Apple and Some Withering Fruit: Is the Orchard on Fire?
January 14, 2025
A dinobaby-crafted post. I confess. I used smart software to create the heart wrenching scene of a farmer facing a tough 2025.
Apple is a technology giant, a star in the universe of bytes. At the starter’s gun for 2025, Apple may have some work to do. For example, I read “Apple’s China Troubles Mount as Foreign Phone Sales Sink for 4th Month.” (For now, this is a trust outfit story, but a few months down the road the information may originate from the “real” news powerhouse Gannet. Imagine that.) The “trusted” outfit Reuters stated:
Apple, the dominant foreign smartphone maker in China, faces a slowing economy and competition from domestic rivals, such as Huawei…. Apple briefly fell out of China’s top five smartphone vendors in the second quarter of 2024 before recovering in the third quarter. The U.S. company’s smartphone sales in China still slipped 0.3% during the third quarter from a year earlier, while Huawei’s sales rose 42%, according to research firm IDC.
I think this means that Apple is losing share in what may have been a very juicy market. Can it get this fertile revenue field producing in-demand Fuji Apples to market? With a new US administration coming down the information highway, it is possible that the iPhone’s pop up fruit stand could be blown off the side of the main road.
An apple farmer grasps the problem fruit blight poses. Thanks, You.com you produced okay fruit blight when ChatGPT told me that an orchard with fruit blight was against is guidelines. Helpful, right?
Another issue Apple faces in a different orchard regards privacy. “Apple to Pay $95 Million to Settle Siri Privacy Lawsuit” reports:
Apple agreed to pay $95 million in cash to settle a proposed class action lawsuit claiming that its voice-activated Siri assistant violated users’ privacy…. Mobile device owners complained that Apple routinely recorded their private conversations after they activated Siri unintentionally, and disclosed these conversations to third parties such as advertisers.
Yeah, what about those privacy protections? What about those endless “Log in to your Facetime” when our devices don’t use Facetime. Hey, that is just Apple being so darned concerned about privacy. Will Apple pay or will it appeal? I won’t trouble you with my answer. Legal eagles love these fertile fields.
I don’t want to overlook the Apple AI. Yahoo recycled a story from Digital Intelligence called “The Good and Bad of Apple Intelligence after Using It on My iPhone for Months.” The Yahoo version of the story said:
I was excited to check out more Apple Intelligence features when I got the iOS 18.2 update on my iPhone 16 Pro. But aside from what I’ve already mentioned, the rest isn’t as exciting. I already hate AI art in general, so I wasn’t too thrilled about Image Playground. However, since it’s a new feature, I had to try it at least once. I tried to get Apple Intelligence to generate an AI image of me, in various scenarios, to perhaps share on social media. But every result I got did not look good to me, and I felt it had no actual resemblance to my image. It kept giving me odd-looking teeth in my smiles, hair that looked nothing like what I had, and other imperfections. I wasn’t expecting a perfect picture, but I was hoping I would get something that would be decent enough to share online — dozens of tries, and I wasn’t happy with any of them. I suppose my appearance doesn’t work with Apple’s AI art style? Whatever the reason is, my experience with it hasn’t been positive.
Yep, bad teeth. Perhaps the person has eaten too many apples?
Looking at these three allegedly accurate news stories what do I hypothesize about Apple in 2025:
- Apple will become increasingly desperate to generate revenue. Let’s face it the multi-thousand dollar Vision Pro headset and virtual Apple TV may fill the Chinese iPhone sales hole.
- Apple simply does what it wants to do with regard to privacy. From automatic iPhone reboots to smarmy talk about accidentally sucking down user data, the company cannot be trusted in 2025 in my opinion.
- Apple’s innovation is stalled. One of my colleagues told me Apple rolled out two dozen “new” products in 2025. I must confess that I cannot name one of them. The fruitarian seemed to be able to get my attention with “one more thing.” Today’s Apple has some discoloration.
Net net: The orchard needs a more skilled agrarian, fertilizer, and some luck with the business climate. Failing that, another bad crop may be ahead.
Stephen E Arnold, January 14, 2025
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