John Konopka on Premarket: Apple is green - 'I saw an article the other day that Anthropic had asked Apple for several billion dollars (per year? ) to use their AI. Apple declined. Anthropic tried to spin it like they had turned down Apple. Sounds like sour grapes. Anyway, the number is interesting. Let’s say it was $5B a year. Presumably Apple is paying less than that to Google for their AI. But I wonder if Google will somehow monetize this connection and then give Apple a cut of the action? Anthropic is desperate for cash and all they could think they could get from Apple was several billions per year. It is yet another data point showing that AI is not worth much monetarily. After all, Google was paying Apple ~$20B for access to customers to sell them ads. If AI was really that great then Anthropic, as the putative AI leader, should have demanded much more than about $5B. I wonder if we’ll get any comment from Tim on Thursday about this deal?'
on More blowback for Apple's Tim Cook, starting with M.G. Siegler - 'Not to quibble Rodney, but it wasn’t “one shot.” Two ICE agents fired ten shots over five seconds, all while he lay sprawled out on the ground. This was an execution.'
on Premarket: Apple is green - 'Too true. I’m really not much interested in professional sports anymore. Just popped up for Seattle because that’s where I am. 🙂'
on Premarket: Apple is green - 'Joseph, I don’t think you have the perfect answer either. Despite your claim to be using “Occam’s razor”. If it is such a consistent answer for the magnitude and direction of the stock movement every quarter then everyone would have noticed the pattern and it likely wouldn’t work as a strategy. The chartists would be all over it for sure. Instead we have many people coming up with different explanations for a drop in Apple stock price. Some ridiculous and some well thought out. Besides the stock buyback by Apple even though it is large by revenue standards it gets dwarfed buy the magnitude of the change in the stock price over the short term when for instance the stock price drops 10% over a short period of time. I am not saying your idea doesn’t contribute to the direction of the stock price I just think it is not big enough to account for the kind of price action we have seen when Trump has announced Tariff’s that the market think could hit Apple. (Now it would be interesting to correlate Trumps Tariff announcements with timing to see if he always seems to make them with Apple in its so called dark period before earnings.) With a market cap of around 3.8 trillion a stock move of 10% is about 380 billion in market cap swing. Apple buyback is usually less than 25 Billion per quarter spread out so on any given day it likely is less than 2 billion in buying. Price stabilizing maybe but not a huge wall that would prevent a stampede from happening. And what we have seen in both the down stock action and the up stock action is a bit of a stampede. That we agree on.'
on Premarket: Apple is green - 'So far, this year is playing out like a repeat of last year. I don’t expect the pattern to repeat much longer, though, because last year’s crazy tariff bombshells have all pretty much fizzled.'
on More blowback for Apple's Tim Cook, starting with M.G. Siegler - 'Need to change the title to: Daily Donald Disaster'
on More blowback for Apple's Tim Cook, starting with M.G. Siegler - 'While I absolutely think TC’s decision to attend this was a horrifically bad and stupid decision, from pretty much every angle including strategically, I do find it pretty rich that all the other CEOs and “VIP”s who were there – or, even worse, who’ve absolutely in tight with Trump and doing far, far worse, like all the CEOs of the AI megascalers and associated AI and social media companies – are getting a free pass in both the media and publicly. Americans are being murdered on sidewalks for passively filming masked gunmen who are constantly breaking the law and called domestic terrorists by he people running the country, but let’s distract ourselves by being outraged at Tim Cook’s forced attendance at a super-crappy movie that was produced as part of a crooked settlement deal between Jeff Bezos and a vindictive, power-drunk sociopath. I’m not happy as a shareholder that Tim didn’t call in sick, but a little perspective is in order.'
on More blowback for Apple's Tim Cook, starting with M.G. Siegler - 'Joseph Bland said: “IMO Mr. Cook helped Mr. Trump win election…” **Joseph, although I usually find myself in agreement with your comments, in this case I have to disagree. I believe Tim Cook not only didn’t help Trump win election, I don’t believe for a minute that he would ever vote for the person most people knew Trump to be.'
on Premarket: Apple is green - 'What a difference a day makes, 24 little hours Five sessions. $243.42 to $261.95. Up $18.53. GO AAPL'
on More blowback for Apple's Tim Cook, starting with M.G. Siegler - 'Let us see what other controversies we can try to blame Tim Cook and Apple for. They do business in China with their authoritarian leaders. Cook has met with them a number of times. Maybe, just maybe, Cook can affect how things go by having the influence behind the scenes since he has access. The thing is, I don’t know and neither does anyone else. Tim Cook and Apple did not cause this event. They are just trying to do business under the conditions they have to work with.'
on More blowback for Apple's Tim Cook, starting with M.G. Siegler - 'So you’re the CEO of a multi-trillion-dollar company and instead of navigating product design, roadmaps, etc., you have to navigate treacherous political waters, and no matter what course you take to guide this company where many people rely on its existence (shareholders, employees, and users), you will inevitably make a choice that will imperil you or these constituents. Who wouldn’t absolutely love that job? As an astute observer of these kinds of dynamics once articulated “ in the Game of Thrones you either win or you die”'
on More blowback for Apple's Tim Cook, starting with M.G. Siegler - 'Scroll to the bottom and check out the disgusting picture… boingboing.net/2026/01/27/melania-documentary-expected-to-bomb-who-cares.html'
on Premarket: Apple is green - 'Following yesterday’s $7.37 gain in Apple to $255.41, the shares are green pre-market and are currently higher by $4.05 at $259.46. Index futures are mixed heading into today’s opening bell. iPhone glass maker Corning has just inked a deal with Meta for $6 billion to supply the company with fiber-optic cables. This is another enterprise from the dotcom era finding new growth opportunities in the AI epoch. Corning shares are up $6.74 at $101.70 ahead of the bell.'
on More blowback for Apple's Tim Cook, starting with M.G. Siegler - 'Even JoyOfTech is on this topic: ‘Boycott Apple?’ https://www.geekculture.com/joyoftech/joyarchives/3230.html'
on More blowback for Apple's Tim Cook, starting with M.G. Siegler - 'I have been giving Tim the benefit of a fairly broad latitude on the Trump situation, but I have to say that events have moved swiftly and I don’t believe he can continue for much longer without a better explanation to people who might be placing their trust in him. Trump is trumpy and he’s gonna make a big deal of the 5-600billion Apple is investing (irrespective of party or president I believe), and I guess Tim just has to live with that…. But to be seen to be intimately supporting events that are borderline complicit is going to create a lot of backlash from the global community. Now, the bougies don’t give up their habits easy, so Apple is no danger of losing sales just yet, but they are in danger of having their trust credentials severely dented with large sections of humanity. And being Apple, they are a sexy target and there will be a lot of ginning up by various actors who don’t want the spotlight on themselves – So this is brewing and depending on circumstances could become a real liability for Apple…. Is Apple going to be guilty of not reading the room properly because they are too old, or out of touch as leaders? Is it a form a noble sacrifice that Tim is undertaking, to spare others – I dont know — I would expect any CEO of Apple to be adept at handling this kind of terrain.'
