2026-05-02 09:06:31
Regarding my earlier post about the cleverness of Tim Cook’s solution to Apple’s dilemma regarding how to apply for, and accept, a potential tariff refund check without drawing the ire of Donald “Tariff Is My Favorite Word” Trump, at least one reader asked why Tim Cook committing to spending the refund check on “U.S. innovation and advanced manufacturing” doesn’t mean that Apple would — if they get a tariff refund — be spending more than they had previously committed to. Cook even said yesterday, “These would be new investments and would be in addition to our prior commitments in the U.S.” But there’s never been any precise accounting for these commitments. Apple committed to spend “more than $500 billion”. “More than $500 billion” plus their tariff refund check would still be “more than $500 billion”.
Here’s what I wrote when Apple first made this current commitment in February 2025, just weeks after Trump’s second term started:
Apple announced a similar plan four years ago — $430 billion and 20,000 jobs. In the announcement of that 2021 plan, Apple said, “Over the past three years, Apple’s contributions in the US have significantly outpaced the company’s original five-year goal of $350 billion set in 2018.”
So I don’t think this announcement is bullshit, at all. But I also don’t think what Apple has announced today is much, if any, different from what they’d be doing if Kamala Harris had gotten 1–2 percent more of the vote in a handful of states in November. The difference is that everyone is looking for quid pro quo with President Transactional back in office.
Apple first announced a plan in 2018, during Trump 1.0, to spend $350 billion over the next five years. Then in 2021 — midway through those five years, at the start of the Biden administration — they said spending was above that previously promised pace but they were announcing a new five-year plan to spend $430 billion. That plan would have run through 2026 (this year). But, again, right after Trump was re-inaugurated last year, before the period covered by the 2021 five-year plan was up, they announced the current $500 billion plan. The only difference is that this latest spending commitment is a four-year plan, not a five-year one (probably because they know Trump doesn’t give one shit what they do after he leaves office).
This isn’t a shell game or a scam. I believe Apple really has spent what they’ve said they were going to spend, and really plans to spend what they’ve committed to spend in the coming three years. If anything, as they said in 2021, their actual spending has probably exceeded what they committed to, during each of these periods, and will continue to. It’s very Tim Cook-ian and very Apple-like to underpromise and overdeliver. So I’d say it’s a shoo-in that when Apple announced the current plan to spend “more than $500 billion” in the U.S. from 2026–2030, they actually planned to hit that target with room to spare. So saying that they’ll throw the proceeds from any potential tariff refund check into the same fund doesn’t actually change a damn thing about their plans.
And if the pattern holds, they’ll announce a new four- or five-year plan for $600 billion (give or take) after the 2028 election, regardless who wins. There’s never any sort of accounting where they show that they spent exactly, say, $447 billion between 2021 and 2026, or $389 billion from 2018 to 2023. And there’s never going to be any exact accounting like that for what they’ll spend in this current “more than $500 billion” plan covering 2026 to 2030. There’s also no accounting for how much Apple spent last year on Trump’s invalid tariffs. Presumably, if they eventually get a refund check from the Treasury, we will know the exact number. But given that whatever they spent on Trump’s tariffs had only a negligible effect on their earnings last year, we can presume that the money they’re committed to spending on U.S. manufacturing and job creation from 2026 to 2030 remains about $500 billion, and it’s really all just projects that they would have spent the exact same amount of money on if Kamala Harris were now in the White House — just like how they committed to spending $430 billion when Biden was president.
The whole thing is just presented in such a way to make it look like they’re doing what Donald Trump would like them to do, when in fact it’s just exactly what Apple wants to do anyway. That’s what makes it genius. It’s win-win-win. It’s what Apple wanted to do anyway, it pleases Trump, and it’s actually good for the American economy.
2026-05-02 05:00:36
Remember the appalling but utterly-unsurprising story two months ago where a team of investigative reporters in Sweden uncovered a company in Kenya contracted by Meta to review video content captured by Meta’s “smart” glasses? They spoke to some of the workers, who told tales of reviewing footage of Meta glasses users getting undressed, having sex, and taking dumps. This is a rather seedy job, and a big surprise to most of the people wearing Meta’s AI glasses, who are under the impression that “AI” does not involve human beings in Kenya seeing what their glasses capture.
Well, Meta has fixed the problem. Chris Vallance reports for BBC News:
Meta is under pressure to explain why it cancelled a major contract with a company it was using to train AI, shortly after some of its Kenya-based workers alleged they had to view graphic content captured by Meta smart glasses.
In February, workers at the company, Sama, told two Swedish newspapers they had witnessed glasses users going to the toilet, and having sex.
Less than two months later, Meta ended its contract with Sama, which Sama said would result in 1,108 workers being made redundant.
Meta says it’s because Sama did not meet its standards, a criticism Sama rejects. A Kenyan workers’ organisation alleges Meta’s decision was caused by the staff speaking out.
There’s no mystery here. The “standard” that Sama didn’t meet was keeping their mouths shut about the dignity-shredding nature of the entire operation. Like that fact that it even existed, let alone the gross privacy-invasive footage they witnessed. The deal wasn’t just for Sama’s workers to do the work, it was to do the work and keep it on the down-low. Go to Meta’s AI glasses website and try to find the part where they warn you that footage is subject to review by teams of contractors in third-world countries, Mechanical Turk-style. If you look hard enough, you’ll find oblique allusion to “review may be automated or manual (human)” in their legal small print, but their large-scale human review of video footage and recordings isn’t part of the brand or marketing image for their glasses.
2026-05-02 04:30:47
One more from Jason Snell, from his analysis of Apple’s quarterly results:
During a complicated question from J.P. Morgan analyst Samik Chatterjee about product margins, Parekh unusually half-answered the question and then stopped and “turned it over to Tim” so that Cook could read an obviously prepared statement about tariffs, which included this bit:
In terms of applying for a refund of tariffs paid, we’re following the established processes, and we plan to reinvest any amount we receive back into U.S. innovation and advanced manufacturing. These would be new investments and would be in addition to our prior commitments in the U.S.
This is the sort of politics Cook will continue to be plying from the boardroom. Sure, Apple’s going to try to get its tariff money back. But it’s going to do so using the perfectly normal and established process, and if it does get billions back from the U.S. government, it double-promises to reinvest that money in the United States, above and beyond its already stated commitments. Trump Administration, take note.
The kind of logic puzzles I enjoy most are ones where, when the puzzle is posed, there’s no obvious solution. But once you see the solution, it seems profoundly obvious. Jason Kottke last week linked to 1D-Chess, a game from Rowan Monk that’s like that. Once you find the solution you can’t unsee it. (Don’t give up and peek at the posted answer!)
The question of tariff refunds is like that. Two months ago the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that Trump’s obviously illegal tariffs last year, were, in fact, illegal. They left as an open question, however, whether importers who paid those tariffs should get refunds from the federal government. Apple, obviously, is one of those importers. The logic puzzle is this: if it turns out that Apple is eligible for a refund, how do they collect it without infuriating the petulant Donald Trump? Cook just spelled out the answer. Take the money but commit it all to their longstanding plan to spend $500 billion over the next few years to U.S. manufacturing efforts, a program they’ve maintained through the Trump 1, Biden, and now Trump 2 administrations, but which Cook has made dog-and-pony shows out of during both Trump terms to, as Trump himself describes it, “kiss his ass”.
That’s so obvious, now that Cook spelled it out, that it doesn’t even seem like a puzzle.
Update: “More on Apple’s Logically Elegant Tariff Refund Puzzle Solution”.
2026-05-01 10:58:44
MG Siegler returns to the show to discuss Apple’s announcement that Tim Cook is stepping aside (into the role of executive chairman) and John Ternus will become CEO.
Sponsored by:
2026-05-01 10:36:36
Uwa Ede-Osifo, reporting for The Guardian:
On any given day, Los Angeles’s Hollywood Boulevard teems with tourists and street performers clustered near the area’s many landmarks. But in recent months, the strip has been set abuzz for a new reason.
Throngs of mostly adolescent boys and young men have been rushing the Church of Scientology’s international headquarters on the famed street.
The so-called “speed runs” appear to be bids for social media valor — clips of the raids have amassed millions of views on TikTok — as much as they are an outgrowth of public intrigue surrounding the church, which has previously drawn accusations of being a cult. Some users have developed blueprints for the building based on information gathered from videos of the raids.
I’m not condoning it, of course, but this video of one guy doing it sure was fun to watch.
Update: Now the kids are speed running Palantir too.
2026-05-01 08:41:20
Apple Newsroom:
“Today Apple is proud to report our best March quarter ever, with revenue of $111.2 billion and double-digit growth across every geographic segment,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “iPhone achieved a March quarter revenue record, fueled by such extraordinary demand for the iPhone 17 lineup. During the quarter, Services achieved yet another all-time record, and we were excited to introduce remarkable new products to our strongest lineup ever. That included the addition of the iPhone 17e and the M4-powered iPad Air, along with the launch of MacBook Neo, which is captivating customers all around the world.”
Record results for the January–March quarter for revenue, profit, and iPhone revenue in particular. And iPhones were constrained by supply. Tim Cook led the analyst conference call because he’s still CEO, but John Ternus joined for the first time. Worth a listen to just their opening remarks.
Over at Six Colors, Jason Snell has the usual assortment of graphs charting Apple’s numbers. Spoiler: up, up, up. And he has his usual transcript of the analyst call. From that transcript, this bit from Ternus’s prepared statement made me smile:
I want to echo Tim’s sentiment about our shareholders, especially those who have been with us for many years. Thank you so much for your confidence in our company. As you know, one of the hallmarks of Tim’s tenure has been a deep thoughtfulness, deliberateness, and discipline when it comes to the financial decision-making of the company, and I want you to know that is something Kevan and I intend to continue when I transition into the role in September.
Translation: “In case you were worried, we intend to keep making money hand over fist when I become CEO. I’m not coming into the job to spend the company’s money like a drunken sailor.”
