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Apple boss Tim Cook says prices to rise due to memory chip costs

bbc.com

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Re: Apple boss Tim Cook says prices to rise due to memory chip costs

#141

Post by kjshsh123 »

cm2187 wrote: post #22

There was a very interesting podcast that went into all the details of the AI supply chain shortage [1] The key takeaway for smartphones isn't so much that iphones will cost $150-200 more, which apple customers have shown they can stomach. But that cheap $200 chinese smartphones will need have to hike prices by about the same amount, which will decimate that market. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDG_Hx3BSUE

>The Alchian–Allen effect was described in 1964 by Armen Alchian and William R Allen in the book University Economics (now called Exchange and Production[1]). It states that when the prices of two substitute goods, such as high and low grades of the same product, are both increased by a fixed per-unit amount such as a transportation cost or a lump-sum tax, consumption will shift toward the higher-grade product. This is because the added per-unit amount decreases the relative price of the higher-grade product.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alchian%E2%80%93Allen_effect?w...

Re: Apple boss Tim Cook says prices to rise due to memory chip costs

#142

Post by TFNA »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #76
a-french-anon wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You underestimate how poorly optimized Android (both the OS and ecosystem) is.

Why does it need to be Android? Make a phone that will send text messages and run a web browser and all the people who just need a phone will buy it to save $200. Also, when software is poorly optimized that implies it is possible to optimize it.

As already pointed out, your awareness is very geographically limited. In my country (and in a few others I’m familiar with), what I most need a smartphone for is as the obligatory second factor for strong authentication to all kinds of services both governmental and private. That’s done through a bank app that only runs on Android. Elsewhere, people might find that their local public transportation or similar things can only be paid using an app.

Re: Apple boss Tim Cook says prices to rise due to memory chip costs

#143

Post by rglover »

alt227 wrote: post #78
steve1977 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's called native applications and has been around since before the days of web app wrappers. Just stop using Electron and you're halfway there already.

Still dont see the point of using electron for mobile apps. Just make a webapp and be done with it without having to jump through the app store hoops.

Only point is to get access to native APIs and a distribution channel. Tauri is far better than Electron if you want to ship a web front-end as either desktop/mobile.

Re: Apple boss Tim Cook says prices to rise due to memory chip costs

#144

Post by mindslight »

cm2187 wrote: post #22

There was a very interesting podcast that went into all the details of the AI supply chain shortage [1] The key takeaway for smartphones isn't so much that iphones will cost $150-200 more, which apple customers have shown they can stomach. But that cheap $200 chinese smartphones will need have to hike prices by about the same amount, which will decimate that market. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDG_Hx3BSUE

Apple sure is lucky that the supply chains for those low end Chinese phones are in a country that is notoriously bad at building new manufacturing capacity and prioritizing their own industry

Re: Apple boss Tim Cook says prices to rise due to memory chip costs

#145

Post by mindslight »

andrekandre wrote: post #135
mort96 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Forget hyper-optimizing, how about we just stop throwing away gigabytes for no reward? If we get there, then we can start thinking about maybe actually optimizing anything

> we just stop throwing away gigabytes for no reward jira/confluence and google docs browser tabs are perfect examples... what does a single page need literally gigabytes of data for?

browser tabs are the perfect examples, period. These things were being done with native widget toolkits twenty years go. Or going back even further, TUI forms. Rich text with straightforward inline graphics is nice, but we're paying an extremely heavy price for it.

Personally I might not even mind so much about the memory except the latency from the garbage collection, swapping, etc absolutely kills interactive performance. My TI-85 had a snappier interactive experience than my "modern" phone.

I think a large part of the problem, at least on the embedded side, is that people really just don't have standards for these things should feel. When I tried out the first gen Nest in a store, my first thought was it was a joke and who would actually buy it with 100ms+ jittery UI lag. But lo and behold, people did.

Re: Apple boss Tim Cook says prices to rise due to memory chip costs

#146

Post by Obscurity4340 »

mathisfun123 wrote: post #140
bredren wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hasn't Apple's dev environment for iOS and its non-macos relatives always been about working with as little memory as possible? It seems like Apple, of all companies has been about doing more with less memory. That would seem to have helped in the % of BOM getting wrecked by the supply chain and discipline of developers in its ecosystem.

Where do people get these goofy ideas about how Apple functions? Is there like a mythology section of the Wikipedia?

Lot of astroturfers, no doubt. Its irritating, its like, no, how about they change their behavior and people stop expecting you to treat their computers as computers, which should be personalizable on your side, not just theirs

Re: Apple boss Tim Cook says prices to rise due to memory chip costs

#147

Post by rurp »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #47
cm2187 wrote: post #22

There was a very interesting podcast that went into all the details of the AI supply chain shortage [1] The key takeaway for smartphones isn't so much that iphones will cost $150-200 more, which apple customers have shown they can stomach. But that cheap $200 chinese smartphones will need have to hike prices by about the same amount, which will decimate that market. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDG_Hx3BSUE

Or they'll start making cheap phones with <=2GB of RAM again and people will have to write software that uses memory efficiently (the horror).

I would personally love it if efficiency actually became a priority again, but I don't see it happening. Instead we'll get an even more K shaped economy where people with enough money absorb the extra cost without much care, but everyone else will be materially worse off with a slower more limited phone.

Apple has a long history of not caring about budget-concious consumers. I doubt the wealthy decision makers at Apple and other companies are suddenly going to start caring about them now.

Re: Apple boss Tim Cook says prices to rise due to memory chip costs

#148

Post by frollogaston »

ben_w wrote: post #83
Maakuth wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you expect Apple to give up their margin? The DRAM price hikes affect every smartphone vendor, even Samsung through opportunity cost. That means the competition will also need to hike their prices. And the competition has lower margin, so they have less choice here.

> Why would you expect Apple to give up their margin? Price go up, demand go down: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supply_and_demand#/media/File:... (The iPhone is only a premium brand, not a Veblen good).

That's if iPhone costs go up and there are no other changes. As the parent said, competitors' products are also going up in price. I just don't consider the products interchangeable enough. Apple has its margins for a reason.

Also even if they had pure competitors, demand for high-end smartphones is pretty elastic. People will really just buy fewer phones if they get more expensive.

Re: Apple boss Tim Cook says prices to rise due to memory chip costs

#149

Post by frollogaston »

mrweasel wrote: post #67
cm2187 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't tell the difference between a 5 years old smartphone model and the latest generation.

For the average consumer, I'd argue that any phone made in the past 10+ years would be absolutely fine. It issues are: battery life/battery replacement, lack of updates, developers targeting newer devices only. In Apples case a good solution would be to rollback at least part of the liquid glass UI updates, as it severely affects older devices. Then announce upfront that every Apple phone will be supported for no les…

I do use an iPhone 6S. The hardware is fine, but I basically can't install apps because they all target newer OSes that can't be installed on it, and the older versions of those apps available are broken.

Re: Apple boss Tim Cook says prices to rise due to memory chip costs

#150

Post by Jblx2 »

johnvanommen wrote: post #109
prmoustache wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't want to build a huge factory if you believe the market might deflate suddently. A lot of industries got bitten by greed and the sudden deflation of demand and huge unsold inventory post COVID. The reality is the market was overly and abnormaly inflated and consumers who bought the stuff during COVID period were equipped for the next ~10 years in stuff like sporting goods and had no reason to buy new items i…

> A lot of industries got bitten by greed and the sudden deflation of demand and huge unsold inventory post COVID. I’m betting that the world is about to hit a wall of inflation. https://i.ibb.co/s9Mm8w2r/IMG-0743.jpg This is a graph I made. It shows: * the inflation rate from 1971 until 1991 * the inflation rate from the start of COVID 19 until today. Does anyone notice anything interesting about the graph?

You can tell that a chart is authoritative when it economizes on pixels?
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