Bill Donahue on Mark Gurman: Ternus wants a more agentic Siri - 'I’m having trouble squaring this with Ternus’s recent decision to rein in AI bot use and expenses for Apple engineers. How big a corporate priority and financial reality can developing an agentic bot for Siri and the world’s Apple users be, if providing high levels of AI bot access and use just to its own engineers is too expensive? If Apple’s going to pursue true AI, then it should do what Apple does, recognize that LLMs are never going to be the way to get there and will continue to be the centers of financial black holes, and focus elsewhere. Leave the room that everyone else insists on playing in, while they’re all painting themselves into corners.'
on Counterpoint: Apple hoovered up half of Sept. quarter phone revenue - 'Apple went through their ownership cycle lengthening back in 2021-2024 with the iPhone 11 & 12 being so good, people didn’t invest in another quick upgrade, the pandemic induced a large buying cycle which satisfied a lot of folks, plus post pandemic buying within a depressive economy dampened sales. All of that meant Apple addressed how to handle a slumping sales market by expanding the market (and manufacturing) to India, had to bide time in China (see decline in China revenues (2022-mid 2025), and getting enough used and refurbished products by itself or third party resellers to become available to price sensitive markets. That last part primed the pump for Apple to now effectively compete in budget and midrange tiers WITHOUT any significant costs for manufacturing, production, logistics, sales, or additional warranty. Sad to say, for Android, many of the makers are now suffering a length of ownership expansion as prices are raised, price sensitive markets’ new sales contract, and current Android owners think twice about getting a new phone. Now some have to get a new phone as their midrange or budget phone is dying or is unsupported now. Because of price increases, value retaining used iPhones now become viable alternative choices to new but pricier Android models. The fact that a 3-4 year old iPhone 13 or 14 still works great, has iOS support for at least 3-4 more years, and had much better resale still makes them attractive for purchase. Apple then keeps growing the install base, new iPhone sales keep adding older used iPhones to the lower tier inventories, and Apple eventually sees ticks in iPhone revenues and Services revenues, and maybe someday down the line, Wearables, iPad and Mac sales if the user becomes invested in the ecosystem. Since Android has very poor and competing ecosystems, no one brand can improve their revenue situation beyond mostly just hardware sales, Huawei and Samsung mostly being the exceptions, and even then, revenue is uneven. Apple is smartly riding out this crazy market by capitalizing now at the high end with Duo, 18 Pro models and continuous iPhone 17 sales, and, somewhat covertly and insidiously penetrating the lower end with used and refurbished long lived and reliable older iPhones. Win-win-win for Apple.'
on This week's Apple trading strategies (11/9-11/13/26) - 'Apple ended a tumultuous week of trading off $1.80 or 0.52% on Friday at $342.37. Over the past five trading days Apple was off 0.66%. Over the past month Apple is up 2.62% and year-to-date the shares are higher by 25.94%. The week began with Apple reporting results on Monday, the mid-term elections on Tuesday and the market’s response to the election results for the last three days of the week. For the week the Dow Jones Industrial Average was off 0.94%, the S&P 500 was off 2.68% and the NASDAQ Composite was down 3.37%. Apple’s market cap at the close of trading on Friday was $4.975 trillion.'
on Mark Gurman: Ternus wants a more agentic Siri - 'My guess is Apple is working on agents. The question may well be how hard to work on it with limited resources/personnel. Apple has increased its research budgets but Ternus may want more of that to be focussed on agents, and on making them ready for full, rapid development, rather than mostly research. More focus on making agentic Siri ready for release than sticking in the lab.'
on Mark Gurman: Ternus wants a more agentic Siri - 'Good on you, Mr. Federighi! The absolute target as AI evolves is personal privacy protection. Apple’s system gives its users a choice. If Mr. Ternus isn’t 100% behind that, then putting him in charge was a mistake. More likely, though, this is just Mark Gurman making trouble.'
on Mark Gurman: Ternus wants a more agentic Siri - 'I thought they were doing this already. Stop pussyfooting, Craig!'
on Mark Gurman: Ternus wants a more agentic Siri - 'I use Grok Bot for agentic work that I wish Siri could handle. Yesterday I asked it to check iPhone Duo inventory at local Apple and T-Mobile stores every hour. It found exactly the model I wanted within a few hours. Siri cannot do that, but it should be able to!'
on Mark Gurman: Ternus wants a more agentic Siri - 'Have you met them? Apple will not stop. They don’t have the same goals as the others. They need an agent to get things done on device. And Apple is still the best device for AI – even the competitions.'
on Singapore has become Apple's biggest tax shelter - 'Giddy up Guinness. Ireland stood by Apple throughout that political nonsense. So I will give them kudos for being a stalwart partner fighting the likes of Vestager from beginning to end.'
on Counterpoint: Apple hoovered up half of Sept. quarter phone revenue - 'It gets even better next quarter, when Duo sales get counted,'
on Apple in Dem's crosshairs? - 'Joseph, I agree with you. Doing the investigations doesn’t do anything to lower the price of gas or food. I think some of the early comments that I heard may be encouraging that at least there is some sanity left in some of the politicians but we will have to see. They would be more wise to dealing with things that will make people’s lives better and not looking for revenge. I would hope that investigations into Apple would be further down the list. But, then again, you never know. There may be a few on the far left(as with the far right) that may say some crazy things but hopefully, they don’t speak for most of the people elected to office this past week. But we will have to see.'
on Apple in Dem's crosshairs? - 'Shocking though this is, I think the Washington Post is all wet here. I am unaware of Apple ‘hosting tracking apps” used by ICE. I do recall that Apple removed “ICE Block” from the App Store at the Trump Administration’s request. That was an app that some people protesting ICE used to keep track of the agency’s movements in real time so they could show up in time to video-record their actions. Photographing and even protesting law-enforcement actions that occur in plain sight is activity protected by the First-Amendment. So if Congress plans to apply some heat to reinforce that basic idea, I am in favor of it.'
on Apple in Dem's crosshairs? - 'Why would anyone take on a job wherein half the population thinks you’re an idiot and that pays less (in some cases a lot less) than their day job, unless they have some degree of a god complex, or the side benefits are really good. Are lawyers anymore ethical than the average politician? I think not.'
on Apple in Dem's crosshairs? - 'Unfortunately congress is made up of a bunch of amateurs posturing for constituents rather than legal professionals evaluating the facts and merits. I don’t expect that kind of rational thinking from them.'
on Saturday Apple video: Why Apple Didn't Make Steve Jobs Rich - 'It is not uncommon to hear people say the Jobs was all about the product and not the profit. And yet…….'
