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TBPN is a live tech talk show hosted by John Coogan and Jordi Hays, streaming weekdays from 11–2 PT on X and YouTube, with full episodes posted to Spotify immediately after airing.
Described by The New York Times as “Silicon Valley’s newest obsession,” TBPN has interviewed Mark Zuckerberg, Sam Altman, Mark Cuban, and Satya Nadella. Diet TBPN delivers the best moments from each episode in under 30 minutes.
And without further ado, we have Mark Gurman.
Speaker 2:The Gurman here.
Speaker 1:Managing editor of Bloomberg in the Ultradome. Welcome to the show. Thank so much for taking the time to come on down. Right there? Yeah.
Speaker 1:Right here. K. We'll have this microphone for you. You have Diet Coke, so you're locked in.
Speaker 2:Yeah. We're ready to go.
Speaker 1:How have you been? How's your New Year going so far?
Speaker 2:Oh, freaking great. Yeah? Yeah. Had a my wife and I had a baby last year.
Speaker 1:Gong. Gong. Gong. Big Gong. I need to get one of those things that you guys make on the Twitter and Yeah.
Speaker 2:Just me. The card. Baby.
Speaker 1:Baby. I wanna be happy to do that. We're happy to do it. We never we never yeah.
Speaker 3:We never we never know. Some people some people wanna be, you know, more low key about
Speaker 2:Oh, I am low key about it. I just figured, you know
Speaker 3:But but how do you how do you rate parenthood? How does it how does it feel being in it versus, you know, all the expectations that that people have?
Speaker 2:It's just taking care of this Yeah. Individual and they they're being so reliant on us and Yeah. Getting to to teach them. But shout out to my wife for Yeah. Being the one really Yeah.
Speaker 2:Pulling the strings there and taking care. So it's great. Anyway I feel
Speaker 3:like I feel like reporting in parenthood are especially hard to balance in some ways.
Speaker 2:Still early.
Speaker 3:Well, I would yeah. No. I I would I would just like, obviously, it's completely possible and you're you're clearly doing fine. But the nature of the work means that, a story is happening and you wanna be the first to provide the best coverage. And sometimes, you know There's a baby crying.
Speaker 3:You. Yeah.
Speaker 1:And you might not be able to pick up the phone.
Speaker 3:But But you get through.
Speaker 2:You know what? People people have been hearing crying babies over the phone for That's true. For for forever. So they'll have to deal with it. I just can't wait till we go on an airplane.
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah.
Speaker 3:Oh, yeah.
Speaker 2:I already told my wife, yeah, know, we're gonna get like banned from American Airlines. Like
Speaker 3:No. I've I've said this on the show before. I I like the funniest thing is growing up, I assume that when a baby was crying on the airplane, it means that the parents were bad parents. Like, they were doing something wrong.
Speaker 1:Totally. Totally.
Speaker 3:And in reality, babies just cry Yeah. For a million reasons. And it's it's totally possible that there's no solution sometimes. They just need
Speaker 1:a Yeah. I saw like an Instagram reel of of a mother talking about her kid and the kid was crying in the background. I was like, why would you take advice from her? Like, that's such a bad bond. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Has nothing to do with that. It's not good at all. It's like now, it's like, baby's always crying.
Speaker 2:It's crazy. Hungry. They have gas.
Speaker 1:They
Speaker 2:don't like the sweater they're wearing.
Speaker 1:There's a million reasons.
Speaker 2:You know, they didn't like my article. You know, like who who knows? But anyways Anyway. Let's talk about Apple.
Speaker 1:Don't talk about Apple. I mean, we've been talking about new Siri expectations there. The big news yesterday was Claude Bot. Have you been do do you think there's anything about have you been how have you been processing the Claude Bot, now Molt Bot story? What's possible there?
Speaker 1:Expectations around AI assistants feel sky high in the open source community. What do you do you think, like, anyone at Apple's, like, updating on Claude Bot and Molt Bot and what's possible?
Speaker 2:Well, let me just take a step Please. Yeah. Yeah. You know, with Apple and AI. Yeah.
Speaker 2:So in '20 what is it? 2018, they hired John, Jean Andrea. He was this high flyer at Google. He ran AI and search. And Apple thought they had a coup here.
Speaker 2:Apple thought they would hire this guy and really just hit the ground running and be at the forefront of artificial intelligence. Just seven years earlier, they announced Siri. In 2011, there was absolutely nothing like it. It was breakthrough. Yeah.
Speaker 2:But then it just became utter junk. Yeah. Right? Google assistant lapped it. Alexa lapped it.
Speaker 2:So they thought they were gonna bring this guy in and it'd be a game changer. Turns out, and maybe this will be Tim Cook's fate to Compli, but this was the biggest mistake this hire of Tim Cook's tenure. I think it's easy to say. Mhmm. Apple is so behind in AI.
Speaker 2:There has been so much ink spilled on this and so many conversations on this and I've written about and talked about it half a million times. I think it does you haven't even scratched the surface about how big of a problem this is for Apple. Mhmm. Right? They've completely screwed up AI in every which way, And it comes down to just hiring the wrong people and entrusting the wrong people.
Speaker 3:But is it a do nothing win scenario? Because I think we're seeing a situation now where the Mac Mini might end up selling out stocks seems fine.
Speaker 1:Or is it are seeing like financial
Speaker 2:the stock that's the problem. Sure. Right? When you've had no real negative hit
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:It's hard to
Speaker 3:Go wartime. Go wartime.
Speaker 1:Right? And acknowledge that there's failure because all the numbers
Speaker 2:are full. It is wartime.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Right?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:The numbers are great. Tomorrow Yeah. They might report their first 135,000,000,000 to $140,000,000,000 quarter. Right?
Speaker 1:That's good.
Speaker 2:Like,
Speaker 1:I don't, you know, the
Speaker 2:problem is, how can you put a $140,000,000,000 and Tim Cook needs to go retire in the same sentence?
Speaker 1:You can't.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Exactly. It doesn't make sense. Yeah. But when you think about the long term, you think about the future Yeah.
Speaker 2:These things are not are going to need to get rectified. Yeah. And I guess the good news is they are on a path to rectifying it to some extent. Mhmm. This Google Gemini deal is a breakthrough for Apple.
Speaker 2:It's embarrassing. Mhmm. I mean, it's absolutely crazy Mhmm.
Speaker 3:That You poach their guy and then later you're paying them And you're paying billions.
Speaker 2:He screws you up. Okay? You pay him 25,000,000 a year for eight years. Right? And then now, you're paying basically four x that, eight x that, maybe a little bit more in order to get, you know, the new good stuff.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And so, they'll announce a new Siri next month.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:The thing with this new Siri is basically a replay of everything they announced in June 2024. Yeah. So it's basically everything they announced two years ago coming very late. Things like using what's on your screen to fulfill Siri queries, being able to control your apps. And then in June is when the good stuff launches.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. That's when Apple launches its first chatbot. It's interesting because they've spent the last two years saying nobody likes chatbots. Everyone hates ChatGPT. It's terrible.
Speaker 2:It's ruining the world. K. Then you have ChatGPT Really? Nearly a billion, right, active users. So, like, okay, we kinda gotta do this or we're screwed.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So they're doing it.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And it's actually going to run on Google servers, Google Cloud platform, Google TPUs. Yep. This is great for Google too.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:And I think some people at Apple think this is going to be like a short term thing, you know, we're gonna partner with Google till we get our act together. No. I definitely think that this is more of a long term play unless these models continue to get commoditized, which they will eventually. But this is not a twelve, twenty four, thirty six month thing. This is this is longer term, I think, than people expect.
Speaker 1:And Apple can't just go wrap llama because of the terms of service that Metas put around put that around. They said you can't
Speaker 2:use They don't wanna llama. I don't think they wanna work
Speaker 1:with open Meta. Source models. So there aren't that many games in town.
Speaker 2:Well, let's take a step back here. So they're using Google Yeah. In The US. Yeah. Right?
Speaker 2:But they're gonna have to do something in China.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:And so you'll see them use a combination of Alibaba Uh-huh. And and way I think it's Weibo or Tencent or one of those. Different AIs for different features. Sure. So they'll use them.
Speaker 2:And just because they're partnering with Google Gemini on on Siri in this chatbot, doesn't mean they're not using other players. There's a lot of OpenAI and a lot of applications. They launched their creative cloud competitor Mhmm. Today, and a lot of those AI features are powered by ChatGPT, like some image generation stuff. Okay.
Speaker 2:I still think on an image generation side, you're getting a little bit better on OpenAI than you're getting from Google. And then a lot of stuff internally, like Apple runs on Anthropic at this point. Anthropic is powering a lot of the stuff Apple's doing internally in terms of product development, a lot of their internal tools. So that's a big one to watch. They have custom versions of Claude running on their own servers internally too because this Google deal, this just came together a few months ago, they were not going to use Google.
Speaker 2:Apple actually was going to rebuild Siri around Claude. Mhmm. But Anthropic, they were holding them over a barrel. They wanted a crap ton of money from them, several billion dollars a year, and at a price that doubled on an annual basis as well for the next three years or so from what I understand. At the time, Google was really an afterthought because they were in the middle of the trial with the Department of Justice.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And then, for some reason, the judge ruled that Apple and Google's deal was kosher, even though everyone knows it's a huge issue and a monopoly and all that. I'm not here to be a judge. I I write. I don't make judgments for for for legal proceedings.
Speaker 2:But anyways, Apple and Google get off scot free. Mhmm. They can do whatever they want now and, you know, they're not being held back at all. Mhmm. And then obviously, OpenAI, that is a real firestorm for Apple right now.
Speaker 2:Like, OpenAI, obviously, they're working on these AirPods competitors, the Chad GPT built
Speaker 3:Sweet Pea.
Speaker 2:Sweet Pea. Johnny Ive is, you know, running the show and design there. That's a big freaking deal.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:Okay? He raided the whole design team, all of the Apple designers that were there under Johnny Ive. Not all of them. 95% of them are gone. You know, a ton of them are now working at Love From and OpenAI and other companies.
Speaker 2:Some of them have retired. Mhmm. But the crux of it is like, how do you partner with a company that's trying to put you out of business?
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:Right? So there's no way that they were gonna work with with OpenAI Sure. No matter how good the
Speaker 3:What do you think about some of the projections that you've seen or or kinda estimates around I forget. It was Foxconn forty was saying
Speaker 1:units, which
Speaker 3:was to be able to produce something like that in the first year. It feels like a massive number, but at the same time, you have a billion users, you know.
Speaker 2:Talking about the OpenAI earbuds?
Speaker 3:Yeah. Sweet.
Speaker 2:You know, it's so interesting.
Speaker 3:And and one more thing there. Yeah. The ear the the earbuds, the benefit of them versus some of these other AI hardware is like, if you can just take calls and listen to music, like already you have some functionality that people are using all day long.
Speaker 1:Sure. Sure.
Speaker 3:So it's not the same as like wearing a pendant or having some other little gadget that like actually serves no real use case or at least not a powerful use case. If I can just listen to calls or sorry, take calls, listen to music Mhmm. At least there's like some like base level functionality and then you layer on AI and maybe it turns into this amazing, you know, super differentiated experience.
Speaker 2:I just don't see it. Mhmm. I just don't see them selling 45,000,000 units. Yeah. I just don't see it being a success.
Speaker 2:The barrier to entry for a new hardware company, as you know, is extremely high. Like, can you even think of one hardware company that just came into being and became an immediate success? Like, I just don't see it. And I also think the reason they're doing earbuds is because it's more low hanging fruit, to your point, and it's easier to accomplish. It's not what they wanted to do.
Speaker 2:Yeah. What OpenAI wanted to do is they wanted to create an iPhone killer. Yep. Instead, now they're trying to create an AirPods killer.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:And I don't think they're going to be able to accomplish that. Will they look nicer than the AirPods? Probably. Will they have better AI than the AirPods? That's an open question.
Speaker 2:Right? What stops Apple from expanding this Gemini deal to its AirPods and just basically adding a bunch of AI functionality to the AirPods? They have very fast processors, very tight iPhone integration. Apple can replicate whatever OpenAI is going to do pretty quickly by relying on Google and Gemini and whatever they can cook up functionality wise there.
Speaker 3:Do you think that AI specifically products, you know, that we had the creator of Maltbot on yesterday. He was saying like, there's so many applications and he was referencing like MyFitnessPal. Do I really need MyFitnessPal if I can just take a picture and just send it in to my agent and track it? And so what I was thinking there is like, does that make the App Store broadly potentially less of a hurdle with OpenAI is launching eventually launches a new phone and they have a new OS and don't have an app store. They don't have an app store in day one.
Speaker 1:See equivalence of apps on the fly.
Speaker 2:Well, if you ask me, you know, we're already in territory where iOS and the App Store legacy features.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:Right? Like the App Store is a legacy world. Mhmm. The iOS user experience, the Mac OS user experience where you're jumping between applications, where you're going into something to get information, where you're going back to your home screen to launch another app. Apps are the past.
Speaker 2:AI agents are already here and that's the move forward. And whenever OpenAI comes out with a phone, I do eventually anticipate them coming out with a phone. And when I say phone, I'm not talking necessarily about something you put to your ear like a classic phone like an iPhone. I'm talking about I feel like people are always gonna have some sort of slab in their pocket.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:Right? Yeah. Because it's convenient. You get the display, you get the sensors, you get the battery, you get the cameras. It's not a replicable experience no matter how many different gadgets
Speaker 3:like a banana. Like banana. Smart banana. Yeah.
Speaker 2:That would be fun. Yeah. So, yeah. AI agents are where the the world is going. And I totally expect Apple to move in this direction.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:This new Siri, Campo, that they're launching at the end of this year, that is a huge step towards the AI agentification of different features on the phone.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:And being able to, for instance, tell your phone, pull up this photo that I I took at the studio, find photos where I have bottles of water, Mhmm. And remove the bottle of water from the from the from the photo and email or text it to Mark. Right? Like, the AI agentification of iOS is happening.
Speaker 3:Sure. Yeah. And theoretically, Siri should have killed, like, the weather app a long time ago. Yeah. Because I don't like, when you think about, like, if you're just gonna navigate to the weather app and you're traveling somewhere and you're like, oh, where is this city?
Speaker 3:Oh, I don't have it saved. I'm gonna search and add it. Yeah. You're, like, finally looking at it and it should just be a prompt
Speaker 1:You sort of that you're firing. But then when you try and click a level deeper, when this in the current Siri experience, you just can't
Speaker 2:get there. That is the big problem with Siri. Yeah. And the big difference from ChatGPT and Gemini is it has the going a level deeper problem. Yep.
Speaker 2:There's no back and forth. Yep. It forgets context very easily. Yep. It has no memory.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. It doesn't have that tight integration with applications because the app developers, they know Siri is so terrible, you know. Here's a question. So Mhmm. What if I told you that you could call an Uber with Siri?
Speaker 2:Right? Like, you guys probably know that, but like, does anyone use it? I don't have the data. But I can tell you that they announced support for that and they actually rolled out
Speaker 1:ago?
Speaker 2:No. Ten years.
Speaker 1:Ten years ago.
Speaker 2:Okay? It doesn't work. And nope. Because nobody uses it. You know, it's too cumbersome.
Speaker 1:Totally.
Speaker 2:Okay? Like, I'm very tech forward as anyone watching this probably knows. You know, it's right up my alley to have Siri call my Uber for me. But like, I've never done it because you know what? I don't freaking trust Trust
Speaker 1:it. Yep. No. Yeah.
Speaker 2:It's not I don't think it's gonna work. Yeah. And it's just going to be a time suck.
Speaker 1:And people didn't trust ChatGPT with three point five, but now on 5.2 Pro
Speaker 2:I would trust with ordering it.
Speaker 1:Me too.
Speaker 2:I would trust ChatGPT with my life. Okay? Love you.
Speaker 1:You're good to hear.
Speaker 2:But Siri?
Speaker 1:Okay. So on the Siri rollout, it seems like there's a couple milestones that we're going to be tracking throughout this year. When will when do you think I'll be able to go to Siri and just say a general Google able question, you know, give me the history of the Roman Empire? The type of thing that any LLM can just pull up a couple paragraphs on, but current Siri does not have that ability.
Speaker 2:Okay. I can't tell you that you're going to be able to do it. I can tell you that you're supposed to be able to do it. How's that? I'll speak I'll speak in
Speaker 3:I just
Speaker 1:mean I just mean, that
Speaker 2:Like, what's the goal?
Speaker 1:No. No. I just mean, like, there's knowledge retrieval
Speaker 2:March.
Speaker 1:And then and then there's and then there's, like, agentification, like making, interacting with the apps, doing all the things like pulling what's in your camera roll together with your iMessage and all that. March. And that feels harder for both of those March.
Speaker 2:They're supposed to be March.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:But the latter in terms of the app manipulation, the AI agent, that's going to be split probably between
Speaker 1:Because that seems harder than just integrate Gemini and just give people the Gemini answers when they when they ask Siri for a question.
Speaker 2:You know, it's so funny. You you I look back to WWC twenty twenty four, and obviously, I made a big deal about all the delays because, of course, I did. Yeah. But then you think about it, it's like, was anyone gonna use these in any of these features anyways? Like, we're talking about a few features that were delayed and Yes.
Speaker 2:You look back at the announcement of these features at WWDC twenty twenty four, it's like Apple totally downplayed them too. Like, gave a few cool demos, but it's like, this is some game changing stuff if it's marketed correctly. Yeah. So not only did they preannounce it, not only did they delay it, but like, they didn't even market what they had in the hand correctly, which I guess in hindsight, like, you should have realized that it wasn't that compelling Yeah. Or or ready to go if they weren't gonna market it.
Speaker 2:Because I'm telling you, they can market anything.
Speaker 1:They can How does Yeah. How do
Speaker 3:you see search fitting into Siri? Because so much of what people are using LLMs for is search now Mhmm. And you're seeing more commerce integrations. And I've always thought the labs like obsession with the browser was interesting because in many ways, like, I feel like using LLMs, it already feels like you're using a browser. It's just kind of a new experience and and a big question is like, okay, so Google's powering the new Siri.
Speaker 3:What happens when people start doing searches with high intent in Siri?
Speaker 2:Do you Google search anymore?
Speaker 3:I do.
Speaker 2:I don't.
Speaker 3:I I specifically still Google search when doing like product research, shopping, etcetera.
Speaker 2:I don't. Do you?
Speaker 1:I I still go to Google if it's something that I know is fastest in Google. So today, I wanted to know what year the Avengers movie came out. And I know that that's half a millisecond in Google. And I know that that's five seconds in any LLM. And so I'll Fine.
Speaker 1:Control t to go there. Fine. But for any level deeper, I also wanted to know about the VFX house that worked on it and what technology they used and when that happened. That was an LLM query.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. I don't really use Google anymore. Yeah. I have my action button on my phone sent to ChatGPT.
Speaker 2:Okay. And I'm just like living in ChatGPT. Sure.
Speaker 1:Sure. Sure.
Speaker 2:You can't ask it the weather.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:You can't ask it to do anything on your phone.
Speaker 3:Sure. Sure.
Speaker 2:That's I guess the the differentiator for what the new series is going to be. They've built a feature called World Knowledge Answers.
Speaker 1:Okay. It's the
Speaker 2:internal name. And it's basically a perplexity rip off
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:Or a web search rip off in JAT GPT, which is to to bullet out summaries and information Yeah. And give you citations and context.
Speaker 3:Yep. Is it using Google directly for that or is it some other
Speaker 2:an Apple solution. Okay. It's an Apple solution. Interesting. The the what they've been trying to do now is under the hood, change that to the Gemini model.
Speaker 2:Again, all this stuff was supposed to come out
Speaker 3:because Gemini is very good at Google search.
Speaker 2:Gemini is very good at Google search, but there's no Google services in this new Siri. It's literally a model. It's basically like they hired the Google DeepMind team to develop the model to power its AI in Siri.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So I guess what I'm getting at is is will I ever get if I'm doing using Siri to research a product, will I ever get an ad powered by like a Apple ad network because it is a high intense search.
Speaker 2:Like ever? Yeah. I think the end game for all these guys is to put ads in this stuff. Yeah. You know, one thing that I haven't talked about
Speaker 3:in a And and while I just feel like that's been somewhat under discussed because people are so obsessed with just make Siri work. Yeah. That if it does end up working really well, then you would have a effectively a search engine.
Speaker 2:If it well, yeah. If it works they have all the tools to do a search engine. And if it does work well, yeah, they'll probably eventually put ads in it. A couple things they haven't discussed in a while. One, is they're, you know, working on a new Safari web browser and you're gonna see AI search at the forefront of that.
Speaker 2:The other thing is the ads ification, the advertising ification of of the Apple operating systems, that starts this year. Mhmm. You're going to see them up the ad slots in the App Store in search in search in particular. You're
Speaker 1:Give it up for more ads.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Ads. Any sponsors we wanna give a shout out to over here? And then
Speaker 3:Don't tempt junk.
Speaker 2:And then you're gonna see ads in Apple Maps.
Speaker 1:Oh, interesting.
Speaker 2:You know?
Speaker 1:That's been one of the main differentiators in the different
Speaker 2:Well, you know, it'll be all AIE and it'll be targeted to based on things that you're searching. Like, if you see a sushi restaurant, search for sushi, whatever, you may see some search results get elevated. It's kinda like what Yelp does. Yeah. Right?
Speaker 2:By the way, it's so funny on on on Siri, there's this Japanese restaurant in the valley I like and it's named after a city in in Japan or province in Japan. And it's like, take me to Chiba. Yeah. Right? And I've been that's the name of the place.
Speaker 2:Shout out to Chiba.
Speaker 3:Okay, boss. You're gonna need to get in a boat.
Speaker 2:Oh, my god. It's like oh, on immediately pops up. 7,652 miles away. I'm like, I've been to this place 50 damn times. You should know by now.
Speaker 2:Talking about the restaurant Yep. 20 miles away. Yep. Not the city, 8,000 miles away. That's crazy.
Speaker 2:It's really amazing.
Speaker 3:Hiring chartering an aircraft, sir.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I I I got a bunch of other stuff in the Apple ecosystem. First, Starlink is reportedly planning to integrate Apple's reportedly planning to integrate Starlink connectivity into the iPhone 18 Pro.
Speaker 2:You know? I saw
Speaker 1:How do think about this? Saw this stuff on Twitter the last couple Yeah. Of
Speaker 2:There's been no reporting on this recently Okay. By the way. This is another see, this is one of the downsides to AI. Mhmm. People just spew BS on Twitter.
Speaker 1:Oh, interesting. Okay.
Speaker 2:So Apple already does work with Starlink. Yeah. Right? Yeah. You can hook in if you have a T Mobile iPhone Mhmm.
Speaker 2:You can get on to to Starlink. Okay. So that already exists.
Speaker 1:Yeah. What
Speaker 3:Yeah. I have I've experienced I experienced I think during the fires last year. So No. All the cell service was down. I'm on Verizon.
Speaker 3:You want if you want satellite
Speaker 1:satellite on the seventeenth, but it's not what?
Speaker 2:You don't wanna be on Verizon.
Speaker 1:I I should get off of it. But but it's not it's not Starlink. It's the old network.
Speaker 2:On which? On the Verizon one? Yeah. You're talking about on the the Apple network?
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. Like like, if I'm in an emergency situation, I can get out like one text message. It's really, really slow. And it's clearly going with like, think, ViaSat
Speaker 2:The Apple network is just super legacy. Yeah.
Speaker 1:It's just older.
Speaker 2:It's got
Speaker 3:a Yeah.
Speaker 2:They've gotta strip that down
Speaker 1:Yeah. And
Speaker 2:partner and rebuild or something. Anyways, the iPhone 18 is gonna have enhanced satellite connectivity. Sure. And they'll, you know, obviously work with Starlink and, you know, whoever Yeah. Whomever.
Speaker 2:So that's coming. Yeah. What else we got on our plate? You wanna talk about John Absolutely. Let's talk about Turnus.
Speaker 3:Turnus around, John.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:John. Okay.
Speaker 1:Yes. I I so I have a bunch of questions. Let's start with, like, how like, what is going on behind the scenes of this campaign? It feels like there's Hey. It feels like feels like internal politics there could be like people like pushing for him, pushing against him.
Speaker 1:There's this weird quote that keeps going out that people say he's never made a decision in his life.
Speaker 3:Everybody keeps making the most underhanded compliments that I've ever seen. Yeah? It's like it's like, yeah, he's shipped a lot of products, but
Speaker 1:He's never had to make a hard decision. That's the one.
Speaker 2:Just wait for my profile Okay. Bloomberg.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:You'll get the real story soon. Okay.
Speaker 1:Fantastic.
Speaker 2:Not gonna give it all away today.
Speaker 1:Of
Speaker 2:course. But I'm here
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:For the company. Appreciate it. Gotta give the shout out. Yes. Stay tuned for the article.
Speaker 1:Of course.
Speaker 2:Subscribe to Power On
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:In our Of course. Tech bundle. Yeah. It's great value. Okay.
Speaker 2:Turnis, he's 50. Mhmm. Everyone else in the Apple executive team, late fifties through their mid sixties Yeah. Turning 66 this year in the case of Tim
Speaker 1:Cook. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:You're Apple's bored. You like continuity. You like an insider. You like people who know what they're doing, have been there for a while. They know where the bodies are buried.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. Okay. These guys are all have hundreds of millions of dollars, if not more. Yeah. At 50, he's the only one Mhmm.
Speaker 2:Who is if let's say Tim Cook hangs out another three to five years, you're not gonna appoint another CEO who's 65 Yeah. 70 years old.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:He's the only guy. Mhmm. Apple, they get vast majority of the revenue from hardware. He's the hardware guy. Yep.
Speaker 2:Have they screwed up any hardware since he's been in charge? No. No. He's a steady hand. He knows what he's doing.
Speaker 2:He's really the only choice. Mhmm. You know, there was this New York Times report a few weeks ago
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:Basically saying that it could be Greg Joswiak, it could be Eddie Q, it could be Deirdre O'Brien, it could be Craig Federighi. It's for sure not gonna be Craig. It's not gonna be Deirdre. Mhmm. It's not gonna be Eddie.
Speaker 2:It's not gonna be Jaws. Mhmm. The only category that makes sense is an operations person because you look at the current c e CEO, Tim, obviously comes out of the ops world. You look at the guy who would have been CEO if Tim Cook didn't stay so long. I'm not saying he shouldn't have stayed so long.
Speaker 2:He's done, obviously, a fantastic job for shareholders and and the employees and and what have you, would have been Jeff Williams. He was the COO. So, Sabi Khan, he was named COO, you know, a few months ago, but he's really been in that job for the last half a decade, I would say. So anyways, it'll be Ternis or or Sabi or or someone completely out of left field. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:I don't think this is imminent. Mhmm. So we'll see what ultimately happens, but all signs are turning towards Ternus.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:Everyone has an opinion that Ternus is gonna be the next CEO. Fine. I've been shouting this from rooftops the last two years, but no one has given evidence like, what is this based on? Right? Has there ever been a baton hand off?
Speaker 2:Is he getting more responsibility?
Speaker 1:Well They have a bit like a big baton?
Speaker 2:They don't even got one of these. You know what? You have you have white smoke coming out of Sure. Well, actually, no. There's no smoke.
Speaker 2:It's very environmentally friendly. So,
Speaker 1:you know, maybe out of the parking sun solar panels. Yeah. They glint off the solar panels.
Speaker 2:Exactly. So what? You want evidence? Yes. You wanna hear that he's been getting more responsibility?
Speaker 2:Okay. One, a few months ago, took full control of the Apple Watch Mhmm. Engineering team that was co run with this old COO until he retired. K. There's something for you.
Speaker 2:When they started soft firing Mhmm. The head of AI, the guy we were talking about earlier, they took the robotic stuff away from him. They gave that to Turnis. Turnis. And then the real news, as I broke last week, is that even though on paper, Tim Cook is running the Apple design teams, it's not.
Speaker 2:It's Turnis. Mhmm. He took over at the end of last year for a variety of reasons. But you look at who's run design at Apple over the course of history. Well, like Steve Jobs, Tim Cook himself between 15 and 17.
Speaker 2:Jeff Williams, who was the number two in heir apparent for a long time. And then obviously, for all heard of Johnny Ive.
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 2:Now you add John Turnis to that list. It's it's a big sign. It's a big indicator because you look at what Apple is known for as a company and its design. Right? That design function.
Speaker 2:And it's not just hardware. It's hardware and software that he's, you know, overseeing as the manager of both of those teams. So Mhmm. I would say that is your your first piece of evidence that he's getting some more material.
Speaker 1:What does he have to do since he's the hardware guy to communicate that he has a steady hand on the tiller as Apple transitions into the AI age? Like the narrative is that on they have hardware. They have not delivered on AI.
Speaker 2:No, they haven't.
Speaker 1:And so how is he going to communicate that he's forward thinking and can be the one to keep him on the
Speaker 2:cutting Take me step back. You think about like succession at all of these big tech companies. Right? Like, who's gonna who who's gonna take over Google one day? Who's gonna take over Microsoft one day?
Speaker 2:Who's gonna take over Amazon one day? Right? Like, it's probably gonna be the AI guys Yeah. At all of these companies. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Right? Apple doesn't really have an AI guy.
Speaker 1:Sure.
Speaker 2:They're trying to make Craig Federighi the AI guy, but he's not CEO material. He's he's voices himself. So don't get mad at me, Craig. Mhmm. But, yeah.
Speaker 2:Turnis, can he become the AI guy at Apple? Like, I think it's too early to tell him. I think that is a that is a big question there. Like, do you put a hardware person in charge of the
Speaker 3:AI era? People have been speculating that Apple would do some big m and a deal to bring some AI native talent in house.
Speaker 2:They wanted to buy perplexity. Yeah. So the origin story They they were really talking about it. Like, Eddie Q was seriously considering Adrian Preeck, other head of corp development m and a reports to Tim Cook. They were looking at this pretty closely.
Speaker 2:Then they pulled out why were they gonna buy Perplexity to power the search stuff we were talking about earlier. Became less important after the Google deal was allowed to live.
Speaker 3:And do you think they would have done it if Perplexity hadn't been marked up to oblivion?
Speaker 2:I think they would have done Perplexity at Like a reasonable price.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Like,
Speaker 2:couple of
Speaker 3:Yeah. That's the thing. Low single digit
Speaker 2:I think they would have done it up to 5 or 6,000,000,000. Yeah. Yeah. But like at this 1520, and then Perplexity started, you know, trying to say they're gonna buy Google Chrome if it got divested and all that. So and I think they would have done it if the Google search deal was torn apart.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. Yeah. In order to bring the search product to market faster. They like to buy companies to they I I'm not trying to do Apple corporate speak here, but this is like legit. They buy companies to accelerate their roadmap.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. You'll hear Tim Cook use those exact words tomorrow. Yeah. Okay? By the way, but literally Tomorrow?
Speaker 2:Apple earnings.
Speaker 3:Oh, yeah.
Speaker 2:This guy. Apple earnings. Yeah.
Speaker 3:This guy.
Speaker 2:My god. Yeah. Come on. Yeah. Head in the game.
Speaker 1:But but I is is there specifically deal that he'll be talking about tomorrow? Is that what you think?
Speaker 2:No. No. Just in general.
Speaker 1:Like, he will be asked
Speaker 2:to I bet he'll mention the Gemini thing.
Speaker 1:Because he was asked that in the last earnings.
Speaker 2:But once
Speaker 1:and everyone was like, why haven't you done a mega deal?
Speaker 2:Why haven't done mega
Speaker 1:just it's just gonna be more of the same. Got it. You know, what it
Speaker 2:is fair to say Yeah. Is their pace of deal making has decelerated significantly. Interesting. Significantly.
Speaker 1:And so so he will be I mean, in the last earnings, he was sort of like managing that and saying like, oh, we're still doing deals, but we're selective and we only do it
Speaker 2:to He's
Speaker 3:like, well, they also don't care to announce like, 95% of
Speaker 2:deal. They have to. You know, like, Golden State Warriors, they want Giannis, but they don't wanna make a big trade. They don't wanna give them all their draft picks. Right?
Speaker 2:They're like, yeah. This is the same with the Lakers. This is like my existential crisis. The Lakers, like, yeah, we'll trade the picks. If the right guy becomes available.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And they know the right guy is not gonna become available. Right? Just like Apple knows, these companies are always gonna be out of the price Yeah. Range they wanna pay.
Speaker 1:Sure. Sure. Yeah. I'd throw
Speaker 2:The thing with Apple is like, let's do it. They're very frugal money wise, extremely frugal. The other thing is is they've been burned countless times with acquisitions. Like, Beats deal
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:Terrible process for integrating that company.
Speaker 1:Sure.
Speaker 3:Even then, think it was like a three x revenue multiple. Weren't they doing wasn't Beats doing like a billion dollar
Speaker 2:Oh, from a financial standpoint Yeah. It was just like a home run. People criticized that deal, but they made it back in months.
Speaker 1:Oh, interesting.
Speaker 2:Oh, Beats?
Speaker 1:They made the money, but it
Speaker 2:was a nightmare from Yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah. But worth it's worth noting because like even paying for perplexity perplexity
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 3:At $56,000,000,000
Speaker 1:It's gonna be monetized that probably.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I mean, Beats was monetized from day one. You're selling the headphones which are terrible by the way but everyone loves them. And then Apple Music, they, you know
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Beats started the whole subscription services business at Apple. And so, if you look at it, Beats is one of the most wildly successful technology acquisitions of all time.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Then you compare it to how much criticism it got because it's a doctor Dre and Jimmy Iovine and whatever whatever whatever and the headphones are crap. You know what? From a financial standpoint, home run. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:Home run.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2:You know? But integrating into Apple's culture is not easy.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Speaking of hardware, what what what's going on with the robotic arm that will live in your kitchen?
Speaker 3:Yeah. The Pixar lamp.
Speaker 2:It's the Pixar lamp. It's the Pixar a lamp. You got this nine inch display. It's like an iPad display on a robotic arm. It can float around your desk.
Speaker 2:It can twirl and turn around. Yeah. Like, you know what we'll do?
Speaker 3:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:In a
Speaker 1:few
Speaker 2:years when this thing comes out, you'll have me back on. Yeah. Instead of me actually being here, you'll have this on here. Yeah. Maybe.
Speaker 2:You know, leave my head floating around.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I mean, Meta tried to do something like that with the
Speaker 2:Meta tried to do something like that. You know, these things are big in China. They are. It's a big thing in China No one really talks about them. Yeah.
Speaker 2:But it's a it's a category that has some potential. Okay.
Speaker 1:Yeah. But it's years away just because stay
Speaker 2:tuned. Yeah. What about the foldable phone? That's not years away.
Speaker 1:That's that's closer? Yeah. No. That's decades away. No.
Speaker 1:No.
Speaker 2:That's that's coming out in the fall. Okay. That'll be fine. I can't wait for that.
Speaker 3:Yeah. That'll be Are you are you gonna be
Speaker 2:a 20 buy? $200 on it.
Speaker 1:Oh, it's not gonna be is
Speaker 2:it It'll be at least it has to
Speaker 1:be Is it gonna be the highest tier? The biggest, the most powerful?
Speaker 2:For Apple? Yeah. That's gonna it's gonna sit at the top
Speaker 1:of the Yeah. New status symbol.
Speaker 2:Sorry. What were you
Speaker 1:I like that.
Speaker 3:We had Ben Thompson on maybe before the end of the year.
Speaker 2:Feel bad for Ben. Know, he's a big Milwaukee Bucks fan and they're about to ditch you on us.
Speaker 1:The Milwaukee Bucks, that's sports team? Really? I don't know. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Sports team.
Speaker 1:I do know it's a basketball team. I do know that it's Ben Thompson's favorite team. Yeah. Was talking about the Apple Yesterday, we
Speaker 3:didn't know when the Super Bowl was.
Speaker 1:He he he was talking about the Apple Vision Pro. I wanted to demo the the you know, you can watch the NBA live.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Watch Basically,
Speaker 1:you Ben watched you liked it.
Speaker 3:He Ben's didn't pitch was like screw the Yeah. Screw the the Apple highly produced, you know, they're cutting around all the time and he's like Just just invest the money to set up like the actual hardware in every single stadium.
Speaker 2:The
Speaker 3:cameras. The cameras so that anybody can just drop in.
Speaker 1:So you can just sit there, watch the game like
Speaker 3:don't your four sides. Need the you don't need the announcer because you can just look at the scoreboard. You can No read what's going on. Yeah.
Speaker 2:So he's saying, strip the guys out of it. I mean Yeah. Look, I watched it. Yep. It was great.
Speaker 1:You watched the whole thing?
Speaker 2:Yeah. Really? Yeah. Okay. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Trust me. People at home were not happy that night.
Speaker 1:Oh, know? You're saying that they're crying baby.
Speaker 2:Crying baby. And then you're completely isolated. I mean, I'm telling you, VR does not work for for families.
Speaker 1:It's true. Yeah.
Speaker 2:It just doesn't.
Speaker 1:It's really yeah. It is one of the major because then, I mean, the family people have the disposable income more likely, so then they buy it, but they can't use it. Doesn't work.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Okay. Here's the problem.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:It's like once a month. They've got like five games on the calendar.
Speaker 3:Well, and that and that was Ben's point. It's like just set up the infrastructure and sell me a pass Yeah. So that I can drop into any game and sit courtside.
Speaker 1:Because right now, have to pull up with a production truck. They need editors. They need voiceovers.
Speaker 3:They need preaching post shows. There's there's, you know, basically one time fixed cost of like he he did the
Speaker 2:math Put them in all the NBA stuff.
Speaker 3:Yeah. He said it's like $40. It's like not like a huge amount of money. And you have no incremental cost per show. You're not dealing with producers and running a live, you know
Speaker 2:need to decide if this hardware is going to continue to exist before they keep investing in the content strategy.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:Right? It's a chicken and the egg problem.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:Right? How do you sell this thing if there's no content? But why invest millions in the content if you're not playing to sell this thing anyways and you're pivoting to smart glasses? Don't forget, they were supposed to come out with the Vision Air in '27 Yeah. Product called n 100.
Speaker 2:They I forgot when my article came out. It's time is a blur. A few months ago six months ago? Anyways, they killed that thing.
Speaker 1:They killed it entirely.
Speaker 3:Killed it. The smart
Speaker 2:shocked the vision team on that, by the way.
Speaker 3:The smart glasses, that was that just completely reactionary to to Meta?
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah. They started toying with the smart glasses in terms of like this non AR smart glasses. Yeah. Right? First of all, AR smart glasses, that has been the vision from day one for a decade plus.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. But in terms of like this non display smart glasses, that is a concept that Meta has really popularized. And, you know, when these things started to gain a little bit of steam in '22, '23 is when they started taking a very hard look at it. And they're gonna do it. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:And I think they're gonna destroy Meta with them, I'll be honest.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Is that the styling, the pricing, the features, the
Speaker 3:the challenge is if you can't deliver me iMessage.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Apple has the ingredients
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:Because of their login to destroy any company in any hardware. It's just about them figuring out how to do it and get it done and not waiting too long. You know, the biggest problem with them is they just take too long and over engineer everything.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Like, the Vision Pro is the most over engineered device Right? They could've got that out three years earlier with a little bit less fit and finish, and maybe it would be more successful today.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. It does feel like there was a cycle where the iPhone was ahead of the curve on so many things, touchscreen. And then you and then in the like that middle decade period, you had the Android folks being like, oh, we've had this Apple feature for a year. We've had this for Yeah.
Speaker 1:Two
Speaker 2:care. It doesn't matter.
Speaker 1:Now it's like five years.
Speaker 2:There's you know how many people wouldn't be caught dead with a non iPhone? Yeah. You know, like, it doesn't matter. But AI changes that equation.
Speaker 1:Sure.
Speaker 2:That changes the equation.
Speaker 1:Especially if it's a Johnny Ive product and it's expensive.
Speaker 2:Well, you know, Johnny Ive, obviously, he's done amazing things. Yeah. And the new headphones or whatever they come out with are gonna look amazing Yeah. Probably work amazing.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:It's just the barrier to entry on hardware is so high. Yeah. There's so much risk there.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I I I just I still wonder if the like, Claude bot, these, like, open source agents I don't know that everyone's gonna adopt those, but something like that that sort of opens up the ecosystem just by brute forcing it. We were debating this earlier. Like, you can't get iMessage notifications on the meta ray ban displays, which is I have them.
Speaker 2:Do you guys have them?
Speaker 1:I I think we do have some We've years the the the the non displays a bunch, and then we demoed the displays and have used them a fair amount. And it's it's just a hard sell if you're an iMessage user.
Speaker 2:A hard sell if you're an iMessage user, but the potential is just oozing with potential. Yeah. Like, they've got a they've got a solid product there. Yeah. And like a couple iterations on that, make them a little lighter, get the display resolution up, look better outdoors.
Speaker 2:Yeah. It's compelling.
Speaker 1:And and it and in a world where you have some sort of agent running on your Mac Mini, scraping all your iMessages and then putting them into what's app or something.
Speaker 2:You know, maybe I'll do that. Maybe you guys will do that.
Speaker 1:It's rare.
Speaker 2:Yeah. It's rare. Nobody wants to deal with that.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:You know? Nobody wants to deal
Speaker 1:with that. Even if it's just an app that you download like Napster? You don't think so?
Speaker 2:People don't have time for that.
Speaker 3:Yeah. People don't care. Probably not. What?
Speaker 2:I feel like nobody cares about anything anymore. You know? I just feel like
Speaker 1:You take Back in my day, we used to care.
Speaker 2:We used The world to has changed.
Speaker 1:Yeah. You know, I don't
Speaker 2:World has changed. They just want everything in front of them. They want everything in their eyeballs. They all want it set from the get go. They don't wanna put any work in.
Speaker 2:They just want it to start working. Right? Yeah. And I think that's been the Apple ethos from the beginning, is just like give people what they need, let it get up and running and not deal with any of the BS.
Speaker 3:What's going on in China?
Speaker 2:Lots going on in China.
Speaker 3:With Apple? Are they more stores?
Speaker 2:Shutting down more stores? No. Not that I know of. Mhmm. I don't see Apple just shutting stores at this point.
Speaker 2:I think the retail arm still is extremely profitable and and successful. Sure. All the shutdowns
Speaker 3:you're not somebody's not embarrassed to not be using an iPhone.
Speaker 2:Problem yes. The problem is is that Apple hasn't done anything this spoke for the Chinese market.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:The competitiveness there is just unbelievably just it's amazing. It's like no other part of the world.
Speaker 3:Are there are there compelling AI hardware Yes. Integration?
Speaker 2:Yes. I mean, mentioned the robotic thing. I mentioned well, like the foldables are taking over Yeah. The universe there. Right?
Speaker 2:And so, you know, Apple's an American company launching American devices, European devices, and they're trying to shoe horn it into the Chinese market. And they've never really done anything just for the Chinese market or built around the Chinese market.
Speaker 1:What about the
Speaker 2:Okay. Maybe that was I mean,
Speaker 1:But why why it's
Speaker 3:such a massive market. Why not?
Speaker 2:Because they're a global company. Mhmm. But I think the foldable is gonna do extremely well in China. Mhmm. You know?
Speaker 2:Yeah. It might do better in China than it does here. Interesting. I don't know. I'll be having one.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I'll tell you that much right
Speaker 1:What's the future of the iPhone Air?
Speaker 2:It's like the price difference.
Speaker 1:Sam Altman's got one. Great. Yeah.
Speaker 2:You know, the the
Speaker 3:the But he doesn't care about money.
Speaker 1:The price breaks it and buys a new one. And he
Speaker 3:doesn't get paid by OpenAI.
Speaker 2:He's probably got both.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He doesn't get paid. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah. The iPhone Air and the iPhone Pro, it's like negligible pricing wise. It's the same price if you get the battery pack.
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah. Right? Oh, no.
Speaker 2:It's like $99.09 99 plus a 100 plus yeah. Right? Yeah. Nobody ever gonna get the battery pack.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So, I don't know. Like, you look at the features comparison, you look at the cameras. I mean, people are gonna always pick the Pro over the air. There needs to be more of a price gap
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 2:Between the two. And eventually, you know, those two lines are gonna merge. Could take five years, but like, eventually, you're gonna be able to get a Pro Whistle.
Speaker 1:As
Speaker 2:thin as an Air or an Air with the same bells and whistles as a Pro. I mean, you look at the MacBook Pro and the MacBook Air today from a perform These
Speaker 1:are different laptops and they're exactly the same.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So what you've got the
Speaker 3:I have the Air
Speaker 2:the Air. He's the Pro.
Speaker 1:And they're identical.
Speaker 2:It's the same thing because the chips. Yeah. Right? The big differences between the two Yeah. Are it's a little lighter.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:K? The display is terrible on that thing compared to that thing. Mhmm. Like, you use like, I tried out the 15 inch MacBook Air. K?
Speaker 2:Yeah. The thing is sleek and slick and awesome.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:But like I've been ruined visually by how amazing the display is on the MacBook Pro.
Speaker 1:Okay. Maybe I gotta upgrade Okay.
Speaker 2:And so, you know, you have to think about the different changes.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah. You wanna talk about big things happening at Apple this year, it's that new MacBook Pro.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Right? You got the OLED, you got the thinner, you got the touch. Okay. I cannot wait to drop $4,000 on that thing and then
Speaker 3:It's gonna be a touch screen?
Speaker 1:Yeah. I
Speaker 3:cannot wait to get my fingerprints all over. When somebody if somebody's looking at my computer and they touch the screen, I'm just like
Speaker 2:Isn't it the worst thing ever?
Speaker 3:Like, I like, you
Speaker 1:You gotta be carrying a polishing cloth. You gotta be carrying the Apple official cloth. Maybe 20. You know, Apple could make a or
Speaker 3:something. Well, Apple makes
Speaker 2:one That's funny.
Speaker 3:Apple makes a Pixar lamp that just kind of polishes
Speaker 2:your
Speaker 3:touch screen.
Speaker 2:That'd great in AI for for screen cleaning. Yeah. Yeah. You know, the Apple polishing cloth, they got so much, you know, flack for that thing. Like, you would think that it was $75, but it was $20.
Speaker 2:To think of it, like, it's really not that big of a deal.
Speaker 1:Also, know someone who is OCD and is obsessed with keeping their screen perfectly clean. Yeah. And I was like, what's the secret? Like, what you must have some secret formula like Windex or something that you're using. And he's like, no, just the Apple polishing cloth.
Speaker 1:The one that works as well.
Speaker 2:You know what? I need to get one
Speaker 1:of those. I was like, that's glowing.
Speaker 2:You know, one did come with my VisionPRO.
Speaker 1:So Yeah.
Speaker 2:Oh, there go. Yeah. Let's try that.
Speaker 3:I threw one in as a bonus.
Speaker 2:Isn't it nice of them? That's so nice You know, of $34.99, get a free
Speaker 1:polishing cloth. That's $20 off. Yeah. Maybe maybe the the the Ternus narrative can center around, like, the as the models commoditize, like, the hardware becomes more important. You wanna be able to run different models locally.
Speaker 1:And so pushing that like chips are great.
Speaker 2:Yeah. The software, I'll even tell you is maybe not it's between good and great.
Speaker 1:Sure.
Speaker 2:Okay? I'm not gonna say it's only good.
Speaker 1:Sure.
Speaker 2:I'm not gonna say it's as great as the hardware. Yeah. But it's good enough. Yeah. How's that?
Speaker 2:The AI is like
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:The worst in the industry.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I mean, right now you're seeing people go out and buy Mac minis to run AI.
Speaker 2:Okay. Let's think about it. You see these people on Twitter doing that. Right? Yeah.
Speaker 2:How many extra Mac minis do you think were sold because of all this jazz? I would guess I would put the over under on 500 units.
Speaker 1:500? No. I mean I thought was 10,000. Seen it on There's 40,000 GitHub Okay.
Speaker 2:If it's on Instagram, maybe I'm wrong. Yeah.
Speaker 1:500. So there's 40,000 GitHub stars. Clearly a big meme.
Speaker 3:60.
Speaker 1:Maybe it's in the thousand. But, yes, I mean, it's a quarter million a quarter or something.
Speaker 3:And I think so much of it is just performative.
Speaker 2:Go on the Apple Apple People no. People Go to the Mac Mini.
Speaker 1:They're in stock.
Speaker 2:Are they all in stock?
Speaker 1:They're in stock.
Speaker 2:Look at the ship dates.
Speaker 1:Funny thing. Two weeks ago, I go to the Pasadena I go to the Pasadena Mac store. You know what's out of stock? Apple Vision Pros.
Speaker 2:What? They're
Speaker 1:always because they're like To me,
Speaker 3:to me, lot of a lot of the buying, I think, is purely status oriented and just On
Speaker 2:the No.
Speaker 3:No. Selling the Mac mini and people just saying, I wanna signal that I'm AI native and I'm at I'm at the
Speaker 2:gonna use it for two weeks.
Speaker 3:Yep. Yeah. Yeah. Forget about it. I'm I I think that's gonna be a real thing.
Speaker 2:I mean, how many people actually need to live in these type of workflows?
Speaker 1:Not many. Just the hackers.
Speaker 3:It's niche.
Speaker 1:Which is a niche community.
Speaker 2:It's a niche community. It's a great community.
Speaker 3:But it has made me think, maybe I should start using Apple's native file system and, like, actually
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Bring my data out of the cloud, out of Drive, and store it locally.
Speaker 1:You don't need to because Cloudbot will go and access your So what's the deal with the Mac mini? It's shipping. Order now, pick up in store today. It's available. Order by 3PM.
Speaker 1:Delivers two hours from the store.
Speaker 2:They haven't been all the
Speaker 1:tomorrow. It has yeah. It's everywhere. They're they're widely available. They're widely available.
Speaker 2:So maybe I am right.
Speaker 1:Available tomorrow at the Americana brand.
Speaker 3:Today They sell like somewhere where they can take look at and
Speaker 1:It's literally available at every Apple. Minis a year. Yeah. Yeah. Think that's it?
Speaker 3:Yeah. Yeah. And so and so it doesn't take that many if they're projecting out, hey, we're gonna sell. It's not like they I would I would imagine they don't have all of them that they're gonna sell this year sit sitting in stock already.
Speaker 2:I'm curious how the Mac quarter is going to go tomorrow. Mhmm. Right? Like, there might be a little bit of a drag on that.
Speaker 1:Sure.
Speaker 3:Yeah. What should people pay attention to?
Speaker 2:Well, the China number, to your point. Mhmm. The iPhone number is basically everything tomorrow.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Right? Either they they grow 10% as they say they will or they won't. Yeah. Either Tim Cook gets to keep his job or he doesn't. No.
Speaker 2:He's joking. But you think about like the product. Right? Like, they didn't do much iPad or Mac last year.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:This year is going to be the biggest year for the Mac Mhmm. In a long time. Mhmm. Got new MacBook Pros about to launch. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:Same design or the as those ones with the faster chips.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:You've got the iPhone chip powered low cost MacBook, which is gonna destroy PCs and Chromebooks and be like just this utter game changer.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:You've got the touch screen MacBook Pro end of year. You've got a refreshed Mac Mini. You've got a refreshed Mac Studio. You've got the m six chip. You've got the first new monitors from Apple in four years.
Speaker 1:Where will those sit? The monitors?
Speaker 2:Yeah. In terms of
Speaker 1:well, they'll
Speaker 2:sit on my desk.
Speaker 1:I'll tell you that. Yeah. But is it gonna displace the studio or the Pro XDR?
Speaker 2:The one I know about is going to replace the the studio. There's a new XDR also.
Speaker 1:Oh, okay.
Speaker 2:Yeah. But because and the XDR timing.
Speaker 1:Remarkably long term. Like, I cannot camera on that thing? Because it was it was created fifteen years ago. Like, Oh, sure. It was it's so old.
Speaker 1:And you and you go and you look at, like, you could YouTube search for the pro pro Pro Display XDR right now, and there's guarantee a new video why you should buy one in 2026. It's still good in 2026. Like, it's still the best option for
Speaker 2:me do. Crazy. Remarkable.
Speaker 1:It's just amazing that it didn't commoditize fast.
Speaker 2:What are you guys using here? I see. Oh, the
Speaker 1:We we mostly studios.
Speaker 2:The studios.
Speaker 1:We don't have a lot of XDRs. And it but we have been eyeing that new Dell monitor monitor that Michael Dell has been rapaciously pumping
Speaker 2:on x.com. Twitter.
Speaker 1:Yeah. It's amazing. Why? So enthusiastic about that thing. Yeah.
Speaker 2:I'm sure you've
Speaker 3:answered this a 100 times, and I'm sorry. But why why would they never do a TV? Is it just commodity space?
Speaker 2:Commodity margin differentiator.
Speaker 3:You don't you don't think people would happily spend
Speaker 1:They're gonna buy a Pixar lamp before they buy a TV, you walk in. Oh, you got the Apple TV? I've heard that's good.
Speaker 3:Somebody who's like, you know, been It's marketing. Apple I I can't describe myself as an Apple fanboy anymore, but as a kid as a teenager and a kid, I was. Right?
Speaker 2:Like What the hell happened?
Speaker 1:The photos. The photos app. Photos app, Rui and Jordi.
Speaker 3:Relationship just over. But I do think there's enough people out in the world that if you made a 10 if you made the $10,000 TV Yeah. That they would buy it.
Speaker 2:You know, the
Speaker 3:Because because when I'm buying a computer, a TV, sure, it's different. But when I'm buying a computer, it's not cycle.
Speaker 1:Look at the premium on the Samsung frame TVs. Those line off shelves and they're not better than an LG.
Speaker 2:So my TV in my living room, I bought in '18. Yeah. And what are we in '26 now? Yeah.
Speaker 3:Eight years? Yeah. But Apple would figure out a way
Speaker 1:to deprecate the hardware. This is what they do. They're the best
Speaker 2:in the world. Well, if they did, they would do it. Yeah. Right? They were they were They're like,
Speaker 3:Tim's like, where's my TV? He's like, sir, we haven't found a way to deprecate the hardware.
Speaker 2:They got pretty down the road on the TV They did. About ten years ago. Yeah. And then they they killed that thing. They had teams working on it.
Speaker 2:It was a big deal. Yeah. But then they went off and did a car, and went off and did a VisionPRO. Like, if you think about like their two big moonshots over the last decade, they were both utter failures. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:The car obviously is just like your quintessential failure. Yeah. Pretty much. But, you know, they did get some good stuff out of it. Right?
Speaker 2:Like, I would say the saving grace for Apple's AI, and you've said this a few times now, has been the AI chip and the AI hardware. Mhmm. The only reason they have an AI chip, the neural engine they launched in 2017 was because of the Apple car. That was designed to power the AI needed for a self driving car and they shrunk it down for the phone. So if the Apple project didn't get ignited, you know, back in twenty fourteen, fifteen, they would be even further behind in AI than they are today.
Speaker 2:And so give a shout out to the Apple car team. And you know
Speaker 1:I'm still pulling
Speaker 2:for the car
Speaker 1:with a naturally aspirated v 12. Can you imagine?
Speaker 2:It'd be great. It's crazy.
Speaker 1:It'd be great. Real wheeled it off.
Speaker 3:Gated manual. Gated manual.
Speaker 2:I think they would have just destroyed Tesla if they just didn't set their bar so high Sure. When we talk about over engineering. Yeah. Can you imagine like a model y or a model three or even an s whatever, just like with that Apple interior, the Apple ecosystem, the Apple interface? Yep.
Speaker 2:Like, why did they have to go bananas, remove the steering wheel, remove the pedals, have everyone facing each other, like, why'd they have to go toll they overshot it. Why'd they have to go, like, all apple on
Speaker 1:us? Yep.
Speaker 2:Right? Like, why couldn't they just do just do a car?
Speaker 1:Yeah. Just be a luxury brand. Car. Just be a luxury brand.
Speaker 2:Would have been amazing.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And we got a sock instead.
Speaker 2:We got a sock instead. That one those were the sock choices.
Speaker 1:Shipped. Okay? So you gotta
Speaker 2:give up. Did. And you know what? That was a success. Yes.
Speaker 2:Sold out. Got people talking. Yeah. You know, we did a review of the sock on on Bloomberg. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And people ate that thing
Speaker 1:up. They they
Speaker 2:loved it.
Speaker 1:Subscribed? It's great.
Speaker 3:Where's your socks?
Speaker 1:Smashing down
Speaker 2:the I've got socks. I've got you know what I have? I've got sushi socks on right now.
Speaker 1:Oh, no way. He's a sushi fan.
Speaker 2:No. Not from Apple.
Speaker 3:No. No. They're your favorite restaurant in the Valley.
Speaker 2:No. No. These are for my mother-in-law.
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah. That's fantastic. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Well, we kept you Yeah.
Speaker 1:We kept
Speaker 2:you much
Speaker 1:longer. But thank you so much. This is so much fun. I'm so glad you're
Speaker 2:in LA. Do I get to do the Gong? Of course.
Speaker 1:Hit the Gong. Give us a number. How long you've been writing? How long you've been following Apple?
Speaker 2:Writing since o nine.
Speaker 1:O nine. Overnight success. There we go. Hit the gall. There you go.
Speaker 1:Boom. With authority. For the carbonator. For the carbonator. Five.
Speaker 1:Take the app. Thanks. Sorry. Have a great rest of your day. Let's let's do this again.
Speaker 1:Yeah. We gotta do this again soon.
Speaker 2:We'll be
Speaker 3:following your coverage
Speaker 1:tomorrow. Tomorrow.