Much as I dislike the man, he or the smarter brains behind him are right. Though probably for the wrong reasons. But the bottom line is stop giving US IP away for executive share options based on “shareholder value”.
In my opinion, since Jobs died Apple has just been milking its cash cows. Cook’s attempt to curry favour at the inauguration was a pathetic betrayal of Jobs’ renegade nature.
Time to shake the,“Designed in Cupertino” and built in a Chinese/Indian sweatshop model is overdue.
And all design innovation left when Jony Ive did, though he’d been resting on his laurels for a while.
Unless new factories have been built since 2018, all iPhone production is in China and Taiwan.
Topical news for Jony Ive
On Wednesday, Sam Altman, OpenAI’s chief executive, said the company was paying $6.5 billion to buy IO, a one-year-old start-up created by Jony Ive, a former top Apple executive who designed the iPhone. The all-stock deal, which effectively unites Silicon Valley royalty, is intended to usher in what the two men call “a new family of products” for the age of artificial general intelligence, or A.G.I., which is shorthand for a future technology that achieves human-level intelligence.
Mr. Altman and Mr. Ive are effectively looking beyond an era of smartphones, which have been people’s signature personal device since the iPhone debuted in 2007. If the two men succeed — and it is a very big if — they could spur what is known as “ambient computing.” Rather than typing and taking photographs on smartphones, future devices like pendants or glasses that use A.I. could process the world in real time, fielding questions and analyzing images and sounds in seamless ways.
John, both you (and Trump) appear to miss the obvious point that moving production of iPhones (or other high-tech gadgets) to the USA is almost certainly not economically viable unless the manufacturing was fully automated, and then it would not generate the jobs that the Orange Buffoon thinks he is going to create with his tariffs.
Setting up a plant to make iPhones would be a hugely expensive operation, take years to complete, and the resulting products would be too expensive - everyone would switch to cheaper Chinese-made Androids instead - especially since by the time the plant was up and running the next President would be in office and would have repealed the tariffs. Nobody is going to pay $3,500 for an iPhone (see article linked below).
The idea that basic manufacturing jobs can be magically brought back to Western economies, with their much higher wage costs and other overheads, is a complete fallacy. That ship sailed long ago - these days about 75% of the GDP of developed nations comes from services not manufacturing.
That’s not to say that boosting some local manufacturing is impossible in the USA or Europe - of course it can be done - but it needs to be in product areas where labour costs are not such a big part of the price. You can’t just decree that henceforth all cars, phones and plastic toys will be made domestically.
I do understand that Chris, and my answer is…. tough. So we don’t have such sophisticated time wasters anymore, what’s the problem? We don’t have everyone on a bus, train or in a restaurant glued to bullshit on a small screen. Bad parents using phones to keep kids amused. Kids that start school and only then encounter a book for the first time, which they try to expand the pictures in or swipe left.
My whole (successful) career was based on IT. I love technology and play with it all the time, But I know bullshit when I see it. I think “smart” phones being double the price, or more 
, than they are today would be a good thing. The proliferation of bullshit to drive share prices is a bad thing for our World.
Except that your point of view is that of an older person who grew up with books (as did I). 
I believe a certain King Canute tried to command the tide to turn back - it didn’t work - nor will this policy.
Making iPhones more expensive in the short term won’t stop people using smart devices - as I mentioned above they will just seek cheaper alternatives.
I don’t disagree with you about the detrimental effect of people spending many hours a day staring at screens, or about “bullshit to drive share prices” - but a) we live in a consumer oriented capitalist world and b) tariffs are not going to have the desired effect.
What might help is education to encourage people to lead more balanced and healthier lives, but as we know the powers-that-be across the Pond are in the process of gutting education and health in order to create even more ignorant MAGA sheep who will obey orders given by the Great Leader.
Life is not all electronics…
Can I gently mention Lire et Faire Lire… which was done in our local primary school.
Kids come next door to the library and each chooses whatever book/publication … then they are helped to discover its contents… both the pictures and the written words.
It is magical when a child who only wanted to look at pictures, gradually becomes enthralled with the “words”.
Each child has one-to-one aid/assistance/encouragement…
I was last involved in this as a volunteer pre-Covid and (hurrah) there’s talk of that successful 40 mins per week making a come-back. 
I don’t think anything has been addictive as social media though. I never got a dopamine hit from reading a Famous Five Social media manipulates viewers in realtime… and tailored just for them. Scary.
This thread is living proof of that. 
Has Sir tried crystal meth?
This is a really interesting discussion.
I was a child who always had his head in a book. The day I was allowed to join the adult section of the library was a great day. I still read for probably 4 hours a day, often on a Kindle.
But the written word - and the devices which “deliver” it: books, newspapers, magazines - is completely different from wireless ( ), tv, smartphones and tablets. With the written word, you have to make an effort to engage. With the screen-based devices, the pace is set for you and little is left to the imagination. (I suppose wireless is somewhere between the two, but the fact it sets the pace makes it closer to screen-based devices.)
That’s what gives you a useful perspective.
Another difference is the tech which screen-based dsevices use to keep the user engaged. These are much more sophisticated than the book equivalent, which I suppose is the cliff-hanger chapter ending.
And on that bombshell …
