Linked List: April 5, 2025

Saturday, 5 April 2025

Millions Attend ‘Hands Off’ Protests Across U.S. – and Europe – to Oppose Trump’s Agenda ★

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 support. We saw large scale protests like today’s starting in 2017 too, and in this 2.0 administration, they’re only going to get bigger. Today’s protests were coast-to-coast, in cities large and small. Hundreds of thousands — correction, millions — of people. Huge crowd in Philadelphia. Over 100,000 in Boston. But there were never any protests at all against the Biden administration. Trump’s support has been just wide enough to win, twice, but it’s so thin. His first inauguration was so conspicuously sparsely attended they held the second one indoors. Support for democracy runs deep.

The WSJ Estimates the Effect of Trump’s Tariffs on the iPhone ★

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 phone was introduced, says Wayne Lam, research analyst at TechInsights, which breaks down major products. Throw in assembly and testing and Apple’s cost rises to around $580. Even when you account for Apple’s advertising budget and all the included services — iMessage, iCloud, etc. — there’s still a healthy profit margin.

Now factor in the newly announced tariff for goods from China, which currently totals 54%. The cost rises to around $850. That profit margin would shrink dramatically if Apple didn’t up the price. And you don’t become a trillion-dollar gadget company by charging for things at cost.

Also worth a look is today’s front page of the WSJ print edition. At least they picked a flattering photo of Trump.

The Pricing Stability of the iMac ★

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 powerful iMac M4 starts at … $1299.

Granted, with inflation, those prices would be a little different. In researching the details, I came across this great piece from PerfectRec charting the iMac’s price history over the years, including adjusting for inflation. Impressively, while the iMac’s base price has dipped as low as $1099 in all that time, it’s never gone over $1299.

What a great example. And bringing inflation into the mix is a key factor I neglected to make yesterday. Moore’s Law makes computers very strange manufactured goods. A Honda Civic LX cost about $15,000 in 1998, but now costs about $25,000. BMW 3-series sedans went from around $30,000 to $45,000. But the iMac still starts at $1,299.

Pricing stability is a way that Apple keeps these two forces — Moore’s Law and inflation — in balance.

Perhaps the E.U. Took Mercy on Apple and Meta (and Investors) This Week ★

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 President Donald Trump.

According to people familiar with the decisions, the iPhone maker is expected to be fined and ordered to revise its App Store rules, following an investigation into whether they prevent app developers from sending consumers to offers outside its platform. Regulators will also close another investigation into Apple, which was focused on the company’s design of its web browser choice screen without any further sanctions.

Meta will also be fined and ordered to change its “pay or consent” model which forces users to either consent to data tracking or pay a subscription fee for an ad-free experience of its products.

The FT is usually the go-to source for leaked news from the European Commission. But “next week” came and went with no announcements made. Maybe the FT just had a bad source, or maybe there was some sort of unforeseen delay? Or maybe the EC looked at the chaos unleashed by Trump this week and figured these fines could wait another week. Or maybe they’re just recalculating the fines post-trade-war.

Tim Sweeney’s Praise for Microsoft ★

Epic CEO Tim Sweeney, yesterday:

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.

Microsoft’s 50th Birthday Was Interrupted, Twice, by Employees Protesting Against Israel ★

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 Israel’s war against Hamas. A second employee interrupted the event later on, while CEO Satya Nadella, co-founder Bill Gates, and former CEO Steve Ballmer were discussing 50 years of Microsoft.

The only opinionated public takes I’ve seen on these two protestors are from political extremes: a small number of people cheering them on, and another small number of people angrily decrying them as terrorist sympathizers. I suspect most people, though, have a take closer to my own, but are unwilling to espouse it lest they risk the ire of the two aforementioned political extremes. I’ll try.

There’s a time and a place for everything, and Microsoft’s own 50th anniversary celebration was not the time or place for two insufferable self-involved showboats to make the event about them. Because that’s what this was. It was about them, personally. Not about Gaza or Israel.

The place for righteous protests is in public, in the streets — exactly as they are happening across the United States today.

Of course Microsoft conducts business in Israel and with the Israeli government. They’re Microsoft — the entire point of the company (and thus the core point of the 50th anniversary celebration) is that their software is ubiquitous. Ranked by GDP, Israeli’s economy is 29th in the world. If Microsoft employees really want to make the case that the company should sever all ties to Israel, go ahead, but performance stunts at public celebrations are not the way. Why do they even work for Microsoft if they’re not happy to celebrate the company’s own 50th anniversary? Why did Microsoft hire people who seemingly despise the very company they work for?

I don’t know if you’ve heard but there’s a lot of horrible shit going on around the world right now. Should Microsoft sever all ties to Republican-led states that have made women’s reproductive healthcare illegal? (A woman in Georgia was just arrested after suffering a miscarriage.) Should Microsoft sever all ties to the U.S. federal government, which is now led by a mad tyrant who, in plain sight, attempted to overthrow an election he lost, and now claims (shocking no one) to be considering running for a third term that even a child could understand to be plainly unconstitutional? How much Microsoft software does ICE use? Or DOGE?

Where do such protests — all in the name of just causes — stop?

In the midst of all this madness and chaos — much of it already horrific, more of it suggestive of foreboding horrors to come — we need more than ever to savor, to appreciate, what’s still good about the world. Microsoft is a great American company. What a remarkable gift of good luck, good health, brilliant strategy, successful execution, steady leadership, and the right circumstances (e.g. Bill Gates’s precocious age — 19! — at the company’s founding) that the company has had only three CEOs in its half-century history and all three were available to join each other on stage to celebrate this anniversary, and the company’s still-bright future.

What a shitty thing to do it was to try to spoil this.