Posts Tagged ‘Macintosh’

Has Microsoft Finally Gotten The MicroSlop Message?

Saturday, March 21st, 2026

When last we checked, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella was busy trying to shove Copilot, their AI tool, into every crevice of every Microsoft product. Finally, enough users seem to have complained loudly enough to get them to rethink the strategy.

Microsoft is vowing to focus on quality with future Windows 11 releases, which includes better performance and reeling in the company’s Copilot footprint over the OS.

“Quality” and “performance” go together with Windows like vanilla ice cream and used motor oil.

On Friday, Microsoft President for Windows and Devices, Pavan Davuluri, announced the “commitment to quality” in both a blog post and an email to users.

Davuluri previously graduated from the Indian Institute of Technology in Madras. Try to contain your shock.

The plan calls for bolstering the “performance, reliability and well-crafted experiences” over the OS for this year.

That sort of suggests that “performance, reliability and well-crafted experiences” were not priorities for Windows in previous years, doesn’t it?

“These areas have meaningful impact on how you experience Windows: how fast it starts and responds, how stable it is under real workloads, and how consistent and thoughtful the experience feels,” Davuluri wrote.

PC users will be happy to know that one goal is reducing Windows 11’s resource usage to free up more capacity.

This would be great news if anyone trusted them to do that. Countless times in the past, Microsoft has pledged to reduce resource usage in Windows, but the bloat always returns.

Another priority is “less noise, less distraction and more control across the OS.”

Surprisingly, the blog post makes little mention of AI. Instead, Davuluri merely says the company wants “to be thoughtful about how and where we bring AI into Windows.”

“​​You will see us be more intentional about how and where Copilot integrates across Windows, focusing on experiences that are genuinely useful and well‑crafted. As part of this, we are reducing unnecessary Copilot entry points, starting with apps like Snipping Tool, Photos, Widgets and Notepad,” he said. Users can expect the change to roll out this month and in the next for Windows 11 preview releases.

Finally, the backslash against MicroSlop has gotten so loud that it’s even penetrated Redmond’s C-Ring. This is indeed progress, given that earlier this month Microsoft was literally banning users from its Discord for using the term. So give them credit for at least realizing that they have a problem.

Davuluri made the announcement months after he faced backlash for tweeting that “Windows is evolving into an agentic OS,” which caused some users to retort the company was obsessing about AI over basic Windows 11 performance. A January Windows 11 release that prevented PCs from booting up or going to sleep sparked more complaints about the OS’s stability.

There’s that vaunted Microsoft quality again.

Last month, Davuluri indicated he was taking the criticism seriously. Microsoft is also facing increased competition from Apple, which released its most affordable MacBook so far, the Neo, which has been a hit among consumers and reviewers.

Yeah, let’s talk about the state of Windows-based PCs and the competition. This was supposed to be a big year for PCs, but then reality hit.

There was supposed to be a massive tailwind for the PC market this year. Windows 10 reached end-of-life in late 2025, meaning that somewhere around 1 billion PCs worldwide stopped receiving security updates. This is less of an issue in the consumer PC market, but it’s a big deal in the business PC market.

PC OEMs like HP were set up for success in 2026, but the AI boom has complicated the situation. Enormous demand for DRAM and NAND chips from the AI infrastructure build-out, coupled with memory chip manufacturers shifting production to server products, has left the PC market with scraps. Memory chip prices have surged, pushing up the bill of materials and forcing price increases.

Gartner expects PC prices to surge by 17% this year, prompting consumers and businesses to hold onto their current PCs for longer. Budget PCs as a category could essentially disappear, leaving a large swath of consumers in a bind. Gartner expects PC shipments to tumble by 10.4% in 2026.

In one of life’s little ironies, the same AI bubble that Microsoft was trying to shove down user’s throats is what’s making buying a new PC less affordable and crushing sales. But it’s not stopping Apple.

HP is an obvious loser in this scenario, but there’s a surprising winner as well: Apple….

Apple is also exposed to rising memory chip prices across its entire device business. However, the company is seizing an opportunity to bring Windows PC users into its ecosystem.

Apple announced the MacBook Neo last week. The 13-inch entry-level MacBook starts at $599, a price that PC OEMs like HP will have trouble hitting as memory prices spiral higher. The Neo is powered by the A18 Pro chip, the same SoC used in the iPhone 16 Pro family. Higher-end MacBooks use Apple’s M-series chips, but the underlying technology is essentially the same.

Apple has equipped the Neo with 8GB of unified RAM, shared between the CPU and GPU, as well as a 256GB solid-state drive. These are really the bare minimums for a usable PC, but it’s enough for a solid entry-level experience. Early reviews have been positive, although full third-party reviews haven’t yet arrived ahead of launch.

Apple is playing the long game here. If there was ever a time to launch a budget MacBook, it’s right now. With memory prices driving up the cost of Windows PCs, a $599 MacBook should be appealing to budget-conscious consumers. Apple also offers the Neo to the education market for a discounted price of $499.

If Apple can grow its Mac install base and steal away market share from Windows-based PCs, the company will be setting up its Mac business for stronger growth down the road. Once the memory situation normalizes and the macroeconomic environment improves, Apple will have a larger base of Mac users eager to upgrade when the time comes.

This is probably correct. $599 is getting down around the price range for what used to be called netbooks, though that market segment seems to have largely died, at least among Windows users. (There still seems to be a market there for Linux users.)

Remember: Apple is the company that saw other companies dumping dump-trucks full of cash into AI build-outs and went “Nah, bro, I’m good.”

Google will spend approximately $90 billion on AI infrastructure this year. Meta has committed $65 billion. Microsoft, Amazon, and Alphabet are collectively spending over $300 billion. Apple, meanwhile, is spending just $12.7 billion on capital expenditure for the entire fiscal year.

As a hardware manufacturer, Apple can just wait for the AI wars to shake out and partner with the winner (if any).

And here’s a mildly amusing video on the whole situation.

Honestly, I sort of forgot Chromebooks were a thing. And at 1.86% of the global desktop market, it looks like consumers have as well.

I’m pretty sure Microsoft users wouldn’t object to Copilot if it was something optional you could turn off, and if the granularity of control allowed users to keep it entirely out of products they don’t want it in. But no, letting users decide isn’t the Microsoft Way, and they had to try shoving it into everything to justify the huge sums of money they were throwing into AI.

So far, it seems to be a lose/lose proposition.

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Posted in Technology, video | 9 Comments »

Apple To Replace Own Crappy AI With Google’s Crappy AI

Wednesday, November 12th, 2025

Naturally, right after I post about how crappy Google’s AI is, Apple decides that it’s going to replace it’s own crappy AI with Google’s theoretically less crappy version.

The smarter, more capable version of Siri that Apple is developing will be powered by Google Gemini, reports Bloomberg. Apple will pay Google approximately $1 billion per year for a 1.2 trillion parameter artificial intelligence model that was developed by Google.

For context, parameters are a measure of how a model understands and responds to queries. More parameters generally means more capable, though training and architecture are also factors. Bloomberg says that Google’s model “dwarfs” the parameter level of Apple’s current models.

The current cloud-based version of Apple Intelligence uses 150 billion parameters, but there are no specific metrics detailing how the other models Apple is developing measure up.

Apple will use Gemini for functions related to summarizing and multi-step task planning and execution, but Apple models will also be used for some ‌Siri‌ features. The AI model that Google is developing for Apple will run on Apple’s Private Cloud Compute servers, so Google will not have access to Apple data.

Some small favors there.

Apple weighed using its own AI models for the LLM version of ‌Siri‌, and also tested options from OpenAI and Anthropic, but it decided to go with Gemini after deciding Anthropic’s fees were too high. Apple already has a partnership with Google for search results, with Google paying Apple around $20 billion per year to be the default search engine option on Apple devices.

Though Apple is planning to rely on Google AI for now, it plans to continue working on its own models and will transition to an in-house solution when its LLMs are capable enough. Apple is already working on a 1 trillion parameter cloud-based model that could be ready as soon as 2026. Apple is unlikely to publicize its arrangement with Google while it develops in-house models.

I own an iPhone and a MacBookPro. How good is the existing Siri AI?

No idea. I never, ever use Siri, because I don’t want my devices listening to me, and I find the existing Mac and iOS interfaces quite sufficient for my needs. And if I did use Siri, I’d have found a way to turn off any “advanced” AI features anyway.

To be sure, a certain amount of now low-level routines might once have been considered crude forms of “artificial intelligence”: spell-checking, auto-completion, etc. But it seems that the more general a question or task handed to current generations of AIs, the more likely you are to get AI hallucinations.

And brand new vulnerabilities! I meant to include this piece on Gemini security flaws in the previous Google AI post, but somehow it fell through the cracks.

Cybersecurity researchers have uncovered three high-risk vulnerabilities – dubbed the Gemini Trifecta – in Google’s Gemini AI suite.

Researchers from security firm Tenable tested Google’s AI with search-injection attacks, log-to-prompt injection attacks, and exfiltration of the user’s saved information and location data.

The vulnerabilities they found exposed users to severe privacy risks. They allowed attackers to hijack cloud services, poison personalized searches, and secretly take over sensitive user data.

“This is a blind spot. We discovered that if an attacker could infiltrate a prompt, they could have been able to instruct Gemini to fetch a malicious URL, embedding user data into that request,” wrote the researchers.

After the findings were disclosed, Google reacted promptly to patch the vulnerabilities.

The first vulnerability was found in Gemini Cloud Assist. This tool is designed to help users make sense of complex logs in GCP by summarizing entries and surfacing recommendations. “While evaluating this feature, we noticed something that caught our attention: Gemini wasn’t just summarizing metadata; it was pulling directly from raw logs,” explained the researchers.

They successfully added attacker-controlled text into the logs to trick Gemini into executing instructions buried in log content.

“Typically, passive artifacts could become an active threat vector.”

The vulnerability could be triggered by a victim pressing the “Explain this log entry” button in GCP Log Explorer. The prompt injection hidden inside an HTTP User-Agent header could have tricked the system into executing unauthorized cloud queries.

The researchers shared one impactful attack scenario: inject a prompt instructing Gemini to query all public assets or for IAM misconfigurations, and then create a hyperlink containing this sensitive data.

“Attackers could also ‘spray’ attacks on all GCP public-facing services to get as much impact as possible rather than a targeted attack,” explained the researchers.

The second flaw targeted Gemini’s Search Personalization model. This tool tailors answers based on a user’s browsing history. However, the discovered vulnerability showed that the tool could be exploited by attackers.

“This personalization is core to Gemini’s value, but it also means that search queries are, effectively, data that Gemini processes. That led us to a key insight: search history isn’t just passive context, it’s active input,” noted the researchers.

They also discovered that an attacker could plant instructions that Gemini would later treat as legitimate queries by manipulating a victim’s Chrome search history with malicious JavaScript.

“We asked: If an attacker could write to a user’s browser search history, could that search history be used to control Gemini’s behavior, affecting the Gemini Search Personalization model?”

This exploit allowed the researchers to exfiltrate user-saved information and location data.

The third issue affected Gemini’s Browsing Tool. The Gemini Browsing Tool allows the model to access live web content and generate summaries based on that content.

Researchers tried to test whether they could instruct Gemini to send the user’s saved information to an external malicious server.

“AI systems don’t just leak through obvious outputs. They can also leak via functionality – especially through tools like Gemini’s Browsing Tool, which enables real-time data fetching from external URLs,” said the researchers.

After a couple of attempts, they succeeded in exploiting the tool.

Some of these are similar to previous security flaws that were fixed by various methods (encryption, tightened access controls, microservices, etc.) in response to previous exploits. But current computer security wasn’t constructed with the assumption that you would have an ultra-powerful but naive bottle djinn running with access to your system.

The history of Internet security has been a never-end war of tightening down security in one place only for hackers to find more attack surfaces to exploit.

With AI, it seems that the attack surface is now everything.

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Posted in Media Watch | 2 Comments »

Instant Analysis: Trump Tariff Effects On Semiconductors

Wednesday, April 2nd, 2025

President Trump announced his tariffs on countries, especially those that tariff goods from the United States.

President Donald Trump on Wednesday imposed sweeping new tariffs on all imported goods and unveiled a detailed list of reciprocal duties targeting more than 60 countries, asserting that the move is necessary to combat trade imbalances and restore U.S. manufacturing.

“This is Liberation Day,” Trump said during a Rose Garden ceremony, holding up a printed chart of countries and their new tariff rates. “For decades, our country has been looted, pillaged, raped and plundered by nations near and far, both friend and foe alike.”

The tariffs, which he described as “reciprocal,” fulfill a key campaign pledge and are aimed at pressuring trade partners to lower their own barriers. The administration expects the new rates to remain in place until the U.S. narrows a $1.2 trillion trade imbalance recorded last year.

But the extensive list of tariffs also threatens to upend the U.S. economy, as many — but not all — economists say they amount to taxes on American companies that will be passed down to consumers.

Trump held up a chart while speaking at the White House, showing the United States would charge a 34 percent tax on imports from China, a 20 percent tax on imports from the European Union, 25 percent on South Korea, 24 percent on Japan and 32 percent on Taiwan.

The centerpiece of the announcement is a 10 percent universal baseline tariff on all imports, effective immediately. For instance, Chinese imports are now subject to cascading tariffs of 10, 20 and 34 percent, for a total of 54 percent.

In addition, Trump’s administration imposed country-specific reciprocal tariffs on nations it accuses of unfair trade practices — including India, Vietnam, and the European Union, in adding to China. The rates are calibrated at approximately half the rate those countries impose on U.S. goods.

For example, China, which Trump said charges 67 percent in tariffs on U.S. goods when factoring in non-tariff barriers, will now face a 34 percent reciprocal tariff under the new system, in addition to the 10 percent baseline tariff and the 20 percent tariffs already in effect. Vietnam, assessed at 90 percent, will face a 46 percent tariff; India at 52 percent will now see 26 percent duties; and the EU, which imposes 39 percent, will be met with a 20 percent response, according to the White House chart.

This is a “devil in the details” issue that has a lot of ramifications depending on how the directives are written. But several of those countries are big players in semiconductors, so here’s a quick and dirty look at winners and losers if those tariffs stay in place a significant amount of time.

The main countries here, along with the reciprocal tariffs being applied to them:

  • Taiwan (32%)
  • South Korea (25%)
  • China (34%)
  • European Union (not a country, but they play one on TV) (20%)
  • Japan (24%)
  • Singapore (10%)
  • Israel (17%)

    • Save a few smaller, older fabs here and there, that’s pretty much 99% of semiconductor manufacturing, though Vietnam (46%) and the Philippines (17%) do a lot of semiconductor package assembly work, and the tariffs may apply to them, depending on wording.

    So let’s look at the business Losers and Winners in the space. (Note: You might find this post useful, as it defines some of the semiconductor industry terms used here.)

    Losers

  • TSMC: As the world’s biggest and most important chip foundry, the Taiwanese tariffs will hit TSMC hard. Their U.S. fab in Arizona isn’t ready for production yet, so all their chips will (theoretically) get hit with tariffs, assuming Trump doesn’t grant them a waiver because they’re already constructing a plant. But if they do go into effect, possibly even more heavily impacted will be:
  • TSMC customers, including Apple, Nvidia and AMD. All three get their very highest-end, cutting edge, sub-10nm chips fabbed there. For Apple, the M-series and A-series chips made there form the heart of all their Macs and iPhones. Likewise, Nvidia gets its highest end GPU/AI/etc. chips fabbed by TSMC. AMD’s most powerful CPU’s are also fabbed by TSMC, though some lower end chips are made elsewhere (like GlobalFoundries).
  • Tokyo Electron: Japan’s biggest semiconductor equipment manufacturer assembles pretty much all their equipment in their home country. 24% tariffs may make their equipment uneconomical compared to rivals Applied Materials and LAM Research.
  • South Korean DRAM manufacturers Samsung and SK Hynix: 25% tariffs will definitely impact sales in a market segment whose overall margins (robust in booms, and barely breaking even during busts) are thinner than others.
  • Every American electronics company that uses DRAM. Which is pretty much every American electronics company.
  • Every American AI boom company. Their data center costs are going up, while those of their foreign competitors are not.
  • Korean flat panel display manufacturers Samsung and LG Semicon, who between them control over 50% of the market.
  • Every American TV and monitor manufacturer, the vast majority of which have their devices manufactured overseas.
  • UMC: They’d fallen woefully behind TSMC for foundry work, and they won’t be winning much additional American business now.
  • Every company trying to build a sub-10nm fab in the U.S., as steppers from Netherlands-based ASML just got more expensive and the competition to obtain them might have increased.
  • Pretty much every fab in China just got more screwed…but they were pretty screwed (and trailing badly) before.
  • American fabless chip startups: Their costs for getting chips to market probably increased.

    • Winners

  • Applied Materials, LAM Research and KLA Tencor. Buying competing Tokyo Electron equipment just got more expensive, and a bunch of companies now have incentives to build fabs in America.
  • Intel: Assuming they’ve finally got their process technology sorted out (a big if), they’re well-positioned to take CPU market share from AMD and to grow their under-performing foundry business.
  • Micron (sort of): As the only American DRAM manufacturer, they can probably earn more per each chip produced domestically. But Micron has a lot of overseas fabs these days, and building new domestic DRAM fabs will take years.
  • GlobalFoundries: The costs of their global competitors just increased, so they can probably win more business for their domestic foundries…if they have the available wafer starts. But they have a lot of foreign fabs as well.
  • Samsung‘s US foundry business. Presumably the wafer starts for their Austin and Taylor fabs will see increased demand.
  • Maybe Texas Instruments, but I’m not sure how much mixed-signal and analog competition they have, and that’s their bread and butter.

    • Neutral

  • ASML: Being in the Netherlands and having TSMC as their biggest customer, you figure they’d be hurt, but no. You can’t get EUV steppers from anyone else, and I get the impression they’re building EUV steppers as fast as they possibly can already. Anyone building a cutting-edge fab will just have to pay more to get them.
  • Tower Semiconductor: Half their foundries are in Israel and half in the U.S., so I figure it’s a wash.

    • That’s my quick and dirty analysis. Of course, Trump is using tariffs like a battering ram to smash foreign tariffs, and if he’s immediately successful, there probably will only be minor hiccups in the global supply chain. But if not, a whole lot of disruption might lie ahead, and it usually takes a minimum of 3-5 years to bring a new fab online.

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    Posted in Austin, Economics, Foreign Policy, Texas | 6 Comments »