[HN Gopher] Apple reports fourth quarter results
___________________________________________________________________
Apple reports fourth quarter results
Author : mfiguiere
Score : 106 points
Date : 2025-10-30 20:34 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.apple.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.apple.com)
| lapcat wrote:
| This stuck out like a sore thumb to me:
|
| Q4 2024: Income before provision for income taxes $29.610
| billion, Provision for income taxes $14.874 billion
|
| Q4 2025: Income before provision for income taxes $32.804
| billion, Provision for income taxes $5.338 billion
|
| [EDIT:] The 2024 taxes were actually an aberration.
|
| "the one-time charge recognized during the fourth quarter of 2024
| related to the impact of the reversal of the European General
| Court's State Aid decision"
| https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2024/10/apple-reports-fourth-...
| nerdponx wrote:
| Enough to pay for everything DOGE and the Trump admin cut in
| 2025, assuming a big chunk of that is US taxes.
| aauchter wrote:
| Effective US tax rate is higher in 2025. The 2024 tax number
| was inflated due to a one time payment relating to Ireland
| which actually dates back to 2016.
| nomel wrote:
| Are different sources of income taxed differently? Could it
| partly be from some change in income sources? Seems Services is
| more significant this quarter.
| Psillisp wrote:
| Yes Tax Avoidance strategies are inversely correlated to
| enforcement efforts.
|
| What could have possibly changed...
| jdminhbg wrote:
| No, the 2024 number is goosed by paying a big back tax bill
| after a court decision in the EU.
| aauchter wrote:
| Their 2025 US taxes are actually higher. In Q4 2024 "Apple paid
| a one-time income tax charge of $10.2 billion in order to
| resolve the tax issue with Ireland, which dates to 2016."
|
| https://finance.yahoo.com/news/apple-profit-drops-36-tech-20...
| curiouscats wrote:
| Actually it was a huge tax addition in 2024 (from Europe over
| dispute about how Ireland had taxed Apple for many years). In
| 2024 Apple added 14.4 billion in additional taxes accrued over
| many years.
| FredPret wrote:
| Corporate income tax is one of those ideas that are immensely
| popular politically ("someone who is not me will pay billions
| to benefit me? yay!") but not supported by economic theory or
| real economic outcomes. Rent control / other price controls is
| another one ("No more rent increases for me, yay!").
|
| Personal income taxes are a better choice according to [0] and
| that makes sense if you think about it. Let companies go wild
| creating wealth; eventually the company matures, growth slows,
| and instead of reinvesting, the money mostly gets paid out to
| employees and owners as salaries, dividends, or stock buybacks.
| That's the point where it's most efficient to tax it.
|
| [0] https://www.economicsobservatory.com/which-taxes-are-best-
| an...
|
| [1] https://taxfoundation.org/taxedu/primers/primer-not-all-
| taxe...
| aauchter wrote:
| Correct. Corporate income tax is really a tax on shareholders
| (alternative to paying tax is paying shareholders a
| dividend). The corporate tax rate hits all owners regardless
| of income/wealth. That includes pension funds, 401ks, small
| investors, etc. Proponents of progressive taxes should be
| against corporate tax and in favor of income tax, property
| tax, etc.
| FredPret wrote:
| It also takes money away from the corporation, when they
| should be doing one of these:
|
| - spend their profits to try and grow, but fail; thus
| spreading their capital into the rest of the economy
|
| - spend their profits to try and grow, and succeed; not
| only spreading capital but creating new wealth that will
| eventually work its way around to the shareholders
|
| - return it to shareholders, where it gets taxed
| what wrote:
| Isn't that how it already works? They can spend all of
| their profits or pay taxes on profit and sit on the rest?
| FredPret wrote:
| Depends on what it gets spent on - capital purchases dont
| reduce net income. You _can_ write it off, but there are
| rules limiting how much.
|
| So you could have a situation where you have $1m in
| profit, and you want to buy a $1m machine, but the
| machine goes on your balance sheet and not your income
| statement, so your books still show $1m in profit, even
| though you now have no cash. And now you still have to
| pay tax on the $1m.
|
| Now, in the next year, the rules allow you to write off
| say $200k of that machine, reducing your profit by that
| much. Eventually, you get to write off much / all of the
| machine.
|
| But cash is king, and on a cash basis, the tax man is
| doing very much better than the business in this
| scenario.
|
| Better to dispense with all the accounting intrigues, tax
| corporations at 0%, and just tax dividends, buybacks, and
| salaries.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Earned income tax makes no sense, it targets the young and
| hard working, and work should be maximally rewarded. Land
| value tax is what makes sense, targeting rent seekers and the
| wealthy. Also consumption taxes, if one is concerned about
| things like the environment or substance abuse.
|
| Land value tax is a consumption tax too, since defending and
| servicing and routing around one's occupied surface area of
| the earth is very costly for the rest of society.
| haunter wrote:
| Kind of telling that
|
| 1, the iPhone outsells every other category by 5-7x ratio, and
| the Mac (which includes everything from Macbooks to Mac Minis to
| iMacs) barely sells more than the iPad.
|
| 2, Services (iCloud, apps, music, TV shows etc.) now bigger than
| every other category, except the iPhone, combined
|
| Basically 76% of the sales are iPhones and Services
|
| (millions)
|
| iPhone $209,586
|
| Mac $33,708
|
| iPad $28,023
|
| Wearables, Home and Accessories $35,686
|
| Services $109,158
|
| Total $416,161
|
| Next 5 years or so (or even less) both the iPad and the
| Wearables, Home and Accessories category will overtake the sales
| of Macs.
| lapcat wrote:
| These are the wrong numbers. You posted the 2024 numbers, not
| the 2025 numbers.
|
| 2025: iPhone $209.586 billion, Mac $33.708 billion, iPad
| $28.023 billion, Wearables, Home and Accessories $35.686
| billion, Services $109.158 billion, Total $416.161 billion
| haunter wrote:
| Yeah you are right, my bad! Fixed
| lapcat wrote:
| I think your conclusion is also wrong. iPad sales are flat,
| and wearables are actually declining:
|
| (Wearables, home, and accessories already surpassed Mac
| sales, although I don't know what exactly is included in
| accessories.)
|
| Also, I don't think it's useful to compare wearables to
| Mac, because Watch isn't much of a computing platform,
| AirPods aren't a computing platform at all, and Vision Pro
| has almost no sales. This category is mostly accessories to
| iPhone.
|
| https://sixcolors.com/post/2025/10/charts-apple-caps-off-
| bes...
| fyrn_ wrote:
| Wearables may include lightning charger cables :) ?
| ghaff wrote:
| I find iPads only marginally interesting now that I don't
| travel as much. Although the newer magnetic keyboards
| make them more usable as laptop replacements than they
| used to be. (Still not totally sold--maybe next longer
| trip.)
|
| Re: Macbooks generally. My mind was somewhat blown when a
| former co-worker told me their kid didn't want a Macbook.
| They were fine with an iPhone for their schoolwork.
|
| Personally, I still find MacBooks as the least
| replaceable category--other than the iPhone. Anything
| else I could live without as needed.
| browningstreet wrote:
| Not too long ago the iPad was painted as a disappointing
| product line, relative to the iPhone. It's still bigger than
| the entire Mac business. Alas.
|
| EDIT: Ack, you're right. Bad comment, self.
| lapcat wrote:
| No, iPad is not bigger than Mac. It's smaller. Look again
| at the numbers.
| xfour wrote:
| Seems like the obvious reason for this is that Mac is now a
| niche for people that operate computers, where there are likely
| 6 people that don't for every 1 that does. We keep hearing that
| the next generation is "true computer" illiterate.
|
| The second reason is likely that there are computers that are
| 1/3 of the price subsidized by the terrible ad-supported OS
| installs. (Has anyone tried to setup a MS computer lately, it's
| an ad-box).
| Terr_ wrote:
| > We keep hearing that the next generation is "true computer"
| illiterate.
|
| I 'member when "personal" computers were going to be a kind
| of capital-equipment made available to the masses, creating
| new levels of autonomy and personal control over our own
| lives, working _for our_ goals and interests... Whoops.
|
| Folks like Stallman _did_ warn me though.
| ReptileMan wrote:
| >We keep hearing that the next generation is "true computer"
| illiterate.
|
| This is logical result of walled gardens.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| There's also the fact that it's tough to share a smartphone
| like you can a computer. I suspect Apple hasn't made user
| switching a thing on iOS for this reason.
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| It also helps that they are moving phone financing off their
| balance sheet and onto AT&T's, where people who don't know
| anything think AT&T is giving away iPhone 17s right now, when
| of course, actually, Apple is.
|
| The better question is, who do you know pays full price up
| front for an iPhone with no discounts? Only people who
| destroy or lose their current iPhone? The parents of
| teenagers giving the teenager the old phone and replacing
| theirs?
| weikju wrote:
| I pay full price, and use cheap MVNOs for phone service.
| Ends up being much cheaper and no mobile carrier
| shenanigans polluting my phones, sim lock, etc.
| gigatexal wrote:
| Same. I buy the phone I can afford. And then I pay for
| cell coverage I can afford. And then I go about my life
| living it logically.
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| You didn't trade in your old phone?
| rconti wrote:
| I pay full price up front. Just bought an iPhone 17 pro and
| sold the 16 pro on Swappa. I've never found a trade-in deal
| that was better than selling a phone myself, and the 1 or 2
| times I've tried it, I've ended up frustrated by having a
| locked phone, and paid it off early anyway.
|
| The big carriers hide the phone in the price but you're
| still paying it. I just use US Mobile unlimited plans for
| $35/mo, plus it gives me free international service which
| was the real advantage for me. Paying 1/3 the annual
| service plan and $0/day int'l roaming instead of $15/day.
| MrGilbert wrote:
| > We keep hearing that the next generation is "true computer"
| illiterate.
|
| We had that development with cars. 40 years ago, it was
| common to fix your own car. Nowadays, we have a subscription
| for seat warmers. The manual tells you to visit the dealer to
| get your brakes checked. Makes me sad, somehow. But people
| have choosen this path as a collective.
| ghaff wrote:
| People choose what to outsource and, as cars have become
| more complicated and require more diagnostic equipment,
| they go to a dealer/mechanic. Personally, I've never done a
| lot of personal car mechanic work.
|
| On the other hand, I've done my own cooking more than not.
|
| You make choices about what you do yourself and what you
| have others do for you.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Cars are both more complicated and way more reliable. You
| used to spend a Sunday changing your plugs and points.
| Now your car lacks points and if the plugs last less than
| 100000km it's a disappointment. You used to need new
| clutch plates on the regular, now nobody ever needs them
| or if they do need them the car is a total loss because
| good luck getting to the clutches. On my current car the
| closest I ever came to working on it was replacing the
| wiper blades.
| asdff wrote:
| They were already this reliable by the 80s and 90s.
|
| Where new cars get shitty is the electronics that get
| shoehorned in to control systems that were previously
| controlled by a button or dial.
| giobox wrote:
| > cars have become more complicated and require more
| diagnostic equipment
|
| For the consumable stuff every car owner has to deal
| with, nothing has really changed in 40 years, honestly! A
| brake service is still done the exact same way, same with
| virtually all the fluid services.
|
| I just find far more people parrot "modern cars are so
| complicated" today and don't even consider that in fact,
| it is relatively simple to change a brake pad and disc,
| or your own oil, perhaps an air filter, even on most
| brand new cars. Fluids filters and brakes are like 90% of
| most people's maintenance needs nowadays.
|
| YouTube has also massively lowered the barrier to working
| on cars, given there are multiple easy to follow guides
| for just about any car service for any car model you can
| think of.
| Jnr wrote:
| Except many new cars are locked down in software, for
| example not allowing to release rear parking brakes
| without authorized service subscription, keeping the
| electronic keys for each VIN unique and stored in the
| cloud. Yes, there are workarounds on releasing the brakes
| manually but it is a burden.
|
| Also similarly as with iPhones, many cars require
| connecting to the authorized service to change headlights
| and other parts since they are paired with the MCU.
|
| I know how to work on my car but I am not able to because
| someone decided to lock it down.
| rconti wrote:
| I don't follow. Every time I drive my car I release the
| parking brake. On the cars with electronic brakes, you
| use a button rather than a lever. I'd do it the same way
| to service the brakes.
| giobox wrote:
| A lot of electronic parking brakes do have a service
| mode. For most modern Fords, there is a procedure, as one
| example of many:
|
| > https://www.brakeandfrontend.com/quick-answer-
| electronic-par...
|
| You typically need the piston fully retracted to replace
| pads, which very rarely happens just by disengaging the
| park brake.
|
| If you are old enough to have changed a manual handbrake
| pad, you normally had to screw the piston back in before
| you could fit the thicker new pad with a "piston rewind
| tool" even if the handbrake was off, the electronic
| parking brake service mode essentially does this for you,
| or unblocks the piston permitting a rewind tool to work.
|
| > https://www.thedrive.com/guides-and-gear/how-to-use-a-
| brake-...
|
| FWIW, I've never found an electronic parking brake I
| couldn't rewind myself after a few minutes on google.
| duskwuff wrote:
| You're overstating how easy these tasks are for many
| people. Doing brake pads/rotors or changing oil requires
| a driveway, some tools, and (for oil) a way to collect
| and dispose of the old fluids. Not everyone has access to
| those things - for instance, people who live in an
| apartment complex may not have the space to work on their
| car.
|
| (Air filters are, admittedly, pretty easy.)
| giobox wrote:
| Sure, everything you say was true for many folks 40 years
| ago too though! My point is, the processes haven't really
| changed for the common maintenance tasks over this
| period, people's perception of the difficulty certainly
| appears to have though.
| stockresearcher wrote:
| Actually, in modern times you can buy an oil extraction
| pump off Amazon for $100, making oil changes so much
| easier than they were 40 years ago! A lot of [especially
| European] cars have the filter accessible from the top,
| meaning that you can change oil in 15 minutes in any
| apartment parking space by doing little more than popping
| the hood!
| asdff wrote:
| You can change your oil wherever you parked the car. A
| way to collect the used oil is as easy as an old jug of
| milk, or the empty bottles from your new oil. Disposal
| involves finding an autozone or someplace similar and
| dropping it off for free. In terms of tools you'd need, a
| $5 dish from autozone to collect the oil, a 10c copper
| washer for your drain plug, and a socket wrench.
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| > it is very simple to change a brake pad and disc
|
| I can attest that changing a brake pad is mission
| impossible level without the proper tools. The tools and
| experience are what make it look easy, for someone that
| has both.
| pram wrote:
| Changing a pad/disc/caliper isn't "hard" but it's time
| consuming and very messy. Most people probably don't find
| spending 2 hours getting the car jacked, tires off, etc
| to be a good or enjoyable use of time!
| tbirdny wrote:
| I wish it took 2 hours. For me it's spend 2 hours
| shopping for the right part, finding it for a good price,
| and ordering it. Then spend an hour watching youtube
| videos for how to do it. Then spend 4 hours gathering the
| right tools, getting the car jacked, tires off, etc.,
| then put everything away, and clean up. That's the best
| case. I could get the wrong part, my car looks different
| than the videos, I do it wrong, or break something. I
| recently replaced my front brakes. I maybe saved $400.
| I'm proud of myself. I kind of enjoyed it, but it's hard
| to justify.
| jajuuka wrote:
| These are all relatively simple TO YOU. You are not
| everyone though. Some people lack the mobility, strength
| or even time to do these things. Some people just don't
| want to get dirty working on their car. Some people don't
| have the space to do these kinds of maintenance.
|
| Not everyone needs to know how to compile their own
| kernel, build their own furniture or clean their laundry
| perfectly. Everyone has their own interests and areas of
| expertise they want to delve in to. Now I can screw up a
| brake job working on it all day and rewatching YouTube
| videos wondering what I missed, or I can take it to a
| shop and get it done in an hour for cheap. That's just me
| though. I spent a lot of time working on cars in my youth
| and I'm just tired of spending my time on it. I don't
| like it and I am more than willing to pay someone who
| does like it to do it.
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| > These are all relatively simple TO YOU. You are not
| everyone though. Some people lack the mobility, strength
| or even time to do these things. Some people just don't
| want to get dirty working on their car. Some people don't
| have the space to do these kinds of maintenance.
|
| That is irrelevant to the argument he is making that
| things have not gotten harder in the last 40 years in
| regards to car maintenance that you can do at home.
|
| His point is that the perception that car maintenance has
| gotten harder for the average joe does not match reality.
| Almost all of the things that need periodic on modern
| cars are more or less the same as they were in 1985.
| kshacker wrote:
| No, I think the other side has a point. If I were doing
| 10 services on my car, I would have muscle memory of a
| lot of things. If I am doing only brakes, and maybe
| another thing, I do not have that muscle memory. While
| the work may not be harder, the familiarity is gone for a
| lot of people.
|
| BTW just before Covid, or during Covid, I took a car
| mechanic course from the local De Anza college - no hands
| on, so that's why I think it was during Covid. But after
| 5 years and no experience, I have forgotten except the
| abstract concepts. Then imagine people who never had to
| look under the hood -- ever.
| asdff wrote:
| Stuff like changing cabin air filter or your own oil
| takes no additional space beyond the space already
| occupied by the parked car. You don't even need to lift
| the car to change the oil in most cases unless the car
| designers were massochists. Sure, maybe not everyone can
| get down on their back anymore, but that shouldn't be an
| issue for able bodied people.
| rconti wrote:
| More complicated _and_ more reliable!
| myvoiceismypass wrote:
| Modern cars are also way harder to work on than in the
| past. You used to be able to buy a Haynes manual for every
| major car and could do most of the repair work if you
| wanted! Nowadays, not so much. Specialized tools galore,
| tearing apart the whole car for minor hidden things... This
| one is far more on the car manufacturers than consumers
| IMHO. I am also sad about the death of the manual
| transmission. Glad to have gotten one of the final years
| that Mini will be producing them!
| lostlogin wrote:
| > Makes me sad
|
| On one hand, yes. But also, cars are now an appliance. They
| rarely break, can be bought quite cheaply (if that's what
| you want) and consume little time. I like this.
| asdff wrote:
| Except they are 2020s appliances with bells and whistles
| and reinventing the wheel for no reason with electronic
| wizzbangs and dohickeys and layers and layers of
| complexity. Your car in the 90s was the appliance. Simple
| electronic system. Reliable simple ICE engine. Simple
| gearbox. Easy to work on which means even if you don't
| work on your own car it helps you, because labor takes
| less time and therefore repair shop bills are lower.
| Parts back then were widely shared across a manufacturers
| lineup so readily available and relatively cheap. 4
| cylinder economy car was practically a commodity back
| then.
| decafninja wrote:
| My wife has been without a desktop or laptop for more than a
| decade. Her primary computing devices are her phone and iPad.
|
| For doing tasks like online banking or booking plane tickets,
| I find the mobile experience frustrating and therefore do it
| on my laptop. She finds the laptop clunky and finds mobile
| much easier.
| jajuuka wrote:
| You can easily turn the "ads" off though. The only true ad
| are the start menu ones which is a single toggle in Settings.
| I have much bigger issues with setup time. I just got a
| Windows laptop and it took (not exaggerating) 3 hours to
| finally get to the desktop. Multiple reboots at the POST,
| then taking forever to download Windows updates and get
| through all the setup screens. Compared to a Mac setup it's
| an insanely long time to just use your computer.
|
| That is even not counting the additional Windows updates
| after you get to the desktop and updates from the OEM. This
| is also with a Microsoft account while restoring my own
| settings from OneDrive.
| racl101 wrote:
| If they ever stopped making Macs guess I'd start using Linux
| other than just for servers.
| ikamm wrote:
| One would hope that before ceasing to make the hardware that
| they open it up and actually allow you to install other OSes
| seemaze wrote:
| Framework desktop incoming here. (mac/iPad/i)OS 26 tipped me
| over the edge. Eyeing whether 7 years of GrapheneOS on a
| pixel will suffice as well..
| gigatexal wrote:
| Good luck. I went the other way on the laptop desktop side
| (I was always an iPhone guy throughout it all). I'm super
| happy. I won't go back.
| 827a wrote:
| > Next 5 years or so (or even less) both the iPad and the
| Wearables, Home and Accessories category will overtake the
| sales of Macs.
|
| Are we reading the same quarterly report?
|
| Wearables/Home/Accessories is slightly higher than the Mac,
| yes, but its a category that has been trending poorly for Apple
| for ~18 months now IIRC, and that hasn't gotten better this
| quarter (9.04B->9.01B 3mo YoY). There's no foreseeable future
| where Vision starts driving Mac-like revenue (meaning, it'll be
| at least 2 years). Airpods are huge mainstays but have really
| hit market capacity and aren't growing. Apple Watch will see
| strong growth if they can successfully get glucose monitoring
| working, but that's an *if, and until then its slipping from an
| "upgrade every 3 years" to even longer lifecycle for most
| people.
|
| Meanwhile: Mac is their fastest growing hardware segment by
| revenue (+12% 3mo YoY) (iPhone is +6%, iPad is flat, Services
| +15%).
|
| iPhone aint going anywhere, Services are carrying their growth,
| but Mac is very solidly the #3 darling of this report. Their
| other product lines (Apple Watch, iPad, Airpods, etc) are
| interesting, successful businesses, but its unlikely we're
| going to see much growth out of them over the next 2 years. The
| story is iPhone, Services, and Mac, in that order, and there's
| no #4.
| willtemperley wrote:
| I wonder how much the Windows 11 debacle will increase Mac
| sales by.
| willtemperley wrote:
| Hahaha that was some targetted downvoting! Must have hit a
| nerve.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| It's hard to see someone living under a rock for this long
| suddenly deciding to switch the Mac.
|
| I suspect iPhone adoption has done a lot more toward Mac
| adoption.
| lateforwork wrote:
| Revenue growth is more interesting than raw revenue: iPhone up
| 6% YoY, Mac up 13%, iPad flat, Wearables, Home, and Accessories
| flat.
|
| So Mac is doing very well!
| gigatexal wrote:
| Mac hardware has been the best it's ever been.
|
| Though if the Mac Pro with all those slots could run nvidia
| GPUs I'd be even crazier I think.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Crazier if Apple got into the GPU business.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| They somewhat are, and have long been, but weren't
| targeting the same audience as Nvidia has lately.
|
| https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/tech-
| talks/111375/
| asdff wrote:
| If only devs wanted to build for mac like they did 15 years
| ago when the hardware was shitty
| tpurves wrote:
| Around a decade ago, even as they were just launching Apple
| Pay, Apple was trading at a multiple barely over 10x. Street
| was valuing Apple like a manufacturing OEM company. I remember
| buying a small chunck of shares at the time thinking, this is
| crazy, just the services revenue off of owning these platforms
| is going to become massive one day.
| maximus_01 wrote:
| Good investment decision and obviously the street was very
| wrong, but the reason the multiple was low was because of
| concerns earnings were at risk from a) their issues in China
| (which they solved, at least for now, but was a very valid
| concern at the time) and b) android eating them (there was a
| narrative they were about to be blackberried, or that android
| was doing what windows did to mac). There are good reasons
| why that didn't happen.
| madeofpalk wrote:
| > _Services (iCloud, apps, music, TV shows etc.) now bigger
| than every other category, except the iPhone, combined_
|
| This is reputation laundering. 'Services revenue' is
| undoubtably App Store game microtransactions, bigger than all
| other services categories combined.
| wingspar wrote:
| My understanding is Services includes the billions Google
| pays for Safari search default, reported to be $20 billion a
| year.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| > Next 5 years or so (or even less) both the iPad and the
| Wearables, Home and Accessories category will overtake the
| sales of Macs.
|
| I view this the exact opposite way. The death of the laptop in
| favor of tablets has been touted for about a decade now, and it
| has still failed to materialize. Wearables have even surpassed
| the iPad.
|
| Not to mention, the Mac laptops have seen a recent surge of
| popularity last few years, due to still being the only
| realistic ARM-based laptop, with the battery life / weight vs
| performance you get from this. This is still likely to remain
| the reality for at least a few years, and thus they're likely
| to snowball even more based on this reputation.
| Gigachad wrote:
| Even if people still own laptops, if they aren't using them
| as much they aren't going to upgrade as frequently and they
| aren't going to buy the expensive models.
|
| Theres also the fact much of the developing world went
| straight to mobile, skipping laptops.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| And yet MacBooks, some of the most expensive laptops, ate
| out selling iPads, and outgrowing them. I don't think the
| data points in the direction of your argument, quite the
| opposite.
| layer8 wrote:
| In terms of unit sales, Apple sells roughly double the number
| of iPads over Macs.
|
| If the rumors about a cheaper entry-level MacBook are true,
| that might put a small dent into that, though I wouldn't hold
| my breath.
| j1elo wrote:
| I really don't get how people do research work (like finding
| good flight tickets, or comparing hotels to stay in for a trip)
| without a computer. I really cannot stand seeing websites in a
| small screen without the ability to quickly open 4 browser
| windows with 4 tabs each for different combinations of dates,
| for example.
| flyinglizard wrote:
| People use computers, just not Macs. Which is a shame because
| it feels like where Apple has the largest advantage compared
| to their competitors, being that high end Android phones are
| rather nice and the barrier to making a good tablet is quite
| low but a laptop is a whole different ball game, and Apple is
| far ahead of the rest.
| ponector wrote:
| Or rather not buying laptops as often as phone. 2015 Mac or
| other premium laptop is good enough for internet surfing.
| agentcoops wrote:
| I bought my dad a Mac laptop when I got my first job out
| of college and he used it for well over a decade. I even
| later got him a MacBook Air and he kept using the old one
| for years yet out of habit... I imagine that's not an
| uncommon pattern for non-programmers who aren't gamers.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Perhaps a lot of people use their "work computer".
|
| Me, I was in on the ground floor with laptops (and desktops)
| and so prefer them. Kids though?
| moduspol wrote:
| I have literally watched my in-laws plan and book a vacation
| from their smartphones. From their house, where they also
| have computers.
|
| They're quite different from my side of the family, but the
| biggest thing is that they've never been big planners.
| Everything is by the seat of their pants. If you're like
| that, you're probably OK with taking one of the first three
| SEO-optimized search results and making it work.
|
| Meanwhile, I'm not booking anything until I have a proposed
| itinerary.
| jdross wrote:
| How often do you get a meaningfully better result than
| google.com/flights? Outside of booking with points, it's
| all basically the same thing and I can book on google on my
| phone in under a minute
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| I live in a place where I have to fly to a nearby bigger
| airport to go anywhere outside my province. In other
| words, everything is a compromise on routing, layovers
| and cost. When I lived in a big city, it was just timing
| and cost that mattered.
|
| Frequently it isn't that google flights on a phone
| doesn't find the same flight, its that it is much easier
| to figure out the tradeoffs with more screen real estate.
| E.g. I can see that a flight is cheaper, but it involves
| mixing airlines, and a terminal change that I probably
| can't trust on a tight schedule in winter.
| ellisv wrote:
| For tasks like planning travel I often am trying to
| optimize multiple goals at once. I might find cheaper
| flights on certain days but more expensive hotels. This
| is much easier on larger screens because you can view
| more information side by side.
| asdff wrote:
| It's not that you get a meaningfully better result. It is
| that you can open an arbitrary number of results and
| trivially compare them side by side. Essentially
| multitasking multiple concurrent searches and scenarios.
| Smartphones limit you to one view at a time on the screen
| and make it somewhat clumsy to flip through tabs in
| comparison.
| ajmurmann wrote:
| Is this because they don't have macs or because they spent
| more on the other stuff? My M1 macBook is 4+ years old and
| still going strong. How many phones do average people buy in
| that same time?
| oceanplexian wrote:
| I'm not going to list specific apps since I don't want to be
| a shill, but in the last few years the web has become
| increasingly hostile with ads, fake reviews, bad information
| (Especially sites like Reddit.com). A lot of places that used
| to have good information have since been astroturfed. And
| Search Engines like Google will happily serve them up on the
| front page of any relevant web search.
|
| "I don't get why the kids these days book their travel using
| an app" is this generation's "I don't understand why people
| don't use travel agents". There are better sources of
| information and that information has moved to walled-garden
| mobile apps.
| lostlogin wrote:
| > I don't understand why people don't use travel agents
|
| I laughed. Just used a travel agent.
| lm28469 wrote:
| You don't really have to buy a new laptop every year though.
| If it wasn't for my work provided laptop I'd still use my
| 2015 mbp
| portaouflop wrote:
| I still use my thinkpad from 2012. It runs fine with Linux
| on it, i had to replace the hdd and some other parts but
| otherwise it's holding up. Granted I only do very simple
| stuff on it, no dev work, video or gaming. Mostly browser,
| reading, writing, music and chatting
| ajross wrote:
| People do research work without a _mac_. A Windows box or
| Chromebook to do the stuff you want is less than half the
| cost of an Air, and a MBP is priced out of everything but
| status-conscious executive (and para-executive) consumers and
| FAANG-adjacent tech folks.
| JustExAWS wrote:
| My wife and I travel a lot, we aren't that price sensitive.
| We are going to fly Delta where we both have status and stay
| in a Hyatt or Hilton brand hotel where I have status. It
| takes us less than 10 minutes to make travel plans on our
| phones.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Eddy Cue was tasked, over a decade ago?, with getting out front
| with services. Microsoft was doing it. And no one wants to have
| all their eggs in the iPhone basket.
|
| Congrats to Eddy Cue then?
| nerdsniper wrote:
| Most of the "Services" are the App Store and iCloud and
| AppleCare, so it's still directly tied to market share of the
| iPhone. If iPhone sales drop 20%, "Services" will drop 15%
| (with some amount of time lag / smoothing)
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| iCloud (and the Mac) App Store, AppleCare are Mac products
| as well. But to your point, sure, Mac sales are a fraction
| of the phone's--the latter's loss would be devastating for
| Apple and for services.
|
| It's too bad the world has moved on as it has. I liked
| Apple a lot when they were _just_ a computer company.
| victorbjorklund wrote:
| I get that the phones outsell the Macs but just wild Ipads
| almost match Macs.
| lostlogin wrote:
| Especially given how long an ipad lives, and how overpowered
| they are for a large portion of their users.
| bmitc wrote:
| Kind of funny they don't separate out accessories as its own
| category. If I were to guess it's because they don't want to
| advertise how much they make selling dongles.
| bilsbie wrote:
| How come they don't add AI?
| peterspath wrote:
| They have enough "AI" stuff. People just don't know it is AI.
| That is the best way of integrating AI into your product(s).
| The tech behind stuff doesn't really matter for the end user.
|
| other companies should also follow that trend, use ai for
| useful features, just give the feature a good name... no need
| to mention "ai"... because next year it could be something else
| that is powering the feature.
| eastbound wrote:
| Siri can't tell the time and people on Android can remove
| passerby's from pictures, we can't. I'm an Apple fanboy but
| Apple has been coasting for 10 years.
| bikelang wrote:
| Siri can tell the time (I just checked - I've never tried
| before now) and you've been able to remove people/cars from
| photos for a while now I believe. Looks like iOS 16? Still
| took way too long and it wouldn't surprise me if it is crap
| compared to Android (I haven't used it). They also finally
| added call screening - idk why that took so long as my
| Pixel 3 had it over 5 years ago.
| digianarchist wrote:
| Apple is far behind the competition when it comes to
| image editing...
|
| https://www.instagram.com/reels/DPWkNZHjebe/
| kshacker wrote:
| AI spell check OR rather sentence improvements are awesome.
|
| But by AI, people mean LLM and context. Remember what I told
| you -- yesterday I was booking a flight, can we check the
| prices again? What happened to that hotel booking? Dozens of
| other use cases. A private AI with awesome memory and zero
| hallucinations will be ... awesome.
| smt88 wrote:
| They tried and made fools of themselves. They're trying again
| right now.
| sethops1 wrote:
| If people are buying iPhones without AI mashed into every
| orifice, why bother?
| oxqbldpxo wrote:
| All these companies depend on TSMC for their life.
| sho_hn wrote:
| And TSMC depends on machines by ASML they can also sell to
| others.
|
| And ASML licensed the technology from EUV LLC.
|
| Which was a conglomerate of a bunch of state-funded US research
| labs.
|
| And the US cut its science funding.
|
| Misery all the way down!
| yieldcrv wrote:
| It's a conglomerate of researchers that were employed by the
| feds and private institutions who met have received various
| forms of grants
|
| I think the science funding cuts will be inconsequential to
| that entity
| lokar wrote:
| But what about the next area where science can have a
| massive impact?
| yieldcrv wrote:
| sounds like a totally different thread to me
| throw0101a wrote:
| > _And ASML licensed the technology from EUV LLC._
|
| And glass/mirrors from Zeiss, amongst a whole bunch others:
|
| > _ASML employs more than 42,000 people[1] from 143
| nationalities and relies on a network of nearly 5,000 tier 1
| suppliers.[6]_
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASML_Holding
|
| * https://www.robotsops.com/complete-list-of-all-suppliers-
| and...
|
| Let's also not forget the the two most prominent chip design
| software companies, Cadence and Synopsys, are American:
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_EDA_companies
|
| There are all sorts of inter-dependencies between companies
| and countries: welcome to globalization.
| seizethecheese wrote:
| If true, TSMC would command much higher margins. Their net
| revenue is a fraction of Nvidia or Apple
| trenchpilgrim wrote:
| TSMC's business is much higher risk, each improvement to
| manufacturing process is a massive investment that's never a
| guaranteed success.
| nomilk wrote:
| Had to look up what TSMC meant (Taiwan Semiconductor
| Manufacturing Company).
|
| What would Apple's next best option be if a war rendered TSMC
| unavailable?
| madeofpalk wrote:
| https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2025/02/apple-will-spend-
| more...
|
| > The fund's expansion includes a multibillion-dollar
| commitment from Apple to produce advanced silicon in TSMC's
| Fab 21 facility in Arizona. Apple is the largest customer at
| this state-of-the-art facility, which employs more than 2,000
| workers to manufacture the chips in the United States. Mass
| production of Apple chips began last month.
| colechristensen wrote:
| >What would Apple's next best option be if a war rendered
| TSMC unavailable?
|
| Onshore TSMC fabs followed by Intel fabs.
|
| Properly motivated, I think Intel and Apple could do a lot
| relatively quickly.
| 45764986 wrote:
| If a war rendered TSMC unavailable it would crash the global
| economy. There is no next best option.
| astrange wrote:
| Samsung, Intel, SMIC are not incredibly far behind. TSMC is
| the best because we (the US and its customers) trust them
| more than its competitors and so fund its R&D and license
| them more exclusive technologies.
| dontlaugh wrote:
| SMIC in particular have made very quick progress. They'd
| probably match TSMC first in such a scenario.
| martinald wrote:
| There's an amazing book on Apple in China all about this
| issue (and more). It's a great read and I'd highly recommend
| if you're interested.
|
| Also Chip Wars is really good. I may be confusing which one
| is which because I read them back to back, but they overlap!
| nomilk wrote:
| Thanks! I've added both to my reading list
| jayd16 wrote:
| I mean... do they? TSMC is the best but in a world where they
| had to use Samsung or Intel is it really a death sentence?
| andy_ppp wrote:
| Apple could substantially eat into Nvidia's AI lunch if they
| really tried, honestly Macs are fast enough... my guess is by the
| time M6 is coming out they will have external GPUs available for
| both the data centre and home use. If I was them I'd already be
| taking orders, power requirements alone even if they aren't as
| fast 2 nodes ahead would make their offering sensational.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _by the time M6 is coming out they will have external GPUs
| available for both the data centre and home use._
|
| I thought there were already external GPUs for Macs. Since
| before COVID, IIRC.
| larkost wrote:
| There were eGPUs for Macs, but only the Intel ones. To my
| knowledge there are no drivers for eGPUs for Apple Silicon.
| My guess is that without Apple's involvement it would be
| near-impossible to get graphics accelerators working.
|
| In theory you could make things work for some sort of
| computational acceleration (e.g.: AI, or some OpenCL work),
| but I am not sure that that market is really worth all of the
| work it would take. For those sorts of things it is probably
| a lot easier to setup an external (Linux) box, and send the
| work over.
| MaysonL wrote:
| Just last week: https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-
| components/gpus/tiny-corp-su...
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| I don't think so. The GPU die itself isn't the key it's the
| interconnects and data center scale infra coupled with their
| closed software. If it were just GPUs AMD is better positioned
| than Apple.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| "If it were just GPUs AMD is better positioned than Apple."
|
| Is that true? Does cash mean nothing?
| kcb wrote:
| They'll just need to start from scratch on all this.
| https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!CwyW!,f_auto,q_auto:...
|
| I don't think some power efficient laptop SoCs gives you much
| competitive advantage there.
| yRetsyM wrote:
| Interesting that Google and Apple matched their quarterly
| earnings in revenue .
| nullbyte808 wrote:
| No wonder they treat the Mac like a third-class citizen. Mac
| sales barely pay their tax bill.
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