It took Twitter 10 years before it was profitable [1]. I'd guess that Anthropic will be one of the companies left standing when it's all said and done, assuming nothing catastrophic happens.
Also the switching cost. If its negligible theres no reason for Anthropic to be considered a going-concern in the long term. So its valuation makes no sense from a DCF basis unless you are expecting a liquidation in future. But even then, the liquidation value still doesn't justify its valuation today.
If the Mac were its own standalone business, it would rank at no. 134 on the Fortune 500 with $33.7 billion in revenue. Also, that's a 12% increase in revenue compared to 2024.
If anything, AI has brought more attention to the Mac. Just about every major AI app is released for the Mac first. I've seen complaints about it on HN.
The latest is Claude Cowork. It was released for macOS on January 12th; it didn't ship for Windows until February 10th; it's still not available for Windows running on ARM.
It's been nearly a year since Dia launched [1], the first AI browser, and it's still not available for Windows.
We just had the frenzy over OpenClaw [2] with AI enthusiasts lining up at Apple Stores to buy a Mac mini just to run it!
The most popular AI channels on YouTube are almost exclusively using Macs. Apple seems to have enough runway until they get their act together.
Outside US, most people that buy Macs do so because they are developers targeting iDevices, or can afford Apple and want the ecosystem that comes with their iDevice.
An independent Mac business that doesn't have such tie-ins, would sell much less.
Where you live, maybe. It really depends on the country even outside the US. A lot of it is, to this day, because of things like Final Cut and Logic. Either because they dabble in it as a hobby or professionally.
A lot of the recent growth is developers in general, there's really been a huge shift there. 2010 developers using Macs vs 2026 developers using Macs, if you look at personal devices or workplaces that give them a choice. Biggest driver being Apple Silicon.
I live in one of those 70% market share Windows world region, where Apple gear is taken from a devices pool when required for project delivery, or bundled with cable TV subscriptions with credit payment scattered across several years.
> An independent Mac business that doesn't have such tie-ins, would sell much less.
For businesses and pro users, it isn't the Apple ecosystem that's the main driver.
Since Apple silicon a lot of laptops are just so far behind in battery life, speed and usability that you wouldn't get it. Often Apple ecosystem was a net negative since most things worked better on Windows but that has shifted.
Until the Apple tax goes away, most folks will put up with Windows flaws, unless Apple changes their pricing policy for countries that cannot afford G8 level salaries.
> No, as in the entire PC market for the past two decades
Is this why AI is winning? People aren't doing better. You pick a random stat and somehow make it support what you're arguing.
The link says DESKTOP. I said LAPTOP. Laptop after M1. Why are we going back 2 decades? They have >15% registered as unknown. Sure, "accurate". Cough cough. It doesn't differentiate new or old and IF (the original discussion) that Apple is gaining market share and NEW sales.
> and they're not gaining very quickly
This is just as bad as speculative stock trading e.g. with software stocks. They're losing to AI. Oh no. Dump. Oh they're actually not too bad. Buy it back. Apple doesn't have AI. Sell. Apple doesn't have AI. Buy. Are you ok?
Laptops are desktops in 2026, and without needing Apple style dongles to make out of missing ports, yet another Apple "improvement" in expensive hardware.
There'a great indie app called Notepad.exe [1] for developing iOS and macOS apps using macOS. You can also write and test Swift apps for Linux easily [2]. It also supports Python and JavaScript.
If you hate Xcode, this is definitely worth a look.
So wait this thing is real? Calling it notepad.exe gave me the impression that it's just an elaborate joke about how you can code any program in Notepad...
> The people of the USA really remind me of the people of Russia: totally depoliticized. I think in the USA many people are really focused on a pointless culture war yet aren't politically active at all.
If anything, the opposite is true. Citizens who've never protested in their lives are now in the streets. Off-year elections have had record turnouts.
154–155 million people voted in the 2024 presidential election; that's 63-65% of eligible voters, the second highest percentage in the past 100 years.
Most Americans took democracy for granted; the possibility of losing it has caused Americans to wake up.
> 154–155 million people voted in the 2024 presidential election; that's 63-65% of eligible voters, the second highest percentage in the past 100 years.
And then trump got elected which is the reason of the crisis right now.
Perhaps American people wanted this?
Also, I think that America and Russia's probably the only biggest difference right now is protests and yea, I looked at some protests in America and how people are getting shot and even one veteran got detained who worked in iraq war for 3 days and was stripped naked and wasn't allowed to say anything and this happened a long time ago because of ICE
All because he looked brown. You could fight or die for the country & they would come to haunt you.
Veterans are calling ICE against the protestors even worse than how Veterans acted during the wars towards Iraqi citizens
I have consistently called it out but most Americans from what I can gather want to desperately fit in the two boxes and not have independent support and especially when one party's effectively doing something like this. Bi-partisanship had always ended & you can't vote for anyone more than these two parties (one of which is causing an active war in greenland but the other party's better in this context but its also complicated and they still have very much an influence caused by lobbying)
Would have been super useful if they woke up like... A year ago. I'm afraid we might be past the point of no return. The relationships are already irreversibly damaged.
> I legitimately do not understand these takes connecting everything to slavery. It's been more than a hundred years at this point. The trope is getting old.
It keeps coming up because in 2026 the compromises made to accommodate slave-owning states reverberate to this day.
The Three-Fifths Compromise of 1787 (at the Constitutional Convention) allowed slave-owning states to count enslaved people as three-fifths of a person. This gave the slave-owning states more representation in the House and more Electoral College votes in presidential elections.
This allowed the south to create a voting block that blocked legislation that would have given the formerly enslaved rights that other Americans had.
The Civil War ended in 1865; black Americans in the south were second class citizens and lived under an Apartheid state for the next 100 years until the Voting Rights Act became law in 1965.
> We killed millions over the ability to own humans
"we" didn't kill millions; it's estimated that 750,000 soldiers were killed [1].
> The Three-Fifths Compromise of 1787 (at the Constitutional Convention) allowed slave-owning states to count enslaved people as three-fifths of a person. This gave the slave-owning states more representation in the House and more Electoral College votes in presidential elections.
This is only true if you omit a frame of reference. The slave states wanted slaves to count 1:1 when assigning representatives. The free states wanted them to not count at all. From the point of view of the slave states (which is a perfectly valid point to claim as there isn't an objectively correct baseline here), the 3/5 compromise gave them less representation. So yes, from one point of view the 3/5 compromise gave some states more voice than they should have had. From another point it gave them less. That's what makes it a compromise.
> From the point of view of the slave states (which is a perfectly valid point to claim as there isn't an objectively correct baseline here), the 3/5 compromise gave them less representation.
This is not accurate, and there was a baseline: one man equals one vote.
It was a compromise because the northern states didn't want to count slaves at all because they're not allowed to vote; they were just property.
Of course, the South wanted to count slaves (for census purposes) as a person, even though they couldn't vote.
By allowing slaves to be counted as 3/5 of a person, it enabled the South to have more representation in the House, since the number of representatives is based on the population of the state.
If they weren't allowed to count their slaves, they would have had fewer representatives in the House and wouldn't be able to control legislation, etc.
They wouldn't have done it if it resulted in less representation in Congress.
> Makes sense. I assume each of them is in control and at the whims of US president?
Absolutely not.
If the president attempted to force a US-based CA to do something bad they don't want to do, they would sue the government. So far, this administration loses 80% of the lawsuits brought against it.
You're putting a lot of trust in US institutions (courts etc). The rest of the world is starting to see them as not a strong and independent as they were once assumed.
And that's before more overt issues. Microsoft/Google/etc could sue to stop the US ordering them to do what they should. Is the CEO really willing to risk their life to do that? Be a terrible shame if their kids got caught up in a traffic accident.
> You're putting a lot of trust in US institutions (courts etc)
I don't have a lot of trust in US institutions actually. The most powerful universities, corporations and law firms have capitulated to him.
So far, the tech companies have placated Trump by contributing to his causes and heaping praise upon him and not speaking out regarding the tariffs. That's enough for now.
> Is the CEO really willing to risk their life to do that?
We're not at that point; at least not so far. Besides, it's much easier to blackmail them for more money or for the Department of Justice to open an investigation or to stop a merger they want to do.
Also these companies aren't just sitting around doing nothing. Apple reworked their supply chain; all iPhones sold in the US are now made in India.
Anthropic went from zero to $14 billion in revenue in less than 3 years, growing at 10x per year.
That's what they're investing in.
Also Anthropic seems laser-focused, unlike some of their competitors who are throwing stuff against the wall to see what sticks.
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