Ron Fredrick on Oscars: NYT's critic horrified by Best Picture nomination for Apple's 'F1' - 'Gregg Thurman said: “Ron, I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that F1 was filmed in visionOS, with plans to rerelease post WWDC. If TC announces that you’ll find me at the Apple Store an hour later (and anxiously awaiting 2027 Kansas basketball).” **Gregg, the only technology enthusiasts who might want to hold off buying an Apple Vision Pro are 20 or 30 years younger than we are…and, IMO, even those folks shouldn’t wait for a lighter, less expensive model because the current product is so absolutely mind-blowing. Whether or not F1 was filmed in visionOS, you’d never regret buying an AVP. I do hope Apple announces more sports available for the Vision Pro and that Kansas basketball is among the teams that are included.'
on UBS: Apple's long-term DRAM contracts may expire in June - ' imagine when the AI market correction hits Been calling that for a while now. Sooner than later. No matter your backing, you can’t spend like a drunken sailor, without revenue for very long. OpenAI demonstrated that money CAN be made, just not enough to pay for all the capex. Altman’s AI device is a Hail Mary to keep the donor (long since passed the point of being investors) money flowing. OpenAI is going to be the mother of all bankruptcies.'
on UBS: Apple's long-term DRAM contracts may expire in June - 'How many times have we heard Apple is doomed because component X is in short supply and price is surging. Ignoring that the price rises will hurt more apple’s competitors who probably don’t have the long term deals and buying power of Apple and certainly don’t have Apple’s margins to absorb the increase. Plus even though memory is significant we don’t know if other components have been falling in price lately. Perhaps they have as Apple has been reporting higher GM. Finally, anyone else surprised that base iPhone pricing has hardly changed during this long run of inflation? Maybe Sept this year if indeed memory becomes a cost concern for Apple?'
on He shares his Apple family plan with two people wrongly convicted of murder - 'Apple “Family” plans (U.S.) aren’t really about legal family at all. They’re a small sharing group — up to six people — set up on trust. Apple doesn’t ask whether people are related, married, or living together. Each person has their own account, and one person agrees to take responsibility for the group. That leaves the hard part to us. Rules can tell you what’s allowed, but they don’t tell you what’s right. If someone uses that flexibility to help people who’ve already lost decades of their lives to a broken justice system, it may sit outside a narrow idea of “family,” but it sits squarely inside the idea of basic human decency. It’s not gaming the system; it’s choosing to act, quietly and concretely, instead of stopping at sympathy. (Apple’s family-sharing rules are largely the same everywhere, even though prices and availability differ by country.)'
on Apple postcards from Davos - 'Yeah, and Pissant looks very puffed up and full of himself. But in the opening pic it sure looks like TC is giving a real side-eye to Ms. La Garde. 🙂'
on Apple postcards from Davos - 'In your pic, Stephen Miller looks creepy as f and a straight up serial killer. Or unhappy as hell. He’s dead behind those eyes.'
on He shares his Apple family plan with two people wrongly convicted of murder - 'I’m not sure if this is a proper or wise use of a family plan. But his empathy towards their situations is definitely commendable. And what’s even more admirable, Is his willingness to actually do something about it. That’s a story worth repeating.'
on Apple to expand App Store advertising in March - 'Apple moves to further Enshittification for the App Store, and in particular the Big Lie about the alleged value of ‘targeted advertising’ (to both consumers and advertisers.) One reason why I don’t use Apple iOS services (Stocks.app, News.app, etc.) is because I can’t block the blankety blank ads, the same way I can in Safari. When the walled garden is full of advertising, it will lose significant value. Unlike Google and Meta, Apple does NOT NEED advertising to be profitable. Let me assure every advertiser out there: Putting ads in front of me in on-line services generates a SIGNIFICANT NEGATIVE RESPONSE. Do you want to tar your brand with obnoxious, intrusive on-line advertising?'
on Oscars: NYT's critic horrified by Best Picture nomination for Apple's 'F1' - 'My, but we have a lot of movie curmudgeons here! I’ve enjoyed this movie twice, and I’ll probably enjoy it again. I’ll never watch it as many times as I’ve watched Casablanca, Maltese falcon, any Hitchcock movie, the Manchurian candidate, etc., etc. But it’s a worthy movie. And don’t we want Apple to succeed with these movies? Doesn’t every movie that they succeed with help the share price, which is good, right? I don’t know why there are so many downers. This movie did what it needed to do for us. My own personal list of favorite movies (my “desert island movie list”) includes multiple movies from every decade since the 30s. I’m certainly not stuck on the “modern movie look.” Frankly, I’m a little bit tired of the modern movie look. That includes everything from plot devices to a special effects, and dialogue. But F1 was enjoyable, and it kicked ass in the box office. Those are good things. I want Apple kicking ass there.'
on He shares his Apple family plan with two people wrongly convicted of murder - 'In 2023, I hired a lawyer to get Alla out of jail in Ohio. The US government had decided she was a dangerous Russian hacker, but never had a case. In 2021, Alla was living with her then husband in Suriname in South America. An FBI agent went there, and got the Suriname government to revoke her visa and deport her. She was to be put on a plane to Amsterdam, but she ended up on a different plane. The plane landed in Miami, where the US government arrested her. When I heard about her, she had been in jail for almost two years “awaiting trial “. The constitution guarantees a speedy trial, which is supposed to be seven weeks. The prosecution had no case, so they worked on getting her to plead guilty and accept 80 years in prison. She was not guilty, so she did not agree to this. I hired a lawyer who got her out for time served, but she was deported home to Latvia. Of course, I got her an iPhone and other Apple devices.'
on 219 patients at risk of stroke wore an Apple Watch 12 hours a day for 6 months - 'Gregg–hope you are well. Good to get this info. I assume this was not an ultra?'
on Utah state symbols: Dutch oven, brine shrimp, porcini mushrooms and... Android OS? - 'Based on his proposal for SB-138, the logical dining extension for this political genius is that when his entire family wants to go eat at In-N-Out Burger, he insists on ordering from McDonald’s and eating his “Happy Meal” in the car all by himself.'
on 219 patients at risk of stroke wore an Apple Watch 12 hours a day for 6 months - 'Hi David, upvoted. Yes, healthcare IT sucks. With all due disclaimers, there is an angel stage company trying to address this called AdviNOW Medical.'
on Oscars: NYT's critic horrified by Best Picture nomination for Apple's 'F1' - 'I lasted 15 minutes.'
on UBS: Apple's long-term DRAM contracts may expire in June - 'I imagine when the AI market correction hits, and/or data center construction slows, a lot of those memory foundries will be left high and dry, with lots of unused capacity. Apple would then be able to get memory at much lower prices because it can guarantee capacity. Boom and bust is pretty typical here historically.'
on Premarket: Apple is red - 'The quarterly pullback on AAPL (4.5%) is only about half of the quarterly pullback on MSFT (9.5%), which I expect to be about the extent of it, now that President Trump has been forced to retract his latest tariff threats by the negative market reaction. Typically, AAPL rebuilds slowly after these “runs on the bank”, but the depth of the run (outside of last year’s aberration) is decreasing and thus the time it takes to regain the lost ground back to a fair valuation. It used to literally take years, but barring yet another black swan event, I’m expecting just a few months.'
on UBS: Apple's long-term DRAM contracts may expire in June - 'Open AI Corning the market on memory is the reason for the price hikes. There is no sustainable moat around AI. So they are trying to create this as a barrier to entry.'
on 219 patients at risk of stroke wore an Apple Watch 12 hours a day for 6 months - 'Amen Watch & Health.'
