Apple suffers unprecedented exec losses, slashes bonuses, and freezes hiring | Hacker News Reader

Apple suffers unprecedented exec losses, slashes bonuses, and freezes hiring

imore.com

51 pointssizzle24 comments

This article looks like a blend of recent attempts to sow fear/uncertainty/doubt in the normal pattern used to manipulate market sentiment.

Peter Zeihan is predicting [1] that this is the last revision of the iPhone, given the manufacturing situation in China and Apple's deep roots there. It's an interesting assessment of the challenges Apple faces due to the deteriorating relationship between the US and China.

[1] https://investorplace.com/2022/06/aapl-stock-drop-apple-amid...

Never underestimate Apple's ability to pull something out of its rear end and present it as the next big thing. Zeihan has elaborated on this topic in other more detailed videos/articles and it seems like the main concern is the reliance on TSMC. If the cutting edge factories in Taiwan manage to go down it would be the end of Apple's top of the line chipsets used in the Pro iPhones, Macs etc.

If this is the case I don't see why Apple couldn't ship an iPhone using older nodes made in other fabs as an interim solution but dress them up using fancy software or other hardware that does not rely on newer nodes? It has been announced that the Arizona fab will be using 5nm. Isn't that what M1 is using? Thats not too bad and given that Apple has practically unlimited cash reserves, whats to stop them from writing a check to just buy out all the production of this Arizona fab once it starts up in 2024?

Things like iMessage and Memojis are software based solutions that help differentiate iPhone as a premium product that others cannot easily clone.

Yeah I know I know, a lot of HN people are going to come out of the woodwork and decry that it is still not good value and they have said this for years but the greater market has disagreed with HN so far and they are ones who ultimately matter to Apple.

You can't rule out how Apple has used software that people really enjoy (in addition to hardware) as a basis for their differentiation in the market.

Yeah I think this is the right take. The current generation iPhone SoC is on a 5nm process. The Arizona fab will do 5nm initially. Apple has recently purchased TSMC's entire upcoming 3nm production and plans to use it for the next gen iPhone and MacBook.

While the actually assembly is done mostly in China, Apple is already assembling a small number of iPhones in India and working on ramping up production there as well as looking at Vietnam.

In the unlikely event that China storms Taiwan and seizes the foundries or something, at this point the outcome for Apple would be that they would just delay the next iPhone and use another 5nm SoC in it. Most consumers would be oblivious.

Big deal, the world's richest company would suffer some delays, some junkies who are addicted to always buying the newest phone would cry a lot, overall no one would care that much. TSMC would get 3nm up and running outside of Taiwan sooner or later, and/or other fabs would catch up. I don't think it would lead to as much of a meltdown as people have been saying. (The subsequent world war on the other hand...)

Edit: Looks like the latest iPhone 14 Pro is actually on 4nm, not 5nm, but unless China invades like tomorrow I don't think this really changes the equation much.

If necessary, supply chain will be created in Vietnam, served by Japan, Korea and Taiwan. This article is nonsense.

It's going to take time to migrate production and will take time to work out the issues.

- https://www.forbes.com/sites/qai/2023/01/01/apple-to-diversi...

- https://macdailynews.com/2023/02/13/how-apple-plans-to-diver...

Apple’s stock is up since the author warned people from buying it, and made other predictions which didn’t really pan out.

The interesting part of this question is always the why, and it is almost never the why that they actually state.

If I had to take a gamble I would say they are having supply problems, India isn't picking up as fast as expected in their ability to manufacture and they are expecting more issues with China facilities soon.

Honestly maybe it's just seeing a picture in static but it seems to me that things in the US are subtly moving to prepare for hostile relations with China.

The US’s National Defense Strategy unambiguously states low tech conflicts are on the way out, history will show that great power competition came to the forefront in 2014 when Russia took Crimea, and China is the pacing challenge. We expect something like one of 3 general narratives for China: competitive, assertive, and aggressive. We really don’t want aggressive, and are hoping encourage assertive to competitive but there’s some concern that Xi, who is widely seen as the strongest leader since Mao, and may be fencing himself into a political position that forces him toward aggression. The US is roughly of a mind that the Chinese people deserve free and fair electoral politics but the CCP is a real problem internationally. H.R. McMaster, Trump’s first National Security Advisor, has been advocating we perceive narratives of American exceptionalism to be properly understood as American narcissism on the international stage.

Do you really think 350M people on one of the smaller continents really have the power to dominate the other 7.6B people on the planet? Do we really not have to care about how much information we share publicly? Do we really not have to care which countries have controlling investments in companies operating within our borders?

Are you sure the 17 Beijing-owned genetics companies operating in the US are entirely compliant with CLIA?

Are you sure the operating systems on OnePlus phones and Huawei switches are designed with user privacy in mind?

> The US is roughly of a mind that the Chinese people deserve free and fair electoral politics

The US could care less about the chinese people lol, they only care about maintaining power and hegemony.

Tell that to the democracies the US has toppled...

Being the world's largest, most developed, economy (we're number 1) brings some unwelcome truths;

The only direction is down. Obviously you can't be the best at everything, for ever, so inevitably by some measures you're "not number 1". For folks raised on "we're the best country on earth" all their lives, this is hard to hear. Health care? Annual leave? Education? Construction? Infrastructure? The US has the best in the world (we must have, we're the best at everything).

Unfortunately when wishful thinking and reality collide, reality tends to fall away. If we just think it, if we just say it often enough, it'll become true.

Ironically it is exactly the "we're the best at everything" that prevents improvement. You can't improve the best, and most importantly you can't learn from other places, thereby implying you're not the best. Can't learn from the Japenese health system because, by definition, that's inferior.

Of course the US _does_ have the best health, education, whatever, as long as you add the phrase "for rich people" to every claim. And since all Americans are either currently rich, or rich-in-waiting, that means it's the best for everyone.

Are you sure there isn't east bloc propaganda left you haven't gobbled up?

This article is pretty trash. Tim Cook taking a pay cut in order to balance the books? Seriously?

I own zero apple devices outside of work and don't even like them.

This article is a contentless hit job.

Am I the only one annoyed by these articles that are full of links to the same website? What's the point of iCloud being a link? A link to the best iPhone? Which just points to /best-iphone. Not even a specific one...

Then the link to Tim Cooks allegedly taking a pay cut. Same website, no sources.

Bad website.

Apple needs to fire or send a message to all their third party recruiters then.

These commission chasers are wasting everyone’s time living in a different dimension where contracts are filled and budgets are allocated.

I thought they had their own Siri version of ChatGPT to be released soon but looks like he didn't plan for this to happen this fast and under increasing interest rates.

I'm about halfway through the new "After Steve" book, and gotta say headlines like this are making more and more sense with every page.

Earth looks flatter with each passing day.

What are you implying?

That he may be shorting Apple or owns a lot of Google and Microsoft.

The hell? How are people misinterpreting this. It's a book about the corporate structure and changes in Apple over the last ~decade, which details a lot of internal challenges and execs leaving over the years. As well as Apple's struggle to maintain profitability in a lot of instances and taking decisive actions to do so. Pretty related to the headline!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com