Apple Will Pivot to US Made Chips; Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2; Musk Demands Twitter Staff to Go ‘Hardcore’ or Quit; MacKenzie Scott-2 Billion Given Away in 7 Months

We reported earlier about Foxconn quadrupling employees in India, in a move to be less dependent on China. Now, bloomberg.com reports that Apple’s Tim Cook disclosed at an internal meeting in Germany that Apple will start sourcing chips from the TSMC plant being built in Arizona. Cook said they should be using those US chips in iPhones in 2024. Taiwan Semiconductor is already looking to build a second chip plant in the US, and Intel is also building plants in Arizona that will open in 2024. All these plants are beneficiaries of some $50 billion in incentives from the US government that are a result of the Chips Act that passed last summer. At present, 60% of the world’s processor supply comes out of Taiwan…which he noted is probably not a good strategic position.

Qualcomm has announced its latest and greatest chip…the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2. According to androidpolice.com, the chip sports 4 performance cores and 3 efficiency cores. Qualcomm claims it has 25% improved performance over last year’s chip, and gets an efficiency boost of 40%. It also rocks a new 5G modem, and is Wi-Fi 7 capable. It should start showing up in new smartphones early in 2023.

From the world of Elon Musk, his latest antic is to demand that the Twitter employees still standing have to commit in writing to going ‘hardcore,’ or leave. TechCrunch.com says those who decide to bail will get 3 months severance. Twitter folks have until 5 pm Thursday, November 17th to choose to stay or leave. If enough leave, I wonder if Twitter will have to resurrect the old ‘Fail Whale’ when the platform crashes!

As Jeff Bezos recently announced he would give away most of his fortune, and gave $100 million to Dolly Parton to distribute to charities, his ex-wife MacKenzie Scott continues to give away money at a rapid clip. Scott says she has given about $2 billion to some 343 organizations…in the last 7 months! Geekwire.com notes that Scott doesn’t even have an official foundation. With this $2 billion, Scott has now showered some $14 billion on around 1500 organizations. Come on, Jeff…time to play catch up and give away more of those Amazon billions a little faster!

I’m Clark Reid, and you’re ‘technified’ for now.