More conjecture on AAPL and GOOG partnership, and MM1.
Conjecture: iPhone with MM1 will handle Gen AI ask first. If can’t handle, pass to Gemini.
Train the AI model using the opinions of such people 
Anyone not in the Apple cult automatically means they don’t understand tech and business.
Let’s see what Apple’s growth number will be like when they report in April. AAPL has the highest PEG among Mag 7. Higher even than TSLA. But I am sure it’s a meaningless metric for cult members.
Tim Apple also better has some earth shattering announcements on the AI front. I don’t recall another time when Apple pre-announced ground-breaking features months in advance. Not sure why he sets the bar so high for himself. We will see in June.
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I follow Amit for awhile. You can verify for yourself by listening to his finance junkie (don’t bother with his solo one, mere blah blah blah) podcast. I listen to him not for his insights but to know what a typical Gen Z thinks, anyhoo, his three other finance junkies are experienced investors. They are from different background as me, so is worthwhile for me to listen to their viewpoints, YMMV.
You win if there is no Gen AI announcement… probably will start liquidating AAPL. Actually I did liquidate some two years ago, bought NVDA + some other “high growth” stocks… combined return is worse than just holding AAPL. IMHO, only Gen AI is the real thing, the rest of the “challenges” are non-critical i.e. won’t hurt AAPL long term.
Frankly, I don’t follow P/E, PEG, P/S, whatever hot ratios social media influencers claim will tell LT performance of a business… I view them suitable for traders only. IMHO, is waste of time. LT for tech businesses should look at key fundamentals e.g. CEO, positioning vs megatrends, SBCs/FCF, willing to self-cannibalize.
China won’t retailiate vs AAPL and TSLA. As I said many times, China would rather punish their own companies than foreign allies. Western media likes to publish doomsday speculation to get eyeballs.
USA - partner with OpenAI and GOOG
China - partner with Baidu
Elsewhere?
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Follow the hype to call its devices, AI devices. All the while, Apple products have a neural (ie. AI) chip. This chip is designed for accelerating ML, can it be used for accelerate Gen AI?
I bet there will be Gen AI announcements in June. That’s not my point.
My point is that the expectations are set very high now. Almost nothing announced at this year’s WWDC will meet that expectation. I have been watching Apple for decades now and don’t recall a time Apple pre-announced major features. Steve Jobs famously loved surprising his audience with his “one more thing”. Apple is also famously secretive and will fire anyone who leaks.
So Apple better has some really major announcement in June. Something of the magnitude like embedding a LLM on every iphone.
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Apple didn’t pre-announced anything. Is all rumors. In fact, except for the earlier years of SJ, whatever were announced during WWDC are largely leaked by rumors. So much so that Apple no longer have one more thing. Nowadays, Apple events are largely sell the news event.
If that is true, then you didn’t pay attention to rumors nor compare that with what are announced during WWDC.
Did you not see this?
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Huge opportunity is not an announcement of anything to be announced in WWDC. Tim Cook always said things like that. Later this year could be end of the year.
By saying later this year, Tim Cook set the expectation he will announce at WWDC. That’s the natural venue to make that kind of announcements. If he didn’t announce any major Gen AI featuers there, market will be hugely disappointed.
Currently that’s the consensus: Apple has a major announcement at WWDC. I think it’s weird he set the bar so high. We will see.
“As we look ahead, we will continue to invest in these and other technologies that will shape the future. That includes artificial intelligence, where we continue to spend a tremendous amount of time and effort, and we’re excited to share the details of our ongoing work in that space later this year,” Cook said in his prepared remarks.
Analysts tried to press Cook for more details, but he didn’t offer much. “Our M.O., if you will, has always been to to do work and then talk about work, and not to get out in front of ourselves. And so we’re going to hold that to this as well. But we have got some things that we’re incredibly excited about, that we’ll be talking about later this year.”
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When I first hear that, I take it as TC wants to appease the journalists, doesn’t mean much. So I conveniently forget about it. Didn’t know that market is so eager for Apple to announce something, they “put words” into Apple’s mouth… look like this is a habit of Americans… I am not an American so couldn’t understand how American listen.
Even if Apple announced something, market will still be hugely disappointed because market expects Apple to announce Gen AI to be incorporated into Siri. Yes, this is what the market want to hear. If don’t have such announcement, regardless of how Apple adopt Gen AI, it is a failure.
I don’t care about terms like extremely excited, insanely great, blow your mind away, or similar words. For dramatic effect… typical of American.
As far as I am concerned, Apple didn’t set any expectations. Is market put expectations into Apple WWDC. Market insists that Apple said something when it didn’t say anything.
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LLM is open source. So coming out with a LLM app is not hard. The problem with Apple is they tie their own hands with user privacy and security. Although they have tons of data in their (and third party) DCs, many of those belong to customers, doubt they can train on them as that would infringe on user privacy. Apple has to figure out a way out of this predicament. With the high speed of Gen AI adoption, Apple didn’t have the luxury of time to sort out an ideal strategy and perfect a product. Now or never. They probably have a stop-gap solution involving OpenAI, Anthropic, Google and Baidu.
Coming out a LLM app on internal Apple owned (non-customer) data is not that hard. Is already done. Is called ASK for AppleCare staff.
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With the rise of Gen AI and robotics, the market for cloud computing has expanded many folds i.e. can allow one more competitor to come in. Hence, Apple should seriously consider building a hyperscaler business… bonus is get B200 for the same price as H100 but 4x more powerful. Go slower is more efficient 
Adam Khoo is disappointed that AAPL didn’t decline enough for him to accumulate more. Only AAPL haters and gullible 
will think this mark peak AAPL.
Rather than waiting, Adam short secured puts ($165) 
Btw this DOJ manages to push AAPL to $168.49, last Friday closed at $172.28.
17228 in Cantonese means get rich easily together 
Ofc, for those who have bot.
A few deductions:
a. All Apple products (Macs, iOS devices, AirPods, HomePods, AppleTVs) are Gen AI products.
b. While other device makers have to depend on NVDA for on-device inference (hence paid exorbitant price to NVDA), Apple doesn’t have to.
c. Apple’s weakness is they don’t have a hyper scalar business and its self-inflicted user privacy and security policies. So far, Apple is able to prosper despite such tie-your-own-hand policies, might not be able to in a Gen AI world. IMHO, most people care less about their personal info, they talk about themselves in social media and really don’t care that social media sell their personal info for money… this issue will be a big case for MBAs to talk about.
More conjectures by Mark Gurman…
Why Apple could partner with Google, OpenAI or others for generative AI in iOS 18.
When Apple announces iOS 18 at WWDC 2024, the company is expected to spend a considerable amount of time discussing how it views AI. That includes how it believes such technology should be integrated and why its approach is different than those of competitors. Apple also is still figuring out how to handle privacy with AI features — one reason that the company’s in-house initiatives will be more conservative than those of rivals, I’m told.
In the spirit of caution, Apple could ultimately decide to scrap the partnership idea and not offer a chatbot at all. But with all the pressure to catch up in AI, that probably wouldn’t be a popular decision with either consumers or investors.
With so much desires from consumers and investors, whatever Apple did is not likely to make them happy. Apple needs to reset and start from first principles.
Point #3 on my list.
iPhone sales in China down a cliff 2 months in a row. No wonder Tim Apple is touring China kissing Xi’s ass.
More on Apple’s China problem:
“The golden time for Apple in China is over,” said Linda Sui, a senior director at TechInsights, a market research firm. One of the biggest reasons is the rising tension between the United States and China over trade and technology, Ms. Sui said. Without a significant lessening of geopolitical stress, it will be difficult for Apple to retain its position.
People made fun of me when I said ordinary Chinese are under pressure to use domestic brands:
For some in China, buying a phone has become a political statement. Debates over whether using an iPhone is disrespectful to Chinese tech companies or akin to handing personal data over to the U.S. government have erupted online. Last year, employees at some Chinese government agencies reported being told not to use iPhones for work.
Communist government wants Chinese to use phones made by domestic companies. They are loaded with spywares. Even though Apple is eager to please but it doesn’t dare to go as far as companies like Huawei. If Apple get caught doing shady stuff like that, the blowback it will face back in the US will be catastrophic.
China’s economy is also doing badly. iPhones are expensive and Apple has done nothing innovative in the last 5 years?
Repeating the same f… thing many moons ago. Also anyhow rationalize the reason. That’s the problem with mainstream media*. I don’t even bother to read it. With so many “bearish” news, AAPL didn’t even go into a bear market (20% decline from ATH)… it tells you what the market thinks about those news… BS. Surprisingly, some bloggers love to eat those cow dungs.
AAPL not even affected by the news, merely move with the market.
Note: *Mainstream media loves to twist facts and push narrative e.g.
So called competitors are: Search giant GOOG and Windows giant MSFT. Why don’t mention AMZN, fellow retailer? And META, Vision Pro competitor?