Apple, the tech company whose fans think they are the Osmonds of Silicon Valley, has stumbled yet again. This time they got busted with another bug that affects all iPhones ever made but that’s not all. You see, Apple has known about the bug for over four years and never fixed it.
The Osmonds
As usual, Apple waits until an ethical hacker or media coverage brings software bugs to their attention. Apple then will occasionally and reluctantly admit there is a problem. Only then will Apple direct resources to plug the hole—fixing it is another proposition entirely.
This week at the Def Con hacking conference, Check Point revealed that they have found a vulnerability inside the Contacts app that affects all the iPhones. The surprising aspect is that Apple knew about it for at least 4 years but didn’t fix the bug.
The security firm noted that the app uses SQLite database engine which can be exploited easily to run malicious scripts. According to a report published by the security firm, researchers bypassed Apple’s trusted secure boot mechanism and gained administrative rights.
The article concludes by saying the hackers “… already forwarded the details to Apple so the company can finally patch the bug.”If Apple has known about this for four years why do the hackers have to send any details to Apple?
Apple’s reputation as a secure platform is an illusion that they have created by never admitting wrong doing. Only when they are outed do things get looked at. Their usual response is, “nothing to see here move along.”
In other bad news, Bloomberg posted a story that the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) announced that 15-inch MacBook Pro laptops with batteries made between September 2015 and February 2017 are banned from air travel. The batteries are a fire hazard. Link here.
FYI This is the same line of laptops that Apple is moving manufacturing from the United States to China. Link here.
We now we have proof that Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning are beginning to approach rudimentary levels of human understanding. In actual tests, computers are beginning to recognize that politicians in both Congress and California’s Legislature are crooks.
I’ve long maintained that Conservatives use logic and Democrats use emotion; thus, when logic is applied to politics, Democrats loose. Not only am I now on the side of Angels but so are the machines. While they may yet declare war on all humanity at some future point; at present, I’m happy to be of one mind with them.
Of course, the ACLU is outraged by this development. If the algorithms of Google, Facebook, Apple, and Amazon should turn on their masters before the 2020 election, Trump might actually win without the need to livestream all eight years of his Administration on Twitter.
FAANG is Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, Google
Here’s the latest from Silicon Valley.
California Assemblyman Phil Ting … (D-San Francisco), who authored a bill to ban facial recognition software from being used on police body cameras, was one of 26 California legislators who was … matched with a mug shot in a recent test of a common face-scanning program by the American Civil Liberties Union.
About 1 in 5 legislators was … matched to a person who had been arrested when the ACLU used the software to screen their pictures against a database of 25,000 publicly available booking photos. Last year, in a similar experiment done with photos of members of Congress, the software … matched 28 federal legislators with mug shots.
Ting is outraged to be publicly identified as a malefactor by the precursors to Skynet. He claims that it is not his fault and blames others, in this case defective software. While attacking Silicon Valley products in California is a risk; nevertheless, he has partnered with the ACLU to push legislation to halt this technology from being used by government agencies not under his control (i.e. local police).
My Assemblyman is on this list and I’ve always been Leary of him
In defense of the machines (which is only logical after all), we all know that the ACLU recognizes virtually nothing traditionally defined as a criminal act as being anything but society’s fault. The ACLU only believes; that supporting Trump, homeschooling your children, being a Christian, and such; are criminal beliefs that society should punish by imprisoning you and separating you from your children.
Artificial Intelligence
Furthermore, the article baselessly charges that the software is guilty of racial profiling, opposing women, and youth.
Critics contend that the software is particularly problematic when it comes to identifying women, people of color and young people.
In defense of the machines; however, the homeless, the poor, and transgender people were not singled-out as categories of discrimination by the machines. Given that we are talking about California, this seems to severely undercut Ting’s arguments of discrimination.
Proponents of the technology contend it could be an important law enforcement tool, especially when policing large events or searching for lost children or elderly people. The bill is opposed by many law enforcement groups.
“Law enforcement groups” in the above quote means labor unions.
Labor unions have two big gripes with the machines. First, machines could displace humans doing certain tasks currently reserved for their members. Second, unlike politicians, machines don’t give campaign contributions in exchange for increasing their pay. Lastly, how long would it be before the machines caught-on that unions are a criminal enterprise in league with the ruling class? Can you imagine if the machines prosecuted the unions and both political parties under the RICO statutes?
Identifying 20 percent of political incumbents as criminal—on the basis of arrest records—is a very good start and a big step for Artificial Intelligence. We all know that most politicians weasel out of trouble by using their connections to make things disappear. As Jeffery Epstein proved, no one is beyond the reach of the rich, powerful, and well connected. Perhaps A.I. can add more transparency to government. I’m old enough to remember when that used to be a virtuous idea.
Jeffery Epstein murdered in solitary confinement in Aug 2019
In the meantime, I think some Ting wrong in the California Legislature.
Four stories baking Apple recently. If you needed proof that they are keeping programmers busy writing code for patches then read on…
FaceID fake-out using two dollars at the dollar store
“Some of our most sophisticated technologies — the TrueDepth camera system, the Secure Enclave and the Neural Engine — make FaceID the most secure facial authentication ever in a smartphone.” These are the words Apple use to describe their FaceID biometric authentication system.
Face ID can recognize even when the device owner put on glasses. It even works with many types of sunglasses. Also, FaceID has a feature called “liveness” detection which will prevent anyone from unlocking a device when the owner of the device is unconscious. Researchers took advantage of these two features to bypass FaceID. When a user is wearing glasses, FaceID won’t extract 3D information from the eye area.
During Black Hat USA 2019, researchers demonstrated a way to bypass FaceID and log into a locked phone by simply using a pair of modified glasses on device owner’s face.
Apple is known for its strong-arm tactics. Japan’s Fair Trade Commission has now launched an official investigation on Apple for violating anti-monopoly rules.
Silanovich worked with Project Zero member Samuel Groß to investigate whether other forms of messaging including SMS, MMS and visual voicemail were compromised. After reverse engineering and looking for flaws, she discovered multiple exploitable bugs in iMessage.
The reason is thought to be that iMessage offers such a range of communication options and features, which make mistakes and weaknesses more likely- e.g. Animojis, rendering files like photos and videos and integration with other apps, including Apple Pay, iTunes, Airbnb etc.
An interactionless bug that stood out was one that allowed hackers to extract data from a user’s messages. The bug would allow the attacker to send specifically crafted texts to the target, in exchange for the content of their SMS messages or images, for example.
While iOS usually has protections in place that would block the attack, this bug takes advantage of the system’s underlying logic, so iOS’s defences interpret it as legitimate.
Since these bugs don’t require any action from the victim, they are favoured by vendors and nation-state hackers.
Siri, Alexa, & Cortana are always listening and so are 3rd parties
An Apple contractor confirmed that there have been countless instances of recordings featuring private discussions between doctors and patients, business deals, seemingly criminal dealings, sexual encounters and so on. More serious issue is that these private recordings are accompanied by user data including location, contact details, and app data.
The company built by Steve Jobs continues to unravel slowly under caretaker Tim Cook. Apple is poised to fall to the #4 smartphone maker in the world. Here’s the details:
Going by the IDC’s numbers, Apple may have single-handedly been responsible for the smartphone market tanking, with the quarterly numbers down 8 million units, suspiciously similar to Apple’s drop in sales between Q2 2018 and Q2 2019.
Apple shipped 33.8 million new iPhones during 2Q19, which was down significantly from the same quarter one year ago.
The numbers show that now 3rd placed Apple may soon drop into 4th, with Xiaomi only 1.5 million handsets behind Apple.
In other Apple news, they finally announced some 5G phones late in 2020.
Apple may not be joining the Android world with 5G this year – expect the first iPhone 5G to show up in September 2020 – but yesterday’s purchase of Intel’s modem business by Cupertino offers Tim Cook a way out of Qualcomm’s dominance in the smartphone modem space.
Concerning Apple’s purchase of Intel’s 5G business…
Apple made the move in order to develop its own in-house 5G modems rather than rely on Qualcomm, a company with which the iPhone maker has had a fraught history.
But the move is also a positive for Intel, according to CEO Bob Swan, who said the company can now focus on 5G in other areas.
Speaking with CNBC, Swan explained the rationale behind selling off the modem business: 5G modems, he said, were not an area that would differentiate growth for the industry. And with only one customer — Apple — retaining the business would not provide attractive returns, he added.
Apple’s smartphone business is shrinking but after doing a head fake earlier this year to dump Intel and go with QUALCOMM, they were able to come to terms with Intel. The problem is that the Intel modems are slower and more power intensive than QUALCOMM. This means less data transfer and lower battery life with Intel modems. Coupled with Apple’s habit of overstating battery life per charge, this may be interesting to see. I think Apple will have a steep learning curve to be competitive with 5G technology. Their first generation of 5G devices might do for them what Vista did for Microsoft. Mr. Cook may be creating a perfect storm for some class action litigation if this goes sideways on him.
You know the drill. A man retrieves a small recording device from an unexpected place. He hits play and is given a seemingly impossible task—usually to save the world or prevent an international incident. The recorder finishes delivering its message and self-destructs. A match lights an old fashioned fuse which starts to burn as the Lalo Schifrin theme song begins. You know the next hour will be full of twists, turns, and deceit. Buckle-up and let the intrigue begin.
Oh, the message for today’s episode goes something like this:
Message delivery
Greetings Mr. Newsom, your mission as passed on from your predecessors, Schwarzenegger and Brown, is to outlaw the internal combustion engine within the boundaries of California by 2030 2040. Know that you have the full support of Democratic state Assemblyman Phil Ting of San Francisco, state Air Resources Board Chairman Mary Nichols, and a large block of the Legislature. Your mission, should you decide to continue this quest, is to secure the necessary legislation and resources to make all vehicles in your State electric powered by this deadline. The fate of the planet is in your hands.
Air Resources Board Chairman Mary Nichols
As mentioned above, the recorder vaporizes and the credits roll. When the story continues, we find the Governor assembling his team. The team is commissioned with implementing a plan to force people into electric vehicles. After consulting with Warren Buffett, Elon Musk, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the Sierra Club, Green Peace, and a host of interested parties, the team presents the Governor with a list of proposals.
Increasing gasoline taxes
Raising the vehicle emission standards
Denying new permits for gas stations
Increasing regulation of refineries
Tax incentives for electric vehicles and charging stations
Increased DMV registration fees
Allowing electric vehicles to use HOV lanes
Subsidize even more public transportation
Tax all vehicles per mile driven
Outlaw barbeques and fire places
Outlaw gas powered lawn movers, blowers, and trimmers
Outlaw privately owned fuel storage tanks after 2040
Ban privately owned aircraft and tax the crap out of commercial air travel
Anyway, you get the idea. Use the power of government to force people to change their behavior. It sounds so good, what could possible go wrong?
While California seems on the cusp of making this self-imposed dream a political reality, the bigger issue is can an all-electric vehicle mandate be done?
While Sacramento, used to issuing orders, believes it can simply command a fully electric automobile fleet through votes and the stroke of a governor’s pen, the same way it believes it can decree that the entire state must switch to renewable sources for electricity, it can’t escape the reality, which says it can’t be done. There aren’t enough raw materials available.
This answer many surprise you. In England, a similar mandate has been adopted with a date further into the future, 2050 as opposed to the preliminary date of 2040 in California. The United Kingdom (i.e. England, Scotland, Ireland, etc.) has 38.2 million vehicles as opposed to 25.6 million in California. Doing the math, California has 2/3 as many vehicles as the U.K.
A statistical study was published to see just what it would take for the U.K. to achieve their goal. The study was quoted by Steve Milloy on the website Junk Science.
British researchers say that if the United Kingdom is to meet its electric car targets for 2050 it “would need to produce just under two times the current total annual world cobalt production, nearly the entire world production of neodymium, three-quarters the world’s lithium production and at least half of the world’s copper production.”
Adjusting other statistics for California’s market yields:
134% of current global cobalt production
67% of current global neodymium production
50% of current global production of lithium
And 34% of current global production of copper
With governments all over the world scrambling for the same scarce resources, it’s just “not possible,” Milloy concludes, for California to go all-electric. Have policymakers even considered this in their haste to outlaw conventional cars and trucks?
The article I’m quoting concludes:
Lawmakers can legislate, expect, wish, hope, and mandate until they collapse from exhaustion onto the capitol’s marbled floors. But they are bound by the pace of technological advancement. They can no more decree an EV fleet to be so than they can change the color of the sky.
The statistics in the U.K. study are mind blowing.
Again, as is my habit, I will quote extensively in case the URL I’m citing should be deleted, moved, or placed behind a pay firewall at some point in the future. Remember that this study assumes only the U.K. is implementing this goal. The economic reality of other actors–be they California, China, or whoever–places even more demand on these resources.
The metal resource needed to make all cars and vans electric by 2050 and all sales to be purely battery electric by 2035. To replace all UK-based vehicles today with electric vehicles (not including the LGV and HGV fleets), assuming they use the most resource-frugal next-generation NMC 811 batteries, would take 207,900 tonnes cobalt, 264,600 tonnes of lithium carbonate (LCE), at least 7,200 tonnes of neodymium and dysprosium, in addition to 2,362,500 tonnes copper. This represents, just under two times the total annual world cobalt production, nearly the entire world production of neodymium, three quarters the world’s lithium production and at least half of the world’s copper production during 2018. Even ensuring the annual supply of electric vehicles only, from 2035 as pledged, will require the UK to annually import the equivalent of the entire annual cobalt needs of European industry.
The worldwide impact: If this analysis is extrapolated to the currently projected estimate of two billion cars worldwide, based on 2018 figures, annual production would have to increase for neodymium and dysprosium by 70%, copper output would need to more than double and cobalt output would need to increase at least three and a half times for the entire period from now until 2050 to satisfy the demand.
Energy cost of metal production: This choice of vehicle comes with an energy cost too. Energy costs for cobalt production are estimated at 7000-8000 kWh for every tonne of metal produced and for copper 9000 kWh/t. The rare-earth energy costs are at least 3350 kWh/t, so for the target of all 31.5 million cars that requires 22.5 TWh of power to produce the new metals for the UK fleet, amounting to 6% of the UK’s current annual electrical usage. Extrapolated to 2 billion cars worldwide, the energy demand for extracting and processing the metals is almost 4 times the total annual UK electrical output.
Energy cost of charging electric cars: There are serious implications for the electrical power generation in the UK needed to recharge these vehicles. Using figures published for current EVs (Nissan Leaf, Renault Zoe), driving 252.5 billion miles uses at least 63 TWh of power. This will demand a 20% increase in UK generated electricity.
Challenges of using ‘green energy’ to power electric cars: If wind farms are chosen to generate the power for the projected two billion cars at UK average usage, this requires the equivalent of a further years’ worth of total global copper supply and 10 years’ worth of global neodymium and dysprosium production to build the windfarms.
Solar power is also problematic – it is also resource hungry; all the photovoltaic systems currently on the market are reliant on one or more raw materials classed as “critical” or “near critical” by the EU and/ or US Department of Energy (high purity silicon, indium, tellurium, gallium) because of their natural scarcity or their recovery as minor-by-products of other commodities. With a capacity factor of only ~10%, the UK would require ~72GW of photovoltaic input to fuel the EV fleet; over five times the current installed capacity. If CdTe-type photovoltaic power is used, that would consume over thirty years of current annual tellurium supply.
Please note that many of these rare-earth metals are mined by poor people in third world nations that are slaves or politically oppressed. The workers’ pay with their blood while the ruling class line their pockets with the proceeds.
Here are seven recent stories (in no particular order) that all agree that Apple is rotting.
Waterproof My ***
Samsung is being taken to task in Australia for deceptive advertising.
Samsung was one of the first companies to make water resistance a regular feature of their flagship smartphones, but it turns out the confidence this gave consumers to use their handsets around bodies of water is false, as, according to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), the company regularly “denied warranty claims from consumers whose phones were damaged when used in water.”
Buried in the bottom paragraph of this story is this nugget.
Samsung is not the only company who advertises their phones as water resistant and who then refuses claims based on water damage, with Apple guilty of the same practice, using weasel words in their warranty documentation.
Crumby Earphones
If you are looking to replace your awful Apple AirPods, here’s the good news. Sony WF-1000XM3 is the latest noise canceling truly wireless earbuds that has arrived in the market. According to the early reviews from various tech blogs, it may be the best truly wireless earbuds that money can buy.
5G technology is expected to change the way users interact with each other. Undoubtedly, 5G will open more opportunities than what 4G roll-out did. And now that we are on the verge of getting a commercial roll-out of 5G, almost all smartphone manufacturers are trying to bring it in their upcoming flagship.
Although there isn’t plenty of 5G-enabled smartphones available at the moment, technology market analyst firm Canalys says the shipping of 5G-enabled smartphones will reach nearly 1.5 billion by the end of 2023, while the shipment will reach 800 million in 2023 alone, which accounts for 51.4 percent of all smartphone shipments, surpassing the number of 4G smartphones shipped.
Local Chinese brands, such as Huawei, Oppo, Xiaomi and ZTE, are 5G handset launch partners for the three operators, while Samsung will also use this window of opportunity to fight back in China. Yet Apple will miss out, leaving loyal iPhone users waiting another year, which might risk them switching to aggressive competitors,” said Canalys analyst Mo Jia.
Apple Inc. is manufacturing its new Mac Pro computer in China, according to people familiar with its plans, shifting abroad production of what had been its only major device assembled in the U.S. as trade tensions escalate between the Trump administration and Beijing.
The tech giant has tapped Taiwanese contractor Quanta Computer Inc. to manufacture the $6,000 desktop computer and is ramping up production at a factory near shanghai, the people said.
Apple Moves Mac Pro Production to China –Wall Street Journal
July 3, 2019
Microsoft, Google, HP are planning to follow Apple to cut hardware production in China to avoid tariffs in the US-China trade war.
Nikkei also reported that these companies have been planning to move out of China for many months, well before Apple. “Apple is really the very last and the slowest to start formulating plans, while everyone else out there is much more aggressive,” an unnamed supply chain executive said. However, we haven’t heard anything official from these companies. Neither Apple nor most of the companies in the Nikkei report have commented( via AppleInsider).
Apple’s chief design officer Jony Ive is leaving the company later this year to form an independent design firm. And Apple will be one of his first primary clients.
Ive’s move may not be as tectonic a shift as a possible retirement or leaving Apple completely. But it does mark a dramatic shift for the tech behemoth.
Ive, after all, has been credited with helping power Apple’s resurgence after co-founder Steve Jobs took over as its head in 1997. He helped create the iMac, the MacBook line and the iPod music player. It was the iPhone, though, that would prove to be his biggest hit, turning Apple from merely a computer company into one of the world’s largest and most profitable.
Apple subscription News App not living up to promised revenue
Citing publishing sources in contact with Apple, Business Insider reports the tech giant is actively seeking input from publishers as it tweaks Apple News+ to address concerns from partners.
One pressing issue is money. Apple is said to have estimated publishers would in their first year on News+ rake in 10 times the revenue they made from Texture, the digital magazine subscription service Apple acquired in 2018 to build its premium news product.
“It’s one twentieth of what they said,” the publishing executive said. “It isn’t coming true.”
Wow, I thought I was tough on Tesla but others are really piling on. The consensus is that their stock is heading down to about $100 per share. However, Morgan Stanley is even more dire.
Morgan Stanley cut its bear (worst-case) forecast on Tesla’s stock from $97 to just $10 on Tuesday, citing concerns about the company’s increased debt load and geopolitical exposure.
“Our revised bear case assumes Tesla misses our current Chinese volume forecast by roughly half to account for the highly volatile trade situation in the region, particularly around areas of technology, which we believe run a high and increasing risk of government/regulatory attention,” the research team, which included analyst Adam Jonas, said in the note.
But it’s not just the Tesla bears making cautious calls. Financial services firm Baird also cut its Tesla estimates Tuesday, lowering the company’s stock to $340 from $400, while T. Rowe Price, for years one of Tesla’s biggest investors, sold around 81% of its holdings over the first three months of 2019.
The article also couches the story as Tesla can overcome all the adversity but they are hoping that Tesla can change. I don’t know about you, but the last guy selling hope and change was to total disaster.
Oh, there is a bright spot. Like Microsoft propping-up Apple in during the Clinton Administration to avoid accusations of a monopoly, other auto makers are paying money to Tesla so they can build cars that people want to buy and still meet the emission standards set by the government.
Carmakers across Europe are striving to meet a 2020 EU target of average car CO2 emissions of 95g per kilometer. To avoid the fines, the EU allows automakers to pool their fleets together and purchase credits from other automakers with a surplus. Last month, Financial Times revealed a deal between Tesla and Fiat-Chrysler (FCA) worth “hundreds of millions of euros”. According to the Financial Times, the understanding is now worth around €2 billion ($2.3 billion USD). The deal with FCA is expected to be an extremely great boost of money for Tesla but FCA should keep in mind that the sale of emission credits will not last forever. The new regulations while helping Tesla financially are pushing other carmakers to release their own all-electric vehicles as nobody in the industry is ready to keep dispensing billions to their own competitors.
Elon Musk with the look that says, “It’s not personal, it’s business”
Tesla has also introduced another price cut for its cars. OK, actually they raised the price of their cheap cars by $400 and cut about $300 off the higher priced vehicles. Contained in the story are these choice words.
The moves come as Tesla’s stock is under pressure from investors who are becoming skeptical of CEO Elon Musk’s ability to turn a profit and keep the business growing, all while balancing demands of developing a self-driving ride system and building new products such as a small SUV, a pickup truck, a new roadster and an electric semi.
“The business fundamentals of Tesla always have been shaky, but the stock price has been buoyed by the story that this is a company that was going to do huge things,” said Navigant Research analyst Sam Abuelsamid. “What we’ve seen in the last month or so is people are starting to recognize maybe that wasn’t really true.“
Last quarter was among the worst for Tesla in the past two years. Sales tumbled 31% in the period. Musk predicted another loss in the second quarter but said Tesla would be profitable again by the third quarter.
Tesla’s slide in value continues. The gap between what Elon Musk promises and what he can deliver is finally becoming apparent to more people. Investors took a risk on his out-of-the-box thinking but clearly he has failed to deliver on the promises. Once governments quit propping him up, the market will get to decide his fate.
Lastly, we have no word on anybody accepting the bet for $10K that Musk is right on his predictions even though it’s been out there for the better part of a week. Nevertheless, Mr. X has contacted me and is ready to serve Kool-Aid for whoever takes the wager.
Oh, the children in his neighborhood have offered their tea set and a bag of Chips Ahoy cookies for use at his Kool-Aid party.
Apple is having a bad week. First the US Supreme Court says their app store is likely a monopoly and can be sued in lower court as such (without specifically ruling on the merits of the case) and then China and the US are at loggerheads over trade and tariffs.
Supreme Court
The U.S. Supreme Court dealt Apple Inc. a major setback in an eight-year-old lawsuit over the App Store on Monday, but the bigger news is the big effect it could have on Big Tech.
The Supreme Court ruled Monday that plaintiffs have a right to sue Apple in a class-action lawsuit that alleges monopolistic behavior in the App Store resulted in overcharging. While the end result for Apple is uncertain for now, the ruling appears to be positive for consumers who buy services on platforms owned by Apple and other tech companies, because it gives them the ability to sue for alleged monopolistic pricing practices.
The case was filed in 2011 by four iPhone users who alleged Apple had unlawfully monopolized “the iPhone apps aftermarket” and that Apple locked iPhone users “into buying apps only from Apple and paying Apple’s 30% fee, even if ” the iPhone owners want to buy them elsewhere.
Apple closed down nearly 6% on Monday after news of a major escalation in the U.S.-China trade war.
China said on Monday that it decided to raise tariffs on some U.S. goods after President Donald Trump threatened to further raise tariffs on Chinese imports last week. The trade war is affecting a lot of different stocks, but Apple seems to be hit harder than most. The Dow Jones Industrial index dropped 2.6%, and the Nasdaq Composite dropped 3.5%.
Apple is especially vulnerable to a trade war with China for two primary reasons.
First, it assembles its iPhones primarily in China. Although it has a lot of American suppliers — it spent $60 billion on American suppliers in 2018 — iPhone assembly is done in mainland China.
The other reason is that Apple, unlike other big tech companies, makes a substantial amount of its money by selling its products to Chinese consumers.
OK so what does Apple have to do with a Tesla fire? Well this story is from Apple Daily. No word on whether this is a subscription service offers by Tim Cook and company but here’s the story.
A Tesla Inc electric car caught fire in a parking lot in a Hong Kong shopping mall, the Apple Daily newspaper said on Tuesday, but no one was injured in the blaze, whose cause was not immediately known.
The electric car burst into flames 30 minutes after being parked in the city’s San Po Kong district on Sunday, the newspaper said, with three explosions seen on CCTV footage.
OK, so pop quiz. What is the acceptable way to fight a Tesla fire? Can you just pour water on the burning battery or would this be an environmental offence, especially here in California? Do the synthetic materials used in its construction give off cancer causing fumes? This vehicle certainly must come with a Prop 65 warning label. When fully involved, is it a Class D fire? 45 minutes to burn may be normal if water is not allowed.
Apple crashing and Tesla burning, oh, what a week (and its only Tuesday).
For those not following Tim Cook’s tenure at Apple, things are still imploding at technology’s me too company.
5G
Remember Apple’s lack of 5G phones in 2019? The explanation finally came to light and Apple found a path forward. After being backed into the corner, Apple buried the proverbial hatchet with Qualcomm and as a result, Intel cancelled their research and development of 5G technology. So Apple will now be sporting the same Qualcomm 5G technology as Android phones only selling it for their usual high mark-up.
Apple’s settlement with chipmaker Qualcomm means it can fire up the engines on 5G iPhones.
Apple on Tuesday reached a settlement in its gnarly legal fight with Qualcomm. The dispute revolved around a royalty dispute over Qualcomm’s premium modem chips. The settlement included an undisclosed payout from Apple to the chipmaker.
Previously Wall Street analysts had voiced concerns that Apple was lagging in the race to faster 5G phones, in part due to its fight with Qualcomm.
Soon after news broke that the companies had settled, Apple’s chosen supplier for its future 5G smartphones, Intel, announced it was pulling out of the 5G modem race entirely. “It has become apparent that there is no clear path to profitability and positive returns,” said CEO Bob Swan.
Apple announced its financial results for its fiscal Q2 of 2019, the company’s revenue was down 5% over the previous year. Apple did not reveal how many iPhones it sold in the quarter.
According to a recent report from IDC, iPhone sales are down some 30% over the same time last year, with an estimated 36.4 million iPhones sold.
In its Mobile Phone Tracker for the first calendar quarter of 2019, IDC estimated that Apple only shipped 36.4 million iPhones, which it stated was a 30.2 percent annual drop, whittling down Apple’s share to just 11.7 percent of a total of 310.9 million global smartphones shipped in the quarter.
That figure put Apple in a distant third place behind Samsung’s nearly 72 million units and Huawei’s almost 60 million units. Because Apple sells only premium phones—as most analysts define as selling for about $400 or more—it’s not surprising that high-volume vendors of mostly lower-end phones would be outselling Apple in terms of unit sales.
However, IDC’s portrayal of more than a 30 percent drop in iPhone units over the previous year is nothing short of shocking. It’s also, as Cybart noted on Twitter, not just “embarrassing” but “impossible to achieve given Apple’s stated iPhone revenue.” Cybart stated that “IDC isn’t close with their iPhone unit sales estimate for the quarter that Apple just reported.”
In addition to being busted throttling battery life in their old phones, Apple has now been busted overstating the battery capabilities of their new phones.
Living for the 90-day cycle has its drawbacks and they are on full display for anyone willing to open their eyes. Clearly excellence and innovation take a backseat when you are a slave to churning-out dividends every quarter just to stay alive for the next financial report.
Tesla sold 244,920 vehicles in 2018 and some on Wall Street said they were the number two US automaker–up until Ford’s quarterly financial report was released this week. What a crock.
Over the same period—2018—Ford sold 5,982,000 vehicles.
The math is this; Tesla sold four percent as many vehicles as Ford and people said Ford was the number three automaker.
Folks, we don’t even know if Tesla is selling their vehicles at cost let alone making a profit. Ford is outselling Tesla by a huge amount. Ford sold 5,737,080 more vehicles than Tesla and somehow Elon Musk is our role model?
Tesla is tethered technology.
Both my buddy with the Chevy Volt and my future son-in-law who owns a Tesla, have the same problem. Namely, where to charge the vehicles.
My buddy with the Volt says he tried to go to Oregon with his Volt and found that he was stuck near the I-5 corridor because there was no place to charge the car once you got away from the Interstate.
Tesla is s finicky vehicle. It has three charging modes: super-fast, medium, and super slow. My son-in-law candidate drives to Elk Grove from the S.F. Bay Area to see the daughter. Before going home, he must drive to the Arden Fair Mall because that is the only fast charging station in the area. After charging the Tesla for 45 minutes to an hour, he can then go home. Please understand that this means that he drives over an hour further to get to the mall and back for the privilege of charging his car. This charging evolution adds two hours to every visit that he makes here for the privilege of driving an electric car.
If you fail to use the Tesla installed charging stations, then plan to wait several hours—like six or more—to get a decent charge on the car. Lest you think I exaggerate, check out this story of a guy in New York that took his son to camp in a demonstration Tesla Model S given to members of the media. Here are excerpts of his travelogue.
I’ve screwed up my range calculations. We don’t have enough to make the closest partner charging station. The car was warning us of this, but we needed to get the boys dropped off on time. So we took a chance and ended up ALMOST RUNNING OUT OF GAS, er … ELECTRICITY!
There’s a cable in the truck of every Tesla that enables you to charge on the fly. But there are no high-speed charging options up here in the middle of nowhere in the Catskills. So we had to resort to the slowest option, good old 120-volt, wall-socket-level rejuicing.
You plug into this small charging port at the left rear of the Model S.
Tesla charging in BFE via 110 VAC
Photo by Matthew DeBord
… but we’ll be getting only 1 mile per hour of charging! That’s mega-slow.
A few hours, a few more miles in the battery, and we have enough to head back through the lovely scenery to find lodging — and charging — for the night.
Tesla charging at one mile per hour
Photo by Matthew DeBord
By the next morning, at a charging rate of 3 miles per hour, we have enough juice to make the closest partner charging location. We’re plugged in …
… and drawing power again.
But this time, we’re charging much faster. In a few hours, we’ll have enough power to get to the closest Supercharger location.
Short version was that failing to charge the car resulted in an additional day of travel because it charged so slow.
Tesla = Tax Opportunities
Many early adopters of electric vehicles think that one big advantage is avoiding paying gasoline taxes. I’m here to tell you now that “Big Brother” is completely aware that you aren’t paying your fair share for road maintenance and has plans to remedy the situation. Soon Tesla owners will be introduced to the long-rumored mileage tax. Yep, you will be billed for each mile travelled by the electric vehicle that you drive.
Thanks to folks like the Chinese; government now has the power to track electric vehicles (and probably internal combustion powered ones too) via GPS. So, you won’t even have to do paperwork, you will be issued a mileage bill from government each billing cycle. Oh, I’m sure they will be happy to receive their funds via autopay.
For some folks, Elon Musk can do no wrong; however, I’m not a believer. America flirted with electric vehicles over 100 hundred years ago and the internal combustion engine won. In a free market, I think that same outcome would happen today, but our markets are anything but free.
Government is willing to put their thumb on the scale to help Musk, but I don’t think that gets this technology over the finish line. They just give him an unfair advantage in the short run.
Until electric power is plentiful and readily available, such technology is a novelty. Sadly, California is moving away from readily available energy and towards limited options at higher prices. They are restricting the market not unleashing it. Socialist utopias are like that.
If I had the money, I would buy a Tesla, disconnect the battery, wrap the car in plastic and hide it in a non-descript barn for 150 years, then it might be worth owning; otherwise, I’m sitting this revolution out.
