By John Moltz
This Week in Apple: Forget it Jake, it’s Glasstown
Apple bestows a prestigious award, acquisition speculation continues, and set the date: new iPhones are coming.
Presidential Participation Awards
Apple has upped the ante in its bid to please our petulant president, bumping up the $500 billion investment it had previously pledged.
“Apple Announces American Manufacturing Program, Promises to Spend $600 Billion”
$500 billion isn’t cool. What’s cool is $600 billion. Stay tuned until 2026 when $700 billion will be even cooler.
Look, here’s the thing. The President wants people to buy American. And the President himself is American. You can see where he’s going with this.
Apple can.
Tim Cook gifts Trump with 100% US-made piece of glass on a 24k gold base
You will forgive me if I first read that as “Tim Cook grifts Trump”. The fun thing is, you can also read it as “graft”! Ha-ha! This is how we have fun in the hellscape that is this timeline. It’s all we have.
I personally can’t bear to watch the video because I have an easy gag reflex but Cook is described as being “visibly nervous”. Hey, I get it. I always get nervous when I have to prostrate myself before the base and mercurial entity who threatens my livelihood, too. But what am I gonna do, not prostrate myself before the base and mercurial entity who threatens my livelihood?! I don’t need any more pestilence than I have, thanks!
The grift [sic] has a very Liquid Glass look and if you don’t think that I’ll be remembering this travesty every time I see a round Liquid Glass button from now on then you don’t know the first thing about me.
Say what you will about Cook cozying up to Trump (and believe me, I have) but the guy knows how to get results.
“Apple Won’t Be Impacted by India Tariff Increase”
[“Mission Accomplished” banner drops down, seemingly from nowhere]
My least favorite TV+ show is Tim Cook’s Cavalcade of Apple Indignities. Foundation’s pretty good, though.
Acquisition Intelligence
Apple went to great lengths last week to tell us how great everything was going with Siri and Apple Intelligence and, completely unrelated, how it was 100% open to acquiring a company that could help with Siri and Apple Intelligence. Weirdly, this week a lot of questions are still being asked, despite the company handing out all those t-shirts that say “Everything is going great with Siri and Apple Intelligence”.
According to The Financial Times, Apple has lost a dozen members of its AI staff, “including top researchers”. Uh, well, excuse me for suggesting the obvious answer but can’t it just replace them with AI? Duh.
It is annoying that you can’t joke “If AI is so cool then why don’t you marry it?” because people are literally trying to do that.
John Gruber fancasts Anthropic as the right company for Apple to acquire as opposed to Perplexity which seems to have somewhat “sketchy” business practices.
It’s not like Apple needs the help. Everything is going great with Siri and Apple Intelligence.
Cupertino Nine-Nine
According to sources in the carrier industry, none of whom died to bring us this information, this year’s iPhone event will be held on Tuesday, September 9th. Yes, in just over a month, we’ll see just how thin that iPhone 17 Air is.
A new Apple TV is expected sometime this year and could come as early as the September 9th event. If it is announced on September 9th, expect it to be during the event, unless Apple moves to an Oscars-style event system in which the company holds a separate event for its less important products, possibly at an airport Marriott and hosted by Ken Bosco, employee of the month at the Nashua, NH Apple Store.
Sources indicate Ken has a killer tight five.
The new Apple TV may be the first of its line to be capable of using Apple Intelligence. Apple will finally deliver what the masses have been crying out for: Image Playground on the big screen.
[shudder]
[John Moltz is a Six Colors contributor. You can find him on Mastodon at Mastodon.social/@moltz and he sells items with references you might get on Cotton Bureau.]