Apple CEO Tim Cook warns AI-driven price increases are unavoidable

My lack of desire to purchase any Apple product is also unavoidable.

I beg to differ - I will find it extremely easy to avoid Apple's AI-induced price rises.

Well that just makes sense. I mean, all those baby giraffes they need to feed to the janky, six-fingered plagiarism bot can't be cheap...

Sounds like they should offer a cheaper, AI free version of products.

Dear Apple, instead of focusing on AI, can you fix the setup process on new iPhones?

It is a fucking mess, shit has been added seemingly at random to it and you need to do stupid workarounds to activate an iPhone without a physical SIM card while setting up an Apple account.

I am an IT guy, I have to help our users several times a week with setting up new phones.

If you have a new user with a new phone you have to do it like this:

• Sign in to WiFi,
• skip setting up an Apple ID,
• skip through all settings until the phone is activated without an Apple ID,
• go into settings, mobile service, add an eSIM card with a QR code,
• disable SIM PIN,
• wipe the phone, but keep the eSIM card,
• activate the phone again, but this time, create an Apple ID,
• verify the user's email and phone number,
• start the enrollment with Intune

The issue is that for some idiotic reason, Apple puts the eSIM part of the setup after you sign in with your Apple ID, meaning that unless you have a physical SIM card in the phone, you can't activate an Apple account on the device since you can't verify the phone number.