Horace Dediu on Mark Gurman: Apple has a cheaper laptop up its sleeve - 'This is only happening because there is a sufficiently powerful A series chip to put in a Mac. It has nothing to do with “going after Chromebooks”. This is momentous but has been foreseeable for years. The trajectory of the A series was always “disruptive”. To Intel first and, eventually to the M series. It’s quite stunning that a lowly phone processor now can run not just a laptop but a Macintosh. Then again, M is used in another mobile device, the iPad. And a very mobile device, the wearable Vision Pro. Apple is the only company that can self-disrupt, in multiple dimensions.'
on Mark Gurman: Apple has a cheaper laptop up its sleeve - 'Not sure about this particular configuration, but I recall a lot of discussion that this sort of thing would be possible when Apple replaced Intel chips with their own SOC. An easily affordable laptop with great battery life that still provided good margins.'
on Mark Gurman: Apple has a cheaper laptop up its sleeve - 'A lot of writers might think it was perfect for just those reasons.'
on Mark Gurman: Apple has a cheaper laptop up its sleeve - 'As a traveling 2nd to my regular MacBook. Yes! If it’s nearly as sleek and svelte as the 12” MacBook, I’ll buy one as a 2nd to my main MacBook Air 13”. For travels. The 12” was fantastic when using in 2019. So much, that I tried OCLP (to run current OS on non-supported hardware). I would go back to using a MacBook Pro 14” as my main. (a revenue and marging offset, granted one off use case). I would need to figure out an easy way keeping them in sync.'
on Mark Gurman: Apple has a cheaper laptop up its sleeve - 'Hasn’t Apple always made laptops that have sold for less than $1,000? I’ve never thought of that as a “budget” product. That said, I’ve always taken my laptop with me when I travel, so a smaller, cheaper laptop that is probably faster than my current 2015 MacBook Air would definitely be attractive for me. Although I’ll almost certainly just buy another Air in the next few months.'
on Mark Gurman: Apple has a cheaper laptop up its sleeve - 'I’m not sure this laptop signals a trend but we can perhaps predict a dynamic: as the profit share from services grows, and if Google pays Apple based on the size of its user base, it then becomes profitable to lower the cost of some devices for consumers if doing so grows that base. It would be unwise, for example, to forego fat profit from services and Google from a consumer who might start subscribing to them if they had an Apple device. The more people Apple can bring into its ecosystem, even on thinner device margins, the more profit gets generated over the long term. The larger the gap between profit on hardware and profit on services/Google grows, the more tempting it is–and the more sense it makes–to pursue this strategy. If that dynamic is correct and the pressure builds, and Apple pursues it, that does not imply reversing the commitment that “we don’t ship junk.” Thinner margins on great hardware might be worth it to expand the base. Personally, I have a 13 inch Air w/M3 chip, and I would JUMP at the chance for a laptop that was even smaller. Love this form factor, smaller could be dynamite, no lower price required, imho.'
on Premarket: Apple is red - 'I put a limit order on NVDA in case we see a sizable drop over the next 60 days. Even Sam Altman is getting nervous… futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/sam-altman-loses-cool-revenue'
on Premarket: Apple is red - '@Bill: After a nuclear blast the only survivors will be cockroaches and Hedge Fund Managers. They compliment each other perfectly.'
on Mark Gurman: Apple has a cheaper laptop up its sleeve - 'Look at the MBA 13 and 15 inch today. The 13 inch at $999 is $200 lower than the 15 inch. It has 4 speakers instead of 6. That’s it. By inference, an 11 inch MBA would sell for $799-ish. Maybe slightly less, considering normal component cost declines. Apple’ iPad easily competes with Chrome. Windows loses due to an aging demographic.'
on Apple issues election-eve software updates - 'Oh, I updated my laptop, my Mini, my HomePod Mini, and my iPhone 15 to 26.1 To my GREAT DISAPPOINTMENT, AirPlay works -worse- from either my laptop or my Mini to my HomePod, with multiple disconnects/drops in an hour. The bug where ‘shuffle by album’ is still there, too. At this point, I’m -disgusted- with Apple’s ability to find and fix bugs that aren’t security problems. I was polite in my “Letter to Tim”, but if I wrote that today, I’d be much less so.'
on Mark Gurman: Apple has a cheaper laptop up its sleeve - 'This does NOT represent a “strategic shift” and is also NOT “a lower-end offering”. This is leveraging your lead in silicon, OS, supply chain and ecosystem. They’d be negligent *not* to do this. And these offerings will still be on par, if not superior.'
on Premarket: Apple is red - 'The major indexes continue in the red. On the S&P 500 market breadth remains narrow. 60% of S&P 500 components are trading below the breakeven line at 2:30pm in the east. Apple is bucking today’s downward trend. The shares turned green late morning and continue above the line in afternoon trading. The shares are up $1.42 at $270.47. Chatter about a market bubble prompted by the gains in AI-related stocks such as NVIDIA with its $5 trillion market cap is getting louder. Ironically, one of the enterprises that had its share price bubble burst in the big dotcom bubble 25 years ago reached a new all-time high yesterday. Cisco, on a price target upgrade from UBS to $88 per share, set a new all-time high of $74.48. Cisco is off $1.74 today at $72.71.'
on Premarket: Apple is red - '(Raises his hand) Me, Gregg. And it seems to match nicely with a 5 year chart. But a 10 year chart reveals an even more interesting observation, because just over 5 years ago, something magical happened to AAPL, and I think it’s about to happen again, In March of 2020, AAPL was at a low.of around $60/share when it went on a run culminating in a trailing P/E of, as I recall, about 42, peaking at year’s end at about $132/share. Yep. It literally more than doubled in about 9 months. And I think it could be happening again. On April 6th this year, AAPL hit $181.46/ share, and since then, it’s gathered momentum I don’t think that momentum has been lost. In fact, I think it has been added to. Yes, the Trump Tariffs have been more and more desperately backpedaling, and iPhones are selling like hotcakes. But there’s more to it than that, as many have been saying here for some time now, clear back to when Tommo was posting Apple’s doom for missing the AI freight train. Because Apple HASN’T missed that train! In fact, they’re literally the single most important AI component: The piece that will actually monetize AI! I woke up with a thought: How is Apple like SpaceX? It’s simple, really. SpaceX (and the really smart rocket guy that was SpaceX’s #2 employee) cracked the problem of reusable rocketry. In doing that, they literally paved a new highway to Low Earth Orbit (LEO). Apple has also been paving its own highway. And while it has its competitors, NONE of them can presently even begin to match what Apple has already put in place: Safe, private interaction with AI on a billion or more devices. And to go there, Apple’s competition is going to have to match years of development. SpaceX has built a transportation system that, even now, competitors are just beginning to match. But it’s taken many years, and a concerted effort. And in the meantime, SpaceX has developed what is soon to be a completely reusable Starship, Apple is literally where SpaceX was when they first landed a reusable rocket. That’s the thought I woke up with.'
on Richard Windsor is counting the years (months?) until the AI bubble pops - ' The wild cards, IP and Brand Value, are worth hundreds of $B’s What value is an IP that can’t generate profitable revenue? What value is a startup brand name that failed? To me, Apple management looks smarter every subsequent day.'
on Apple's Live Translation: The NYT's Brian X. Chen can't believe his ears - 'Gregg Thurman said: “I’m thinking about translations of foreign movies. I hate subtitles. They take attention away from the action.” **You hate subtitles? You young whippersnapper, you’re lucky your hearing is so damn good. 🙂 My wife and younger son shamed me into getting hearing aids many years ago because I was missing so much from the conversation dialog. My hearing aids don’t work well in noisy restaurants because they amplify ALL the conversations which causes me to not clearly hear what people at my table are saying. But, early in the morning, I often have to tell my wife to hold off on any comments because “I don’t have my ears in yet”. The hearing aids make that much of a difference. And, as far as subtitles go, to me they’re a godsend and I use subtitles on everything I watch, including on my iPad. My hearing aids are great, but I still sometimes still have to ask someone to repeat themselves. For example, as we were finishing a very long walk this morning, I thought my wife quietly said, “I have to have some tea when we get home”…but that’s not what she said at all. 🙂'
on Premarket: Apple is red - 'Apple green now. Possibly because Gurman is out with a story on Apple’s low cost MacBook. “ Apple plans to sell the new machine for well under $1,000 by using less-advanced components. The laptop will rely on an iPhone processor and a lower-end LCD display. The screen will also be the smallest of any current Mac at 13.6 inches.” Shipping soon at around $600.'
