Recent Comments

  • Gregg Thurman on WSJ: Sam Altman's AI math doesn't add up - 'Hi Joseph. When I look at the cellular experience of MSFT and GOOG I am not impressed. Microsoft had Windows CE, then bought Nokia when it became apparent that Apple’s iPhone was eating everybody’s lunch. Both ventures were failures. GOOG had been planning Android as a free OS for flip phones. The iPhone entered the market and the vision for Android was shit canned in favor of an iPhone inspired model. It was a hilarious piece of crap that didn’t come out until the iPhone 4. GOOG completely missed the premium market, something Apple has a lot of experience with, and had to settle for a very competitive commodity market with rapidly declining margins. As an engine to drive search based advertising Android was fantastic. As a smartphone OS the only firms to genuinely benefit from Android were GOOG (advertising) and Samsung (fast copier). But Samsung had bullied its competition who tried to seek recompense for its copying. Apple wasn’t like the competition and won. Neither MSFT nor GOOG control the whole stack. By virtue of that they will never be able to match, let alone surpass Apple’s mobile offerings. I’m not in the least bit concerned about those two as future competitors of Apple. To the contrary, I think they need Apple’s shirttails in order to survive in an “AI” future.'
  • Bill Donahue on Macalope: Three reasons Apple's CEO switch has been so chill - 'I don’t think you need to go that far afield, Fred. I’d say Sam Altman is the biggest threat to OpenAI.'
  • Philip Elmer-DeWitt on UBS up Apple target $7 to $287 - '“Typo should say – ‘raises target to $287’” Argh. Fixed. Thanks.'
  • Joseph Bland on Premarket: Apple is green - 'Volume yesterday was a little below average, and initially dropped Apple down to just about $265/share. Options and negative media played their part in it, setting up what looks to become a nice gain for yesterday’s bottom purchasers of AAPL during or following Apple’s fast-approaching earnings call – additional black swans staying absent, of course. Except for the crap media manipulation, I no longer have a problem with folks making a buck from these downdrafts, since Apple itself can often take advantage of the drops on our behalf, either with open market purchases of AAPL or with ASRs. I just prefer the boring safety of a long term Apple position steadily increasing our net worth.'
  • Gregg Thurman on Big bet on Apple puts - 'I just placed a Sell order on my Call Spread position at $4.85 (max value is $5.00). I don’t expect that order to fill until after earning/guidance. At that time, with solid guidance for the June quarter (two months remaining) there will be 3 months to the next earnings report (July) I will again purchase $20/$25 in the money for July. I will reinvest the total gain from my initial investment. I anticipate those contracts to be about 130 JUL $250/$255 Call Spreads vs 100 of my initial purchase.'
  • Joseph Bland on WSJ: Sam Altman's AI math doesn't add up - 'Hi, Gregg. OpenAI, unless I miss my bet, is going to be forced to ultimately hang its shield with Microsoft, in order to get product that’s sellable out the door in a timely fashion. Of course, there’s irony in that, since once upon a time Apple hung its shield with Microsoft, only to be ultimately betrayed with Windows. OTOh, Apple is partnering with Alphabet, which has a stable of Android, Chrome, and Pixel, not to mention Google Search. Clearly, if OpenAI can envision an integrated AI smartphone, so can Alphabet. IMO, for this reason alone, Apple may be continuing its own Cloud AI development. But, of course, we’ll hear nothing about it, and rightly so. I’m hoping it’s sandboxed off somewhere, learning by watching, and getting ready for the inevitable moment Alphabet goes up hard against the iPhone.'
  • Gregg Thurman on WSJ: Sam Altman's AI math doesn't add up - '” But the timeline that was published by Kuo is just way too aggressive. IMO.” Correctomundo. Beyond that, how many pioneers are going to adopt OpenAI’s new mobile device (in 3-4 years) when the most loved mobile has a decade head start. Maybe I’m smoking too much hopium, but the evidence against the data center model seems to me to be piling up. There’s way too much capacity at too high a price for centralized, general use “AI” to be successful. The on device models scales with the expansion of Apple device users, and is financed by those users, not Apple.'
  • Joseph Bland on Macalope: Three reasons Apple's CEO switch has been so chill - 'The Horny One is always a fun read. Thanks, PED!'
  • Joseph Bland on WSJ: Sam Altman's AI math doesn't add up - 'Hi, Neal. It’s called being all cart and no horse….'
  • Greg Boyd on High praise for Apple TV - 'https://giphy.com/gifs/AppleTV-apple-tv-app-gyeHU9NakQBXa8imRJ If you don’t like “Slow Horses” we can’t be friends.'
  • Gregg Thurman on Premarket: Apple is green - '” Options must be more complicated than what Wikipedia says.” No, they aren’t. The complication in options not knowing how they work. There isn’t a single person on this forum that couldn’t learn. All they have to do is open their mind to the fact that there are other ways to invest.'
  • Joseph Bland on Nate B. Jones: Apple has made a hardware bet against cloud AI (video) - 'Sorry – just dated myself – I meant MacBook, of course…. And I join with the rest of you in saying that this sounds on the money, although I’m not qualified to judge more than generally. I’ll be running it past my stepson to see his reaction. He is one of those folks Mr. Jones was specfically talking to at the last.'
  • Joseph Bland on Nate B. Jones: Apple has made a hardware bet against cloud AI (video) - 'Huh, William. All I saw was books and a big ass model rocket….'
  • Joseph Bland on Nate B. Jones: Apple has made a hardware bet against cloud AI (video) - 'Hi, Gregg, I’d modify it to simply say “Long live Apple chips!”. Turns out the M5 Powerbook is equally in demand. When practically your whole product line is struggling to meet demand, and it’s taken you literally decades to build it up, you have to be blind to not see the incredible potential value of the company. Advantage, Apple and Apple longs, and maybe game, set, and match.'
  • Rodney Avilla on Nate B. Jones: Apple has made a hardware bet against cloud AI (video) - '“One question for the group. Did the Apple pivot on AI come about because they failed in the race and had to pivot or was this the plan all along?” Based on Apple’s CapEx, they may have started in the race, but by staying within their budget, they quickly changed paths.'
  • Rodney Avilla on Premarket: Apple is green - 'Monday’s put peak at $190 went poof!” Options must be more complicated than what Wikipedia says.'
  • Joseph Bland on UBS up Apple target $7 to $287 - '“…macro weakness dampening product demand…” Not exactly Apple’s problem alone. I suppose I’m grateful he has a price target that’s above AAPL’s present price, under the circumstances The blackest of black swans hovers over the whole world’s economy. In the meantime, Apple just keeps practicing continual improvement and serving its customer base just like Mr. Deming taught, lo those many decades ago.'
  • Bill Donahue on Nate B. Jones: Apple has made a hardware bet against cloud AI (video) - 'Which is why they’ve begun using SPVs to finance the vast spends. Or, more accurately, to keep evidence of the spends off their books.'
  • William Baggs on Nate B. Jones: Apple has made a hardware bet against cloud AI (video) - 'I looked at what he’s got on his shelf and thought, nah.'
  • Fred Stein on Nate B. Jones: Apple has made a hardware bet against cloud AI (video) - 'Hi David, Give it a listen. The sub title is misleading. Apple chose device vs. cloud, which is winning choice. It’s also a much better business regardless.'
  • Jeff Daniel on Nate B. Jones: Apple has made a hardware bet against cloud AI (video) - 'PED, Thanks for sharing. Very interesting.'
  • Fred Stein on Nate B. Jones: Apple has made a hardware bet against cloud AI (video) - 'Good question, upvoted. Apple has dropped products like a wall mounted TV, Titan, and may be cloud-based frontier models. Instead they focus on products with their IP (and cross-platform capability) drive durable pricing power. They also avoid large CAPEX, leaving that to others like chip foundries, telecom infrastructure, fintech rails, etc. Frontier requires a lot of CAPEX, mainly for the infrastructure other than Apple’s core chip and software IP.'
  • Bill Donahue on Nate B. Jones: Apple has made a hardware bet against cloud AI (video) - 'My bet is the second scenario, Neal. Apple has always been pretty tight with its spending, and spending hundreds of billions of dollars on physical infrastructure for which not even one of the hyperscalers has provided a clear financial model for acceptable payoff and returns would be a wild departure for Apple management and the Board. They refused to do that with their manufacturing, opting instead to squeeze margins and profits from others who specialize in that, and their refusal to do that with AI cloud compute capacity seems like the same kind of decision to me. So that’s the first part of the decision: refuse to dump money into the AI datacenter black hole. Add in that they’ve been working on and have prioritized AI for a very long time, and have been open about how hard it’s been to get to an AI agent/assistant/bot to a place that meets their performance standards for user interactions. LLMs suddenly leapt onto the public consciousness what, two years ago? So for Apple to suddenly go all in on that and to chase a highly questionable LLM dream, the fallacy and failings of which their own researchers have widely published papers on, would be crazy. Add in privacy protection, and that’s the second part of the decision: relying on 3rd-party cloud-based AI providers – all of whom live on and for monetizing user data – for something as important as providing Apple users with that functionality would immediately destroy everything Apple has done until now to protect user privacy and security. So refusing to join the datacenter rush and refusing to sacrifice Apple user security means they’d have to go all-in on on-board, secure AI, across their product line. The chip advancements and hardware upgrades they’ve accomplished over the last two years says to me that that’s been the plan, which has perhaps crystallized more over the last two years.'
  • Fred Stein on Macalope: Three reasons Apple's CEO switch has been so chill - 'Apple is a threat to OpenAI, not the other way around. Google, with Gemini, is a powerful ally for Apple and threat to OpenAI. Frontier models may commoditize. The dot com bubble also included a Telecom bubble and bust. Frontier modes, now a scarce premium asset, may reach over-supply and price collapse. The Telecom (fiber optic) build-out was debt fueled. The frontier build out carries $100B’s of debt. Finally, much of demand for back-end in the Dot Com, came from VC funded startups, not from revenue-generating customers.'
  • David Emery on Macalope: Three reasons Apple's CEO switch has been so chill - 'I loved the pun at the end of the Macalope article…'
  • Gregg Thurman on Macalope: Three reasons Apple's CEO switch has been so chill - 'For every 1,000 suggestions what Apple should do with its cash, 999 will be met with a resounding NO, with a single YES. TSLA was a resounding NO, and for good reason.'
  • Fred Stein on UBS up Apple target $7 to $287 - 'Typo should say – ‘raises target to $287’'
  • Gregg Thurman on UBS up Apple target $7 to $287 - '”suggesting he doesn’t see much upside long term.” Suggesting he has blinders on.'
  • David Emery on Nate B. Jones: Apple has made a hardware bet against cloud AI (video) - 'WTF? The guy is an “AI influencer” Nothing in that bio that shows anything other than someone making a living doing Tik-Tok videos about AI.'
  • David Emery on Nate B. Jones: Apple has made a hardware bet against cloud AI (video) - 'I gotta wonder, by the way, about a guy who has to wear a stocking cap inside his house. I’m thinking there’s a “Strange Brew” vibe there, eh hoser?'