Reuters:
“The U.S. side’s imposition of excessively high tariffs on China
seriously violates international economic and trade rules, runs
counter to basic economic principles and common sense, and is
simply an act of unilateral bullying and coercion,” China’s
Finance Min...
Blockbuster report by Wayne Ma for The Information (paywalled and pricey, alas):
But an equally important factor was the conflicting personalities
within Apple, according to multiple people who worked in the AI
and software engineering groups. More than half a dozen form...
Ben Thompson:
The problem with these tariffs is that their scale and
indiscriminate nature will have the effect of destroying demand
and destroying the capability to develop alternative supply. I
suppose if the only goal is to hurt China then shooting yourself
in the foo...
Chance Miller, writing at 9to5Mac:
Ahead of that, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said
today that Trump firmly believes that Apple can move iPhone
manufacturing to the United States. In response to a question
from Maggie Haberman of The New York Times about ...
Jen Simmons, writing on the WebKit blog, “Better Typography With text-wrap pretty”:
For over 30 years, the web had only one technique for determining
where to wrap text.
The browser starts with the first line of text, and lays out each
word or syllable, one after anothe...
This sounds like one of those puzzles job interviewers often ask, but there’s a practical relevance at the moment: What’s a ballpark estimate for how many iPhones Apple might have hustled to ship into the US on those five freight planes ahead of the new tariffs? Ryan Jones t...
President Trump, in a post on Truth Social, which is apparently how the world’s financial markets now run:
Based on the lack of respect that China has shown to the World’s
Markets, I am hereby raising the Tariff charged to China by the
United States of America to 125%, e...
Chance Miller, writing for 9to5Mac:
According to senior Indian officials cited in the report, Apple
flew five planes full of iPhones and other products from India and
China “in just three days during the final week of March.”
“Factories in India and China and other key ...
My sincere thanks to The Ole Independence Hall Hooligans for sponsoring this past week at DF to promote democracy. That’s it. A real sponsorship, real money, raised by a group of readers who simply wanted the ad space on DF to promote, as they described it, “the enduring and...
David Remnick, in a fine short piece for The New Yorker on Signalgate:
This is an Administration that does not have to slip on a Signal
banana peel to reveal its deepest-held prejudices and its painful
incapacities. You get the sense that we would learn little if we
were...
Terrific photos and summary coverage from The Guardian. Additional coverage from The New York Times, Washington Post, and CNN. Update: The Atlantic has a great collection of photos from dozens of cities.
There’s something so bizarrely asymmetrical about Trump’s political su...
Joanna Stern, Adrienne Tong, and Nicole Nguyen, writing for The Wall Street Journal (News+):
Take a look at this iPhone 16 Pro. Your cost, for the 256GB
version, is $1,100. The cost of all the hardware inside — aka the
bill of materials — was about $550 to Apple when the...
Dan Moren, writing at Six Colors:
In his piece, Gruber particularly calls out the trashcan Mac Pro
sticking at $2999 throughout its existence, but I think an even
more striking example is the iMac. Introduced in 1998 at a base
price of $1299, today’s infinitely more powe...
Barbara Moens and Henry Foy, reporting from Brussels for the Financial Times last Friday, March 28:
The EU is set to impose minimal fines on Apple and Facebook owner
Meta next week under its Digital Markets Act, as Brussels seeks to
avoid escalating tensions with US Pres...
Thanks to Microsoft for 50 years of being awesome to developers!
Some years the software was great. Some years the software sucked.
Every year the company and its ecosystem has stood with and
supported developers.
I pity the man who doesn’t have enough fingers to count the number of game stores available on Xbox.
Tom Warren, reporting for The Verge:
Microsoft held a special 50th anniversary event at its
headquarters earlier today. During Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa
Suleyman’s presentation, a Microsoft employee interrupted the
event to protest the use of Microsoft’s technologies in
I...
Susan Glasser, writing for The New Yorker, “Donald Trump’s Ego Melts the Global Economy”:
In this new political moment of the unthinkable made manifest, the
sheer power rush for Trump should also not be underestimated.
Imagine his joy as he sat down to sign an executive ...
CNBC:
President Donald Trump on Friday extended a deadline requiring China-based ByteDance to sell the U.S. operations of TikTok or face an effective ban in the country, marking the second time he has taken such action.
Trump, on Truth Social, which is by far the most ...
From that same Reuters report by Akash Sriram that I just wrote about, speculating that iPhone prices might rise dramatically under Trump’s tariffs:
However, other analysts noted that iPhone sales have been
floundering in the company’s major markets, as Apple
Intelligenc...
Akash Sriram, reporting for Reuters under the headline “A $2,300 Apple iPhone? Trump Tariffs Could Make That Happen.”:
Most iPhones are still made in China, which was hit with a 54%
tariff. If those levies persist, Apple has a tough choice: absorb
the extra expense or pa...
Akash Sriram, reporting for Reuters:
Most iPhones are still made in China, which was hit with a 54%
tariff. If those levies persist, Apple, opens new tab has a tough
choice: absorb the extra expense or pass it on to customers.
Shares of the company closed down 9.3% on T...
Mike Isaac, writing for The New York Times:
Apple, Dell, Oracle — which rely on hardware and global supply
chains that are in the direct line of fire from tariffs — saw
their shares go into free-fall. But there was another big tech
company whose stock took a pummeling ev...
Nintendo is pushing back preorders for the Switch 2 due to
concerns about Donald Trump’s newly announced tariffs. According
to a statement sent to The Verge by Eddie Garcia on behalf of
Nintendo, it says preorders will no longer begin on April 9th:
Pre-orders for Nintendo Switch 2 in the U.S. will not start April
9, 2025 in order to assess the potential impact of tariffs and
evolving market conditions. Nintendo will update timing at a
later date. The launch date of June 5, 2025 is unchanged.
Allison McDaniel, writing for 9to5Mac back in 2022:
Apple Cash is a virtual debit card where you can send and
receive money through iMessage. Stored in your Wallet, you can
make secure and contactless payments with Apple Pay from your
iPhone or Apple Watch. It’s also a w...
I observed yesterday that, in general, Visa and Mastercard credit cards are both accepted at the same locations. The most notable exception is Costco, which, as part of the deal to make its own credit card a Visa (after long partnering with Amex), only accepts Visa credit ca...
Bill Gates, commemorating Microsoft’s 50th anniversary:
The story of how Microsoft came to be begins with, of
all things, a magazine. The January 1975 issue of
Popular Electronics featured an Altair 8800 on the
cover. The Altair 8800, created by a small electronics
compa...
Wonderfully detailed write-up of a perfect prop from Make3:
Repurposed Nagra Knobs & Switches — To ground the device in a
tangible, vintage aesthetic, we salvaged original knobs and
switches from a 1990s Nagra IV-D recorder, seamlessly integrating
them into our desig...
Jason Snell, last month:
The new M4 MacBook Air is the Mac most people should buy. [...]
That’s why perhaps the most important change in the M4 MacBook Air
is its base configuration, which starts at $999. When Apple
introduced a winning new flat-with-rounded-corners Air...
Following up on the previous item, here’s a WSJ report from October on Visa’s dominant position in the payments industry:
Visa, based in San Francisco, has built its network over more than
60 years — going back to clunky manual credit-card readers and
carbon-paper copies...
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