Steven Philips on This week's Apple trading strategies (6/29-7/3/26) - 'Bernie is, of course, one of those congress critters who are too old to make rational judgments. (Along with half of the rest!) (Not that you can really blame his problems on age.)'
on This week's Apple trading strategies (6/29-7/3/26) - '”These price hikes aren’t unavoidable.” I can see his point. Cut buybacks in half and you may not have had to raise prices at all. Quarterlies may take a hit but market share would certainly rise. That of course might draw the ire of the DoJ Anti-Trust division'
on This week's Apple trading strategies (6/29-7/3/26) - 'Filed under insane by Bernie Sanders about as nutty as anything Trump says (which is saying a lot) From DF – Bernie Sanders, posting on Twitter/X Thursday: “Corporate greed is Tim Cook, the billionaire Apple CEO, claiming that hiking prices on Apple products by over $200 is “unavoidable” after it made $112 billion in profits last year & spent $310 billion on stock buybacks. These price hikes aren’t unavoidable. They’re unacceptable.” WTF?'
on This week's Apple trading strategies (6/29-7/3/26) - '@Joseph: Thank you for the kind comments. This Apple 3.0 get together ought to be a memorable event. Very much appreciative for pulling this all together and handling the dining arrangements. You too Romeo for those great looking shirts! @Joseph: BTW, since the $17 hit to Apple last week, is it too late to transfer this event to the local Costco and change everyone’s dining order to the $1.50 hot dog and unlimited beverage?'
on This week's Apple trading strategies (6/29-7/3/26) - 'Upvoted, Fred! BTW, I’m in the camp that wants to see Apple start manufacturing their own RAM, and thus hellp break the backs of the monopolistic cadre making obscene profits off of this. (Does it remind anyone else of the oil cartels and the original Arab oil embargo?) Cut out the middleman and pocket the difference, Apple; it’s a win-win. And forget about a shot across their bows. They don’t deserve the curtesy.'
on This week's Apple trading strategies (6/29-7/3/26) - 'Fred: I know you to be a smart, savvy and thoughtful gentleman. As bullish as I am on Apple at this time, how do you see the company starting a 10-year super cycle with Apple AI?'
on Daniel Ives: Apple held off as long as they could (video) - 'Working within the semiconductor integrated supply chain function, I think I have some analogies to share. We make silicon die and “sell them”, 99% within our own company, the remaining 1% direct to external customers. As such, we are “suppliers”. But we are also customers. We buy raw silicon. We buy chemicals that we use to clean and etch our wafers. We buy chemicals and services to “implant” into our wafers.’ Nowadays, lots of our vendors squeeze us. “We’re discontinuing this chemical.” (Isopropyl alcohol FFS! OK, find another vendor: not a huge deal, because the IPA does not go *into* the silicon. BBr3: oops, that’s a big deal, because that is one of the chemicals/dopants we use to make the transistors and electrical interconnects in our devices.) Some of these new source qualifications (verifications of goodness) require 1000 hours of stress cycling. That takes 6 weeks no matter what, but it really takes closer to ten because of back and forth transactions. And we had to get the Die built into packages, typically a 6 weeks cycle. And make the wafers with the intentional change injected at the right point in the process, probably 12 weeks minimum. So very quickly, that takes half a year, and some customers, even if we shipped their part internal to my company before they ever got shipped to the end customer, then want to do their *own* verifications, which can add another 6 months. And god forbid you have two different vendor changes to qualify. Customers sometimes force you to wait until you can coordinate both – strictly for their convenience. Based solely on my professional experience at the bottom end of the supply chain, I give Apple a lot of credit for not putting out price increases log ago.'
on This week's Apple trading strategies (6/29-7/3/26) - 'Agree Gregg, ignore the noise. AI created the memory supply / demand imbalance impacting device makers and hyperscalars. So who hurts the least? Apple can pass the cost to its price-insensitive demographic, with no need to borrow nor impact cash flow or rack up CAPEX (subject future write down.) Even if unit sales drop for a bit, as Katy Huberty said; “Demand is not perishable”.'
on Apple vs. Russia - 'I managed the creation of the very first Russian version of the Mac OS — 6.0.5, never released. I lived in Moscow and worked with a team of free-lance engineers in a brick office building that had been converted from a church. I brought two of them to Cupertino to finalize the build in 1991.Most Soviet software engineers had heard of Apple, some had even seen an Apple II, but no one had every owned a Macintosh computer, except for one automobile plant in Moscow (the Macs came from Germany). I also had to find Russian language fonts, which came from Stepan Patchikov, the late creator of Evernote and key software for the original Newton. Russia then was truly greenfield, so this was a chance to open the world’s largest country to the world of Apple. I was forced to leave Moscow before any Apple product was available; I believe a MacBook was used to introduce a Russian language version to the Russian market a year or two later. Doing business in Russia is never easy, and often a story of overcoming countless roadblocks and handicaps. Today it’s even worse, with a hot war that is worse than during the Cold war.'
on Saturday Apple video: What motivated Steve Jobs - 'I loved this, but it angers me that Jobs ignored his doctor’s advice for pancreatic cancer and followed a pseudoscientific diet until it was too late. Imagine the impact his inspirational leadership could have today. Compare his commencement speech to the ones many tech bros gave this year. We desperately need leaders like him. We’ll find them, but he would have helped that happen sooner. No one like him in my lifetime. Sorry, Need to blow my nose. Inspirational leadership got stuck in my eye. 🙂'
on Saturday Apple video: What motivated Steve Jobs - 'Inspiring! It’s very cool that he shared so much of his personal journey with the world – to our benefit!'
