Recent Comments

  • Fred Stein on $185 billion later, Warren Buffett asks Tim Cook to take a bow (video) - 'OMG. Thanks so much, and thanks to your Son-in-law. I’ve struggled to understand how Apple could leverage the potential of the SoC architecture and ROI advantage of selling chips in the 100’s of B’s annually. This takes an intellect and knowledge way beyond me. We can also ponder culture changes needed to build and sell high-end products. Might Apple agentic computing open a market comprising individuals and small teams much like the creatives that sustained Apple in its tough times.'
  • David Drinkwater on This week's Apple trading strategies (5/4-5/8/26) - 'After Thursday’s report, I am more bulllish today than I was on Wednesday. Fundamentally reasons: 1) supply constrained Mac Mini and MacBook Neo (and it seems like Mac Studio as well, but I haven’t gotten to that article yet)imply good continuing sales into the June Quarter. 2) a “smarter” (but how smart?) Siri will be good for overall sales, iPhone in particular, but also potentially this rumored “home” device. 3) only 30% of iPhones being upgraded (I take this to mean that ther are still 70% of them out there waiting for an upgrade (I know mine is ready). 4) With WWDC yet to come in June, I think the September quarter could get a bump (extending beyond June quarter). 5) December quarter yet to be reckoned, but I think it will be really good. I think Martin is coming to very incorrect conclusions.'
  • Greg Lippert on This week's Apple trading strategies (5/4-5/8/26) - 'She could star in the reboot of Clueless.'
  • Greg Lippert on $185 billion later, Warren Buffett asks Tim Cook to take a bow (video) - 'Laura is just one of the Lamealysts who don’t get the Apple story.'
  • Gregg Thurman on Mark Gurman: What no more net-cash-zero means for John Ternus - '” put meaningful privacy controls on cloud-based AI” Now that’s a strategy I could buy into, especially if Apple used its own silicon. “M-7” with TurboQuant enhanced unified memory anybody? Private label Gemini and put an Apple (SIRI) interface on it. No need to gobble up a couple of farms, or need a small nuclear power station, or the Mississippi River to keep it cool. And no push back from the citizenry where it is located. Maybe even design the building to look like a flying saucer in the middle of a tree filled park with community walking trails and a duck pond. : ) Now if that isn’t the pin that pricks the “AI” balloon, I don’t know what is.'
  • Stephen Gordon on Mark Gurman: What no more net-cash-zero means for John Ternus - 'Ternus will tune his harp to the strengths of the company, leveraging his expertise along the way. Cook did it, Jobs II did it, and the company will evolve accordingly, albeit not radically or recklessly. Reminds me of this parable about the two bulls… youtu.be/mxNXp86gFnw?si=UlOvj5_MUuNsh2PW'
  • Greg Lippert on Mark Gurman: What no more net-cash-zero means for John Ternus - 'You wrote my post for me. They will have the cash needed to do what’s in the best interests of Apple in the ever-changing tech/AI/political/world landscape.'
  • Michael Goldfeder on $185 billion later, Warren Buffett asks Tim Cook to take a bow (video) - 'Does anyone else find it odd that Laura Martin from Needham with her profound bear outlook on Apple wasn’t able to deter Berkshire from their heavy investment in Apple? Or is it just me? Or possibly, Berkshire listened to Laura and sold out of half of their Apple position at prices in the $160 to $185 range. At any rate, a toast to the “Farmers” on Apple 3.0 who truly understand Apple better than anyone else outside of the “C” Suite and ignore the noise from the uninformed talking heads and other assorted Wall Street Analysts who proffer continuous doom and gloom for Apple quarter by quarter..'
  • Michael Goldfeder on This week's Apple trading strategies (5/4-5/8/26) - 'Needham’s Laura Martin is the new face for those folks who shorted Apple. I expect her to join the ranks of Rod Hall and Tony S. very soon as irrelevant analysts.'
  • David Emery on Mark Gurman: What no more net-cash-zero means for John Ternus - 'Each of (Alphabet, Apple) have been the target of regulators. Closer integration or joint ventures by these two would ring really loud alarm bells in antitrust departments everywhere. Lobbyists from the other Big Tech companies would be parked in regulator/legislature offices. Apple is absolutely the victim of its success. We can decry both the motivations (“all big tech is evil”) and the actions (“Other companies should have access to Apple’s customers”), but ignoring the risk puts our heads in the sand (which leaves our asses hanging in the air…) I’m particularly disgusted that “Big Regulation” (my neologism for the set of bureaucrats and politicians who have targeted Apple….) sees NO Value for consumers/the general public from Apple’s unique emphasis on privacy.'
  • Joseph Bland on Mark Gurman: What no more net-cash-zero means for John Ternus - 'Also, Fred, since buybacks, something like $800-900 B in free cash flow has been generated by Apple. For comparison, less than $150 B has been generated by Nvidia over the same time period, although lately they’ve finally matched Apple’s quarterly free cash flow. And as a result, every AAPL share that was bought and held from pre-buybacks 12 years ago now owns approaching twice as much of a much bigger and still growing Apple Inc. I agree that Apple buybacks won’t be going away anytime soon. But I do think the handwriting’s on the wall for that cash going elsewhere as the years roll by.'
  • Fred Stein on Mark Gurman: What no more net-cash-zero means for John Ternus - 'Maybe it’s too early to make big inferences. Perspective: Apple increased the buyback allocation for the next 12 months. Apple cut buybacks in half, but only for one quarter. Apple’s Market Cap has increased about 8X since buyback started. Today, net cash is about 1% of Market Cap. The increase in net cash is about 1/3 of 1%.'
  • Joseph Bland on Mark Gurman: What no more net-cash-zero means for John Ternus - 'BTW, Horace, I definitely think building out what I call AiCloud is a way to sidestep the stumbling block of acquisitions. It could start with Apple literally returning to the server hardware arena, but basically dedicating those M-based servers to iCloud/AiCloud. They literally have the cash reserves and burgeoning cash flow to build those without borrowing a cent, unlike even Microsoft. And a safe, secure AiCloud mated with a safe, secure Siri would only stampede customers to Apple products. Would Alphabet play a role in this? Only if they join Apple in making safety and security for the user Job #1, and not pirating user personal information. I will never forget the game the played with Apple over Google Maps….'
  • Joseph Bland on Mark Gurman: What no more net-cash-zero means for John Ternus - 'On the money, Horace. I don’t mean to sound like I’m dissing Tim Cook, because I think he has been masterful (what I consider his political missteps aside). But the times require a fresh evaluation of where best to spend this cash, and between them, Mr. Ternus and Mr. Srouji have got a real alternative vision of the future of Apple that is now being unfettered. I always looked at buybacks as a good use of excess cash. But when there’s a better use, that’s where it needs to go.'
  • Horace Dediu on Mark Gurman: What no more net-cash-zero means for John Ternus - 'Cash flow can support practically an infinite amount of talent and R&D. The only thing excess cash (retained earnings) would be useful for is acquisitions and, as I pointed out in my remarks on Asymco One, the obstacle is cultural not capital. NB: Engineers don’t get this and I’ve had many arguments with ex-Apple engineers who think shareholders don’t deserve to be rewarded (because they did not do the work). This is typical lack of understanding of risk/reward and capital allocation. I believe Ternus is going to use this move to show support for engineering and pacify their concerns though I think he’s smart enough to know the purpose of capital (and whose capital it is.).'
  • David Emery on Asymco's Horace Dediu: Services is the foundation - 'but services is looking more and more to be the thing that keeps people in the ecosystem. That’s why I asked Horace about the potential risk if regulators start to attack the integration of products & services… The legal/regulatory risk is the one that worries me the most about Apple’s enterprise.'
  • Joseph Bland on $185 billion later, Warren Buffett asks Tim Cook to take a bow (video) - 'All of the above, David, plus a massive opportunity with its Mac line for AI. From a recent dialogue with my stepson: “- Apple is *almost* at the point where mobile hardware has been built in support of local models that can be used for any number of applications, but it’s only there now with the modern Mac line – Even then, hardware really needs to be redesigned for AI workloads, cause the Mac is barely effective for most applications (like 14.4k modems when DSL is available) – The real crux is *applications* of AI, not so much the models themselves – In the past 3 months, there have been open-source models that do about 2x as good as the top models of just a year ago, and can operate on a Mac (not super fast, but free and privately) – The models dont have the magic…it’s leveraging the models in agentic teams, to work autonomously on problems for hours, getting feedback from the user as it tackles the problems; it’s shared memory and effective memory harnesses; it’s tools and the skills to run those tools; and it’s the security bubble to wrap all of that up in a way that we can trust won’t introduce catastrophic impacts. So, Apple’s hardware is *almost* to the point where it can produce hardware that easily handles top-model AI workloads for developers to build AI applications on top of. I give them a year to really get there. Im producing an MLX port of the key Pytorch library. I’ll open source it. Hopefully that will mean more models can seamlessly plug into and take full advantage of Apple hardware. Really, Apple should be doing this themselves. All models are built/trained using either Pytorch, Tensorflow, or Keras. If we want to run an open source model built on that, we can’t leverage MLX unless the neural nets were created with that hardware (as far as I know) because of how floating point and integer numbers are handled by MLX versus the other libraries. So making a port of the libraries (with built-in adaptors) should help users run the models on a Mac with MLX and get an extra 20% compute power out of it at inference time. But like I said, Apple should build that port+adaptor base libraries, and support it, not me.” Food for thought, IMO….'
  • Joseph Bland on Asymco's Horace Dediu: Services is the foundation - 'This is just the tiniest taste of Horace’s excellent dissection of Apple’s stunning earnings call. Also: Excerpt From “Apple was ready for the RAM crisis” Filipe Esposito Macworld https://apple.news/AF_QmRzO7QUyVC_EtlpKyDg This material may be protected by copyright. “In summary: – Macworld reports that Apple launched the $599 MacBook Neo amid a global RAM crisis that has forced competitors to raise prices by hundreds of dollars. – Apple’s M-series chips use unified memory and system-on-chip design, allowing 8GB to perform efficiently while competitors struggle with expensive, scarce RAM components. – The crisis forced Apple to discontinue high-end Mac Studio models, but its integrated approach provides advantages over Microsoft and Meta’s price increases.”'
  • David Emery on Mark Gurman: What no more net-cash-zero means for John Ternus - 'That’s a solid line of reasoning.'
  • David Emery on $185 billion later, Warren Buffett asks Tim Cook to take a bow (video) - 'Could you be a bit more specific (“add color” I think is the ANALyst term 🙂 ) about where you think that growth will come from? I’m presuming it’s a combination of these factors, but in what proportions? • increased sales of existing devices (iPhones, Macs, iPads, Watch, etc) Certainly India is a large source of potential growth • increased consumption of existing services (both as installed base grows, and by making those existing services more attractive) • revenue from new Apple services (such as?) • commissions from 3rd party AI services accessed from an Apple device • new devices (mebbe a folding iPhone is a huge worldwide success. I’d be willing to be proven wrong as a pessimist on that particular device.) * new markets (should Apple move more directly into enterprise markets in general, or into specific markets such as healthcare)? A discussion on these would be interesting and fruitful, methinks. But that really deserves its own thread.'
  • Joseph Bland on Mark Gurman: What no more net-cash-zero means for John Ternus - 'Hi, David. Here’s part of what I said this AM on Asymco One: Joseph Bland here, aka Sacto Joe. First, a general comment: By itself, this single thread plus the recorded Q&A is worth of a full year’s subscription. I will be taking that back to Apple 3.0 right now. [leaves, then returns] Second. Horace, that’s a brilliant bit of unpacking, and mirrors a huge chunk of my own thinking, pretty much across the board. My focus is going to be on the cash flow and the abandonment of the link between net cash and net debt being brought into synch. Like you, Horace, that and the incredible margins got my attention. To me, it’s a blinding signal that the Tim Cook Era was over last quarter, and the John Ternus Era has already hit the road running. For some, care needs to be taken to avoid mental whiplash, it’s so abrupt. For Apple and cash flow, there’s Before iOS and After iOS. One of the reasons Apple was valued “like a steel mill going out of business” even as the cash coffers filled to overflowing following the advent of iOS is that (1) it almost WAS a steel mill going out of business before Steve Jobs returned, and (2) cash had almost zero value in the eyes of investors, since [almost] all it could do was earn a paltry bit of interest. As a result, following the Great Recession, Apple was woefully undervalued. In part, that was because Apple had deeply diluted AAPL, growing the float in order to finance its turnaround. And when the long term investor contingent abandoned Apple following the G. D., that left the trader contingent/options completely in control of the Apple narrative, and thus able to swing huge changes in valuation, in essence “milking” Apple shareholders like myself of their commitment to Apple, over and over. That all changed when some bright bulb convinced Tim Cook to go into buybacks with that “dead” Apple cash, big time. Now, as we approach a 50% reduction in float, those of us that held our stock or acquired it BB (Before Buybacks) until the present time have seen each share essentially double in it’s percentage ownership of Apple Inc. That’s our reward for our faith, and a handsome reward it has been. But the reality is that, these days, the “Bang per Buyback Buck” has greatly diminished over what it was BB. And I strongly suspect that has not gone unnoticed by Mr. Ternus. In fact, I’m convinced that the brakes applied to buybacks last quarter were purposeful and indicative of what we’ll see going forward. In that sense, it’s the end of an era. Bottom line: I think Mr. Ternus and Mr. Srougi looked at that flood of cash and reimagined what it could be funneled into rather than buybacks. And I think that portents a massive sea-change in the way cash flow is going to be directed in the coming age of AI and spatial computing. And that very much includes looking at a much, much larger investment in what now might be called – AiCloud. Which has the potential to put meaningful privacy controls on cloud-based AI, giving folks like me massive compute capability that is truly safe and secure.'
  • Joseph Bland on $185 billion later, Warren Buffett asks Tim Cook to take a bow (video) - 'Wonderful! Thanks, PED! Interesting that Apple is still B.H.’s biggest single investment even after the massive reduction in ownership. And IMO, that much, much smaller remaining investment is destined to continue growing, to the point where, had they NOT sold it, Apple would have essentially swallowed B.H. – from the inside. Apple, IMO, far from being done growing, is about to see a massive growth spurt over the next decade, as spatial computing and AI mature across their platforms, and as personal privacy protection becomes even more dear to its users, who are also destined to substantially grow in numbers. Thank you, Tim Cook, for your service to we, the Apple investors, employees and ex-employees, and users.'
  • David Emery on Mark Gurman: What no more net-cash-zero means for John Ternus - 'Is this a hidden attempt to get money returned to employees, rather than shareholders? I’m not sure that the net-zero commitment had any impact on Apple’s strategies for acquisitions, R&D, or even hiring/compensation. I’m really not sure what the net impact of dropping ‘net zero’ will have on Apple for the next couple of years. But I hope it doesn’t turn into ‘spending like Zuckerberg’.'
  • Joseph Bland on This week's Apple trading strategies (5/4-5/8/26) - 'I just reviewed Horace Deidu’s notes and Q&A on Apple’s quarter. Simply put, it’s worth paying the Asymco One yearly subscription just to have access to that one thread. And, I believe Apple 3.0 subscribers still get a discount. So consider joining Asymco One supporters like Fred and David and myself. You won’t be disappointed. IMO.'
  • Gregg Thurman on This week's Apple trading strategies (5/4-5/8/26) - 'Friday I bought a few MAY $272.50/$275 CallSpreads, using uninvested funds from my original risk allotment. When my first tranche sells I will add higher Strike Call Spreads for JUL expiry. I’ve never bought as far into the money contracts before. Something I’ve learned is that the “delta” (amount a contract will move in relation to a stocks move) is virtually identical, ergo, the only movement in the contracts is time decay. Currently, with a price of about $4.50 on a $5.00 Spread, and ~3 months to go for max value, there isn’t much time decay remaining (50 cents divided by ~85 days). Having discovered that phenomenon I lowered my sell price from $4.85 to $4.65. I expect my JUL contracts to sell at the same time my MAY contracts are exercised. Buying as deep in the money as I did greatly reduced risk. But in an environment where the underlying quite is going to appreciate rapidly (like I think AAPL has just entered), buying as deep as I did, could be counter productive as the opportunity to adjust a position upwards is diminished, as will be your ROI potential for the period. For that reason, and because I think the possibility of AAPL declining from your buy point has declined, I will not buy $25/$30 in the money in the future. Instead I will be looking at Spreads that are $15 – $20 in the money depending on the period.'
  • Gregg Thurman on Saturday Apple video: Marques Brownlee on the turnover (2026) - '”not sure why so many people, not just Tommo, write off the Vision Pro as a failure” They have no “Vision”. How many projects can a well run corporation run simultaneously? I don’t know but is coming clear that Apple has been engineering: A succession plan for TC AI hardware – Mac Mini, Mac Studio, MacBook Neo, iPhone 17e SIRI/Apple Intelligence Movies (Vision Pro.) Pipeline'
  • Ron Fredrick on Saturday Apple video: Marques Brownlee on the turnover (2026) - 'Joseph Bland said: As regards the Vision Pro, nobody else has, thus far, even come close, so it’s both. **Upvoted your comment, Joseph. I’m not sure why so many people, not just Tommo, write off the Vision Pro as a failure just because a $3500 product didn’t fly off the shelves. It’s the most impressive technology I’ve ever experienced and my wife and I have zero regrets about buying them as soon as they were available.'
  • Kirk DeBernardi on Why Apple's entry-level Mac Mini disappeared - 'Gregg T. — …and my money says most don’t. 😉'
  • David Emery on Why Apple's entry-level Mac Mini disappeared - 'Actually, the more you can accomplish with syntax, the easier it is to get it right. When you’re dependent on semantics for correctness, that places more emphasis on context and implicit knowledge. If you can read music, consider how much knowledge is encoded in the syntax of musical notation. Then consider, for example, medieval music notations that didn’t include time as part of that syntax. (And that’s about all I know about medieval musical notations 🙂 )'
  • Fred Stein on Why Apple's entry-level Mac Mini disappeared - 'I maxed out all the options to get Mac Mini for $4,699 not including any SW or extended service contracts. And it is not available. Apple wins edge, while literally $T’s CAPEX spent on cloud.'