Recent Comments

  • Gregg Thurman on The head of Apple Vision Pro marketing demos visionOS 27 (video) - 'Wait, wait, wait, didn’t Gurman just say that Vision Pro was being/ had been shut down, that hundreds of engineers were transferred elsewhere? I didn’t get my Vision Pro update and general release with the elimination of screen production constraints. That makes my forecast wrong, just as is Gurman. But it’s obvious the product is still advancing. Engineers may be transferred elsewhere until the screen supply constraint is solved, but it isn’t dead.'
  • Kemble Widmer on Guess what the Middlebury professor blames for our falling birthrates - 'I like to think it’s a gradual realization and thoughtful deliberation of the economic implications of having children, and we are all the better for it. (Ie those without the means or desire to responsibly raise kids no longer feel like a societal failure). At least that is my anecdotal conclusion from many younger folks I talk with.'
  • Dan Scropos on Apple's iPhone revenue share was its highest ever for the March quarter - 'If I didn’t know better, and with a quick glance, I’d swear that’s Ted Danson and Joe Pesci. Thanks for sharing. I’m still not sold on Federighi, though. Apple Intelligence was delayed in 2024, delayed in 2025 and now aided, at least in part, by Google/Gemini in 2026. Credibility matters and he has a lot of work ahead of himself to earn back my trust.'
  • Dan Scropos on The head of Apple Vision Pro marketing demos visionOS 27 (video) - 'There’s some incredible technology in the latest updates. The Apple enthusiast/investor in me loves seeing that. The cynic in me, however, can’t help but wonder how much of what we’re seeing in this revamped and seemingly more than capable Siri is compliments of Google/Gemini. No matter what, the Siri platform seems to be rounding into shape and I can now see how this will soon be monetized, not merely as a personal assistant, but as a suggestive partner to enhance one’s life. As for the Vision Pro software updates, they continue to shape the platform into what should be a true mass market product (lighter, sleeker, affordable) in about 2030. I think we’re still 3-4 years away from seeing that product take off.'
  • Greg Lippert on Guess what the Middlebury professor blames for our falling birthrates - 'Young people these days have different priorities and struggle to afford homes, etc. kids are expensive. Also Tinder, it’s easy to jump around and not commit. I have young adults and that’s what I see.'
  • David Emery on Guess what the Middlebury professor blames for our falling birthrates - 'Here’s a take on this story: https://www.geekculture.com/joyoftech/joyarchives/3263.html'
  • Rodney Avilla on Guess what the Middlebury professor blames for our falling birthrates - 'The only benefit when an author extrapolates cause and effects from correlations, is that it reveals the author’s biases.'
  • Robert Paul Leitao on Premarket: Apple is green - 'Space Exploration Te chronologies Corp (SpaceX) is now ranked 6th in market cap among US listed enterprises. The shares closed up on the day $25.95 or 19.22% from the IPO price of $135 to close its first trading day at $160.95. The market cap is listed at $2.11 trillion. That’s above the market cap of Taiwan Semiconductor at $1.89 trillion and below Amazon, which is in the 5th spot on the list, with a market cap of $2.57 trillion.'
  • Steven Philips on Guess what the Middlebury professor blames for our falling birthrates - 'Fred: Thanks! Data always helps reaching a valid conclusion.'
  • Fred Stein on Guess what the Middlebury professor blames for our falling birthrates - 'I checked the data from 1950. The data does not support the conclusion. Not even close. The data does show birth rates declining since 1950 with several ups and downs. KEY point “several”. (Source Macrotrends dot net) There was a sharp drop in birth rates starting in 1960, when the birth control pill got FDA approval. There was modest uptick in 2011 and 2012, just as smart phones really got going. There was another uptick in 2024 and 2025 following steeper than usual declines during Covid. Those correlations seem like legit causations.'
  • Gregg Thurman on Guess what the Middlebury professor blames for our falling birthrates - 'I have a hard time believing that texting replaced sex as our national pastime. I’d think it’s more likely that the bank meltdown of 2008 led to greater use of the pill, in the face of total economic collapse of the world economy. Who wanted to start ( or expand) a family in that environment? Throw in a couple of mid-east wars, Al Qaeda running around blowing things up, the collapse of Enron, and our bungled war with Panama’s Noriega and the invasion of Granada, in short the chaos that was the late ‘90s through the first 20 years of the 21st Century, who wouldn’t be fearful of the future? I reject that it was a single event that caused birth rates to decline, it was the loss of our belief in American exceptionalism (precipitated by the failings of the Vietnam war) that caused the decline. Trump is continuing that sense of loss as our institutions have failed to curb his anti-constitutional conduct. After all that, not having children just became habit.'
  • Stephen Gordon on Guess what the Middlebury professor blames for our falling birthrates - 'Forget the Great Recession, in 2007 it was BlackBerry.'
  • Brent Maynard on Counterpoint's M5 Pro teardown finds a chip built for accelerated computing - 'I exclusively use local models on my M4 Max 64GB for a variety of tasks and learning how to use models on device. I don’t and won’t pay for foundational model access. I have been an IT professional for 45 years and am quite impressed what the latest batch of local models can do. Everything from coding iPhone apps, generating detailed design documents after feeding it a detailed prompt, helping design 3D printer housings and code templates for an ESP32 based laser “goose deterrent”, and other tinkering projects to see what local models can do. I adjunct teach Comp Science classes and I am trying to make sure the students use AI as a tool and not a crutch. I see critical thinking skills going out the window if we don’t change the way we deliver the curriculum. A lot of traditional professors stay in academia mode and don’t convey practical skills and real world knowledge to students. That combined with easy AI access has the potential to limit creativity and problem solving skills. I asked my Spring Computer Architecture class of 35 students if they pay for OpenAI or Claude, and all 35 raised their hands. I say probably once a week, use AI as a tool, not a crutch.'
  • Steven Philips on Guess what the Middlebury professor blames for our falling birthrates - 'Another good reason to own an iPhone! 🙂'
  • David Emery on Counterpoint's M5 Pro teardown finds a chip built for accelerated computing - 'No analysis, no citations. This is just bald assertions, and it’s one of the things I find so objectionable about using a LLM chat engine for ‘research’. “Trust me, I’m an AI!”'
  • Michael Goldfeder on Premarket: Apple is green - 'I’ll be curious to see if the subsequent IPO’s for Open AI and Anthropic generate anything near the buzz created by the SpaceX IPO. I think that SpaceX sucked all of the IPO oxygen out of the room for the rest of 2026.'
  • Michael Goldfeder on Guess what the Middlebury professor blames for our falling birthrates - 'The closing of Drive in theaters is the real culprit.'
  • Fred Stein on Guess what the Middlebury professor blames for our falling birthrates - 'Correlation is not causation.'
  • Fred Stein on Counterpoint's M5 Pro teardown finds a chip built for accelerated computing - 'Gemini said; (but note everyday AI workloads) ” A modern Apple Silicon Mac can migrate an estimated 70–90% of everyday AI workloads from the cloud, including code generation, summarization, transcription, and agentic workflows. You can run highly capable open-source models (e.g., Q4/Q8 quantization of 8B to 70B parameter LLMs) completely locally on your hardware.The shift from cloud to local execution is being driven by several key benefits:Zero Costs: No per-token API usage fees or monthly subscription charges from cloud providers like OpenAI or Anthropic. Complete Privacy: All processing, prompt history, and file parsing happen on-device, meaning no sensitive company code or proprietary data leaves your machine.Offline Availability: Workflows remain fully operational without an internet connection.Cloud vs. Local: What Can (and Can’t) Migrate?What Can Migrate to the Mac:General Text Generation & Chat: Open-source models rivaling standard cloud tools can be loaded directly onto the machine.Coding Assistants: Local agentic workflows and inline autocomplete can run entirely offline.”'
  • John Konopka on Counterpoint's M5 Pro teardown finds a chip built for accelerated computing - 'It’s too bad these are so small. Most people just see the device and enjoy how well it works. These SOCs are truly modern wonders. The pyramids in Egypt have nothing on these. It boggles the mind to think of all the engineers, chemists, physicists, finance people, organizers and managers who had to collaborate to make these a reality.'
  • Fred Stein on Counterpoint's M5 Pro teardown finds a chip built for accelerated computing - 'Also from the article “for 7 billion to 13 billion-parameter models, because the combination of up to 64 GB unified memory and 4× higher GPU AI performance can become a key advantage.” These tokens are free, for researchers that already own Macs. It may also drive switching to Macs'
  • Darren DMW on Premarket: Apple is green - 'Those paying attention will remember RPL was pro SPG (Simon) about 5 years ago when it was under $120. I listened and have averaged about 6% dividend yield since then. (Owner) management seem very experienced and focussed. Dividend increases a little bit every 2 or 3 quarters. Great steady stock to have and hold, but perhaps fully valued at these prices. Thanks Robert.'
  • Gregg Thurman on Premarket: Apple is green - '”I placed an order to sell PUTs that expire end of the year” I almost did the same thing. It’s just that I’m such an optimist, that I get a bad vibe from anything that may be considered negative.'
  • Gregg Thurman on Apple's iPhone revenue share was its highest ever for the March quarter - 'Maybe it’s my aging ability to follow long conversations about abstract concepts, I don’t know, but I had a hard time following this conversation. I wonder how many others had the same difficulty, and is that difficulty is spilling over into feature overload.'
  • Joseph Bland on Premarket: Apple is green - 'Volume was 38 M vs the (higher now) average of 47 M. My guess on why no “lift” today: Max Pain was probably closer to $290 than $295 (recall that it’s measured in units of $5). Anyway, if you look at a one month chart, you’ll see that it’s been trending back up again since it dropped to ~$290. When it comes to AAPL, patience is definitely a virtue!'
  • Gregg Thurman on Apple's iPhone revenue share was its highest ever for the March quarter - '”I wonder if the markets are distracted by the SpaceX IPO.” I was wondering the same thing. And considering SpaceX’s fundamentals, I’m wondering if these early bird buyers might also be early bird profit takers, not interested in sticking around for quarterly results.'
  • David Thall on Premarket: Apple is green - 'I think the SpaceX IPO had a significant effect on the Tech stocks this week. It closed with a market cap of $2.1 trillion. Tesla, by comparison, is $1.5 trillion. Besides making Elon Musk, the richest sociopath on the planet, it also sucked up an enormous amount of liquidity out of the market. This may have contributed to why the other tech stocks went down this week. Thursday on Mad Money, Cramer had a chartist on – and one of the big takeaways was there’s very little liquidity in the market right now. So there’s very little cash on the sidelines. MY TAKE: Next week could see profit taking out of SpaceX… and guess where that money could go? The problem with AAPL now, is the “news” is already out – so to get the stock price to go back up significantly could take a while, until there’s some kind of new Apple news. Worst case scenario, we have to wait until the next ER when Apple reports terrific numbers again – and the stock goes up to a new all-time high again. Personally, I placed an order to sell PUTs that expire end of the year – because I believe Apple is now at the lower end of its new trading range and it’s a good time to buy the dip. Just sayin’.'
  • Daniel Epstein on Premarket: Apple is green - 'Robert, Apple stock is marching to its own drummer today. Could be a lot of selling pressure from Space X rebalancing among funds and investors. I haven’t seen the negative news which would point to the stock to continue its decline. I will say Apple stock often trades about 10% below its highs when there is a break between real news events that drive the stock.'
  • David Emery on Premarket: Apple is green - 'SpaceX: Proof that “A fool and his money are soon parted….”'
  • Robert Paul Leitao on Premarket: Apple is green - 'Into the final hour of trading and Apple is now off $4.73 at $290.91. This is in contrast to a market moving mostly higher today. The major indexes remain in the green. Over 75% of S&P 500 components are higher on the day. Seagate, Intel and Western Digital are all on the index’s leaderboard today. Albermarle is the top performer on the index today and is up 9.17% at $173.21. Goldman Sachs, the lead financial firm on the SpaceX IPO, is now up 2.95% at $1,066.16. As for SpaceX, the shares are flying high today and are up $32 at $167 from the this morning’s opening price of $135.'