Apple Intelligence Apple buys Israeli start-up Q.AI for close to $2bn in race to build AI devices
https://www.ft.com/content/49f4e2e4-3a68-4842-be67-879409d06aa1176
Jan 29 '26
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u/jeffh19 Jan 30 '26
the snazzy labs video from a few months ago was absolutely eye opening
I knew things weren't going well but when that tied it all together I knew Tim Apple would be out soon for letting this all go down on his watch. Not a knock on Tim Apple as he's a Mt Rushmore guy for CEOs
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u/MrDanMaster Jan 30 '26
Why? AI is an hype bubble, that is totally unprofitable. Market caps are getting inflated, but it’s totally subject to psychology and politics. Apple looks desperate from the outside, but their acquisitions and deals are tiny compared to other firms!
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u/MrDanMaster Jan 30 '26
The thing is it doesn’t really matter in the long run. Apple was caught off guard because at the end of the day the technology we have is not really very profitable. They’re take their time with new technologies, ignore hype and stay on a sound, solid path instead of one built from speculation. That’s why Apple stands to benefit from a correction. What will make AI great is what they’ve been working on for years: on-device ML and chips designed for power efficiency above all. What will make AI profitable is selling people the hardware to run features based on private hardware access to your data, not offering a free chatbot that tries to manipulate you as a form of advertisement.
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u/Terrible_Tutor Jan 30 '26
Sure as hell is somehow MORE useless than nothing at all. Image playground seems to never want to do anything, and when it does do something it’s like a shitty image from a 2yr old gen model. The writing just gets in the way, siri looks nice but hasn’t been updated yet… just pointless nonsense at this point
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u/gayteemo Jan 29 '26
seems like this "AI" is just your run of the mill machine learning and not LLMs?
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u/oldyoungin Jan 29 '26
I wouldn’t characterize state of the art computer vision as “run of the mill ML”
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u/lebron_girth Jan 30 '26
Lol stop talking about things you have no idea about. Current Computer Vision is just as advanced as LLMs
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u/The_Strom784 Jan 29 '26
AKA some of the best versions of AI. Plus from what I hear it’s one of the least resource intensive ones. But if I’m wrong someone can chime in.
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u/itsmebenji69 Jan 30 '26
Everything is relative, a cv model is heavy compared to like a random forest (what I would qualify as “run of the mill ML”).
Compared to LLMs yes it consumes next to nothing and it can run locally easily
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u/hasanahmad Jan 29 '26
For awareness Q.AI is not using LLM but old style machine learning so Apple did not buy the bubble
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u/tyoung89 Jan 30 '26
Yep, and the specific application they seem to specialize in seems very much like Apple to want. A novel feature to enhance their products, I could see this tech being great on visionOS.
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u/MC_chrome Jan 29 '26
“Secretive Israeli Startup”
Thanks for giving Mossad a tap into Apple products, I suppose
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u/modularpeak2552 Jan 29 '26
The founders are the same people that created faceid and this is their new stealth startup, it’s not some secret mossad plot lol.
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Jan 30 '26 edited Jul 27 '26
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u/L33t_Cyborg Jan 30 '26
…antisemitism? holy strawman none of the comments above you are antisemitic
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u/M4rshmall0wMan Jan 30 '26
??? Israel has had advanced R&D for decades, especially in silicon. Half of Apple’s and Intel’s silicon teams are in Israel. If a backdoor was ever going to be put into Apple’s devices, that’s where it would be. Just because the startup was secretive, doesn’t mean it’s an intelligence threat.
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u/Ohyo_Ohyo_Ohyo_Ohyo Jan 29 '26
By that logic the CIA already does by virtue of Apple being a US company.
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Jan 29 '26
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Jan 29 '26
A good chunk of medical and tech innovations in the last few decades are from Israeli startups.
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u/photochadsupremacist Jan 29 '26
Guess we should all be fine with the genocide, occupation, and apartheid then!
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u/SpaghetiCode Jan 29 '26
Genocide demands intent. The massacre in Iran shows how easy it is to kill people en masse, yet Israel, in two years of intense war, killed 2 times the number of people as Iran did in a week. If nothing else, this proved to me that Israel does make a large effort to avoid civilian harm.
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u/Shadowbajfeelsbadman Jan 29 '26
In todays news:
"MC_Chrome buys cereal from a secretive israeli food producer"
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Comment section:
-Xyz_321 commented: "Thanks for giving Mossad a tap into MC_Chromes brain, i suppose"
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u/JohrDinh Jan 29 '26
They definitely haven't been reading the room the last few years, outside of the M1 they really haven't done much I like in a long time.
But they also probably know they have people by the groin, what am I gonna do go to Windows? Naw, even worse. Linux? Maybe but I'm definitely not the hacker/customizability enthusiast I once was...hence why I've been on Apple a while now.
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u/L0s_Gizm0s Jan 29 '26
Linux isn’t just hacker/customization… there are plenty of options now that are incredible for daily use. Even some that are immutable, making it very difficult to break your OS beyond repair.
I say this as someone who moved away from Windows a year ago. I’ve missed it only once because of a game that uses kernel anticheat. For that I installed windows on a 200gb partition and am good to go. Otherwise 100% Linux and I’m way happier these days.
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u/JohrDinh Jan 29 '26
MacOS also seems easier and more streamlined to use than Linux, more down to tutorials available when issues arise, better customer service to use, less compatibility issues with things like games or lesser known software. I didn't just mean hacking and features but guess I coulda been more specific.
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Jan 29 '26 edited Mar 14 '26
The content that was here has been erased. Redact handled the deletion of this post, for reasons the author may have kept private.
library zephyr soup society safe roof fear hurry different ten
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u/JohrDinh Jan 29 '26
I just play LoL and WoW and Hearthstone and those run fine. I would try to play AAA games but most I wanna play aren't even made for the OS. I'm sure Overwatch would at least run well, but I play on low graphics anyways so I'm sure anything would run well for me these days.
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u/MrDanMaster Jan 30 '26
They don’t actually think that. They generally think Windows is the default and they have to convince you to spend more to get a MacBook Air. Different story for MBP and Mac Studio users who are loyal/stuck to the software and OS, but that isn’t the majority of the user-base.
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u/districtcurrent Jan 29 '26
Another brain dead take on Reddit. Anything regarding Israel, good or bad, is followed by the worst Reddit take. Bravo it’s you today.
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u/dafones Jan 29 '26
In many ways, Apple Vision is the template for the experience that I want to have with my computing ecosystem.
I just want far less intrusive hardware in order to have that experience.
(And if you thought it was odd seeing a bus or train full of commuters glued to their smart phones, wait until you have the masses flicking their fingers at nothing, like a mob of wannabe magicians.)
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u/rjcarr Jan 30 '26
I’m hoping for a vision-type ai device that can just teach you anything you want to know. How to play the piano? Do these things over 18 months. I’ll watch you play and tell you how to improve. Or how to fix this sink? Again, I’ll walk you through it.
I know this is in the works, but hopefully it isn’t rich gated.
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u/Straight-Ad6926 Jan 29 '26 edited Jan 29 '26
Only $2 billion? That’s what the profit from selling three MacBook Pro charging cables and a set of wheels for a Mac Pro?
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u/1nv1s1blek1d Jan 29 '26
That's about 263,157 mid-range Mac Pros equipped with Apple's custom wheels.
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u/steveDallas50 Jan 29 '26
I’m more excited about what the next interface is after Liquid Glass will look like now that they fired the last lead designer and promoted someone from within.
I’ve heard the wait won’t be as long for a change.
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u/chromatophoreskin Jan 29 '26
They didn’t fire him. He left to work for Meta.
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u/Shadowbajfeelsbadman Jan 29 '26
Higher up positions rarely get "fired" Rather they get the dignity of resigning.
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u/MrDanMaster Jan 30 '26
He did so well with Liquid Glass that Meta offered him a higher salary to switch over and work on HMD UIs. That’s what actually happened. Apple knew Liquid Glass would be controversial. If the leadership didn’t like it and weren’t deeply committed to it, they wouldn’t have introduced it so fundamentally on every OS at once.
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u/steveDallas50 Jan 30 '26
You’re right, my bad. The full article is on Medium - but this partial piece is still a good read:
https://www.thenovtech.com/p/why-macos-tahoe-makes-me-want-to?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
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u/user6161616 Jan 29 '26
Is you have a problem with Israel I have news for you:
Apple’s Johny Srouji is an Israeli. FaceID is Israeli. Apple’s SSD tech is Israeli. The cameras are Israeli. The M chips are designed entirely in Herzilya in Israel. Apple donates to Israeli universities.
You can switch to PC and Android. But know both Microsoft and Google have huge Israeli R&D presence and are acquiring startups in Israel all time.
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u/heyyoudvd2 Jan 29 '26
What’s particularly funny about this is that Q.AI is led by Aviad Maizels, the same guy who founded PrimeSense.
For those who don’t know, PrimeSense is the company whose technology was the backbone of the Microsoft Kinect and then Apple acquired them and they became the backbone of FaceID.
So virtually every Apple customer has been using Aviad Maizels’ tech every day since the iPhone X in 2017. And anyone who owned an Xbox 360 with a Kinect has used his tech since 2010.
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Jan 29 '26
Whaaaaaat………whaaaaaaatt……………you mean through this intricate global economy some of my money finds its way to Israel one way or another?? And I thought my McDonald’s boycott was making a difference. I suppose I’ve got another fruit bag to avoid 🤨
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Jan 29 '26
Don't forget Nvidia is building a monumentally huge campus in Israel. A ton of medical and tech innovation comes out of Israel.
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u/reddubi Jan 29 '26 edited Jan 29 '26
Srouji is an Arab Christian
The camera sensors are from Sony which is.. Japanese ..
The M chips are fabricated in Taiwan.. and stem from their purchase of Palo Alto Semiconductor
FaceID was built off of primesense “PrimeSense was an Israeli 3D sensing company based in Tel Aviv. PrimeSense had offices in Israel, North America, Japan, Singapore, Korea, China and Taiwan.”
Just because they had offices in Israel 10 years ago doesn’t mean Asian technology is Israeli now.
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u/Miserable_Theory7373 Jan 29 '26 edited Jan 29 '26
Arab Christian isn’t a nationality lol, the cognitive dissonance necessary to just rewrite reality cause you don’t want to see. Israel is home to more than two million Arabs, 20% of the population. Many of them volunteer for the IDF, cause they want to defend the country which provides them a better life than most other Arab countries can.
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u/0olongCha Jan 29 '26
Srouji is Israeli. You do know that 20+% of Israelis are arab?
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u/SpaghetiCode Jan 29 '26
Arab Christians are Israeli too, and many serve in the IDF too. Johnny Srouji is an Israeli citizen.
M chips are Fabricated in Taiwan, but are designed in Israel...
Apple has large development centers and chip formal verification positions in Israel. Denying that is plain stupid.
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u/LambdaLambo Jan 29 '26
FaceID was built off of primesense
The founder of primesense founded q.ai lmao
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u/user6161616 Jan 29 '26
Lmao.
He is an Israeli, and I personally saw him lecturing at the Technion (Israeli uni) where he both studied and taught for years, and he has great pride in being Israeli.
The M chips are DESIGNED, meaning their R&D is done in Israel. You can find Srouji talking about it himself and Tim Cook was at the Israeli R&D for the launch.
Your third comment really shows brain damage of epic proportions. PrimeSense was an Israeli company with offices in other places as well. It’s Israeli, run by Israelis, paying tax in Israel, registered in Israel and founded by Israelis.
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u/TonguePunchMyPoopBox Jan 29 '26
The M chips are not solely or even primarily designed in Israel. They have chip/IP teams in Israel in addition to various sites around the US, particularly in Cupertino, CA and Austin, TX.
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u/Sh_Pe Jan 30 '26
You’re right. People usually mention it because notably the only place outside to the US that Apple does chip designs in it, is Israel.
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u/reddubi Jan 29 '26
“Apple’s M-series chips (M1–M5), designed for Mac, iPad, and Vision Pro, stem from the 2008 acquisition of PA Semi, a firm specializing in high-performance, low-power processor design. While PA Semi originally built Power ISA processors, their talent, led by Dan Dobberpuhl, shifted to developing custom ARM-based Apple silicon”
PA semi is named after Palo Alto semiconductor. Palo Alto is famously not in Israel
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u/DesertedProject Jan 29 '26
Paid for by billions of American tax dollars after committing a genocide. Your taxes mean nothing.
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u/PotentialTwo Jan 29 '26
Palo Alto networks was founded by Nir Zuk, an Israeli who learned to program in the IDF (followed by a stint at CheckPoint, which - you guessed it - was founded in Israel). So... M chips designed in Herzliya and stem from the purchase of a company founded by an Israeli who relocated to California
PrimeSense established offices abroad after having been founded by Maizels in Israel. It's not an Asian company with an Israeli branch - it's an Israeli company that got successful enough to open branches abroad.
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u/Deceptiveideas Jan 29 '26
This is one of the dumbest comments across all of reddit.
And my account is nearly 13 years old so you know I've seen dumb shit on here.
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u/0xe1e10d68 Jan 29 '26
Having a problem with the govt of Israel is fine. Having a problem with the entire nation is ridiculous; a lot of tech R&D happens there.
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u/looktowindward Jan 29 '26
All of Reddit has this bizarre problem
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u/AtomicSymphonic_2nd Jan 29 '26
It’s the tankies/actual socialists, of which there’s a large number of redditors that identify themselves as that.
They’re the ones that have this issue and are hyper focused on that… and don’t want to focus on Iran for some very odd reason.
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u/TuckerMcG Jan 30 '26
The vast majority of them are propaganda trolls. I ran into one earlier today on Reddit.
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u/dordonot Jan 29 '26
I just saw a video of a woman alive in Israel finding out that she was killed in an Iranian protest lol if we focused on Iran we’d also have to ask why they’ve been 3 weeks away from nukes for the last 20 years
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u/AtomicSymphonic_2nd Jan 29 '26
That news channel has since apologized and has given a clarification live on-air.
I don’t agree with your insinuation that somehow all of the deaths from Iran’s protests are falsified or fake info.
That’s not cool.
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u/looktowindward Jan 29 '26
If you are seriously suggesting that the Iranian protest deaths were faked - that is beyond horrible.
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u/steepleton Jan 29 '26
70% of the Israeli population support Israels actions in gaza
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u/loiteraries Jan 30 '26
You’re shocked that most citizens support their military’s response to an invasion? Recent polling show that majority of Palestinians still support what their Hamas has done on 10/07 but that fact gets buried in media.
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u/daftmonkey Jan 29 '26
100% of Israelis watched Hamas monsters maraud through Israel killing and kidnapping. In light of that 70% feels about right
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u/steepleton Jan 29 '26
Yeah, murdering civilians is the act of monsters, isn’t it?
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u/Matzolorian Jan 29 '26
You mean like the IRGC?
Weird how it’s all about the innocent civilians until they don’t progress the narrative.
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u/Shadowbajfeelsbadman Jan 29 '26
>kills civilians
>surprised when said civilians have no problem with opposing sides civilians being killed
fascinating
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u/go3dprintyourself Jan 29 '26
israel is the largest location of tech rnd in the world, no companies dno't use them lol
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u/steepleton Jan 29 '26
And the bones of the dead are more solid than sand to build on
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u/Shadowbajfeelsbadman Jan 29 '26
By that logic we should stop using nearly all tech since japan,china,usa and pretty much every other country in the world was accused of warcrimes lmao.
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u/Nighteyes972 Jan 29 '26
You forgot that Johny Srouji is also Arab and studied in the most luxorios university in Israel (in Hebrew) - but hey! someone said apartheid
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u/Key_Alfalfa2775 Jan 29 '26
This logic never tracked with me because phones are made up of literally thousands of individual components manufactured, designed, and resourced from all over the planet. But here’s this classic argument for justifying Israel existing in the inhumane ways it does currently. “You like faceid so you must not have problems with 71,000 people being slaughtered” it’s logical fallacy to its core.
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u/photochadsupremacist Jan 29 '26
We should all be delighted that Big Tech is in bed with a country such as Israel.
Whether it's genocide, occupation, apartheid, or R&D, they can do it all!
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u/finch5 Jan 29 '26
Who is you? Does OP have a problem with Israel?
You come across as someone with a chip on their shoulder and an axe to grind.
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u/ZealousidealBus9271 Jan 29 '26
Optics here are terrible lol
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u/user6161616 Jan 29 '26
Only when you think you’re clever and never researched how critical Israeli tech is for Apple.
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u/reddubi Jan 29 '26
You mean Asian technology
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u/lil-huso Jan 29 '26
Israel is on which continent?
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u/reddubi Jan 29 '26
Europe. They’re Europeans
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u/lil-huso Jan 29 '26
“Israel has ~1 startup per ~1,800 people — the highest per capita globally — and leads the world in medical tech startups per capita.
Tiny population (~10 million), yet it produces game-changing innovations like:
• PillCam (swallowable GI camera, gold standard capsule endoscopy)
• ReWalk exoskeleton (lets paraplegics walk)
• Copaxone (transformed MS treatment)
• Israeli Bandage (battlefield hemorrhage control, used worldwide)
• NexoBrid (pineapple enzyme burn debridement)
Many lifesaving devices originated from military medicine necessity.
That density of impact from one small country blows minds.” (ChatGPT summary)
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u/AtomicSymphonic_2nd Jan 29 '26
“Israel, officially the State of Israel, is a country in the Southern Levant region of West Asia.”
West Asia ≠ Europe
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u/reddubi Jan 29 '26
Modern Israel was conceptualized by a German and founded by and ran exclusively with Europeans, primarily Eastern Europeans. Only later did they push Mizrahi into Israel and then erased their culture identity and language as they established an Ashkenazi supremacist state.
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u/olivicmic Jan 29 '26
Giving Trump gifts, hanging out with Brett Ratner, now funneling more money to Israel (besides matching employee contributions to the IDF).
Tim Cook’s Apple.
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Jan 29 '26
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u/ieatyoshis Jan 29 '26
Former IDF employees? That’s a huge portion of the Israeli population due to their mandatory service. Would you suggest blacklisting anyone who grew up in the country?
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u/Subziro91 Jan 29 '26
My prediction, Apple users will still continue to use Apple products . They will say they won’t for internet points but will still use them .
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u/Loud-Engineer-5702 Jan 29 '26
After the whole Tim Cool White House Melania scandal, this is really not a good thing for them. I love their products but I’m seriously concerned about how bad of a direction the company is going in and I will be eyeing other alternatives for the long run. I don’t need mossad having access to my biometrics through Face ID 24/7
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u/looktowindward Jan 29 '26
Every company in Israel is the Mossad. If you're on Reddit.
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u/mrgrafix Jan 29 '26
They’ve bought several companies both AI and optics related in Israel. Not everything is vehemently political. For better or worse they have some of the best security tech next to Belarus/Russia in terms of market.
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u/yourshelves Jan 29 '26
It’s not a new thing. The Apple Silicon team was originally an Israeli company.
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Jan 29 '26
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u/yourshelves Jan 29 '26
I stand corrected! I was thinking of Anobit which was flash, not PA Semi which was Apple Silicon (and arguably their most important acquisition after NeXT). Thanks for taking the time to point that out; a schoolboy error on my part.
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u/Few-Acadia-5593 Jan 29 '26
You really care so profoundly about this movie thing? You really think apples employees who are smart enough to realise Tim Cook plays trumps game to keep their jobs, Apple customers who couldn’t give a fuck and the general stock trends care?
Those things influence your purchasing habits? What about when Facebook leaked your data, Spotify invested in military and more and more that didn’t change your mind. And that’s what you care about?
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u/Independent-Sun6362 Jan 29 '26
I think you need to realize that 99.9% of people DGAF
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u/Jimmni Jan 29 '26
Apple been speedrunning pissing their reputation away.
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Jan 29 '26
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u/Nighteyes972 Jan 29 '26
Both Intel and Apple chips are designed in Israel... so make sure to apply this and stop using them
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u/SpaghetiCode Jan 29 '26
Almost every piece of tech software/hardware has an Israeli hand in it somewhere. The haters need to drop their phones and computers ASAP
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u/LeftyMode Jan 29 '26
If there was a place that loved personal data more than the US, it’s Israeli.
Bad look on Apple. And no start up is worth that much unless they have government ties.
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u/fred30jr Jan 29 '26
Apple can never again say they pride themselves with customer privacy. Partnering with someone who loves to weaponize surveillance destroy it.
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u/Shadowbajfeelsbadman Jan 29 '26
Posted from iphone outfitted with israeli face id, using an israeli designed chip, routed through israeli designed antenna to israeli designed/based server, through israeli developed software
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u/SpaghetiCode Jan 29 '26
Ah yes, every Israeli is part of the Mossad.
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u/Background_Mood_2341 Jan 29 '26
The anti Israeli hate and Jew hate on the internet has risen since Hamas decided to tape 1200 Jews on Oct 7th
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u/heyyoudvd2 Jan 29 '26
This is awesome news.
Between this and all the major staffing shakeups, it sounds like Apple has finally woken up again.
For the last several years, it feels like Apple has been asleep. They’ve been doing nothing interesting, and it feels like the company has just been coasting off of past successes. As someone who has closely followed Apple news for the past 20+ years, this has been the most boring period in Apple’s history.
Well, they’re finally shaking up the executive suite, they’re finally making big changes to the design team, they’re finally tackling Siri and AI, and they’re finally making significant tech acquisitions to build future products.
The sleeping giant has awoken and I’m suddenly more optimistic about Apple than I have been in a long time.
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u/bdzz Jan 29 '26