James Hillhouse on Errol Brandt: 'This whole cloud migration thing has been a massive disaster' - 'I won’t object to Brandt. He is raising valid points, just as he has been for awhile. I wish Apple would bring him and his team in-house and market Kiraa as a small and medium business solution. The bicycle for AI. Ahhh, to dream.'
on Apple TV hikes ticket $2 to $14.99 per month - 'Stephen: I have a 5 year-old in the house so Disney+ is pretty much a “must “subscription. In fact we just got back from a trip to Disneyland. I did grab the (no ads) Disney+ & Hulu bundle to save money and cancelled the standalone Hulu subscription. From a value perspective the winner in our family is Apple One Premier. For $39.95 per month it’s shared with five other family members and includes 2TB of iCloud storage for the one monthly subscription fee. It also includes for all family members on the plan Apple TV, Apple Music, Apple Arcade, Apple Fitness+ (which I use for hours each day), and Apple News+. I’m happy to sponsor the subscription for all members of the family and I consider it a bargain at $39.95 per month.'
on Apple's August bombshells (videos) - 'Gregg T. — I think you just suggested the great hair-split of where the profitable half of AI is headed — specific applications & industries — which also happens to be best accomplished privately. …and who might best be poised for that rabbit-out-of-a-hat.'
on Barron's: The AI trade has more room to run - 'For a stupid species we’re pretty lucky! Can’t everyone just use Sterno? Can always drink it if they run out of food.'
on Barron's: The AI trade has more room to run - 'All of these “never ending AI boom” cheerleaders never ever consider where all the energy to power these data centres is going to come from. Globally there are energy shortages. Ukraine is knobbling Russia’s output. Europe is too dependant on Russia. The US shot the world in the foot when it inadvertently closed the strait, and has a Luddite for a president. Australia gives away its gas (face palm). Coal is too expensive to keep going, Nuclear takes too long to onboard. China is the only state that has set about securing its future energy needs by developing renewables at breakneck speed. For an intelligent species… we’re pretty stupid.'
on Barron's: The AI trade has more room to run - 'HO scale. Track covers one room in the basement with some spill-over to another room. Not much is finished, but I should create a small website with photos of what I do have. The general theme is to connect Pennsylvania oil country (e.g. Titusville, Oil City, Bradford) with New Hampshire mill towns (Dover, Manchester), by removing all that inconvenient land between the Susquehanna and the Merrimack rivers 🙂 Timeframe is more-or-less 1898, but I’ll run more modern stuff as an anachronism (as long as I know it’s not era-appropriate.) My primary interest is structures.'
on CNET: 'Surprise Macs?! This Is Not Apple’s Typical Playbook' (video) - 'I think this series of announcements, coming as they are just before the main event, are like the intro bands at concerts. They warm up the crowd, they don’t overwhelm. Besides you don’t want to dilute the main act with too many announcements such that the message you really want to convey gets lost in all the noise. So how important will September 9 be? An order of magnitude greater than the new AI Macs just announced.'
on Apple TV hikes ticket $2 to $14.99 per month - 'I bought a monthly subscription to the Disney/Hulu/HBO bundle ($19.99 with ads) to catch up on a few things. Will probably cancel afterward, unless I’m given a reason not to.'
on CNET: 'Surprise Macs?! This Is Not Apple’s Typical Playbook' (video) - 'I sure hope that the reason why Apple is releasing these two very AI-capable machines before the event is because they have major announcements that will depend on the kind of power that these machines have. Especially the M5 Ultra, with enough RAM (tons), could handle a decent size AI model on the desktop without connecting to the Internet and putting sensitive data on other companies’ servers. So hopefully they wanted to get these out there so that the next announcements could build on them. Or maybe they’re just really happy about a folding iPhone and they want to talk about that.'
on Barron's: The AI trade has more room to run - 'TL:DR AI bubble is not in an isolated environment. The overall economy is shaky. Apple will be okay. This is what I tell people who have the means to prepare. It worries me that so many do not have those means. Love that they say “yeah a bubble but it won’t pop just now.” They gotta get their fees from trading stocks. Maybe if the bubble was totally isolated, we could give it a lot more to run. But it is forming in an economy that is, both locally and globally, wobbling. We have a Federal debt that is skyrocketing. The annual interest payments for that debt are over $1 trillion. And it very much looks like interest rates will go up, making those interest payments grow. The impact of the oil debacle is hitting Asia hard. Japan is having a hard time with its economy , which could spread elsewhere. (They hold more US debt than any other foreign government.) The vast majority of the employment picture comes from building out datacenters and taking care of old people. Most other sectors are having a hard time. Rising food and transportation costs affect spending patterns. The top 1% in the US own 32% of all the wealth, and the top 10% are responsible for 50% of the consumer economy (huge income and wealth disparities almost always presage a major economic downturn). Without a vital consumer economy, the business economy gets shakier. I would not be worried if AI buildout and its debt were the only things. But I suspect that many of the lenders did not learn any real lesson from the mortgage crisis, with CLOs may be ready to fall when weak loans go into default (and both the major actors seen in The Big Short are shorting AI). We already got a hint of the possible weakness of AI investing from the rapid collapse of the hedge fund, Situational Awareness. I took an excellent economics class that examined what to do when the economy sucks. We looked at the stock market from the Depression. It took a long time for most stocks to recover. But there were some that recovered much more rapidly. Coca-Cola was one. People wanted a nice treat to consume. It easily made them feel better in tough times. For just a few pennies. And there was really little competition nationwide. And IBM was the other one we looked at. It got a government contract for its calculators for use by the SSA. Its structure and innovations carried it into the stratosphere as their tech moved into every business. The lesson was that companies that best gave consumers or businesses what they needed, even in harsh economic times, did better than most companies. They recovered much more quickly. Apple is positioned to do both. Nobody provides a better value for the user for the necessary computer in their pocket than Apple’s does. And the new hardware will demonstrate to businesses how to do AI without paying rent to hyperscalers in order to access tokens. So, to my mind, it should not be when is the AI bubble going to burst. It will. Better question: What is the best way to prepare for the coming economic collapse? IMHO, find the companies that make products (actually capitalist, not rent-seekers) that produce the best goods people want for themselves and for their businesses. Apple is the only one of the magnificent 7 or 8 or 10 or whatever that is perfectly positioned for both. If I were an analyst, I would be telling people to prepare by doing 2 things: 1) Make sure you have access to cash, not debt. J. Paul Getty showed that cash is king in a depression. Apple’s increasing cash position may be a business equivalent; 2) Invest in Apple. It might go down with a crash but will recover faster than many (buy it low with some of that cash) . I have actually seen that Apple often dips before a recession is officially declared and starts rising before the recession is declared over. It is a great global bellwether IMHO. So, the AI bubble is just a part of a wobbly Jenga Tower that will come down, likely through the misuse of debt, as it usually does. But having cash and investing in Apple present the best path to get through the coming economic crisis. Better than investing in an index fund. I’ve been preparing the last year for this. I have been encouraging others to also. I hope they listen.'
on CNET: 'Surprise Macs?! This Is Not Apple’s Typical Playbook' (video) - 'PED: Just wondering: Is this person a friend of yours? If so, that would explain why they’re getting airtime from you. As I’m struggling to see anything new here… Less fluff! More Kiraa: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFc3vVeJGv0'
on Barron's: The AI trade has more room to run - 'Ooh, what scale and how big of an area does your diorama take? Choo Choo ! 🙂'
on CNET: 'Surprise Macs?! This Is Not Apple’s Typical Playbook' (video) - 'Wow! I think it’s the first time I’ve watched one of her videos. Thank god I was sitting down. I feel dizzy.'
