Locator: 50952AAPL.
For Siri AI to "work," one must have a mobile device with an M-chip -- even as far back as "M1" will work. Apple is currently M5 in its newest products and by this time next year should be marketing M6.
It's all about iCloud --
Apple is now being more realistic about Apple Intelligence. It’s turning to its longtime search and cloud partner, Alphabet, to provide the models. There are small ones that live in an iPhone’s memory and larger ones in the company’s Private Cloud Compute, servers which obscure user’s AI interactions, even from Apple.
Both of those options optimize privacy over all else, a message that always resonates with Apple customers.
While Wall Street wants everything resolved now, Apple still has time to get AI right. Despite the first troubled launch of Apple Intelligence, iPhone sales rose 23% in the first half of fiscal 2026.
AI isn’t yet driving device sales yet. Someday it will, and Apple will be ready.
Only about half of the iPhone installed base is able to use Apple Intelligence, according to Melius Research analyst Ben Reitzes. That means more than 500 million people will eventually need a new phone. Knowing Apple’s sticky customer base, they’ll have just one option.
It's not just AI. It's security and safety. Even if the EU doesn't agree, everyone seems to agree, this is where Apple excels.
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Social Security
Maybe it might be time to end COLAs for social security.
But until we do ...
I talked about his offline with a reader some weeks ago ... this is a bigger deal than folks might realize. This is going to affect military raises and pensions also.
- The largest Social Security cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) in the last 30 years was 8.7%, which took effect in January 2023. This historic raise was driven by the severe, pandemic-era inflation that peaked in mid-2022.
- The top three largest COLAs over the last three decades reflect recent surges in inflation compared to the historically lower adjustments of the early 2000s and 2010s:
- 2023: 8.7%
- 2022: 5.9%
- 2009: 5.8% (Note: This 2009 increase was calculated just before multiple years of 0% adjustments occurred)
The best the active duty military ever did in the past 30 years was 5.2% in 2024. The second best was 2023, 4.6%.
But look at this: larger percentage raises occurred in the early 1980s (peaking at 14.3% in 1982) at which time I was a senior officer on active duty.
In many respects, many social security recipients need the COLAs the least of all socio-economic groups.
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A Musical Interlude
