On the record about
4 people · 17 quotes · 26 Aug 2011 to 28 Aug 2025
2 of 4 lanes rest on fewer than 5 quotes and are marked thin. Offsets are days from the middle first-quote date, 26 Nov 2019 — a date, and nothing else. It is not a claim about who reached a view first.
Gurley recounts learning Jobs personally decided which icons appear on the iPhone home screen.
“Because we've got some great companies, Zillow, OpenTable, and I love to talk to him about getting something on there. And he just starts laughing.”
Gurley notes Apple grew from $2 billion to $343 billion market cap under Jobs, exceeding Microsoft and Intel combined.
“started at $2,000,000,000 when in market cap when he came in. Today, they're three forty three and bigger than Microsoft and Intel combined.”
Baker recounts how Sunu Kalra's simple iPod vs Walkman comparison gave him conviction to hold Apple long-term.
“And as soon as I heard that, it's like, wow. It really doesn't matter. Apple went on to be seven x, 10 x, 15 x from there.”
Baker argues used iPhone resale value is critically important to Apple's business model and pricing power.
“One is, I think the price to used iPhones is critically important to Apple's business model. Why is that? Used iPhones retain their value much better than used Android phones.”
Baker says used iPhone resale value enables Apple to charge consumers less effectively than Android despite higher sticker prices.
“Used iPhones retain their value much better than used Android phones. When you trade in your phone, you capture that.”
Baker argues used iPhone resale value enables Apple to charge premium prices while maintaining lower effective consumer cost.
“When you trade in your phone, you capture that. That lets the used iPhones retain their value better, supports a dramatic price premium for Apple.”
Baker explains Apple's effective price is $600 versus Android's $850 due to trade-in value differences.
“That comparable Android phone is being traded in for probably a $150, which means you're paying $850.”
Baker provides specific numbers showing Apple's effective price is $600 versus Android's $850 after trade-ins.
“So Apple can charge the consumer more than its competitors, but actually have a lower effective price to the consumer.”
Gerstner argues memory and context matter more than raw intelligence for AI assistants.
“Or would you like to have an assistant that's just above average intelligence, knows everything about you, and they can use the Internet?”
Gerstner estimates Apple needs 75 gigs of DRAM on phones to run 7B on-device models.
“I think the question that Apple's probably struggling with, Bill, is in order to do that, even a 7B model, you probably have to have, you know, 75 gigs of DRAM on your phone, right?”
Gerstner says only 5% of Apple users can access Apple intelligence, requiring device upgrades.
“only 5% of Apple users today can access Apple intelligence. So they're going to have to upgrade these devices in order to play.”
Gerstner suspects OpenAI's integration with Apple is deeper than publicly disclosed, creating unequal competition.
“I suspect that the integration going on with OpenAI is deeper than what we heard about yesterday. Right? So I don't know that this is going to be everybody playing equal.”
Patel explains that Apple's rushed model has empty experts not receiving tokens due to flawed sparse MOE routing.
“Basically in between every layer, the router can route to whatever expert it wants to, And it learns which expert to route to. And and each expert learns its own independent things”
Patel describes the Bumpgate incident where NVIDIA laptop GPUs had defective solder balls.
“There's a generation of NVIDIA GPUs for laptops. Right? And and chips have solder balls on the bottom. Right?”
Patel explains Bumpgate issue where thermal expansion differences caused GPU solder ball failures in Apple laptops.
“And what ended up happening is because of that different rate of expansion, the solder balls connecting the chip and the board would crack.”
Gerstner is asked about Apple evaluating Perplexity and other LLM providers for potential partnerships.
“I haven't heard your thoughts on the revelation that people inside Apple were kicking the tires at Perplexity and some of the other LLM providers and AI companies.”
Gerstner suggests Apple should acquire AI capabilities given their $2 trillion market cap and cash position.
“What's your opinion on the build it versus buy it debate around Apple? I feel like for $2,025,000,000,000, they should just buy it, just given how much cash they have”