About 4% of China’s 2025 oil came from Venezuela. Trump has cut off much more US access to oil with his Iran action than that.

As I said, he’s an idiot.

You’ve got yourself confused. Camshafts are made in the US, yes, but by global suppliers like MAHLE and LInamar. They amortise tooling, designs, and process engineering across all their global production. They are able to purchase supplies at costs held down by their global scale. They stay in the market at all because the volumes of sales globally justify it, and having multiple camshaft suppliers keeps costs down by increasing competition.

I think the gap between Honda, Nissan, Toyota, Stellantis, GM and Ford in relation to EVs is a distinction without a difference. They are all in deeper trouble than they know what to do with. The US auto market is doomed to ever-higher prices and ever-worse tech than the rest of the world, because it will miss out on the global economies of scale that have been essential to the last 50 years of automotive manufacturing and which will be just as important, if not more so, in the next 50. Camshafts made for a market with a population of 330m are going to be a shit ton more expensive than those made for a market with a population of 8bn.

I'm absolutely with you. Honda is strategically fucked, as are the US OEMs over the longer term. BMW and Renault may get through this, along with Hyundai and Kia, but many ICE OEMs are in their death throes, whether they know it or not.

You can't rely on fucking anecdotes for this kind of thing. You need some actual data. All the data points in the opposite direction, and in line with what one would expect: low cost Chinese EVs use LFP batteries because those are cheap, and LFP batteries do not have any thermal runaway issues.

Once again, Trump is an idiot. The literal only reason that Venezuela is said to have the largest oil reserves in the world is because their government said so in various official reports. There is no actual proof that it does have oil reserves of the size it's claimed.

It's truly astonishing that people write that kind of stuff without the slightest hint of irony, isn't it? After Trump has used military force against two oil producing countries in less than six months, and announced he's just going to take Venezuelan oil without compensation (although being an idiot, he's neglected to get the oil majors on board)

Obviously we all depend on oil. But given the challenges associated with it, from the costs of extraction to wars to climate change, it makes sense to use as little as possible, and certainly not for activity which is better done with alternatives. EVs are an excellent example. Heat pumps are another.

Ember wrote an excellent recent report on a related topic:
https://ember-energy.org/lates...

While you could be right, I reckon Apple has done the work to find out what the segment really values and has got this right

The chip is more than capable of powering that screen. It’s already used to power a screen that has slightly more pixels on the iPhone 16 Pro Max.

As for build quality, it’s made out of aluminium rather than plastic, has the same keyboard as MacBook Pros, and every review has commented that the build quality is as good as other Macs. That alone puts it well ahead of the competition. I’m sure many people don’t care about build quality, but many more absolutely do, because it means it feels nice in the hand and is less prone to physical damage.

MKBHD covered this in his review, and pointed out that FCP worked fine for basic video edits but not more complex activity. That’s just fine for influencers. Also, TikTok doesn’t need any video editing software to become a big star, it’s only YouTube that needs that. I stand by what I said, this is totally fine for the intended audience, and hits the mark in terms of key things they care about, like a good display, metal & solid build quality, etc.

What this has that other products don’t at this price point:
1. Solid build quality that feels good in the hands. This is very important to a lot of consumers, who spend a lot of time using their devices
2. A really decent screen. 75% more pixels than 1080p, 500 nits of brightness, and reviewers commenting that it looks way better than competing products at this price. Again, something consumers value hugely, after all they’re staring at it
3. Integration with consumers’ other Apple devices. In particular, apps like Calendar, Notes, Messages. It’s just substantially more convenient than the alternative approaches
4. Coiour and other elements of Apple pizzazz. Vanishingly few people on this site give a shit about funky colours, but students will
5. Financing. 0% means you can spread the cost without worrying too much, and that counts hugely.

Maybe I’m wrong, and someone else is offering a nicely built metal device with a great screen that looks funky and providing 0% financing. But I don’t think I’m wrong, and that still doesn’t do the integration with iOS apps that consumers are using all the time.

This has a keyboard though, and the iPad is not cheaper once you add a keyboard.

Most people, no matter how tech-savvy they are, are not going to need any help to run their MacBook Neo. My father in law ran his Mac Mini for many years right up to his death at aged 85 without any issue. These things are not going to be painful for consumers to use the way that Windows machines can be.