Not all of Apple‘s chips need to be fabbed at the smallest size, those could certainly go elsewhere. I’m sure they already do.

Is there anyone who can match TSMC at this point for the top of the line M or A chips? Even if Intel was ready and Apple wanted to would they be able to supply even 10% of what Apple needs for the yearly iPhone supply?

    > Not all of Apple‘s chips need to be fabbed at the smallest size, those could certainly go elsewhere.

When I saw that TSMC continues to run old fabs, I immediately thought about this idea. I am sure when Apple is designing various chips for their products, they design for a specific node based on available capacity. Not all chips need to be the smallest node size.

Another thing: I am seeing a bunch of comments here alluding to Apple changing fabs. While I am not an expert, it is surely much harder than people understand. The precise process of how transistors are made is different in each fab. I highly doubt it is trivial to change fabs.

My understanding, and I’m a layman, is it basically requires making new masks. And that’s not trivial.

I guess you’d be doing that anyway with a brand new chip. But still probably easier to work with the tools/fab you know well.

I suppose you’d have to do it just switching nodes at TSMC. Which is why the A13 (or whatever) probably never moves to smaller nodes.

Sometimes Apple updates the chip in a product that doesn’t seem to need it, like the AppleTV. I wonder if it’s because the old node is going away and it’s easier to just use a newer chip that was designed for the newer node.

I know what you mean. I really liked Dilbert, but I don’t think I read any of his other books.

At some point I stopped reading because the RSS feed kept getting broken and it was just too hard for me to follow.

I didn’t hear about Adams again until maybe 7-8 years ago when I found out about the sock puppet thing and he had seemingly gone off the deep end.

From the meager amount I know, it only got worse from there.

It makes things very odd. Given who he was/became I don’t miss him. But I did enjoy his work long long ago.

Don’t you see I have to hit you. How else will you learn?

They switched despite Apple Maps having poor data for a reason:

Google wanted to shove ads in it. Apple refused and to switch.

Their hand was forced by that refusal.

I thought it was Google refusing to provide turn by turn directions?

Apple announced last year they are putting their own ads in Maps so if that was the real problem the corporate leadership has done a complete 180 on user experience.

I think Google was withholding them unless Apple was willing to put the ads in.

Apple is a very VERY different company than they were back then.

Back then they didn’t have all sorts of services that they advertised to you constantly. They didn’t have search ads in the App Store. They weren’t trying to squeeze every penny out of every customer all the time no matter how annoying.

Google Search also has ads in it, but that didn't stop Apple from keeping it as the default, and now Apple is adding ads to Apple Maps. GP is correct. Google withheld turn by turn navigation from the iOS app. There are many deficiencies in the iOS platform, but this one was glaringly visible, forcing Apple's hand.

Apple does ads but they have a very particular taste with it. Not necessarily a better taste, but they do it in their own apple way. They're very much control freaks.

They had better taste.

It’s running away from them fast.

Actually isn’t the cost of a Pi basically a rounding error compared to the 5090 at this point?

I was surprised when I walked into a pet store last week to see an aisle cap advertising a new tofu based cat litter.

Reminds me of The Country of the Blind by HG Wells.

It’s about a guy who finds his way into a valley in a mountain range where everyone has been blind for generations. At first he thinks that he’ll have “a superpower“ because he’s sighted. Instead the people of the valley view his sight as an illness.

That think him mentally ill because they do not believe he can actually see and think him deluded.

If he had kept quiet in the face of scepticism he would have had a huge advantage.

I see it as a story about people's unwillingness to believe in something that is outside their own experience and that of their society.

It WOULD have been a superpower if he hadn't told anyone he could see.

The Apple Card has a lot of sub-prime borrowers because Apple pushed to approve almost everyone.

Plus Apple had things structured for fewer fees to be charged than normal cards for late payments, foreign transactions, etc.

That combination meant GS didn’t see the expected profit and in fact lost money (reportedly).

The savings accounts are through GS as well. The transition page basically says “nothing to announce yet”, in a way that implies they may move somewhere as well.

WSJ says you’ll be able to choose between keeping your savings account at Goldman or switching it to Chase.

It’s today’s 3D TVs. It’s something investors got all hyped up about that everybody “has to have“.

There is useful functionality there. Apple has had it for years, so have others. But at the time they weren’t calling it “AI“ because that wasn’t the cool word.

I also think most people associate AI with ChatGPT or other conversational things. And I’m not entirely sure I want that on my computer.

But some of the things Apple and others have done that aren’t conversational are very useful. Pervasive OCR on Windows and Mac is fantastic, for example. You could brand that as AI. But you don’t really need to no one cares if you do or not.

> Pervasive OCR on Windows and Mac is fantastic, for example.

I agree. Definitely useful features but still a far cry from LLMs which is what the average consumer identifies as AI.