David Drinkwater on Barron's: John Ternus is off to a good start - '“My take: As choreographed as an Apple product introduction.” John Ternus’ ascent to the CEO role was not choreographed in the sense that is was “fake”, but the stage was well set, and I am 100% confident that there was lots of (years of, no decades of) work that laid the groundwork for a transition where he was ready to step into the limelight. He deeply knew every product that he was going to present, which is why it “looked” so effortless. It’s because it was effortless from him. No magic tricks. Just sharing something that he deeply understood and believed in. What I am trying to say, I think, is that it is not a good start: it is a good transition and public demonstration. For Ternus, this is hardly the “start”.'
on Premarket: Apple is green - 'Apple finished the day up $1.07 or 0.32% at $332.41. Looking at the financial stocks Goldman Sachs dropped 3.96% today to finish at $937.98 and Morgan Stanley pulled back 1.87% to $202.42. Select AI-related names such as Arista Networks, which gained 2.44% to $197.54, and Vertiv Holding, which rose 2.05% to $239.41, moved higher on the day.'
on The Information: Apple may reenter the server market with Nvidia - 'My Firewire drives got all excited at the thought they’d be relevant again! 🙂 🙂'
on Barron's: John Ternus is off to a good start - 'More color on the Emmys: https://brooklyneagle.com/415287/widows-bay-breaks-emmys-record/'
on Premarket: Apple is green - 'Yup, stricter emissions regulation than rest of the U.S. It’s our recompense for the lack of winter fuel consumption.'
on The Information: Apple may reenter the server market with Nvidia - 'Yikes! Thanks for that correction, David!'
on The Information: Apple may reenter the server market with Nvidia - 'David, here’s what AI said to your question: Switch and Chiplet Sales: Nvidia makes direct revenue by selling its specialized networking gear, switches, chiplets, and software licensing through NVLink. Fusion.Ecosystem Expansion: Embedding its architecture inside Apple’s hardware guarantees Nvidia a financial stake in a brand-new enterprise server product line targeted at governments and major businesses.'
on GM reverses itself, designs new dashboard with Apple and Google - 'It was simply foolish on GM’s part, three years ago, they now see the light. I look forward to news of the ‘27 models from all makes running Carplay 3.0'
on Premarket: Apple is green - 'AAPL closed at $332.42, up 1.07 on weak volume of 36M shares. AAPL didn’t get sucked down with the broader market after the Fed raised rates by 0.25% to combat rising inflation. What is the inflation due to? Rising and persistent oil price hikes due to the Iran War and resulting closure of the Strait of Hormuz which STILL hasn’t been resolved, leading to near and record gasoline and diesel prices. “The current U.S. national averages for major energy commodities are $4.37 per gallon for regular gasoline, $6.31 per gallon for diesel, ~$5.21 per gallon for heating oil, and ~$2.83 to $2.90 per MMBtu for natural gas (Henry Hub spot/futures).“ Diesel: At or near record highs. National diesel averages recently crossed the $6-a-gallon threshold for the first time on record, driven heavily by middle-east supply bottlenecks and surging crude costs linked to geopolitical conflict. They are tracking near or above nominal all-time peaks. Gasoline: Elevated, but below all-time records. At roughly $4.37, gasoline is high and climbing contrary to normal late-summer demand drops, but remains below the historic peaks near $5.00+ seen during mid-2022. Heating Oil: Hovering high. Retail heating oil sits above $5.20/gallon, influenced by tight distillate inventories, though regional variations in the Northeast remain sharp. Guess what, all of the above cause ripple increases to everything that is moved including trucking, rail, air, and of course small business, leading to price increases in food, commodities, resources. As well, continued tariff wars raised imported products which America cannot replace or will not pay higher for US products. Of course, here’s the President’s response to the unanimous rate hike headed by his hand picked Chair replacement, Kevin Warsh: ““Interest Rates in the United States should be 1%, or less, because we are the Best Credit in the World — BY FAR. Our Country is BOOMING with new Investment!” “If we stopped Trading with every country that we have a Deficit with, which is most of them, we would make, at least, 1.5 Trillion Dollars a year,” the president continued. “LOWER THE INTEREST RATES FOR THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, AND FAST!” Such macroeconomic understanding! Generally, inflation was reignited and fanned by the last 6 months of geopolitical, military, trade and foreign policy “decisions”, pretty much leading to average Americans having to foot the bill AND transfer wealth to energy businesses AND stress smaller businesses on costs and eventual price hikes, dripping down to us consumers. Whether there is a long game to discredit California and its Governor because of record gasoline & diesel prices (Avg $6.04, record $6.44 in 2022, >$8.14 for diesel, an all time record), we don’t know.'
on The Information: Apple may reenter the server market with Nvidia - 'Apple likes to control its key hardware and software so I would bet they will partner to start and then eventually roll their own (like they did with Qualcomm).'
on The Information: Apple may reenter the server market with Nvidia - 'Bill, thanks for pointing that out. Here’s one interesting report from January: https://metalcloud.space/compare/apple-silicon-vs-nvidia/ So many great points in there, so here is just one teaser: “The cost implication is massive: Running Llama 70B at full precision on NVIDIA requires 2-3 H100s ($6,000-$12,000/month cloud rental). On MetalCloud, it’s a single machine [M3 MacStudio Ultra] at £3.50/hour.”'
on Horace Dediu on iPhone 2.0 - 'As iPhone cameras improve the number of exacting users do not keep pace.'
on Horace Dediu on iPhone 2.0 - 'If you are used to wearing sneakers you might very well vow to never wear boots, or high heels if you’re a lady. Note that boots and heels are more expensive.'
on GM reverses itself, designs new dashboard with Apple and Google - '60 inches of screen space?? That’s just ridiculous.'
on The Information: Apple may reenter the server market with Nvidia - 'This is all a smokescreen and the real reason is Nvidia needs to warm up to Apple is so they can figure out how to properly execute on buybacks and hopefully some day be as successful as Apple was and currently still is in this shrinking the float methodology.'
