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Tim Cook's Impeccable Timing

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Re: Tim Cook's Impeccable Timing

#321

Post by GeekyBear »

jmyeet wrote: post #172
havaloc wrote: post #9

Cook seems to be dragged for some of his decisions ( like China ), but he was the right CEO for the time. Ternus in turn seems to be the right CEO for this phase of Apple. I'm excited to see what Ternus does in the role! It's a homecoming of sorts having a product person and there has already been chatter he'll be more like Jobs in the role. If they can maintain their hardware lead and tighten up the software a bit,…

I think Tim Apple [sic] has made 3 major errors, 2 of which got corrected: 1. The mid-to-late 2010s Cult of Thinness as the last gasp of Johnny Ive was terrible for the Macbook range. Butterly keyboard, 12" Macbook, no Macbook Air, Touch bar... ugh. I personally believe Johnny Ive got gently shown the door over all that so was corrected; 2. The Apple Watch didn't know what it was at launch. Remember the $10,000 Apple…

Apple is way ahead in AI, since they are unique in offering a single switch that turns it off if you don't care for it.

Re: Tim Cook's Impeccable Timing

#322

Post by aworks »

reducesuffering wrote: post #99
aworks wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Likewise he can probably defer his Social Security payments until 70, in order to get the higher benefit... +1 for Medicare for the non-rich, though. I'm a retiree and the monthly payment is about 1/4 of what I was paying for health insurance before I was eligible.

> defer his Social Security payments until 70, in order to get the higher benefit People repeat this but when I ran the math on earlier Social Security payments it seems like the accrued $, by the time you're eligible for the higher benefit, is plenty similar as bonus income.

I'm not following this advice for now but a recent post about not delaying

https://nesteggcare.com/why-would-you-delay-the-start-of-soc...

Re: Tim Cook's Impeccable Timing

#323

Post by maxglute »

zenapollo wrote: post #47

I don't think Cook gets enough credit for this [0] - Book: Apple in China. (Author Interview [1]) It's an undisputed damning account of how Cook was used by China to train millions of Chinese electronics manufacturers, managers, and engineers. The US took the most advanced industrial electronics manufacturing tech, and handed the expertise on a silver platter it to a long term strategic enemy. Frankly, he shouldn't l…

The book's thesis is frankly unwarranted Apple glazing. Asian Tigers trained PRC decades before Apple. Muh designed in California and manufactured in China was always Cupertino hands Chinese factory specs and Chinese engineers and workers building it into reality. US manufacturing already in the shits by then, the idea that Apple substantively "elevated" PRC manufacturing is huffing copium. PRC process engineering was always the hardest part of the equation that somehow gets credited to US. PRC manufacturing made Apple, not the other way around.

The reality is PRC already had magnitude more high end manufacturing talent by the time Apple entered PRC already and they're the ones that made Apple scribbles at scale possible. The stories of PRC manufacturers having stupendously fast line turn arounds, making changes in hours should disabuse the notion they needed learning, when they already knew how to execute at scale. Apple's derisked manufacturing in other countries still can't do this, PRC was doing this on day one - see overnight turnaround to retool iPhone line from plastic to glass screen 20 years ago. Apple went to PRC because PRC already had competently trained manufacturing workforce, and only one that can operate at speed + scale. Apple buying a few 1000 CNC machines doesn't tip the balance remotely in Apple's favour - if sector moved towards CNC and tighter tolerances, PRC industry would have simply followed, Apple $$$ is nice, but PRC doesn't need Apple $$$ - capex is not a bottleneck for their system. And Apple would have never push enough goods and make $$$ without PRC.

Re: Tim Cook's Impeccable Timing

#324

Post by macintux »

jarjoura wrote: post #305
havaloc wrote: post #9

Cook seems to be dragged for some of his decisions ( like China ), but he was the right CEO for the time. Ternus in turn seems to be the right CEO for this phase of Apple. I'm excited to see what Ternus does in the role! It's a homecoming of sorts having a product person and there has already been chatter he'll be more like Jobs in the role. If they can maintain their hardware lead and tighten up the software a bit,…

I always understood, going to China, as what the industry was already doing, and Apple was in the middle of coming out of bankruptcy, so pressured to get their costs down. Tim Cook, the process guy, would have been given the task to do just that in an industry that was already consolidating in China. I don't remember the details, but I'm pretty sure Tony Fadell's startup was already in China building what would becom…

Technically Apple was never bankrupt. It certainly came within a few months, but never reached that point.

Re: Tim Cook's Impeccable Timing

#325

Post by foldr »

repparw wrote: post #276
sneak wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I collect the 12" macbooks, even today. It really only needs one port; the vast majority of people never plug anything but power into their computer ever. I would pay huge sums for a modern Mx 11-12" ultralight macbook with a reliable keyboard.

the engineering workarounds to give the Neo a second port probably says that their internal numbers differ, regarding the number of ports importance

The Neo's targetting a different market. The MacBook was a premium ultraportable product. If you were buying it, you were willing to make all kinds of sacrifices for a thin and light laptop. The Neo is a general purpose consumer laptop that just happens to be fairly small.

Re: Tim Cook's Impeccable Timing

#326

Post by epistasis »

BeetleB wrote: post #306
epistasis wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> he shouldn't legally have even been able to do this What law do you want to write to make it so that knowledge can't be transferred to other countries? In the mid 20th century, the Green Revolution, partly led by Norman Borlaug, fed billions, and was a huge transfer of knowledge to other countries, and hugely beneficial for all of humanity. (The critiques, well they exist but they are refinements, not critiques tha…

> What law do you want to write to make it so that knowledge can't be transferred to other countries? Actually, this is fairly standard via export control laws. When a certain technology is deemed critical, it can be put under export control. When I worked in the semiconductor space, some of the advanced tech we had was subject to these laws. Countries came under different tiers - we could freely discuss the tech wit…

Thanks, that seems like a reasonable way to do it, if it were to be done, though the types of manufacturing would have to be very specific.

We could perhaps outsource mass precision manufacturing of aluminum iphone and macbook cases to Germany, or try to build up the industry over time in the US that would enable such manufacturing. But such multi-year delays that are kinda-sorta in the interest of a nation but not at all in the immediate interest of a private company and US consumers, imposed by politicians that have not bothered to dive deep into the issue but are instead responding to half-informed populist revolt, seem like a dangerous path.

If something like that were to be done, a carrot approach is far more likely to yield better outcomes than the stick approach of export controls, IMHO.

Re: Tim Cook's Impeccable Timing

#327

Post by divbzero »

tacker2000 wrote: post #265
jmyeet wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Tim Apple [sic] has made 3 major errors, 2 of which got corrected: 1. The mid-to-late 2010s Cult of Thinness as the last gasp of Johnny Ive was terrible for the Macbook range. Butterly keyboard, 12" Macbook, no Macbook Air, Touch bar... ugh. I personally believe Johnny Ive got gently shown the door over all that so was corrected; 2. The Apple Watch didn't know what it was at launch. Remember the $10,000 Apple…

Agree with you, but when was Siri ever “well-regarded”? Its been trash since day 1.

Siri was the first of its kind on Day 1. Alexa wasn’t announced for another three years.

Re: Tim Cook's Impeccable Timing

#328

Post by Groxx »

Forgeties79 wrote: post #282
vel0city wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its interesting the touch bar was also hung up, as from what I recall the touchbar was actually driven by a separate processor (the T1/T2 chip) and had its own version of watchOS running. I would have thought it would have continued working, just unable to continue syncing with the rest of the Mac.

It’s rare but I’ve definitely seen my touchbar lock up or go dark and require a restart. It also could get mad hot on my 2016 MBpro when video editing. Still love(d) that computer though…

Yeah, it locked up on me every couple months or so. Very glad to see it gone (as the primary ESC + F-row input).

I also would not mind it in addition to regular keys, there are some great interactions in there. But it's an extremely poor keyboard-emulator. Splitting off the escape key made a huge improvement, but it's nowhere near enough.

Re: Tim Cook's Impeccable Timing

#329

Post by jmyeet »

EGG_CREAM wrote: post #300
jmyeet wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Tim Apple [sic] has made 3 major errors, 2 of which got corrected: 1. The mid-to-late 2010s Cult of Thinness as the last gasp of Johnny Ive was terrible for the Macbook range. Butterly keyboard, 12" Macbook, no Macbook Air, Touch bar... ugh. I personally believe Johnny Ive got gently shown the door over all that so was corrected; 2. The Apple Watch didn't know what it was at launch. Remember the $10,000 Apple…

3. Is an interesting perspective, because it’s not at all how I see it. There really isn’t anything for Apple there right now except that they stumbled into making hardware that is perfect for the technology right now. They could a.) burn all their cash and go into massive debt chasing a big foggy question mark that may be entirely overvalued or b.) focus on the hardware right now, wait for the technology to mature a…

I think there’s a happy medium between doing nothing and burning cash faster than the US military like OpenAI. If I had to pick one company who walking that line the best, it’s Google.

You can wait until improving hardware eventually solves the local LLM problem but imho that’s too passive.

What if someone cracks the problem of splitting LLM inference effectively between local device and server? Think about it. ChatGPT can do calculus. Is that useful to most people? No. Can you currently effectively modularize an LLM and load knowledge on demand? No.

I’m fairly bearish on the use cases for current AI. The biggest is actually just firing people and suppressing labor costs.

But a personas assistant, at least in theory, is something people want, even if it’s just to effectively obey voice commands. If Apple loses to Google here it’s going to be bad for Apple. I think they have to do more than they’re seemingly doing.

Re: Tim Cook's Impeccable Timing

#330

Post by appplication »

ryanmcbride wrote: post #239

I read an article speculating that Ternus was up next in I think wsj and it sounds like a good decision but obviously time will tell. I've been super disillusioned with Cook for years now, I just hope Ternus's approach isn't just more of the same, and that he actually works to innovate/improve the apple ecosystem. Hell I'd KILL for them to just take the time to make Homekit like 10% better.

I think this is probably not very tin-foil, but I do believe the rumors we were hearing about Cook retiring and Ternus stepping in were less leaks and more intentionally preparing markets for the inevitable transition.
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