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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

#41

Post by frollogaston »

rjzzleep wrote: post #4

I'm not sure how much of it is just an unintentional side-effect of greed from promises of international capital based in NY, and Dubai, and how much was intentional malicious behavior to destroy home compute to force people to pay for openai subscriptions, but the role of a functioning government typically is to keep corporations from doing exactly this. Regardless of which one it is, I absolutely despise the cartel…

Home compute doesn't matter to them, their advantage is the model. If they're trying to squeeze anyone out, it's the other AI companies.

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

#42

Post by teiferer »

brailsafe wrote: post #26
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

> But that cheap $200 chinese smartphones will need have to hike prices by about the same amount, which will decimate that market. Hmm. Even if iPhone users can theoretically stomach the increase, they have many other options available, whereas if the cheap $200 phones are the bottom of the market, there's no other real options. I'm in the ~$450 USD Pixel range atm, and never buy the current flagship or anything. If…

> Plenty of younger people are already reverting to more primitive phones

That's an effect that has always been claimed (younger generations rejecting new tech and going offline/low-tech/anti-...) but it's never been more than a minor very temporary fad. In the mid to long term, younger people are always at the forefront of tech adoption and it would be very surprising if it was different this time.

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

#43

Post by bredren »

pjmlp wrote: post #2

Of course they were, not even Apple has infinite stock. What they have are sweet margins and deals in place that helped them to take some time until the inevitable came to be. In the other hand maybe all these prices drive folks to program like we used to, conscious of the hardware limitations, without extra slots to rescue from bad programming.

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.

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

#44

Post by frollogaston »

lostlogin wrote: post #40
frollogaston wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's nothing special, high-margin product prices are less sensitive to the costs.

Is that it, or did Apple negotiate long term contracts with suppliers? Tim Apple has never been one to shy away from squeezing out another dollar.

It could be that too. But just seeing Apple not raise prices on the face of it, that could be purely from taking lower margins. I'd have to dig into the last earnings call.

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

#45

Post by nullorempty »

rjzzleep wrote: post #4

I'm not sure how much of it is just an unintentional side-effect of greed from promises of international capital based in NY, and Dubai, and how much was intentional malicious behavior to destroy home compute to force people to pay for openai subscriptions, but the role of a functioning government typically is to keep corporations from doing exactly this. Regardless of which one it is, I absolutely despise the cartel…

But the governments had been this way for decades now. It's just that things are accelerating and people notice it more.

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

#46

Post by [deleted] »

steve1977 wrote: post #36
jl6 wrote: post #21

There’s probably a big marketing opportunity for anyone who can make more memory-efficient alternatives to some of the bloated apps that have normalized the need for >16GB RAM in a desktop computer. Alongside dark mode, apps should have a “slim mode” that turns off some of the more wasteful features in order to run on older/smaller hardware.

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.

[deleted]

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

#47

Post by AnthonyMouse »

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).

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

#48

Post by cm2187 »

teiferer wrote: post #42
brailsafe wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But that cheap $200 chinese smartphones will need have to hike prices by about the same amount, which will decimate that market. Hmm. Even if iPhone users can theoretically stomach the increase, they have many other options available, whereas if the cheap $200 phones are the bottom of the market, there's no other real options. I'm in the ~$450 USD Pixel range atm, and never buy the current flagship or anything. If…

> Plenty of younger people are already reverting to more primitive phones That's an effect that has always been claimed (younger generations rejecting new tech and going offline/low-tech/anti-...) but it's never been more than a minor very temporary fad. In the mid to long term, younger people are always at the forefront of tech adoption and it would be very surprising if it was different this time.

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

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

#49

Post by frollogaston »

jl6 wrote: post #21

There’s probably a big marketing opportunity for anyone who can make more memory-efficient alternatives to some of the bloated apps that have normalized the need for >16GB RAM in a desktop computer. Alongside dark mode, apps should have a “slim mode” that turns off some of the more wasteful features in order to run on older/smaller hardware.

I feel like the market of apps and websites has usually been irrational about bloat because developers tend to have beefy machines. It required a beefy machine just to use Twitter without lag, and now X is the same. In the 2000s it was excessive Flash instead, or Java for apps.

Some sites like Google were able to measure the user-engagement cost of slowness and chose to optimize, but they're exceptional. I doubt most businesses know the cost.

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

#50

Post by pjmlp »

bredren wrote: post #43
pjmlp wrote: post #2

Of course they were, not even Apple has infinite stock. What they have are sweet margins and deals in place that helped them to take some time until the inevitable came to be. In the other hand maybe all these prices drive folks to program like we used to, conscious of the hardware limitations, without extra slots to rescue from bad programming.

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.

Not really, they just don't support pagination, which is another matter, plenty of GB on those devices for Cordova, React Native, Webviews in general.
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