Peacocking Performative Chats
The Top iPhones Still Need China • Motorola's Wooden Foldable Razr • Microsoft in OpenAI's Dust • Revenge of the Sith, Indeed
The notion that the world is run on group chats is, of course, fun. Powerful people, they’re just like us! But I also think it’s a mistake to conflate what was going on with the Pete Hegseth Signal situation with the chats that Ben Smith unearthed in his most recent column for Semafor. They’re thematically linked, of course. But tactically and practically, they seem quite different. I know a bit more about the latter than the former — though it seems that the whole world knows quite a bit about the former now! — but I suspect that if you were, say, accidentally added to such a chat with a bunch of powerful people in tech, you would be decidedly underwhelmed and perhaps even disappointed. It would be less a front-row seat into how decisions are made that will change the world and more a sycophantic piece of performance art.
More here: In the Chat Where It Happens
• Listening to "Hey Jealousy" by The Gin Blossoms 🎶
• Written on an M4 MacBook Air 💻
• Sent from London, England 🏴 I Think...
📱 Apple Still Needs China at the Cutting Edge
With all the talk about Apple moving iPhone production over to India so as to better deal with the Trump Tariffs, Mark Gurman brings up a good point. Even if Apple was able to fully ramp up their Indian facilities to produce all the iPhones needed for the US market, they likely still need China for implementing any major new design changes for the device. Presumably that’s true of the “iPhone Air” coming later this year. And also perhaps the “iPhone Fold” next year. But also, any new designs for the 20th anniversary of the iPhone in 2027… While much is made of the cost benefit of manufacturing in China, it long ago shifted to be more about the expertise in doing precision builds at scale. Even if they could get all the right equipment to India, it will undoubtedly take longer to ramp up that expertise when it comes to creating a new build of the most popular device in the world. [Bloomberg 🔒]
🪵 Motorola’s New ‘Razr Ultra’ Brings the Wood Back Panel Back
I continue to think these new Razr flip phones — foldable touchscreens — look pretty slick. I’m not sure how I feel about the wood-grained back, but I appreciate that they’re at least going for something totally different than the slab of glass approach which Apple pioneered almost 20 years ago and remains the norm. The Razr was actually my last phone before I got an iPhone in 2007 and part of me does miss both the size and satisfying *click* of the thing. It sounds like the hinge here is pretty impressive too. To the point where you barely notice the screen crease. Such issues were undoubtedly one of the last hold-ups before Apple dives into this general space (more likely with a “fold” than a “flip”). But it sounds like that’s getting a lot closer as well… But if Allison Johnson deems this Razr expensive at $1,299, wait until she gets a load of the ‘iPhone Fold’ cost… Might it top out at $2,499? [Verge]
🤖 Microsoft’s Big AI Hire Can't Match OpenAI
The knives may be starting to come out for Mustafa Suleyman at Microsoft. While he was clearly given a lot of free reign leading up to the launch of the “new” Copilot, on the consumer side — his purview — the entire thing seems like a muddled mess that, even worse, it feels like no one really cares enough to even bother talking about. That is, until some leaked internal numbers suggest growth has flatlined over the past year, as Tom Dotan scooped. On a recent Big Technology podcast with Alex Kantrowitz, Suleyman continued to downplay the awkward rivalry with OpenAI and also continued to double down on the notion that they would differentiate the consumer Copilot through personality. I’m not buying it. And I’m not alone. Microsoft may indeed have a building AI problem. And worse, it’s one they had a solution for with ChatGPT + Bing, but they blew it. Maybe all of this points to why the bickering with OpenAI has seemingly picked up again? [Newcomer 🔒]
😈 Revenge of the Sith, Indeed
While the refreshing tale of Sinners (huge box office, great reviews, original IP, creator Ryan Coogler’s incredible rights deal) remains the bigger story in dropping a mere 5% in its second weekend, the sidenote here is that Revenge of the Sith beat out a major new wide release, The Accountant 2, for second place. Have I mentioned that Revenge of the Sith is 20 years old? And also, not a great movie! I know the revisionists are out in full um, force now — especially the Hayden Christensen fans — but it can really only be considered good if judging on a curve versus the other prequel films. In a vacuum, it’s not a good movie. It doesn’t matter. It just made $25.2M at the box office. And it’s not like the other recent Star Wars re-releases have done this type of business, The Phantom Menace (the worst of the prequels) made just $8.7 million on it’s re-release in 2024. Sith is a rather incredible outlier here — nearly matching what the original Star Wars did upon its own 20th anniversary way back in 1997. But that was much more of a big deal, with the movie digitally re-done (much to the chagrin of many) and marketed to the nth degree. (Yes, it helps that Sith is rated PG-13, versus R for Accountant 2 — which also did quite well, btw!) [THR]
I Wrote...
Ted Sarandos Screams "Fire!" at the Movie Theaters
He's not wrong, but is he right?
Can the Web Browser Be the Disruptor Yet Again?
This time *against* Google with AI (and perhaps Microsoft, again)...
Hey Jealousy
Are OpenAI and Microsoft back bickering yet again?
I Note...
A nice visual story explaining why Apple likely cannot produce the iPhone in the US — at least not anytime soon. Beyond leading to a price upwards of $3,500 (and you thought the ‘iPhone Fold’ was going to be expensive), we lack the materials, the machines, and the expertise. But other than that… [FT 🔒]
VW is gearing up to launch their own robotaxi electric minivans, in partnership with Uber, in Los Angeles in 2026. [Verge]
Elon Musk says the Tesla robotaxi tests (not yet ‘Cybercab’) are still going to roll-out this June in Austin, but some are getting skeptical for the usual over-promising reasons… [Verge]
Meanwhile, Waymo, which is currently doing 250k weekly rides in SF, Phoenix, Austin, and LA, may also be open to the idea of future personal ownership of the cars — which reads a lot like a shot directly at Tesla by Sundar Pichai… [Information 🔒]
Stripe is gearing up to test their first stablecoin, a big step that will help further legitimize the concept, but also will presumably help Stripe’s actual business when it comes to cross-border payments. [CoinDesk]
It seems like there may indeed be an ‘iPhone 17e’ next year, meaning Apple is perhaps going to do a yearly cadence, albeit off-cycle from their “regular” iPhone lineup, for this model of iPhone as well. [MacRumors]
Duolingo now teaches chess. Fun! Smart! [Verge]
Why did Alphabet’s net income get an $8B boost last quarter? Likely a rise in the on-paper value in SpaceX, thanks to Google’s investment back in the day. This remains one of the more silly accounting rules, since obviously this value is in no way realized yet. [Bloomberg 🔒]
Once again, it’s not just the iPhone and the Big Tech™ products that are under the threat of the Trump Tariffs, it’s products from a bunch of startups too. [WSJ 🔒]
Microsoft ran an ad made by generative AI and nobody noticed. [Verge]
Australia ran a radio show with a host made by generative AI and nobody noticed. [Sydney Morning Herald]
It sounds like Miami Vice is being rebooted — again. And just as was the case the last time when Michael Mann opted to turn his show into an (underrated) feature film, now Joseph Kosinski wants to bring it back to the big screen. It sounds like it wouldn’t be a sequel to Mann’s, but Kosinski has a strong history with taking up such reigns… Dan Gilroy, brother of Andor-helmed Tony, is writing it. [THR]
One of the first Apple TV+ movies I recall watching was Greyhound, the Tom Hanks property that Apple smartly snatched up in the midst of the pandemic. I remember thinking it was pretty good, but otherwise, it was pretty forgettable. But now it’s getting a sequel, tackling D-Day… [Deadline]
Ziff Davis is the latest publisher to sue OpenAI as the sides continue to align either on ‘Team Partner’ or ‘Team Sue’… [NYT]
After months of pullbacks and delays, Microsoft Recall — once seemingly the key selling point of the then-new ‘Copilot+ PCs’ — is finally fully here. And it sounds… just okay. Fairly buggy. But at least a bit more secure. [Verge]
On the surface, any discussion around AI welfare and rights seems ridiculously early, if not outright ridiculous. But I do believe there’s value in simply debating it, even if just on a philosophical level, as it may help inform decisions that are tangential to this type of debate. [NYT]
A recent small update to ChatGPT has perhaps made it “glaze” too much, says Sam Altman. AI, it’s just like others in the chat and on social media. Maybe they do need those rights… [Xitter]
Back to Star Wars, real world astronomers believe they’ve found a “Tatooine-like” planet orbiting two suns. Incidentally, it’s roughly the same distance from Earth as the recently discovered planet perhaps showing signs of life… 120 light years. Cue the music… [WSJ 🔒]
I Quote...
“He was basically the philosopher of the movie, so [he had] longer talking scenes, where I had to figure out a way to get people to actually listen. Especially 12 year olds.”
— George Lucas, when asked why Yoda speaks the way he does in the Star Wars films. Lucas was making a rare appearance these days, to celebrate the 45th anniversary of The Empire Strikes Back. A lot of Star Wars anniversaries, there are.
I Spy...
SemiAnalysis ran some numbers and did some analysis around Microsoft’s supposed data center spending “freeze”. One wild stat (which the infographic below highlights):
The chart below provides a perfect illustration. Microsoft singlehandedly drove the leasing market in 2023 and the first half of 2024. Not only was it aggressively signing deals, but it was also effectively “freezing” the market by locking up non-binding LOIs across the board. Our estimates suggest Microsoft accounted for more than 60% of all new leased turnkey capacity from Q1 2023 through Q2 2024. In June 2024, Microsoft’s preleased capacity was larger than that of the four other major hyperscalers combined.
