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Why Make Displays Cheaper for Everyone Else?  The Verge is reporting that Samsung has Apple (AAPL) under a barrel when it comes to pricing on their new iPhone OLED displays. Which strikes me as accurate because no one else can deliver on the scale that Apple needs and Samsung knows it.
When iPads Are More Convenient  How better to kick off Labor Day weekend than a discussion on how to make your work both easier and more enjoyable? Writing for Fstoppers, Alex Cooke highlighted a great video on how a professional photographer has stopped traveling with laptops and now prefers to use Apple’s (AAPL) new 2017 12.9” iPad Pro.
As Opposed to What?  In an interview with the New York Times this week, Tim Cook brought up his belief that Apple has a “moral responsibility” to be a force for good wherever they do business.
They Had What Gateway Craved...and Threw It Away  Fortune writes this week about what’s happened to HP after they split up their business a couple of years ago.
 Zach Epstein over at BGR.com makes the astute observation that industry watchers have been saying for years that Apple (AAPL) needed to make a low-cost iPhone or else they’d be doomed. Apple has done the opposite.
Could We Get a Mini-Carousel?  In July, Apple (AAPL) made a slew of iOS 11 changes that really improved the multi-tasking ability of the iPad. When I’m working on projects with my iPad there are certain apps that I use much more than the others. I’m now pretty happy with the ability to no longer have to hunt for these apps in the former big app carousel to the right that exists in iOS 10.
Is Original Content a Distraction?  An excellent essay by Pantho Investments over at Seeking Alpha tackles head-on the issue of whether or not Apple (AAPL) is going through “diworseification”. The recent news that Apple is investing $1 billion dollars to create original content kicked off the discussion. Diworseification is a concept that Peter Lynch popularized in his 1989 book, One Up On Wall Street:
 Writing for McClatchy, Tim Johnson laments that people seem to be too busy to care whether or not their Amazon Echo may be spying on them and how people could regret that one day.
Dealing with Hyper-Inflation  So for a brief period this week a Venezuelan bank was ranked above Apple (AAPL) in terms of market cap. That is just how far out of whack things in the socialist country of Venezuela have gotten. In a nutshell, oil revenues have collapsed and the nation is printing more money to avoid defaulting on their debt. The influx of new cash is causing massive inflation.
 I’m not sure why, but it seems that there isn’t much being written about what would happen if Samsung’s headquarters is destroyed. Seoul sits only 35 miles from North Korea, and technically, the Korean War never really ended. North Korea has been steadily building their armaments so they can launch thousands of rockets at Seoul on a moments notice. They’ve been preparing for decades to wipe out as much of Seoul as possible in a thirty minute window. They know they’d lose any war fairly quickly so the threat of leveling Seoul in the first 30 minutes is their way of holding hostages.
How Connecting People Can Reshape Society  CBS had an amazing story today illustrating how the future lies in the power of moving data. Connecting people in new ways that were impossible only a few years ago is what is changing society. Not physically moving people to be in the same room.
The Bubble's True Size Is Hidden  An op-ed over at the New York Times by Ruchir Sharma yesterday is asking what is increasingly becoming a very real fear by tech stock watchers. It’s a very well written article that I’d recommend reading in its entirety.
 Every quarter when Apple releases their earnings, there is one thing I wish the tech or financial press would do: put the earnings in context. The fact that they don’t do this is especially egregious with the financial press which supposedly caters to investors.
Lessons from the MacBook Pro Debacle  Apple was forced to change their customer service policy last week after MacRumors publicized a great thing that Apple Stores were doing for their customers. Some lucky MacBook owners who were taking in their older 2012 MacBook Pros for service were having them exchanged for brand new MacBook Pros. Understandably, a stampede followed which caused Apple to immediately amend their policy. Going forward, Apple Stores were instructed to no longer exchange for newer models but to wait for the parts to come back in stock.
Apple Nails It  Apple (AAPL) spent untold millions to make this short movie with Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and it was great. Was it a commercial? Was it an instructional video? Was it a movie? All of the above and it was very well done.
It's a Mess  One of the reasons I gravitated towards using an iPhone over an Android was a perception that Apple sweats the details that others will miss. I haven’t been disappointed. These items will never make for an exciting commercial but small things like touch sensitivity, storage speed, and even audio lag are all better on Apple’s iPhone.
They Serve a Purpose, a Small One  Apple (AAPL) made a great move recently when they changed their App Store to allow for app developers to offer their products at a subscription price if they choose too. There are some products that lend themselves perfectly to a subscription. But most software products do not fall into this category.
 Evan Selleck at phonedog.com writes about how he wishes Apple would add 3D Touch to the iPad and I completely agree with him.
Is This About Money?  Is anyone else wondering why Tesla’s Elon Musk harps on artificial intelligence so much? He’s literally advocating that governments step in and start regulating it. That’s a pretty drastic move that could permanently cripple AI’s future. Nothing slows down progress in an exciting new field more than government bureaucrats getting involved. Here is a guy consumed with his primary purpose in life, raising money from investors, who regularly takes time out of his agenda in order to throw shade at AI.
Where Benedict Evans Gets Apple & Netflix Wrong  Benedict Evans had an interesting piece on content but he makes the same mistake many others do when assessing the value of an Apple acquisition of Netflix.
Welcome to a Slower Internet for All  A lot of people get confused by the subject of net neutrality because they think that they’d have to study arcane telecommunications law to come to their own conclusions. As a consequence, most people simply believe what the media tells them, that net neutrality is essential to a free and vibrant internet. But nothing could be further from the truth. Net neutrality guarantees that the internet will be less free and less available for everyone.
Facial Recognition Would Be the Perfect Complement  I’ve been listening to the tech blogosphere go crazy for two weeks now at the thought of Apple adding facial recognition. The underlying assumption by everyone is that Apple is going to abandon the tried-and-true system of Touch ID. But I’m not so sure that it’s an either-or situation.
What Is Plan B’s Breakeven Point?  There’s been a lot of speculation lately regarding Apple making an unprecedented move with their iPhone. That would be if they offered a sort of “Pro” model that costs upwards of $1,100. It’s unprecedented for the iPhone, but not for Apple. They’ve already offered Apple Watches and iPads that cost north of $1,000 so they probably have some feel for the kind of demand that they can expect.
Twice the Power!  Anybody in business is probably pretty well acquainted with Microsoft Excel. It’s like a lump of clay just waiting to be molded and shaped into whatever you need it to be. If you work in finance, you work with Excel about as much as a truck driver grips a steering wheel. And yet, most people seem to stop exploring and learning new tools in Excel that could make them more efficient after a while.
The iPhone Was the Best Thing to Happen to Android  Business Insider yesterday published a piece mentioning that the components division at Samsung Electronics which sells to Apple (AAPL) is the most profitable section.
Samsung is best known as a brand that sells phones like the Galaxy S8. But its most profitable division sells parts, like screens and memory chips, to companies including Apple. In fact, Samsung is reported to be the only supplier of the new next-generation OLED screen expected to be a key selling point of the iPhone 8.–Kif Leswing |
Robert PerezManufacturing and distribution analysis since 1993. 
Perezonomics is available in Apple News
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