Why Apple Is Heading Into a Pivotal Moment

**Joe Weisenthal** (0:02)
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio, News. Hello and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots Podcast. I'm Joe Weisenthal.

**Tracy Alloway** (0:22)
And I'm Tracy Alloway.

**Joe Weisenthal** (0:24)
Tracy, do you know what iPhone you have and what iOS you're currently on?

**Tracy Alloway** (0:29)
No, I have no idea. I will say, I think it might be like an iPhone 11
It is definitely on its last legs because in the past two days, I can only charge it when it's standing up and plugged in like that. And so I've been creating elaborate like Jerry Riggs systems at my desk to actually get this thing to charge. So I got to get a new one.

**Joe Weisenthal** (0:50)
So you know what, you don't have to get a new one. If you go to like any one of these like little random, like sort of Apple fix-it shops, they can like take care of that in 10 minutes.

**Tracy Alloway** (0:59)
Wait, I have the right to repair my iPhone. Is that true?

**Joe Weisenthal** (1:01)
They put a little vacuum cleaner in there. That's what the issue always is.

**Tracy Alloway** (1:05)
I don't think that's it because I tried it already. I think the battery is like legitimately dying. I've had it for like eight years.

**Joe Weisenthal** (1:10)
Well, I've had my, okay, so I think I have no idea what iPhone I'm on. I think I've had it for about four years. I have no like, I don't know anything. But there was a point in my life in which I could have answered.

**Tracy Alloway** (1:23)
You just said you don't know anything.

**Joe Weisenthal** (1:25)
I don't know anything about my phone. But there was a point where I could have answered, right?
Yeah, sure. If at some point in the early 2010s, for sure, if someone would say like, what iPhone do you have? He's like, oh, I got the iPhone 4 I got the iPhone 5, whatever it is. And that was just part of like, I would say pop culture, like knowing like what generation is. And it's been so long, you know, those Apple presentations, everybody would like tune in, like it's a World Cup game or something like that. Like it's been so long since like, these were like top of mind things for people.

**Tracy Alloway** (2:00)
So I have never been an Apple watcher as evidenced by the state of my phone. But I think part of the issue is also like, the products got pretty good, right? To the point where you don't need to replace them literally every two years for the latest upgrade. Or maybe it's just Apple can't think of the enticing upgrades that people need to see in order to buy.

**Joe Weisenthal** (2:20)
Something that I had forgotten about until someone, I think, pointed out recently, there was a period in which it was very common to see people with very cracked iPhone screens, right? Yes. That was just like, oh, and they were just like really looked, but they were still usable. When was the last time you saw a badly cracked iPhone screen? Yeah, they never, and you can drop them now, and they're very likely to survive.

**Tracy Alloway** (2:41)
Do you remember I dropped this phone from the stands at Jackson Hole Rodeo?

**Joe Weisenthal** (2:47)
Oh yeah. You were there, I think. Did it fall underneath the...

**Tracy Alloway** (2:49)
It fell all the way down.

**Joe Weisenthal** (2:50)
And it was fine, right? And it was fine. Yeah.

**Tracy Alloway** (2:52)
It was probably like 15 feet or something.

**Joe Weisenthal** (2:54)
They work really well. Anyway, I think setting aside the fact that, okay, Apple is still a huge successful company, but we should talk about Apple because it is actually one of these things that it's at the intersection of so much that we're interested in right now. It's at the intersection of the future of manufacturing China. It's at the intersection of memory costs and the degree to which that's bleeding into consumer prices. It's the primary way so many people interact with computers and the Internet. And yet it's not a major player in like building AI models. So like how will AI change our relationship to just like either like computing or there. It sits like at the center of so many like important topics right now.
So I sort of want to know like what's going on with Apple.

**Tracy Alloway** (3:45)
The thing I'm really interested in are the recent price increases.

**Joe Weisenthal** (3:49)
Yes.

**Tracy Alloway** (3:49)
Because you think like the story in consumer tech for decades now has been deflation.