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Money well spent on that inauguration "gift", Tim... money well spent.
We don't know whether it's money well spent or wasted yet. Apple got exemptions from tariffs on China during the last Trump admin. We'll see if there are similar backroom deals this time soon enough.
 
I'm more interested in if the penguins (the birds) are going to move their factories to USA, cause trump placed retaliatory 10% tariffs on heard and mcdonald islands.
Or now is the time for the penguins to buy their Studio with...
Apple M3 Ultra chip with 32-core CPU, 80‑core GPU, 32-core Neural Engine
512GB unified memory
8TB of SSD storage
before Apple puts their prices up globally.
 
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I'll put it simply. Tariffs do not work. They didn't work before, and they don't work know.

Global trade will route around the US like the internet routes around damage. Meanwhile, we will be paying more for everything, but especially things that can never, and will never be produced in the US. We don't have the climate for a lot of foodstuffs, we don't have the natural resources for many metals and minerals (as in they simply do not exist in usable quantities in the United States). Europe and other areas are already looking to completely cut out US-produced defense weapons and ammo, which is spooking the administration as we speak. Boeing needs all the help it can get, yet other countries will be looking to Airbus instead. Travel and tourism is already down in the US, and will go down further.

Tariffs are a simpletons fix. The senate voted yesterday (including some republicans) to block the president from blanket applying tariffs...but of course the house won't even vote on it, because they know it will pass if they do.

Edit: Additionally, "Made in USA" now equals "Avoid" outside the US.
You just wasted valuable time trying to explain economics to a MAGA. Facts, logic and reasoning does not have a place in MAGAslobovia.
 
I'm skeptical of how serious Apple's efforts have been at setting up factories/supply chains in the US.

Musk is running several factories in the US between Starlink in Washington, Falcon in Hawthorne, Starship production in Texas, vehicle production in Fremont and Austin, battery packs in Nevada...

These span numerous industries where competitors insist that skilled laborers and tooling isn't available. I know lots of people who used to work at HP factories in the US and are now working at customer service desks because manufacturing jobs have largely disappeared from the US. What is Musk doing several times over that Apple can't do?

(I suspect the answer is compensate employees.)

So what you’re saying is first musk built factories in the us…then bought the election and then raised tariffs to block international competition? That’s some long term strategy
 
That's nostalgia speaking.

Do you have data on failure rates out of the box?

BTW, I remember the Macintosh O/S of the past. It has problems.
I remember when OSX was a new thing, it had problems.

MacBooks were notorious for issues - Butterfly keyboard anyone?
It's not nostalgia speaking at all. I don't have time to list off all of the major bugs, security issues, etc. , etc. , etc. that Apple releases in every single release these days (for a while now). Sorry, this forum isn't my life and I just don't have the time to make a list.

And yes, you're correct. All software will have bugs in it, it's the nature of the game. Older OSX versions did have some issues, however none - at least that I can recall - just kept having bugs and security issues, release after release after release. With each one, just piling on more and more of the "bad stuff" while not really making any strides forward.

You said "I remember when OSX was a new thing, it had problems."
...
At this point, "macOS" is definitely not new. It has been here for far too long to be so buggy and inconsistant and just plain stale.
Damn, as I'm writing this in Safari, I'm encountering a new bug just right now. Super annoying(!!!). The window is staying focused and I'm unable to type without tabbing out of the app and back in, which then only does the last action such as pasting and then freezes until I tab out again. Wow. So yes, talk about bugs - ABSOLUTELY!

What have we really gotten out of the last few major macOS releases? Apple Intelligence? If so, I'm not even counting that. And, I can't really recall any mind-blowing features that have come out in any of the past few/many macOS system versions.
It used to be a VERY exciting day when the next big major Mac OS version came out. I actually remember huge lines at the stores to pickup the systems in a retail box. That's how much of a big deal it was. Major features were in each release.

Now - when Sonoma came out, what did you look forward to, and did it satisfy you when you installed it in some major way? Surely not for me.
And for me, it was the same for Ventura, Sonoma, Sequoia and I'm sure whatever tree comes next. Nothing exciting anymore, just bugs and security issues. And more bugs.

Hardware-wise, yes like you said there will always be at least some issue with a ridiculously complex piece of hardware. And I did say that I give Apple a big credit for the whole Apple Silicon lineup, and I own a few of them. And I definitely am not going to just make things up or argue for the sake of it (especially since I have to keep tabbing out of Safari now to paste anything or change windows - which will hopefully fix itself when I quit, but I have to finish typing this! Annoying bug!). So I'll agree that right now, at least with the hardware that I have, things are pretty good. But I'd sure love a PowerMac tower that wasn't $20k+. I've always had towers with massive expansion via PCI and graphics cards that I could choose, etc. But that's impossible now. Even with thunderbolt 5 and an external PCI chasis, there's not really much that I can do with that. GPUs won't work in there, which limit many other things as I mentioned besides games. AI acceleration would be nice to play with, but that's not doable unless I get a very expensive Studio. But I loved the power of the Towers, the expansion options were ideal for my usage. Now, that is obsolete, which has nothing to do with the form factor - I'd actually be ok with even a mini or cheaper Studio and a PCI chasis, IF it was able to actually do anything useful other than support a very (very) few PCI cards that aren't of use to me.

Apple as a whole, is just broken. I don't know how you and others don't see it. Look at the marketing debacles (scandals?) they've done with the iPhone 16 and magic Apple Intelligence (I don't own a 16, but am rooting for a class action on that one, it is well deserved). Apple Intelligence = NOT intelligent at all, basically just a poorly written Grammarly that barely works and never produces anything useful. They're SO far behind in that space. And so many others - zero communication between departments, or purely just carelessness.

I don't know if it's a hiring problem with younger generations that are just not learning proper development flows and techniques and implementing testing, or if it is even deeper than that. No idea at all. All I know is that Apple is sliding down a hill, and fast.

Ok, I already spent way too much time writing this. And I'm genuinely curious how many others agree or disagree with my post? Please thumb up or down, I truly am wondering what the general visitor on MacRumors these days feels.

...and I'm not kidding. This new bug I just ran into while writing this post is insane. I'd quit and come back but I can't even copy the text from this field. Even CMD-Tabbing out and back only does so much, and applies the last command or thing I typed. So I'm deducting another massive chunk from the already abismal rating that I already have given them. Super, super annoying. Is anyone else running into this?
 
Correct, this is the Marxist view, which is far more inept than billionaires running the show. The Marxist believes in equity, that is poverty for all. I remember a fable about killing a golden goose.
Your "/s" is missing.
 
Or now is the time for the penguins to buy their Studio with...
Apple M3 Ultra chip with 32-core CPU, 80‑core GPU, 32-core Neural Engine
512GB unified memory
8TB of SSD storage
before Apple puts their prices up globally.
maybe you don't know, so I'll spell it out for you. Trump placed tariffs on those two islands with a population of zero, the islands is only populated by penguins.
 
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maybe you don't know, so I'll spell it out for you. Trump placed tariffs on those two islands with a population of zero, the islands is only populated by penguins.
Yeah it was the penguins I was referring to. I have been to these islands.......and I know the penguins develop a lot of LLMs, so they will be very worried.

People are making fun of Donald Trump's tariffs after he put a 10% tariff on an island inhabited only by penguins. Photo / Getty Images/ Digitally enhanced
 
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But here you are, dumping on people for actually being able to critically think about the topic unlike the geniuses in the US administration.
My comment was purposely vague to reflect the general political discourse on MacRumours. The expertise dujour is economics... who knows what it will be tomorrow. My comment was agnostic and wasn't intended to be pro/anti Trump or tariffs. Trump, his tariffs, the Republican Party, and most conservative ideology is the antithesis of all I believe in. If you personally felt "dumped" on then I apologize.
 
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I thought that was Walmart?

And before that, it was Ford.
Yeah there’s a lot of companies like apple in that regard, for sure.

Which I guess is why you see the crashes in Wall Street, which of course loves globalisation, as that enables higher growth.
 
But even the dumbest knew he was a serial bankrupt, a sexual predator, a convicted felon. That he was rude, sneering and generally obnoxious and even his wife hates him. So, pretty stupid all round to have him represent the USA as its number one citizen.
Did they know? Their voters live in an echo chamber, mostly. Trump will find a way to put the blame of what's to come on everyone else except him, and his follower will buy it.
 
Yeah it was the penguins I was referring to. I have been to these islands.......and I know the penguins develop a lot of LLMs, so they will be very worried.

People are making fun of Donald Trump's tariffs after he put a 10% tariff on an island inhabited only by penguins. Photo / Getty Images/ Digitally enhanced's tariffs after he put a 10% tariff on an island inhabited only by penguins. Photo / Getty Images/ Digitally enhanced
Donald: "You don't take our cars, you don't take our farm products, you take almost nothing and we take everything from you.
Penguin: (Squawking loudly) "HONK! HONK!"
Donald: "Have you even said 'thank you' once? I don't think you have. That's very ungrateful."
Penuin: "..."
 
Why didn’t this small business owner get their products manufactured in America. This is exactly what is wrong here.
Yes, that's the question, why don't they?

And more importantly, why should they, really any business any size make their stuff in America just because they live in America when we've spent decades, (or centuries, if you take a larger perspective), on building a World where we can sell and buy anything to anyone pretty much across the entire globe, saving costs on manufacturing and having access to every buyer and seller out there?

You want your products to have less exposure, your business to and products to have access to fewer markets, to costs you more to produce? Why would you want that?
 
If I need it, I'll pay it (the increased price). If I don't need it, I'll go without. I don't upgrade my phone every other week like some people. I keep it until it either breaks (stops functioning properly) and I can't replace it (like my iPhone 5C), or the OS upgrades stop coming (like with the 6S I had previously). I'm debating about trying to get another iPhone SE (3rd Gen) before they're no longer available new... I really like my home button. But if I have to upgrade to the iPhone 16e, I'll learn the finger swipe gestures and the new buttons and whatnot. But the size is gonna be the worst part for me... I don't like big phones.
I get what you're saying.

But I promise you, you will not feel the same way when only a fraction of the goods and services available in the U.S. is exempt from these double digit percentage tax increases.

-Your salary also isn't going up to match these increased price, the administration is not converting its DOGE-cut savings or tariffs earnings into checks and sending them out to you.

You, the consumer, will be footing the bill to finance all the factories and infrastructure to make this "Made in America" "(faux) revolution".
 
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Hmmm... I have on the list for purchase in 2025:

M4 MacBook Air - I was going to wait until June for the Back-To-School sale for a gift card, but that seems less likely now. Maybe I should have picked up the 13" M2 16/256 GB on clearance when I had the chance.

iPad (A16) x 2 - For the kids, this fall. Will the prices stay the same 6 months from now?

iPhone 17 Pro Max - At release in the fall. It will be interesting to see how this will be priced.

I guess the good news is I don't live in the US.

Of those 3, you're probably best off getting those ipads now. Since they're newly released so not being replaced anytime soon. If those tariffs do eventually kick in, paying 50% more for them is going to be daft.

That iphone is certainly going to see a price spike.
 
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Of those 3, you're probably best off getting those ipads now. Since they're newly released so not being replaced anytime soon. If those tariffs do eventually kick in, paying 50% more for them is going to be daft.

That iphone is certainly going to see a price spike.
Yeah I’d buy the iPads now except that they’re supposed to be for their birthdays, which are in the fall.

I hope we are wrong about the 17 Pro Max pricing. Maybe the fact I don’t live in the US mitigates the pricing risk.
 
Now - when Sonoma came out, what did you look forward to, and did it satisfy you when you installed it in some major way? Surely not for me.
And for me, it was the same for Ventura, Sonoma, Sequoia and I'm sure whatever tree comes next.

I don't look to operating systems to give me satisfaction in life.

An regarding the recent versions of macOS: most of the changes are under the hood. The evolution of system security has been a big one, going from T1 to T2 chips then to having the internal SSD being locked down... to constantly changing Safari to protect against attacks... and so on.

It sounds like you have a list of grievances you have been working on, for whatever reason.

I find such an approach to not give me "satisfaction" either.

This thread is about the man-made disaster of Trump's tariffs.

Said tariffs will make Americans poorer, save for the very rich who will pounce on depressed assets up for fire-sales.


Said tariffs will not help Apple. All the tariffs can do is hurt most Americans.
 
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So China is imposing a 34% tariff on American goods.
Trump threatened to ramp it up if anyone retaliated, what’s the expectation? 100% 200% where’s the line that the US populace just can’t take it?

It’s fine saying you want to drive manufacturing back to the US but that’s years away if ever.
There’s no way swing voters (who actually matter) will tolerate this.
 
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