Western Electric didn’t just show up at AXPONA 2026 with new amplifier designs. It tapped into something a lot of us have been thinking about for years.

I’ve had a thing for tubes since I was a kid, learning the basics with my grandfather before I was ten. Decades later, that interest hasn’t faded. It has just gotten more expensive and harder to justify shelf space. I’ve owned just about every type of tube amplifier you can name and built a few along the way. My wife would argue the collection peaked years ago, but I’m still not walking past a good 6922 or KT88 without at least thinking about it.

The bigger issue hasn’t been the gear. It has been the tubes themselves. Options have thinned out to the point where “choice” often feels like theater. I remember standing in a large musician supply shop staring at five different brands of 12AX7. Different logos, different boxes, different prices. Same factory in Russia. Same tube.

That’s a long way from where things used to be. There was a time when American manufacturing alone offered a deep bench. RCA, GE, Sylvania, Tung Sol. All building serious product, alongside a strong European presence from Mullard, Telefunken, Philips, and others. Today, new production is concentrated in a handful of places: Slovakia, China, Russia, and yes, Rossville, GA, USA. Which is why what Western Electric is doing right now actually matters.

The operation in Rossville, GA, USA belongs to Western Electric, one of the most storied names in American tube manufacturing. For a long stretch, that name carried more history than output. Western Electric was not producing tubes at all. Even now, the lineup coming out of that factory is focused and limited. Two tubes. The 300B and the 308B.

The 300B remains the centerpiece. It powers Western Electric’s Type 91E integrated amplifier and continues to define what the brand does best. The 308B is a different story. Production is being ramped back up to support the new 100E monoblock amplifiers, which signals a broader push beyond a single legacy tube.

Both amplifiers were on display in Western Electric’s room at AXPONA 2026. And yes, they deliver exactly what you think they will. If you have even a passing interest in tubes, this is the kind of gear that stops you mid sentence and makes you reconsider your financial priorities.

The 300B Reality

The 300B has been around since the 1930s and, during the golden age of tubes, it powered everything from PA systems to theater installations and clubs around the world. It wasn’t boutique back then. It was the workhorse.

Today, it sits on the other end of the spectrum. Among the most coveted tubes in the new old stock market, with prices that can start just under a thousand dollars and climb into several thousand for early examples. Add the premium for matched pairs or quads and the cost of keeping a 300B amplifier running gets uncomfortable fast. And that’s before you factor in the risk. Most NOS tubes come with little to no warranty. You’re buying history and hoping it holds up.

That’s where Western Electric shifts the conversation. Their current production 300B comes in at $699 each or $1,499 for a matched pair. Still not cheap, but grounded in reality compared to NOS pricing. More importantly, they back it with a five year warranty. That alone changes the math for anyone serious about running a 300B based system long term.

The 308B: Big Glass, Big Power, and Still a Work in Progress

The 308B is not subtle. It stands roughly 14 inches tall and close to 4 inches in diameter. This is the kind of tube that makes everything around it look like it needs to hit the gym.

In Western Electric’s 100E monoblock, a single 308B is rated to deliver 160 watts. That’s more output from one tube than many push pull designs manage with a quad of KT88s. It’s an ambitious play and one that suggests Western Electric is not content to stay in the 300B comfort zone.

Details are still catching up to the product. Pricing and availability have not been finalized, and even the web page listed in the company’s show materials was still under construction the week after AXPONA 2026. That tells you where this sits. Early, promising, and not quite ready for prime time.

91E and 100E: How Western Electric Is Actually Using These Tubes

Western Electric wasn’t just putting tubes on pedestals at AXPONA 2026. They showed how they’re being used across two very different amplifier designs.

The 300B plays two roles here. In the 91E integrated amplifier, it’s the output tube. In the 100E monoblock, it shifts upstream and handles the mid stage. The spotlight in the 100E belongs to the 308B, which drives the final output stage and does the heavy lifting.

The 91E integrated amplifier, priced at $8,000, uses a pair of 300B tubes to deliver roughly 20 watts per channel. That number will not impress anyone chasing big power, but that’s not the point. Western Electric built flexibility into the design with interchangeable output modules for 4, 8, and 16 ohm loads. That opens the door to a wide range of loudspeakers, although higher sensitivity designs will make the most sense here.

Connectivity is more modern than you might expect. There are moving coil and moving magnet phono stages built-in, along with RCA inputs for a tuner, CD player, and additional analog sources. On the digital side, the 91E includes Bluetooth, USB, and Ethernet, with an ESS DAC handling up to 16-bit/96 kHz for incoming Bluetooth and USB signals.

Outputs include line out and pre out for system integration, plus dual sets of binding posts. It’s a tube integrated that leans into flexibility without pretending to be something it isn’t. No apps, no ecosystem pitch, and definitely not a Class D network amplifier. It just makes music and throws off enough heat to remind you that winter is coming.

100E Monoblocks and A2 Loudspeakers: Open Window Listening

The rest of what Western Electric brought to AXPONA 2026 leans newer, and in some cases, still short on published detail. The 100E monoblocks were impossible to miss. Physically and visually, they owned the room.

Each chassis is built around that 14 inch tall 308B, and yes, it glows in a way that will stop you in your tracks. Subtle is not part of the brief here. Rated at 160 watts per amplifier, the 100E is doing something few tube designs attempt, delivering serious output from a single ended architecture that looks more like industrial art than consumer audio.

Size is part of the story. At roughly 32 inches deep and close to 22 inches wide, these amplifiers are going to dictate the layout of most rooms. Weight is estimated around 160 pounds each, so once they are in place, they are staying there. This is not gear you casually move around on a Saturday afternoon.

The topology is just as unconventional. A 12AT7 handles the input stage, a 300B is used in the mid stage, and the 308B takes over as the output tube. Seeing a 300B in that middle role tells you everything about the scale of this design. Nothing about it is typical.

Heat is not an afterthought either. With plate voltage around 1500 volts and plate dissipation exceeding 220 watts, these amplifiers are going to generate serious thermal output. Ventilation is not optional, especially in smaller rooms.

The 100E is impedance matched to the 91E, so building a complete Western Electric system is straightforward if you are willing to commit. At $75,000 each, the monoblocks sit in a very different bracket than the 91E, and the new A2 loudspeakers at $70,000 per pair make it clear this is a full system play, not just a statement amplifier. You accountant would like a word.

Big System Energy, Small Room Reality

The A2 loudspeakers from Western Electric are a hybrid design built around air motion transformer tweeters and midrange drivers, paired with dual dynamic bass drivers. The goal is broad, even coverage with a 180 degree dispersion pattern. This is meant to fill a room, not lock one listener into a single chair.

That ambition ran into a familiar problem at AXPONA 2026. The hotel room was simply too small. The A2 sounded like it wanted more space, more air, more distance to breathe. Instead, it was confined to a setup that forced it to hold back. This is the kind of speaker that needs a larger ballroom or dedicated listening space to make sense.

Feeding the system was the new WE 203C CD player, priced at $12,000. It served as the primary source for a system that, all in, lands around $310,000 before you even start thinking about cables or adding a turntable.

The Bottom Line

What stuck with me most from Western Electric at AXPONA 2026 wasn’t the big glass. It was the small signal tubes quietly doing their job up front. The 12AX7 in the first stage of the 100E may not draw a crowd, but it matters more than it looks.

Western Electric is ramping up production of the 12AX7 and aiming to expand into other small signal tubes as well. If that includes something like a 6SN7, a lot of people are going to pay attention. This is not a niche development. It’s a structural shift. For the first time in decades, American amplifier manufacturers could have a domestic source for one of the most widely used tubes in both hi fi and instrument amplifiers.

For years, “made in the USA” has come with an asterisk. Chassis, transformers, assembly. Sure. Tubes? Usually sourced from Russia, Slovakia, or China. Bringing small signal tube production back to the U.S. changes that conversation in a real way.

With the factory in Rossville, GA, USA only a few hours from me, there’s a good chance to see this firsthand. And if that happens, it’s worth documenting. People should see how this is being done, not just read about it.

Honestly, if Western Electric had shown nothing but that 12AX7 effort, it still would have been one of the most important rooms at the show.

For more information: westernelectric.com

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Looking for the most recent Mini Crossword answer? Click here for today’s Mini Crossword hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Wordle, Strands, Connections and Connections: Sports Edition puzzles.

Today’s Mini Crossword features some Earth Day-specific clues. Read on for all the answers. And if you could use some hints and guidance for daily solving, check out our Mini Crossword tips.

If you’re looking for today’s Wordle, Connections, Connections: Sports Edition and Strands answers, you can visit CNET’s NYT puzzle hints page.

Read more: Tips and Tricks for Solving The New York Times Mini Crossword

Let’s get to those Mini Crossword clues and answers.

Mini across clues and answers

1A clue: It’s clearly recyclable!
Answer: GLASS

6A clue: ___ Day (April 22nd observance)
Answer: EARTH

7A clue: Thick, underground part of a plant stem
Answer: TUBER

8A clue: Small cluster of trees
Answer: GROVE

9A clue: Rowed, as a boat
Answer: OARED

Mini down clues and answers

1D clue: From the ___ (right at the beginning)
Answer: GETGO

2D clue: Author Ingalls Wilder who wrote “Little House on the Prairie”
Answer: LAURA

3D clue: ___ Day, observance on the last Friday of April
Answer: ARBOR

4D clue: Actor Buscemi
Answer: STEVE

5D clue: Rip into bits, as paper
Answer: SHRED

Framework, the company that makes laptops designed for optimal repairability, announced a new version of its main product, a 13-inch-screen laptop. It’s called the Framework Laptop 13 Pro, and it has far better battery life, a touchscreen, and a haptic touchpad, and is fitted with Intel processors.

At an event in San Francisco today, Framework CEO Nirav Patel showed off the company’s new tech, opening with a joke about making Framework AI—something the company is very much not doing. Framework’s whole thing, after all, is aiming to give users control over the physical tech they use.

“That industry is fighting for you to own nothing, and they own everything,” Patel said about the AI industry. “We’re fighting for a future where you can own everything and be free.”

Framework used the event to detail other updates coming to its 16-inch laptop. It also showed off previews of an official developer kit and a wireless keyboard for controlling your rig from the couch.

Framework 13 Pro

The Framework Laptop 13 Pro.

Courtesy of Framework

As the name implies, the 13 Pro is a step up from the company’s last version, the Framework 13. It’s also pricier, starting at $1,199 for a DIY Edition that requires assembling the computer yourself. Prebuilt units start at $1,499 but can be upgraded with more features. Framework says it will start shipping the 13 Pro in June.

Framework’s signature move for its products is the ability to take the thing apart. The 13 Pro is made with that ethos in mind, so its parts can be easily swapped out, upgraded, or replaced. Four Thunderbolt 4 interfaces let you pick which ports (USB-C, HDMI, etc.) you want and then choose where to place them. Framework says it planned the laptop with cross-generation compatibility in mind, so current Framebook 13 laptop owners will be able to use new 13 Pro parts like the mainboard, display, and battery, and put them into their existing machine.

The big changes in the guts of the 13 Pro come from Framework’s shift away from using an AMD processor to Intel’s Core Ultra Series 3 processors, which Framework described in its press release as “just insanely efficient.” That efficiency, along with a bigger battery, translates to more than 20 hours of battery life while streaming 4K Netflix videos, at least that’s the claim. That’s almost 12 hours longer than the Framework 13.

Courtesy of Framework

Courtesy of Framework

Why does a chocolatier build a railroad? For Milton S. Hershey, it was a logical response to a sugar shortage brought on by World War I. The Hershey Chocolate Co. was by then a chocolate-making powerhouse, having refined the automation and mass production of its products, including the eponymous Hershey’s Milk Chocolate Bar and the bite-size Hershey’s Kiss. To satisfy its many customers, the company needed a steady supply of sugar. Plus, it wanted a way to circumvent the American Sugar Refining Co., also known as the Sugar Trust, which had a virtual monopoly on sugar processing in the United States.

Why Did Hershey Build an Electric Railroad in Cuba?

Beginning in 1916, Hershey looked to Cuba to secure his sugar supply. According to historian Thomas R. Winpenny, the chocolate magnate had a “personal infatuation” with the lush, beautiful island. What’s more, U.S. business interests there were protected by a treaty known as the Platt Amendment, which made Cuba a satellite state of the United States.

Like many industrialists of the day, Hershey believed in vertical integration, and the company’s Cuban operation eventually expanded to include five sugar plantations, five modern sugar mills, a refinery, several company towns, and an oil-fired power plant with three substations to run it all.

A 1943 rail pass entitled the holder to travel on all ordinary passenger trains of the Hershey Electric Railway. Hershey Community Archives

The company also built a railroad. To maximize the sugar yield, the cane needed to be ground promptly after being cut, and the rail system offered an efficient means of transporting the cane to the mills, and ensured that the mills operated around the clock during the harvest. By 1920, one of Hershey’s three main sites was processing 135,000 tonnes of cane, yielding 14.4 million kilograms of sugar.

Initially, the Hershey Cuban Railway consisted of a single 56-kilometer-long standard gauge track on which ran seven steam locomotives that burned coal or oil. But due to the high cost of the imported fuel and the inefficiency of the locomotives, Hershey began electrifying the line in 1920. Although it was the first electrified train in Cuba, rail lines in Europe and the United States were already being electrified.

In addition to powering the various Hershey entities, the generating station supplied Matanzas and the smaller towns with electricity. F.W. Peters of General Electric’s Railway and Traction Engineering Department published a detailed account of the system in the April 1920 General Electric Review.

Hershey’s Company Towns

The company town of Central Hershey became the headquarters for Hershey’s Cuba operations. (“Central” is the Cuban term for a mill and the surrounding settlement.) It sat on a plateau overlooking the port of Santa Cruz del Norte, about halfway between Havana and Matanzas in the heart of Cuba’s sugarcane region.

Hershey imported the industrial utopian model he had established in Hershey, Penn., which was itself inspired by Richard and George Cadbury’s Bournville Village outside Birmingham, England.

The chocolate magnate Milton S. Hershey had a “personal infatuation” with Cuba.Underwood Archives/Getty Images

In Cuba as in Pennsylvania, Hershey’s factory complex was complemented by comfortable homes for his workers and their families, as well as swimming pools, baseball fields, and affordable medical clinics staffed with doctors, nurses, and dentists. Managers had access to a golf course and country club in Central Hershey. Schools provided free education for workers’ children.

Milton Hershey himself had very little formal education, and so in 1909 he and his wife, Catherine, established the Hershey Industrial School in Hershey, Penn. There, white, male orphans received an education until they were 18 years old. Now known as the Milton Hershey School, the school has broadened its admission criteria considerably over the years.

Hershey duplicated this concept in the Cuban company town of Central Rosario, founding the Hershey Agricultural School. The first students were children whose parents had died in a horrific 1923 train accident on the Hershey Electric Railway. The high-speed, head-on collision between two trains killed 25 people and injured 50 more.

Milton Hershey was a generous philanthropist, and by most accounts he truly cared for his employees and their welfare, and yet his early 20th-century paternalism was not without fault. He was a fierce opponent of union activity, and any hard-won pay increases for workers often came at the expense of profit-sharing benefits. Like other U.S. businessmen in Cuba, Hershey employed migrant seasonal labor from neighboring Caribbean islands, undercutting the wages of local workers. Historians are still wrangling with how to capture the long-lasting effects of U.S. economic imperialism on Cuba.

Can the Hershey Electric Railway Be Revived?

Hershey continued to acquire new sugar plantations in Cuba throughout the 1920s, eventually owning about 24,300 hectares and leasing another 12,000 hectares. In 1946, a year after Milton Hershey’s death and amid growing political uncertainty on the island, the company sold its Cuban interests to the Cuban Atlantic Sugar Co. In addition to Hershey’s sugar operations, the sale included a peanut oil plant, four electric plants, and 404 km of railroad track plus locomotives and train cars.

Service on the Hershey Electric Railway in Cuba continued into at least the 2010s but became increasingly sporadic, with aging equipment like this car at the Central Hershey station. Hershey Community Archives

The Central Hershey sugar refinery continued to operate even after the Cuban Revolution but eventually closed in 2002. Passenger service, meanwhile, continued on the Hershey Electric Railway, albeit sporadically: By 2012, there were only two trips a day between Havana and Matanzas. This video, from 2013, gives a good sense of the route:

A colleague of mine who studies Cuban history told me that in his travels to the country over almost 30 years, he has never been able to ride the Hershey electric train. It was always out of service or had restricted service due to the island’s chronic electricity shortages, which have only gotten worse in recent years. I’ve been trying to find out if any part of the line is still operating. If you happen to know, please add a comment below.

Cuba’s frequent power outages make it difficult to operate the Hershey Electric Railway. In this 2009 photo, passengers await the restoration of electricity so they can continue their journey.Adalberto Roque/AFP/Getty Images

A 2024 analysis of the economic potential and challenges of reactivating Cuba’s Hershey Electric Railway noted that an electric railway could be a hedge against climate change and geopolitical factors. But it also acknowledged that frequent power outages and damaged infrastructure argue against reactivating the electrified railway, and it favored the diesel engines used on most of Cuba’s rail network.

Cuba has been mostly off-limits to U.S. tourists for my entire life, but it was one of my grandmother’s favorite vacation spots. I would love to imagine a future where political ties are restored, the power grid is stabilized, and the Hershey Electric Railway is reopened to the Cuban public and to curious visitors like me.

Part of a continuing series looking at historical artifacts that embrace the boundless potential of technology.

An abridged version of this article appears in the May 2026 print issue as “This Chocolate Empire Ran on Electric Rails.”

If there’s one thing the gaming industry loves more than hype cycles, it’s a good ol’ value shake-up. And right now, Xbox Game Pass is right in the middle of one. Microsoft has officially cut prices across Game Pass tiers, making the service easier on the wallet at a time when subscription fatigue is very, very real. But, as always, there’s a twist. And it’s a big one.

The price drop that comes with a twist

Let’s get the numbers out of the way first, because they’re genuinely compelling. Xbox Game Pass Ultimate has dropped from $29.99 to $22.99 per month, while PC Game Pass now costs $13.99 instead of $16.49. That’s not pocket change. Over a year, that’s a noticeable saving, especially for players juggling multiple subscriptions.

But here’s the catch. New entries from Call of Duty are no longer launching day one on the service. Instead, they’ll arrive much later, roughly a year after release. Just to be clear, older Call of Duty titles aren’t going anywhere, so the back catalog remains intact. What’s gone is the instant access to one of gaming’s biggest annual releases, which, let’s be honest, was a huge part of Game Pass’s flex.

The community is… conflicted

The reaction? Exactly as chaotic as expected. There’s a sizable chunk of genuinely relieved players. You see, not everyone subscribes to Game Pass for Call of Duty, and for those users, this feels like getting a discount without losing anything meaningful. If COD wasn’t part of the weekly rotation anyway, the lower price is a straight-up win.

Then there’s the other side. For a lot of players, Game Pass built its reputation on the idea of “pay once, play everything day one.” Losing a flagship franchise from that promise feels like a crack in the foundation. It’s not just about Call of Duty; it’s about what this could mean going forward.

Microsoft just lowered Game Pass prices while quietly removing Call of Duty Day One launches.

They’re charging you less for a worse product and calling it ‘a response to feedback’.

Don’t fall for the trap.

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It’s a downgrade disguised as marketing. pic.twitter.com/xn7dFQmcvw

— Yorch Torch Games (@YorchTorchGames) April 21, 2026

And then comes the third wave of takes, arguably the most interesting. Some fans are now asking if Microsoft should go even further and start trimming other bundled perks like EA Play or Fortnite Crew to reduce prices even more.

The thinking is simple. If removing one expensive piece lowers the cost, why not customize the whole thing?

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Why Microsoft drew the line here

Here’s where the conversation shifts from emotional to practical. Call of Duty isn’t just another title in a catalog. It’s a yearly blockbuster with a massive, loyal player base that often buys the game regardless of subscriptions. That creates a strange value mismatch. Either players were going to pay for it anyway, or they didn’t care about it much in the first place.

Xbox gave up more than $300 million in sales of Call of Duty on consoles and PCs last year – Bloomberg

From Microsoft’s perspective, that makes it an incredibly expensive inclusion with limited upside. Worse, it likely eats into direct sales, turning what should be a revenue driver into a cost center. And while some fans are calling for more cuts, like removing EA Play, it’s not so simple. Game Pass thrives on being an all-in-one ecosystem. Start unbundling too much, and it risks turning into a fragmented, pick-and-pay service that loses its identity.

With Microsoft even exploring bundling services like Netflix into Game Pass, stripping away more perks would start to chip away at its whole “all-in-one” appeal. At that point, it’s not a powerhouse bundle anymore; it’s just a menu with items missing.

The End of “Too Good to Be True”?

For years, Xbox Game Pass felt like a cheat code. Day-one AAA games, a massive library, and a price that almost didn’t make sense. But eventually, reality caught up. Keeping a giant like Call of Duty in that mix from day one was always going to be expensive, and more importantly, unsustainable.

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And honestly, this change feels like Microsoft finally admitting that. Instead of hiking prices even further, they’ve trimmed one of the costliest perks and made the service more accessible again. It’s not perfect, and sure, some fans will miss the old days, but this feels less like a downgrade and more like a smart reset. Not as flashy, but a lot more built to last.

Summary: Bloomberg frames Apple’s CEO transition as a bet on “Jobs-era decisiveness,” with John Ternus expected to centralise decision-making and move faster on AI, where Apple’s models trail year-old competitors and the Siri overhaul has been delayed three times since 2024. He inherits a product roadmap spanning a foldable iPhone, smart glasses, and a HomePad, plus a supply chain shifting to India under tariff pressure, EUR 500 million in EU DMA fines, and a Vision Pro whose sales plunged 95%, while no major analyst downgraded the stock and the closest historical parallel is Nadella’s transformation of Microsoft.

Bloomberg’s framing of the Apple CEO transition, published the morning after the announcement, was pointed: the company is betting that John Ternus will bring back “Jobs-era decisiveness.” The implication is that Tim Cook’s consensus-driven leadership style, which produced $416 billion in annual revenue and a $4 trillion market capitalisation, was nonetheless too slow for a moment that demands faster and harder choices about artificial intelligence, product strategy, and a supply chain under geopolitical pressure. Ternus is expected to take a more centralised approach as a singular decision-maker, and Bloomberg reports he had already overhauled the hardware engineering organisation in early April around a new AI platform designed to accelerate product development.

The reorganisation is already visible. Johny Srouji, now chief hardware officer, has split the combined hardware group into five divisions: hardware engineering under Tom Marieb, silicon under Sri Santhanam, advanced technologies under Zongjian Chen, platform architecture under Tim Millet, and project management under Donny Nordhues. The structure concentrates technical leadership while giving Ternus a flatter reporting chain than Cook maintained. Bloomberg also notes that Ternus “opposed” both the Vision Pro headset and the cancelled autonomous car project “to varying degrees,” a detail that suggests sharper product instincts about what not to ship.

The AI deficit

The most urgent challenge Ternus inherits is an AI strategy that has fallen visibly behind. Apple’s server-based model is rated behind OpenAI’s year-old GPT-4o. Human raters preferred Meta’s Llama 4 Scout over Apple’s cloud model in image analysis tests. The company’s on-device models run at approximately 150 billion parameters. The custom Gemini model Apple licensed from Google under a deal announced in January, estimated at roughly $1 billion per year, is a 1.2-trillion-parameter mixture-of-experts architecture, eight times larger than what Apple built internally.

The Siri overhaul that was supposed to demonstrate Apple’s AI competence has been delayed repeatedly. Originally targeted for iOS 18 in 2024, it was pushed to spring 2025, then to spring 2026, then partially to iOS 27 in September 2026. Apple switched from a first-generation architecture to a deeper end-to-end rebuild after finding the original version could not reach the quality level required, forcing engineers to effectively start again. The Gemini-powered version is expected to reach 1.5 billion daily Siri users through iOS 26.4, but the delays have already postponed the HomePad smart home hub, which depends on the upgraded assistant, from spring to autumn.

Ternus’s own framing of the AI challenge is patient. “I think Apple Intelligence is going to continue to grow, and it’ll just make things you do better and easier,” he told Tom’s Guide this month. “If we’re doing it right, people won’t even really notice or think about it.” The philosophy is coherent, but consumers have not been convinced that AI features justify new hardware purchases, and the gap between Apple’s capabilities and those of its competitors continues to widen. Gene Munster, the longtime Apple analyst now at Deepwater Asset Management, said Ternus has “an opportunity to supercharge AAPL’s multiple by changing the narrative, which is the biggest opportunity in big tech.” He expects “big hires under Ternus from AI-focused firms like Anthropic and OpenAI.”

The product roadmap

The hardware pipeline for 2026 and 2027 is the most ambitious Apple has attempted in years, and it falls squarely within Ternus’s domain of expertise. A foldable iPhone is expected alongside the iPhone 18 Pro in September, with a book-style design and an internal display roughly the size of an iPad mini at a higher price point than existing models. Apple is testing at least four frame designs for AI smart glasses targeting mass production in late 2026 or early 2027, with projected shipments of three to five million units in the launch year. The glasses will not be standalone devices: they rely on a connected iPhone for processing, meaning their success depends on the Siri overhaul that has already been delayed three times.

The M5 generation of Apple Silicon is rolling out across the Mac lineup. The Vision Pro, which shipped roughly 390,000 units in its launch year before sales plunged 95% to an estimated 80,000 to 90,000 units in 2025, is being deprioritised. Apple cut its marketing spend on the headset by up to 95% and is shifting engineering resources toward the smart glasses projects. The $2 billion acquisition of Q.ai, the Israeli silent speech AI startup, signals the kind of sensor-driven, ambient AI that lightweight wearables could eventually enable.

Supply chain under pressure

The tariff environment has improved but remains volatile. The Supreme Court ruled in February that Trump’s IEEPA-based reciprocal tariffs were unconstitutional, potentially triggering more than $175 billion in refunds to importers. Trump immediately imposed a 10% blanket tariff under Section 122 with no product exemptions. Apple imports more than $100 billion worth of goods from China annually and is accelerating plans to shift all US-bound iPhone production to India by the end of this year, which requires doubling its current Indian manufacturing capacity.

The regulatory burden in the EU continues to expand. The European Commission fined Apple EUR 500 million for DMA anti-steering violations in April 2025 and gave the company 60 days to comply. The Coalition for App Fairness has accused Apple of “persistent non-compliance” six months later. Interoperability requirements are forcing Apple to open APIs for NFC, default browser and app settings, and messaging, while Apple Intelligence itself remains unavailable in the EU due to the same DMA constraints that have complicated its China rollout. Repeat violations carry fines of up to 10% of global revenue.

In China, Apple holds 18.9% market share behind Huawei’s 20%, but grew faster than any competitor in the first quarter with 33% year-over-year gains driven by iPhone 17 pricing and government subsidies. The structural challenge is that Huawei’s domestic supply chain insulates it from the global DRAM shortage that is constraining Apple’s production, while Chinese competitors are integrating domestic AI capabilities that Apple cannot match in the market due to regulatory restrictions on Apple Intelligence.

What Wall Street expects

No major firm downgraded Apple or cut price targets following the announcement. Wedbush, JPMorgan, Bank of America, Melius, and Evercore all reiterated their ratings, with targets ranging from $325 to $350. BofA said “the timing of the leadership transition suggests near-term results are extremely resilient.” Evercore said the appointment “makes sense given Apple’s history of leadership rooted in the core hardware business.” Morgan Stanley said any AI strategy shift under Ternus “is likely to be long-term,” suggesting Apple will avoid the aggressive AI spending seen at competitors.

The stock fell just over 1% on the first trading day, a reaction analysts attributed to timing surprise rather than fundamental concern. Raymond James offered the most measured assessment: the transition is “incrementally positive for product innovation” but “introduces heightened execution risk at a critical juncture.”

The closest historical parallel is Satya Nadella’s appointment at Microsoft in 2014. Nadella inherited a company that was not failing but was stagnating strategically, and led a platform transition to cloud that tripled its market capitalisation in five years. Ternus inherits a company at or near peak financial performance but facing an equally fundamental question about its position in AI. The difference is that Nadella was a cloud and services leader taking Microsoft into cloud and services. Ternus is a hardware leader being asked to solve a software and AI problem. Whether that mismatch is a vulnerability or an asset, whether the person who builds the devices is best positioned to determine what intelligence runs on them, is the bet Apple’s board has made. The next 12 months, starting with WWDC on 8 June, will reveal whether it was the right one.

Itanium was once meant to be the next step in computing, to compete with the likes of IBM, Sun and DEC, but also for Intel to have an architecture that couldn’t be taken from it, as the PC was from IBM by its clones. Today, however, Itanium is a relic of the past. [Asianometry] tells us the story of Itanium.

By the ’90s, servers were an established market dominated by RISC architectures and Unix-like operating systems. Intel wanted to compete in this market, due in part to worries of losing control over x86. So, when Hewlett Packard came to Intel in late ’93, Intel eventually agreed to collaborate on a new project in EPIC (Explicitly Parallel Instruction Computing).

The project initially called PA-WW (later IA-64 and Itanium), was also a radical approach to ILP (Instruction-Level Parallelism). As HP engineers saw RISC architectures potentially hitting performance limits in the future, the idea was a compromise between fully compiler-driven VLIW and the fully hardware-driven superscalar and out-of-order computers.

The collaboration between Intel and HP did not go without problems, however. Internal politics, both between HP and Intel disagreeing about design choices and Intel’s Itanium and x86 teams internally competing who was making the new big product, were early signs of trouble. The x86 team’s work eventually came to be the Pentium Pro, which was now catching up with the fastest RISC architectures.

In the mean time, Itanium had been delayed once and twice, due to Intel underestimating the true scale of the project and the fabrication technology required. The mounting delays eventually caused a release in 2003, 4 years late. And the competition wasn’t waiting in the mean time. New RISC chips were still being released year after year, eating in to what would have been Itanium’s performance advantage.

In an ironic twist, Itanium’s attempt to dislodge x86 actually solidified it. AMD realized that Intel had made a mistake; software developers would not want to recompile for a completely different architecture. And so, yet more competition began in the form of AMD’s 64-bit extension to x86, the specification written by the legendary Jim Keller. And, while sales numbers were lower than projected, AMD had still won; more AMD64 chips were being sold than Itanium ones.

In the end, Itanium died a slow death due to delays and increasing competition. With it, AMD made a major change to x86, the first time Intel was on the back foot in the x86 race, eventually leading to their adoption of AMD64 (now called x86-64) with some minor changes. By the time Itanium 2 launched, the writing was on the wall: Itanium had failed to capture the market.

History often rhymes, and so does the story of Itanium to that of VLIW; an architecture perhaps too ambitious for its own good.

Die shots of an Intel Itanium processor courtesy of [der8auer].

Dr. Semiconductor transformed an ordinary garden shed into a facility for the assembly of actual working memory chips. He had already set up the air filters and controls a few months before to maintain dust levels low enough to allow for careful operations.

The materials needed began with silicon wafers, which served as the operation’s base. Each one was broken down into tiny pieces with highly exact cuts following natural crystal lines, just to prepare them ready for what was to come. The wafers were then cleaned with acetone and isopropanol to remove any surface imperfections that might cause problems later. Once they were thoroughly cleaned, they were placed in a furnace set to 1,100 degrees Celsius. An oxide layer began to grow on the surface and increased to a thickness of approximately 3,300 angstroms, since this insulating barrier serves as the foundation for all subsequent transistors and capacitors.

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To begin creating the circuit layout, a slurry of photoresist and liftoff resist was spun evenly across the oxide. The appropriate pattern masks were then applied, allowing ultraviolet light to reveal the necessary locations. The photoresist that was exposed to UV light was then scraped away, revealing clear pathways to the silicon beneath, where the circuitry will be created. Then dry etching was used to cut out the paths all the way through the silicon.

The areas were then converted into conductors by doping them; all that was required was to lay a phosphorus-rich glass on top, then heat and anneal it at high temperatures, and all of the phosphorus atoms ended up in the silicon. This constructed the routes that each transistor need to function. Following that, a second round of resist coating and ultraviolet patterning specified the transistor gates and capacitor plates. This time, another oxide layer began to form in similar locations, but it was thinner, measuring around 20 nanometers, and the furnace temperature was slightly lower, at 950 degrees Celsius. This oxide layer was more limited in the amount of charge it could carry.

The next step was using hydrofluoric acid to create microscopic holes in the oxide where the metal would eventually be bonded. Next, a thin, uniform layer of metal was formed using a technique called sputtering. When the resist was removed with a solvent bath, the metal gates, contacts, and capacitor caps remained in their respective placements. That was it; the 5by4 array was built and placed on the wafer, with transistor gates smaller than a micron and each cell measuring a mere micrometer across.

Probes made contact with the finished cells to begin the first tests, and when a small voltage was supplied to the gate, the transistor flashed on and off exactly as it should. A capacitor was charged to 3 volts and then held for around 2 milliseconds before slowly leaking away. The fact that it didn’t carry that charge for very long meant that the cells needed to be updated far more frequently than the memory inside a standard computer, but the basic principle worked perfectly. Data entered and exited through the transistor switch, just as it does with DRAM in principle.
[Source]