The Talk Show

00:00:00 ◼   ► How are you doing, Chance?

00:00:01 ◼   ► I'm excellent.

00:00:02 ◼   ► How's the summer treating you?

00:00:04 ◼   ► Not bad.

00:00:04 ◼   ► It's when you texted me this morning asking if I could do the show,

00:00:08 ◼   ► I was thinking, like, it's been kind of slow these past few weeks.

00:00:12 ◼   ► We're in kind of the the doldrums.

00:00:14 ◼   ► We don't have beta five.

00:00:17 ◼   ► We're just kind of sitting on our hands, it feels like.

00:00:20 ◼   ► Yeah, it's funny.

00:00:20 ◼   ► I was on the that uh TBPN show, the the one that the open

00:00:26 ◼   ► AI bought, and you know, it's like a YouTube thing.

00:00:29 ◼   ► And they asked if the summer was busier than usual, and I kind of

00:00:33 ◼   ► had to put on my well, I'm talking to people in the great in

00:00:37 ◼   ► the greater tech world, it is a very busy summer because the AI thing

00:00:40 ◼   ► is a mania that is continuing.

00:00:42 ◼   ► In the Apple specific world, no, I would say.

00:00:48 ◼   ► I mean, there is the added drama of the open AI lawsuit, which I

00:00:52 ◼   ► do want to get to, but you know, that that isn't really a steady

00:00:58 ◼   ► turn, right?

00:01:00 ◼   ► I mean, that's the thing that's gonna play out for years and years, barring

00:01:03 ◼   ► any surprising settlements.

00:01:04 ◼   ► So you can dissect it for a few months at first, and then you

00:01:09 ◼   ► have to wait.

00:01:10 ◼   ► Yeah, it's like the Epic Games thing.

00:01:11 ◼   ► We spent I think first time I was on the show, maybe we talked

00:01:15 ◼   ► about Epic Games, and it's like, oh my god.

00:01:18 ◼   ► I know it's it is a very odd measure of time, but I had

00:01:22 ◼   ► a lot less gray hair when the epic thing started.

00:01:26 ◼   ► And it's you know as slow as other things move, you know, and we

00:01:31 ◼   ► all want everything that we're unhappy with to move faster.

00:01:34 ◼   ► Nothing moves slower than the legal process.

00:01:37 ◼   ► Nope.

00:01:37 ◼   ► We'll get to that.

00:01:38 ◼   ► But you did mention it's a good opening topic that uh even iOS 27

00:01:43 ◼   ► is slow.

00:01:44 ◼   ► And my friend Will Haynes, who I sort of, it's not like a commercial

00:01:50 ◼   ► project, but if he he's he hit me, him and Craig Hockenberry from uh

00:01:55 ◼   ► the icon factory are do Kotoba, which is a dictionary app for iOS.

00:01:59 ◼   ► You could just KOTO, I'll put it in the show notes.

00:02:03 ◼   ► But it's not in the App Store because it uses APIs that you're not

00:02:08 ◼   ► allowed to use in an App Store app.

00:02:10 ◼   ► So you if you want to use it, you have to like get it

00:02:12 ◼   ► for it's open source, you get it from GitHub.

00:02:14 ◼   ► Anyway, he's a friend.

00:02:15 ◼   ► But for years and years and years, Will has at Will, I'll put and

00:02:19 ◼   ► I'll put a link to this in the show notes too.

00:02:21 ◼   ► His iOS version history, where he tracks the betas for I it I'm looking,

00:02:30 ◼   ► it goes all the way back to iPhone OS, iPhone OS 2.0 and just

00:02:36 ◼   ► tracks how many betas there were for each release.

00:02:41 ◼   ► And it's uh like iOS 20, it it's so it's interesting, like the the

00:02:47 ◼   ► point zero releases are obviously very different than the point one, point two point

00:02:52 ◼   ► three releases because this is the big summer beta.

00:02:56 ◼   ► It looks like Apple's only a little bit behind, but it feels to me

00:03:01 ◼   ► like a lot behind.

00:03:01 ◼   ► So right now, as we record, and again, there is no better way to

00:03:06 ◼   ► guarantee that beta five will come out than me and you recording this.

00:03:10 ◼   ► As you started talking, as you pointed to Will's website, it came out.

00:03:13 ◼   ► Beta 5 is now.

00:03:14 ◼   ► Did it really?

00:03:15 ◼   ► Yes.

00:03:16 ◼   ► As we're listening, that's late breaking news.

00:03:19 ◼   ► Well, that's fantastic that it came out while we're recording.

00:03:23 ◼   ► I actually made it happen.

00:03:25 ◼   ► I jinxed it so hard that it came out.

00:03:28 ◼   ► All right.

00:03:29 ◼   ► Well, it it looks to me like beta five came out like third week

00:03:35 ◼   ► of July last summer, and beta five came out for iOS 18 two summers

00:03:41 ◼   ► ago, around the same week.

00:03:43 ◼   ► So it looks like they're maybe like three weeks behind for a beta five.

00:03:49 ◼   ► You know, I I don't know what the holdup is because overall, uh maybe

00:03:52 ◼   ► that's the thing is that iOS 27's been pretty stable, but I also think

00:03:56 ◼   ► iOS, I've been using them on my iPhone.

00:03:59 ◼   ► I think beta four, the one that we've been stuck with since the very

00:04:02 ◼   ► beginning of um July has been the worst of all of them.

00:04:07 ◼   ► Yeah, I think so.

00:04:08 ◼   ► I'm I don't know if you have it, but the most frustrating bug is

00:04:11 ◼   ► you search for an app in Spotlight and none of the app icons show

00:04:15 ◼   ► up, so it's just a bunch of blank.

00:04:16 ◼   ► So you type like I in, wanting to get into get to Instagram.

00:04:21 ◼   ► All the icons are blank.

00:04:22 ◼   ► It's like app roulette.

00:04:23 ◼   ► You just tap one and hope that the one you're tapping is Instagram, 'cause

00:04:26 ◼   ► it's blank, you don't know what it is.

00:04:27 ◼   ► So a lot of little things in beta four, I think.

00:04:31 ◼   ► But it's impossible to know what the holdup is 'cause there are so many

00:04:35 ◼   ► like factors at play with these, like maybe s like some of the engineering

00:04:39 ◼   ► team like these teams are so small.

00:04:40 ◼   ► If half the engineering teams just out of the office for a few days

00:04:44 ◼   ► or they're focused on something else, then like yeah, you just push it a

00:04:47 ◼   ► week.

00:04:47 ◼   ► They're surprisingly flexible, I think, despite the fact that they are usually pretty consistent.

00:04:52 ◼   ► What's your experience been like with the beta of 27?

00:04:56 ◼   ► All in all, really good, I think.

00:04:59 ◼   ► It's the obvious like Siri AI has been twofold.

00:05:04 ◼   ► I think the new stuff that it can do with personal context, digging into

00:05:08 ◼   ► everything on your phone, mail mail messages, reminders, wallet, all of that stuff has

00:05:13 ◼   ► been remarkably reliable.

00:05:15 ◼   ► But where I've started to have more problems, and it's weird because it started

00:05:18 ◼   ► in the later betas, is where trying trying to do things that old the

00:05:24 ◼   ► old version of Siri could do right nine point nine out of 10 times.

00:05:28 ◼   ► So setting a timer, adding a reminder, adding something to your shopping list, controlling

00:05:29 ◼   ► a home kit scene.

00:05:36 ◼   ► At some point between like beta three and beta four, maybe there seemed to

00:05:41 ◼   ► be a regression in how reliable those things were.

00:05:44 ◼   ► And we heard about it some at the tech talk that you and I

00:05:47 ◼   ► and many other members of the press went to at WWDC, where there's like

00:05:51 ◼   ► that intermediary layer trying to determine which direction a request needs to go.

00:05:59 ◼   ► And one example I've been using is like I'll say, add something to my

00:06:03 ◼   ► shopping list, and it'll come back and say, you don't have a shopping list.

00:06:07 ◼   ► Would you like me to create one?

00:06:09 ◼   ► I do have a shopping list and it's there.

00:06:12 ◼   ► And then so one time I said, okay, create the shopping list.

00:06:15 ◼   ► And it said, I don't have the ability to create lists and reminders.

00:06:19 ◼   ► It's like that that side of things is really buggy for me.

00:06:25 ◼   ► I had one the other day where I needed to set a reminder to,

00:06:33 ◼   ► well, I mean, I it's I'll just username.

00:06:36 ◼   ► But we have a friend, we we got caught in a rainstorm, and a

00:06:39 ◼   ► friend named Andrea let us borrow me and my wife's some umbrellas to get

00:06:45 ◼   ► home in a thunderstorm, walk home.

00:06:47 ◼   ► And I wanted to set a reminder to return her umbrellas.

00:06:52 ◼   ► And I said, remind me to return the umbrellas to Andrea.

00:06:56 ◼   ► And Siri AI on the phone said, was that Andrea?

00:07:02 ◼   ► Andrea, you know, spelling the name different ways.

00:07:05 ◼   ► Andre or it was like four different things.

00:07:09 ◼   ► And I just said Andrea.

00:07:11 ◼   ► And then it just asked again, was that Andrea, Andrea, Andre, or whatever?

00:07:17 ◼   ► And I said, and I just took a different one.

00:07:19 ◼   ► I just said, Andrea.

00:07:14 ◼   ► It doesn't matter to me.

00:07:22 ◼   ► Like whatever it said, I would know what it meant, right?

00:07:25 ◼   ► It could spell, it could say Andrew.

00:07:27 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:07:27 ◼   ► And I would, I would know exactly what it meant.

00:07:29 ◼   ► Umbrella to somebody whose name is vaguely start, you know, starts with A and

00:07:33 ◼   ► D.

00:07:34 ◼   ► And I went through this, it was like obviously caught in an infinite loop.

00:07:37 ◼   ► And at the last one, I just said, you pick.

00:07:42 ◼   ► And uh it actually that actually worked.

00:07:45 ◼   ► And it did pick the wrong name, but it actually it actually worked.

00:07:49 ◼   ► It made a decision.

00:07:50 ◼   ► Yes.

00:07:51 ◼   ► Which I thought was kind of interesting.

00:07:53 ◼   ► Because I did I thought that you I thought this was stuck in some

00:07:56 ◼   ► kind of loop.

00:07:57 ◼   ► And I'm just un I'm unsure even of the ways that it breaks down

00:08:03 ◼   ► now because it's so clearly ground up a new system, right?

00:08:08 ◼   ► Like that that to me, that loop I got stuck in was all new.

00:08:12 ◼   ► I don't remember that ever happening with Syria before.

00:08:15 ◼   ► I remember it mishearing me.

00:08:16 ◼   ► I remember saying I can't do that.

00:08:18 ◼   ► I remember, you know, all sorts of other frustrations, but never repeatedly asking me

00:08:25 ◼   ► Andrea Andrea Andre or whatever, and me saying one of them and then it

00:08:32 ◼   ► just repeating the exact same question again.

00:08:34 ◼   ► And being able to say you pick and having it work, that actually is

00:08:38 ◼   ► kind of clever.

00:08:39 ◼   ► I think one of the things they've done, and maybe they've toned it down

00:08:41 ◼   ► a bit through the betas, but at least in beta one and two, the

00:08:46 ◼   ► dictation model for Siri interactions seemed to be like hypersensitive.

00:08:49 ◼   ► It did not ever want to assume what you were saying, and it thought

00:08:53 ◼   ► if if there was like a 50% chance that it misheard you, it was

00:08:56 ◼   ► going to ask you to clarify.

00:08:58 ◼   ► Because my example of a very similar situation is I ask it for years,

00:09:03 ◼   ► almost every day, what time do the Reds play tonight?

00:09:06 ◼   ► Because I watched the Cincinnati Reds.

00:09:08 ◼   ► And usually it's like some games are at seven 7:10, 6:40.

00:09:12 ◼   ► Like just so I just want to know exactly what time does it start.

00:09:15 ◼   ► In iOS 27, it started saying, Did you mean the Cincinnati Reds or the

00:09:20 ◼   ► Boston Red Sox?

00:09:23 ◼   ► And I would say I meant the Reds.

00:09:24 ◼   ► And it would say Reds or Red Sox.

00:09:26 ◼   ► And you have to put the Cincinnati in there for it to be confident

00:09:29 ◼   ► enough just to tell me the score or tell me the time.

00:09:31 ◼   ► Tell me the time.

00:09:32 ◼   ► Yeah, or tell you which team.

00:09:33 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:09:33 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:09:34 ◼   ► So one step or two steps forward, one step back overall.

00:09:39 ◼   ► It is, you know, there's some.

00:09:42 ◼   ► I know some people want to argue about comparing it to the frontier, which

00:09:48 ◼   ► is, you know, it is a big part of today's tech news, is what

00:09:53 ◼   ► the very latest fable and uh you know, whatever the chat GPT version numbers

00:09:58 ◼   ► are capable of, which is so far beyond what we're talking about with Siri.

00:10:06 ◼   ► Not even that saying that Siri is dumb, it's just that we're talking about

00:10:08 ◼   ► just getting basic stuff right.

00:10:10 ◼   ► It's just really is it's not even apples to oranges because they're both fruit.

00:10:15 ◼   ► It is like comparing a whole meal to a snack, right?

00:10:18 ◼   ► It's like, let's just get the snack right.

00:10:21 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:10:21 ◼   ► It is and it's good overall, but it it and it's definitely progress, but

00:10:26 ◼   ► it is still sort of uh confusing at times.

00:10:30 ◼   ► And to me, the baseline isn't like, hey, what ad super advanced stuff can

00:10:35 ◼   ► you make?

00:10:35 ◼   ► Can you have this make an entire app for you?

00:10:38 ◼   ► Can it look at the source code for an entire Xcode project or a

00:10:42 ◼   ► website and do stuff?

00:10:43 ◼   ► Like Siri AI doesn't even try to do stuff like that.

00:10:46 ◼   ► Put that aside.

00:10:47 ◼   ► And to me, the baseline for what it should be able to do is

00:10:51 ◼   ► if you hired a college intern, right?

00:10:54 ◼   ► And if you have chance hired a college intern and you said, hey, I

00:10:58 ◼   ► don't, I actually don't know.

00:10:59 ◼   ► Do you live in the Cincinnati area?

00:11:02 ◼   ► I live in Michigan.

00:11:03 ◼   ► I grew up in Louisville, Kentucky, and everybody in Louisville is a Reds fan.

00:11:07 ◼   ► So right.

00:11:08 ◼   ► Right.

00:11:08 ◼   ► But that's a very quick thing that a human being would learn about you,

00:11:13 ◼   ► that your favorite team is the Cincinnati Reds.

00:11:15 ◼   ► And if you just said to your human assistant, hey, every day tell me,

00:11:20 ◼   ► you know, if I ask you, you know, just know I I, you know,

00:11:22 ◼   ► because the times vary, you know, I don't know.

00:11:24 ◼   ► Maybe they're playing out in California and it's going to be on at 10,

00:11:26 ◼   ► 10:30 at night.

00:11:27 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:11:28 ◼   ► And you said, what time are the Reds on tonight?

00:11:31 ◼   ► to a human being.

00:11:32 ◼   ► They would never in a million years ask you, you mean the Red Sox

00:11:36 ◼   ► or the Cincinnati Reds?

00:11:38 ◼   ► Like, that's just baseline.

00:11:40 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:11:40 ◼   ► And it's still kind of frustrating that Siri isn't getting to that baseline.

00:11:44 ◼   ► Like the first time, sure.

00:11:47 ◼   ► But that seems like something that it should be able to remember about you.

00:11:50 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:11:51 ◼   ► Part of the overall my time with iOS 27, there's is a like a

00:11:57 ◼   ► psychological element, especially with the personal context stuff, because we've spent the last however

00:12:03 ◼   ► many years thinking, well, if I ask Siri this, it's gonna bomb.

00:12:06 ◼   ► It's not gonna like I'm not even gonna bother trying to ask it because

00:12:08 ◼   ► I know it's gonna get it wrong.

00:12:10 ◼   ► And throughout iOS 27, it's been like a mental training to be like, maybe

00:12:15 ◼   ► I could ask it that and it'll get it right.

00:12:17 ◼   ► And then you start doing that, it accurately responds to enough of your questions

00:12:21 ◼   ► that you start to learn that it actually is quite a bit better than

00:12:25 ◼   ► it used to be.

00:12:26 ◼   ► But it's been bad for so long that at least for me personally, it's

00:12:30 ◼   ► like I don't trust it yet.

00:12:29 ◼   ► Or I didn't trust it at first.

00:12:34 ◼   ► So in beta one and beta two, I wasn't using it as much as

00:12:37 ◼   ► I could have because that mental model of thinking it was terrible took a

00:12:41 ◼   ► while to overcome.

00:12:42 ◼   ► And I think that's going to be a thing when it ships to everybody

00:12:44 ◼   ► in September.

00:12:45 ◼   ► Like there's not going to be a resounding response from iPhone users saying, wow,

00:12:50 ◼   ► Siri is good.

00:12:50 ◼   ► It's going to be like a trickle as people try things and learn that

00:12:53 ◼   ► it's finally mostly quite a bit better.

00:12:56 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:12:57 ◼   ► I talked about that on a recent episode with Quinn Nelson, and we both

00:13:00 ◼   ► have the same problem where it's the hardest part of testing it is remembering

00:13:03 ◼   ► to use it.

00:13:04 ◼   ► Yes.

00:13:05 ◼   ► In the flow of daily life.

00:13:07 ◼   ► Like when I'm actually actively thinking about it, you know, and like I'll install

00:13:12 ◼   ► beta five when we're done recording this today, and I'll be thinking about it

00:13:15 ◼   ► the rest of the day.

00:13:16 ◼   ► But like just out and about in daily life, it just does not often

00:13:21 ◼   ► does not occur to me.

00:13:22 ◼   ► And I'll search for something the other way.

00:13:23 ◼   ► And then afterwards I'll think, ah, I should have used Siri AI.

00:13:26 ◼   ► And then I'll go and do it, not in the flow, you know, and

00:13:30 ◼   ► just see, ah, and it even would have worked.

00:13:32 ◼   ► But I I don't think of it.

00:13:34 ◼   ► There is some learned behavior not to bother trying that is that they need

00:13:39 ◼   ► to overcome.

00:13:41 ◼   ► What else have you been using the apps, the actual Siri apps?

00:13:46 ◼   ► I've used it on iPhone quite a bit.

00:13:49 ◼   ► I I've kind of tried to replace my use of ChatGPT or Claude, just

00:13:53 ◼   ► trying the Siri app.

00:13:54 ◼   ► On Mac, not at all really.

00:13:59 ◼   ► I don't think it's well enough integrated into Mac OS to really be useful.

00:14:03 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:14:03 ◼   ► And I think I think overall, because so part of German's reporting up to

00:14:09 ◼   ► WWDC was like, will they, won't they make a standalone Siri app?

00:14:13 ◼   ► And up until March or April, he was like, well, they're testing the models

00:14:14 ◼   ► with a dedicated app, but they're probably not going to release it.

00:14:20 ◼   ► And then it was like, okay, maybe they will release it then.

00:14:23 ◼   ► Yes, they're releasing it.

00:14:24 ◼   ► And I think that kind of shows him the quality of the app across

00:14:27 ◼   ► iPhone and Mac, especially where it's very basic.

00:14:32 ◼   ► I heard something, I mean, and you know, this is me dipping my toes

00:14:36 ◼   ► ever so gently into the rumor game.

00:14:38 ◼   ► I heard something at while I was out in California at WWDC that I

00:14:43 ◼   ► don't want to go into detail much, but basically that part of the code

00:14:53 ◼   ► and the project at Apple changed kind of remarkably close to WWDC.

00:15:00 ◼   ► You know, that I don't know what I don't even remember exactly what month,

00:15:04 ◼   ► but something like March or April that like it's like, hey, why don't we

00:15:11 ◼   ► do it an app and somebody put one together and they're like, yeah, now

00:15:15 ◼   ► you're in charge of Siri, and because this is a good idea, you know

00:15:19 ◼   ► that um I'm not trying to make excuses for Mark German, um, but that

00:15:24 ◼   ► I actually really do think in this case that actually was a a fairly

00:15:29 ◼   ► significant change internally and I think so.

00:15:32 ◼   ► And and to the surprise and possible consternation of people at Apple who were

00:15:38 ◼   ► working on whatever they were going to use as the visual presentation layer at

00:15:42 ◼   ► that point.

00:15:43 ◼   ► Um, and I think it's a good idea, but I agree with you.

00:15:47 ◼   ► It it just feels very thin, and nowhere does it feel thinner than on

00:15:51 ◼   ► the Mac.

00:15:52 ◼   ► You know, it just is like because and I can't use it day to

00:15:56 ◼   ► day because I am still on my main work Mac still using Sequoia, so

00:15:59 ◼   ► I don't get it.

00:16:02 ◼   ► And I think often, but I am using it on my iPhone, and it

00:16:06 ◼   ► I am going to it before I go to Chat GPT.

00:16:08 ◼   ► And it is it is succeeding for so many of the things I've used

00:16:13 ◼   ► Chat GPT for, and I don't miss it.

00:16:16 ◼   ► It is slower.

00:16:17 ◼   ► I notice when I go back to Chat GPT, like, oh man, chat GPT

00:16:22 ◼   ► is a lot faster to respond.

00:16:23 ◼   ► This feels like Chat GPT when I first started using Chat GPT two years

00:16:28 ◼   ► ago.

00:16:28 ◼   ► But I, you know, uh it's it's not too slow, it's just you know,

00:16:33 ◼   ► and and if you're not used to if you're currently using chat GPT a

00:16:37 ◼   ► lot or or Cloud or whatever else that's fast, you might look at the

00:16:43 ◼   ► results of this and be like, I'm I'm not switching to this, it's slow.

00:16:46 ◼   ► Whether you think the results are good or not, why why use the slow

00:16:49 ◼   ► thing?

00:16:49 ◼   ► But for all the people out there who haven't been using one on a

00:16:52 ◼   ► regular basis, it's pretty good.

00:16:54 ◼   ► And you know, you can trigger it from the side button on the lock

00:16:57 ◼   ► screen.

00:16:57 ◼   ► You don't have to unlock your phone, it is a huge convenience factor.

00:17:01 ◼   ► Um, but when I'm at my Mac, and I often think, ah, I kind

00:17:05 ◼   ► of wish I could use Siri AI on my Mac so I could continue

00:17:09 ◼   ► testing it this summer.

00:17:10 ◼   ► And then I do use Chat GPT classic, and I notice all the ways

00:17:16 ◼   ► like the ways that it will attach itself to a BB edit window or

00:17:20 ◼   ► to the current note in Apple notes, and I think I do not want

00:17:24 ◼   ► to give this up.

00:17:25 ◼   ► Like, yep.

00:17:26 ◼   ► Same reason I don't want to, I'm not gonna switch to their stupid ass

00:17:29 ◼   ► uh Chat GPT's super app that doesn't, you know, the super app that misses

00:17:34 ◼   ► the best features of Chat GPT Classic.

00:17:37 ◼   ► Uh, I'm gonna hold on to ChatGPT Classic as long as they will continue

00:17:41 ◼   ► to let it be used, and it's not even the speed thing, it's the

00:17:44 ◼   ► integration thing.

00:17:45 ◼   ► It just doesn't.

00:17:44 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:17:47 ◼   ► But you know, hopefully, I I don't expect a lot between now and the

00:17:51 ◼   ► fall when Mac OS 27 Golden Gate actually ships, but hopefully it is a

00:17:58 ◼   ► you know major point of development after 27.0, you know.

00:18:04 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:18:05 ◼   ► I do applaud them for making the chat just a standalone chatbot app because

00:18:10 ◼   ► it felt like if they weren't if the reason for not doing it felt

00:18:15 ◼   ► like pride more than anything because they said all along they didn't want to

00:18:18 ◼   ► make a chatbot app, but people want a chatbot app.

00:18:20 ◼   ► I want a chatbot app app because typing to it is honestly the most

00:18:26 ◼   ► natural way to interact with it, especially if you're just researching something.

00:18:30 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:18:30 ◼   ► And to like silo it all off, however, they were gonna do it without

00:18:33 ◼   ► an app, I don't think would have made sense.

00:18:36 ◼   ► Yeah, I do think, you know, so I do give them credit for that,

00:18:39 ◼   ► you know.

00:18:40 ◼   ► Uh turning, you know, doing effectively an about face, you know, and they've definitely

00:18:45 ◼   ► managed to do it without saying that they're doing an about face, which I

00:18:51 ◼   ► don't blame them for, and I would do if I were them in in

00:18:55 ◼   ► charge of the messaging too.

00:18:57 ◼   ► But I'm glad they did.

00:18:59 ◼   ► And I I just feel it is the common sense of hey, chat is

00:19:05 ◼   ► actually just a good interface.

00:19:08 ◼   ► You know, it is why human beings spend so much time in text messaging

00:19:15 ◼   ► with each other.

00:19:16 ◼   ► It is a it is actually and it it's a thing that has stuck.

00:19:22 ◼   ► It it's you know, I would say I started using what looks like a

00:19:26 ◼   ► modern chat style interface back in the instant, we used to call it instant

00:19:30 ◼   ► messaging days of iChat and the apps of that era.

00:19:35 ◼   ► And it's effectively unchanged since then.

00:19:38 ◼   ► It's just gotten technically better with syncing between devices and being always on instead

00:19:43 ◼   ► of having to actually log in and being end-to-end encrypted with services like iMessage

00:19:48 ◼   ► and WhatsApp and Signal.

00:19:50 ◼   ► Um, but it's it's just a good interface that people get, you know, they

00:19:55 ◼   ► understand it and it's simple.

00:19:58 ◼   ► And you know, the the time-oriented nature of hey, uh new bubbles are at

00:20:04 ◼   ► the bottom and you go keep scrolling up to go old, you know, to

00:20:09 ◼   ► go back in time, it people understand it.

00:20:11 ◼   ► And you're on this side and the person or thing, if in the case

00:20:16 ◼   ► of a chat bot is on the right, it just works.

00:20:19 ◼   ► And so I feel like if they had not done it and presented something

00:20:25 ◼   ► else as the visual layer of it, it would almost certainly be worse and

00:20:30 ◼   ► just for the sake of being different.

00:20:32 ◼   ► And putting aside the technical limitations of the old Siri, it was just frustrating

00:20:38 ◼   ► up until now that you couldn't go back.

00:20:40 ◼   ► Like if you knew that yesterday you had had an interaction with Siri that

00:20:44 ◼   ► answered a question and you've already forgotten the answer, not being able to go

00:20:49 ◼   ► back and look at it and having to start all over again was super

00:20:52 ◼   ► frustrating.

00:20:53 ◼   ► And if you look at it from Apple's perspective and sort of not growth

00:20:58 ◼   ► hacking, Apple doesn't need to growth hack anything, but if you want people to

00:21:02 ◼   ► know that you're trying again and that Siri is different and better now, the

00:21:05 ◼   ► best way to do it is to slap a Siri icon on their home

00:21:07 ◼   ► screen for the first time.

00:21:08 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah.

00:21:09 ◼   ► They update iOS 27 and it's there.

00:21:11 ◼   ► Yeah, I agree.

00:21:13 ◼   ► You know, I think the other thing that maybe they tied themselves in knots

00:21:16 ◼   ► wasn't um all these other companies that everybody is saying is ahead of us

00:21:22 ◼   ► and that we're hopelessly behind, they're all doing chatbots.

00:21:25 ◼   ► So we don't want to say we're doing a chatbot because then it looks

00:21:28 ◼   ► like even more like we're catching up.

00:21:30 ◼   ► So let's just say we don't think chatbots are a great interface, blah, blah,

00:21:33 ◼   ► blah, blah, blah.

00:21:34 ◼   ► I think the other thing they got they maybe tied themselves in knots over

00:21:37 ◼   ► was the idea that having a chat transcript is a privacy problem.

00:21:44 ◼   ► You know, that you might want to say things to Siri and not have

00:21:49 ◼   ► a record of them.

00:21:51 ◼   ► And I think they overthought that.

00:21:53 ◼   ► I I think it is great that Apple thinks of privacy way at a

00:21:58 ◼   ► way higher priority than I would say any of its peer companies.

00:22:02 ◼   ► But in this case, what is the privacy violation?

00:22:06 ◼   ► Like I've been thinking about it, you know, on that privacy front as I've

00:22:09 ◼   ► used ChatGPT for years.

00:22:11 ◼   ► Like I don't even trust OpenAI nearly as much as I trust Apple, but

00:22:15 ◼   ► I do trust that my actual chat transcripts with ChatGPT aren't nobody else is

00:22:20 ◼   ► going to read them, and nobody else has access to my devices.

00:22:23 ◼   ► So how would they read them?

00:22:25 ◼   ► And if somebody does get access to my devices, I've got bigger problems than

00:22:30 ◼   ► them reading my Chat GPT transcripts, right?

00:22:34 ◼   ► And I guess I haven't even looked.

00:22:36 ◼   ► I'm presuming that if you don't want Siri transcripts, I'm sure there's a setting

00:22:40 ◼   ► to turn it off.

00:22:41 ◼   ► But I think the settings are the same as messages, which is delete after

00:22:46 ◼   ► 30 days, delete after 60 days, something like that.

00:22:48 ◼   ► Yeah, something like that.

00:22:50 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:22:50 ◼   ► Which I, you know, it's great.

00:22:51 ◼   ► I haven't said to save forever.

00:22:52 ◼   ► What do I care?

00:22:53 ◼   ► Honestly, you know, I feel like the security layer is that my phone is

00:22:56 ◼   ► locked and people don't know my passcode, and I don't tell people my passcode.

00:23:00 ◼   ► And you know, it's being too private, right?

00:23:03 ◼   ► That's what I think.

00:22:59 ◼   ► If you're if they were worried about that.

00:23:05 ◼   ► And I think maybe they've just sort of realized, hey, what is the point

00:23:09 ◼   ► of this?

00:23:09 ◼   ► You know?

00:23:10 ◼   ► What what is the point of worrying about the privacy here?

00:23:13 ◼   ► We can do this and keep it private, you know.

00:23:14 ◼   ► And and I would honestly say uh my personal chats in iMessage are way

00:23:21 ◼   ► more have way more stuff that I would not want somebody else to read

00:23:24 ◼   ► than my Siri interactions.

00:23:26 ◼   ► So if you know, if you're allowed to keep an Apple encourages, I mean,

00:23:31 ◼   ► they don't make it as easy as possible to search your old stuff, but

00:23:34 ◼   ► it's there, why not?

00:23:36 ◼   ► I saw an example on Threads or somewhere of somebody.

00:23:41 ◼   ► I think people are gonna realize how much stuff is in their messages history

00:23:44 ◼   ► because this person was used to Siri and iOS 27.

00:23:46 ◼   ► They said, What's my social security number?

00:23:48 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:23:49 ◼   ► And it went and it found it in an old messages thread, like with

00:23:51 ◼   ► their partner or something.

00:23:53 ◼   ► Because you're exactly right.

00:23:54 ◼   ► People will send and save just about anything in messages and they forget that

00:23:59 ◼   ► it's there.

00:24:00 ◼   ► You can surface that for better or for worse for some people.

00:24:03 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:24:04 ◼   ► And I guess if it uncovers something, you know, I mean, you'd have to

00:24:08 ◼   ► ask for it for it to be uncovered, but if you discover, ooh, I

00:24:11 ◼   ► wish that wasn't there, you know, you can delete an old text message, I

00:24:17 ◼   ► think.

00:24:17 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:24:17 ◼   ► You know, I think that if you delete if it uncovers it and you

00:24:20 ◼   ► tap it and it shows up, you can delete it and it's only deleted

00:24:24 ◼   ► for you.

00:24:24 ◼   ► Obviously, it's not deleted at the other end on the person you were corresponding

00:24:28 ◼   ► with, but I think it deletes to all of your devices.

00:24:30 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:24:31 ◼   ► I mean, it's always been there.

00:24:32 ◼   ► And and it it it is funny to think from a privacy angle that

00:24:36 ◼   ► that because iMessage search has is still so bad, yeah.

00:24:40 ◼   ► Um that people forget how much is in their archive.

00:24:44 ◼   ► Um I've noticed that too.

00:24:47 ◼   ► I guess at the last point on that point is that at WWDC, Apple

00:24:51 ◼   ► made a big deal out of the fact that they have rewritten the search

00:24:55 ◼   ► backend for mail, and say and kind of admitted, hey, mail search just kind

00:25:01 ◼   ► of sucked for a long time, and you know, we knew it and we

00:25:04 ◼   ► fixed it.

00:25:05 ◼   ► And I think it is better.

00:25:07 ◼   ► Um I I really do.

00:25:09 ◼   ► I mean, I'm mostly amusing it on my iPhone because my main Mac is

00:25:13 ◼   ► still running Sequoia.

00:25:15 ◼   ► But it does seem like search is better, faster.

00:25:18 ◼   ► And when I know I'm looking for a thing that is in my email,

00:25:22 ◼   ► it does seem to find it.

00:25:24 ◼   ► Um, the search in the messages app though is not updated.

00:25:29 ◼   ► Um, and I asked about that.

00:25:32 ◼   ► We had a briefing about the sort of snow leopard.

00:25:36 ◼   ► Did you get that briefing?

00:25:37 ◼   ► I think sort of yeah, yeah.

00:25:38 ◼   ► It was sort of like here's how this is like they even said snow

00:25:42 ◼   ► leopard, you know.

00:25:43 ◼   ► I think they said iOS 12, which I didn't recall as a bug fix,

00:25:48 ◼   ► let's fix underlying stuff year, but it and you know, I don't know.

00:25:52 ◼   ► I don't really remember iOS 12 specifically.

00:25:54 ◼   ► But I asked, hey, you guys said mail search is better, is messages search

00:25:59 ◼   ► better too, and it got one of those Apple great Apple non-answer answers, which

00:26:05 ◼   ► was like a smile, which said a lot, and a that would be something

00:26:11 ◼   ► for us to look at in the future.

00:26:13 ◼   ► Yeah, which is interesting because it seems like Siri AI for the personal context

00:26:18 ◼   ► stuff, the hierarchy of where it's going to look for answers to your personal

00:26:22 ◼   ► context, like messages is near the top.

00:26:24 ◼   ► It might be number two to mail, but somehow they're they're doing it without

00:26:29 ◼   ► having actually re-architected the actual search for users in the messages app.

00:26:35 ◼   ► Yeah, well, and that is the the thing, and maybe because it is computationally

00:26:39 ◼   ► expensive somehow, because it does take a while.

00:26:43 ◼   ► But I have personally found this would be my tip for people listening.

00:26:48 ◼   ► If you are looking for something in your messages, and the actual traditional search

00:26:54 ◼   ► in the search bar in the messages app isn't helping you or is giving

00:26:58 ◼   ► you so many results it's not helpful.

00:27:00 ◼   ► Ask Siri AI and tell it to search in messages.

00:27:04 ◼   ► You know, uh search messages for the time chance told me his social security

00:27:09 ◼   ► number.

00:27:10 ◼   ► And you know, which you've never done, or at least have not done yet.

00:27:14 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:27:14 ◼   ► But that works way better than searching the old fashioned way in the search

00:27:21 ◼   ► field.

00:27:21 ◼   ► And I can't can't really blame them for not making the search field a

00:27:25 ◼   ► front end to Siri, because I I think that is it just is more

00:27:29 ◼   ► expensive.

00:27:29 ◼   ► I don't know if it's expensive locally.

00:27:31 ◼   ► I don't know if it's going out to private cloud compute, but whatever it's

00:27:35 ◼   ► doing, it takes long enough that you can tell it's um, but it it

00:27:38 ◼   ► actually works.

00:27:39 ◼   ► So it is sort of it is sort of weird that the built-in search

00:27:44 ◼   ► is kind of crappy, but you can fix it by doing what seems like

00:27:49 ◼   ► a very complicated or or should be an unnecessary workaround of going to Siri,

00:27:54 ◼   ► but it actually does work.

00:27:56 ◼   ► That's it's which is kind of unusual.

00:27:59 ◼   ► All right, let me take a break here and thank our first sponsor.

00:28:03 ◼   ► It is our good friends at Squarespace.

00:28:06 ◼   ► Squarespace, man, what a long time great sponsor Squarespace has been for the talk

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00:28:13 ◼   ► Uh, it is the all-in-one platform for building your website or your presence on

00:28:14 ◼   ► the web.

00:28:21 ◼   ► And it is truly soup to nuts.

00:28:24 ◼   ► I I say this every time that I talk about them on the show

00:28:27 ◼   ► because they sponsored that I can't think of any aspect of having a website

00:28:31 ◼   ► that Squarespace can't handle.

00:28:33 ◼   ► Now, if you already have a domain name, that's fine.

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00:28:38 ◼   ► But if you don't even have a domain name, you can register it at

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00:29:10 ◼   ► You can pick and choose which parts you do on Squarespace and which parts

00:29:14 ◼   ► you uh bring in elsewhere.

00:29:16 ◼   ► Um if you know CSS, HTML and JavaScript and stuff like that, you can

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00:29:24 ◼   ► And if you don't even know the difference between JavaScript and HTML and CSS,

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00:29:31 ◼   ► It is both totally visual if you want it to be, or very low-level

00:29:35 ◼   ► roll up your sleeves if you want it to be.

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00:29:41 ◼   ► And like I always say, even if it's not for you, dear listener of

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00:29:50 ◼   ► show, are the people that everybody in your life comes to when they need

00:29:54 ◼   ► things like a website for their business, like a consulting business or a, or

00:29:58 ◼   ► like I said, like a friend who has a restaurant or something like that,

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00:30:03 ◼   ► Uh they come to you and they're like, I need help.

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00:30:05 ◼   ► Send them to Squarespace and give them the code for the show and it'll

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00:30:30 ◼   ► So squarespace.com slash talk show.

00:30:36 ◼   ► What else?

00:30:37 ◼   ► Did you the other breaking news that happened I knew about this because I

00:30:41 ◼   ► was embargoed on it, but uh the embargo is apparently up.

00:30:45 ◼   ► Live baseball and Vision Pro coming later this month.

00:30:48 ◼   ► Yes.

00:30:49 ◼   ► I was hoping we could talk about this.

00:30:51 ◼   ► Yes.

00:30:52 ◼   ► I'm very excited.

00:30:54 ◼   ► They it is uh the first uh Friday night baseball with uh uh what's

00:30:59 ◼   ► the word not interactive uh immersive immersive video and it is a game between

00:31:05 ◼   ► my beloved New York Yankees and I think I might be an exhibition game

00:31:10 ◼   ► with a uh a triple A team uh called the Boston Red Sox yeah

00:31:14 ◼   ► excellent yep yeah exactly exactly right lots of Red Sox mentioned so far this

00:31:20 ◼   ► episode unfortunately yeah four games total I think it's it's Red Sox Yankees Angels

00:31:25 ◼   ► Pirates Padres Giants Giants Dodgers so if you're Jason Snell, you get your Giants

00:31:31 ◼   ► in there twice, even though yeah yeah abysmal abysmal baseball team, but you can

00:31:36 ◼   ► watch it immersively.

00:31:38 ◼   ► I feel like it is not a coincidence that the first one though is

00:31:41 ◼   ► Red Sox Yankees.

00:31:42 ◼   ► Probably, and again, I am biased at least halfway.

00:31:45 ◼   ► I mean, but everybody involved in that rivalry is biased only halfway.

00:31:50 ◼   ► I think the best rivalry in baseball, possibly in U.S.

00:31:55 ◼   ► professional sports, two teams that truly despise each other.

00:31:58 ◼   ► Yep.

00:31:59 ◼   ► Very, very exciting.

00:32:01 ◼   ► And I think like a lot of things, and I don't know, maybe it's

00:32:04 ◼   ► just the way, you know, because they're going as fast as they can, and

00:32:08 ◼   ► whatever the hiccup has been to getting, you know, doing this in Vision Pro

00:32:14 ◼   ► for live sports.

00:32:16 ◼   ► Um even though they have Friday night, you know, we all I at least

00:32:20 ◼   ► I thought, well, they have Friday night baseball rights.

00:32:22 ◼   ► I kind of thought they'd get this going sooner than they did.

00:32:26 ◼   ► And here it's you know, only starting at the end of August, so they've

00:32:29 ◼   ► only they're only gonna have four games before the end of the season.

00:32:32 ◼   ► But that's better than nothing, and maybe, you know, uh, you know, it's as

00:32:37 ◼   ► fast as they could do it.

00:32:38 ◼   ► And why wait till next year?

00:32:39 ◼   ► Let's let's start this year.

00:32:41 ◼   ► I mean, I remember the original Vision Pro demo at WWDC in what that

00:32:48 ◼   ► have been 2024, I guess.

00:32:50 ◼   ► One of the things in like that sizzle reel was I think it was

00:32:53 ◼   ► a Red Sox game.

00:32:54 ◼   ► Yes.

00:32:55 ◼   ► You were sitting, I think, behind the dugout or in the dugout, or the

00:32:58 ◼   ► dugout.

00:32:58 ◼   ► Yeah, and that's on the first baseline, right?

00:33:01 ◼   ► Yeah, I remember it.

00:33:02 ◼   ► That is cool.

00:33:03 ◼   ► And they did the NBA thing earlier this year with like the four or

00:33:07 ◼   ► five Lakers games.

00:33:09 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:33:09 ◼   ► But that was it was really cool once you got to watch it, but

00:33:12 ◼   ► that one had like the blackouts and the rights restrictions.

00:33:15 ◼   ► Like you couldn't actually watch it live unless you lived in Los Angeles.

00:33:19 ◼   ► So this is better from that perspective because if you have Friday night baseball,

00:33:23 ◼   ► you can just watch it and you can watch it live, which is gonna

00:33:26 ◼   ► be really cool.

00:33:27 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:33:28 ◼   ► They've got a Friday night uh game with the Reds at the Brewers on

00:33:29 ◼   ► September 11, but alas, no uh no goggle icon next to that one.

00:33:38 ◼   ► Um but this is very cool.

00:33:41 ◼   ► I I I do I suspect that it's going to be like I I

00:33:47 ◼   ► don't know.

00:33:48 ◼   ► I'm reading the description here that it's sort of uh like I think it's

00:33:52 ◼   ► gonna be like the the basketball games where they jump you around with your

00:33:56 ◼   ► viewpoint, you know, that you don't get to you don't get to like pick

00:33:59 ◼   ► a seat, you know, from the like let's say they put three seats and

00:34:03 ◼   ► camera up three locations and you get to control it.

00:34:07 ◼   ► I think they're gonna move you around.

00:34:09 ◼   ► But uh I know my my dithering colleague Ben Thompson is particularly uh uh

00:34:14 ◼   ► adamant that you should be able to stay in the same seat and you

00:34:18 ◼   ► know control it yourself.

00:34:20 ◼   ► But I'm just excited.

00:34:21 ◼   ► I I don't want to complain of this that feels like uh looking at

00:34:23 ◼   ► gift horse in the mouth.

00:34:25 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, this is this should be super cool.

00:34:27 ◼   ► Um I mean, I would I really would watch triple A teams play immersively

00:34:31 ◼   ► just to see it.

00:34:32 ◼   ► The fact that it is Yankees, Red Sox, and uh if the season ended

00:34:36 ◼   ► today, both teams would be wild card teams, I believe.

00:34:39 ◼   ► Yep.

00:34:40 ◼   ► Um, you know, it it's it should be, you know, what 18 days from

00:34:44 ◼   ► now should be high both a high stakes game and a in a rivalry

00:34:48 ◼   ► that's always feels high stakes.

00:34:50 ◼   ► So awesome, awesome news.

00:34:52 ◼   ► Yankees fans have it nice because they also did the stadium tour, the Yankee

00:34:57 ◼   ► Stadium tour in immersive video.

00:34:59 ◼   ► And that I mean, I don't like the Yankees, but that was a that

00:35:01 ◼   ► was a fantastic immersive video kind of example.

00:35:04 ◼   ► So yeah, it was.

00:35:06 ◼   ► Uh, you know, I don't like the Dodgers, but I would love the same.

00:35:08 ◼   ► I would love the same thing at the Dodgers at Dodgers Stadium.

00:35:11 ◼   ► Yeah, I I would even take it at uh that rat infested shithole Fenway

00:35:16 ◼   ► Park.

00:35:16 ◼   ► I mean, honestly, you know, especially if they showed all the rats and stuff

00:35:19 ◼   ► like that.

00:35:14 ◼   ► That'd be great.

00:35:21 ◼   ► Uh uh Vision Pro still alive.

00:35:26 ◼   ► I love it.

00:35:27 ◼   ► It still makes me laugh.

00:35:28 ◼   ► It really does.

00:35:29 ◼   ► Uh I guess we could parlay this into the next subject uh as a

00:35:33 ◼   ► bit or segue.

00:35:34 ◼   ► Um it still when I think about it, makes me laugh that they raised

00:35:40 ◼   ► the price of Vision Pro by like the most token amount possible.

00:35:46 ◼   ► Like it can't possibly be commensurate to the RAM in the device compared to

00:35:53 ◼   ► it.

00:35:53 ◼   ► It really to me was like somebody, you know, and I don't blame them.

00:35:58 ◼   ► And again, I think I would have done the same thing where they were

00:36:00 ◼   ► like, hey, we don't need to raise the prices, we're hardly selling any units.

00:36:04 ◼   ► The RAM is just a it actually is a drop in the bucket compared

00:36:08 ◼   ► to the overall four thousand dollar price tag of this thing.

00:36:11 ◼   ► We don't need to raise the price.

00:36:13 ◼   ► But I think they were like, yeah, but if we don't raise the price,

00:36:16 ◼   ► people are gonna think that the product is dead, right?

00:36:19 ◼   ► There's so many rumors that this is a dud that we're walking away.

00:36:22 ◼   ► We want to make let people know we're you know, this is still a

00:36:26 ◼   ► uh active product with a future ahead of it.

00:36:29 ◼   ► If we don't raise the prices, you know, it looks bad.

00:36:33 ◼   ► And so they raise the price like I don't know, five dollars or something.

00:36:37 ◼   ► And the other thing I was thinking, like, are they still do you think

00:36:40 ◼   ► they're still actively they can't still be actively making that many Vision Pros, like

00:36:45 ◼   ► presumably they've made enough to satisfy demand right now.

00:36:49 ◼   ► I would think so.

00:36:50 ◼   ► I remember, and it it with the home with the original home pod, there

00:36:55 ◼   ► was some uh sleuthing based on like the copyright dates on the boxes and

00:36:59 ◼   ► the serial numbers.

00:37:03 ◼   ► But you know, and again, Apple never confirmed it, but that there was some

00:37:06 ◼   ► sleuthing that strongly suggested that there was only ever one production run of the

00:37:12 ◼   ► original home pod.

00:37:13 ◼   ► And you know, then when they stopped, it was and it's a kind of

00:37:18 ◼   ► an unusual product line because they it wasn't dead, obviously, right?

00:37:23 ◼   ► You can go to an Apple store now and buy a second generation home

00:37:26 ◼   ► pod.

00:37:26 ◼   ► But they had that in the works, but it wasn't ready to go and

00:37:30 ◼   ► it wasn't out yet.

00:37:31 ◼   ► But they I guess they ran out of original home pods, didn't want to

00:37:35 ◼   ► make more of them, and so they had this uncomfortable we're not going, we

00:37:39 ◼   ► you know, the home pod is no longer for sale, but it is not

00:37:42 ◼   ► dead.

00:37:43 ◼   ► And lo and behold, the new one did come out later.

00:37:47 ◼   ► Um, and I can't help but think that Vision Pro is kind of like

00:37:50 ◼   ► that, right?

00:37:50 ◼   ► That yeah, they they made a bunch of them with the M5 or whatever

00:37:54 ◼   ► the hell chip they updated it to, and it's you know, I I don't

00:37:58 ◼   ► think they had to make many.

00:37:59 ◼   ► So I whatever they you know again, the new prices of RAM probably you're

00:38:04 ◼   ► right, chance probably aren't raising the price.

00:38:06 ◼   ► I think it's really just a sign of life.

00:38:09 ◼   ► And that same thing applies to the Apple TV, probably too.

00:38:11 ◼   ► Like they're not I don't think they're still making new Apple TVs, like that

00:38:16 ◼   ► they probably have what they need to satisfy that, and it's still got a

00:38:19 ◼   ► $70 or something absurd, like $70 price increase, which oh yeah, it was crazy

00:38:25 ◼   ► as a percentage, it was you know, and people aren't talking about it.

00:38:29 ◼   ► I you know, we can get to the rumors, it's one of the other

00:38:32 ◼   ► topics we can get to um, you know, on the show.

00:38:36 ◼   ► But uh I I'm not hearing a lot of rumors about uh new Apple

00:38:41 ◼   ► TV, but it feels like man, like if this isn't a price increase for

00:38:46 ◼   ► new ones that are coming in September or October, boy, it makes no sense

00:38:51 ◼   ► at all why they raised the price this much.

00:38:53 ◼   ► Like Gurman's latest reporting on the Apple TV is I think he it's the

00:39:00 ◼   ► same hedging that it's been for a while now, but ready to ship as

00:39:03 ◼   ► early as September or October, I think he said.

00:39:06 ◼   ► So maybe but all that's gonna be new is it's gonna have a faster

00:39:09 ◼   ► chip.

00:39:09 ◼   ► It's not anything dramatically different.

00:39:12 ◼   ► Right.

00:39:13 ◼   ► Uh which uh, you know, what could be different?

00:39:16 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:39:16 ◼   ► I mean, I the only thing I can think of that could be dramatically

00:39:19 ◼   ► different is it wouldn't you wouldn't know it by looking at the hardware, but

00:39:23 ◼   ► if they have a significant home uh, you know, this is your what do

00:39:28 ◼   ► they call it, your home hub base station hub, your home hub.

00:39:33 ◼   ► If it can suddenly do more interesting and useful things in the home hub,

00:39:38 ◼   ► maybe.

00:39:39 ◼   ► Uh, but any, you know.

00:39:43 ◼   ► The segue would be to the ram crisis and the what the hell is

00:39:49 ◼   ► going on.

00:39:49 ◼   ► Okay.

00:39:50 ◼   ► Right?

00:39:51 ◼   ► Great way to put it.

00:39:52 ◼   ► Um and I do feel like we just had last week, the week before,

00:39:59 ◼   ► I forget, you know, I guess maybe it was eight days ago, but whenever

00:40:02 ◼   ► Apple released their earnings, it's Tim Cook's last earnings.

00:40:06 ◼   ► Was Tim Koch's last earnings as CEO.

00:40:10 ◼   ► We are recording this on August 10th.

00:40:12 ◼   ► I think it's gonna come out tonight.

00:40:13 ◼   ► So, you know, August 10th.

00:40:14 ◼   ► Um, we're 21 days out from uh John Turnus taking over as CEO on

00:40:21 ◼   ► the first of September.

00:40:22 ◼   ► Uh it is the very end of Tim Cook's tenure as CEO.

00:40:27 ◼   ► He very obviously, both both just observing and taking his public statements at their

00:40:35 ◼   ► at his word, wanted to hand things make this the best and easiest and

00:40:42 ◼   ► most seamless transition ever.

00:40:44 ◼   ► No drama, right?

00:40:45 ◼   ► And there it really hasn't been, right?

00:40:47 ◼   ► There's no German doesn't have any reports of any, you know, kind of upset

00:40:51 ◼   ► within the executive ranks or anything like that.

00:40:54 ◼   ► It seems like there was no drama, or if there was drama internally, it

00:40:58 ◼   ► was entirely self-contained, you know.

00:41:00 ◼   ► No drama internally, broad public support.

00:41:05 ◼   ► I haven't seen anybody on the technical side, people who are just fans of

00:41:09 ◼   ► the company or the investor side who is like, hey, what the fuck is

00:41:13 ◼   ► up with this John Turnus, you know.

00:41:15 ◼   ► You know, and he's left the Turnus with record, uh, record another record quarter.

00:41:22 ◼   ► Everything is good except for the Ram thing.

00:41:25 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:41:26 ◼   ► And there's nothing Tim Cook can do about it, right?

00:41:28 ◼   ► And if there's nothing Tim Cook can do about it, there's nothing anybody can

00:41:31 ◼   ► do about it because if anybody could navigate the situation, it would be him.

00:41:36 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:41:38 ◼   ► The latest I'd link to a thing today that both the New York Times,

00:41:41 ◼   ► it seems and it seems to me like can't be a coincidence that the

00:41:44 ◼   ► New York Times and the Wall Street Journal both had fairly similar reports about

00:41:50 ◼   ► Apple sort of uh lobbying the the federal government here in the US to

00:41:57 ◼   ► get permission or a blessing.

00:41:59 ◼   ► It's it's unclear whether they would need a legal exception or just like a

00:42:05 ◼   ► blessing, like, hey, this is okay because it's technically legal, but we don't want

00:42:11 ◼   ► to cross a political line to use Chinese-made RAM, even if only for devices

00:42:14 ◼   ► that are sold within mainland China itself.

00:42:21 ◼   ► But Apple tried that back in 2022 for other reasons before this crisis, I

00:42:25 ◼   ► guess for cost savings or just to, you know, they like to have as

00:42:29 ◼   ► many suppliers as possible.

00:42:30 ◼   ► And the this is for multiple reasons, sort of a political red line, and

00:42:36 ◼   ► one of the ever more increasingly rare things that is bipartisan here in the

00:42:42 ◼   ► U.S.

00:42:43 ◼   ► That both Democrats and Republicans alike are sort of like, hey, Chinese-made RAM is

00:42:48 ◼   ► a bad idea.

00:42:49 ◼   ► And it's not for a security, as far as I know, it's not a

00:42:52 ◼   ► security thing that, hey, if you put Chinese RAM in a device, somehow the

00:42:57 ◼   ► Chinese have a backdoor to devices.

00:43:00 ◼   ► Because RAM doesn't have communication ability.

00:43:03 ◼   ► That does not have RAM works.

00:43:05 ◼   ► It's really, I as I understand it, just a hey, we don't RAM is

00:43:10 ◼   ► such a crucial component.

00:43:12 ◼   ► We don't want to give China any kind of leg up in the long-term

00:43:18 ◼   ► supply chain for RAM in the world.

00:43:21 ◼   ► This it's a bad idea.

00:43:23 ◼   ► And in other areas of computing and components where China does have this position,

00:43:31 ◼   ► it has played out poorly for the West geopolitically.

00:43:36 ◼   ► And so let's not give them RAM too, basically.

00:43:39 ◼   ► And Apple apparently the reports today are that Apple is still, because of this

00:43:43 ◼   ► crisis, trying to take a second crack at getting permission slash blessing to use

00:43:48 ◼   ► Chinese-made RAM and even in China.

00:43:51 ◼   ► And both the Times and Wall Street Journal reports, they didn't have any names,

00:43:56 ◼   ► but they seem to suggest that politically speaking, uh, the answer is still no.

00:44:02 ◼   ► And more interestingly, both suggested that even if they Apple did get the permission,

00:44:07 ◼   ► it actually wouldn't help them very much because apparently the Chinese made RAM is

00:44:11 ◼   ► all sold out through the end of 2026 anyway.

00:44:14 ◼   ► I don't get if if that part of it's true.

00:44:18 ◼   ► Apple's original strategy was let's get permission from Trump or the Trump administration.

00:44:23 ◼   ► Right.

00:44:24 ◼   ► And then they would do it despite the fact that they would get blowback

00:44:27 ◼   ► from both parties.

00:44:29 ◼   ► Or were they hoping that if Trump said yes, the Republicans would fall in

00:44:33 ◼   ► line and they'd support it, but the Democrats would push back against it still,

00:44:37 ◼   ► and Apple can live with that.

00:44:39 ◼   ► But now if they're gonna go through all of that those hurdles and headwinds

00:44:42 ◼   ► and whatever, and it's not solved the problem.

00:44:45 ◼   ► I don't like what what's the point?

00:44:48 ◼   ► Yeah, I don't know either, right?

00:44:50 ◼   ► You know, and again, part of this crisis is it's not just oh, and

00:44:55 ◼   ► again, Apple did have to raise or they said they had to, but I

00:44:59 ◼   ► you know, I I think in some sense they did have to, and other

00:45:04 ◼   ► than by taking a severe hit on their own margins.

00:45:08 ◼   ► They needed to raise prices.

00:45:10 ◼   ► They raised prices on all products other than what, the iPhone and Apple Watch,

00:45:15 ◼   ► I think.

00:45:16 ◼   ► AirPods, yeah.

00:45:17 ◼   ► And AirPods, which possibly aren't affected, right?

00:45:20 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:45:21 ◼   ► I mean, they have some kind of memory in them, but maybe actually are

00:45:24 ◼   ► not affected by this particular crisis, AirPods.

00:45:27 ◼   ► Um, presumably they didn't raise the iPhone and watch prices because they're just waiting

00:45:32 ◼   ► till the actual new devices uh in a month.

00:45:36 ◼   ► Um and you know, uh, I guess I don't know.

00:45:41 ◼   ► It it is kind of curious strategy-wise, because then I would if that's what

00:45:47 ◼   ► they're doing, and there was a room.

00:45:48 ◼   ► Do you see that?

00:45:49 ◼   ► There was a rumor over the weekend that maybe they were going to raise

00:45:51 ◼   ► prices on the iPhone 17 and 17 Pro today, which didn't happen, or at

00:45:56 ◼   ► least hasn't happened while we're recording yet.

00:45:58 ◼   ► Maybe we can make that happen right now.

00:46:01 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:46:01 ◼   ► Because strategically you could think, well, why not raise the prices now?

00:46:05 ◼   ► And then we uh when they announce the iPhone 18 Pro and the But

00:46:10 ◼   ► maybe everything is so out the door because they're gonna do this iPhone folding

00:46:16 ◼   ► ultra that's even before this was going to have supposedly going to have a

00:46:23 ◼   ► very high price because these folding screens are so expensive and all the other

00:46:26 ◼   ► competing folding phones are like close to $2,000 or more than $2,000.

00:46:33 ◼   ► And so whatever they raise the price of the iPhone 18 Pro 2, it'll

00:46:37 ◼   ► look good compared to that.

00:46:38 ◼   ► Yeah, I don't know.

00:46:39 ◼   ► I think that if they're going to raise iPhone prices, they should have and

00:46:43 ◼   ► probably would have just done it when they did everything last month.

00:46:46 ◼   ► Because if you if you look at it from a public reception point of

00:46:50 ◼   ► view, I think lumping it all in together and doing it all at once

00:46:54 ◼   ► is better and getting through that one cycle than doing all that, letting the

00:46:58 ◼   ► chatter about that die down, and then six weeks later say, actually, we're also

00:47:02 ◼   ► gonna make the iPhones.

00:47:03 ◼   ► Yeah, the current iPhones, not even the new iPhones, the current iPhones, 100, 200

00:47:08 ◼   ► more expensive.

00:47:09 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:47:10 ◼   ► Uh so but I guess the other wild card on that iPhone pricing thing

00:47:14 ◼   ► is okay.

00:47:15 ◼   ► So we're expecting iPhone 18 Pro and the iPhone Ultra slash folding, whatever they're

00:47:20 ◼   ► gonna call it.

00:47:21 ◼   ► But I don't know, I don't know.

00:47:22 ◼   ► I'm I it it just makes sense they would call it Ultra.

00:47:25 ◼   ► But yeah, I don't want to imply that I've heard anything, and that's just

00:47:27 ◼   ► a guess.

00:47:28 ◼   ► But everybody's sort of centered on the same guess.

00:47:30 ◼   ► Um are they going to raise price and the rumor is that the regular

00:47:36 ◼   ► no adjective iPhone 18 is not going to come out till next March or

00:47:41 ◼   ► so alongside the 18E and possibly a second generation iPhone Air, um, that they're

00:47:51 ◼   ► just permanently going to a hey, the E and the regular phones will come

00:47:56 ◼   ► out early the next year, and only the high-end pro and ultra phones will

00:48:01 ◼   ► come out in September.

00:48:03 ◼   ► But will they raise the prices on the iPhone 17 in September a month

00:48:08 ◼   ► from now in September?

00:48:10 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:48:11 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:48:13 ◼   ► Well, historically, if you think about it on the old cycle, so when they

00:48:17 ◼   ► when they announced the iPhone 17 lineup last September, they kept selling the 16

00:48:22 ◼   ► but knocked it down 100 or 200.

00:48:26 ◼   ► So if this cycle alongside the 18 Pro introduction, typically they would introduce the

00:48:33 ◼   ► base 18 and then the base 17 would stay around and go down a

00:48:36 ◼   ► hundred to two hundred dollars.

00:48:39 ◼   ► So if you're looking at it from that schedule, just keeping the prices the

00:48:44 ◼   ► same this year is technically better than most years for the for that base

00:48:48 ◼   ► 17 phone.

00:48:49 ◼   ► Right.

00:48:49 ◼   ► But it does create if the 18 Pro and Pro Max are 200, 300

00:48:55 ◼   ► more expensive, the gap between the base 17 and the flagship 18 Pro.

00:49:01 ◼   ► Like that's gonna be a well, like a $700 gap at that point.

00:49:05 ◼   ► So I think they could just raise the prices for the 17 and get

00:49:09 ◼   ► away with it.

00:49:10 ◼   ► That's what I I sort of think that they'll do, you know, because I

00:49:13 ◼   ► don't think they want to make the 17 look more appealing compared to a

00:49:18 ◼   ► brand new 18 Pro, right?

00:49:20 ◼   ► Like if somebody is out there and just you know, a normal or closer

00:49:24 ◼   ► to normal human being who doesn't follow 9 to 5 Mac on a regular

00:49:29 ◼   ► basis and is just vaguely waiting until September or October, and then sees that

00:49:34 ◼   ► the iPhone 18 Pro has a whoa, that is more expensive.

00:49:38 ◼   ► And then hey, the iPhone 17 is like six hundred dollars less or whatever,

00:49:42 ◼   ► seven hundred dollars less.

00:49:44 ◼   ► I'll just get that.

00:49:45 ◼   ► I've been waiting and I'll just get that.

00:49:47 ◼   ► I don't think that's what Apple wants.

00:49:49 ◼   ► So I think that they would raise the prices then to sort of keep

00:49:52 ◼   ► you know, establish the new pricing tiers of these 100 gaps between 100 to

00:50:00 ◼   ► 200 gaps between phones.

00:50:03 ◼   ► But I don't know.

00:50:04 ◼   ► I mean, I feel like everything's off the table at this point.

00:50:06 ◼   ► You know, it's just it's just all uncharted territory.

00:50:10 ◼   ► What else?

00:50:10 ◼   ► It I guess the the other weird thing about the RAM crisis is just

00:50:15 ◼   ► that it's not just a normal supply-demand thing, like oh, now they're more expensive

00:50:20 ◼   ► and you pay the higher price and you could just get as much of

00:50:23 ◼   ► it as you want.

00:50:24 ◼   ► It's it just feels like no matter what you're willing to pay, there's it's

00:50:28 ◼   ► like they're sold out, right?

00:50:29 ◼   ► It's yeah, the the rumor, I don't think it's confirmed, but I get the

00:50:33 ◼   ► big three non Chinese RAM companies, Micron, Samsung, and I think it's SK Heinex

00:50:39 ◼   ► in there.

00:50:40 ◼   ► Yes, something like that.

00:50:41 ◼   ► Yeah, supposedly they've sold out their future comp they're completely sold out of their

00:50:47 ◼   ► production runs for 2027, right?

00:50:51 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:50:52 ◼   ► Now, presumably Apple is part of that.

00:50:55 ◼   ► Right.

00:50:56 ◼   ► That the yeah, I mean, it's almost certain to some degree.

00:50:59 ◼   ► Now, are they like, uh, you know, I guess we're good.

00:51:02 ◼   ► But I, you know, a big part of the earnings call last week with

00:51:06 ◼   ► Tim Cook was that part of the reason they're facing a crunch is that

00:51:12 ◼   ► Mac and iPhone sales are significantly up year over year, right?

00:51:16 ◼   ► That they do lock in orders to some degree based on their projected sales.

00:51:23 ◼   ► And Tim Cook said something more or less, you know, and we we projected

00:51:27 ◼   ► strong sales.

00:51:28 ◼   ► We weren't thinking sales would be weak, and they are strong, and that's why

00:51:32 ◼   ► we're caught flat.

00:51:33 ◼   ► It was we thought sales would be good, but they are really, really good.

00:51:37 ◼   ► It was like 22% up for the Mac and 29 for the iPhone, or

00:51:40 ◼   ► maybe the other way around, but you know, somewhere around 25% up year over

00:51:44 ◼   ► year for Mac and iPhone, and they just did not lock in that kind

00:51:49 ◼   ► of RAM, and there is no RAM to buy at any price to fill

00:51:54 ◼   ► the need.

00:51:54 ◼   ► It's unprecedented.

00:51:57 ◼   ► He called it a demand forecast issue, I think was his term.

00:52:00 ◼   ► And if there was ever a bad year to really mispredict how many phones

00:52:06 ◼   ► and Macs you thought you were gonna sell, it's this year.

00:52:09 ◼   ► Because any other year, they just go and say, Okay, we need 30% more

00:52:12 ◼   ► RAM for the iPhone, 30% more RAM, and they get it.

00:52:14 ◼   ► Like they say jump, the suppliers say, Okay, how high?

00:52:17 ◼   ► That is not the case this year, and it's really coming back to bite

00:52:20 ◼   ► them.

00:52:20 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:52:21 ◼   ► And what was the story?

00:52:22 ◼   ► Did you see the story about the um it's it's affecting the TSMC production

00:52:27 ◼   ► of the chips?

00:52:29 ◼   ► Yes.

00:52:30 ◼   ► As I recall, it is basically, you know, they have to, because of the

00:52:35 ◼   ► system on a chip, everything's integrated.

00:52:38 ◼   ► You can't just do can't print the wafers and then stick the RAM on

00:52:46 ◼   ► when it's done.

00:52:46 ◼   ► It has to be there at a at a production level.

00:52:44 ◼   ► Yes.

00:52:50 ◼   ► And it's it is halting production of the actual chips because they don't have

00:52:54 ◼   ► the RAM part to put on the system on that chip.

00:52:56 ◼   ► Yeah, it was from Tim Culpen who and he so the A20 Pro, the

00:53:00 ◼   ► chip for this year's phones, is going to use TSMC's wafer level multi-chip module

00:53:06 ◼   ► or WMCM.

00:53:08 ◼   ► And like you said, that's where the RAM is integrated and packaged alongside the

00:53:13 ◼   ► chip itself.

00:53:13 ◼   ► And what Culpin said was they have $1 billion in A20 Pro chips sitting

00:53:20 ◼   ► there that they can't do anything with because they don't have the RAM to

00:53:23 ◼   ► go along with those chips yet.

00:53:25 ◼   ► And his kind of takeaway was the iPhone 18 Pro could be, probably will

00:53:32 ◼   ► be super hard to find when it comes out.

00:53:34 ◼   ► It will be announced and released on schedule like we anticipate, but it'll be

00:53:39 ◼   ► the hardest iPhone to get at launch in a while.

00:53:43 ◼   ► Because again, it goes back to if any other year they had decided to

00:53:46 ◼   ► implement this new wafer level multi-chip module technology, it'd be fine because they have

00:53:51 ◼   ► plenty of RAM.

00:53:52 ◼   ► But they picked this year, and this is the year that the RAM Mageddon

00:53:56 ◼   ► is happening.

00:53:57 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:53:57 ◼   ► And it's been a couple of years since there was a new iPhone that

00:54:01 ◼   ► was literally hard to buy.

00:54:03 ◼   ► Um I know with the iPhone 10, it it like didn't even come out

00:54:10 ◼   ► till November.

00:54:11 ◼   ► So it was like they did the September announcement and announced it alongside the

00:54:15 ◼   ► iPhone 8, and we got to see it in the media, but then it

00:54:18 ◼   ► didn't come out.

00:54:19 ◼   ► And even the review units didn't come out until November because they don't like

00:54:24 ◼   ► giving review units more than 10 days before products come out.

00:54:28 ◼   ► You know, so that in some sense was a supply issue where there was

00:54:32 ◼   ► literally zero supply.

00:54:34 ◼   ► But I guess I I can't remember the last time there was like, hey,

00:54:40 ◼   ► you know, some people who got their pre-orders in right when the pre-orders opened

00:54:45 ◼   ► are gonna get their iPhone 18 Pro on launch day, but an awful lot

00:54:50 ◼   ► of people are gonna, you know, and presumably right when the pre-order, if this

00:54:54 ◼   ► is true, when the pre-orders open, people, you know, I don't know, half an

00:55:00 ◼   ► hour too late, or people who are just later in the day, or people

00:55:03 ◼   ► I don't know how how severe this will be, but people who like ordering

00:55:09 ◼   ► at a time of day when the pre-orders launch, who in the last handful

00:55:13 ◼   ► of years would still get their new iPhone on launch day, are gonna see

00:55:18 ◼   ► like two to three weeks or four to six weeks, or who knows, you

00:55:22 ◼   ► know, what it's going to say.

00:55:24 ◼   ► We don't quite know, but I kind of believe it.

00:55:27 ◼   ► You know, it's not just that Tim Culpen is a pretty good reporter, it

00:55:31 ◼   ► just feels like this crisis is industry-wide, and there's literally it's just outside Apple's

00:55:37 ◼   ► control.

00:55:37 ◼   ► What are they gonna do?

00:55:39 ◼   ► Yeah, every year.

00:55:40 ◼   ► I think it's it's it's probably you who you say you wake up on

00:55:43 ◼   ► well past when pre-orders start every iPhone launch day.

00:55:45 ◼   ► Yeah, and you still get one on it, still comes on launch day for

00:55:48 ◼   ► you, even though you ordered it at two in the afternoon or whatever.

00:55:50 ◼   ► You might have to set an alarm that day to order my time.

00:55:55 ◼   ► But the last time I can remember this, anything like this wasn't even at

00:56:00 ◼   ► an iPhone launch window.

00:56:02 ◼   ► I want to say it was the iPhone 12 Pro going into the holiday

00:56:07 ◼   ► season of 2020, where Apple had they like issued an actual state, like an

00:56:13 ◼   ► update to investors saying we can't make enough phones because the factories in China

00:56:14 ◼   ► are shut down because of COVID.

00:56:22 ◼   ► That's the last time I can remember.

00:56:23 ◼   ► And that wasn't when the 12 was released.

00:56:26 ◼   ► That was two months later because when they released the phones, the factories were

00:56:30 ◼   ► up and running, and then COVID got worse.

00:56:34 ◼   ► Yeah, I do I vaguely remember that.

00:56:35 ◼   ► I'll try to find that and put it in the show notes.

00:56:37 ◼   ► Um and again, overall, though, I remember thinking earlier in 2020, like, oh, who

00:56:43 ◼   ► knows?

00:56:44 ◼   ► Maybe there won't even be a new iPhone this year.

00:56:45 ◼   ► Like this is so, you know, 2020 was a bananas year, especially around April,

00:56:50 ◼   ► May, into June.

00:56:52 ◼   ► Uh, and overall, Apple navigated that uh almost remarkably well.

00:56:58 ◼   ► Um it's uh I don't know, but this, you know, and again, if this

00:57:04 ◼   ► turns out not to be that big a deal, you know, if it's like,

00:57:07 ◼   ► oh, whatever happened to like we, you know, it's come December and it, you

00:57:12 ◼   ► know, the iPhone 18 Pro availability is more or less like 17 Pro and

00:57:16 ◼   ► 16 Pro were the last few years.

00:57:18 ◼   ► We'll be like, hey, what about that report over the summer that they were

00:57:21 ◼   ► gonna be back ordered?

00:57:21 ◼   ► I wouldn't be surprised if any company can pull it off and still manage

00:57:25 ◼   ► to keep up with it.

00:57:26 ◼   ► It's Apple, but I don't know.

00:57:28 ◼   ► I feel like this this could be the year to really set the alarm

00:57:32 ◼   ► for for pre order day.

00:57:34 ◼   ► It wasn't the 12 Pro, it was the 14 Pro.

00:57:37 ◼   ► Uh in 20.

00:57:38 ◼   ► It's I can't imagine COVID shutting down things in 2022.

00:57:44 ◼   ► That's such a no that it affected that many launch cycles for Apple is

00:57:48 ◼   ► hard to remember.

00:57:50 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:57:50 ◼   ► All right.

00:57:51 ◼   ► So, well, I'll I'll look for that in the show notes.

00:57:54 ◼   ► All right, let me take another break here and thank our next sponsor.

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01:01:20 ◼   ► Do you want to want to put your lawyer hat on?

01:01:22 ◼   ► I'll put my tie on.

01:01:23 ◼   ► Let's do it.

01:01:25 ◼   ► Uh so uh Apple filed the lawsuit against uh OpenAI and I.O.

01:01:35 ◼   ► Um, I guess at the beginning of July?

01:01:38 ◼   ► I forget.

01:01:39 ◼   ► Uh and OpenAI's only response was some pretty weird PR statements of we don't

01:01:45 ◼   ► have any interest in other people's IP uh or trade secrets.

01:01:50 ◼   ► And then Apple filed before OpenAI filed a legal response.

01:01:57 ◼   ► OpenAI uh Apple like got a second shot in.

01:02:00 ◼   ► They filed their request for a preliminary injunction.

01:02:05 ◼   ► Um then in immediate response published, I think, a very ill-considered blog post that

01:02:13 ◼   ► was kind of confusing, even.

01:02:16 ◼   ► But then their law firm uh filed their request to dismiss the website.

01:02:24 ◼   ► And that was a good read, and they have very good lawyers, and that's

01:02:28 ◼   ► where we stand.

01:02:29 ◼   ► So Apple is saying they need to pre they want an emergency preliminary injunction

01:02:33 ◼   ► before the trial date, I think is October 1st, or the first trial.

01:02:37 ◼   ► They're saying this is so severe, and we're our trade secrets or will be

01:02:42 ◼   ► so hurt forever if they're allowed to proceed that we need an injunction against

01:02:46 ◼   ► them right now.

01:02:48 ◼   ► And OpenAI is like their lawsuit is such nonsense that it should just be

01:02:52 ◼   ► dismissed out of hand.

01:02:54 ◼   ► I think that catches us up on the high level.

01:02:57 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:02:58 ◼   ► The Apple request for a preliminary injunction, like what they say is the harm

01:03:03 ◼   ► is happening now, and every day that passes without an injunction allows OpenAI to

01:03:07 ◼   ► embed their knowledge of Apple's stolen information into its hardware development efforts.

01:03:12 ◼   ► And then as part of that, in a separate filing, they also filed a

01:03:16 ◼   ► motion to expedite discovery.

01:03:19 ◼   ► And they want OpenAI to hand over the documents sooner.

01:03:22 ◼   ► They want to be able to depose OpenAI employees and executives sooner.

01:03:27 ◼   ► So they're not like I know at the start of the show we said

01:03:32 ◼   ► legal cases kind of take a while and they drag out, but Apple's trying

01:03:35 ◼   ► to hit the ground running on this one.

01:03:36 ◼   ► Right.

01:03:37 ◼   ► Right.

01:03:38 ◼   ► And you know, everything does move slowly in the legal world.

01:03:42 ◼   ► And so we're, you know, this happened, you know, at the very end of

01:03:45 ◼   ► July, and the trial date is set for October 1st.

01:03:49 ◼   ► So really it's just August and September in between what's already the trial date.

01:03:54 ◼   ► But, you know, uh at least for the discovery, I could certainly see Apple's

01:03:59 ◼   ► desire for that.

01:04:00 ◼   ► Like, I do not think I mean, and the way uh lawyering works is

01:04:08 ◼   ► you, you know, you say, you know, uh a hundred percent, I say zero

01:04:16 ◼   ► percent, you know, and somewhere in the middle, if there's going to be some

01:04:22 ◼   ► kind of settlement, it's somewhere in the middle.

01:04:25 ◼   ► But the, you know, as the lawyer, you you start with asking for everything,

01:04:30 ◼   ► or the other side asking for the other everything, right?

01:04:35 ◼   ► So who's clo who's going to get closer to what they're asking for?

01:04:40 ◼   ► Uh I I don't see Apple getting the preliminary injunction, and I'm not quite

01:04:46 ◼   ► sure what that would mean, even.

01:04:48 ◼   ► I honestly don't know what they're looking to to shut down.

01:04:53 ◼   ► It's unclear.

01:04:54 ◼   ► Like, are they saying that Tang Tan's uh employee badge should stop working and

01:04:58 ◼   ► he can't come to work in the meantime until the trial?

01:05:01 ◼   ► I I I really don't know.

01:05:03 ◼   ► The request for expedited discovery, though, I could see being granted.

01:05:07 ◼   ► You know, that okay, let's get the let's get this process started and an

01:05:12 ◼   ► agreed upon framework for what each side is going to have to disclose to

01:05:17 ◼   ► the other.

01:05:18 ◼   ► In the filing for the preliminary injunction, Apple outlined the five things that it

01:05:24 ◼   ► at it once, which is stop accessing or using Apple's confidential information, halt ongoing

01:05:29 ◼   ► user disclosure, preserve evidence, allow forensic inspections of devices, and allow Apple to search

01:05:35 ◼   ► OpenAI system for Apple confidential information.

01:05:39 ◼   ► And Apple said that OpenAI agreed to the first three of those.

01:05:43 ◼   ► So stop using the information, stop the disclosure and preserve the evidence, but it

01:05:48 ◼   ► would not allow the forensic inspection or let Apple search through all of its

01:05:53 ◼   ► systems.

01:05:54 ◼   ► Right.

01:05:55 ◼   ► And translating that into normal talk, it's because they're saying we don't have any

01:05:59 ◼   ► of your trade secrets.

01:06:01 ◼   ► So yes, we will stop using the things that we don't have.

01:06:05 ◼   ► And then the parts that are let us come in and look to see

01:06:08 ◼   ► that you really don't have them, they're like, no.

01:06:10 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:06:11 ◼   ► If they don't, right?

01:06:13 ◼   ► In one scenario where they literally do not think they have any Apple trade

01:06:17 ◼   ► system uh secrets on their devices or their networking systems, I still don't blame

01:06:23 ◼   ► them in that scenario for saying, no, we're not letting you come in here

01:06:26 ◼   ► and inspect this.

01:06:27 ◼   ► We didn't do anything, right?

01:06:29 ◼   ► You know, it's w if you if if I tell you, chance, uh uh,

01:06:36 ◼   ► you know, give me, you know, give me back the wallet you stole from

01:06:39 ◼   ► me, and you have not stolen my wallet, you're not gonna let me come

01:06:43 ◼   ► into your house and like search for my wallet.

01:06:45 ◼   ► Because you didn't you you didn't steal it.

01:06:48 ◼   ► You know.

01:06:48 ◼   ► So I I you know, there is no, hey, if they have nothing to

01:06:52 ◼   ► hide, why don't they do this?

01:06:53 ◼   ► I don't blame them.

01:06:54 ◼   ► You know, it's like, and if they did, if they're worried, because they do

01:06:58 ◼   ► think, hey, maybe we did some sketchy things here, well then obviously they don't

01:07:02 ◼   ► they don't either way they don't want to concede those points.

01:07:05 ◼   ► And I think Apple knew I uh there's no way that they were gonna

01:07:08 ◼   ► get agreement on those last two points.

01:07:10 ◼   ► Either way.

01:07:11 ◼   ► Yep.

01:07:12 ◼   ► You know, I I guess the three possibilities is open AI really thinks they

01:07:16 ◼   ► did there's no there there and they didn't do any of this.

01:07:19 ◼   ► Apple AI uh open AI knows that they've got some uh some sketchy stuff

01:07:24 ◼   ► that hey that doesn't look good, or somewhere in the middle where they're like,

01:07:27 ◼   ► ooh, we don't we're not sure, maybe.

01:07:30 ◼   ► Any one of those three, there's no way that they're going to want to

01:07:33 ◼   ► to give Apple discovery.

01:07:35 ◼   ► Right?

01:07:36 ◼   ► Part of it goes back to like I know this got talked about some

01:07:40 ◼   ► when the lawsuit was first filed, but part of it goes back to what

01:07:44 ◼   ► Apple wants from the lawsuit period and also the multiple people named in the

01:07:48 ◼   ► lawsuit, because I think that Tang Tan probably could have kept getting away with

01:07:54 ◼   ► what he was doing for a much longer period of time.

01:07:58 ◼   ► But on the other side, the Chang Luction, they got they were doing something

01:08:07 ◼   ► so obscene and so obtuse and so easy to trace that that's what threw

01:08:12 ◼   ► them onto through Apple onto that scent.

01:08:15 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:08:16 ◼   ► And that's sort of my high-level takeaway, too, right?

01:08:19 ◼   ► There's there's uh what they're they they've named uh three people, Apple.

01:08:24 ◼   ► They've named OpenAI as a whole, Tang Tan in particular, and this guy Chang

01:08:29 ◼   ► Lu, uh an electrical engineer who left Apple for OpenAI at the beginning of

01:08:35 ◼   ► 2026.

01:08:37 ◼   ► I think with this guy, Chang Lu, they've got uh I think he's got

01:08:43 ◼   ► some problems.

01:08:44 ◼   ► He's dead to rights.

01:08:46 ◼   ► Right.

01:08:46 ◼   ► And Apple even got their thing out, like OpenAI is trying to hang their

01:08:51 ◼   ► hat on this.

01:08:53 ◼   ► It is an unusual uh use of iCloud drive that Apple has.

01:08:59 ◼   ► Um I've written about it a bit at Daring Fireball and heard much about

01:09:04 ◼   ► it after I started writing about it from people who used to work at

01:09:07 ◼   ► Apple.

01:09:08 ◼   ► So uh, you know, Apple has this unique, I'm sure there's no other company

01:09:13 ◼   ► even close to Apple size who uses iCloud Drive like this.

01:09:16 ◼   ► And part of it is they are using some magic secret sauce.

01:09:20 ◼   ► But long story short, that if you work at Apple, they encourage you but

01:09:25 ◼   ► don't require you to use your personal iCloud account, your Apple account ID on

01:09:33 ◼   ► your work devices, and then you are still iMessageable with your regular phone number.

01:09:41 ◼   ► It's everything is more convenient.

01:09:43 ◼   ► If you can imagine all the ways that you're as a non-Apple employee, that

01:09:47 ◼   ► your life would be weird if you had to use a second device with

01:09:51 ◼   ► an entirely second separate Apple ID.

01:09:54 ◼   ► You know, that's what they're trying at one level, that's really what they're trying

01:09:58 ◼   ► to avoid.

01:09:58 ◼   ► And that they, I don't know, some number of years ago, they added a

01:10:01 ◼   ► feature where if you agree to use your personal iCloud account with Apple with

01:10:07 ◼   ► your work, they flag your account and you get a special Apple.

01:10:11 ◼   ► I think the folder is literally named Apple Work at the top level of

01:10:14 ◼   ► your iCloud drive.

01:10:16 ◼   ► And then the contents of that folder are where you might share work-related documents

01:10:22 ◼   ► with your colleagues.

01:10:23 ◼   ► And you can use features like you know, the way that the iWork apps

01:10:28 ◼   ► like numbers have collaboration.

01:10:30 ◼   ► Like I one of the readers who emailed me was like, you know, you

01:10:33 ◼   ► know, I know it sounds a little silly, but you know, one of the

01:10:36 ◼   ► reasons people use Google Docs is you can have a spreadsheet and two people

01:10:39 ◼   ► can edit it at the same time.

01:10:41 ◼   ► And we added this feature to numbers, you know, and it's really cool and

01:10:46 ◼   ► it works.

01:10:46 ◼   ► And we couldn't use it at work.

01:10:48 ◼   ► And instead, you know, even though we made this cool feature, we've still had

01:10:54 ◼   ► to do the old-fashioned thing where we're back and forth emailing or iMessaging each

01:10:58 ◼   ► other, saved copies of document name, final revision two date dot numbers, and then

01:11:08 ◼   ► somebody else would get it and be like final, final, final revision one.

01:11:12 ◼   ► Yeah, uh and you're like, which one is it?

01:11:15 ◼   ► Final, final, final or final, final revision four.

01:11:19 ◼   ► Which one's the final?

01:11:20 ◼   ► And yeah, and you know, at some level, you're like, oh yeah, it would

01:11:24 ◼   ► make sense if they could just use iCloud.

01:11:26 ◼   ► And then you run into, but yeah, but what happens when you stop working

01:11:29 ◼   ► at Apple?

01:11:29 ◼   ► Right.

01:11:30 ◼   ► What happens if some of your documents aren't in the um the Apple work

01:11:38 ◼   ► folder?

01:11:39 ◼   ► But anyway, it's as pertains to this lawsuit, Apple got out ahead of OpenAI's

01:11:45 ◼   ► motion to dismiss and said, as pertains to Chang Lu, yes, there was some

01:11:49 ◼   ► of that with iCloud Drive, but all the stuff we're talking about had nothing

01:11:54 ◼   ► to do with iCloud Drive and everything to do with the third-party cloud storage

01:11:58 ◼   ► provider, who nobody neither side has named yet, but I'm almost certain is Box.

01:12:03 ◼   ► Yes, absolutely almost 99% sure, yeah.

01:12:06 ◼   ► Right.

01:12:07 ◼   ► Um and Apple said, you know, pretty I would say as clear as they

01:12:12 ◼   ► could state it, that uh the stuff they're talking about has nothing to do

01:12:16 ◼   ► with iCloud Drive.

01:12:17 ◼   ► So any of the i Apple open AI's lawyers saying, hey, you know, to

01:12:23 ◼   ► prove a trade secret, you have to protect it.

01:12:25 ◼   ► And the way Apple handles this iCloud Drive stuff with their employees is so

01:12:30 ◼   ► sloppy that they're not even protected.

01:12:32 ◼   ► And it raises the question of whether these even qualify as trade secrets.

01:12:35 ◼   ► It's all out the door or a moot point as far as Apple's concerned,

01:12:38 ◼   ► because it was related to Box.

01:12:41 ◼   ► And they had, I read the the dep, or not deposition, but the statement

01:12:45 ◼   ► that from a hired forensic expert who looked at the logs and showed the

01:12:49 ◼   ► dates that Chang Lu had accessed, presumably box, you know, and it was, you

01:12:55 ◼   ► know, at least 37 files or something like that, um, or 39 files from

01:13:01 ◼   ► and he left the company, left Apple in January, and he accessed them in

01:13:05 ◼   ► February and March and all the way until like April 27th.

01:13:09 ◼   ► That seems to me to be uh not good.

01:13:14 ◼   ► The Tang Tan stuff is like some of it strikes me as kind of

01:13:18 ◼   ► word of mouth like game of telephone, some of the things he was doing.

01:13:23 ◼   ► And I think if Apple had only known about what Tang Tan was doing,

01:13:28 ◼   ► I don't know if any of this actually happens.

01:13:31 ◼   ► I don't think that's enough to take on a whole company because they're not

01:13:34 ◼   ► just taking on Tang Tan and Chang Lu, which is how they usually approach

01:13:38 ◼   ► these trade secrets cases.

01:13:39 ◼   ► Like we've seen them go after different people before for taking things with them

01:13:43 ◼   ► when they leave, leaking information while they're there.

01:13:46 ◼   ► There were a few of them linked to who like left Apple's self-driving car

01:13:51 ◼   ► project to go work for a Chinese self-driving car project and they took some

01:13:55 ◼   ► files with them.

01:13:56 ◼   ► Apple didn't go after the company that those people went to.

01:13:58 ◼   ► Apple went after the individual person.

01:14:00 ◼   ► Right.

01:14:01 ◼   ► Which is what makes this case so different.

01:14:03 ◼   ► And why I think it is primarily Chang Lu, but since they're going after

01:14:08 ◼   ► OpenAI, they can kind of lump it all together.

01:14:10 ◼   ► Right.

01:14:11 ◼   ► I think one scenario is that this uh that Chang Lu was doing this

01:14:16 ◼   ► on his own, you know, and and if he had asked his supervisor or

01:14:22 ◼   ► who I don't know who, you know, who's, you know, if he'd reported directly

01:14:26 ◼   ► to Tang Tan or if there was somebody in between them.

01:14:29 ◼   ► But if he had asked, you know, should I go go back to my

01:14:33 ◼   ► I still have I still have access to my Apple box account?

01:14:36 ◼   ► Should I get the documents for Blanc?

01:14:38 ◼   ► They would have been like, oh my god, no.

01:14:40 ◼   ► You know, no.

01:14:41 ◼   ► Let's, you know, let's talk to you know, legal and and figure out the

01:14:46 ◼   ► right way to let Apple know that they accidentally still have you access, you

01:14:51 ◼   ► know, but whatever you do, don't touch that.

01:14:53 ◼   ► You know, they might have said that, or they might have they might have

01:14:57 ◼   ► just said, you know, real cutesy style, like, hmm, yeah, I don't know.

01:15:02 ◼   ► That's assuming OpenAI has any sort of checks and balances in place internally.

01:15:07 ◼   ► And I don't think they're utilized, yeah.

01:15:11 ◼   ► Right.

01:15:11 ◼   ► We have no idea, you know, and I don't want to imply one way

01:15:14 ◼   ► or the other.

01:15:15 ◼   ► Um, and is was is Chang Lu the exception?

01:15:19 ◼   ► Whether he had any uh uh other people within OpenAI and I.O.

01:15:25 ◼   ► who knew what he was doing, uh you know, is he the one person

01:15:28 ◼   ► who had access to these documents and did this?

01:15:31 ◼   ► Uh or was he one of several and he's just the one that Apple

01:15:37 ◼   ► has evidence against.

01:15:38 ◼   ► And that's obviously that's what Apple is saying, they need the broad discovery to

01:15:42 ◼   ► find out.

01:15:43 ◼   ► I don't know, but I would say of the people and things that are

01:15:47 ◼   ► in Apple's accusations, he seems like he's in trouble.

01:15:52 ◼   ► When it comes to Tang Tan, who is I forget his title at IO,

01:15:57 ◼   ► but he's effectively that in head of a head of the hardware initiative, and

01:16:00 ◼   ► he was a senior or not a senior vice president, but a vice president

01:16:03 ◼   ► of iPhone hardware at Apple until he left a few years ago.

01:16:08 ◼   ► Obviously, still had had always had and clearly still has a good relationship with

01:16:13 ◼   ► Johnny Ive, given that he worked with him when Johnny Ive was at Apple,

01:16:17 ◼   ► and Johnny Ive hired him amongst other people in Johnny's inner circle at Apple

01:16:23 ◼   ► at I.O.

01:16:25 ◼   ► He's named in the lawsuit, but as I read it, nothing that Apple has

01:16:30 ◼   ► revealed as evidence is unlawful from Tang Tan.

01:16:34 ◼   ► You can say that it looks bad, and if it goes to a jury,

01:16:39 ◼   ► you know, it this is not a criminal suit, it's a civil suit.

01:16:44 ◼   ► And so it's not you know, is Tang Tan going to jail?

01:16:48 ◼   ► Nobody's accusing him of that.

01:16:50 ◼   ► And so you go to a civil suit and it's sort of what does

01:16:53 ◼   ► the jury think?

01:16:54 ◼   ► And does some of this stuff look bad?

01:16:57 ◼   ► Yeah, but is it unlawful?

01:16:59 ◼   ► I don't think anything that they've alleged is unlawful.

01:17:02 ◼   ► Even the part if you really read what Apple puts in quotes in their

01:17:07 ◼   ► um their motions, um, like the part about asking people coming in for job

01:17:12 ◼   ► interviews to bring parts, the parts that are in quotes, nothing says bring prototypes

01:17:18 ◼   ► or individual in development secret parts.

01:17:23 ◼   ► It could just be it could be you know, bring parts in released devices

01:17:27 ◼   ► that you have worked on.

01:17:28 ◼   ► And I'm sure company policy at Apple is you can't bring that, right?

01:17:32 ◼   ► Like if you worked on the volume buttons for the iPhone 17 Pro, I

01:17:39 ◼   ► don't know, you know, that's a simplistic example.

01:17:42 ◼   ► But if you did the volume buttons for the iPhone 17 Pro, you could,

01:17:46 ◼   ► you know, it's obviously not illegal to show Tang Tan the volume buttons from

01:17:50 ◼   ► the iPhone 17 Pro, because you could stop by an Apple store and buy

01:17:55 ◼   ► an iPhone and show them to them, or or you know, if it's a

01:17:59 ◼   ► an internal part like a uh logic board or something, you could use a

01:18:03 ◼   ► screwdriver and take the iPhone apart and show it to them, right?

01:18:06 ◼   ► And I'm so sure if they just have extra parts laying around so you

01:18:09 ◼   ► don't have to dissemble a phone that it's against company policy, and that you

01:18:14 ◼   ► know, if you just use a part that was laying around the office, you

01:18:19 ◼   ► might get fired for taking it off campus to show at a job interview

01:18:24 ◼   ► at any company, let alone open AI.

01:18:26 ◼   ► But again, is it un is it unlawful?

01:18:29 ◼   ► No, there's all sorts of things you get fired for at Apple that are

01:18:32 ◼   ► not unlawful.

01:18:33 ◼   ► Uh you know, if if it comes out that you're Joe Apple employee and

01:18:38 ◼   ► you've been telling Mark German anything that Mark Garmin reports, you're going to get

01:18:43 ◼   ► fired.

01:18:44 ◼   ► That's a hundred percent certainty.

01:18:46 ◼   ► Did you break the law?

01:18:48 ◼   ► No, yeah, you're not, you know.

01:18:50 ◼   ► I mean, I now can you are you if you told him things that

01:18:55 ◼   ► you had signed uh uh non-disclosure agreement, I guess you're on the hook for

01:19:00 ◼   ► a civil judgment, but you're not gonna go to jail, right?

01:19:04 ◼   ► Tang tan doesn't work for Apple anymore, right?

01:19:07 ◼   ► So I don't think it's unlawful.

01:19:08 ◼   ► It just looks bad, right?

01:19:10 ◼   ► And and like the whole thing, Apple is making a big deal out of

01:19:12 ◼   ► like Tang Tan held on to a checklist of what Apple managers do when

01:19:18 ◼   ► you say, Hey, I'm giving my notice.

01:19:22 ◼   ► Uh I'm gonna go work at OpenAI, and they're like, Oh, you don't need

01:19:25 ◼   ► two weeks.

01:19:26 ◼   ► We're gonna call security and you're gonna be you're gonna be marched out now,

01:19:30 ◼   ► and we're gonna ask you for this, that, the other thing, and we're gonna

01:19:33 ◼   ► have an interview with you.

01:19:35 ◼   ► Again, that's not illegal.

01:19:36 ◼   ► Apple might wish that people who don't work at Apple didn't have that checklist,

01:19:41 ◼   ► but it's not illegal to have it, you know.

01:19:43 ◼   ► So I don't think there's anything Apple has alleged to date that is unlawful

01:19:48 ◼   ► that Tang Tan has done.

01:19:49 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:19:50 ◼   ► It's a harder case to prove than it is for Chang Lu, anyway.

01:19:54 ◼   ► Yeah the burden is on Apple to do to do that and convince a

01:19:57 ◼   ► jury of that.

01:19:58 ◼   ► Right.

01:20:00 ◼   ► Possibility A is they just, you know, and again, it's multiple people, and I've

01:20:04 ◼   ► even heard this from people at Apple that per at a personal level, John

01:20:08 ◼   ► Turnus and Tang Tan never liked each other.

01:20:10 ◼   ► And not just not just that they were rivals coming up through the hardware

01:20:14 ◼   ► ranks for what was eventually uh Turnus' pro promotion to senior vice president of

01:20:22 ◼   ► hardware, and now promotion from SVP of hardware all the way to the you

01:20:27 ◼   ► know the CEO office.

01:20:29 ◼   ► Um, but that they didn't like each other even even at beyond the way

01:20:33 ◼   ► that maybe two up and comers in a company are just not going to

01:20:37 ◼   ► like each other for competitive reasons, that they just didn't like each other, period.

01:20:40 ◼   ► Um I've heard that.

01:20:42 ◼   ► That could factor into this, obviously, you know.

01:20:44 ◼   ► And maybe too, if they did like each other, you know, that maybe Tang

01:20:49 ◼   ► Tan isn't mentioned in the lawsuit, right?

01:20:51 ◼   ► I don't know, who knows?

01:20:53 ◼   ► The example that would prove that point would be the Johnny Ive element of

01:20:56 ◼   ► it all.

01:20:56 ◼   ► He's not named in the lawsuit, and presumably that's because Apple still has respect

01:20:59 ◼   ► for five in a way that they don't for Tang Tan.

01:21:03 ◼   ► Tang Tan.

01:21:04 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:21:04 ◼   ► Or that they literally don't have any evidence at all.

01:21:06 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:21:07 ◼   ► You know, that that Johnny Ives, you know, is not involved in these job

01:21:11 ◼   ► interviews that Apple has obviously gotten some details about.

01:21:14 ◼   ► And and if they do find evidence that he is, maybe they name him.

01:21:18 ◼   ► Who knows?

01:21:18 ◼   ► Maybe they're, you know, we don't know.

01:21:20 ◼   ► I mean, this is it's it's it could be one or the other.

01:21:23 ◼   ► It could be that they like him and have respect for him and definitely

01:21:26 ◼   ► were trying to keep are tr are trying to keep him out of it

01:21:29 ◼   ► by name.

01:21:30 ◼   ► Or it could be that they just don't have any evidence, and so therefore

01:21:34 ◼   ► they didn't name him.

01:21:35 ◼   ► But if they do find evidence, they would.

01:21:37 ◼   ► I don't we don't know.

01:21:38 ◼   ► That's uh to be determined.

01:21:41 ◼   ► The the third thing, so there's Chang Lu, and I think that they've got

01:21:44 ◼   ► him on some stuff.

01:21:45 ◼   ► And I suspect that uh it uh Mr.

01:21:48 ◼   ► Liu is just going to be cut loose by open AI.

01:21:51 ◼   ► And if he's the only person involved, then that's maybe the end of the

01:21:55 ◼   ► matter, you know, like, oh well, he did some bad stuff and we're gonna

01:21:59 ◼   ► part ways with him.

01:22:00 ◼   ► And but we've made sure that everything he brought in and everything he's touched

01:22:05 ◼   ► at open AI, you know, is expunged from our systems.

01:22:09 ◼   ► Tang tan, I'd to date, again, there might be evidence against him.

01:22:13 ◼   ► Maybe Apple has evidence and they put it didn't put it into motion and

01:22:16 ◼   ► they're waiting to see what uh open AI does comes up, you know, comes

01:22:20 ◼   ► back within disclosure.

01:22:22 ◼   ► And then Apple can say, hey, but we already know about these text messages

01:22:26 ◼   ► from Tang 10, and they're not in what you've not disclosed.

01:22:29 ◼   ► What's it called?

01:22:30 ◼   ► Uh discovery.

01:22:31 ◼   ► Right.

01:22:31 ◼   ► That hey, your discovery is obviously incomplete because we know about this.

01:22:29 ◼   ► Like Apple's under no obligation to have already put in their current motions everything

01:22:40 ◼   ► they know.

01:22:41 ◼   ► I sort of suspect they have, because if they really are looking to get

01:22:45 ◼   ► a preliminary injunction, they've put everything they've got into it, but who knows.

01:22:49 ◼   ► The other factor that's in the Apples thing is this bit, which they don't

01:22:54 ◼   ► they don't name the company, the supplier, but they claim that there is a

01:22:59 ◼   ► supplier that knows that Apple has worked with for a proprietary finish to I

01:23:05 ◼   ► think and I think they say it's a metal.

01:23:07 ◼   ► Yes.

01:23:08 ◼   ► So presumably either steel or aluminum or titanium.

01:23:12 ◼   ► Um it doesn't really matter, but there's some proprietary finish to a metal with

01:23:18 ◼   ► a supplier that Apple considers a trade secret that they've spent money to develop

01:23:23 ◼   ► and that that they have a proprietary agreement with this supplier.

01:23:27 ◼   ► And that open AI went to this supplier and said, Hey, you can tell

01:23:30 ◼   ► us and how to do this, and we can use this finish too.

01:23:33 ◼   ► And we have Apple's permission to do it.

01:23:36 ◼   ► Apple doesn't reveal the name of the supplier, and without even the name of

01:23:40 ◼   ► the supplier, they don't reveal like here's text messages we know that they exchanged.

01:23:44 ◼   ► We Apple hasn't said how they know that this happened.

01:23:47 ◼   ► Presumably they've talked to the supplier, and the supplier was like, Hey, somebody this

01:23:51 ◼   ► guy who I thought this guy left Apple and whoever it is, and he

01:23:55 ◼   ► came and said, you know, was talking about this finishing thing, and Apple was

01:23:59 ◼   ► like, Yeah, he left, you know, last year.

01:24:01 ◼   ► Uh tell us more.

01:24:02 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:24:03 ◼   ► But to me, that is the wild card in this whole thing.

01:24:07 ◼   ► Because that that's a pretty I I think prima facie.

01:24:12 ◼   ► I forget, I don't know if that's how you pronounce it, but on the

01:24:14 ◼   ► face of it, that's a theft of a trade secret.

01:24:17 ◼   ► And you know, uh it's it's pretty much the definition of what Apple is

01:24:21 ◼   ► accusing them of.

01:24:22 ◼   ► But Apple hasn't revealed the details of it.

01:24:24 ◼   ► And obviously, for this to come when this comes to trial, they will have

01:24:28 ◼   ► to.

01:24:28 ◼   ► That's to me the wild card in this whole thing.

01:24:31 ◼   ► I think it's interesting that going back to the John Turnus bit a little

01:24:36 ◼   ► bit.

01:24:37 ◼   ► If John Turnus wasn't behind this lawsuit, would Apple have chosen right now to

01:24:43 ◼   ► start slinging mud at OpenAI?

01:24:45 ◼   ► Like the whole that whole the timing of it is so weird for a

01:24:50 ◼   ► company that's been so meticulously planning this transition that you wouldn't just start this

01:24:55 ◼   ► without not just buy-in from Turnus, but Turnus being emphatically behind it and thinking

01:25:02 ◼   ► there was more to it than just dragging people's names through the mud.

01:25:05 ◼   ► That's why with Tang Tan, like I'm a bit more inclined to think Apple

01:25:11 ◼   ► has maybe more than they've talked about.

01:25:13 ◼   ► And I think Apple's lawyers probably have a reason for particularly emphasizing this need

01:25:18 ◼   ► to know document so much, like for just a single document, they're really the

01:25:23 ◼   ► filings make a real big and put a real big emphasis on it.

01:25:26 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:25:27 ◼   ► I think we're entirely right that Cheng Lu is number one.

01:25:30 ◼   ► This material supplier thing is clear as day, probably.

01:25:33 ◼   ► And I think Apple even says Cheng Lu was mostly behind that too.

01:25:39 ◼   ► And then the Tang Tan thing is the weakest argument, but I think there's

01:25:46 ◼   ► enough to it that Apple that they wouldn't do it, yeah, if they didn't

01:25:50 ◼   ► think there was a there.

01:25:51 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:25:52 ◼   ► Maybe maybe they're more spiteful than we're than we think.

01:25:56 ◼   ► I do think it's got to be the case that Turnus, not that he's

01:25:59 ◼   ► single-handedly behind it, but that he endorses this lawsuit.

01:26:03 ◼   ► Because if he didn't, I don't again, Cook's desire to leave Turnus the neatest

01:26:11 ◼   ► plate possible coming into the job.

01:26:14 ◼   ► Even if Cook was like, John, I really think we should do this.

01:26:18 ◼   ► And Turnus was like, ah, I don't want to.

01:26:20 ◼   ► I I just don't want to, I don't want to, I don't want to

01:26:22 ◼   ► start my tenure with this ugliness.

01:26:25 ◼   ► I think Cook would say, Okay, you know, you've heard my piece, but we'll

01:26:29 ◼   ► do it your way, and you know, but you know, keep your eye on

01:26:33 ◼   ► this, you know.

01:26:33 ◼   ► I but I think Cook would actually defer to Turnus because obviously all but

01:26:39 ◼   ► these I I don't think we'll hear anything more from Apple until September when

01:26:43 ◼   ► Turnis is CEO.

01:26:44 ◼   ► So the only the very opening salvos happened under Cook's tenure.

01:26:49 ◼   ► And it's clearly such a this transition is exactly, you know, it is Cook's

01:26:55 ◼   ► baby, the transition.

01:26:57 ◼   ► It is not like the Cook said, Hey, maybe I'll stay on, and the

01:27:01 ◼   ► board is like, no, you're out, and we've picked this guy, Turnus, you know,

01:27:05 ◼   ► and Cook is like, well, let me quick hurry and file this lawsuit.

01:27:09 ◼   ► You know, that's that is clearly not the situation.

01:27:12 ◼   ► So either Cook and Turnus are both fully on board with it, or Turnus

01:27:18 ◼   ► is fully on board and Cook is like, sure, I'll go, we'll go your

01:27:21 ◼   ► way.

01:27:21 ◼   ► Yeah, but I suspect it's both of them.

01:27:23 ◼   ► But it's one way or the other, it's got to be Turnus.

01:27:25 ◼   ► There's no scenario where Cook is on board with it and Turnus is not,

01:27:29 ◼   ► and Cook is like, well, screw you, we're going ahead with it.

01:27:32 ◼   ► The other factor, though, I have to say it before we move on, is

01:27:35 ◼   ► the other factor that could be the whole point of this is that Apple

01:27:39 ◼   ► has no real intention of getting an injunction.

01:27:41 ◼   ► They know there's not much more.

01:27:42 ◼   ► They've got this Chang Lu guy.

01:27:44 ◼   ► I mean, the poor guy might get fired and whatever.

01:27:47 ◼   ► Um, but it's not going to really have any long-term effect on whatever open

01:27:52 ◼   ► AI is already working on with the people who were already there.

01:27:56 ◼   ► But that the entire point of this is to stop employees from Apple from

01:28:01 ◼   ► leaving Apple for Open AI.

01:28:03 ◼   ► Because if there are others, and I don't know, you know, obviously that's the

01:28:07 ◼   ► sort of thing where you'd have to be insane to be a little birdie,

01:28:10 ◼   ► even if you trust me to say, yeah, I'm still at Apple, and I

01:28:13 ◼   ► was thinking about leaving for open AI, but now I'm thinking, I don't know.

01:28:17 ◼   ► You know, but if there are other employees who at Apple who were on

01:28:22 ◼   ► the fence and thinking, ah, some of the best people I used to work

01:28:25 ◼   ► with here are there, and they seem pretty happy.

01:28:27 ◼   ► Maybe I should go too, and they're still hiring.

01:28:30 ◼   ► This might make, I think that the intention, the not that as a side

01:28:34 ◼   ► effect, but maybe the primary intention of this whole thing is to give those

01:28:38 ◼   ► people second thoughts of, oh, do I want to get involved in this and

01:28:42 ◼   ► have Apple, you know, if you leave Apple to go work at Google or

01:28:47 ◼   ► or whatever, you know, they're like, okay, you know, it's been nice working with

01:28:50 ◼   ► you, have a good time, you know.

01:28:52 ◼   ► You know, Sayanara.

01:28:54 ◼   ► Uh I think when you say I'm leaving and I'm going to IO and

01:28:57 ◼   ► open AI, you're looking for a forensic exam of your digital life on the

01:29:03 ◼   ► way out the door.

01:29:05 ◼   ► And a sort of hey, the old open door of sometimes people leave Apple,

01:29:12 ◼   ► they go somewhere else to a startup for a couple years, and then after

01:29:15 ◼   ► a couple years they come back to Apple.

01:29:17 ◼   ► Like that door closes if you're going to open AI.

01:29:20 ◼   ► You know.

01:29:21 ◼   ► And I think that that might give people pause, and that might be the

01:29:25 ◼   ► entire intent.

01:29:26 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:29:26 ◼   ► You know.

01:29:27 ◼   ► I mean, in the filing, I I was surprised they revealed this number, but

01:29:30 ◼   ► they said I think it's more than 400 former Apple employees are at Open

01:29:29 ◼   ► AI now.

01:29:35 ◼   ► Which I expected that number to be high.

01:29:37 ◼   ► I don't know if I expected it to be that high.

01:29:40 ◼   ► High.

01:29:41 ◼   ► I I agree, because that is an aw, that's just a very, very large

01:29:44 ◼   ► number.

01:29:45 ◼   ► And I I'm trying to think off the top of my head how many

01:29:48 ◼   ► I know.

01:29:49 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:29:50 ◼   ► I I could probably count them on one hand.

01:29:52 ◼   ► But definitely on two hands.

01:29:54 ◼   ► Um and I thought that was unusual, but now it makes if it is,

01:29:59 ◼   ► you know, I mean, there's no nobody's disputing the 400 number.

01:30:02 ◼   ► And it's like, oh, well, if it is 400, well then no wonder I

01:30:05 ◼   ► know 567.

01:30:06 ◼   ► Right.

01:30:06 ◼   ► Or I've heard of 567 because it's 400 people.

01:30:09 ◼   ► And I can't even think of who is in second place in terms of

01:30:14 ◼   ► having the most highest number of ex-Apple employees currently employed.

01:30:19 ◼   ► Probably Qualcomm with the chip team that left Apple Silicon some number of years

01:30:26 ◼   ► ago.

01:30:26 ◼   ► And there was, you know, some uh legal uh elbow throwing over the legality

01:30:32 ◼   ► of what they what knowledge those people were leaving with, right?

01:30:35 ◼   ► That there were some of the people from Johnny Sarugi's team involved in the

01:30:38 ◼   ► creation of Apple Silicon, not just Apple Silicon, like the M series chips, yeah,

01:30:42 ◼   ► but like the whole lowercase Apple Silicon from the chips that they've been making

01:30:47 ◼   ► under Johnny Surugi's division ever since the PA semi acquisition in 2010 or whatever

01:30:53 ◼   ► year that was, or 2007.

01:30:55 ◼   ► Um, that they left for Qualcomm, but it's not 400.

01:30:58 ◼   ► I think it's more like 40, right?

01:31:00 ◼   ► I think it's I think it's a team that could kind of fit on

01:31:03 ◼   ► a bus, not 400.

01:31:04 ◼   ► And I would guess that that's second place.

01:31:07 ◼   ► I I I'd I've just never heard of anything like this.

01:31:10 ◼   ► And I think that could just be the explanation that there isn't anything ever

01:31:14 ◼   ► there's never been anything like this.

01:31:16 ◼   ► And Apple is some combination of angry and concerned about it.

01:31:23 ◼   ► And the combination of anger and worry is let's just file this lawsuit and

01:31:28 ◼   ► see if that helps put a stop to it.

01:31:32 ◼   ► I think Apple employees leave for Google all the time, but Google employees also

01:31:35 ◼   ► leave for Apple all the time.

01:31:37 ◼   ► That's kind of an open door both ways.

01:31:39 ◼   ► I haven't I haven't heard of anybody leaving open AI for Apple.

01:31:42 ◼   ► I can't imagine that's a very common pathway.

01:31:46 ◼   ► No, and at this point, and again, I don't know, at a personal level,

01:31:50 ◼   ► maybe there's some people who are still, you know, it's it's like, hey, no

01:31:53 ◼   ► hard feelings, even if you went to, I'm sure for some people, and it

01:31:56 ◼   ► a measure of their actual friendships and the technical acumen, you know, like hey,

01:32:01 ◼   ► you're so good, we'll take you back, you know, because we'd love to have

01:32:04 ◼   ► you back.

01:32:04 ◼   ► Um, you know, but I can't help but think that for the average employee

01:32:09 ◼   ► who's made this switch, the door might be closed at least for a number

01:32:13 ◼   ► of years.

01:32:13 ◼   ► Yeah, just because this is been escalated to a level that it hasn't before.

01:32:18 ◼   ► And again, there's no I I can't think of any precedent for it, really.

01:32:22 ◼   ► So we shall see.

01:32:23 ◼   ► All right, let me take a break here and thank our third and final

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01:34:44 ◼   ► One last topic.

01:34:47 ◼   ► And it's I think it was the last time I saw you in person,

01:34:50 ◼   ► chance was uh the Siri AI in the EU situation.

01:34:54 ◼   ► Yes.

01:34:57 ◼   ► Situation.

01:34:59 ◼   ► So the only thing that's happened, there's two things that have happened over the

01:35:02 ◼   ► summer.

01:35:03 ◼   ► There was a thing, I don't think I wrote about it where Tim Cook

01:35:06 ◼   ► met with somebody, somebody I have some woman whose name I don't remember from

01:35:09 ◼   ► the EU in a private meeting.

01:35:12 ◼   ► And uh, you know, there it's what they said, I don't know.

01:35:15 ◼   ► We don't know that they were like, well, we you know, it was a

01:35:19 ◼   ► it was a it was a nice discussion or something.

01:35:22 ◼   ► But nothing came out of it.

01:35:24 ◼   ► And I haven't heard anything like, oh, you know, we straightened that out, and

01:35:28 ◼   ► you know, now we we have a path forward.

01:35:31 ◼   ► Um as Apple left it at WWDC, they said they were pretty clear, almost

01:35:37 ◼   ► almost using words as strong as this, that they did not see a path

01:35:41 ◼   ► forward to launch Siri AI in in the EU under the current interpretation of

01:35:46 ◼   ► the DMA from them.

01:35:48 ◼   ► Um you know, and that they have this idea of the the what do

01:35:53 ◼   ► they call it?

01:35:54 ◼   ► The uh trusted systems agent.

01:35:57 ◼   ► Yeah, the TSA.

01:35:59 ◼   ► They should have thought of a better name, you know.

01:36:01 ◼   ► But anyway, the trusted systems agent.

01:36:04 ◼   ► Uh, but that it would be an enormous engineering effort.

01:36:07 ◼   ► I think they said something to the effect of that it would be the

01:36:10 ◼   ► biggest, as they as they envision it, it would be the biggest engineering effort

01:36:14 ◼   ► for compliance with the DMA that they've undertaken to date, you know, more than

01:36:19 ◼   ► the alternate app stores, more than the system for alternative web rendering engines, uh,

01:36:26 ◼   ► more than the whatever stuff is in the system for taking payments from other

01:36:29 ◼   ► processes, you know.

01:36:32 ◼   ► Um it would be a bigger engineering effort to build this trusted system agent.

01:36:38 ◼   ► And the EU that was pretty clear that they would have to build it

01:36:43 ◼   ► first before the EU would say whether that makes it compliant.

01:36:47 ◼   ► That they could spend a year and a half and a lot of engineering

01:36:50 ◼   ► talent and resources and time building it, and then have the EU pass it

01:36:55 ◼   ► around to the competitors and say, What do you guys think of this?

01:36:57 ◼   ► And then come back to Apple and say, nope, that that's not compliant.

01:37:01 ◼   ► And Apple's stance is we're not going to do it unless we know that

01:37:05 ◼   ► the plan we've shown them is uh, you know, that we have a framework

01:37:09 ◼   ► for what would be compliant.

01:37:11 ◼   ► That was the biggest sticking point for Apple, I think.

01:37:13 ◼   ► It's not just that they wouldn't say no, they or not just that they

01:37:15 ◼   ► wouldn't say yes, that they wouldn't say no either.

01:37:18 ◼   ► Like if the EU had come back and say, we like this trusted system

01:37:22 ◼   ► agent thing, but you also need to do X, Y, and Z.

01:37:27 ◼   ► They didn't even do that.

01:37:28 ◼   ► It was build it and find out.

01:37:30 ◼   ► Yeah, we and we don't talk about plans, we only talk about actual proposals.

01:37:35 ◼   ► Um yeah, that they they really, you know, according to Apple.

01:37:39 ◼   ► And I think, again, there's some dispute over how detailed the trusted system agent

01:37:43 ◼   ► proposal is, but I think both sides, this is one of those things where

01:37:46 ◼   ► at the the the Venn diagram does overlap that both sides agree that they

01:37:51 ◼   ► did not, they did not give them any kind of well, you at least

01:37:54 ◼   ► knew need X, Y, and Z.

01:37:57 ◼   ► Apple said they didn't show it to us, so we don't know what to

01:37:59 ◼   ► build.

01:38:00 ◼   ► And the EU basically said, we don't do that.

01:38:02 ◼   ► We don't tell them, you know, what to do.

01:38:05 ◼   ► Now, the other news though, over the summer that I wrote about was that

01:38:09 ◼   ► they did give guidance, quote unquote guidance to Google for AI interoperability on Android.

01:38:18 ◼   ► And it is, I described it as breathtaking in terms of the scope of

01:38:24 ◼   ► what they're saying Google needs to offer to third parties to comply.

01:38:30 ◼   ► Um, you know, down to the fact that they need to allow third party

01:38:34 ◼   ► agents to provide code that would run on the digital signal processor of the

01:38:40 ◼   ► device to process the the wake words.

01:38:43 ◼   ► Hey Dingus, you know, like if me and you do a startup with Dingus

01:38:48 ◼   ► AI and you say to your Android phone, hey Dingus, you know, what what

01:38:52 ◼   ► time am I recording the talk show with chance?

01:38:56 ◼   ► They they don't want, you know, the the EU.

01:38:59 ◼   ► I mean, it's this is what they're saying they have to do is the

01:39:02 ◼   ► third party has to have code that runs on the digital signal processor.

01:39:06 ◼   ► Um and they say it would be done securely, and it's not just any

01:39:10 ◼   ► Joe app in the Play Store could do this, it would be some kind

01:39:13 ◼   ► of vetting system.

01:39:15 ◼   ► But it's just uh breathtaking in terms of the level that it's effectively being

01:39:20 ◼   ► able to write low-level system software for Android and that they have to allow

01:39:25 ◼   ► others to do it.

01:39:26 ◼   ► Google did took the opposite standpoint.

01:39:29 ◼   ► I'll just say this.

01:39:30 ◼   ► Google did the, well, we're gonna ship our thing first and see if it's

01:39:33 ◼   ► compliant later.

01:39:34 ◼   ► And Apple has taken the we're gonna find out if it's compliant before we

01:39:38 ◼   ► ship it in the EU first.

01:39:40 ◼   ► And I think Google is now finding that uh perhaps would think maybe we

01:39:44 ◼   ► should have done it the way Apple did it.

01:39:46 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:39:47 ◼   ► I mean, the bullet point in your story about the Google stuff that you

01:39:49 ◼   ► describe as madness, but that Google must allow concurrent access to always-on hot word

01:39:55 ◼   ► detection.

01:39:56 ◼   ► So if you have Claude, ChatGPT, Grok, and Meta AI installed, all of them,

01:39:59 ◼   ► in addition to Gemini must be permitted to have always on audio detection concurrently.

01:40:07 ◼   ► Right.

01:40:07 ◼   ► How?

01:40:09 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:40:10 ◼   ► And you know, it's and how many different words are they allowed to use?

01:40:15 ◼   ► You know, and again, that's part of the argument of innovation is well, what

01:40:18 ◼   ► if you have a very broad idea of the ways that you could wake

01:40:22 ◼   ► up the device and you know, uh who knows?

01:40:26 ◼   ► The other thing in the guidance, you know, as a requirement in addition to

01:40:30 ◼   ► this digital signal processing code, um, even if we concede, like, oh, I don't

01:40:37 ◼   ► understand what they mean by digital signal processing code.

01:40:40 ◼   ► Yes, it's very low level, but it's completely isolated.

01:40:43 ◼   ► This could be done safely, blah, blah, blah.

01:40:45 ◼   ► In the guidance is also that these third-party agents have to be allowed to

01:40:48 ◼   ► run as just regular apps in the background, unfettered by Google in terms of

01:40:54 ◼   ► like, hey, you get 30 seconds an hour or something, you know, that there's

01:40:58 ◼   ► some kind of limit on what they can do in the background.

01:41:01 ◼   ► It's it more or less comes out and says that the that these agents

01:41:05 ◼   ► have to be able to do whatever they want in the background whenever they

01:41:08 ◼   ► want, because Google is the one who's allowed to set the limits on what

01:41:13 ◼   ► Gemini does in the background.

01:41:15 ◼   ► Um, and you know, I I've never heard I haven't heard anybody say, hey,

01:41:19 ◼   ► I upgraded my Android phone to one that has Gemini built in and now

01:41:23 ◼   ► the battery life is trash.

01:41:24 ◼   ► I have there's no reports of that whatsoever.

01:41:27 ◼   ► Google obviously is balancing whatever Gemini does in the background with the battery life

01:41:32 ◼   ► concerns of you know, actual users.

01:41:37 ◼   ► But if you know, if they're if they actually comply with this in the

01:41:41 ◼   ► EU, every single third party who does participate in this, it would be up

01:41:46 ◼   ► to them whether they take battery life and RAM into consideration with what they

01:41:52 ◼   ► do in the background.

01:41:54 ◼   ► I mean, it's effectively PC rules on an on a phone.

01:41:59 ◼   ► And I know that there are people out there, every time this comes up,

01:42:02 ◼   ► you can see, you know, some of them and some people feel very strongly

01:42:05 ◼   ► that they wish all phones worked like Macs and Windows, where third parties could

01:42:10 ◼   ► run code that runs in the background.

01:42:11 ◼   ► And they, you know, when I defend the the or argue that this is

01:42:15 ◼   ► madness, they'll say, but yeah, don't you but don't you say the Mac is

01:42:18 ◼   ► your favorite platform and don't you run third-party things that run in the background?

01:42:22 ◼   ► And yes, I do.

01:42:23 ◼   ► That's not my phone, and they're different things, you know.

01:42:27 ◼   ► And there's a reason why phones are so much more popular than PCs ever

01:42:31 ◼   ► were.

01:42:32 ◼   ► Um and anyway, if this guidance to Google is any indication of what guidance

01:42:38 ◼   ► to Apple would be if Apple were to just ship Siri AI in the

01:42:43 ◼   ► EU and then find out from the guidance what they need to add to

01:42:47 ◼   ► comply, I can't see how Apple would ever agree to this.

01:42:52 ◼   ► Any of it.

01:42:53 ◼   ► No, I mean, the way Apple described the trusted system agent thing was like

01:42:57 ◼   ► it was an intermediary that would allow assistants to access the same features as

01:43:02 ◼   ► Siri AI and Apple Intelligence.

01:43:06 ◼   ► What the EU is telling Google to do here, we don't know a lot

01:43:09 ◼   ► about trusted system agent, but based on that description from Apple, there's no way

01:43:14 ◼   ► half three quarters of this stuff would work if that's Apple's only as far

01:43:19 ◼   ► as they're willing to go.

01:43:21 ◼   ► Right.

01:43:22 ◼   ► And so for example, like I I I know that I we don't know

01:43:28 ◼   ► what they would want.

01:43:28 ◼   ► I don't think they know what they want.

01:43:29 ◼   ► I don't think they're technically competent enough to really uh form opinions.

01:43:34 ◼   ► I think they take their advice from competitors.

01:43:38 ◼   ► But like for example, it's not just, hey, Apple would have to open up

01:43:43 ◼   ► Siri AI to third, you know, to open AI to Chat GPT or to

01:43:48 ◼   ► Claude or to Groc or to uh you know an up and coming AI

01:43:54 ◼   ► system agent, and they would have to get the same access to the semantic

01:44:00 ◼   ► index in iOS and Mac O, or I guess iOS because Mac OS isn't

01:44:04 ◼   ► a gatekeeping platform, but uh the semantic index, they'd have to have the same

01:44:08 ◼   ► in uh access to the entire semantic index that Siri AI has.

01:44:13 ◼   ► Um, that alone I'd see as a red flag, right?

01:44:18 ◼   ► And I I think the trusted system agent, I think you agree too, with

01:44:22 ◼   ► something like the way that like, hey, when third-party apps try to access your

01:44:26 ◼   ► photo library, they have to go through a system prompt that gives you the

01:44:31 ◼   ► user the ability to say, I only want to give this app access to

01:44:35 ◼   ► this, this, these four photos, tap, tap, tap, tap, right?

01:44:38 ◼   ► Yeah, these four photos uh Instagram now has access to, but not my whole

01:44:43 ◼   ► library.

01:44:44 ◼   ► And it yes, if I want to give it my access to my whole

01:44:47 ◼   ► library, I can opt into that too, but I have to confirm it and

01:44:51 ◼   ► then it can have it.

01:44:52 ◼   ► I think that per the EU, you don't have to do that with Siri

01:44:56 ◼   ► AI.

01:44:57 ◼   ► Like when Siri AI goes to read your Apple notes, it's not, hey, do

01:45:01 ◼   ► you want to give Siri AI access to these three Apple notes?

01:45:04 ◼   ► You know, or do you want to give it all?

01:45:05 ◼   ► It just has access to them because Apple trusts its own Siri in a

01:45:10 ◼   ► way that it's never going to trust third parties.

01:45:12 ◼   ► But I think to comply, Apple would have to allow the third parties the

01:45:17 ◼   ► unfettered no confirmation prompt access to this stuff.

01:45:22 ◼   ► And I'm not entirely sure to think why they wouldn't have to permit the

01:45:27 ◼   ► third parties to build their own semantic indexes, right?

01:45:31 ◼   ► What's to say that that Claude Anthropic wouldn't say, we don't like the way

01:45:36 ◼   ► Apple built their semantic index, it doesn't work the way Claude does.

01:45:39 ◼   ► We want to have access to all the users' email, all of their iMessage

01:45:44 ◼   ► history, all of their Apple notes, all of their calendars, all of their contacts,

01:45:48 ◼   ► everything else that is exposed to Apple's semantic index so that we can read

01:45:53 ◼   ► all of this stuff and build our own semantic index, which is what we

01:45:56 ◼   ► need to do to use this.

01:45:58 ◼   ► To me, I honestly reading what they said to Google, I think that they

01:46:02 ◼   ► would that that that's what the EU would say to Apple, that they would

01:46:05 ◼   ► have to give third-party AI agents access to every single thing on your devices,

01:46:11 ◼   ► iOS devices that Siri has access to just to build the semantic index.

01:46:24 ◼   ► Right.

01:46:25 ◼   ► And you know, it's not just that Apple is being a competitive dick and

01:46:28 ◼   ► saying, hey, we've got you know, we are the ones who make this, and

01:46:32 ◼   ► you know the users only get to use our system, which is part of

01:46:36 ◼   ► it that you know, they are the ones who built the iPhone, and so

01:46:38 ◼   ► they get to build the system components of the iPhone.

01:46:41 ◼   ► But there is also a brand promise to users, which is that when you

01:46:45 ◼   ► buy an iPhone, everything the iPhone is uh capable of doing, even when you

01:46:51 ◼   ► install third-party stuff from the App Store, is stuff that Apple says is okay.

01:46:56 ◼   ► Right?

01:46:56 ◼   ► That is a brand promise that you can, you know, and it goes to

01:47:00 ◼   ► the heart of why Apple, you know, the part of Apple's argument for the

01:46:59 ◼   ► exclusivity of the App Store is distribution.

01:47:07 ◼   ► That people just say, I don't know how to do this.

01:47:10 ◼   ► I just trust Apple.

01:47:11 ◼   ► That's why I bought an iPhone.

01:47:13 ◼   ► And everything I can do on my iPhone, I can't mess up.

01:47:16 ◼   ► And it's, you know, whatever I, you know, and if there is anything that

01:47:20 ◼   ► I should be careful about, I can feel assured that I will be prompted

01:47:25 ◼   ► and have to give permission for.

01:47:27 ◼   ► Um so honestly, all of that is to say that I on my honest

01:47:33 ◼   ► guess is that unless the EU and the European Commission comes back, has a

01:47:38 ◼   ► come to Jesus moment and says, all right, we're we're going to rethink our

01:47:42 ◼   ► policies on what the DMA requires.

01:47:45 ◼   ► If they stick to what they're currently saying the DMA requires, I don't think

01:47:49 ◼   ► Siri AI is ever coming to the EU.

01:47:52 ◼   ► I I mean, and I know that sounds that sounds crazy, but there are

01:47:57 ◼   ► feet, you know, iPhone mirroring still hasn't come to the EU.

01:48:00 ◼   ► And that's now an old feature.

01:48:01 ◼   ► It's like two years old, right?

01:48:03 ◼   ► And I don't see any future where it is coming.

01:48:06 ◼   ► And that's much smaller than Siri AI overall.

01:48:10 ◼   ► But I I really don't see it happening.

01:48:13 ◼   ► And that creates an incredible, it goes back to again to what we were

01:48:17 ◼   ► talking in the first half of the show.

01:48:19 ◼   ► I mean, Siri AI is not groundbreaking in terms of its intelligence, but it

01:48:23 ◼   ► is totally groundbreaking in the utility of Siri on your device.

01:48:28 ◼   ► It is useful, it works.

01:48:30 ◼   ► It is it it the hardest part of using it is remembering that it's

01:48:33 ◼   ► actually good.

01:48:34 ◼   ► And I don't think it's ever coming to the EU.

01:48:37 ◼   ► And which makes EU iOS devices a second class experience in the world.

01:48:42 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:48:43 ◼   ► At WWDC, me and you were in the same briefing about this with Greg

01:48:48 ◼   ► Joswiak and some other Apple people.

01:48:44 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:48:50 ◼   ► And leaving that, my impression was one, Apple is unhappy about this whole situation.

01:48:57 ◼   ► They're unhappy that they can't ship this feature, and they're unhappy at the lack

01:49:00 ◼   ► of cooperation from the European Union on trying to ship it, trying to work

01:49:05 ◼   ► together on a plan.

01:49:07 ◼   ► Then they kind of went silent.

01:49:09 ◼   ► Like there was the report of the talk with the EU digital person that

01:49:13 ◼   ► went well, apparently.

01:49:15 ◼   ► But now I'm imagining that Apple has seen this list of requests from the

01:49:19 ◼   ► EC to Google, and inside they're just like, oh, we dodged a bullet with

01:49:25 ◼   ► this one.

01:49:25 ◼   ► Thank God we didn't build this system out just for them to come back

01:49:28 ◼   ► with all of this crap.

01:49:29 ◼   ► It's like, yeah.

01:49:30 ◼   ► I left that briefing optimistic that they would probably you could tell the Apple

01:49:36 ◼   ► wanted to come together with the EU and figure something out.

01:49:40 ◼   ► But now I'm less optimistic.

01:49:42 ◼   ► I think you're right that it's probably just not gonna happen.

01:49:45 ◼   ► Right.

01:49:45 ◼   ► And I do think that some of the initial coverage was too focused on

01:49:50 ◼   ► the fact that Apple was like, and again, it goes back to the way

01:49:53 ◼   ► that lawyers just ask for everything at the start, and then they find out

01:49:57 ◼   ► if they need to dial it back.

01:49:58 ◼   ► And Apple was like, and in addition to if you if you'll look at

01:50:03 ◼   ► our TSA proposal and give us a thumbs up or tell us to add

01:50:07 ◼   ► a couple of items, and maybe we can come to, okay, we said A,

01:50:11 ◼   ► B, and C, you say A B C plus D and E, and we'll

01:50:15 ◼   ► say, how about just A, B, C and D?

01:50:18 ◼   ► And you'll say, okay, that's good.

01:50:20 ◼   ► Build that, and then they can go ahead.

01:50:22 ◼   ► In addition to that, they were like, and how about you just let us

01:50:25 ◼   ► ship Siri AI now while we build this, as it is?

01:50:29 ◼   ► And the EU is like, no, that, you know.

01:50:32 ◼   ► And too many people focused on that as Apple asking for a complete permanent

01:50:36 ◼   ► complete exemption.

01:50:37 ◼   ► That was just Apple shooting for the moon.

01:50:40 ◼   ► I don't think Apple really had any hopes that the EU is going to

01:50:43 ◼   ► say, sure, go ahead and ship that while you build it.

01:50:47 ◼   ► Because from the EU's perspective, it doesn't make any sense.

01:50:52 ◼   ► I mean to say, sure, you can ship what you have now that's non-compliant