Cinemix

[Cinemix @CinemixVFX]

@maverickecom Workflow

[Cinemix @CinemixVFX]

@kim_2k04 @grok which ai is used here

[Mark Gurman @markgurman]

Wow. This looks legit.

[Facts Chaser 🌎 🤦🏻‍♂️ @Factschaser]

Elon Musk took deposits for a Tesla Roadster then ghosted buyers. Meanwhile BYD’s U9 electric roadster 👇 can rocket from 0-60 in 2 sec, shimmy, slide, jump, drive on 3 wheels and looks like this because designer Wolfgang Egger crafted Lamborghinis

[Cinemix @CinemixVFX]

@NVIDIAGeForce #GeForceGreats !!

[WilliamOsman @WilliamOsman]

EMERGENCY!
PLEASE RETWEET TO HELP MY BOY MARK ROBER SMASH

[dbrand @dbrand]

Appreciate the follow, but we're not settling this via DM.

[Rusty 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 @ImSmilingRn]

This gotta be the worst iphone dock ive ever seen bro 😭😭😭

[JerryRigEverything @ZacksJerryRig]

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone except @Casetify!

[Cartesian Caramel @Cartesian_C]

Here's a little tutorial/breakdown of the mimic effect: #b3d #geometrynodes

[Cartesian Caramel @Cartesian_C]

Car Wrap Testing #b3d #geometrynodes

[NikTek @NikTek]

After Rockstar Games baited everyone into thinking we were getting a GTA 6 Trailer, but instead we have a new Halloween T-shirt and another mask for GTA Online

[Jake Lucky🔜 GAMESCOM @JakeSucky]

French YouTuber Squeezie organized an event where 22 different streamers are racing eachother in F4 cars…

The event has nearly 40,000 people in attendance and over 1 million watching on Twitch… wtf

[Rockstar Games @RockstarGames]

Happy Moon Festival!

Play GTA Online anytime this week to get the Red Happy Moon Tee and join the festivities: https://t.co/s0i54l6HoW

[Max Weinbach @mweinbach]

Apple is probably rasing the iPhone 15 Pro price

(Render from @ianzelbo)

Here are 5 reasons that they should and it makes sense:

1. TSMC's 3nm node is just more expensive

TSMC's new 3nm node is simply more expensive. According to SiliconExpert, a single wafer from the node is about $20,000, for reference the 4nm node that A16 Bionic is on cost around $15,000 per wafer. According to some of my calculations, Apple should be able to fit about 550-600 on each wafer, but not all of these chips are usable. It's reported the yield is about 55%, so only around 330 of the 600 will work. This is again just reported and my estimation, but before anything else that goes into making the A17 SoC, it should cost around 1/3 more per chip compared to A16 bionic to manufacture.

Even if the base model iPhone 15s aren't getting the A17 Bionic, they are still getting the A16 Bionic and that still cost more to manufacture, it's estimated (though it seems high and unlikely) to cost 2.4x that of A15 Bionic.

2. Titanium is more expensive

It's pretty easy to just assume titanium is a more expensive material than stainless steel, and it is. From my research it's around 3x the price, with stainless steel 316 being about $1.78 per lb in the US while titanium is between $3-5 per lb for an alloy. On top of that, since Titanium is a physically harder material working with it requires more expensive machinery.

(Foxconn is the one that does the tooling and material collection for the body, so it's whatever quote they get for materials in China or India or Vietnamm at the factories, so assume less than US but still around 3x the price)

3. Spending power of US dollar

$1,000 now is not the same as it was in 2017 when Apple started selling phones for $999 with the iPhone X. It takes $1,238.04 to get you the same amount of goods and services, this is due to both inflation, measured by Consumer Price Index. Every year Apple doesn't increase the price, they are effectivly lowering it.

There is supposed to be wage inflation to match the inflation of the US dollar, but due to many factors this generally doesn't happen.

Margins getting better YoY on iPhones does let Apple eat some of this inflation based loss in value, but there is a point at which prices need to be increased to catch up. This is that year.

4. Shipping and freighting costs are going up

If you've been following the news, UPS worker strike payed off (Yay!) and now the minimum wage UPS offers to all part and full time workers went up. This doesn't all just come out of the UPS margin, but there will be price increases. If you didn't know, UPS is the distributor Apple mainly uses for iPhone delivery.

On top of that, even with freighting cost going down, it is still near 2x what it was in 2019. It's more expensive to get product from China to the US, from manufacturer to US ports. Then it's more expensive to get from US ports to warehouses because of UPS wage increases.

The lack of ports and smaller iPhone boxes did help with this price increase in shipping, and was likely one of the reasons for it, but with inflation and newer material cost, it's hard for Apple to eat the margin.

5. People aren't buying as many phones
It's as simple as that, people just aren't upgrading as often. Apple is obligated as a public company to do what is in the best interest of shareholders and increase profits YoY. This might sound like some big capitalistic conspiracy, but it is the nature of the US markets. Love it or hate it, it is what it is and they have to do what they have to do.

For the sake of this post, let's say Apple is targeting $40B in iPhone sales per quarter. This is going to be about 40 million iPhones per quarter, averaging $1000 per unit (this is just an estimate for this post.)

If less people buy iPhones, let's say 35 million iPhones get sold per quarter, that means Apple needs to increase prices to still hit over $40B per quarter to show not only growth but that they're adjusting to the changing market. Part of this is their focus on services as a source of monitization of current customers, other parts are new product categories or higher end SKUs.

This is just scratching the surface of how Wall Street looks at this type of stuff, and dumbs it down quite a bit. Trust me, it's complex.

Conclusion:
Yeah, iPhone price increases are likely. Not only are they likely, it's in the best interest of the company to do it. This is only discussing the Pro models, but it's likely happening across the board.

As much as the tech community will hate it, it absolutely makes sense. I think Apple needs to do it as well. We'll see what happens in September when Apple releases it, but get your wallets ready.

Sources:
https://t.co/EEK50HZTKy
https://t.co/BcSuGpbV5t
https://t.co/fqGIvwBpX7
https://t.co/woku0uU2J3

[Robert Irwin @RobertIrwin]

Dad and me feeding Murray... same place, same croc - two photos 15 years apart ❤️🐊

[Chas🥀 @ChasRathburn]

@Casey You should be able to sign into your Apple ID. When it looks like it’s erroring out after entering your Apple ID password, you add the two factor number at the end of your password.

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

Still so grateful 🥹