Author: sick skills

Apple is expanding its presence in Sunnyvale once again by leasing a 125,800-square-foot building. If history repeats itself, Apple will buy it within a year.

Companies with a massive workforce are always on the lookout for more office space. In the case of Apple, it will be adding one more location to its roster in Sunnyvale.

According to sources of the Mercury News, Apple has agreed to lease a building located at 580 North Mary Avenue in Sunnyvale. The property, which weighs in at 125,800 square foot of office space, is being leased from the Bay Area real estate firm Peery Arrillaga.

The terms of the lease have not been leaked yet, but it will certainly cost Apple millions per year to occupy.

A building buying spree

While the property is being leased for the moment, Apple has the potential to buy it at a later time. This has become a habit of the company, choosing to lease before acquiring it fully.

Apple’s June purchase of office space in June demonstrates this perfectly.

After leasing the office building at 684 W. Maude Avenue in Peery Park, Sunnyvale in 2025, Apple waited until later in the year to close the deal to purchase it. That 194,624 square foot property cost Apple $162.2 million, which was a considerable discount from its $222 million sale price in 2022.

Its Silicon Valley real estate moves in the area has also included a 2025 acquisition of a two-building campus in North Mathilda for $350 million. That was closely followed by another four-building Mathilda campus just next door for $365 million.

The same year, Apple paid $160 million for a 220,700-square-foot building in the Tantau office complex, close to Apple Park.

In this week’s Sunday Reboot, Apple’s AI model-shrinking talk could have massive benefits, with a chance of also being a billion-dollar deal if it plays its cards right.

Sunday Reboot is a weekly column covering some of the lighter stories within the Apple reality distortion field from the past seven days. All to get the next week underway with a good first step.

Small AI models, big pricing

Back on July 9, a startup in the AI world gained a lot of attention. PrismML used the mythical power of mathematics and science to somehow cut down the size of large language models (LLMs) by a considerable amount.

The process resulted in models like the 54GB Qwen 3.6 being compressed down to an astoundingly tiny 4GB. That’s a 27 billion-parameter model being smushed down to a size that would fit on some promotional USB thumb drives from back in the day.

While there was some suspicion that Apple was looking at the startup, it was confirmed by PrismML itself on July 14. In an interview, PrismML CEO Babak Hassibi said that Apple and other companies were evaluating the work of its technology.

Hassibi’s public confirmation was an interesting one, especially since Apple has a tendency to NDA everything it does with other companies. While it is unknown if Apple did the same with PrismML, Hassibi seems confident enough in the tech to ignore the possible ire from a potentially massive client.

I say “client” because this sort of important thing in the current AI-centric market warrants acquisition talks. It’s something that, if one company buys PrismML and makes the tech exclusive to it, the buyer then has a serious advantage over the rest of the industry.

An acquisition is entirely a possibility for Apple, based on the July 15 report about the reign of John Ternus is believed that Apple is showing signs of changing its acquisition tactics, from spending hundreds of millions on a single company to spending billions.

It’s an extremely small change. What’s an extra decimal place between friends?

This sort of advantage could well be valued at the billion-dollar level to Apple, if it does acquire the startup. That said, it would also require the startup to be willing to be purchased, too.

Hassibi’s interview doesn’t really seem like someone willing to sell up. It feels more like he’s trying to get more attention from other AI firms to create a bidding war, if the company does want to be sold.

The alternative is that he’s trying to secure as many lucrative licensing agreements as possible from AI companies in general. All while remaining independent.

Either route seems like a win for PrismML.

On-device advantage

For Apple, if the technology is sound, it has big benefits, specifically for its aim of increasing the amount of on-device processing.

Apple’s current problem is that iPhones don’t have massive amounts of memory, nor do most entry-level consumer devices. While some AI-related tasks can be performed with on-device processing, it can get offloaded to a cloud server.

The remote processing can perform much bigger tasks and workloads than a smartphone. Partly because of the higher amount of processing capability, but mostly because the server can have massive amounts of memory to handle the sizable models in the first place.

Apple has managed to use a process of distillation and training to recreate some of Google Gemini’s functionality in a smaller iPhone-friendly model. But something like PrismML could be a force multiplier.

Not only could the big models potentially work entirely on an iPhone in the first place, but these distilled models could get even smaller. That frees up more memory for processing the tasks that use these distilled models.

Add in the continuing improvements in AI processing that are coming down the line, and a future iPhone could be an absolute beast.

Better AI on more hardware

There’s also the possibility of Apple doing something completely unexpected: expanding Apple Intelligence’s reach.

During WWDC, Apple said that the most powerful on-device models would be available only on specific iPhone and Mac models. That includes the iPhone Air and iPhone 17 Pro with 12GB of memory, the M4 iPad also with 12GB of memory, and an M3 Mac with the same memory or better.

While processing is a factor, memory is certainly going to be another. It’s not hard to imagine Apple using the PrismML tech to cut the size of that “most powerful on-device model” to fit into the smaller memory allowances of earlier models.

Extrapolating that further, maybe Apple could expand the availability of Apple Intelligence to older, lower-specification devices.

Sure, there are some tradeoffs, such as much slower processing of tasks. Owners of older hardware would probably be fine with that.

PrismML is a prime opportunity for Apple to take a massive leap when it comes to AI.

If it wants to dominate the field when it comes to on-device processing, it has a chance to take a very major step toward that goal.

Last week’s Sunday Reboot talked about the iPhone 17 Pro Max going into a time capsule for 250 years, and pondered if it will emerge in one piece.

Apple has continued to put the prices up for its online services, with iCloud+ rising in cost in a number of territories.

Over the course of a few days, Apple has been increasing the prices of its various online services. Not to be left behind, iCloud+ has now upped its prices to join the rest of the roster.

The change, revealed by Apple’s iCloud+ pricing support page, doesn’t outright say what countries are affected by the pricing. However, comparisons with previous pricing, including via the Wayback Machine, shows it affects eight countries in total.

The affected countries, seeing higher iCloud pricing, include:

• Egypt
• Indonesia
• Japan
• New Zealand
• Nigeria
• Philippines
• Turkiye
• Vietnam

The price increases vary between territories, but fall in the range of 17% to 30%. For example, the 50GB plan was 150 yen per month but is now 180 yen, up 20%.

Pricing in other markets, including the United States and United Kingdom, remains unchanged. The perks of iCloud+ also hasn’t changed, including Hide My Email, iCloud Private Relay, a custom email domain, and HomeKit Secure Video support.

While Apple hasn’t explained why the prices have changed, it is most likely the company periodically accounting for changes in currency conversion.

Other price upgrades this week include Apple One, Apple Music, and AppleCare+.

Apple stock ended trading on Friday as the world’s most valuable publicly traded company, overtaking Nvidia for the first time since April 2025 after a sustained recovery for the iPhone maker met a sharp selloff in chip stocks.

Apple shares closed at $333.74, leaving the company with a market capitalization of approximately $4.88 CAP trillion. Nvidia ended down about 3.5% on the day, with a value of about $4.86 trillion.

The distinction is largely symbolic, and a lead this narrow could disappear during the next trading session, if not in after-hours trading over the weekend. Still, Apple’s return to the top caps a striking reversal from the tariff, China, and artificial intelligence concerns that weighed on its shares the last time it held the position.

Apple took a difficult route back to the top

Apple entered the spring of 2025 facing doubts about whether its first Apple Intelligence rollout could drive meaningful upgrades. The company confirmed on March 7 that its more personalized Siri features were taking longer than expected.

Tariff fears added a more immediate financial threat. Apple shares lost about 15% during the first half of 2025 as investors considered the company’s reliance on Asian manufacturing.

At the time, Tim Cook warned that tariffs could add about $900 million in costs during the June quarter. It ultimately paid $800 million, but has filed for a refund of those, which Apple says will be used to expand US manufacturing.

Nvidia moved in the opposite direction. Surging demand for AI processors carried the chipmaker back to the top of the market in June 2025, past $4 trillion the following month, and briefly beyond $5 trillion in October.

Apple’s underlying business nevertheless began producing results that were difficult for Wall Street to dismiss. Revenue rose 10% to $94 billion during the June 2025 quarter, followed by an 8% increase to $102.5 billion during the September quarter.

Strong early demand for the iPhone 17 helped Apple reach a $4 trillion valuation in October. Services continued producing record revenue and substantially higher margins than the company’s hardware divisions.

Momentum accelerated during fiscal 2026. Apple reported an all-time record of $143.8 billion for the holiday period, up 16%, followed by a March-quarter record of $111.2 billion, up 17%.

The March quarter set records for total revenue, iPhone revenue, earnings per share, and Services. Greater China returned to strong growth despite earlier concerns over local competition and delayed Apple Intelligence features.

Wall Street changed how it views Apple’s AI strategy

Apple previewed Siri AI at WWDC in June, demonstrating the personal context, onscreen awareness, app control, and conversational features promised in 2024. The technology is due with the fall operating-system updates and is already available to beta testers.

The launch reinforced Apple’s strategy of adding AI to products and services without matching the massive infrastructure spending of Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, and Meta. As investors question those returns, Apple can leave much of the model and data-center expense to partners while distributing AI features across more than two billion active devices.

Apple is also nearing its first CEO transition since 2011. Tim Cook will become executive chairman on September 1, with hardware engineering chief John Ternus succeeding him, but the planned handoff has done little to slow the stock’s rise.

Nvidia’s decline helped Apple finish the job

Apple didn’t retake the top position because of a single announcement or earnings report. Its valuation recovered over more than a year, while Nvidia’s decline on Friday erased enough market value to allow Apple to move ahead.

Nvidia’s role in the AI industry hasn’t diminished. Its processors remain central to the data-center expansion that pushed the company past Apple, and even a modest rebound could reverse their positions again.

Apple’s return instead suggests Wall Street no longer sees massive AI spending as the only credible path to growth.

After spending much of 2025 as the industry’s most conspicuous AI laggard, record iPhone sales, Services growth, a China recovery, and a tangible Siri roadmap have made Apple’s restraint look more like strategy than failure.

Amazon’s $400 discount on Apple’s high-end 16-inch MacBook Pro with an M5 Max chip and 2TB SSD is available now, with delivery as early as tomorrow for Prime members.

The M5 Max 16-inch MacBook Pro is on sale for $3,999 at Amazon in your choice of Space Black or Silver. This high-end configuration has Apple’s M5 Max chip with an 18-core CPU and 32-core GPU, along with 36GB of unified memory and a spacious 2TB SSD.

Save $400 on M5 Max 16″ MacBook Pro

Continue Reading on AppleInsider | Discuss on our Forums

Apple has now announced who can advertise on Apple Maps, barring entire business categories while still giving itself the right to final say over any advertisements on the platform.

On Tuesday, Apple updated its advertising guidelines. This was particularly noteworthy as it outlines the policies that advertisers will be expected to follow when advertising on Apple Maps.

Perhaps not surprisingly, Apple’s policies are generally more restrictive than Google’s across some key categories. This has typically been the case for content moderation between the two services.

For instance, Apple Maps has placed strict prohibitions on certain advertising categories outright. Banned categories include bail bonding services and cryptocurrency ATMs.

It also prohibits any home services. This would include plumbers, electricians, HVAC, roofing, and more; Apple does not explain the rationale for excluding these categories.

Google generally allows these categories to advertise, subject to local law and other advertising policies.

And while Apple hasn’t outright banned medical services, it does note that any such ad “will be evaluated on a case-by-case basis.” Google will generally allow medical ads, assuming they are compliant with local laws.

Apple has also fully banned political advertising, though this is not exclusive to Apple Maps. Google allows political advertising on Google Maps and other categories.

Apple Maps ads will be expected to comply with the whole of Apple advertising policy. This means that ads must be presented clearly and advertisers cannot send users to unrelated pages or use misleading claims.

Generally, Apple reserves broader discretion to reject ads, even if they’re not directly in violation of a rule. Google, on the other hand, tends to allow most things that don’t violate any of its listed criteria.

Coming to a Maps app near you

Apple Maps ads are only now beginning to roll out after years of speculation. Initially, it was believed that the tech giant was weighing the pros and cons of integrated ads in 2022.

Reports later suggested the advertisements would surface in 2023. However, the feature failed to materialize in 2023, 2024, or 2025.

Speculation resumed in late 2025, with reports once again hinting to a 2026 launch. Apple officially confirmed those plans in March 2026 with the launch of Apple Business, announcing that advertising would begin rolling out to Apple Maps during Summer 2026.