Apple's Bad News Keeps Coming. Can They Still Turn It Around? (msn.com) 73
Besides pressure on Apple to make iPhones in the U.S., CEO Tim Cook "is facing off against two U.S. judges, European and worldwide regulators, state and federal lawmakers, and even a creator of the iPhone," writes the Wall Street Journal, "to say nothing of the cast of rivals outrunning Apple in artificial intelligence."
Each is a threat to Apple's hefty profit margins, long the company's trademark and the reason investors drove its valuation above $3 trillion before any other company. Shareholders are still Cook's most important constituency. The stock's 25% fall from its peak shows their concern about whether he — or anyone — can navigate the choppy 2025 waters.
What can be said for Apple is that the company is patient, and that has often paid off in the past.
They also note OpenAI's purchase of Jony Ive's company, with Sam Altman saying internally they hope to make 100 million AI "companion" devices: It is hard to gauge the potential for a brand-new computing device from a company that has never made one. Yet the fact that it is coming from the man who led design of the iPhone and other hit Apple products means it can't be dismissed. Apple sees the threat coming: "You may not need an iPhone 10 years from now, as crazy as that sounds," an Apple executive, Eddy Cue, testified in a court case this month...
The company might not need to be first in AI. It didn't make the first music player, smartphone or tablet. It waited, and then conquered each market with the best. A question is whether a strategy that has been successful in devices will work for AI.
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader fjo3 for sharing the article.
What can be said for Apple is that the company is patient, and that has often paid off in the past.
They also note OpenAI's purchase of Jony Ive's company, with Sam Altman saying internally they hope to make 100 million AI "companion" devices: It is hard to gauge the potential for a brand-new computing device from a company that has never made one. Yet the fact that it is coming from the man who led design of the iPhone and other hit Apple products means it can't be dismissed. Apple sees the threat coming: "You may not need an iPhone 10 years from now, as crazy as that sounds," an Apple executive, Eddy Cue, testified in a court case this month...
The company might not need to be first in AI. It didn't make the first music player, smartphone or tablet. It waited, and then conquered each market with the best. A question is whether a strategy that has been successful in devices will work for AI.
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader fjo3 for sharing the article.
Yes, duh. (Score:4, Informative)
Apple is sitting on unprecedented and unparalleled amounts of cash, to say nothing of their liquid investments, or their other investments. Apple can afford to fail for a long time before they hit on the next big thing.
Re:Yes, duh. (Score:4, Insightful)
Apple has been going out of business for nearly 50 years now. It's a very familiar refrain that's kept going even during the peak of Mac, iPod and iPhone eras.
Re:Yes, duh. (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, but the last time they were in real trouble they were only kept going by two things:
1) Microsoft wanted to avoid monopoly prosecution.
2) They finally brought Steve Jobs back.
Well, they aren't in that kind of trouble yet, but I don't think either of those two "saviors" are likely to help again.
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If they did bring Steve Jobs back, that might just be enough to convince me to be a customer.
But not an employee. They'd be hiring people for their BRAAAAAAAAAINS. BRAAAAAAAINS.
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That would be a whole new market for Apple.
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If they did bring Steve Jobs back, that might just be enough to convince me to be a customer.
Why else do you think they are interested in Robotics?
Re:Yes, duh. (Score:5, Funny)
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They brought back Tupac and John Lennon. Wheeling out Jobs.AI for a keynote should be no problem.
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Sure, but there will be an ampersand in the speech and it will cause him to hang.
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Apple has been going out of business for nearly 50 years now.
No they haven't. They have experienced a couple of specific dips, and several of them were very much existential, especially at a time where several computer companies ceased existing. Each of those crisies were managed in wildly different ways, in some cases by luck (in the case of the return of Steve Jobs).
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IBM was the biggest computer manufacturer until it wasn't, Sega was one of the biggest makers of gaming hardware (Genesis) until it wasn't. Blackberry was THE company for smartphones, until it wasn't. All of these companies stil
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IBM was the biggest computer manufacturer until it wasn't
IBM decided to be a services company instead of trying to revitalize their manufacturing business. Sega trusted Microsoft, never trust Microsoft. Blackberry is a pretty good example of failure they couldn't reasonably anticipate, but they had none of Apple's advantages.
Apple is not indestructible and certainly not infallible, but they can still flail about for quite a while before they're in trouble.
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Apple has tried for years to make more from services income, but aside from the App Store, they haven't done very well. And the App Store is heavily tied to their hardware, which leads back to the original issue.
So Apple's services income for the last quarter was $26.6B. For FY2024 they brought in basically $100B for services alone, which would be enough to put them in the top 40 US companies - not struggling and certainly past trying to "make money" from services. Overall Apple (hardware + services) is #3 behind Walmart and Amazon with $383.4B in revenue for FY2024...
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Apple is sitting on unprecedented and unparalleled amounts of cash, to say nothing of their liquid investments, or their other investments. Apple can afford to fail for a long time before they hit on the next big thing.
Apple's future growth prospects are murky, so it's future stock price appreciation is murky. However, it's main asset is its brand. It's the brand that drives iPhone sales, and although sales are not growing much, they're also not dropping much (aside from China). Apple will continue to generate lots of cash profits. Even if it continues to be behind in AI, it doesn't matter. The iPhone is a device for other companies to run their AI, so AI that works elsewhere will also work on iPhones.
Heard this before (Score:3)
Re:Heard this before (Score:5, Insightful)
Sam Altman might try to spin "AI" as something amazing that everyone needs but reality is the consumer is not asking for it ... and so far is not inclined to pay for it. The extraordinarily large setup costs are being borne by his investors. I can't fathom how that'll ever be recouped. Not to mention the running costs.
And all that without making a single device.
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Were people "asking for" any of the other things Apple's known for? Seems it took Apple for people to realize they needed to start asking for a lot of things.
Re: Heard this before (Score:4)
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Ever feel like you weren't being tracked enough? I think we all have moments where we ask ourselves how much more we could do in our daily lives, to help Big Tech keep an eye on us. After all, wealth transfer doesn't happen unless we all pitch in and make a purchase.
Introducing AI.Lump. The discreet talisman that brings you one step closer to a billionaire. Put it in your pocket today.
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The Mac was a no-brainer as an idea but very ambitious for its time. And of course was fighting an impossible fight against the rampant PC dominance. But even so, the Mac became the last one still standing against the PC.
The iPod, for sure, was being begged for for years and arguably is what saved the Mac from a slow death. The music industry seriously dropped the ball on that one. And still are dropping the ball. The lack of engagement and coordination with the Internet is a jaw dropper. They just se
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I dont remember anyone wanting a tablet until they brought it out.
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I had a TC1100 for work for a while. It was a really nice machine.
It's a tablet. It predates the iPad, but looks rather similar if a little thicker.
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but reality is the consumer is not asking for it
Consumers don't ask for anything. No one asked for email in a web browser. No one asked for a phone without buttons. No one asked for a touch screen. Heck, no one asked for the motor vehicle. Technology development is designed to fit a potential need, and marketing exists to describe that previously unknown need to the consumer to create a demand.
That said I agree the money doesn't make sense for AI.
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That has pretty much been their history, and with about half of my net worth in AAPL stock I hope it continues. There are some real differences now though; they aren't the underdog anymore, and people like Eddie Cue have constantly pushed the company in bad directions. Apple can easily do another share repurchase to push up the stock price, but they haven't managed to keep evolving since Jobs... they just made purchases that brought in some innovation.
It will be interesting to see if the next five years pro
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What consumer problem does AI solve? (Score:2)
Im not really sure. Business can use it to replace data scientists, researchers can use it to simplify analysis. But what do consumers do with it?
Re: What consumer problem does AI solve? (Score:5, Funny)
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Make their resume[s].
FTFY.
Only Funny comment on the rich target? Sadness.
And what happened to the other editors of Slashdot? All the current stories seem to be one editor's. Did the others quit? Or maybe they were fired? Perhaps the surviving editor is just an AI and that is another "consumer problem" AI is "solving"? [Probably not. No reason not to have multiple AIs using the names of all the replaced humans...]
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I'm sure there are books [amazon.com] that help answer [amazon.com] that question.
Re: What consumer problem does AI solve? (Score:2)
Re: What consumer problem does AI solve? (Score:2)
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Re: What consumer problem does AI solve? (Score:2)
Who doesn't want that ?
Ok, so not quite everybody, but pretty damn close .
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Can you remember when the laser was "a solution looking for a problem to solve"? (And actually AI is already addressing a wide number of consumer problems with highly varying successes. Sometimes it works quite well.)
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Coincidentally, there was a very recent thread asking what people use ChatGPT for on one of the national reddit groups I sometimes visit. It appears there are quite a few users of AI, and they use it in very creative ways. Here are a few of the responses, condensed:
- New hire for electrician position: used ChatGPT as a tool for learning the regulations related to electrical installations and offer solutions for various work-related problems (got a raise early)
- Technical translations for various handbooks
-
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Most likely r/ChatGPT. For some reason mainstream forums are hostile. As for me try AI and economic or political systems. See if we can come up with something better. Another AI people might keep an eye on is Manus [forbes.com], a Chinese chatbot.
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Most likely r/ChatGPT.
Actually no; the thread is here [reddit.com] . It's on a forum for casual discussions in Romanian
Re: What consumer problem does AI solve? (Score:2)
What do you expect (Score:3, Informative)
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Donald Trump has significant influence over some fraction of one half of one item in TFA's list of challenges for Apple:
two U.S. judges, European and worldwide regulators, state and federal lawmakers, and even a creator of the iPhone
The federal court cases predate Trump. EU and other regulators around the world have been looking for excuses to extort Apple for years. State lawmakers do what they want. The most influential and powerful federal lawmakers are in Congress, and they don't always do what Trump wants (especially because of the Senate "filibuster" rule). Jony Ive started his company before Trump got elect
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Donald Trump has significant influence over some fraction of one half of one item in TFA's list of challenges for Apple:
A 25% tariff on iPhones is a bit more significant than just "a fraction of one half of one item in TFA's list." It is a major threat.
https://www.nbcnews.com/busine... [nbcnews.com]
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There is a lot more basis to advise the EU antitrust office of acting like gangster criminals. They've ended up losing a lot of their high-profile cases against (the EU arms of) big US companies.
Going through the court system to have your case heard and judged on is the exact opposite of acting like gangster criminals. And several high profile court cases the antitrust office lost were on technicalities. And quite critically they haven't lost a case outright. Even when Intel's $1bn case got thrown out the court still found Intel breached antitrust law and Intel still had to pay $250million. In general the EU has a far higher hit rate than miss rate on these matters.
You may not like it, but that doe
"the best"? (Score:1)
That's debatable. They certainly made the most polished products with the roundest corners, but from performance and technology standpoints you'd be hard pressed calling Apple "the best" at anything until Apple Silicon came along.
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Sometimes, in fact very often the most polished, reliable, and understandable products are the best. It's not all about benchmarks.
That said, Tim Cook's leadership is coming under fire even from the fan boys. The Apple car was an expensive wasted effort. The Visor is a clean miss at least for now. Apple blew it on AI, and their mad panic to slap something together had the side effect of a terrible bug infestation of IOS 18 and MacOS 16. I speak from personal experience on those. IOS 18 is currently fixed at
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The AMD competition will need these qualities for AI needs:
Strengths of Apple's M-series chips for AI:
Unified Memory Architecture (UMA): This is a significant advantage. Instead of having separate pools of memory for the CPU and GPU (and Neural Engine), M-series chips allow all components to access the same high-speed memory. This drastically reduces data copying between components, which is a major bottleneck in many AI workflows. This can lead to improved performance, especially for tasks involving large datasets or models where data shuffling is frequent.
Neural Engine: Apple includes a dedicated Neural Engine on its M-series chips (and A-series for iPhones/iPads) specifically designed to accelerate machine learning tasks. This hardware is optimized for common AI operations like matrix multiplications, which are fundamental to neural networks. The M4, for instance, boasts a Neural Engine capable of 38 trillion operations per second (TOPS), a significant jump from previous generations.
Power Efficiency: Apple Silicon is renowned for its performance-per-watt. This means you can get considerable AI processing power with much lower power consumption compared to many discrete GPUs, making them excellent for mobile workstations and on-device AI.
On-device AI and Privacy: The integrated nature of Apple's chips allows for efficient and private execution of AI models directly on the device, reducing reliance on cloud-based processing for many tasks. This is beneficial for privacy and can reduce latency.
Optimized Software Stack (Metal and Core ML): Apple provides its own frameworks like Metal (for graphics and compute) and Core ML, which are optimized to leverage the full capabilities of Apple Silicon for AI workloads. This can lead to efficient execution for applications built within the Apple ecosystem.
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https://www.amd.com/en/product... [amd.com]
Apple's lead is not as much as it once was.
Don't believe the press releases (Score:5, Insightful)
The press releases from la Presidenta is that he wants Apple to make iPhones in the U.S. His and his sycophants know damn well that is an impossibility due to complex supply chains. What he's looking for is a payoff, either directly into his pocket or some stupid politicized "win" he can blow off his big mouth about.
Re:Don't believe the press releases (Score:5, Informative)
The press releases from la Presidenta is that he wants Apple to make iPhones in the U.S. His and his sycophants know damn well that is an impossibility due to complex supply chains. What he's looking for is a payoff, either directly into his pocket or some stupid politicized "win" he can blow off his big mouth about.
I think what he's looking for is to turn the US into a third-world country wherein people are paid four dollars an hour for long workweeks of back-breaking manual labour.
That's his plan to "bring manufacturing back to America" - destroy the economy and rebuild it around literal wage-slaves. After all, that kind of economy eventually worked out for China, and seems to be working out - for some values of "working out" - for countries like Vietnam.
I'm sure the oligarchs are salivating at the prospect of restoring those enormous profit margins. The huge increase in class imbalance which would result is just a very welcome bonus.
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I suspect at that point people will realize who outnumbers whom and set things straight.
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Last I heard, US is the single biggest consumer market (or at least one of the biggest).
Part of the reason is that workers get decent wages and so got spare money to spend on stuff.
Cut the pay, and the biggest market may end up as a tiny market, since consumers need to be making money above their minimal needs if they are to spend on extra stuff.
Not sure if the oligarchs will like that, unless they really are fine with destroying a huge market. I mean, current system of making cheap crap in China, etc, and
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Last I heard, US is the single biggest consumer market (or at least one of the biggest).
Part of the reason is that workers get decent wages and so got spare money to spend on stuff.
Cut the pay, and the biggest market may end up as a tiny market, since consumers need to be making money above their minimal needs if they are to spend on extra stuff.
Not sure if the oligarchs will like that, unless they really are fine with destroying a huge market. I mean, current system of making cheap crap in China, etc, and selling it to the biggest market has worked well so far. You make the biggest market into another China like factory, who else new is going to buy their shit?
They may not care about selling "their shit". They'll have a country full of nearly-free labour to make and do anything they want, to be step-and-fetch servants for them, and with whom to enact Hunger Games competitions.
I agree that it doesn't make a lot of sense - but their current actions of killing off all kinds of social assistance while simultaneously tanking the economy seem as though they'll end up somewhere close to the scenario I painted, even if that's not their explicit goal. For all their cunnin
Do not believe it (Score:2)
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Exactly.
Where will the ads go?
You can't have technology without ads!!
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It's not. It's for a group that finds current smartphones user-hostile (yes that includes Apple).
What About Customers? (Score:2)
Apple got to where it is today because it made customers their most important constituency. With that said, the quoted statement was not made by Tim Cook, but I wouldn't be surprised if he secretly agreed with it since he's spent much of his career in the finance side of business.
"AI" is not a feature (Score:1)
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I am now stepping farther back from Windows because of "Recall"
I am not a Microsoft fanboy by any stretch, but I'm also not one to overreact.
Isn't this reaction to "Recall" overblown? Two mouse clicks and a restart and its turned off. For the people who don't want it, it seems pretty straightforward to me.
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Will it remain off ? forever? Can some software update "mistake" turn it back on without informing the users? Will a million bugs allow it to be turned on and then exploited? Will they leave some network port open then refuse to close it by saying we should all have firewalls close that port? (which would not be a new thing.)
Nevermind the 3rd party partners that have unprecedented access since windows 11 or so. Besides that, MS is just some bad decisions or bad CEO away from further abusing the trust you
They need to ... (Score:3)
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They have AI now, they can bring him back as an AI!
Click-bait article (Score:2)
The very premise of the article is that Apple is struggling (it's a click-bait article). They aren't. They're still minting money. Even the stock is up about 2% from a year ago - hardly a sign of a struggling company. Being 25% the peak isn't even atypical for Apple (just look at a graph of their share price going back 10 years).
Apple, along with the rest of the computer industry, has a real problem with tariffs. These are going to reduce their business in the US. But guess what, they are an international c
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Review the history of Intel's slide. They were also minting money and doing large stock buybacks while their R&D and fab technology fell behind.
Apple is sitting on a string of failures now. The lead they have on CPUs is diminishing. This M1 is entirely fast enough and I do appreciate the long battery life in my Macbook Air. The Ryzen 4600G in my desktop is also entirely fast enough, including the built in graphics. Not coincidentally they came out the same year.
Apple is stuck at the moment. They should
You can design things all you want (Score:2)
But you can't build it. And even if you did design it and build it, would anyone want to use it? Jony Ive was a big proponent of skeuomorphism which nobody wanted to use.
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Special purpose hardware always flops (Score:2)