Recent Comments

  • Gregg Thurman on Macalope: Three reasons Apple's CEO switch has been so chill - 'OT: and no better place to put my thought. I have a feeling that Apple’s next Mac computer will be an M-5 rack mount. Performance will be greater than any PC farm (while requiring fewer nodes), consumes less energy to function, consumes less energy for environment considerations and requires less tech support, not to mention more effectively securing a firm’s data from hackers. Mac Studio+? After experiencing the efficiencies of MacOS and Apple silicon, how long would be before enterprises start swapping out Windows desktops?'
  • Jonny T on Apple delivers another record fiscal quarter — Q2 2026 - 'Congratulations to all you guys here who make this a truly remarkable page of unsurpassable Apple knowledge, as well as sensible conjecture. Hat’s off!'
  • Gregg Thurman on Apple delivers another record fiscal quarter — Q2 2026 - '” a massive amount of RAM requires a serial connection to transmit the data” That’s the throughput bottleneck that unified memory solves. Over the years Apple has been quietly solving the problems of running “AI” on device. Each time explaining how the new tech incrementally improves performance, without noting that the collective of all these technological breakthroughs are ideal for a local on device “AI” server.'
  • ben luna on Apple delivers another record fiscal quarter — Q2 2026 - 'Yeah, I feel bad for whatever is going on with him. I really enjoyed debating with him. What a pity.'
  • Gregg Thurman on Best and worst Apple analysts: Fiscal Q2 2026 - 'After reading all these theories about what Apple could have done differently, so they wouldn’t be supply constrained, I’m reminded of an old marketing adage: “If you want an American to want something, tell them they can’t have it”. You want a Mac Mini? You can’t have it. You want a Mac Studio? You can’t have it. You want a MacBook Neo? You can’t have it You want an iPhone 17 xx? You can’t have it. With influencers telling the world all these products are best in class, especially if you want to run the hot new AI software locally. It doesn’t take long until a feeding frenzy is created, driving even greater desire. “It may take a few months to achieve inventory equilibrium.” Only adds to the hysteria, because the media loves a story like this. Every cub reporter will be writing about what’s being said by every other cub reporter. And just like that the de facto standard for AI agentic platforms are Mac computers. Everybody that believes they need all that power will wait to get what they want, effectively freezing out anything the competition is offering. “Tell them they can’t have it” I’ll wager that by October 1 (start of new fiscal year) supply equilibrium will be quietly achieved, but the mindset will linger forever, “Macs are what you need, and you have to order early to get one this year”. Caveat: this only works if the brand is aspirational. What brand other than Apple is aspirational?'
  • ben luna on Apple delivers another record fiscal quarter — Q2 2026 - 'I was recently surprised to learn that this wasn’t the case for at least the A series processors. I‘m guessing that there is some complication preventing Apple and others from having done this already for performance reasons alone. I.e there must be something that makes this more complicated than it sounds, such as the caches are small enough to wire up directly in parallel, but a massive amount of RAM requires a serial connection to transmit the data? But maybe this RAM crunch will push the innovation forward through necessity?'
  • Joseph Bland on Best and worst Apple analysts: Fiscal Q2 2026 - 'I agree that the supply constraints they are having aren’t across-the-board, Bart. But a year or so ago, when they could have order x quantities of those critical items, they ordered y quantities. And again, this is a personal observation. I’m not asking anyone ro agree with me. Let’s just all hope that folks will be willing to hang in there and put up with the wait. I can guarantee you lamps are burning through the night trying to figure out how they’re going to cut themselves in on Apple’s action!'
  • Joseph Bland on Apple delivers another record fiscal quarter — Q2 2026 - 'I don’t mean “white flag” in a pejorative sense, Fred. But for a while now they’ve been struggling to hit net cash zero due to their huge net cash flow, so I’ve always seen it as inevitable that they weren’t going to reach it – which they’ve now acknowledged. It’s another of those good problems to have.'
  • Troy Thoman on Best and worst Apple analysts: Fiscal Q2 2026 - 'Very good news, and it explains why Macs weren’t even better. The next two quarters will be solid going into new fall iPhones and into the holidays. This might be the best growth year in a while for AAPL. “For Mac, in the June quarter, there’s two factors that are driving the constraints. One is that on the Mac Mini and the Mac Studio, both of these are amazing platforms for AI and agentic tools and the customer recognition of that is happening faster than what we had predicted, and so we saw higher than expected demand. The second reason is that the customer response to Mac Neo has just been off the charts, with higher than expected demand, and the March quarter record for customers, we set a March quarter record for customers new to the Mac, partly due to the Neo. We think, looking forward, that the Mac Mini and the Mac Studio may take several months to reach supply-demand balance.”'
  • Bart Yee on Best and worst Apple analysts: Fiscal Q2 2026 - 'Joseph, I don’t think Apple is wanting to be production constrained on Macs or iPhones, they can produce almost at will any number of chassis, SOC chips (or at least what they contracted TSMC for), and all other parts including sufficient displays from Samsung Display. What is a rate limiting issue is now availability and cost of their advanced A- and M- series TSMC chips on latest processes, and of course the LPDDR5X memory in both smartphone, desktop and notebook versions, and the competition for now limited volumes of same from all memory manufacturers who have pivoted to trying to fulfill the seemingly endless and insatiable appetite for HBM memory chips used in AI servers. Hopefully, Apple can produce all it can and get supply-demand balance back. Cook said in response to that question that it may take several months to do so From Six Colors Transcript, here: https://sixcolors.com/post/2026/04/this-is-tim-and-john-and-kevin-transcript-of-apples-q2-2026-financial-call/ Tim Cook: “Yeah. Hi, Eric. Thanks for your comments. We were constrained during the March quarter. This was primarily on iPhone and to a lesser extent on the Mac, and as we talked about in the last call, the constraints were primarily driven by the availability of the advanced nodes our SoCs are produced on. If you look forward to the June quarter, the majority of our supply constraints will be on several Mac models, given the continued high levels of demand that we’re seeing, and we have less flexibility in the supply chain than we normally would. For Mac, in the June quarter, there’s two factors that are driving the constraints. One is that on the Mac Mini and the Mac Studio, both of these are amazing platforms for AI and agentic tools and the customer recognition of that is happening faster than what we had predicted, and so we saw higher than expected demand. The second reason is that the customer response to Mac Neo has just been off the charts, with higher than expected demand, and the March quarter record for customers, we set a March quarter record for customers new to the Mac, partly due to the Neo. We think, looking forward, that the Mac Mini and the Mac Studio may take several months to reach supply-demand balance. And so, hopefully that gives you a view of both Q2 and Q3 on the supply side.” Not a bad problem to have though.'
  • Fred Stein on Apple delivers another record fiscal quarter — Q2 2026 - '“White flag”? At least this quarter, they have increased cash and paid down debt whilst dialing back share repurchases. The increase in dividend remains the same at 1 penny per quarter increase annually. One time or new pattern? I’d guess they want flexibility. First to pay off bonds rather than refi if the wars disrupt economies further. Second to fund strategic acquisition(s).'
  • Bart Yee on Best and worst Apple analysts: Fiscal Q2 2026 - 'Congrats on a well done win. Regarding Mac revenues, sales of lower priced Neo’s would have raised sales numbers but diluted revenues and ASP’s. Given that 14 of the 20 participants estimated between $8.60-$10+, expectations were high for increased Mac Revenues above the 6% result. As David suggests, memory costs, availability and production may have actually constrained sales numbers and subsequent revenues. No matter, considering solid backlogs of orders for Mac Neo and mid to high end Mac’s, this is just pushing demand and delivery into Q3, assuming Apple can improve delivery. Neo’s will make great graduation and Back to school gifts and educational institutions will be deciding on whether Mac Neo makes inroads on new school year budgets. Meanwhile, small business and enterprise now have options for running their own Mac-based AI locally instead of paying monthly subscription fees to AI infrastructure and providers. Considering the costs and data privacy issues involved, Mac may see substantial uptake over the next year.'
  • Joseph Bland on Best and worst Apple analysts: Fiscal Q2 2026 - 'The interesting thing for me is that this is normally a production slack period for Apple, but it seems clear production is still humming. Seems a perfect opportunity for Apple to be gearing up for more production. But my past experience of Apple is that they don’t really like to gamble, production-wise. They have appeared to leave cash on the table rather than gamble on the possibility of over-supply. I’d love it if, for once, they took a chance and let production rip. I just don’t have much hope that they actually will.'
  • Gregg Thurman on Apple delivers another record fiscal quarter — Q2 2026 - 'Now that I think about it, unless I’m wrong, you can’t buy physical unified memory silicon. That would mean that TurboQuant would have to be modified to benefit Apple’s hardware. I don’t if, or how that could be done. The important thing is that Apple has alternatives to just paying more.'
  • Joseph Bland on Best and worst Apple analysts: Fiscal Q2 2026 - 'Hi, Troy. I think this was ramping up last quarter. And it may still be ramping up. BTW, my loaded MacBook Pro is shipping today and is scheduled to arrive on the early side, so about 2 weeks from order to delivery. So Apple appears to be able to handle Mac demand, at least for now. Which I see as a positive. It may also account for the high future estimates for the June quarter given today.'
  • Rick Povich on Best and worst Apple analysts: Fiscal Q2 2026 - 'I guess as an indicator that’s not a bad thing'
  • Joseph Bland on Apple delivers another record fiscal quarter — Q2 2026 - 'I see the big after-hours bump has now moderated to a medium bump. I also see that total volume has increased to almost 84 M trades. Will tomorrow see another high volume day? And will that volume steamroll today’s $267.50 Max Pain number? Tune in tomorrow and find out!'
  • graham prudhomme on Best and worst Apple analysts: Fiscal Q2 2026 - 'Congrats, Gregg 🙂'
  • Greg Lippert on Apple delivers another record fiscal quarter — Q2 2026 - 'When Apple pops post call, that’s a boost that has legs IMHO. BTO Tommo’s take made me vomit in my mouth. He’s jumped the shark.'
  • Fred Stein on Apple delivers another record fiscal quarter — Q2 2026 - 'Thanks Gregg, Going out on a limb, if Google and Apple, in combo or separately, radically reduce the cost (CAPEX and OPEX) of AI, parts or all of AI, we might see disruptive changes in valuations. Right now, the price Nvidia pays TSMC for a chip is 1/10th the fully burdened CAPEX of a hyper scalar’s data center.'
  • Joseph Bland on Apple delivers another record fiscal quarter — Q2 2026 - 'Thanks for the quote, Raj! It’s pretty clear to me what he meant, but just why it would elicit a big reversal isn’t as clear. I think Apple just finally admitted it was futile to make net cash neutral happen. Ergo, they expect to see net cash neutral drift away going forward. My guess on the possible reason for it adding to the bump: The possibility that, at the same time Apple is revisiting debt versus cash, they may be examining the worth of buybacks versus dividends as a means for keeping long term investors happy. Now, folks like Donna and me that don’t own enough AAPL to make dividends worth much prefer buybacks. But folks that own millions of dollars worth will likely prefer dividends (even though buybacks are invisibly more beneficial to Apple, since you can take your dividend and go buy something else other than AAPL with it). Of course, dividends outside of a retirement fund are taxed much, much more than buybacks, but that cold, hard feeling of cash in hand still attracts a certain number of investors. My guess is that Apple has been under pressure to change the balance of buybacks and dividends. That possibility is somewhat reinforced by the simultaneously-announced 4% increase in dividends. So is this bump essentially a “cheer from the sidelines” for an increased dividend? I guess that’s a possibility.'
  • Bart Yee on Apple delivers another record fiscal quarter — Q2 2026 - 'I’ve theorized that if Apple could license from Samsung or Kioxia (or develop its own) hi-speed LPDDR5X RAM or the next generation of DDR6 RAM and either fabricate it on better than the 10nm process currently used, Apple could theoretically build the RAM on the SoC rather than using separate chips and using TSMC’s advanced stacked chip packaging. This would make the CPU SOC much larger though, maybe increase costs per wager or chips and/or decrease yields, but would it be offset by performance gains by direct silicon connections, 3-4x smaller, more efficient & faster processes? Then Apple would own their own memory supply, cutting out the vagaries of multi source memory suppliers who are prioritizing HBM AI memory over regular and high performance RAM and NAND chips. Of course, it may only take a year or two for the AI data center craze to slow significantly and the memory price bubble to pop along with it.'
  • David Emery on Best and worst Apple analysts: Fiscal Q2 2026 - '‘supply constrained’ on the high end of Macs?'
  • David Emery on Apple delivers another record fiscal quarter — Q2 2026 - 'Mebbe it’s old age. Mebbe it’s experience. But it seemed to me there was a lot more ‘platitudes’ today than I remember. Anyone else thought about that (one way or the other)?'
  • Troy Thoman on Best and worst Apple analysts: Fiscal Q2 2026 - 'I thought the sold-out Mac Minis and Mac studios that people were buying for building local AI agents would have bumped Mac sales a bit more. I’m pleasantly surprised by services growth. High margin and often recurring. This is the next engine for AAPL buy backs.'
  • David Emery on Apple delivers another record fiscal quarter — Q2 2026 - 'If Apple continues to do SoC, the RAM is part of the silicon, so they don’t need separate RAM chips from RAM suppliers. The core supplier relationship is with TSMC for the SoC production. Of course, some Apple products aren’t yet full SoC (e.g. Neo and Mini/Studio I think), but I bet Apple moves that way. (And I’d expect Apple modem tech to move into SoC for the Mac line, has anyone considered that putting A-series in the Neo makes the Neo “ready for cellular”? 😉 )'
  • Gregg Thurman on Apple delivers another record fiscal quarter — Q2 2026 - 'Daniel, I’m not sure Apple will require more physical RAM in future products. Google has developed a memory compression algorithm that increases physical RAM capacity by about 6X. Initially, as I understand it, TurboQuant is most effective in “AI” environments. If TurboQuant can be used, as is, for less demanding searches, then Apple’s for memory will only go up by its licensing costs from Google. Remember Google has had a long and mutually beneficial relationship with Apple, and now Apple is partnering with Google for Gemini. I expect at some point Gemini with ship with TurboQuant. This would be most beneficial for sales of Mac Minis and Mac Studios. If TurboQuant can’t be modified to improve memory efficiency for mobile products, its desktop efficiencies might be able to subsidize mobile memory costs, the result being no appreciable memory cost increases for Apple. There’s a lot of if’s and maybe’s in there, but tons of potential.'
  • Bart Yee on Apple delivers another record fiscal quarter — Q2 2026 - 'If my call recall is correct, they did guide to a lower GM of 47-48%, so they expect a drop of about -1.2 to -2.2% from 49.27%, all pegged primarily to highly increased memory costs, transport costs, and easing of Fx tailwinds. These same costs & expenses will affect ALL hardware competitors in products (smartphones, tablets, notebooks, PC’s) to a large extent, and more adversely affect those fighting it out in midrange and budget tiers where margins are much thinner.'
  • Raj Pandey on Apple delivers another record fiscal quarter — Q2 2026 - 'The guidance for June quarter was good but not ‘that’ good. Sure, it got the stock back to climbing again but I suspect — because I was monitoring the stock movement very closely — that the sudden surge also had something to do with Kevan saying they will “no longer be providing net cash neutral as a formal target, and will independently evaluate cash and debt.” That comment seemed to have released Joe’s beach ball. From 268.88 to 284.89 in a matter of minutes! What Kevan said sounds slick but vague. You can’t nail the real meaning behind it. One guess could be that they’re looking into bigger [than usual] acquisitions.'
  • Bart Yee on Counterpoint: Apple rules the skies — for now - 'I don’t know what 3GPP was so here is the skinny: The 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) is a global collaboration between seven telecommunications standards development organizations formed in 1998. It develops technical specifications for mobile networks, including 3G (UMTS), 4G (LTE), 5G, and upcoming 6G, ensuring global interoperability and roaming for mobile devices.“ The NTN part of this is the Non-Terrestrial Networks which were fledgelings in the late 90’s but obviously have been built out over the past 28 years. With Apple already deploying this to every iPhone since the iPhone 14, as mentioned above, it has a huge install base capable of using this satellite service built in and at no extra cost for the majority of iPhones in a continually growing number of countries and regions. While for now SOS emergency services and now texting, it will only be a matter of time before voice calling and more complex messaging occurs, likely over Apple designed and produced modem chips and RF systems. Because of Apple’s overwhelming dominance of the premium end of the market, satellite services continue to add even more value to iPhone & Apple Watch Ultra 3 ownership, and perhaps will extend to iPad and MacBooks who may get modems as well. Maybe even extended to the new iFold and inflight internet connectivity? Wouldn’t that be a great feature to have, via aircraft modems or satellite signal routers, iPhone first seamless internet in the air?'