30: Apple: 100B To 3T

Apple's next target: $3T Apple's market value is nearing the $3 trillion mark — a milestone no company has ever reached. The tech giant's shares have risen roughly 46% so far this year — worth about $900 billion — putting it in striking distance of the mark ahead of closing on Friday. The tech sector has seen a flurry of renewed optimism around the potential of artificial intelligence, with the Nasdaq up about 30% and on track for its best first half of a year since the 1980s. Apple has also benefited from a rebound in its iPhone business. .......

In early trading Friday, Apple shares were up almost 3% at $192.51, taking it past the $3 trillion mark.

.



From the moment the iPhone's sleek silhouette graced our lives, Apple's market value took a quantum leap from $100 billion to a staggering ~$3 trillion. This meteoric rise has anchored Apple's position as the reigning champion, the world's most valuable company.



How Can ChatGPT Analyze Data To Determine The Most Effective Customer Acquisition Channels?
How Can ChatGPT Suggest Ways To Use Chat Marketing To Increase Customer Engagement?
How Can ChatGPT Provide Guidance On How To Use Chatbots For Lead Qualification?
How Can ChatGPT Help Create And Manage A Customer Referral Program?
How Can ChatGPT Provide Recommendations For Creating Effective Social Media Profiles?

11: Apple

9: Jony Ive

Apple Producing In India Is A Big Deal

For a long time India has been a promising country that simply did not deliver. That is now changing. There are thousands of tech startups that prove the point. But the move by Apple to start iPhone production in India is a huge symbolic step. That is Apple saying India seems to have done its homework.

India needs a huge manufactuting base to create the large number of jobs it needs for its huge young population. The intractable labor and land laws mean most Indians end up in what gets called the "informal sector." There is a lot of entrepreneurship going on in that informal sector. People do so much with so little. It is heartwarming to see many of those street vendors take digital payments seamlessly.

Google getting an Indian CEO was a big symbolic step. Microsoft getting an Indian CEO was a big symbolic step. That CEO taking Microsoft from 200 billion to over a trillion was big. The recent ChatGPT move on the part of Satya Nadella has been huge and symbolic. And now this move by Apple adds to that momentum.

The two biggest democracies are attemtpting sync.

Apple begins making the iPhone 14 in India, marking a big shift in its manufacturing strategy

Rewriting the Rules of Audience Targeting The way people and tools are handling personal data is fundamentally out of sync with the new privacy-focused world. .......... what if we could personalise advertising without systematically collecting and exposing personal data? ....... The ad industry is fast approaching a crisis point. Cookies are disappearing, mobile IDs are vanishing, and consent rates are falling. This is an existential threat, not just to internet advertising but to the internet in general. If advertising fails, then business models supporting the open internet will fail, professional journalism will struggle, and the internet as we know it will be swallowed up by the walled gardens. ........ the pervasive surveillance of our every move online can no longer continue. ....... a high-level understanding of what publishers needed, a good grasp of privacy rules, very good knowledge of technology and tons of ideas. The canvas they were using to draw the building blocks of what would then become ID Ward (now Anonymised) was truly blank. ......... They spent months absorbing information from all corners of the advertising world, learning the jargon, diving into the tech, figuring out which tools were compliant and which were marketing a lie. They found that regulatory compliance isn’t sexy enough to sell, that companies were happy to break the law if it meant hitting revenue targets, and that leadership was hard to find. In short, they learnt that the industry was, well, a bit of a mess. Convincing a huge, chaotic, fragmented industry that they had to radically change the way they treated data was always going to be difficult, but the need for change was greater than they originally thought and time was on their side. .......... a mission to decouple personalised advertising from personal data. ........ make digital advertising fit for the future and protect advertising business models that support a free, independent internet. There is a direct connection between brands’ ability to speak to consumers online, the ability of journalists to report facts to the public and our right to be informed from a plurality of sources without breaking the bank. ......... without all of the snooping and systematic privacy invasions that are currently rife in the advertising industry ........ By replacing people’s personal data with anonymous datasets across the entire digital advertising ecosystem .

9: News Bulletin

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang's big bet on A.I. is paying off as his core technology powers ChatGPT
Spotify is revamping its podcaster tools, including Anchor, and is partnering with Patreon
The New Bing and Edge – Progress from Our First Month
Apple to Shake Up International Sales Operations to Make India Its Own Region
Google One brings VPN to $1.99/month plan, adding dark web info monitoring

Chinese AI groups use cloud services to evade US chip export controls
Uber Is Considering Spinning Off Freight Logistics Division
New Low: Monthly Funding Dips Below $20B As Funds Continue Record Raises
Consensus raises $110M to inject automation into SaaS product demos
Microsoft, Google-Backed Group Wants to Boost AI Education in Low-Income Schools

Coinbase announces Wallet-as-a-Service product to simplify web3 onboarding
DuckDuckGo Releases Its Own ChatGPT-Powered Search Tool, DuckAssist

‘I beg you to give me a chance’ - A 90-year-old Hong Kong hawker pleaded with officers after they confiscated the cart she used to sell roasted chestnuts. pic.twitter.com/7pk4WLLi32

— South China Morning Post (@SCMPNews) March 9, 2023

Time to reach 100M users. Wow ChatGPT pic.twitter.com/Ta8TcR7Jah

— Mukund Mohan (@mukund) March 9, 2023

For those of you who have been misinformed by authority figures that communism is a decentralized system--it can't be. Everyone can't be raised to the same high level, so everyone has the be pounded down to the same low level. That requires centralized elites to do the pounding. https://t.co/PhHTnEEIXs

— Marc Andreessen (@pmarca) March 9, 2023

#Kyiv is shaken, but not broken after this night’s attack! Do russians really think they can break our spirit?? pic.twitter.com/zuPWHcyUhm

— Inna Sovsun (@InnaSovsun) March 9, 2023

Estonia’s PM, Kaja Kallas, secures election win with pro-Ukraine stance | Estonia | The Guardian https://t.co/qFqjFLiUOP

— Kaja Kallas (@kajakallas) March 9, 2023

79 years ago Soviet planes bombed Tallinn and destroyed almost a quarter of the city. We see Russia using the same terror tactics today in Ukraine.

Must-read thread on the March bombings 👇 https://t.co/GfVnpih3Yy

— Kaja Kallas (@kajakallas) March 9, 2023

In <2 minutes, hear why @randizuckerberg wants you to take 8 minutes to see if you qualify for ERC assistance.

— INNOVATION REFUNDS (@getrefunds) March 6, 2023

Report: Trump ‘Strongly’ Considering Kari Lake As VP Pick As His Poll Numbers Continue To Skyrockethttps://t.co/zGbGzsgAKj

— Dinesh D'Souza (@DineshDSouza) March 9, 2023

During today's massive Russian missile attack on #Ukraine, one of the missiles hit a private house in the #Lviv region. 4 civilians died. Terrorism continues. pic.twitter.com/SXQUCNQ2a5

— Inna Sovsun (@InnaSovsun) March 9, 2023

Haha what a tool

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 9, 2023

Our boy survived 🐻 attack 😅 #Ethereum pic.twitter.com/Z9IgUvmMfh

— Casper (💙,🧡) 🦇🔊🍄💎🍊 (@casperdefi) March 9, 2023

Top Tech CEOs Go To Washington

I believe the anti-trust angst is valid. The big tech companies do seem to be stifling competition with their sheer size. The Google argument that their competition is just one click away belies the fact that search is a hugely capital intensive effort. It is more expensive to build a search engine than it is to build a Boeing jet plane. That huge cost is a moat around the Google castle. The same is true for the other big tech companies. 

But the lack of competition is not true only in tech. Their size makes it obvious but the US economy has a major lack of competition problem in many sectors. 

I do think many next big companies are dying too early in the presence of these big tech companies. 

But anti-trust is the smaller of my concerns. 

Saudi Arabia had oil, but it was undiscovered and it was underground. Western companies swooped in to dig it out. Those companies did not and do not get to take all of the oil money. Data is the new oil. But individual consumers are not getting any pay. There ought to be a 70-30 split. The individual should get 70% and the company that harvests and monetizes the data should keep 30%, which would still be a lot. Especially since the oil wells are about to get huge. 

This has to be established as a right. Taking that political step will necessarily bring up legitimate issues of data privacy and security. And in favor of innovation, we could put a floor underneath the arrangement. Small companies would not have to pay. Only after you cross a certain size you pay up. 

This would have to be a global understanding. This means the tech companies have an obligation to together offer up the digital equivalent of a Social Security number and online bank accounts to all their users. They can. 

Something is amiss. The US Congress does not have jurisdiction over the planet. What we need is a global parliament. 

Makes me wonder, though, why is Microsoft missing? Does Congress feel like it already grilled Microsoft back in the days!? 

The UBI is infrastructure for the global knowledge economy and is in the best interests of these tech companies. They should bring it about. 

The leaders of the four Big Tech companies faced US lawmakers for the first time together on Wednesday in a hearing in which they were accused of harming not only competitors, but also consumers. Here's how it went: https://t.co/pdmassrDlk

— Financial Times (@FinancialTimes) July 29, 2020

Top Tech CEOs Go To Washington https://t.co/WIhFB0AcYc @Apple @Google @Facebook @amazon @JeffBezos @sundarpichai @AndrewYang @scottsantens #UniversalBasicIncome #UBI

— Paramendra Kumar Bhagat (@paramendra) July 29, 2020

Apple, Android, And Ancient Greece

Elon Musk's Giant Blind Spot: Human Beings

There is this no small detail called gravity. It is big, it is fat.

And gravity is physics. And Elon Musk has a degree in physics from U Penn. He must know his physics because he seems to send rockets out into space at will.

But Elon was no biology major, looks like.

There is this funny thing called gravity. The human body needs the earth's gravity. That is why long term human habitation on the moon is a bad idea. Robots? Yes. Human beings? No, no.

In absence of gravity, your eyes might bulge out. Your joints might start getting, well, disjointed. Your bones need gravity to stay bones.

But Elon stays oblivious to the fact. He says everyone who signs up for Mars will get 10 cubic meters of space inside his spaceship, "which is a lot."

And that's just gravity. Radiation will have to be another blog post. Radiation might make those ten cubic meters a microwave experience, which is a lot. Like, too much.

It is not like Elon does not have enough on his plate. There are trillions to be made through robotic asteroid mining. Spices used to be like gold. Gold can become like spices. I want his 10,000 satellites to provide gigabit broadband every point on earth. I like the idea of any point on earth to any other point on earth in 30 minutes. You escape zero gravity before the bones figure it out. Hyperloop is massive. I have an entire real estate tech startup around the Hyperloop concept. Tesla? I want one. Solar tiles on the roof? I want. Super cheap, super boring tunnels? I want them. Although it could get literally boring down there unless the walls of those underground vehicles come alive and are entertainment.

Save earth like this is the only planet we got. There is no other. Plant a trillion trees. Elon should design some drones that will plant those trillion trees. And his satellites should map out the earth to find out every patch of land where trees can be planted. And let's get it done and over with already.

Somebody drop an apple on Elon's head.

Elon Musk's Giant Blind Spot: Human Beings https://t.co/ArZAPYd0FC @elonmusk @Tesla @SpaceX @boringcompany @solarcity #ElonMusk #Tesla #teslamodel3 #Space #Mars #Marshmello #Moonshot

— Paramendra Kumar Bhagat (@paramendra) October 9, 2019

Text from dad.

Happy Dussehra to all the Indians out there! 🤗 pic.twitter.com/fvb3JTFD6f

— Preethi Kasireddy (@iam_preethi) October 8, 2019

Elon Musk's Giant Blind Spot: Human Beings https://t.co/ArZAPYd0FC @wadhwa @SteveCase @mcuban @richardbranson @randizuckerberg @nihalmehta @reshmasaujani @NikhilKal @naveen @satyanadella @sundarpichai @msuster @bfeld @fredwilson @thegothamgal @albertwenger @dens @lessin #Mars

— Paramendra Kumar Bhagat (@paramendra) October 9, 2019

Temperature anomalies by country since 1880

Many thanks @pascal_bornet #climate #ClimateChange #Sustainability #ClimateChangeIsReal #environment pic.twitter.com/oPZuV3qB9G

— Dr. Marcell Vollmer @Celonis (@mvollmer1) October 9, 2019

Microsoft Inspire 2019 Corenote With Satya Nadella

Steve Jobs had a second act at Apple. Bill Gates did not. He had Satya Nadella. It was easier for Steve Jobs to give his second act. For Satya Nadella to come up with the second act is harder, and thus more impressive. Bill Gates was still sending those memos when Steve Ballmer was CEO, and Microsoft missed out on the smartphone completely.

Satya's superpower is his feel for corporate culture. He could teach Bill G a lesson or two. Satya is the antithesis of the nasty Founder CEO aura that is rightly or wrongly credited to/blamed upon Steve Jobs. Satya has proven you can be a nice, humble, empathetic, never angry CEO and create a trillion-dollar company. In fact, he has proven, that is the only way to do it.

And it's not just humility. Satya lays out the vision with such immense clarity, and with such precision; only an impressive intellect can do that. He distills. He forages. He pollinates. He crisscrosses. He wanders around. He picks and chooses. He speaks. He lays it down.

Steve Jobs had a second act at @Apple. @BillGates Gates did not. He had @satyanadella. #microsoft #trillion https://t.co/GL61MqSsQ8

— Paramendra Kumar Bhagat (@paramendra) August 5, 2019

Steve Jobs had a second act at Apple. Bill Gates did not. He had Satya Nadella. It was easier for Steve Jobs to give his second act. For Satya Nadella to come up with the second act is harder, and thus more impressive. https://t.co/GL61MqSsQ8 @emilychangtv @satyanadella

— Paramendra Kumar Bhagat (@paramendra) August 5, 2019

Tech Talk (9)

Could Steve Jobs Have Made A Difference At Apple in 2020?

This is one of those what-ifs. There is Larry Ellison, the colorful Founder CEO of Oracle, best friend to Steve Jobs for 25 years, who will have you believe Steve Jobs was Steve Jobs. Tim Cook can not wear the shoes. It is true Apple has since only been milking what was already built. They are still milking the iPhone and the iPad.

It is said Steve Jobs was thinking about tackling the TV next. If you go from the PC to the iPod-iPhone-iPad, it is a paradigm shift from the GUI (Graphical User Interface) to the touch screen. But do you really want to touch your TV? TV was and is a harder nut to crack. The innovation perhaps is not on the screen. It is in how content is created and distributed. Netflix, and YouTube and Amazon are tackling some of it.

It is true Steve Jobs managed to be a pioneer for both GUI and the touch screen. But what's next? Obviously we are looking beyond touch. They talk of NUI, Natural User Interface. Voice commands. Gesture, things like that. Computing is so seamlessly integrated to the natural environment around you, you simply speak to it, or you wave at it.

Could Steve Jobs have tackled it? It is not like you are saying, Steve Jobs grew up speaking English, could he have beat the Chinese at Mandarin? Steve Jobs would not have been handicapped by the NUI. But it might have been hard for the same person to also be the pioneer for that third paradigm. It is remarkable enough that one person became the master of two paradigms. Three? Three would have been a lot. But it was possible.

Steve Jobs' Apple had almost a hundred billion dollars in the bank. Jobs liked to say he liked to keep his gunpowder dry, in case something showed up. Perhaps things like VR and AR are more capital intensive. Perhaps not.

It is conceivable Apple under Steve Jobs might have also been a leader in this next emerging paradigm, the paradigm of the Natural User Interface. Tim Cook is already missing out. Tim Cook is more like Steve Ballmer. Ballmer kept showing crazy good numbers. But he totally missed out on the smartphone. Cook is similarly showing pretty good numbers. But it is Google and Amazon that are Hey Google! and Hello Alexa!

VR is going to be amazingly democratizing. Before VR you have bought a TV for hudreds of dollars. In a VR headset, a TV is maybe a one dollar app. Suddenly a dollar a day people might be looking at high end TV. And it can be a tremendous educational tool. Super-customized education.

In Defence Of Facebook

It feels like 1999 for Facebook. Microsoft did not split, but all the DC harassing was a hint it was no longer on the cutting edges of innovation. Facebook feels like on a standstill. It has taken quite a beating. There is a backlash.

Facebook is not the next Facebook, and Google is not the next Google, although some of Google's so-called moonshot projects are quite impressive, and in the pipeline.

Today I make free video calls to my parents in Nepal, thanks to Facebook Messenger, although it is true there are others like it. When I showed up for college in Kentucky, and the Internet was the new kid on the block, I had to pay something like two dollars per minute to call my parents. The college phone service was a monopoly. VOIP was unheard of. So when a few years later I came across 20 cents per minute deals, it felt like rocket science to me. Also, at that work study college, you were legitimately paid way below minimum wage. Which meant a week's wages could easily be spent on one conversation. :)

In my home village in Nepal, one of my failed initiatives was to launch a library. It did not fail. We did collect a few books. I donated most of it. But it did not take off as envisioned. Well, in that village today you can get a phone with a data plan. And, boom, there is a library called Google.

The tech giants are subject to public criticism, sure, why not. But let's maintain perspective.

The Big Four -- Apple, Amazon, Google, Facebook --- have collected a lot of data on each of us. True. But what would be the best next step? I think data portability. The data around each person is a personal oil well. It will pay for Universal Basic Income. 

FACEBOOK BOARD DEFENDS HOW ZUCKERBERG, SANDBERG HANDLED CRISIS

Tim Cook Like Steve Ballmer?

Steve Ballmer faced a lot of criticism as CEO and he would get confused because he was bringing in a lot of revenue. A company is supposed to make money, right?

But he was not innovating. All the new products were coming from elsewhere. He did manage to buy Skype though.

Tim Cook has been toying with the dimensions of the various Apple products, and he has been bringing in a lot of money.

Is that a warning sign?

http://venturebeat.com/2016/10/25/why-tim-cook-is-steve-ballmer/

Why Tim Cook is Steve Ballmer | VentureBeat | Business | by Steve Blank

Big Tech Companies Need To Pay Individuals Globally

Over the long run, Google and Facebook are not really in the business of selling ads, and Amazon is not in the business of selling merchandise. No, these technology companies are powered by your eyeballs (and data). Their currency is users. Google, for example, gives away email and search for free to draw users to its products; it needs to innovate quickly, producing more and better products to ensure you stay with the company.

It only makes sense. When a foreign company goes and drills for oil in Saudi Arabia, it pays the country. When Google drills you for data, should Google not pay? Data is the new oil. Tech companies are about to build super rich profiles on individuals. That is fine as long as privacy is respected. And they pay. Google's money might show up in your Gmail account. You should be able to conduct local commerce wherever you are.

This is not really that different from AdSense/AdWords. Google pays you when you display Google ads on your blog.

Just like with ISPs, governments can make companies owning the big pipes allow many small companies to become the last mile provider, similarly, many of these big tech companies are busy building many big pipes of all sorts. At some point it might make market sense to allow for competition in the final mile.

Also true for finance. If the big banks can just make sure your bank deposits are safe, do they also have to be the people providing the basic services? Can not small startups who don't own buildings simply plug in and start offering services?

Google owns Blogger, but Wordpress beats Google's Blogger in blogging platform innovation. Wordpress does the last mile really well.

Like Mao said (at least for a short period of time, very short), Let a thousand flowers bloom.

This is a policy challenge. It is for governments to make sure free competition is kept to the max. Sometimes that requires liberating the last mile to small players who might be more nimble, with their ears close to the ground.

I read somewhere Google is giving 25% ownership to the Sri Lankan government for taking its Project Loon insanity to the ground in that country for use of the airwaves. That sounded close to perfect to me, and might be even more meaningful to many of the African countries. Oil holes in the sky.

Big Sitting Cash

US firms have $1.9 trillion in cash they're not investing. Why? A fascinating essay on this: https://t.co/zA2Za0zYSv pic.twitter.com/1uRU4NamjH

— Clive Thompson (@pomeranian99) January 21, 2016

Why Are Corporations Hoarding Trillions?

Collectively, American businesses currently have $1.9 trillion in cash, just sitting around. Not only is this state of affairs unparalleled in economic history, but we don’t even have much data to compare it with, because corporations have traditionally been borrowers, not savers. ....... it is probably earning only about 2 percent interest by parking that money in United States Treasury bonds. These companies would be better off investing in anything — a product, a service, a corporate acquisition — that would make them more than 2 cents of profit on the dollar, a razor-thin margin by corporate standards. And yet they choose to keep the cash. ........ if you buy a share in Alphabet, which has sold for roughly $700 lately, you are effectively buying ownership of more than $100 in cash. ......

General Motors is perhaps the most extreme: It now holds nearly half its value in cash. Apple holds more than a third.

....... If the companies spent their savings, rather than hoarding them, the economy would instantly grow, and we would most likely see more jobs with better pay. ....... the 1990s were a period of low unemployment and high growth. Remarkably, the United States government was able to tax all that productive corporate behavior so much that it came close to paying off all its debts for the first time in 160 years........

holding on to cash and carefully shifting it among subsidiaries, especially foreign ones, is a great tool to shrink your tax bill.

....... Google buys about one company a week, on average ..... Companies like Google and GM are holding on to far more cash — many times more — than could possibly be explained by emergency funds and tax efficiencies and M.&A. intimidation put together. ...... finance economists agree that there is a puzzle here ..... a large cash hoard is a sign of an unhealthy company. Maybe its whole industry is doing so poorly that there is nothing worth investing in ....... Corporations, it seems, may have amassed at least a good chunk of that $1.9 trillion in mysterious savings because the stock market is rewarding them for it. ........ both the executives and the investors in these industries believe that something big is coming, but — this is crucial — they’re not sure what it will be. .....

Their hoarding of it hints that they think the next transformative innovation could be just around the corner.

These trillions should go into Clean Energy and Global South infrastructure. There will be solid if not sexy returns. A 10% annual growth beats zero. A trillion going into clean energy makes global warming talk mostly history.

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@pomeranian99 @pmarca This is like allowing the ocean currents to stop the churn. Bad for the planet.

— Paramendra Bhagat (@paramendra) January 22, 2016

The Four Horsemen: Amazon/Apple/Facebook/Google

Security And Easy Sign In

I liked two step authentication when it came along. Google is at the center of my digital experience. Android is an easy choice for me. I might still get snooped upon for I use many services online. But if I can at least be sure my Google ID will not be compromised, that is a lot of peach of mind.

And now there is a physical key. That would make it even more secure. But I would not want more than one key. This three step authentication and the ability to Google sign in into a whole bunch of services would take care of a lot of security issues.

The Second Coming Of Sign In With Twitter

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• For your protection, Turn On your Apple ID's Two-Step Authentication
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Carriers Need To Be Shaken

If we could have something similar for the Internet Service Providers (ISPs).

Apple's Quiet Attempt to Shake Up Wireless Carriers Could Benefit Us All

Apple’s SIM card that lets you switch wireless carriers on the fly could lead to cheaper communications. ..... the impact this could have on wireless data competition and prices if more carriers are added to the mix. ..... the Apple SIM is eventually added to the iPhone (and, perhaps, similarly flexible SIMs appear for other smartphones as well). Not only would it make it easier to move from one carrier to another, but it could also make it more affordable for people all over the world to communicate.

The Blockchain: More Than About Money

English: Description: Social Networking Source: own work Author: koreshky Date: 12/10/2007 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The blockchain can be used for more than money. I think it could be a base for social networking, among other things.

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Sapphire Screens

I believe that 11% figure. It is probably an underestimate. A phone case is also a solution, the one I use.



Sapphire Screens Would Test Apple’s Manufacturing and Design Skills

According to one estimate, 11 percent of all iPhones have cracked screens. ..... virtually unscratchable, unbreakable screens could make for a compelling marketing campaign. .... The company’s decision to invest about $700 million in an industrial sapphire plant in Arizona starting last year has added considerable weight to the theory. ..... Sapphire is already used in small amounts to make scratch-resistant screens for luxury watches, and Apple uses small pieces of sapphire to protect the camera and the home button on the iPhone 5S. .... sapphire’s high cost has limited its applications; although new ways of growing sapphire crystals have made it cheaper to produce in recent years, it’s still roughly five times more expensive than toughened glass. ..... second only to diamond on a standard scale of hardness ..... Some types of cutting and polishing can introduce defects into the material that make it easier to break than glass.

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