steve spent his entire career seeing things that absolutely no one else could. Steve was almost always 20 years ahead of everyone—computer scientists, executives, financiers, futurists. Everyone saw bits and pieces, but absolutely no one saw the achievable sea change that Steve could see. So they jumped to the same conclusion about Steve that you did about me: He is deluded. He doesn’t know what he is doing. Walter called this Steve Jobs’ Reality Distortion Field. Walter described Steve as some kind of delusional, Machiavellian madman who gaslighted people… and got them to behave irrationally. The supreme irony here—the reason I believe Walter had such contempt for Steve—is that Walter was 180-degrees wrong. Steve did not distort reality. Steve was impeccable in observing reality. But others around him couldn’t understand is that Steve’s awareness of reality was probably ~1000x bigger than theirs. There are many reasons for what made it possible for Steve to see what he saw and do what he did. But I believe the most fundamental factor is that Steve was a very serious, deeply dedicated, lifelong meditator. Sustained, daily meditation over decades is a process of deep, cognitive purification. Of metabolizing “baggage” and clearing out discursive thinking. Steve’s approach to business was antithetical to the underlying assumptions of western MBA programs. We Americans are stuck in a perpetual trap of believing that the solution to every problem is just to dump more stuff on top of it. We add more frameworks, knowledge, theories, opinions, beliefs. From a Buddhist perspective, the more theories and ideas you add to something, the more barriers you build between you and reality. You probably don’t know who I am, but Steve was a formative mentor and dear friend to me when I was 18 and for 30 years of my life. I’ve been working for 15 years writing a book about Steve that I feel is the book he has always deserved. It’s going to be insanely great… and is ~3-5 years from completion. https://www.jonathanrotenberg.com/my-teacher-steve-jobs David, re. your feedback on my perceptions of Reed, I have a question. If you imagine that someone you don’t know offers their perspective on something to you but it doesn’t jibe with your perspective, how would react? Generically, do you feel your reaction would be informed by habit or by mindfulness? Would you be willing to try an experiment here? Please reread what I wrote, and see if you can observe your own need to judge or classify. As an experiment, would you be willing—for just a few minutes—to try dropping the need to judge? Instead, could you step into a quality of curiosity or open mindedness? You don’t ultimately have to accept or agree with anything I’m saying. But what if you related to it in a slightly different way? In Buddhism, what I’m describing is called Beginner’s Mind. If you go to an ‘Expert’ seeking advice on a problem, the expert will likely say “there are only 2-3 viable answers to your question.” But if you ask a Beginner, the beginner will see an infinite number of possible answers. In the west, we tend to venerate experts and ignore beginners. In eastern wisdom traditions, the beginner is considered to be operating at a higher level of wisdom. If you could relate to what I wrote with genuine curiosity and beginner’s mind, does anything new appear that you might have missed? David, I’m not sure if I have lost you here. But it sounded like you were a great fan of Steve’s and appreciate his work. If you follow the approach I’m offering, you can better understand how Steve related to his own life and how was able to see so many things (e.g., proportionally spaced typography, iMac, iPod, iPhone, retail stores, transforming music distribution) that no one else could see… and that changed our world.'
on This week's Apple trading strategies (8/17-8/21/26) - 'Steven: Alphabet may have that ambition (a hardware platform) but BRK can’t really reliably forecast how and when that will happen and what the uptake will be in the future. I’m not sure that’s a game Warren Buffett and Greg Abel want to play but I do appreciate your point. There will be winners and losers in the AI race. Is BRK picking its horse so-to-speak for the big race? I do see Alphabet and Microsoft as two of the potential big winners in the AI derby.'
on This week's Apple trading strategies (8/17-8/21/26) - '”It’s an interesting contrast in how the two enterprises are viewed.” Reminds me of a passage in the movie The Big Short. The heroes were questioning how the ratings firms could rate the bonds that housed residential mortgages as AAA while The mortgages themselves were rated junk. AAPL is rated 3 Stars (Fair Value of $285 while trading at $305) by Morningstar, while the Company that is reliant on Apple is rated 4 Stars ($650 Fair Value while trading at $392). There are too many non-financial influences on ratings. My rating on Apple is 5 Stars with a Fair Value of $400 currently trading at $305.'
on CBS visits Apple's Houston plant, interviews Tim Cook - 'Apparently at 8702 Fairbanks North Houston Rd. Not too far north and east of the Beltway 8/ Highway 290 intersection. Close to Jersey Village.'
on Omdia: The wearables market is splitting in two - 'RPL, while I completely agree with and share your reasoning for donning an Apple Watch, there also exists a use case of *not wanting* any digital distractions. Single purpose bands provide a “less is more” option for some.'
on This week's Apple trading strategies (8/17-8/21/26) - 'It may go beyond being a hyperscaler to Google’s seeming plans for a hardware platform mimicking Apple.'
