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Apple halted M2 chip production in January amid 'plummeting' Mac sales

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Re: Apple halted M2 chip production in January amid 'plummeting' Mac sales

#381
post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> America, meanwhile, has decent native birth rate AND a culture that's always willing to accommodate new people. And a society that burdens people with debt causing them to work every waking moment while avoiding costly things like health care, because they might miss a day of work or become even more indebted through the cost of said health care. People just pick up opioids so they can handle the pain and keep work…

Not actually that common for teachers to work two jobs. Also most americans have healthcare and the ones who dont are often young and dont consume much of it. Not saying its good. But some europeans think we live in some kind of mad max hellscape.

> Not actually that common for teachers to work two jobs.

Yeah, the smart ones find a better school district to work in or leave the profession entirely. None of my friends in teaching are working 2 jobs. They can find a better paying non-teaching job, easily. Our son has 8 classes and 6 teachers. The school proudly announced at the beginning of the school year they were fully staffed. Currently they are at 85% with a revolving door of educators. We're in a HCOL city and school board is going forward with plans to build housing for teachers because they simply can't recruit them any other way.

Re: Apple halted M2 chip production in January amid 'plummeting' Mac sales

#382
post #36

I was just buying a laptop for my family and the prices of MacBooks here in Europe are utterly crazy. The crappiest 8GB RAM (?!) 256SSD M2 Air model is 1650EUR. 1650EUR for a laptop that won't have enough ram to run the browser in two years. The 16GB model is rounded 2000EUR, which was before reserved for a high-end gaming laptops. It's bonkers.

> I was just buying a laptop for my family and the prices of MacBooks here in Europe are utterly crazy.

they'll sell just fine in the US and parts of Asia

the EU is becoming poor, and its being reflected in the costs of imported goods

Re: Apple halted M2 chip production in January amid 'plummeting' Mac sales

#383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some where someone wrote: It's not that Apples hardware isn't cost competitive, they just don't have en entry level option (or even a low mid-level option). The cheapest MacBook Air, which is fine for most of my needs is €1260/$1370 and while it's a wonderful laptop, it's just a bit much for running Safari, VSCode and a terminal. It really is a €950 laptop, but if they could hit that price then what else would you re…

By the way Framework also has no cheap options like $400-$500: the prices start with 750 Euro for tiny 13-inch version. I guess you can't profit much from selling reasonably priced laptops.

I suspect that the hardware margins might be there, and the sticking point is the additional overhead to cover support. When they sell ten million units and have six-sigma'd any manufacturing and support wrinkles to near-irrelevance, I wouldn't be surprised if they move down-market.

For the time being, there's apparently a customer base willing to pay those prices. They're not spec-competitive, but once you assign value to the brand, and the moral stance of supporting the idea, and the secondary value of intentionally-not-obsolete components, they have a lot going for them.

And notably, the customers who consider those factors to be important, are generally aiming mid-high in the market anyway.

Re: Apple halted M2 chip production in January amid 'plummeting' Mac sales

#384
So its in the interest of every company to squeese wages. To a large degree they've suceeded.

But if they all succeed in paying their employees little, noone can afford their products.

Tragedy of the Commons, corporate edition.

The solution to tragedy of the commons is usually to privatise the commons. Once it's private properly, people take care of it.

Clearly that means companies need to privatise workers.

Re: Apple halted M2 chip production in January amid 'plummeting' Mac sales

#385
post #347
post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it tariffs or something? Everything in Canada is usually 10-25% more expensive than the US, besides stuff covered under NAFTA. Consumer things like clothes/electronics are usually the biggest victims. But I just compared the Apple stores and the base Macbook = $999USD vs $1299CAD, doing pure currency conversion $1299CAD = $965.96USD, so it's technically ~$32USD cheaper in Canada? Probably just out-of-step with cur…

Sales tax is a lot higher in EU, so that accounts for 15-20% (at least) of the end consumer price difference.

And that sales tax (maybe other taxes too) aren't shown in US product displays, but they are basically everywhere else.

Re: Apple halted M2 chip production in January amid 'plummeting' Mac sales

#386
post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a lot of crypto shills that want to scare people into thinking fiat will inevitably fail, so people buy their imaginary currency.

>so people buy their imaginary currency. While I think you're correct regarding the crypto bros, every fiat currency is imaginary.

> every fiat currency is imaginary.

Well, the USD is backed by the "full faith and credit of the United States government" which, however you may feel about it, isn't imaginary. Each dollar is a claim to a piece of output of the world's largest economy with the strongest military.

Re: Apple halted M2 chip production in January amid 'plummeting' Mac sales

#387
post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, and that’s always been an issue with Apple products: they set their prices in USD, then set the foreign price using conversions from around release date (plus taxes obviously). That means if the dollar was very strong at release, the machines get very expensive in foreign currency.

Which is weird, because barely any part of it is produced in the US. So it's not that their costs are going up. They are just not realizing they are self sabotaging in terms of opportunity costs. If they adjust prices to purchasing power, with at least 30% profit marge, windows laptops and chromebooks would be having crisis talks right about now. People would prefer the Apple stuff, but not at that price. Even if you…

If some countries were selling Apple products at a cheaper USD conversion than what it costs in the US, you know there would be massive reselling from those countries if you could undercut Apple's own prices on brand new products.

Re: Apple halted M2 chip production in January amid 'plummeting' Mac sales

#388
post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a lot of crypto shills that want to scare people into thinking fiat will inevitably fail, so people buy their imaginary currency.

>so people buy their imaginary currency. While I think you're correct regarding the crypto bros, every fiat currency is imaginary.

I can pay my non-imaginary taxes with dollars. All my other bills also helpfully accept dollars. This gives dollars a useful non-imaginary quality crypto does not have.

Re: Apple halted M2 chip production in January amid 'plummeting' Mac sales

#389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The dollar is insanely strong right now This is a bigger story that isn’t being told properly often. The recent BRICS currency move is about them panicking over increasing dollar global dominance. Checking recently I can’t find any major currency that is up against the dollar over last 10 years. US productivity is running away from the rest of the planet is another variable and with rapid on shoring of numerous ind…

Outside of Peter Zeihan, I'm also utterly surprised that no one even brings up the demographics debate. Everyone has been so indoctrinated on the "we have too many people" propaganda that they haven't even realized how fast birth rates have dropped across the globe (and they're dropping even faster now). The demographics of Europe, China, Japan and S. Korea are all terminal at this point. Outside of UK, France, and t…

Peter Zeihans insistance on birth rate is a bit silly. Most developed countries, including the USA are in the 1.5-1.7 range. There are outliers like France that are higher. There isn't this huge demographic difference between Europe and the US. He is selling his message to American conservatives, so I guess the one who pays the piper calls the tune. I don't think he cares about immigration much.

Re: Apple halted M2 chip production in January amid 'plummeting' Mac sales

#390
post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> mac air is a luxury item 8GB of Ram is luxury? Rolls Royce is luxury. Luxury means status. A gold plated car is luxury ( for some). It's a whole different league. Macbooks used to be premium - better performance, better experience. Limited storage is not premium. If Porshe releases a car with 30 horsepower, and asks for £100,000, we have a word for that. A joke.

A 30hp Ferrari for 100k would still be a luxury item, very much so, assuming there'd be people that want them (which there clearly are for macbooks). Luxury doesn't mean "the best" or even "good".

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