Robert Paul Leitao on Mark Gurman: Phil Schiller is moving on - 'Speaking personally, it’s uncomfortable to witness Tim Cook, Phil Schiller or any well-known Apple executive from the 1990’s and 2000’s retire. It’s like we lived through the company’s successes and challenges together and shared collectively in the triumphs. It’s also a reminder to us Boomers we are getting older and we are entering new eras in our own lives. I’m witnessing these changes with a tinge of sadness. It’s like having an old friend move away or like having a long-time co-worker and friend transfer to a new location. I’m sure it’s no easier for Tim Cook or Phil Schiller as they endeavor to walk off stage gracefully so-to-speak with very mixed emotions. I wish them well. It has to be hard and yet I applaud them for the wisdom and determination to step back and move forward to different roles at the company they spent much of their lives building together. May they move forward in peace, with grace and the understanding they gave so much of themselves to their work and through their efforts hundreds of millions of lives have been enriched and, even in small ways, made better.'
on Aaron Tilley: Apple was unprepared for the Mac Mini's success - 'Here is an excellent video analysing what open source AI models the Mini and Studio can handle based on their RAM configuration. It also compares the Studio M5 Ultra with 2 NVDIA DGX Sparks – comparable in price. The Studio has far greater memory bandwidth so it can therefore process many more tokens/sec. 22min long but super interesting. Also compares AI subscription cost to Hardware cost. Takeaways: 1) Buying a Mac to save on AI subscriptions doesn’t stack up in 2026. 2) Are Macs worth it for edge compute?- NotSure. 3) These Macs cannot run frontier models – only basic AI – Macs only allocate up to 75% of RAM for GPU use. 4) As models improve in. the next 6-12 months the current Macs will provide an increasingly better experience. https://youtu.be/eDoWKgFqRM4?si=kSxsDtFrLb6tona1'
on Aaron Tilley: Apple was unprepared for the Mac Mini's success - 'Do you think Nvidia was prepared for GPUs to become the engine of AI?'
on WSJ: The challenge for Apple's new CEO - 'This will be a slam dunk. John Ternus has two back-to-back sets of very big shoes to fill, but Mr. Cook is still available to give advice if it’s ever needed. That’s a real advantage, IMO We lost a lot of elderly wisdom during Covid, and the actual impact of that may never be quantifiable. Nonetheless, it’s real.'
on An Apple CEO's valediction - 'Honestly did we expect anything less from Tim Cook! Thank you, Tim! Tim for President!'
on Mark Gurman: Phil Schiller is moving on - 'I suspect that for every departing veteran leader there is a well established and probably younger veteran backup. As when Ives left. It wasn’t a disaster it was an opportunity. It might be a positive for Ternus.'
on An Apple CEO's valediction - 'I remember how I felt with the passing of Steve, an emptiness of sorts. Tim stepping down isn’t the same but it’s close. I hope bonding with John won’t take long.'
on An Apple CEO's valediction - 'Such a class act on all points of the compass. Glad he will still have an important role with Apple.'
on Premarket: Apple is red - 'After Labor Day the senior staff returns from summer vacation, or so they say. Things may change then. Eight days till the iPhone event.'
on Mark Gurman: Phil Schiller is moving on - 'Nothing to see here. Not a disrespect to Schiller at all, but when a major role (especially CEO) is closed and filled, lots of people leave the company. There will surely be more of this.'
on Mark Gurman: Phil Schiller is moving on - 'Smart man. Made sure he qualified for Medicare. Congratz, Mr.Schiller 🙂'
on Aaron Tilley: Apple was unprepared for the Mac Mini's success - '… AI is still going to drive Mac sales. Especially in those crucial enterprise markets. … In fact, it’s probably more valuable. https://appleinsider.com/articles/26/08/31/ai-needs-more-macs-but-not-for-the-reason-you-might-assume One pretty critical point here is that even though these engineers are using Macs, most aren’t primarily relying on self-hosted AI. More than a third are using hosted AI services like OpenAI or Claude. Less than a quarter are primarily self-hosting private models, and another 23% are using a mix of self-hosted and hosted. But that doesn’t mean Mac isn’t valuable. In fact, it’s probably more valuable. About 90% of those polled report increased pull requests and commits since they’ve started using AI coding tools. And AI adoption has increased Mac infrastructure costs for 83% of survey respondents. MacStadium puts it plainly: “More code means more builds. More builds mean more Macs.” This practically means that even if the Mac isn’t being used to run the AI itself, AI is still going to drive Mac sales. Especially in those crucial enterprise markets.'
on A tale of two Great Lakes - 'A toothless protest, but i switched the IOS default search engine to DuckDuckGo after Google’s decision. Seems to pretty much offer the same search function as Google for my purposes.'
on A tale of two Great Lakes - 'As a followup comment, since Apple is obligated to follow the laws of the countries which they operate in, Canada has their own Canadian Geographic Names Information System which calls the lake “Lake Ontario”. Going on that, if push comes to shove, Apple could label the Canadian side of Lake Ontario as “Lake Ontario” and the US side as “Lake America”.'
on They say that Apple, the company, was Steve Jobs' greatest product - 'Tim Cook rightly gets credit for his logistics prowess. But one important innovation that is now embedded in Apple wrt logistics is making it resilient enough to deal with producing the new innovations that Apple comes up with. One of the problems with the Innovator’s Dilemma is being able to shift to entirely new product segments when a company is selling the current ones so well. Creative destruction is one of the hard things Apple does so well. Apple Silicon is a great example. Creating this from scratch and adding innovations to make it useful are great hardware innovations. But creating the supply chain to make 100s of millions of chips is a true testament to Cook’s, and now Apple’s, logistical innovation. ANd this then allowed them to create an entorely new product segment in the Mac Neo. That is just one example. Many others, including becoming a streaming service that just wins awards, do the same. Most old-style companies stop really innovating and simply try to get a bigger piece of the market share pie. Apple easily creates entirely new pies, so market share is not an issue. Then, it actually increases market share.'
