Robert Douglass on This week's Apple trading strategies (8/10-8/14/26) - 'Boy, I sure hope Apple includes an updated AirPort Extreme in that ‘family of hardware’…'
on Apple owns 65% of the (growing) premium smartphone market - 'I noticed there were no comments on this post. I believe setting $600 as the line that separates so-called premium smartphones from other smartphones is outdated. Personally, I consider usability (inclusive of intuitive design and function), quality construction and durability as the most desirable features of any tech product. Necessarily that put me in Apple’s proverbial camp on just about any product the company offers. As we move further into the AI era, I see a diminishing market for “non-premium” smartphones due to rising component costs and consumer expectations for features. Without adjustment for rising costs “premium” smartphones will continue to capture a rising share of the market and will no longer be a valid metric for differentiating classes of smartphones when the line is drawn at the low cost of $600 for a new handset.'
on Mark Gurman: Big changes coming for the Apple Watch? - '” I really wish Gurman would either join McKinsey or stop editorials about what Apple management should be doing.” The arrogance that anybody knows better than Apple is borrriing. Until a few months ago anybody (and everybody) with access to the internet was proclaiming Apple the ultimate AI loser. Today those same “experts” are proclaiming Apple the AI winner. I believe that in the consumer and SMB AI market Apple is going to dominate. Nobody has the street creds as does Apple, nor the installed base of AI capable devices to run it on. The gap between Apple AI capable devices and everyone else is greater than the aggregate share of everyone else, with a silicon and software lead that amounts to years (and we still don’t know the totality of Apple’s AI strategy).'
on Apple gives X's deep fakes a free pass - 'When both political parties are making negative statements about Apple – however misguided! – I would agree with David and also say “Be cautious, John Ternus.”'
on Mark Gurman: Big changes coming for the Apple Watch? - 'I don’t like watches, but I would wear a band the moment it’s released.'
on Apple gives X's deep fakes a free pass - 'This would require a clear statement of requirements and evaluation criteria against those requirements. Now I think that would be A Good Thing in general, but in this case you want to reduce the approval process to a ‘deterministic algorithm’ to remove (or at least formally mitigate) accusations of bias. (Of course, there will be loud and persistent claims of ‘bias’ by those who profit from such claims, regardless of how rigorous the process is.)'
on Mark Gurman: Big changes coming for the Apple Watch? - 'The change I’ve noticed is parents getting their elementary and middle school kids an Apple Watch SE with cellular in lieu of an iPhone because they want to be able to track and communicate with their child, and their child to be able to ask for help if needed.'
on Mark Gurman: Big changes coming for the Apple Watch? - 'Combined with the phone and smart Siri it is a potentially powerful combo!'
on Mark Gurman: Big changes coming for the Apple Watch? - 'More fun speculation: Based on rumors, Home Pod will have a 7 inch square screen, as will iPhone Fold. The Center Stage camera has a square format. Breakthrough? No, but cool, ahead of the competition, and adding stickiness.'
on Mark Gurman: Big changes coming for the Apple Watch? - 'I have a strong anti-Gurman bias, based on his insatiable need to “make news” rather than report it. But surely the very worst sort of Gurman sentence is one that begins, “[Apple] needs to adapt to …” Maybe he’s right. Maybe he’s wrong. But the fact that he thinks this means nothing to me. He knows nothing whatsoever about what “Apple needs” to do.'
on Mark Gurman: Big changes coming for the Apple Watch? - 'I think Apple is working on several health devices. I just took a hearing test on my AirPod 3 pros. FDA approved. Devices like Oura Ring are not FDA approved, cleared, or certified as a medical device. Wonder if it ever will?'
on Mark Gurman: Big changes coming for the Apple Watch? - 'Apple Watch has seemingly stalled in health monitoring. Albeit a small sampling, all of the under 30 year olds at work talk about is the Hume, Whoop, Oura and other devices. That makes this article welcome news. An under $200 Apple branded smart band and/or ring would sell like crazy. That they are so many years behind is a little disappointing, but who knows what they’re working on. Ultimately, I’d love to see an Apple Health subscription. A means of tracking overall health data intra-iOS would be a huge benefit to both humanity and revenue. Even something as simple as aggregated data and providing simple step by step suggestions to change what needs improvement. That’s primarily what the aforementioned bands and rings do, albeit singularly and not with much advice on remedies to certain health problems.'
on Tiny Chinese chipmaker teaches giant Apple a lesson - 'From my experience (and I have done wafer costing) the starting wafer is a small portion of the total cost of the die, so I don’t think there is much to make up there. The hit that CXMT takes is in their photolithography. The reason that they have to start 30% more wafers is that the individual device sizes (transistors, resistors, etc) that build up the finished functional device (a memory chip) are all larger: their photo tools can’t print the small features small enough. It literally takes more silicon surface area to make a device. Costing is evaluated on the basis of what it costs to process one wafer, and then divided by the number of die on the wafer. (This part is neither rocket surgery nor semiconductor design engineering, so I feel pretty safe explaining it, so long as I don’t include actual $$$ numbers.) I also feel safe saying that the actual silicon in one of my old projects was only 3% of the cost of the finished wafer. After that, we test and trim this particular wafer at the die level, adding another 50% to the cost of the finished die, reducing the silicon to only 2% of the total cost. So there is not a lot of water to be squeezed from that rock, the cost of the silicon starting wafer. I believe my neighbors to the north (Global Wafer is in Sherman. I work in Richardson, and live “even further south” in Dallas itself.) *only* produce the starting wafers. So they can only offer a very small piece of die cost reduction. Hope this helps.'
on Saturday Apple video: Steve Jobs and the Apple story - 'This documentary looks great in the beginning but it turns into a highly biased hatchet job. I’d never heard of Bob Belleville before; he came from Xerox and worked on the Mac team for a short time. Yet he seems to have become the global expert on how Apple has devolved into a hideous “monster.” I wish one of these documentarians would stop reifying people with axes-to-grind, and dove instead into understanding the ethical issues. These issues (technology addiction, worker exploitation, workplace safety, and others) are very serious and important for the public to understand and engage in. IMHO, documentaries like this are sensationalistic, simplistic, and do a great disservice. Instead of helping make the world better in some way, they just spread anger and enmity.'
on How Apple wins AI's endgame - 'The problem for everyone is that AI is an insane business as it exists today. If it were based on real products and real revenue then the big five would not be spending like this. Customers are not knocking down doors trying to obtain AI. Most end users are skeptical about AI. It is the billionaires who think that AI will give them god-like powers who are spending like there is no tomorrow. They all feel that this is like a game of musical chairs with one winner and they don’t want to be the loser. This game will go on till they run into some sort of natural limits. Maybe the bond market will start charging them much higher interest rates. Maybe there is not enough water, coal and uranium to power their data centers. If NVIDIA stops expanding and just replaces existing product that will hurt the stock. A lot of this seems leveraged and once the balloon starts deflating it will be painful for some. NVIDIA will likely shrink, but not go away. There is always a market for high speed computation, just maybe not at the $5T level.'
on Tim Bajarin's Mt. Rushmore of tech journalism - 'PED: Any chance you would share with us his longer list? I agree wholeheartedly with respect to Mossberg and Pogue; the other two had far less of an impact on me personally. Hopefully Jason Snell is on the longer list too! YMMV…'
on How Apple wins AI's endgame - 'It is indeed interesting how history tends to repeat itself. In the past, we had IBM main frames dominating, followed by the transitioning to Apple personal computers/iPhones. Now we have Nvidia dominating IA cloud computing, as we watch the transitioning to Apple desktop/iPhone AI computing. After a while, it gets confusing as to who’s actually the hare and who’s the turtle.'
