Tag Archives: Apple

My Phone Is Now Obsolete

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My “friends” like to bust my chops for buying and selling cars too often. And yet, they give me no credit for my seven year old iPhone. The whole lot, consistently inconsistent.

One of my besties visited last week from CA. While in the kitchen, he glanced at my ancient iPhone XS Max on the counter, smiled, make that laughed, and asked, “Do you still keep it in a tube sock?”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“When you first got it, you used to keep it in a tube sock!” followed by more guffawing.

Damn if I hadn’t repressed that memory. It started to come back. Walking into Department meetings slinging a tube sock on the table next to me. Too bad I can’t rewind that tape. Had to have been the phone before the ancient phone and I vaguely remember waiting on a proper cover. Still, hard to live that down. Damn his very good memory.

I just watched a vid of tips and tricks to customize the brand new IOS 26. Only one problem, IOS 26 only works on 11s forward. Tim Apple, what are you doin’ to me, a longtime investor?

Yeah, it’s probably time to upgrade, but I don’t like being pushed. I wanna jump into the new tech pool of my own volition.

The AirPod Pro 3 reviews are smashin’. I will get those despite the 2’s still being fine. The bonus being that will give my “friends” more fodder.

Very Good Sentence

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The last three-word sentence in this brief excerpt from Joanna Stern’s month-long review of Apple’s Vision Pro.

“Ryan Rzepecki, 44, said his Vision Pro has replaced his TV and laptop for watching movies. 

‘It’s the best media player,’ he said, adding that he and his wife also have different show preferences. Same for Chad Christian, 50, who has been putting on the headset to watch movies while on his Peloton bike.

And yes, everyone I spoke to was a male between the ages of 30 to 50. Vision Bro, indeed.”

The Future Is Here

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Everything exists on a continuum. For example, while running down San Vicente Blvd in Santa Monica last week I marveled at the amount of money a fair number of West Los Angelenos spend on cars. Why do they do that I wondered? I concluded, rightly or wrongly, it was because they’re vain. Porsche, Mercedes, and Range Rover make bank on people’s vanity.

Just as I was starting to feel really superior I caught myself. Glancing at my watch, I saw my average pace for the run was 9 minutes and some seconds. Prompting me to pick up the pace in order to avoid uploading a 9 minute per mile run to Strava.* Why you’re asking yourself. See above paragraph. Granted, more subtle and nuanced, but same concept. The only difference, the degree of vanity.

What does this have to do with Apple’s new Vision Pro you’re wondering. Well, I’m here to connect those seemingly disparate dots.

Maybe the mostly likely reaction to the Vision Pro is to fear for a future where tech laden introversion obliterates interpersonal relations even further. But when I walk into the Plum Street Y weight room almost everyone is already listening to their own music and/or podcasts making spontaneous meetings and convo highly unlikely. Including me.** Same on subways and lots of other public spaces. People are already using smart phones, head phones, and related personal tech to tune out the outside world, including the people they are damn near rubbing elbows with.

Steve likes to talk to me whenever he sees me at the pool or in the weight room. In the weight room, when I see him approaching, I pop out one of my AirPods. Easy-peasy. This is what came to mind when watching this Casey Neistat’s review of the Vision Pro.

Just watch from the 7+ minute mark. The first seven minutes are ridiculous, dystopian, depressing, pick your most negative adjective. But let’s do what Casey does at the end of his review and fast forward to a future where Vision Pro-like products are way way lighter, less obtrusive, and less dorky.

Something like eye glasses that morph into sun glasses in the sun seems likely. It would be easy to sit alone on a bench in New York City and switch seamlessly from being alone in your own multimedia world and then either resting the glasses on top of your head or letting them dangle around your neck whenever someone sits down next to you.

There’s no putting this personal tech toothpaste back in the tube, but my tribe, the introverts, will not roam the world alone, figuratively or literally. There will still be a normal distribution of extroverts. And we will still talk to one another even after the Vision Pro becomes semi-affordable and reaches critical mass.

Vain people will even continue expanding their circle of friends, and sometimes even fall in love, and sometimes even have children.

*Fail.

**Love me my AirPods. You can pry them from cold, dead hands.

Apple’s Next Breakthrough

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Vision Pro. John Gruber, of Daring Fireball, is the rare “Elements of Style” writer who says things simply and succinctly. Vision Pro’s importance is evident in what may be his longest post ever.

Quite literally, for AAPL investors, here’s the money paragraph.

“But I can recommend buying Vision Pro solely for use as a personal theater. I paid $5,000 for my 77-inch LG OLED TV a few years ago. Vision Pro offers a far more compelling experience (including far more compelling spatial surround sound). You’d look at my TV set and almost certainly agree that it’s a nice big TV. But watching movies in the Disney+ and TV apps will make you go “Wow!” These are experiences I never imagined I’d be able to have in my own home (or, say, while flying across the country in an airplane).”

Fast forwarding to Gruber’s final paragraphs:

“Spatial computing in VisionOS is the real deal. It’s a legit productivity computing platform right now, and it’s only going to get better. It sounds like hype, but I truly believe this is a landmark breakthrough like the 1984 Macintosh and the 2007 iPhone.

But if you were to try just one thing using Vision Pro — just one thing — it has to be watching a movie in the TV app, in theater mode. Try that, and no matter how skeptical you were beforehand about the Vision Pro’s price tag, your hand will start inching toward your wallet.”

If you know Gruber’s work, you know it’s not hype. However, the question Gruber and his fellow tech analysts never seem to get around to is whether it will improve our quality of life. Based on Gruber’s review, maybe it will if what’s keeping you from living a more fulfilling life is the unsatisfying quality of your home television and movie watching experience.

The Only AAPL Warning Sign That Really Freaks Me Out

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Apple’s shares slipped more than 3% in after-hours trading following last Thursday’s earnings call. Even worser, AAPL was also down Friday despite the fact that the broader market surged both Thursday and Friday.

When it comes to AAPL, I happily and knowingly break conventional personal finance wisdom that says never have more than 5% of your total invested assets in any individual stock.

Over the last fifteen years, I’ve learned to chuckle at the doubters. Chuckleheads all.

But what if I am right, until I am wrong? Maybe a little humility is in order? Maybe AAPL isn’t always going to make the personal tech of choice? If so, maybe I should pay attention to the “headwinds”.

The Wall Street Journal on Apple:

“. . . the stock already had been underperforming its big tech peers lately. Concerns were mounting over the new iPhone cycle and longer-term issues like the health of the China market and the company’s lucrative relationship with Google, which pays Apple billions of dollars every year to be the default search engine on the iPhone and other devices. That relationship is at the center of an antitrust trial against Google that has now lasted two months.

The case is a long way from resolution. China, however, is a more pressing issue. Apple’s revenue for its Greater China segment fell nearly 3% year over year compared with a 6% rise in last year’s fiscal fourth quarter. That brought China’s contribution to Apple’s total revenue to its lowest point in nearly three years. . . . Data from market research firm Counterpoint suggests the iPhone has lost momentum in China to a newly resurgent Huawei, though.”

Also, what about the anecdotal? A year ago the family had the nerve to suggest Spotify was better than Apple Music. Eventually, to save money by partnering with the GalPal, I caved and gave it a whirl. And you know what, don’t tell them, but they were right.

In related news, the sensor on the back of my Apple watch cracked. It still mostly works (no sleep data, heart rate, etc.), but I’m thinking of replacing it. And I’m leaning towards a Garmin Venu 3 or Garmin 265 because one charge lasts at least one week. How to make sense of the masses preference for Apple’s for-shits battery life? By acknowledging the company’s marketing genius.

But I digress. Back to the one, mother and father of all, AAPL warning signs. And I quote the recent CNBC headline that stopped me in my Apple track.

Jim Cramer lauds Apple’s ‘lifetime customer,’ says analysts are too negative on the company.

Harvard educated Jim Cramer is the single worst “stock guru” in the mainstream media. Yes, his television persona attracts eyeballs, but any primate throwing darts at a stock chart would outperform him.

John Oliver said it better than I ever could, “Cramer is the only person who could look you in the eye and say you are going to die tomorrow, and give you an immediate sense of calm knowing that you’re going to live for another 50 years.”

Hard to top that, but Ian Krietzberg says Cramer has been wrong so often “that Matthew Tuttle, the CEO and investment lead of Tuttle Capital Management, decided to create an ETF designed to short Jim Cramer.”

Tuttle for the win.

Maybe I should sell some AAPL and use the proceeds to buy an equal amount of SJIM.

Apple Is Selling Fear

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So says Michael Gartenberg.

After outlining Apple’s new safety-oriented product enhancements, Gartenberg concludes:

“The implied message is: ‘If you want to live, buy our stuff.’ Apple now sells devices the way First Alert sells smoke detectors. 

Sadly, he’s absolutely right. 

A prediction. Apple’s new “life-saving” product enhancements will lead to increased rates of anxiety and related mental health issues. 

Apple is a company that prides itself on being socially conscious, better than the rest.

How disappointing.  

Apple Does It Again

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Wednesday’s Apple event was just the most recent reminder that when it comes to marketing, everyone else is competing for the red ribbon or the silver medal or the consolation bracket title. They are the LA Dodgers. Best in class and it ain’t close.

They’re so good they are going to convince a huge cross-section of the population that they need something they’ve been fine without their whole lives–satellite coverage in case of a car crash or other emergency. Hell, when we crashed our cars and got lost in nature before we had cell phones we were almost always fine. There were pay phones, people assisting one another, smoke signals.

Now, Apple is amping up everyone’s anxiety with a bunch of WHAT IFs with infinitesimal odds. And I have no doubt it’s going to work. Sometime soon, people will question your sanity if you venture into your car or the woods without satellite coverage.

And because Apple is going to leverage your anxiety so expertly, my AAPL stock is going to keep increasing in value. Thank you in advance.