Apple Will 'Watch Everything Burn' When the AI Bubble Bursts • Hacker News Board

Re: Apple Will 'Watch Everything Burn' When the AI Bubble Bursts

#171

Post by dan_gee » Mon, Jul 27, 2026, 4:39 PM UTC

satvikpendem wrote: post #124

anthonyrstevens wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> LLM technology doesn't work very well for software development This comment is so obviously false (in my experience) I'm wondering what sort of niche environment you're working in

As I mentioned in this thread the other day, it's not worth debating AI skeptics anymore in 2026, with step changes like Fable and Sol. Maybe it was the case in 2025 and before but the field has improved rapidly that it doesn't make sense to listen to people with AI experiences prior to that who haven't touched it since. Does AI make mistakes, sure, but increasingly fewer. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4905136…

> As I mentioned in this thread the other day, it's not worth debating AI skeptics anymore in 2026

This is pretty rude!

Re: Apple Will 'Watch Everything Burn' When the AI Bubble Bursts

#172

Post by dan_gee » Mon, Jul 27, 2026, 4:39 PM UTC

satvikpendem wrote: post #166

dan_gee wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for your comment. The narrative that LLMs are essential to the future of the trade often feels like an assault on my professional expertise. Whatever your experience is, mine is that LLMs don't work well for software development. I wish people who use AI would be more willing take that perspective seriously.

You should read this thread and the linked article for a discussion about your last sentence: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49052023

Could you leave a comment expressing your perspective?

Re: Apple Will 'Watch Everything Burn' When the AI Bubble Bursts

#173

Post by thewebguyd » Mon, Jul 27, 2026, 4:40 PM UTC

alpha_squared wrote: post #118

throwaway63467 wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn’t Apple potentially under a lot of pressure due to the DRAM prices as well as having to compete with AI for fab capacity? Before all the price hikes their products were already priced at the top of the market so I would assume that memory getting more expensive will impact their sales or margin quite a bit as they can’t subsidize hardware like AI companies do (they can of course eat into their own margins a bit w…

> Isn’t Apple potentially under a lot of pressure due to the DRAM prices as well as having to compete with AI for fab capacity? I'd qualify this with for now . It's not entirely clear what happens in the event the AI industry implodes, but I do think there will be a glut of memory and hardware up for grabs. It very well could crash the consumer hardware market as a result. The AI obsession and investment has burrowed…

> It very well could crash the consumer hardware market as a result

Tbh, I hope it does. Prices are outrageous, and I'm a firm believer in personal computing/having access to powerful hardware, privately and locally, is hugely important.

On a more selfish note, I miss the days of being able to build an outrageously powerful desktop for myself for relatively cheap. For now I'm still holding onto my AM4 motherboard w/ 64GB DDR4 and an aging GPU, praying my 7 y/o GPU holds up long enough for prices to drop again.

Re: Apple Will 'Watch Everything Burn' When the AI Bubble Bursts

#174

Post by mark_l_watson » Mon, Jul 27, 2026, 4:40 PM UTC

I more or less agree. When Apple starts using Chinese and expanded South Korean production memory chips, their hardware pricing problem will go away.

I am running new betas for macOS/iOS/iPadOS and Siri is actually useful for a much wider set of use cases. I asked Siri last week what models it was using and one of those listed was Gemini which is confusing because I enabled free use of OpenAI in the settings. Regardless, Siri is much more useful than it used to be.

Re: Apple Will 'Watch Everything Burn' When the AI Bubble Bursts

#175

Post by bpavuk » Mon, Jul 27, 2026, 4:40 PM UTC

alpha_squared wrote: post #118

throwaway63467 wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn’t Apple potentially under a lot of pressure due to the DRAM prices as well as having to compete with AI for fab capacity? Before all the price hikes their products were already priced at the top of the market so I would assume that memory getting more expensive will impact their sales or margin quite a bit as they can’t subsidize hardware like AI companies do (they can of course eat into their own margins a bit w…

> Isn’t Apple potentially under a lot of pressure due to the DRAM prices as well as having to compete with AI for fab capacity? I'd qualify this with for now . It's not entirely clear what happens in the event the AI industry implodes, but I do think there will be a glut of memory and hardware up for grabs. It very well could crash the consumer hardware market as a result. The AI obsession and investment has burrowed…

> including agriculture

in fact, agri sees its share of impact now! all of this investment has to come from somewhere, which means that money is getting sucked up into AI from the entire economy. job cuts in tech are part that, part general "de-bloating" of post-COVID tech. retail investors are a lot more likely to invest into AI than any other industry, although there are signs that big players already consider risks of overexposure to AI.

not to mention, agri saw a "bubble" of its own, surrounding Agtech, which peaked at 2021 and has been cooling ever since. scare quotes here because it was nothing like AI bubble

Re: Apple Will 'Watch Everything Burn' When the AI Bubble Bursts

#176

Post by skippyfish » Mon, Jul 27, 2026, 4:40 PM UTC

sajithdilshan wrote: post #138

skippyfish wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I do think the valuations are quite and they would need to meet the reality, but don’t think there’s gonna be a crash or we’d ever go back to pre-AI era. It would more or less would be a correction to valuations. Something to consider: would your description also apply to the dot-com boom of the late 1990s? The internet was real, the ideas for internet business were real, and we were not going to the previous reali…

But there’s a difference between fearing mongering with a crash and a long term correction. The correction would make all the startups/companies that created a wrapper around frontier models go away, but the ones that truly solved a problem would remain. Also I remember reading that Anthropic is on its way to be profitable in 2028

With respect, the way you talk about corrections makes me suspect you weren't working in tech in the US at the turn of the century.

A "correction" in this model isn't a reasoned and gradual re-evaluation of the market cap of every company. It's a broad pullback where people panic and no one wants to be left holding the bag. Money shifts into other assets for years and tech employment, incomes, and the availability of funding takes a big hit.

As to your comment about profitability... every unprofitable company is on a path to be profitable. Some even get there.

Plus, look at it this way: Kellogg's is a profitable company and a part of almost every person's life. Does this make them worth trillions of dollars? No, they just provide boring, commodity products, their valuation is basically a low multiple of the assets they hold and the revenues they bring. There's a future where OpenAI or Anthropic are more powerful than all the world's governments combined, but also a future where they're Kellog's.

Re: Apple Will 'Watch Everything Burn' When the AI Bubble Bursts

#177

Post by ghaff » Mon, Jul 27, 2026, 4:41 PM UTC

robertoandred wrote: post #153

ghaff wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I generally agree. Xserve didn't work out for Apple and they dropped it pretty quickly--think I still have an A/UX coffee cup. Wasn't really in their DNA even if there was an argument before Linux took off. For better or worse, they're basically a client company and barely a software (OK and basically a software services) one--although they spend a fair bit on (roughly) user experience.

They sold the Xserve for ten years, across the PowerPC and Intel eras.

Still, in the scheme of Apple stuff it was a failed experiment--even if a worthwile one.

Re: Apple Will 'Watch Everything Burn' When the AI Bubble Bursts

#178

Post by jen20 » Mon, Jul 27, 2026, 4:43 PM UTC

altmanaltman wrote: post #113

cmiles8 wrote: post #78

Apple looks better and better as every day passes. Other players going deeply into debt to build out massive infrastructure, VCs pumping up the model ecosystem that is now a total commodity. Apple’s just been sitting there with solid cashflow waiting for all this to implode and then have on-device models with their own chips. Apple will own the end device while the rest of the world is fighting over a pure commodity.…

No Apple was not sitting there and waiting as if its some grand plan. They tried their VR device which they don't even talk about now. They were late to AI and yes if the bubble bursts they will be at a better position but it's not some grand master strategy. Even inside apple there's been a lot of talk about how badly the company handled AI. As for laughing all the way to the bank, I am sure memory manufacturers and…

They certainly were not late to AI, unless you narrowly define AI as “LLMs”. See [1] as a single example among many.

[1]: https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1609/aimag.v19i1.1355

Re: Apple Will 'Watch Everything Burn' When the AI Bubble Bursts

#179

Post by user43928 » Mon, Jul 27, 2026, 4:43 PM UTC

scrlk wrote: post #10

> While people get some sort of benefit out of AI-generated code, these tools actually end up making them slower Curious that he references a METR study from July 2025, before the leap in model and harness performance towards the end of 2025/early 2026.

I stopped reading at maybe 25% into the article. It's obvious garbage.

He selectively quotes the max theoretical enterprise pricing equivalent of fully using the private subscription. Did SemiAnalysis not also claim a very high margin?

He throws in doubt about the providers having decent margins, which he claims is made up by "AI boosters" rather than leaked financials and open-weight pricing.

Then next he talks about "the real cost" of inference as if it was in any way realistic that labs price the enterprise plans near cost, like he seems to imply.

Then next he claims AI is actually slowing developers down and there isn't much difference between the models.

It just seems delusional.

Re: Apple Will 'Watch Everything Burn' When the AI Bubble Bursts

#180

Post by neaden » Mon, Jul 27, 2026, 4:44 PM UTC

HAL3000 wrote: post #154

cmiles8 wrote: post #78

Apple looks better and better as every day passes. Other players going deeply into debt to build out massive infrastructure, VCs pumping up the model ecosystem that is now a total commodity. Apple’s just been sitting there with solid cashflow waiting for all this to implode and then have on-device models with their own chips. Apple will own the end device while the rest of the world is fighting over a pure commodity.…

Others are betting on AGI/almost AGI like system. It's a gamble because no one actually knows whether or when it will be possible to create it. But if their bets pay off, they could outcompete Apple. Basically, other companies are going all in on the next card, while Apple is holding back and waiting to see which cards are dealt.

The problem is even if AI ends up being huge all these companies still have to worry about eachother and the Chinese models that are coming out. It's like a dollar auction and it's very possible we are already at the situation where they have all bid more than a dollar.