565: The Scent of Humane
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From Relay, this is Upgrade, episode 565. Today's show is brought to you by FitBud, Vitally, and ExpressVPN. My name is Mike Hurley. I'm joined by Jason Snell. Hi, Jason. Hi, Mike. I have a Snell Talk question for you. It comes from me. Okay, I'm ready. I would like to know, other than talking to me, how are you spending your Memorial Day weekend? Yes, Memorial Day weekend here in the U.S. It's a bank holiday in the U.K., by the way. Yep.

You know that. I knew that. But we're still working. My day is any different. But yes, I know it's Monday. We went to visit my in-laws in LA. So I am sitting in the room that I always think of as the ancestral home of the Upgradees. Okay. Because we recorded the first Upgradees I recorded in this room. I feel like a plaque should be made. I

I know. The first Upgradies was recorded right here at this uncomfortable desk on this uncomfortable chair. But yes, I am back there. People who watch the show on YouTube can get to see the ancestral home of the Upgradies. Oh, yeah. It's real exciting. It's a guest bedroom. So, yeah. Anyway, we did that. We went out. We had lunch yesterday. Yeah.

at the beach. So that was fun. Nice. And then we had dinner on Friday, no, on Saturday night in Santa Monica, a place that was like, we were outside on the streets and

And it was a really great dinner with Lauren's sister and brother-in-law and Lauren's parents. So really nice time there too. So yeah. And we brought the dog. So that's also fun because she gets stimulation and a car ride and all that kind of thing. On the show a couple of weeks ago, you mentioned that the Indy 500 is like a good Memorial Day tradition.

And I want to let you know an upgrade plus today. I'm going to tell this. I watched the Indy 500 and I watched it, but it's going to be an upgrade plus because I don't want everyone to know my opinions about the Indy 500. So if you want Mike's opinions on the Indy 500, go to getupgradeplus.com. Thank you to me. A British man reviews the great American Heartland Indy.

event of the Indianapolis 500 mile race. Yes. Great. Thank you to me for submitting that Snow Talk question. I wrote it directly into our Google Doc, but if you would like to submit a question of your own for future use, don't do that. You can't do that. Go to getupgradefeedback.com. No, just go to upgradefeedback.com. Not get, just upgradefeedback. There's too many domains, Jason. Upgradefeedback.com and you could submit yours in there. We have some follow-up

As we expected, and I kind of predicted, last Tuesday evening, Fortnite returned to the App Store in the US. I believe, from what I could find online, zero statement from Apple on this one. It just appeared. So it's good to know they're scared of the judge, right? They're obviously very scared of Judge Yvonne Gonzalez-Rogers.

because the judge said, if you can't sort this out, you've got to come see me. See me? Like, see me after school. After class, yep. No, thank you. And now Fortnite is back. Tell me who you're sending and then send them to me so that what happens then, I can put them in jail? I don't know. I'm going to yell at them? They're like, no, forget it. We're just going to do this. She might put them in jail. I don't know. We'll see. Maybe...

So I was quite surprised about this, actually. So obviously, Epic are doing what you'd expect, right? They have a way for you to go out to the Epic Games Store and buy the V-Bucks, which is the currency inside of Fortnite. And they're kind of doing it in a way which feels pretty good from a following the rules perspective. You press a button and then a window pops up and it says choose how to pay. And it's called Epic Store or in-app purchase.

And what I had expected Epic would do is give you a discount, right? That like a thousand V-Bucks for you is cheaper. We're going to make it cheaper than if you bought it through Apple. That isn't actually what they're doing. If you buy V-Bucks through the Epic Game Store, you get 20% back in Epic reward points.

that you can use to buy other games on the Epic Games Store, which is a full game store, or you can use that money to buy other virtual currency like V-Bucks, more virtual currency inside of Fortnite. So you kind of build up a credit in your account, but it's still charged the same price. And it's very interesting. It's just not what I expected

them to do. I expected them to say, hey, it's cheaper, right? Like, it is cheaper to spend it here. I don't know if they are trying, if they're like...

Trying not to upset Apple, right? That feels like the way that would upset them more if you told them the price was different. But what I also expect happening is Epic is also trying to maximize the amount of money that they could make from this transaction, right? Because they're getting all of the $9. And what they are giving you is not cash back. It's just... Store credit. Store credit. It's more fake money. It's also training people to use more...

use the Epic Store. Oh, to know it even exists. It was interesting to see that. I don't have, I'm not like, how dare they? It's just I wasn't expecting that route. But this is the route that they've taken. Again, though, like if you are a Fortnite player and you are spending a lot of money on V-Bucks, this is a better deal for you. Like just unequivocally, this is a better deal for you because it's essentially 20% cheaper because you get 20% extra.

So there you go. And I wasn't expecting more follow-up on this so quickly. Donald Trump has threatened Apple with a 25% tariff for iPhones unless production is moved to the US. We spoke about this last week that you had a problem with Tim Cook, didn't like all those phones being made in India. This will apparently apply to other phone makers and is expected to go into effect at the end of June if any of this tariff stuff can be believed. Because no phone maker can make their phones in the US. So great.

I guess. Apparently, there was some reporting today. I don't know what I think about it. But apparently, Tim Cook declined an invitation to join the administration on the Middle East trip that the president's been on. Not sure if that fed into this. He's like, maybe just like personally affronted. He seemed to mention that I think somewhere on the trip, he was like, oh, Tim Cook's not here or whatever. And like, okay, fine. Yeah. And so, yeah, I guess this, I don't know, like, is this...

Okay. It is a problem if it holds, right? Because here's the thing. We've spoken about this already. They can't do this, right? They can't make these phones in America. They just can't. No. I read a very serious analysis that said you might as well say make them on the moon. It just can't happen. I like that. But it's just impossible to do. Again, we spoke about this last week. It is not impossible. It is...

on some timeline, right? Like, there is a possibility of this. It is just not feasible. It doesn't make any sense because the phone would be more expensive to produce than the 25% tariff. Like, it still just doesn't work out. So what is probably going to happen is the price is going to go up on iPhones. Not probably. If this tariff holds, iPhone prices go up. Yep. The thing that I...

If I was Tim Cook, what I am concerned about is this tariff just continuing to increase. Because this is what Trump has shown that he will do. Now, what Trump has also shown that he will do is he will back down if you don't back down, right? Which is what happened in China. So I don't know. Yeah, I think my best guess if I was, and I'm very glad I'm not the person who has to talk to the White House about this,

would be to make the case again, probably to try to get it directly in the ear of the president, that what he's asking for is actually impossible.

Certainly impossible. You could even say impossible during his term or whatever. Like it's impossible. Probably during his lifetime. Probably during his lifetime. But well, you don't tell him, don't remind him of that. Cause you know, uh, he, and, and basically like what steps can we take that will satisfy you in the meantime? Because there are lots and lots and lots of reasons why this can't happen. And like, if they're defiant and they're like, well, no, just make it happen.

your magic wizards of technology get the, you know, what is it bringing the boffins, right? Like just make it happen. And I'm like, well, we can't do it. It's not, it's not, it's not possible. So is there a country you'd like us to make them in? No, no, no USA. Okay. Well,

We're already investing half a billion dollars or whatever in the USA. You tell us. Here are some suggestions of ways we could do this. We could do more assembly. We could quantify. You could make the tariffs on a sliding scale. Or you could just say, in the end, we're going to do this, in which case that's just what it's going to be. And our prices are going to go up and everybody's going to know that it was because of you.

And that's it. So, but that would be my argument is try to get them to either back down or let's invent, again, let's invent another thing that allows you to say, see what I did. I got them to do this thing, but that thing's actually meaningless. I saw some people saying, you know, could you set up a factory that makes, you know, 10 iPhones a day? Yeah.

for an exorbitant amount of money, but say, look, Apple has brought iPhone production back to the U.S., could you re-architect the assembly process so that they're assembled in sort of two pieces and they're imported in the U.S. and then those two pieces are put together in the U.S. and then put in a box? I don't think any of that, it's all ridiculous, right? It's all ridiculous theater. But the question is, what will satisfy the White House?

And nobody knows. And you think you satisfy them. And then somebody... And here's the thing that I'm really interested in. Somebody keeps telling Tim Cook, oh, you shouldn't trust Apple. They're just doing this thing. And they're not wrong, that person. He's telling them that. You said Tim Cook. Do you mean... Oh, sorry. Somebody's telling Tim Cook. No. Somebody's telling Trump things that contradict Tim Cook. There we go. Somebody's telling Trump, oh, don't listen to Tim Cook. And like...

Who is that person? And what is their end goal there? And is that person delusional about Apple's ability to... Because Apple invests a lot in the United States. They just do it in the places where it makes sense. And the problem with a lot of things going on with this administration is they seem to believe that lots of things... They want to bring a lot of things back to the United States that don't make sense.

and that aren't haven't made sense for decades and that nobody wants to bring back because they're like really low paying terrible factory jobs that are that americans don't want um and yet you know whatever the treasury secretary was like oh your kids will work in factories and then their kids will work in factories it's like this is a good message i you know so i

Again, yes, Apple could invest decades in doing this. And in fact, that would be one of your sales pitches is we're going to start the work now. It's going to take a long time though. So, you know, cut us a break while we do this, but we're going to start the work now. In fact, we're already starting it with TSMC and we'll do some other stuff, but let's, we're starting the work now and see if they'll listen. But if they, if there are people inside the white house who just believe that they, Tim Cook can flip a switch and iPhone production can come back to the U S and

So at some point you just say, all right, well, tariffs it is then. Because what else are you going to do? Like there's literally, you can't make the impossible happen. There is a limit to what they can do to play ball with the White House. And one of the limits is reality. So, which is not a limitation to the White House, apparently.

I think at this point, to me at least, it seems abundantly clear that for whatever reason, Donald Trump is unhappy with this scenario, right? Which is that he's like being, because he has obviously been told many times by this point, right? That Apple cannot produce their phones in America. He must have been told this. There's no way he's not been told this.

He is unwilling to accept this as a possibility, right? Yes. He disbelieves lots of facts. Yes. Or he's just, you know, I think my kind of feeling on this is just that he's just like, I don't care. It's not my problem. It's your problem. Make it happen. Like, I just don't think he is even interested in entertaining the conversation. And so I don't know what they do. I think the India thing made him feel like he was being taken advantage of. Which he was.

Right? I mean, look, I'm being as kind as you could possibly be to a set of decisions that I think are legitimately insane. But Apple...

were going to get around the China tariff. Right. And like, I think that Trump saw the amount of money they would make from Apple from whatever China tariffs as a good thing. Right. That like, this is going to be good money for her, for us. And Apple were like, ha ha, we've got you on this one. And like, they played their card and he played his card and now they just keep playing cards. And I don't, I don't know what happens at this point. I don't know.

On a 52 pickup at some point will happen. Yeah, I don't know. There have been a lot of articles written about like, you know, Tim Cook's very bad week. And now like Wall Street Journal is like Tim Cook's very bad year, which is definitely the case at this point. And look, going back to, you know, there's almost too much discussion right now of like Tim being fired or whatever. Yeah.

I mean, if you're Tim Cook at this point, do you want to keep doing this? Like, what is going on to this company? We've got more of it in today's episode, but it just feels not nice right now. I think Tim Cook...

is staying now a great deal because he's concerned about the company that he's been working at all this time and figures that if he leaves, I really, I mean, people can be cynical and say, well, he's going to get paid a lot of money to do whatever he's doing now. But I, I look, if the money's not important, he could pull, he could pull the parachute and walk away right now. And he'd have a very, a huge amount of money. Um, I think he had a legitimate close relationship with Steve Jobs, um,

believes in what steve believed believes in apple and wants it to continue and i think tim cook believes that the best uh scenario is for him to stay through all of this because he's the best position person to deal with a lot of this stuff which is probably true although i am reminded i'm reading um i'm reading david mitchell's book unruly which is about a history of english kings

Very funny book because it's David Mitchell. And one of the things he points out is some of the worst things happen when a king holds onto power as long as possible, thinking, well, I'm the best at this, so I'm going to hold onto this. But what ends up happening is his heirs aren't prepared and he doesn't prepare an heir and say, I'm going to invest more power in my heir. And so then the king, it's all going great. And then the king, you know, like,

lands funny on a saddle and gets wounded in his intestines and he dies the next day, right? And it's just like, well, that's it for the king. And nobody's there and there's a power vacuum and nobody's prepared. And it ends up being much worse for everybody. So I'm not saying that that's happening here, but it just, it struck me that I do think Tim Cook is probably the right person for this moment in terms of these very specific things. But we also can look at all the underlying problems that are going on and wonder,

you know, in the long run, is this a, Tim Cook's good for the short term, but in the long term, the longer he stays, the worse the long term gets? I don't know. I don't know. I mean, I stand by very much what I said a couple of weeks ago, which is that I think that the company needs a pretty large culture change. I'm not alone in thinking this. I,

I don't know how it goes exactly. You know, I posited the idea that maybe Tim Cook needs to leave for that to happen, but maybe not like, you know, I'm not, I'm not like, uh, uh, parading outside of Apple demanding that he is removed. Um,

but I am definitely of the thinking that right now he's the only person that can handle this situation if there is a situation to be handled. If it can be handled, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. It's true. And this is the problem is for all of our criticism of Tim Cook and Apple's culture in a lot of other areas recently, I still believe that dealing with the White House and...

Dealing with the supply chain in this era of tariffs and a lot of pressure being put on the supply chain, I'm not sure there's anybody else who could do all of that as effectively as Tim Cook, which is why you keep Tim Cook around. Or as we were talking about, or you at least keep him as chairman of the board. Sure. Keep him around doesn't necessarily mean keep him as CEO, but it does mean keep him around. Yeah.

An anonymous Upgradium wrote in and said, "I work at the AI/ML org, so that's artificial machine learning organization at Apple, and would like to correct something Jason said on the last episode." This is so great. "The current version of the Foundation models being used for Apple Intelligence are not the same ones that we announced last summer.

They have been updated multiple times. In fact, this is especially important for things such as additional language support along with additional languages. Other metrics have improved such as context, context, length, and MLLU score. I got separate additional unrelated feedback from a trusted individual that Apple updates these models frequently over the internet and they adapt the models. It's not just tied to OS releases, but,

This is good feedback. My question would be, how would we know this? Like, are we supposed to see this is better in anywhere? Like where, where is this better? I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think that the challenge here is if it's not happening in OS updates and it's not being announced, are we noticing? And also I would say a larger question is, is there a large model update being readied as a part of the next iOS cycle? And that update is not being rolled out because they want to hold it. And I would argue again, like,

that the way AI works in the rest of the industry, maybe you need to start branding and making a big deal about pushing out a new model instead of, especially, and this is great news, actually, it's, if it's not tied to an OS update, this is, that's true. This is, that's great because then there could just be a press release some Tuesday where Apple says, you know, our, our foundation model goes to version some ridiculous version number. And,

And so it's improved, and here are the benchmarks, and look how awesome we are. And they could start doing that, and it would at least... If they are working hard and getting good results, it would allow them to show that they're not maintaining radio silence for a year after they announce AI features. So this is all great to hear. Yes. But you and I, I think our point is...

We didn't know this. And that's the point, right? Like if it's getting better, why do we not know? Why is that not? And then my other question is, is something, is there a next wave that is being held back? Because that's the thing they're not going to talk about. And it's going to be, you know, it's going to be September or June or whenever before we see that thing. Or is this the state of the art? I don't know that. It just, it shows this isn't how they think. It's not how they think.

I don't know enough about how this works either really from a technical level, but I can imagine also the possibility that the model, the foundational model, you know, is being updated a lot, but the tools are not being updated at the same frequency to take advantage of the changes in the model.

And the reason I mention this is a couple of days ago, I made an Image Playgrounds image of John Voorhees to troll him, and it just looked atrocious, like so bad. So I think Image Playgrounds is a place where that's not seeming to make a difference. I mean, the only thing that they've added was the, I think it's the animation or the sketch style that they added as part of an OS release. But, you know, aside from that, I don't know where these changes...

are occurring. I mean, I will say I don't use Apple's writing tools. So maybe you see it a lot in there, especially with context length. It's possible they're better. Could be. But yeah, I'm not sure exactly where I'm supposed to see that benefit. But it is good to know that they have the plumbing to do this. Unbelievably, next week is the draft. I had this thought this morning. Couldn't believe it. Started duplicating documents. And so next week we will be competing for the draft.

For the draft of the WWDC draft. Including the California Bear Trophy. So many letters. I thought about that today, too. I don't want to call it dub-dub is the problem. Oh, the California Bear Trophy. Yeah. Yes. Yes. We currently share it. We need better rules. I remember we need better rules. So we'll talk about that. We do need better rules. I will gin up some better California Bear Trophy rules because we ended up

Within miles of each other. And so we declared a tie because depending on how you interpreted entering the location, it changed who won. So it was a tie. It was so amazing, right? Like amazing. And I'm glad that we got some of the rule issues out right away. But who would have thought that we would have been within a couple miles of each other? But we were. So we will revisit that. And I think about that every time I look at my fridge, which is where my California Bear trophy is. I have it in my trophy cabinet behind me.

Beautiful. I love it. I love it. So that's for the people who don't know, that is a, we try to predict the name of Mac OS named after a, assuming it continues to be named after Mac.

a California place name. If it stops, then we just retire the California Bear Trophy after a single tie. And then we all... No, the California Bear Trophy is related to like a bottle of wine. You know, it's just like, it's just like something completely different, but we still just call it the California Bear Trophy. 2024. Yes. Yeah.

It was a one-off. So anyway, we'll try that. And then there's a, because we don't tend to actually predict it, we do a thing where we predict it and the closest to the actual geographical location wins, except when it's identical like it was last year.

I'm putting a link in the show notes to Spalner, the Discord, who made a California Bear Trophy website. And I'll put that in the show notes if people want to check it out. Just very high quality of one thing that happened. Yep. Amazing.

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OpenAI announced that they are requiring a company called IO. This company had been set up by Sir Johnny Ive to explore a new family of AI-powered hardware devices, kind of in collaboration with OpenAI. Yeah, that was the idea. They were working with OpenAI to build some hardware, but it was the separate company that Johnny Ive had set up.

to work with OpenAI on building some hardware. And last week they did a big announcement that apparently was just more like, well, yes, we're doing that and we're formalizing it and we're bringing that inside. We're buying that company, OpenAI is, so that it is, you know, more formally part of OpenAI. And I think they said it made more sense for them to be part of OpenAI than this very weird, like third party, but kind of first party thing.

I think at first it was very much a, do we have an idea here before we become friends forever? So Johnny hired a variety of ex-Apple designers and engineers, including Scott Cannon, Evans Hankey, and Tang Tan. Evans Hankey was the head of design after Johnny left, I think for visual design, not like hardware, right? Like UI. Tang Tan was a hardware engineer overseeing a lot of products like the iPhone. Scott Cannon was...

I think a hardware designer, not engineer. Okay, thank you. Hardware designer. Scott Cannon is a name I didn't know as I looked him up. Scott Cannon made Mailbox, which is one of the greatest apps ever made. Sure. Much appreciated. And so now OpenAI have acquired them for $6.5 billion and is bringing... Don't forget many nameless physicists and scientists that apparently work at OpenAI, which...

I read that as being trying to explain away why all the senior big name people are designers. They're like, oh, but we also have engineers and scientists and physicists. So don't worry about that part. I mean, well, my kind of read on that, I know, here's the thing. We're going to set this conversation up. We're going to get into more detail a bit. Jason's very skeptical. I'm optimistic. So take that as your top line before we get into this info. My read on that was, here are the names you might know. Yes. Everybody else, maybe you don't.

Yeah, but the names that they mentioned, all the senior people that they mentioned in their release are basically designers. It's Johnny getting the band back together. So it's a team being led by designers. And then they mentioned, oh, but we also have engineers and scientists and physicists too. Don't worry about that. Johnny will be overseeing design for OpenAI and IO. All the IO team now work for OpenAI. Johnny is remaining at Lovefrom.

And we'll be taking on no more major clients. So Johnny continues to work with his clients and we'll be overseeing design for OpenAI. Right. Good news for the king.

I mean, yeah, and Ferrari and Airbnb, which is a really great collection. Well, when the king drives his Ferrari to an Airbnb, then it's all set. It's going to be all Johnny all the time when he's talking into his little IO pin and it'll be great. I don't know if you knew this part. I mean, this is interesting. I've been listening to it and reading a lot. Brian Chesky, the CEO of Airbnb, introduced Ive and Altman.

That's how they got to know each other. Because apparently at the moment, Brian Chesky wants everyone to know this. He's just going around Silicon Valley being like, I did this. I did this. You introduce a couple of people and then they get married and you got to take credit for it. At the wedding. When you go to the wedding, you have to give a speech. You know, I did that. I did this. This is because of me.

So a few bits of information I want to give to kind of continue setting the scene, some quotes, et cetera. So Mark Gurman and Shirin Ghafre at Bloomberg got to interview them both. Apparently they got this interview because Mark Gurman got the tip that this was going to happen. And they said, don't tell everyone and we'll give you quotes. We'll give you, you can sit down with Johnny Ive, which by the way, I love the thought of Mark Gurman and Johnny Ive having a conversation.

It's amazing. There's something about that that is so funny to me. But anyway. Well, and if you've got a good sense of humor, if you're Johnny Ive, you sit down with Mark Gurman and say, I can't wait to hear what I'm doing next. Yes. Right? Tell me. I mean, he did it again, though, right? Which is wild. Yeah, he did it again. Somebody inside of this organization is talking to him? Like, Mark, I think, of course, I heard John Gurman say this recently. Like, Mark Gurman's, like,

He didn't say these words. I am. They're like, he is embedded like everywhere. Yeah. And for a long time, the other people kind of come and go, but he's been doing it for a very long time. He is good. All right. So here's some quotes. This is from Johnny Ive. I have a growing sense that everything I've learned over the last 30 years has led me to this place and to this moment.

That's a giant quote. A quote from the Bloomberg article. The takeover of IO will provide open AI of about 55 hardware engineers, software developers, and manufacturing experts, a team that will build what I've and oughtn't expect to be a family of devices.

This is from Sam Altman. In the same way that the smartphone didn't make the laptop go away, I don't think our first thing is going to make the smartphone go away. It is a totally new kind of thing. And Johnny Ive on the Humane AI pen and the Rabbit, those were very poor products. There has been an absence of new ways of thinking expressed in products. In the video that they made, which was their like...

wedding video essentially yeah johnny and sam take a surprise the airbnb guy wasn't waiting for them in the cafe to say hey he was filming brian chesky without the camera i think it's actually worth me saying at this point that i absolutely adore johnny i've which i think listeners of this show probably know so again that like colors my whole thing and i am super over johnny i know i am so over johnny i've i think it is i think he did some great work in the 90s

And in the 2000s, and it's the mid-2020s now, and since Steve Jobs died, I'm just going to lay it out there. Since Steve Jobs died, he has not had a collaborator who can tell him no and work with him. And instead, he was given free reign to do Sir Johnny Ive things. And I think he's to blame for a lot of the mistakes Apple has made since then. And so I don't, I'm super over him. I'm tired of hearing him talk.

I'm tired of his highfalutin words. I am so sick of Johnny Ive. I absolutely could not get enough of it. I'm so happy we're in this world where he's speaking. So this is the difference between the two of us. I love that he's giving interviews. I love that he's showing up in places. This is fantastic. This is all I've ever wanted from Johnny Ive is just to hear more of what he has to say.

from a Wall Street Journal article.

and that I've had been skeptical about building something to wear on the body. And Altman said, we both got excited about the idea that if you subscribe to ChatGPT, we should just mail you a new computer and you just use those. So that's all of my quotes and stuff. I just wanted to set all of that information. I think it's helpful to know what they're thinking about. You wrote an article which essentially was an expanded version of what you just said, that you just think this is...

Nonsense, I guess? Marketing BS. Marketing BS. And yes. Yes. I think about Johnny Ive. I'm very skeptical of Johnny Ive and the fact that given... And I think Apple made the right decision to make him in charge of things in the days after Steve Jobs died because they really didn't want to be perceived as having lost their soul, right? But Johnny Ive, a couple of things. I mean, again...

He came as a young designer to a really broken Apple. Steve Jobs saw something in him. They clicked. They worked together. But again, Steve Jobs had incredible product sense, really was trying to make devices for the rest of us. And there is nothing about Johnny Ive on his own that suggests he's interested in the rest of us. He's really interested in building an amazing driverless car with no steering wheel and a gold watch and

And, you know, and these and of course, working with Ferrari and the king and things like that. Very high design. He doesn't strike me as somebody. He's a very rich man who has had incredible success and runs in very highfalutin circles. And I just don't feel like he is in contact with that other part. And I think Steve Jobs honestly was. I think that was one of the brilliant things about him. And designers are.

are amazing. I've worked with many incredibly talented designers over the years, but you can't just, like, constraints are very important. And being somebody who's thinking about the product in a way that is different from the designer and can say, no, that was the thing Steve Jobs did incredibly well, and they had a very, very fruitful, legendarily fruitful partnership. But since then,

He's been the man in the white room talking about this highfalutin stuff and shipping these products that are, you know, well, it's more important that there are fewer ports on a laptop because then it's more of a monolith and that the laptop be useful. And it's possible I'm ascribing too much of this directly to him, but I feel like the design sense of Apple was built by him and they were given free reign after Steve died to do whatever. And so Johnny being in charge of a team whose big names are other designers, right?

makes me deeply skeptical. And I know I've heard through the grapevine friends of friends that, oh, there are a lot of really good, talented engineering types. We have the statement about the physicists and scientists. That's great. Great to hear. But like, but Johnny's in charge and maybe Sam Altman. But again, I'm skeptical that Sam Altman can bring to the party anything that Steve Jobs did. But like if Johnny's in charge and he's Sir Johnny and he's so intimidating, I feel like you're replicating a

Unless he's really changed and that his time away from Apple and building this new product has made him feel very different about it.

I am just fundamentally skeptical that getting the band back together after you've all made a huge amount of money is more, is probably more about wanting to see those people again and take $6 billion from the AI bros than it is about actual creativity. I prepare, look, they're very talented. Maybe they will make something amazing, but having Johnny be the head of it makes me deeply skeptical because I've seen what happened when he was given a

all the latitude. And I think that it was very bad for Apple in the long run. But there are other reasons too. I texted you and Steven last week when this happened. And I said, you know that they're furious at the humane people because those humane people did that AI pin and it was a flop. And not only do they have to say, no, no, no, no, no, we're not doing an AI pin, but...

Come on, they're probably kind of doing an AI pin. Maybe it's like, oh, but it's not a pin. It's a thing that you put in a pocket or put on your desk or whatever. But like, what else could it be? They've said it isn't a screen and it isn't a wearable. So it's basically like an extrusion of open AI into the world through an aluminum, you know,

thing that looks like an iPod shuffle. Like, okay. But like, we already talked about this with the AI pin. First off, a lot of language about regretting that they unleashed the smartphone on the world because all of these companies that try to do this try to explain that what they're really looking for is to save us all from our smartphones, which we love and everybody loves and are incredibly successful and none of us need to be saved from them. I believe that very strongly. The market doesn't want...

to not buy smartphones. And second, you're left with all of those other issues, which is, okay, why is that better than using AI on your phone or your earbuds or your watch or your laptop? What does this device, like, why do I have a laptop and a phone on my desk and this thing when presumably my phone can do what this thing does? It's really, I'm not saying they can't do it. I'm saying I am, look,

Look, Mike, I spent two days because I didn't want to give a knee-jerk reaction that this was a load of BS. I spent two days thinking about it. And the fact is, I do think this is a load of BS for a lot of different reasons. And I'm not saying that in the end, behind the AI hype and the Johnny Ive hype, there might be something tangible. I'm saying that there is so much AI hype here and there is so much Johnny Ive hype

hype here. And when I look at the last few years and what other people have thought about or tried with hardware that's connected to AI that isn't just a smartphone or accessory...

It doesn't make sense. So I look at this and I think $6 billion of open AI stock, so it's kind of play money, sort of. And these two people who have been responsible for huge amounts of hype in various areas over time, you put it all together and I cannot walk away. I'll just say BS is short for something and I've never used that word on Six Scholars until last week because I feel very strongly the scent of BS marketing here, the scent of Quibi.

The scent of humane is strong with this announcement. Not saying it can't be something because it is a whole bunch of talented people and the leader in AI stuff right now. I'm just saying...

I was shocked at how many people just took this announcement and are like, oh, wow, great, amazing. This is going to be awesome. I think Federico said Apple is cooked at one point when he saw this too. In our defense, that news broke while we were recording. So we were just very excited about it. It's very hard when there's breaking news like that. Of that magnitude, it's pretty huge breaking news, right? It is huge. It is huge breaking news. I get it. I get it. So I took two days to be like,

I'm going to think about this a lot because I don't want to come out with a knee-jerk reaction that is, you know, old man yells at cloud, everything is bad. I didn't want to do that. But after a couple of days, I can't find anything other than deep skepticism that this is nothing.

Can I make more of my rebuttals? I have been writing them down on my little notepad here. Go ahead. I just think, we're not having a debate, but we are having a debate, I guess. So for me, and I think what a lot of people feel. I should say I let you go second because I saw it in the notes that you wanted me to go first and then you were going to say Mike is more optimistic. And I thought, well, I could lean back and let Mike...

say his thing and then demolish it. But I was like, no, I'm going to say my thing and then I'm going to let you go. So go ahead. And then you'll get another chance afterwards if you want it. So I think for me, I just can't help but watch this and feel excited because I love technology. And if I just take them on face value, which I think is...

You know, it's a way to be. You're like imagining about technology that might exist? Yeah. But yes, though, I do, right? Like, I am a technology optimist. Like, I...

I love technology. I'm an enthusiast. And so when something comes along, I often take an enthusiast's view. Like I'm enthusiastic for it until I use it and can then make up a second opinion, right? Because it's like all you can do is take the information you're given and you can choose to do with that what you want. You can say it's BS or you can be like, okay, let me take them at their word.

If I take them at their word and it's great, that's awesome. If I take them at their word and it's terrible, that's also fun. I can pick them apart and see what that's like. And I think it's fair that we would all agree that having talented people can produce good products. If you want to produce good products, you need good talent. And I expect that nobody right now can attract talent for hardware like Johnny can. I expect right now

Everyone wants to go there because maybe not everyone, more than enough people. I would expect there are more than enough people want to like he could take anyone he needs. Right. That's what I would assume. I don't know that, but I think designers, hardware and software designers would look to him and be like, I would love the opportunity. I would love the opportunity to welcome him. And sure. Maybe engineers, too. Who knows? Right.

Maybe. But remember, a lot of those engineers probably worked on stuff while he was at Apple. Sure. And there's a question about how they feel about that. And that's my question. I have no doubt that he's going to have great design talent. I wonder if the leadership is design, if you're a hardware engineer who is really excited about working with Johnny Ive, like...

Are you that excited if it's just on him? Because we've seen what happens when he has that level of power and it didn't really go well at Apple. So yeah, maybe. But I'm sure they will recruit some great people. Just to go through a few movie points. You mentioned the gold Apple Watch. Lots of people bring up the gold Apple Watch. Gold Apple Watch was ridiculous. However...

It was alongside the Apple Watch. The Apple Watch, which is a product which functionally basically the same since it started. Right. Like he was ridiculous in making a gold one. But yeah, the product is still good. Right. Yeah. And my point there, my point there is more I wonder how connected Johnny remains to regular people.

given how it's a $2,000 jacket and a collab with Ferrari. Are any people who make hardware

connected to regular people? Like, the types of salaries? You've been to Apple Park. They're not regular people there, right? Like, they're not. And neither am I. Neither are you. Like, are we regular people? Probably not, right? Like, I don't know what that means. Okay. All right. I think that there's a real difference between living in Silicon Valley, which is a bubble into itself, and, you know, having the King and Ferrari as clients and...

Stuff like that. It's a smaller bubble, right? That's for sure. A world of high design that Sir Johnny floats in. Of course. I read enough of his stuff to know that he is about as high on your own supply as a designer can be, right? Yep. Now, I like to read that stuff. It's a good supply? Is that the argument? I mean, but it's why I like...

designers in general tend to be, because you kind of have to be, because you have to, you have to, as a designer, most of the time, sell your product to someone else. Right? You're constantly selling your idea to someone. And so you have to really believe in yourself. Anyway, the car, you mentioned the driverless car. Yeah, ridiculous. But,

Consider the source. That's the information we know. That might have been one of the 12 ideas, right? One of the ideas is driverless. It could be. We don't know anything about it. All I can do is look at what we know about the 15 years at Apple that Johnny Ive was there without Steve and make some guesses. Somebody could come to me and say, look...

Look, I am Johnny's best friend. I worked with him at Apple every step of the way. And Johnny was always saying, no, no, no, don't do that highfalutin like nonsense. We need to ground this and be more like what Steve would want and what regular people would want. And, you know, they could say that. I just, based on the evidence and the reports, I don't believe it. I just don't believe it. So Vision Pro...

It is what it is, right? That's what it is. However, remember the reporting, and we all agreed to this idea at the time, and I think we still do now. What that shouldn't have been, which is the thing that he vetoed, is that there is a piece of hardware in your house...

And it beamed to the vision pro. Apparently Johnny was the one who came in and said, no, you can't do that. If you can't put it all on the thing, you can't make it. So that was some reporting at the time, which I agree with. Right. Right. He's also responsible for the screens that face out that show your eyes though. Yeah. Which is a ridiculous idea, but you know, who knows? Uh, and that the 3d knitted band on the back, which is probably incredibly expensive to make. I'm sure that Johnny, I'm just trying to get my rebuttals here. Uh,

Nobody's perfect. His portfolio is unmatched. And I understand what you're saying. In the last 15 years, what has he done? The Apple Watch? Yeah. Right? That was probably the last success? Conceded. Yeah. Because that's not my point. But yes, I will concede absolutely that this guy is a legend. I said that in my article too. Absolutely a legend. And rightfully so. Absolutely. I...

One of the things that is intriguing to me is like a quote from the New York Times. I show her a lot of responsibility for what these things, the iPhone, have brought us. And something I find interesting in that, well, one, it is fascinating to me as time goes on, the amount of people involved in the iPhone who regret it. Like someone from a long time ago who shared this. Do you remember Lauren Brichter who created Tweety?

Yep. So this is like the Twitter client. Twitter ended up buying it, actually. It was like a third party Twitter client. But Lauren invented Paul to Refresh. Yes, he did. And regretted it so much later on. And it is really intriguing. I find it kind of a fascinating thing. Don't forget the Flappy Bird guy. The Flappy Bird guy made an addictive game and was like, I regret everything. Take it away. So I find that interesting. And wonder...

The thing is, if he has ideas, like genuinely feels like he has a whole set of new ideas, I want to see what they are. I don't think that they'll... I don't believe they will necessarily be good. But if Johnny has taken all this time away from creating consumer technology and now is like...

I want to get back in this game in a big way. I am very intrigued to see what ideas he has. And that's kind of my conceit for this. I don't think it's all going to be good. I'm just intrigued to see what it is he says and does. I'm very interested in what this is and what it does. I just, I felt like there was a real groundswell of...

Oh, amazing. Amazing. Welcome back. This is going to be so great. And I'm like, for all the reasons detailed, it's really just kind of an empty announcement about people that I'm very skeptical about doing the work. But do I want to see it? Of course. Yes, it will be. This is like you saying, I love everything he says and all those interviews and all that. I find it fascinating, but I do not love it. But am I glad that he surfaces for his Desert Island discs? Yes.

Of course. Of course I am. I don't agree with everything he says. I just love that we get to hear him. Because this was... My thing about Johnny is I always assumed he had things to say. Because of course he did. He would pop up in the white room and talk. But he never spoke outside. Right? Ever. He never gave interviews. Nothing. And...

And one of the things that I've been happy about in his post-Apple life is he's talking. Like, it gives me the potential of a thing that I hope one day, which is the man writes a book, right? Because I want to read that book, right? And I feel like that possibility... Very expensive book, though. It would cost $1,000 for the paperback. But I feel like we're getting closer now to the possibility of him actually doing that because he's opening up now in a way that he never did before. But I think we have...

As we often do. We've settled on this. We're in a similar place, which is like, we're very intrigued to see what comes of this. Yeah. Get your popcorn ready. Get your popcorn ready. Absolutely. This is what my kind of the core from it for me is like, my optimism is just in that I am excited about whatever this is, whether it's good, bad,

bad forgettable like because that is just interesting to me this is like what I said about the vision pro like I didn't think necessarily it was going to work but whether it worked or it didn't work was going to be interesting and oh absolutely

Worth analyzing and worth considering. I mean, that's actually why I thought the Humane AI pin was interesting too, is because it was a lot to think about. I don't disagree with any of that. I just really, my reaction is more to the fact that I think I just got finally fed up with two organizations or at least two trends. Johnny Ive, the sort of like the hype bubble around Johnny Ive, wherever he goes, and

and the AI hype machine. And they came together in this. And everybody is out there reacting to it like...

it feels like deeply uncritically to me. And I'm like, am I missing it? And I spent a couple of days thinking about it and I'm like, I'm sorry, I'm not feeling it. I don't think this is, I don't think this has got a good chance of being a thing. Not to say that I'm not interested because I love a game on moment and this feels like a game on moment, right? Although we will have to talk, we'll have to pivot to talking about what this means for Apple in a minute because I am a little puzzled about that part of it. But

Anyway, you should keep your optimism because I think there's a difference between thinking, I don't think this is anything that's going to succeed and they shouldn't do it and I don't want to see it. That is so not true. I absolutely want to see it. And honestly, one of the things I came to in my piece was, look...

Do I think that Johnny Ive is the person to lead this effort? I do not. However, if he has a different worldview than he did a few years ago and has brought in a bunch of people who are not as famous and rich and are hungrier than he is, and he's the elder statesman who is actually sliding into that Steve Jobs role a little bit of telling a young designer, you know, yes and no, slow your roll, not that, but this, right?

Could they succeed? Of course. Of course. And they're going to have the money. They're going to have the talent. Of course they could succeed. I'm really skeptical of it. And I don't think that anything we've seen so far changes my opinion about that. But I'd like to see them try. I'd like to see a bunch of brilliant people try to do it. I'm also, I should say, when I say get the band back together, I'm also going to say,

That doesn't always go very well. I worry that this is a bunch of people who made a lot of money at Apple who are now going to try to do it again. And you could say, yeah, but they're all brilliant and they did it once, so they'll do it again. Maybe, or maybe that's exactly who won't do it again. The conditions are not the same, so it can't suggest anything, right? Like, it's like these people have a great portfolio, but it's a completely different ballgame. Like, this is a completely different game. And it's 20 years later. Yeah. And...

I do believe, in the thing that you positioned, that whether he is successful in it or not, I think he is setting himself up to be the... just the overseer, in that he has not joined OpenAI. He is continuing to work on Love From Work. But he...

And again, some people could see that he's always one foot in, one foot out on that. And it's like, I could understand that, but I could imagine it's a scenario of like, I do not need to be involved in this every day. I will be the person that meets with everyone. And I say, this is good. This is not, this is good. This is not that kind of thing. But who knows? I have no idea that we don't know. How would we know? And I guess all of this is to say, like, we're talking purely about like the hypothetical, right?

Who even knows? Who even knows if an AI-powered piece of hardware could ever work or be interesting in any way? We don't know that. The thing that gives me the most pause about all of this is I have racked my brain trying to think of what this thing could be, and so has everybody else, right? And then they say, oh, well, but it's not that, right? And I was like, oh, okay, it's not that, then what is it? And look, if they have...

come up with something that is beyond my imagination and I see it and I go, oh, of course, then that'll be a really amazing moment. However, I spent two days trying to think about this and

And I can't get there. But I'm leaving open the possibilities. Maybe they have really cracked it. They've really figured it out. And they're like, this is the thing that we want to do. I'll also say a lot of praise out there for Sam Altman that I think is not justified. But I will say this. I thought the positioning of...

We're not coming for your laptop. We're not coming for your devices. This is meant to be us adding something wonderful and new to the world. I think that's brilliant positioning. Yes. Because it's saying we're not trying to be a computer or iPhone killer.

killer. Don't, don't measure us that way. What we're going to do is different and it's not meant to change the world in ways that you can't understand because your computer will be gone or your, what like Sam Altman is sitting there with a MacBook pro and he's like, MacBook pro is fine. Right? Like I think that's a, that's a masterful piece of positioning for them. So I'm going to give him credit for that even though I don't think he's, um,

a product design genius or anything. And I think the chat GPT has kind of fell into their product, but they've got a good product, but they fell into it. They, they didn't like, they were lucky to do it, but they did do it. And it's a residue of the other choices that he made, but I'm not sure I would call him a product genius, uh, even, even close to, even in the same, you know, uh, universe as Steve jobs, but that positioning of don't judge us, uh,

as the secret stealth project that's going don't we're not a segue right remember it was like oh they're gonna the it is gonna come out and it's gonna change how transportation in inner cities works and then it was a segue and everybody's like what like don't do that and so they didn't do that they said no we're not gonna we're not gonna take your laptop away that's not the goal of this that's smart that's super smart

It seems like apparently that is his skill set. Like the more I hear people talk about him, he's just very good at making you believe something, right? Which is why he can get infinite money. He's very good at getting investments. And this is essentially, he's trying to get the world to like invest their intention into this project of like, oh, we're just going to make a third thing. My expectation of what this is, by the way, is it's just a little like, like honestly a pebble, like a stone.

And sometimes it's in your pocket. Sometimes it's on the desk. Sometimes it's strapped to something. Sometimes it's around your neck. Essentially like the AI pen, but I don't think it has A-screens. Sometimes it's attached to a drone that is hovering around you at all times. I mean, maybe, right? But it is in the John Syracuse of parlance, the naked robotic core. That's what I think this little thing is. Maybe so. And you kind of interact with it, but really you're just...

having conversations with it all the time. And really, it's just an interface for all of the stuff that ChatGPT will be able to do by 2027, which is when this product will be announced.

Anyway, do you think that Tim could convince Donald Trump that the iPhones coming in from China and India are just naked robotic cores? I think he could try. I think he could try. But his son, but Baron is standing in the corner going, he's lying to you, dad. Don't believe him. Oh, no. The kid got me.

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what this means for Apple, right? Because there is an Apple story here, obviously, because Johnny Ive now has gone and done... Johnny Ive wanted to get back into technology and he didn't go back to Apple. He did not fulfill on the collaborative partnership that Tim Cook said that they would have when he left. Speaking of marketing BS, yes. Uh-huh. Yeah. So... I want to start with the multi-industry

dynamic here before we talk about like inside what does Apple want to do and how do they want to work with with GPT OpenAI IO which is the larger dynamic so Microsoft is a huge investor in in OpenAI yep sort of right and again there's a there's a public benefit corporation and there's a non-profit and there's it's it's a mess there's a way out like OpenAI have a way out of that relationship yeah

Yeah. So, and the Microsoft relationship actually like Microsoft and Apple compete in some areas, but in most areas they don't. They're not, it's not like that anymore with them. I think that they really are more friends than enemies now. I think you're right. I think even other than if somebody, they tried to do a deal and somebody was like, wait a second, this is all desktop computers now. And even then they might be like, yeah, but desktop computers who needs them. But, but here's the thing that I keep coming back to, which is,

OpenAI's greatest competitor is Google. Last week, Google I.O. happened. I.O. There's so many I.O.s. Last week, Google I.O. happened. And...

And we're not talking about it because of this Johnny I've thing. Well played, I guess. But Google is all in on AI. Google, after being a little skeptical of it and playing that game of like, oh, but if we do this, we'll kill our search revenue, is now full Steve Jobs, full iPod Nano, where they're like, well, our search revenue is going away.

Anyway, so we better be the replacement. And they announced like three different replacements for it at IO. But anyway, they are OpenAI's biggest threat, I think. And Google owns Android. Yes. Like Google owns Android. And I know Android can be modified and it's open and all of these things, right? I hope you heard my rolling eyes when I said open. But yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Okay.

So you could build something on Android, everybody does it, and have it not be Android or not be Google Android and be different and all that. It's fine. You could do that. Nobody and I could do that. And this embedded device that they're making might even have Android. I was thinking probably at its core, this could be Android unless Johnny just can't bring himself to do it.

I mean, maybe. But if it's Android, but you strip everything out of it that you don't want, then fine. It's an open source operating system. Humane built their own OS. No, I know that's not a lot to say, but it's like there are some companies they can't bring themselves to do it. Maybe they can build on Darwin. But this is my point is, ChatGPT is the leader, but Google Gemini is coming on strong, and there are other players too, I know. But I'm just saying, if you think about it,

If the maker of Android is one of the major players in the AI space, literally everybody else should want to make deals with Apple because the smartphone is the place to be. And Apple is struggling in AI right now.

And I do not know why there isn't, and perhaps there is somewhere, a line out the door at Apple Park with the owners and board members and CEOs of every other AI company. Good point. And I'm not saying that Apple needs to buy an AI company. Maybe they do. Maybe that would be a cultural infusion. Or maybe they would buy it and destroy it with their own cultural, like, who knows?

But what I'm saying is, if I'm an AI company and I think smartphones are huge and are going to be around for a while, which they are, I don't like that Google is going to inject their AI everywhere in Android. And I know, yes, again, maybe you can make a deal with Samsung that's a little bit different and all that. But really, it's a super big threat. Yeah.

One of your two big members of the duopoly of smartphones has their own thing that they're going to prefer. Yep.

So Apple, this is the thing that is curious, right? They're going to make this thing, and it's not inside Apple. It's inside OpenAI, but it's got a bunch of Apple people at it. And does Apple view them as a competitor or is it additive? My guess is that if it's a thing that resembles anything Apple is selling, they'll view it as a competitor. But also, they made their first external AI deal with OpenAI.

Surely everybody at IO recognizes the place that Apple holds in society. And when they talk about Apple products by name in that video, like it's very clear that they're sending that signal that they get it.

So what does that mean? Do they think they don't need Apple in any way because it's a post-smartphone world? They're saying it's not, right? They are saying it's not, whether they believe it or not. But they're saying it's not, right? And I have to believe, even if we replace the smartphone with something in 10 years or 20 years...

there's going to be a ramp to it. And ramping off of the smartphone to lead to the thing is probably what you would do to get there. So, you know, right? You're not going to like, there's one day where you pitch your smartphone and replace it with a Dealey from IO, right? Like you're going to, it's going to work with it. So anyway, I want to set that as the stage here because

What I find interesting about this and a bit of a head scratcher is OpenAI and Apple, to me, are natural partners. Yes. Because they're not Google.

Yeah, I want to add on to what you were saying about Google and the threat of Android, which is how close Google and Samsung have become in the last few years. Google and Samsung were at odds for a long time, and they are now incredibly close. They're strategizing together. They're very clearly strategizing together. They develop hardware and software in lockstep, and Google pays Samsung an obscene amount of money

I don't know what the amount is, but people would say it's a very large amount of money to embed Gemini into Samsung phones because essentially Android is Samsung, right? To the consumer. Like, you know, Android... Samsung sells so many Android phones and Samsung is the biggest competitor to Apple. They are the two biggest device makers, right? Like, their devices sell the most. And so it really is Samsung and Google versus Apple and...

Everyone else. Everyone else. And that's a great point. And yes, it makes so much sense for OpenAI and Apple to work together. The ship has sailed on one buying the other, right? We have a way around it goes now because obviously OpenAI can never buy Apple, but OpenAI is not too expensive. Whether correctly or not, they just are. And I don't even think that it makes sense to do it. But I wonder, as you wondered, and me and you were talking about this in the last couple of days, like,

Is there a partnership that makes sense here where these products could tie into the iPhone in a way that we have not seen other products? And why would Apple do this? So there are a few reasons. Let me sketch this for you. First off, I really believe that with all the compute and the battery and the software,

And the connectivity that smartphones aren't going anywhere. Cause like you can put a cell modem and a processor in these little things, but Oh my God, then you were, you know, you've got a separate cell plan and it, is it talking to your phone at all? And how, or is it only in the cloud services and what's going on there? So the smartphone, very powerful. And then Apple is making all these other constellation of devices, right? Your watch, your AirPods, maybe glasses in the future, right? Yeah.

Those are all going to be connected to Siri and Apple intelligence, either in the cloud or on the smartphone. Okay. So,

If they're making one of those, Apple's like, I don't know, I really want to sell more Apple Watches. But if they're not making one of those, if their pitch is, no, we want to make a different kind of product, and you're Apple, maybe you say, look, we're obviously headed in this direction too, but we're not making a product like you are right now. And more broadly, we have a partnership. People are going to use OpenAI products on all of our devices, easy for me to say. People are going to use...

Open AI products on our devices. And we want to make those integrated even better than they already are. They can use our stuff. They can use your stuff. It's great. You're state-of-the-art. We love you. They say all of that. And they're like, okay. So what we want, if you're Apple, is I want your... We'll make your dingus work with our stuff. But your dingus needs to be... It works both ways. Your dingus needs to be best. It needs to be good...

But our Apple Watch or our glasses or our AirPods or just our phone also need to be that good. It needs to work both ways. We'll give you access, but we want it both ways because if people don't want a dingus and they just want to watch or they just want AirPods or whatever...

We want it to run both ways. There is an argument to be made there. Also, as it's sitting in our notes, it's been here all along, we should say, there may be some very serious legal reasons why Apple's going to have to open up its APIs to things like smartwatches and other devices like that in some markets. And if that's the case, then the jig is up a little bit with something like this, where, you know...

OpenAI could say, well, we are kind of like an Apple Watch, so we should be able to connect and take calls and share the same phone number and use the APIs and all of that. But again, if I'm OpenAI, and maybe if I'm Apple, but definitely if I'm OpenAI, I want to have that conversation with Apple. I want to say, we want to be number one on your platform. We want to be the best. And we would like our thing to be the best on your platform because we'll work with Android, but like,

You know, Google, you know, they're doing their own thing. So it's a really interesting question. I feel like open AI kind of needs in this moment kind of needs Apple more than Apple needs open AI because Apple could say we can build whatever you're building. They could say that. But I think both companies would probably be stronger if they work together, even if they can't, you know, merge with each other. I think that they would probably be stronger if they work together. Yeah. And they can use this as an opportunity to do the thing that they might be forced to do.

And I think if Apple were to create a set of API, maybe an SDK, whatever it might be, it actually provides them with a competitive advantage for the next wave of devices. I think the last two years, last year, should have shown Apple that maybe they're not

And maybe they don't need to be best placed technology-wise to deal with this next wave of computing, but they can continue to provide a necessary platform for that. So everyone's talking about how great Macs have become for running models. And they're very power efficient and you can do a lot of it locally. And they've happened to fall into that because of Apple Silicon. Yeah.

Well, great. Just harness that then. And like similarly, like you create a set of APIs which are super good at integrating these new batch of devices, whatever they might be, including something like the Ray-Bans, right? Like all of that stuff. And then you become the platform that is necessary for this new wave of devices to work.

And you can also continue making your stuff, but then it doesn't need to be all on you. And perhaps that is also a way for you to blunt some of like meta Ray-Bans, right? They want you to be in Facebook's cloud, right? If you're Apple and you're like, oh, well, we created APIs now. So the meta Ray-Bans can just pair to the iPhone. But when they do that now,

the grip on you from meta is less. Yeah. Right? Because now there's Apple stuff in there and meta is more like a maker of sunglasses than it is and maybe an AI provider, but that's it. And you potentially say, like, there's nothing stopping Apple from developing more AI models. I mean, one of the strategies here might be you keep working on your models and I hate to say it, but it's actually a little like CarPlay Ultra where it's like the car has got to have

an infotainment system, right? Yeah. A default. And then somebody can bring their own if they want to. And that's CarPlay Ultra and it lays on top. But there has to be something underneath because you can't have a car that can't be used unless you've got a modern iPhone with a current version, et cetera, et cetera. So this is a little like that, which is like Apple's not going to ship an iPhone without an AI model.

And without private cloud compute models, honestly, going forward, because I think because of the whole security and privacy kind of thing, I think Apple is going to continue to build its own models and it should. But like that doesn't preclude them from also saying, use whatever model you want. And if one of the models takes off, Apple's like, we're there. It just plugs in. And then, you know, use that one. And if you're like, I don't like those guys, they invested somewhere that I don't like, or they did some marketing that I thought was gross. I'm going to switch to these guys. Apple will be like, great.

Just, you know, you cancel your subscription with them, you start up with them, you flip the switch here, and now you're using their models on your iPhone. This scenario that we're positioning would be so funny because it would mean that Apple became the open company. We'll welcome anyone. But maybe that's where they are. I'm sure Google will do it too, right? But Google seems like much more of a threat than Apple does. Google will have the opportunity to make a decision.

Having a good AI model is existential for Google, and it's not existential for Apple. Apple can partner. They can do it, yeah. They can do it different ways. Google's fundamental business is at risk. Apple's is... No, Apple's is not at risk. It's not as much as risk. It's not. It's not.

There is a potential for risk, right? There is. Of course. Google's is current. Like their risk is now. We're hearing it. We're seeing it. Google's house is on fire. Yes. Apple's isn't. Apple's house is on a cliff with maybe there could be a landslide or an earthquake sometime, but Google's house is literally on fire right now. All of Apple's current problems are actually not to do with AI, right? Like the things that are actually affecting them. Like, you know...

You know, from a marketing perspective, they look silly, they look ridiculous, whatever. But nothing's just not going to stop people from buying iPhones. Like their problems are the Google search deal, the falling apart of the app store, all that kind of stuff. Sure. Sure. But even if you take all of that out and you look at their business in selling hardware. Yeah.

It's a pretty good business. And the only way that it's going away is if either smartphones go away or Apple's products are so limited that people stop buying iPhones and only buy Android phones because Apple's limited. So you could argue that...

Although there's the pride of building it yourself. And maybe your long-term goal is nobody's going to need a third party. It's competition, right? Which they don't like. But nobody's going to need a third party because our base models are going to be so good that it doesn't matter. But, you know, like when they added Outlook support or Exchange support to the iPhone, they were like...

Yeah, but sometimes your company wants this or that. And so you let them... They can have that as the goal, that the base is so good that you don't need anything else. But in the meantime, you open it up to everybody. And at that point, if you've got really nice hardware and people are comfortable with your operating system and they have an Apple Watch or AirPods and they like those too, and your preferred AI, whatever it is, works great with it...

you're still going to buy an iPhone and Apple's still going to be happy about it. So a lot less existential, not to say that the iPhone is forever, but, uh,

Google has to press. And Google, like you were saying, Google will have to make a decision about how open do you want to be when you need this to work for your business. You need Google search to be replaced with Google AI search or you're losing all of your revenue. Where Apple can... They'll lose a big chunk of their revenue if the Google search gets replaced, but they can replace it with...

ChatGPT search, Plexity search, and it doesn't affect them. It doesn't affect them at the core. People still buy the iPhone. And you know what they make a ton of money from? Selling iPhones. That's where the money comes from. It's from selling the iPhones. And this scenario means that the iPhone continues to be a very important part of the puzzle. And

of all of the potential companies that you could imagine them working with, why not the one where they already have an existing partnership and the other one is the guy

right like would you work with johnny again do you know him and trust him like it's you know that like you can imagine or you can imagine a scenario where is this going to be the company that screws us maybe it's less likely if it's johnny like i don't know but like you can imagine that there is a different interpersonal scenario going on here think think about the idea that

Apple execs are talking to IO and talking to Sam Altman and Johnny. And under strict secrecy, they get a first glimpse about what this thing is. And Apple says, oh, we're not going to make anything like that. That's actually good, right? That's Apple saying, we don't think that's worth the investment. We've got our other platforms. We're going in a bunch of different areas. That is not a thing we're ever going to make. That's good.

But because, and again, is that part of what IO and OpenAI are saying when they say, oh, it's not this and it's not that and you get to keep your MacBook Pro and all that? On one level, I think that's what they're saying is, look, we're not making something that Apple is planning on making. That's not what we're trying to do here.

And who knows? Who knows? But if that was the case, then Apple would probably be a lot less likely to be like, oh, you're trying to do something completely different from where we're trying to go. And that's fine. We'll work together. That's great because our Apple Watch gets better when we're working with you. And our AirPods work better when we're working with you. The danger here is that Apple's like, no.

all of this is existential. We're going to, we have to build it ourselves. And, and I know there's that maxim that, that comes back to like, uh, when the Mac was being judged based on the performance of internet Explorer and, and the Apple did Safari because they're like, we have to control and people call, I think they call that the cook doctrine, but like it dates to Steve jobs. It's very much, we got to control the things that matter. Um, if we can, right. Because there's that, if you can, you, you got to try. Well, having an AM model is, um,

And if we can, but having that doesn't preclude you from opening it up and saying, look, we're going to work with other devices and work with other models because what we're going to do, because that's not a thing we can control right now. Right.

and we'll try. Safari, when it came out, was like, okay, this is interesting. And over time, it got better. And that happens a lot too. But you can have that project running and still work with others in the background. So it's a risk that Apple is like, no, no, no, no, no, no. We got this covered. But I feel like there's a real opportunity because I do feel like if you look at what Google is doing, everybody else is not Google. So they should probably be working together.

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So first up comes from Mark Gurman. They're actually both from Mark Gurman today, obviously. Of course. Mark reported that Apple is accelerating its plans for smart glasses, now aiming to release their first pair by the end of 2026. They're not going to meet my deadline of 2025, but I think this shows you how long it takes for Apple to make a product. It's not easy. At this point.

So as you'd expect, Apple are targeting to do essentially what Meta is doing. Cameras, microphones, speakers with support for talking to Siri and Apple intelligence or within a pair of glasses. Of course.

This product is not expected to feature any kind of display like what Google is doing with their XR project that they showed off for IO. Of course, this is Apple's goal in the future for full AR glasses. Apparently, Mark said that Meta is expected to be shipping something with some kind of display in 2025. My thought on this is, all right, great. Like this is the product that we want, like meet them where they are. By the time they get this product out,

Most likely Meta and Google will both be shipping products that have all of these features plus some kind of display technology. Yeah. I mean, we'll see. No. But that is... And I think when you say their goal is full AR, I think that that is the end goal. Yeah. First, I think the question is going to be, they're going to look at what Meta and Google are doing and saying, okay, should our first one have a little...

screeny spot on it like those where it's not full AR but there's like a little place a little dynamic island where we can put visual information separate or do we start with product one and

And then go on to product two, because I'm sure that Apple is well aware that the next step is to have some visual indication in there, because you can't go to full AR. It's going to take years to get there, but you could do what the competitors are doing. A little heads up display, kind of a little bit of ambient info. Yeah.

Yeah, just a little bit. It really is like a notification center or like it's a little tiny dab of screen in the way that it's been described by the people who've tried it. And it's a nice idea. And it's like, well, that's something we can do today is essentially what they're saying. We can't do a whole thing, but we can do this little thing that when it's on, they can put some images on it or some text on it or whatever. Right.

It's not a full screen. It's not a vision pro. It's literally like a little thing in the corner of your vision that, you know, like little aliens are beaming you messages. That's spoilers for the three body problem. Anyway, yeah, that's the question, right? Like, so if you're Apple, do you say, look, we got to start somewhere. We're going to start with this thing. And we know that that's where they're going and we're going there too, but we're going to start with this thing. Or are we going to hear in six months that from Mark Gurman, right?

that Apple actually has two different models in the works, one of which has a display and one of which doesn't. And then we hear a month later that they've decided to ship the one with the display in late 2026 instead of shipping the one without the display in mid-2026 because they've decided that they need to go there. It wouldn't shock me if that's what ends up happening here because that's their decision, right? It's like ship the simpler thing or kind of leap over it and go to the one. And a lot of that depends on Apple's internal like...

Is that screen any good? Like they might try it and be like, oh, it's not good enough. Let's just ship this thing and we'll work on one that's better because Apple does that, right? Where sometimes their competitors ship something and everybody's like, why isn't Apple doing it? And Apple says, yeah, we looked at that and we don't like it. And maybe they're right and maybe they're wrong, but like that can happen where they look at what Meta or Google is doing and go, we tried that. It's not very good. Do people like that? It's not good. We could do better.

And that's a tough decision for them to make then. As part of this product reshuffling, Apple have shelved their plans for an Apple Watch with a camera. Thank God. Thank God. No more, no up the nose FaceTime for you. Here's my question, Jason. Will they still ship AirPods with cameras, which is a thing that was- Gurman says they're still working on it. That article says they're still working on that. I know. So maybe. But I wonder if they will. Like-

So here's, here's the thing we, we've been talking about this mythical forthcoming IO product, right? Yeah. It's, it's very clear that you have to have devices with cameras that, that will feed AI because it's useful. Who is that person? What is that sign? Where are we right now in cities? They use cameras to, because the GPS isn't reliable to look at the buildings and go, I know exactly where we are. Uh,

to translate written things, to have a microphone that's not in your pocket so it can hear things, right? Like there are lots of reasons to have a device with a camera that can see. The glasses are one of them. The question is, can you do AirPods where they actually work, where they aren't occluded by hair, you know, that it's actually useful to get something out of it?

am skeptical, but I see what they're trying. I'm just skeptical. And if they're doing the glasses, maybe they don't need to do the AirPods? I don't know. I don't know. Because that's a slot that something like an IO product could slot in if it's got a camera on it, right? So, you know, there is an ergonomic issue, too, which is like if you have a shirt pocket or you clip it on your shirt like an iPod shuffle or something like that, like...

Probably you need something like that if you're thinking about an AI world. And if they don't have the glasses on and lots of people have AirPods, is that a place? To me, it comes down to they have to build it and see if it gives them anything they can use or not. I have a hard time imagining it, but maybe they figured out how to do it.

Mark Gurman is also reporting a few pieces of news for WWDC this year. One is that the Apple Watch and Apple TV are going to see the touch of a big redesign like the other platforms. Previously, Mark was unsure of how much change these platforms would see. This is interesting because I feel like the Apple Watch has already gone through a pretty big UI change in the last year or two, but...

It may just be some visual alignment, right, to make them all seem more of a kind and that it's a light touch on the Apple Watch and the Vision Pro, which is why Mark Gurman hadn't heard that. But there's still going to be something. It's not necessarily radical, but they want them all to sort of feel like they're part of the family. And also that Apple is planning on making their AI models open to developers to build within their own applications. Right.

This will be starting with the models that run on device, not the private cloud compute models. I think this is really interesting. I would be

Really intrigued to see what developers would be able to do with these models. Like what can you use them for? Because if the models are decent enough, it could be a big benefit for a lot of use cases. Like cheaper for developers and customers who don't have to supplement and like pay for third-party API models, right? Because their developers are paying JTBT API cost. And also running on devices is better for the environment.

Yeah. Yeah. It's, it comes down to how good the models are, but I think a bunch of us talked about this. Ben Thompson has written about this a lot, empowering app developers on your platform.

to build AI-based features without having to bring your own model. And I would say also running your model as an app on an iPhone versus running the model provided by Apple, probably it will run better and it may be allowed to run longer than a model that's being run by an app where the system may kill it. I feel like there are probably some real advantages to using the APIs for Apple's own models.

I think it's great news. I mean, whether people will use it or not, it depends on the inclination of the people and on how good the models are. Apparently constantly being updated. That's great. But I love the...

I love this idea. I love the idea because empowering app developers to build clever, interesting apps that use AI in different ways on your platform, leveraging the fact that you've got models that run on your device and that your devices have a lot of computing power built into them because of Apple Silicon, all of these things are good, right? Like this is... And honestly...

I could have probably predicted this a year ago because this tends to be what Apple does, right? They're like, well, this year it's for us because we're still figuring it out. Next year, we open it up. Barely. Barely. Yeah. Well, I know. Well, that's... I mean, this is the whole sweet solution thing, right? Which is the iPhone came out and everybody's like, why isn't there an app store? And they're like, look...

We are barely holding it together as it is. We don't know what we're doing. Give us some time. And then, you know, the next year there was an app store because they were ready. This is a little like that. We just like, look, we've just spent, you know, a very short amount of time getting any AI in here at all. Give us a moment. And so, but I think we've all come to assume the worst about so much of Apple behavior because of Apple's track record.

that we look at this and like, are they really going to give developers anything? It's like, well, they should. So good news, they are. I hope it's good. I hope the APIs are thoughtful. I hope the models are useful. And I hope that app developers can say, oh, this is great because I was considering having to bring in a model that would run on the device inside my app that was bad or have to use a cloud model that I don't like or have to create a premium subscription tier so that I can go out to the cloud to use these APIs.

Or there are features I have the idea for that I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to do because I'm not sure I'm going to be able to afford them. Because I don't know if my customers are going to want them. And then I'm kind of stuck paying for these keys. Yeah, I just need a little scrap of AI here to do this little bit. It's like, you can't. And honestly, this is... We joke about some of the bad implementations of Apple features, but like...

If somebody else wants to use the summarization AI in their interface, they should be allowed to do that, right? Like they should be allowed to do that. And it should be better. Yes, of course. But like right now, you can't, right? You can't do it. So yes, of course, they should be allowed to do that. And again, I want to emphasize you could do it with a model that you put on the device, right?

from somewhere, but that's not going to be the same as using the blessed Apple API, Apple model on a device that might kill your app if you use too much power, right? Like there are a lot of advantages to a blessed AI model running on device from Apple. Yep. All right, let's finish out with an Ask Upgrade question for today's show. Okay. Thank you. That's a problem for the lasers. I can't believe it. So if a single laser...

That's what I was thinking. It's like, it's a single ask upgrade. So is there just one laser or are there many lasers? Because that's like, I'm over lasering it at that point. So... Yeah, you don't want to like people... I don't know if that was a thing that like the amount of lasers equated to the amount of questions. I'm just wasting energy. Exactly. I'm wasting power. You don't want to do it. These are on-device lasers. Yeah, the number of lasers...

does not correspond to the number of questions. But I'm just saying, you know, if there's only one question, maybe there should only be one. We'll work on it. We'll figure it out. And we get lots of questions. Again, please continue sending in your questions by going to upgradefeedback.com and send them in. The reason we have one question today is because we keep running really long on the show. But the summer of fun is coming, so there will be lots of time to answer lots of questions. All Ask Upgrade. But I wanted to do this one today because it was related. This question came from Matt who says...

Mike, what are your thoughts on the Meta Ray bands and have they changed at all given recent life changes? Congratulations.

Thank you, Matt. I've been considering them for a while as a way to get video of my daughter without having to get my phone out or stay more present in the moment. So the camera is fine. It's not great. It's okay. And the framing sometimes is weird. It's actually one of the things that I think does look pretty clever about the Google XR glasses that they showed off for IO is you get a tiny viewfinder that pops up.

could be helpful because the camera in these glasses are not where you would usually put a camera right like next to your eye like it's a even even if you're looking at something it isn't you've kind of got to move your head to the side a little bit if you really want to get the camera on it however i get lots of fun little shots that i wouldn't get otherwise of things that i just wouldn't take a picture of because i couldn't get my camera in time however what i'll say

Since having the baby, I've appreciated a whole different function that's available in my Ray-Bans, which is the audio function. So you can listen to things through the speakers and those speakers go down at your ears. And I had previously thought, why would I use these? I have my AirPods Pro significantly better. What I have been more comfortable with, if I'm taking the baby out in the buggy or something, I want to have my ears completely unblocked so I can hear her. And

And I just feel more comfortable with that. And so I've been listening to podcasts through the Meta Ray Bands because you can listen at lower volumes and still have complete

like clarity of the world around you yeah it's like it's not just transparent mode it is just fully transparent literally transparent yep and so that's been something that i really enjoyed and has made me feel more comfortable uh in doing that so i've really valued them for that too so yeah really cool really cool when you said buggy there did you want to say pram

No, much to the frustration of my family, I am using lots of American words for baby things. And, you know, a lot of people, I get feedback, oh, what's wrong with Mike? If you speak to Americans all the time, you will lose your words. And also, my wife is in English, right? So Adina brings Americanism's

naturally, because she learned a lot of them from popular culture. So we say, and we interchange, actually. I say buggy, I also say pram. I kind of code switch a little bit where I need to. I prefer to say diaper to nappy. I just don't like the way nappy sounds. Similarly, we say pacifier instead of dummy, because I don't like how dummy sounds. I just don't like that word. It's mean. But that's what they're called. Pacifiers, we call them dummies.

Yeah, so a lot of the time I am using American words and that's just... I love this because this continues your baby class thing where people were really wondering secretly when you were in your pre-birth baby class, who the hell is this guy and where is he from? Yeah, I don't remember if I said this, but someone asked if I was from Sweden or something like that. Because it's like, I get this every now and then where people are like,

His English is great and his accent's okay enough, but he says weird things. And they're trying, like, are you Canadian? Like, where are you from? No, born and raised in East London is what I tell people and they never believe me. And then there's like a whole thing that I have to explain. You just have to say, I talk to Americans every day. That is what I say. They've ruined me. I only speak to Americans in my work.

My wife is Romanian. Like I, you know, the amount of time that I actually spend talking to people in London, because that's the thing is honestly, like most of the people I interact with, not most, so many people I interact with in London didn't grow up in London. Many of them didn't grow up in England, right? So like it's- It really, it doesn't matter anymore. Here's my next question, which is going to be, it will be really interesting, won't it? To see how your daughter-

Oh, it's going to be hilarious. As she goes to school. Because I know what she's like. Right? This little English accent. Like, honey. Yeah. Right? She's going to be a real Londoner. We're all going to sound different. Maybe you'll get more English. Yeah. When your daughter is coming home from school. Maybe. I don't know. Like, we... This is something that me and Idina noticed this when she was pregnant. We were on the train once and there was a couple and their child. And...

One of the people was clearly from France. Another person was from somewhere else in Europe. You could tell by their accents. But their child sounded like a cockney. And I thought that was hilarious. And that's just the way it goes. I knew...

I knew kids whose parents were immigrants growing up and they, you know, they didn't have accents at all. And then you go to their home and it's like the thick Hungarian accents and you're like, whoa. Where did that come from? You couldn't tell. And I had a college roommate whose parents were both from Hong Kong and, you know,

Other than the fact that he looked Chinese, on the phone, you would never know. He was completely just... There was no Hong Kong detected. But then his dad called on the phone, and it was like thick accent. And I'm like, whoa. So get ready for that. But my point here is that maybe she will make you both...

more English as time goes on. It could happen. Or probably not. We'll find out. It could happen. Not, well, Irina, so she sounds less Romanian to Romanians as time has gone on. She very much decided she wasn't going to lose her accent. Like, she has friends that came to London at the same time that she did who purposefully got rid of their Romanian accent. Sure. Oh.

Sure. But she decided not to do it. But we'll see. Who knows? We're in a new world. Who knows? We only had time for one Ask Upgrade, and we did a whole other thing also. You can send in your feedback, follow-up, and questions by going to upgradefeedback.com. Thank you to our members and supporters of Upgrade Plus. This week, we're going to do some follow-up about maps, and I'm going to talk about the Indy 500. Go to getupgradeplus.com. You can sign up, get longer ad-free versions of the show each and every week.

If you want to watch this show, you can do so on YouTube where we are, the Upgrade podcast. You can find us just by searching for that. Thank you to our sponsors who supported us this week, ExpressVPN, Vitally, and FitPod. But as always, the biggest thank you goes to you for listening. Until next time, say goodbye, Jason Snell. Goodbye, Mike Hurley.