Linked List: May 19, 2025

Monday, 19 May 2025

Juli Clover, MacRumors:

With Apple blocking Fortnite from returning to the U.S. App Store, Epic Games told the court that Apple was violating the injunction and asked that Apple be forced to approve the app. The judge overseeing the case responded to Epic’s request today, and she is sounding more and more fed up with Apple’s continued defiance and Epic’s grousing.

“More and more fed up” is perhaps euphemistic, given Gonzalez Rogers’s tone today.

John Siracusa: ‘Apple Turnover’ 

John Siracusa, in a piece that, in a bit of rhetorical deftness, only mentions Tim Cook by name once:

What should be motivating Apple to make improvements — the desire to make great products — seems absent. What should not be motivating Apple — the desire for power, control, and profits — seems omnipresent.

And I don’t mean that in a small way; I mean that in a big way. Every new thing we learn about Apple’s internal deliberations surrounding these decisions only lends more weight to the conclusion that Apple has lost its north star. Or, rather, it has replaced it with a new, dark star. And time and again, we’ve learned that these decisions go all the way to the top.

The best leaders can change their minds in response to new information. The best leaders can be persuaded. But we’ve had decades of strife, lawsuits, and regulations, and Apple has stubbornly dug in its heels even further at every turn. It seems clear that there’s only one way to get a different result.

Covers a lot in a relatively short essay. I do not agree with Siracusa on his conclusion, but I’ve sat on linking to it, because — along with a few other recents posts and goings-on — it’s given me much to think about, and has helped me clarify my own thoughts, which I need to put in a piece of their own. But if you haven’t read Siracusa’s yet, you should.

Chad the Bird on ‘Star Wars’ Typography 

The reader who sent me this video said, “I’ve never seen a more Star Wars + Gruber combo on Instagram” and — right down to the profanity — I have to agree.

WSJ: ‘Apple Considers Raising iPhone Prices, Without Blaming Tariffs’ 

Rolfe Winkler and Yang Jie, reporting last week for The Wall Street Journal (main link is a gift link, but also here’s a News+ link):

Apple is weighing price increases for its fall iPhone lineup, a step it is seeking to couple with new features and design changes, according to people familiar with the matter. The company is determined to avoid any scenario in which it appears to attribute price increases to U.S. tariffs on goods from China, where most Apple devices are assembled, the people said.

The U.S. and China agreed Monday to suspend most of the tariffs they had imposed on each other in a tit-for-tat trade war. But a 20% tariff that President Trump imposed early in his second term on Chinese goods, citing what he said was Beijing’s role in the fentanyl trade, remains in place and covers smartphones. [...]

For Apple’s most profitable, high-end phones, such as the Pro and Pro Max models, Chinese factories will continue to handle the bulk of production, people familiar with Apple’s supply chain said. While Indian factories are capable of producing Pro models, India’s infrastructure and technical capabilities aren’t yet sufficient to support mass production at the scale China can currently deliver, they said.

Even if Trump weren’t a vindictive thin-skinned angry kook, I’m sure that if this year’s iPhones have higher prices because of Trump’s tariffs, Apple would not attribute the price increases to the tariffs. At least publicly. But Trump is a vindictive thin-skinned angry kook, irritated even that Apple is shifting some iPhone production to India (which does assemble iPhones already, and has the capability of producing more) instead of the United States (which only has the capability of assembling iPhones, at any sort of scale, in the fever dreams of Trump’s addled mind). So of course no one at Apple is going to blame any price increases — if they do indeed go up — on the tariffs.

But come on. If iPhone prices go up in September, everyone who isn’t drunk on MAGA juice is going to blame it on the tariffs. Like, even if Apple had been planning for years to raise prices for the iPhone 17 lineup — if price increases were already baked-in for this year’s models since before Trump was re-elected — now that the tariffs are here, everyone would attribute the price hikes to the tariffs. Especially after the summer of tariff-driven inflation I expect we’re about to go through.

Trump Tells Walmart to ‘Eat the Tariffs’ 

The president of the United States, on his blog:

Walmart should STOP trying to blame Tariffs as the reason for raising prices throughout the chain. Walmart made BILLIONS OF DOLLARS last year, far more than expected. Between Walmart and China they should, as is said, “EAT THE TARIFFS,” and not charge valued customers ANYTHING. I’ll be watching, and so will your customers!!!

F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.” So I guess I’m wrong that Trump is a know-nothing ding-dong slipping rapidly into dementia, and in fact possesses a first-rate intelligence. Because it’s Trump — soon to win a Nobel Prize in economics for this keen insight — who has been braying to the world, non-stop, for years, that tariffs are “a tax on a foreign country”.

So given that China pays for any tariffs the US imposes on Chinese-made goods, I, for one, don’t have the intellect to understand how there are any tariffs for Walmart to eat. I’m sure Trump is right and Walmart — a company whose “always low prices” brand results in net profit margins between 2–3% — will somehow “eat the tariffs” without losing money. I don’t know why the WSJ Editorial Board is so upset about this — the Republican Party has always been in favor of government price controls.