A Quiet Build to WWDC
NASA & SpaceX • Snapchat & Apple Watch • Meta & Defense • Anthropic • AI Regulation • AI Spy Glasses
It’s the Friday before WWDC and as you might expect, Mark Gurman is here to spoil it for everyone. I kid. But only because there’s not much to spoil. Pretty much everything has already leaked over the past few weeks and really, it’s likely to feel muted anyway because of how badly Apple messed up last year’s WWDC by having their on-stage mouths write checks that their backstage bodies couldn’t cash. As such, they’re almost certainly going to have to keep things more conservative this year when it comes to promises and hints of what’s to come. Instead, much of the focus will seemingly be on new coats of paint for the OSes. This isn’t the worst strategy — people like to see things that look new, even if they don’t operate all that differently — but when compared to their peer group, Apple risks looking further out of touch and behind. Yes, because of AI. But also because of many of their policies.
In fact, the biggest news out of Gurman’s latest report may be what’s apparently not coming: Gemini. While Apple itself has confirmed that they were working with Google to put it in place within iOS multiple times now, it apparently won’t be showcased at the event — perhaps because of the ongoing legal issues the two companies face. But hey, at least we’re getting a Preview app for the iPhone and iPad. Finally.
(Honestly, the biggest thing beyond the UI changes is probably Xcode opening up to third-party LLMs — as I suspected would be a bone Apple would throw to developers after the reports of initial internal testing hit last month. And really, they now sort of have to with the promised Swift Assist feature from last year’s WWDC having never been shipped. What a mess. One that access to smaller on-device models is unlikely to fix. But if the new multitasking support for iPad is actually good, alongside Safari, I might forgive all other sins. Then again, we’re promised that basically every year…)
• Enjoying a Brixton Reliance Pale Ale 🍻
• Listening to "Method to the Madness" by The Wombats 🎶
• Written on an M4 MacBook Air 💻
• Sent from London, England 🏴 Notebook
🛰️ How NASA Would Struggle Without SpaceX
As with all things Trump, I’m not sure there’s much of a point in diving too much into all of this, because everything always changes on a dime. And despite the — admittedly very amusing — theatrics of Trump v. Musk yesterday on Xitter, my guess now (after guessing all of this would happen, like seemingly everyone else) would be that the two rather quickly reach a detente. Yesterday was sort of a showing off of the nuclear capabilities — "impeach!" "deport!" — but the two perhaps need each other more than they might care to admit in the heat of a battle. To be clear, Trump has an upper hand — he has literal nukes, for one thing — but Elon has quite a few cards too, notably, how much the US now relies on SpaceX. And not just for NASA missions, for things like military satellite deployment as well. [NYT]
⌚️ Snapchat Launches an… Apple Watch App?
I actually quite like this zag against the usual zigs. We’re a decade into the Apple Watch and most third-party developers seemingly gave up on developing for the device… about a decade ago. That’s a shame, but it was also Apple’s own fault: the first could iterations were way too slow and limited, Apple should have waited — as they famously did with the iPhone — until everyone was clamoring for such apps. Or at least until they figured out what the device was good for! I do often wish there were more functional apps on my watch — which I’ve worn a version of every day for ten years! — as you can’t take any action on most notifications unless you open your phone. So yeah, good thought, Snap. Maybe Meta will copy this? [TechCrunch]
💣 Meta’s Push Into Defense Tech Reflects Cultural Shift
We went over this the other day, but the main issue I have here is that someone like Boz is only now noting the "silent majority" and a move towards the ideals that Meta was "hoping to return to" when it’s politically safe. I don’t even disagree with the high-level notion here — I have absolutely no issue with our biggest companies, tech or otherwise, working with our government. But I have an issue with them only doing so and again, only willing to admit they want to do so, after the winds have shifted. Grow a spine guys. Including, by the way, the other way. Call out some of the current administration bullshit — of which there is an endless supply — even though Trump is in power now. They won’t for obvious reasons. And obviously it might not be good for the bottom line. But there’s a reason why trust in these companies is eroding fast. They’re such jellyfish when it comes to these stances! [Bloomberg 🔒]
🤖 Anthropic: Don’t Let A.I. Companies off the Hook
Dario Amodei’s op-ed goes hard right out of the gate, suggesting that AI might be used to blackmail you, dear reader, for your affair. He’s not judging you, but his AI is! And it’s going to email your wife! It’s… one way to get your point across, I guess. But actually, I’m persuaded by parts of his real point: that a 10 year pause on any sort of AI regulation is… a long time. It’s a long time for anything, but it might as well be infinity for AI. FWIW, I don’t think states should be able to regulate in piecemeal fashion today when things are moving so fast either, I just think there’s probably something more nuanced in between those two extremes. Amodei makes the case to focus on transparency, which feels correct directionally, at least. [NYT]
Spyglass
⚖️ App Store Changes Here to Stay with the Denial of Apple's Stay
At least for the foreseeable future, and potentially forever...
🕹️ Don't Switch What Ain't Broken
Nintendo seemingly starts strong out of the gate with Switch 2
📰 The Washington Post's Plan to Become Forbes, or HuffPo, or Substack, or Something
Using AI to improve the quality prospects, naturally...
Loose Leaf
As you might imagine, a lot of thought went into every little detail of the new Mario Kart World — the Switch 2 launch title. [Rolling Stone]
The trailer for Alien: Earth looks solid ahead of its launch on FX in August. And I liked Romulus too. But I really wish Ridley Scott would finish his own Prometheus/Convenant story arc — where’s David?! — he says he’s done. Though I do appreciate him being honest in his thoughts about the third and fourth movies. And the fact that Robert Altman was first approached to do Alien?! That would have been something else… [Variety]
Meanwhile the teaser for Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale looks about as opposite as Alien as you can possibly get. And I’m here for that too. Mainly, I’m impressed by their successful strategy translating from TV to film trilogy. This will apparently be the last of those — undoubtedly unless it does really well. Maybe they can run it back to television?! [THR]
To follow up on the item from a couple days ago, one of Anthropic’s co-founder admitted the obvious: they’re not enabling the newest models for Windsurf because Windsurf is selling to their main rival, OpenAI. Duh. [TechCrunch]
Speaking of the "vibe coding" space, Windsurf’s own main competitor, Anysphere (makers of Cursor) has surpassed $500M in ARR — making it the fastest company ever to do so. As such, they’re now valued at a clearly deliberate $9.9B after raising $900M. [Bloomberg 🔒]
Thrive Capital lead the round — which is also one of the largest investors in OpenAI, of course. Which is also an investor in Anysphere, even though they’re acquiring their main rival, of course. AI is a tangled mess of conflicts, as tends to happens when things are moving fast. And nothing has ever moved faster than AI.
In other big rounds, Anduril secured a $30.5B valuation, which is massive, and would have been bonkers a couple years ago, but seems almost quaint in our age of AI — that’s less than the year-old Safe Superintelligence, for example. Still, it’s about halfway to the market cap of Northrop Grumman. [Bloomberg 🔒]
One last one: remember RedNote/Little Red Book? Oh, you don’t? It was going to be the next TikTok for a red hot minute a few months ago. Of course, it was never going to be — not in the US, at least. But in China, it’s now valued at $26B. [Bloomberg 🔒]
In related breaking news: another deadline extension for that TikTok sale since China clearly isn’t going to playball (or the gameshow) right now (see also: the Apple situation below). [WSJ 🔒]
Reddit is suing Anthropic for using their data to train their models — but only after they tried to strike a retroactive deal (as they have with OpenAI and Google) for said usage. [WSJ 🔒]
Anthropic is also now letting their models write some of their blog posts, though they’re "human-enhanced", sort of a reverse of the norm at, say, The Washington Post, soon enough. [TechCrunch]
The AI partnership between Apple and Alibaba — vital to Apple’s software in China — is currently in a holding pattern as the trade wars continue. Yet another massive headache for Tim Cook with iPhone sales already struggling in the region. They are a complete pawn in all of this. [FT 🔒]
Thank god, two new shows on which Stephen A. Smith can speak. [THR]
A few smaller updates we’re likely to see at WWDC:
I Spy...
A look at what’s inside of Meta’s new 'Aria Gen 2' experimental smart glasses. They look like literal spy glasses!
I’d love to know what NASA officials are thinking?