Comment by erxam

In addition to being the sole inventors of lightning (the connector), which directly informed the USB-C spec based on learnings from field use.

Apple doesn't get solo credit for USB-C, but they were certainly essential to it. Just compare the USB-C physical interface to the USB-3 micro or super speed type B ports and compare design sensibilities.

And then they went too far and introduced laptops that only used USB-C before finally setting at a (so far) happy medium.

That's not what Grubber claimed tho. They claimed solo inventor, which Apple is not.

Memory prices are certainly going up, but Apple already makes a 40% profit margin on their products. That $1 trillion+ bank account still gotta go up no matter what right?

The are at least 5 people on the initial USB-C design team on HN. They certainly tell a different story.

But they were forced, at least for iPhones in Europe.

It's a fact. Not a feeling.

They mean stick as in criticism.

And no, the memory in the Neo is not soldered to the motherboard, it is the upper part of the SoC sandwich package.

https://3dfabric.tsmc.com/english/dedicatedFoundry/technolog...

If anything they seem to be ones who managed to delay increasing prices more than the rest.

September new versions will likely start at a price point than they would have

For sure but an iPhone has more RAM than a Neo and those went up $100, so they’re at least eating the price difference for another ~3 months

I've heard that the iPhone price is going up, and they've already started paying you more to trade-in the last generation.

Everything competing for fab capacity is more expensive. The Apple H2 is 7nm and TSMC has raised prices for that capacity.

> That's why some regulation is not the enemy of the people that some want to make it out to be.

The question is always: What specific regulation?

Regulation is not the magic silver bullet that some want to make it out to be.

You’re not going to solve a global supply and demand change by regulating companies to not buy too many things. The supply would go to other countries. Companies would open international subsidiaries that built the data centers in other countries. Companies would move to other countries which didn’t try to stop them from buying components on the free market.

You can’t regulate companies into keeping prices down. This is an international market. If you passed a law that said RAM had to be sold for no more than 30% higher than last year’s price, the international memory companies would laugh and stop sending RAM to that country.

> Unfortunately, I think regulatory capture is so deep now in most places, one can hardly expect anyone to do anything about it.

I think you need to broaden your understanding of how the DRAM supply chain works and which countries are involved. You can’t mandate low prices for a global commodity. You can try, but the supply will just disappear for that country.

What’s the proposed regulation that would help here? Price controls? They don’t work, especially in a market like memory.

The AI "market" is not a free market. It needs regulation.

What evidenced-backed regulation would solve this problem?

Unfortunately, RAM is more like a taxi than an umbrella.

> Anyone who’s spent any time in New York City knows that when it begins to rain, two things happen immediately: It becomes easier to buy an umbrella and it becomes harder to hail a cab. As soon as the first few drops fall, people appear on the street selling cheap umbrellas, while a lucky few pedestrians occupy all the available cabs.

http://shirky.com/2001/01/

This is true in the same sense you don't need to own a pair of shoes.

Technically, sure, but there are jobs that require you to have a phone (at many different career points too), colleges that expect it, and more. And while there may be workarounds, they are often workarounds at someone else's expense, such as asking someone else to check the class schedule or work schedule.

So yes. You don't need to own a smart phone. And you don't need to own shoes. Both will get you (understandable) looks from general society. Both will limit what you can do. Both are somewhat understandable as having become a default, expected thing that people WILL have.

"A linen shirt … is, strictly speaking, not a necessary of life. The Greeks and Romans lived, I suppose, very comfortably though they had no linen. But in the present times, through the greater part of Europe, a creditable day-labourer would be ashamed to appear in public without a linen shirt, the want of which would be supposed to denote that disgraceful degree of poverty which, it is presumed, nobody can well fall into without extreme bad conduct."

--Adam Smith (yes, that Adam Smith) _Inquiry into the Nature And Causes of the Wealth of Nations_

I want to believe this is true, but I am increasingly encountering situations IRL where saying "I don't have a smartphone" would be a serious hindrance to doing whatever it is I'm doing.

Technology and semiconductors are part of the supply chain for all modern necessities.

I mean…

My banks in the US and abroad all require 2fa and some of them are app-based 2fa not just SMS. All traditional banks- no neobanks.

Some government services require apps or the experience is infinitely worse without a smartphone.

Do we need the newest/fastest/best? Probably not, but I don’t see any major mobile OS making software more efficient for older/ lesser hardware and if you try to hold onto your old phone eventually it will be vulnerable to attacks after support for it ends.

It’s gross.

It's 2026, the _WANTS_ are reserved for the ultra wealthy. The rest of us plebs should be happy we're getting 1500 calories everyday with a room to go back to in the evening, after increasing shareholder value everyday. Oh and don't forget to reduce your plastic usage to save the planet.

They are reserving future HW productions to meet their hypothetical usage as well. Which is why others (like Apple) can’t reserve it for their future products.

Yet the AI labs are speculating on usage, and spending money from investments without clear revenue path.

People will consume a lot of things offered below actual cost thanks to VC and cheap loans.

Doesn't mean people would legitimately use them enough to warrant such infrastracture demand, if they were priced according to actual costs.

So it's a distorted market.

Ask every Windows 11 or Google consumer that doesn't give a damn for AI and, yet, has been almost forced to use Copilot and Gemini…

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The cause is the whole thing, cost of shipping (container, gas, etc), cost of components (RAM, SSD, etc), cost of tariff, cost of lobbying and lawsuits, and overall inflation cost.

The world would be a better place without AI, OpenAI, Anthropic and all others. It only immerses the world into chaos, dystopia and increased inequality. So far nothing for the public good has come out of it.

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