The WWDC Shuffle
WWDC in 2 Weeks • iOS Xbox App Delay • Apple's Pressure • Box Office Boomlet • Microsoft Anthropic • Anthropic Agentic Pokemon • AI Shuffle Stick
Two weeks to go until WWDC and last week sure set an interesting stage… And certainly not in a good way for Apple.
Epic tapping out Apple. Microsoft partnering with everyone on AI. Google going full speed ahead on their own AI. OpenAI fully joining forces with Jony Ive’s teams. And President Trump still demanding that American-made iPhone…
Obviously, the agenda for Apple’s events are locked-in well ahead of time, but you have to wonder if they don’t alter some elements to answer at least some of this. Or perhaps they really can’t because the keynote video is already in the can! Yet another potential downside of not doing a live presentation? Can they order some reshoots?
🕹️ An Epic Game
5 years after Tim Sweeney went to war with Apple, he won. For now.
⛽️ Google Slams on the AI Gas
Does it leave Apple in the dust?
🅾️ OpenAI & IO
Sam Altman & Jony Ive aim to take the AI race into the real world...
🚫📲 The Anti iPhone
Jony Ive's antidote to the smartphone obsession he helped usher in...
📆 Apple's No Good, Very Bad Week
Hard to recall such a series of bad beats for one company...
• Enjoying a Nissos Pilsner 🍻
• Written on an M4 MacBook Air 💻
• Sent from Athens, Greece 🇬🇷I Think...
🍏 Microsoft Blames Apple for Its Delayed Xbox Mobile Store
While Spotify and Amazon were quick to roll-out app updates to take advantage of the newly permitted web payments (well, newly permitted without Apple’s silly 27% fee), and Epic took a little longer to get Fortnite back on to the App Sore for obvious reasons, it’s somewhat surprising that Microsoft hasn’t jumped on the wagon too given their previously signaled intent to do so when such changes were implemented. As it turns out, they’re taking their time because they’re worried that Apple could win their appeal and it would just force them to roll everything back again (similar to when Google won their temporary stay on similar changes being implemented). So instead, Microsoft is applying pressure via an amicus brief to try to ensure these changes are made permanently. Apple truly is being assaulted on all fronts here, with several different strategies. Their only advocate, oddly, might be Google? [Verge]
🍎 OpenAI/IO Deal Puts Pressure on Apple to Find Next Big Thing
We can debate whether or not whatever product OpenAI produces with the io team will be a hit or not — obviously, no one knows and as is always the case with hardware in particular, the odds are more against them than in their favor, even with this team — but without question, Jony Ive’s mere involvement in the matter, not to mention the intro video, is a clear rebuke of Apple. Obviously, all sides want to downplay that notion somewhat — to dampen hype and expectations, if nothing else. But this really is the first time that Ive is working on something that makes him a rival to his former company. And with most of the team coming over to OpenAI having come from that former company, no less. And, Smart Glasses leaks aside, Apple’s first public response to that move will be a conference that will apparently be all about UI and not AI. I guess, in a way, that will be Apple severing of any lingering ties with Ive too since he oversaw the last major UI overhaul. But is there any way that WWDC doesn’t feel muted with that focus? Especially in light of Google I/O? [Bloomberg 🔒]
🍿 ‘Lilo & Stitch’ and Tom Cruise Add to a Box Office Boomlet
The numbers are good: $146M for the weekend (and $183M when you include Monday) for Lilo & Stitch. $63M for the weekend (and $77M through Monday) for Mission: Impossible — Final Reckoning. But as always, I appreciate Brooks Barnes pouring a bit of cold water on Disney’s record-touting — the third Pirates of the Caribbean movie technically would have collected just over $200M in the same weekend in 2007 when adjusted for inflation (and nearly $250M over the four-days). For M:I, it’s a bump from the last movie’s opening, which was disappointing (even though the movie was good), but not a huge one (15%). And this one cost an estimated $500M to make when all is said and done. But perhaps the most surprising thing of all of this is that Lilo & Stitch is yet another example of a movie Disney nearly sent to streaming and ended up being a massive hit at the box office. Moana 2 was in the same boat. Sort of wild to have two such near "misses" — that no one would have realized were misses, which leads to the question: what other content did Disney mess up distribution-wise in this regard? [NYT]
🧑💻 Microsoft Picks Anthropic to Power New GitHub AI Coding Tools
It feels like it’s one thing to simply offer more options when it comes to letting developers choose which underlying models they’d like to use for various Microsoft offerings, but it’s another to pick one as the default — which you actually can’t swap right now — that’s not only not an OpenAI model, but it’s arguably their biggest rival, at least when it comes to AI coding capabilities… Oh yes, and to pay that rival to use said model. As the world turns, the greatest soap opera in AI continues… Still, clearly Anthropic is emerging as the winner in this segment of the AI market — and thus, pulling back from the more consumer-focused elements makes sense — with tools like Cursor and yes, potentially Apple going with Claude to power their "vibe coding". Did I mention that Anthropic seems to be playing some hardball by not giving Windsurf, the Cursor-competitor that OpenAI is acquiring, early access to Opus and Sonnet 4? [Information 🔒]
I Wrote...
✨ The Geminification of Chrome
The DoJ wants Google to ditch Chrome, so they loaded in their AI?
💼 OpenAI's Second CEO Tasked With A Lot of First CEO Stuff
How this awkward "number two" role may play out...
😎 Apple Eyes 2026 for Smart Glasses
They're clearly hustling to meet Meta, Google, and now OpenAI/Jony Ive in the AI device market. But will their AI be ready?
👖 Out of Pocket
Mozilla fails to save the beloved read it later service…
🍰 The Stargate Data Center Layer Cake
JPMorgan -> Crusoe -> Blue Owl -> Oracle -> NVIDIA -> SoftBank -> OpenAI -> ...
🦾 Apple Set to Show Some AI Skin, But Not the Full Monty
Giving developers on-device AI access makes sense, and buys Apple some time to get their larger models up to speed...
I Note...
Nike coming back, shoe in hand, to Amazon makes all the sense in the world. Sort of wild that they pulled out over five years ago (though it was in part over counterfeit issues). Even Apple sells on Amazon! You go where the people are, and Nike needs to find the people again. [Information 🔒]
The margin was tiny — “fewer than 100 vehicles” — but BYD outselling Tesla in Europe is yet another blow to the EV pioneer. And yet another wake-up call for Elon Musk to stop dicking around with anything not Tesla-related. [NYT]
I’ll be curious to see if Bluesky account verification goes well given that Xitter has basically destroyed all meaning — and arguably inverted the meaning — of the checkmark. [TechCrunch]
Hardly a surprise that Disney pushed both of their next Avengers movies from May 2026 and 2027 to December 2026 and 2027, respectively, given that they just started production on the first and everything involved... More surprising is that Dune: Messiah hasn’t been moved yet and is currently set for the same release date as Doomsday. Will December 18, 2026 be "Dunesday"? Nah, given that Messiah hasn’t started production and won’t for at least several months, I’m guessing 2027 might be Sandworm Summer… [THR]
The Bear is back on June 25, which is a nice quick turnaround from a third season which felt abbreviated (because it likely was). [YouTube]
It is a bit strange how Mozilla opted to shut down Pocket rather than sell to someone — with both Digg and Medium expressing public interest — but maybe that’s because they intend to still use some of the recommendation tech for Firefox? Still, you’d think they could still sell the brand/user base? Last week I mentioned why I thought it could have made sense back in the day for Medium, and Digg on the verge of its own relaunch makes some sense too… [TechCrunch]
The DoJ continues to look into the so obviously silly "hackquisitions" — this time the Google/Character.ai totally-not-a-deal deal. Been a minute since we’ve seen one of these, presumably because actual red meat M&A is back on the menu, at least somewhat. [Bloomberg 🔒]
While the Robert Langdon movies were just okay and the first attempt at a series on Peacock didn’t work, perhaps Netflix can crack the code after winning a bidding war to produce a show based on Dan Brown’s forthcoming sixth book in the series, The Secret of Secrets. Carlton Cuse — aka the Lost showrunner that wasn’t Damon Lindelof — will showrun this and help write it alongside Brown. [THR]
Napster is back, again. Though this time it’s something entirely different and it’s not entirely clear what that is — a "metaverse" startup, sort of? But the whole backstory — and ongoing story — is a wild, fun read. [Forbes]
A good interview with Richard Gingras, Google’s longtime VP of News who is retiring (and, notably, not being replaced, it seems). He obviously has a lot of thoughts on the state of the business from both the news and Google perspective — and how AI is going to upend it all, again. [NiemanLab]
I Quote...
"It was able to work agentically on Pokémon for 24 hours."
— Mike Krieger, the chief product officer of Anthropic, talking about one fun way the company is measuring the advances in their latest 'Claude 4 Opus' model. Previously, the model could only play the game on its own for 45 minutes.
Google, of course, uses similar scientific measurements.
I Spy...
In my post trying to imagine what an OpenAI/io AI device could look like, I wrote:
For some reason here, my mind goes to the iPod Shuffle. It was one of my favorite products of all time – and I know I'm not alone there. It was just so simple and elegant. It did one thing and did it well. I'm imagining that type of hardware, undoubtedly with a more modern aesthetic, but for ChatGPT. And I mean, if it has a lanyard, does that make it a "wearable"? Maybe! Or maybe it will be more like the iPod nano and you'll prefer to put it in that jeans pocket which Steve Jobs famously figured out how to use all those years ago...
Separately, analyst Ming-Chi Kuo wrote the following:
The current prototype is slightly larger than the AI Pin, with a form factor as compact and elegant as an iPod Shuffle. The design and specifications may change before mass production. One of the intended use cases is wearing the device around the neck.
While it’s sort of weird that we’d end up at the same place, it’s also seemingly not that weird. That was such a great form factor. I recall looking at the original iPod Shuffle quite often and just being amazed that it could do what it did in that form factor. Granted, my mind was somewhat biased having come from the world of portable cassette players and later portable CD players, but still. It was just a great form factor. And felt great in hand (and around neck).
The versions with the clip were cool too, though almost too small for my taste when it came to actually using the device. That weird, button-less, third iteration? Let’s not talk about that one. (All captured below via MacRumors.)
