Rodney Avilla on TheStreet: The market is ripe for a foldable Apple iPhone - 'I do a lot of reading on my iPhone and a small iPad that fits in my pocket would be, for me, desirable. However, I will check it out in the store before buying one.'
on Rothschild catapults its Apple target $140 to $400 - 'Agreed, it’s coming along nicely and do you think Apple is ever gonna stop? Hell no!!!! That’s not how they roll.'
on TheStreet: The market is ripe for a foldable Apple iPhone - 'I think it’s maybe like the original iPhone concept. Why would I want that? Then after actually using one, “Oh! I see.” Will it add something that it turns out that I value enough to offset the added size, weight and cost? I doubt it, but I’ll wait and see.'
on Apple's 'chipflation' dilemma: Margins or market share? - 'Couldn’t find a better thread for this: Nvidia is going to finance Open AI’s next purchase of GPUs to the tune of $105 Billion. I wouldn’t touch either equity with a 20 foot pole. Both of their Balance sheets depend on AI revenue that has yet to be proven. Further Apple’s AI (Apple Intelligence) is going to take a big chunk of data center’s TAM for revenue before data center boosters complete their expansion. These deals have all the markings of a house built of well worn cards.'
on Premarket: Apple is green - 'It’s a challenging day on the Street as we approach 2pm in the east with all four major indexes in the red and 70% of S&P 500 components showing off the same color. Alphabet is off 0.81% at $340.75, Microsoft is down 3.25% at $479.28, Meta has dropped 4.20% at $565.10 and Amazon has given back 1.58% at $258.50. It’s a tough day for hyperscalers. On the other side of the performance teeter-totter Corning is ahead 6.31% at $176.47 and SanDisk is powering up by 9.35% at $1,794.59. Apple is in the red 0.53% at $304.30 at the top of the hour.'
on TheStreet: The market is ripe for a foldable Apple iPhone - 'What is the market for foldable phones? I have tried to think of a reason to use one, but I’m coming up empty. Is it simply new tech for the sake of being new?'
on Apple offers Epic 5% to 15% - 'Yeah, but what happens if those major investors vote no-confidence? I’m -guessing- that the investors in Epic aren’t the same as the sheeple on Spacex’s board… 🙂 Presumably the agreements for those investments have a lot of specifics on how the investors and the board interact. (The small company I worked for had a couple outside investors with shareholder agreement. That agreement eventually ended up being tested in court when the outside investors challenged the founder. A few of us employee shareholders ended up with the controlling difference; the other 2 sides each had about 48% of the company. After that lawsuit was settled, the company went back to the big-name law firm that drafted the ambiguous agreement, and the law firm settled.)'
on Germany removes a brick from Apple's walled garden - 'I guess the view of the EU and European governments is that if you can’t compete against Apple and other US tech companies, then pedantically regulate them. Because to enable Europe to actually compete and innovate would require a great deal of soul searching and soul crushing political and cultural changes.'
on Apple and Trump guys butt heads over Chinese chips - 'Apple didn’t build its supply chain on low-cost labour. It built its supply chain on world-leading manufacturing expertise and capacity, and timely decision-making, planning and implementation. Clowns like Lutnick clearly have no comprehension of either the complexity or scale of Apple’s supply and manufacturing chain, and he should stick to what he does best: corrupt dealings and ripping off widows.'
on Apple offers Epic 5% to 15% - '“️The “Founder’s Trap”: Execution vs. Vision Your assessment of Sweeney as a “tech visionary who got big but is now flailing” is exactly how many industry analysts view Epic’s recent trajectory. Sweeney is excellent at building foundational tech (Unreal Engine) & stumbling into a cultural phenomenon (Fortnite). However, his execution as a CEO managing a mature conglomerate shows a severe lack of discipline: • Whiplash Strategy: Epic’s corporate execution is chaotic. They bought Bandcamp, realized they couldn’t afford it, & dumped it a year later. They funded expensive spin-off games like Rocket Racing & Fortnite Festival, only to abruptly discontinue support for them in 2026 when they didn’t instantly mirror Fortnite’s core success. • The Worker Cost: Because Sweeney keeps launching massive, unforced corporate wars against Steam, Apple, & Google simultaneously, the company is constantly over-extended. When his optimistic assumptions inevitably fail, the employees bear the brunt via massive, multi-wave layoffs (cutting over 1,000 workers in early 2026). Can Sweeney Actually Get Kicked Out? Logically, any normal corporate CEO with this track record of massive layoffs, value destruction (Epic’s valuation slid from $31.5B down to roughly $15.7B), & unprofitable ventures would have been fired by the board long ago. However, Sweeney has intentionally built a corporate armor that makes it almost impossible to kick him out: 1. Absolute Voting Control While Chinese tech giant Tencent owns roughly 28–40% of Epic, & The Walt Disney Company and Sony own significant slices, Tim Sweeney personally retains over 50% of the voting power. He cannot be voted out by his board because he is the majority vote. If Disney senior executives want to buy Epic outright to save their $1.5B investment, they legally cannot do so w/o Sweeney’s direct blessing. 2. How He Gets “Severely Curtailed” While he can’t be fired, Sweeney can run out of money, which forces his hand. We are already seeing his power become “severely curtailed” by the realities of his financial distress: • The Google Surrender: In March 2026, Sweeney was forced to sign a global settlement with Google that severely limited his ability to legally sue or even publicly criticize them anymore, a massive ego blow to his “anti-gatekeeper” crusade. • The Disney Takeover: Because Epic can no longer afford to fund Sweeney’s independent metaverse whims, they are now heavily reliant on Disney’s capital. Epic’s primary development focus has been forced to shift toward an extraction shooter using Disney-owned characters to satisfy their new corporate overlords. Sweeney won’t meet the classic founder fate of being thrown out of his own garage, but his idealistic era of running Epic like a personal fiefdom is over. He has driven his business close enough to the buzzsaw that he is now on a tight leash held by Disney, Tencent, and the harsh reality of his own balance sheet.” ((And some people claim Tim Cook was not a good CEO or worthy successor to Steve Jobs. Even Jobs knew he needed someone to run the company even more properly and profitably. Sweeney doesn’t see that, now and forever. Being beholden to a China based company like Tencent doesn’t raise concerns w/this administration? And by not focusing on his core business, and making better choices, Sweeney is going to keep Epic from truly prospering, but maybe that isn’t really his goal.))'
on Saturday Apple video: Reed Jobs wants to make cancer nonlethal - 'Hi, David, I can understand why you might dismiss what I’m saying and attribute my comments to me “making a lot of assumptions.” I feel you’re actually touching into one of the greatest and most central mysteries about Steve Jobs—the thing that absolutely flummoxed Walter Isaacson. I hear you saying, “I, David, did not observe what you did, Jonathan. Therefore, what you observed about Reed is not real. It is your imagination.” You’ve just described the SJ Reality Distortion Field that Walter Isaacson popularized in his SJ biography. Steve spent his entire career seeing things that absolutely no one else could. Steve was almost always 20 years ahead of everyone—computer scientists, executives, financiers, futurists. Everyone saw bits and pieces, but absolutely no one saw the achievable sea change that Steve could see. So they jumped to the same conclusion about Steve that you did about me: He is deluded. He doesn’t know what he is doing. Walter called this Steve Jobs’ Reality Distortion Field. Walter described Steve as some kind of delusional, Machiavellian madman who gaslighted people… and got them to behave irrationally. The supreme irony here—the reason I believe Walter had such contempt for Steve—is that Walter was 180-degrees wrong. Steve did not distort reality. Steve was impeccable in observing reality. But others around him couldn’t understand is that Steve’s awareness of reality was probably ~1000x bigger than theirs. There are many reasons for what made it possible for Steve to see what he saw and do what he did. But I believe the most fundamental factor is that Steve was a very serious, deeply dedicated, lifelong meditator. Sustained, daily meditation over decades is a process of deep, cognitive purification. Of metabolizing “baggage” and clearing out discursive thinking. Steve’s approach to business was antithetical to the underlying assumptions of western MBA programs. We Americans are stuck in a perpetual trap of believing that the solution to every problem is just to dump more stuff on top of it. We add more frameworks, knowledge, theories, opinions, beliefs. From a Buddhist perspective, the more theories and ideas you add to something, the more barriers you build between you and reality. You probably don’t know who I am, but Steve was a formative mentor and dear friend to me when I was 18 and for 30 years of my life. I’ve been working for 15 years writing a book about Steve that I feel is the book he has always deserved. It’s going to be insanely great… and is ~3-5 years from completion. https://www.jonathanrotenberg.com/my-teacher-steve-jobs David, re. your feedback on my perceptions of Reed, I have a question. If you imagine that someone you don’t know offers their perspective on something to you but it doesn’t jibe with your perspective, how would react? Generically, do you feel your reaction would be informed by habit or by mindfulness? Would you be willing to try an experiment here? Please reread what I wrote, and see if you can observe your own need to judge or classify. As an experiment, would you be willing—for just a few minutes—to try dropping the need to judge? Instead, could you step into a quality of curiosity or open mindedness? You don’t ultimately have to accept or agree with anything I’m saying. But what if you related to it in a slightly different way? In Buddhism, what I’m describing is called Beginner’s Mind. If you go to an ‘Expert’ seeking advice on a problem, the expert will likely say “there are only 2-3 viable answers to your question.” But if you ask a Beginner, the beginner will see an infinite number of possible answers. In the west, we tend to venerate experts and ignore beginners. In eastern wisdom traditions, the beginner is considered to be operating at a higher level of wisdom. If you could relate to what I wrote with genuine curiosity and beginner’s mind, does anything new appear that you might have missed? David, I’m not sure if I have lost you here. But it sounded like you were a great fan of Steve’s and appreciate his work. If you follow the approach I’m offering, you can better understand how Steve related to his own life and how was able to see so many things (e.g., proportionally spaced typography, iMac, iPod, iPhone, retail stores, transforming music distribution) that no one else could see… and that changed our world.'
