Weekly Reading – 26th October 2024

Business

Tim Cook on Why Apple’s Huge Bets Will Pay Off. “Not first, but best”. As long as this man is the CEO of Apple, the company will be fine. When he retires, though, Apple shareholders should really reconsider their holding.

CFPB Orders Apple and Goldman Sachs to Pay Over $89 Million for Apple Card Failures. I really think people don’t appreciate enough how heavily regulated the consumer banking in the US is. Not because one company is resource-rich means that it will be able to navigate through all the compliance pitfalls. Not even Apple or Goldman Sachs.

How Intel Got Left Behind in the A.I. Chip Boom. “Projects were created, pursued for years and then abruptly shut down, either because Intel leadership lost patience or the technology fell short. Investments in newer chip designs invariably took a back seat to protecting and expanding the company’s money-spinning mainstay — generations of chips based on Intel’s PC-era blueprint, called the x86 architecture.”

PayPal Knows Your Pants Size—and Will Share It With Marketers. I hope that the urge to drive ads revenue won’t come back and bite PayPal. Consumers who are conscious about privacy may not use the checkout button. It’s not like PayPal is the only player in town. There is Apple Pay that is known for being secure. Losing consumers will lead to PayPal becoming less appealing to merchants. Once merchants leave, the vicious cycle will be decimating.

What Went So Wrong With Boeing? The consequences of focusing on short-term profitability with a culture built on financial engineering, instead of technical engineering. I fear that Boeing will be another GE, forever a shell of what it once was.

Other Stuff I Find Interesting

How San Francisco Learned to Love Self-Driving Cars. Encouraging signs for self-driving cars, but I think we are still far away from seeing them on every street.

Can Remote Workers Reverse Brain Drain? The City of Tulsa, Oklahoma spent $33 million on its plan to lure remote workers there. Researchers estimated that Tulsa received a boost of around $20 million in revenue. While it is not profitable, you need to start somewhere and those who accepted the offer can help lure others to come as well.

Iceberg A-68: The story of how a mega-berg transformed the ocean.

Minimum Viable Products versus Maximum Possible Products. Two seemingly confliction philosophies in product development. It’s hard to say which one works best. It varies from one company/market to another.

Historical data shows that it took at least two years for mortgage rates to bottom from the peak of interest rates