By John Moltz
December 1, 2023 2:00 PM PT
This Week in Apple: Money doesn’t solve everything
Three situations that money seemingly has failed to fix: the Apple Card, Elon Musk and Apple’s modem project.
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They say that breaking up is hard to do, but when you’ve lost $3 billion because of the relationship, you tend to be motivated to find a way to make it happen, even if it means dividing up your streaming service plans.
According to The Wall Street Journal, it’s splitsville for the richest company in the world and the company that looks out for the richest people in the world.
“Apple Pulls Plug on Goldman Credit-Card Partnership”
The tech giant recently sent a proposal to Goldman to exit from the contract in the next roughly 12-to-15 months, according to people briefed on the matter.
Apple is currently shopping for new partners for the Apple Card—American Express and Synchrony Financial are said to be two potential companies—but when Goldman Sachs has been so vocal about what a bad deal it was for them, one wonders who’d be lining up for some of that.
A whining personality
What would I do if I had billions of dollars? Well, I don’t know exactly. I’d like to find out. But it certainly would not be this.
“Elon Musk responds to Apple and others who paused advertising on X: ‘Go fu*k yourself’”
It’s a real mystery why companies don’t want to do business with him when he’s so consistently charming and pleasant.
Disney CEO Bob Iger was in the crowd at DealBook, prompting Musk to follow up his comments by waving at Iger and cheerfully saying: “Hi, Bob!”
Sources say a heavy sigh was heard to come from the grave of Dale Carnegie. Did Musk amass $200+ billion just by stomping his feet and demanding it? It’s starting to seem that way.
Musk said that this advertising boycott would ultimately result in the death of X. “What this advertising boycott is going to do is kill X,” Musk said.
Promise?
“The whole world will know that those advertisers killed the company, and we will document it in great detail.”
Musk’s threat-based business model may seem like an odd tack to take against companies the size of Disney and Apple but when your only tool is being a tool, that’s what you do.
Speaking during his own interview at DealBook today, Bob Iger doubled down on Disney’s decision to halt advertising on X.
Well, that worked. A+ businessing. No notes.
Apple should really consider upgrading its statement that it has “paused” advertising on Musk’s failing rantorium. “Paused” would be fine, as long as they added “until the heat death of the universe”. Because this situation is not going to get better anytime soon.
Modems, mo problems?
Is Apple set to throw in the chips on making modems? Maybe, maybe not.
“Sketchy report claims Apple 5G modem efforts have been abandoned”
According to 9to5Mac, the source’s track record isn’t great and, given the relationship between the two companies, we should take a story that seems tailor-made for Qualcomm’s marketing department with a grain of salt.
It’s definitely a project that Apple has struggled with, but it’s also struggled with its car project, Titan, which it keeps reorganizing, though it appears to still be plugging away. Sometimes when you’re trying to figure something out, it takes a decade or two before you get it.
Just me?
[John Moltz is a Six Colors contributor. You can find him on Mastodon at Mastodon.social/@moltz and he sells items with references you might get on Cotton Bureau.]