Monitoring the (Apple AI M&A) Situation
Apple EU "Concessions" • The "Cheat on Everything" AI App • ChatGPT in Schools • America-Made Smartphones • Shopping From TVs • Netflix Experience Malls
I made my (Apple AI M&A) list back in March, now I’m checking it twice — especially since recent reports indicate Apple has been at least thinking about a few of these…
💰 Whittling Down Apple's Big AI M&A Options
I'll bring my list of five down to four...
• Listening to "Slowness" by Calexico 🎶
• Written on an M3 Max MacBook Pro 💻
• Sent from London, England 🏴 Notebook
🍎 Apple's Last-Minute EU App Store Concessions
You may have read such headlines and thought, "wow, concessions – maybe Apple is turning over a new leaf". If they are, it's a fig leaf. As the story alludes to, Apple is clearly angling any concessions as a way to buy more time between fines. It sounds like they'll perhaps give an inch on the "core technology fee" and other such nonsense, thus pushing the buck back to Brussels to determine if and how to fine Apple some more bucks – but in a few months. It also doesn't seem to be a coincidence that Apple is negotiation just as you-know-who makes his way back to Europe. While President Trump has been hitting Apple hard in recent months as they're a key piñata for the tariff issue with China, he's always going to side with "Tim Apple" over the EU. And I suspect we'll hear as much again this week. Maybe Judge Gonzalez Rogers no bullshit approach to Apple in the US courts has inspired the EC to act tougher here. But probably not. [FT 🔒]
📝 Cluely, the "Cheat on Everything" Service
Always an inevitable zag on the zig of everyone in the world being worried about AI and cheating in schools (and in life, I guess). Cluely is the "hey, what if 'cheating' is the feature?" play – or, to be more generous, "what if 'cheating' is just just bad branding here and this should be the future of learning?". It should be a good test of how much marketing/branding prowess matter in the age of AI. Can they "hack" enough brand aware to get a consumer toehold? Or will they poison the brand with their stunts? [TechCrunch]
🤖 Welcome to Campus. Here’s Your ChatGPT.
Perhaps related, here's a deep dive from earlier this month into how OpenAI is trying to infiltrate colleges through an "AI-native" sales pitch to these schools. Duke, for example, now give unlimited ChatGPT access to students, faculty and staff through a program brilliant called 'DukeGPT' – branding that's almost good enough to overcome the White Lotus issue. Almost. This is, of course, what Apple, Microsoft, and Google have done for years to get their products into school – the "get them hooked early" approach. But it's more fraught this time because of the aforementioned cheating fears (not to mention the more existential fears around AI). Still, if Google gets to the kids even younger through Chromebooks and can bake Gemini fully into those... ChatGPT may need some hardware. Or a deeper partnership with, say, Apple. (BTW, OpenAI says they aren't using this data to train their models.) [NYT]
📲 The $1,999 Liberty Phone Is Made in America.
I mean, sort of. There are still components that they simply can't get anywhere but Asia. But this is a fun look into just what it might take for Apple to make the iPhone in America – and an even better look into what it would take for the 'T1' (aka the Trump Gold Phone) to be built and launch in the US. The 'Liberty Phone' – meant largely for government agencies or security die-hards – has specs from a decade ago and can't run anything any modern consumer would want. Apple could obviously scale production quite a bit more than this company has, but doing so with specs/components that their customers would want would clearly cost thousands – plural – of dollars to produce. So the selling price would be even more than that. And perhaps most importantly, it would take years to get most of the components they needed to scale in the US. This whole narrative is so stupid. [WSJ 🔒]
📺 Walmart Aims to Let Consumers Shop From Their TVs
Since the days of Home Shopping Network (which launched before QVC – now merged), shopping from the couch has been a sort of holy grail for commerce. But those used to require a phone, so why not, say just do it all on the TV? The (obvious) problem here is an input one. Which is to say, remote controls still mostly suck for everything beyond channel flipping and volume (and we're sort of in a post-channel flipping world now). At the same time, smartphone are pretty great "second screens" when sitting on the couch. So why is this any better/easier? Because Walmart would like a cut of those sales? Please. [Bloomberg 🔒]
Spyglass
🛸 Pixar Peters Out
It has less to do with quality and more to do with our current reality...
🤔 Apple Ponders Perplexity
A partnership is more likely, but they have to at least think about buying here...
Loose Leaf
It looks like a lot of details about the 'X Money' payment service have leaked via code in the app – including a physical card. Genuinely interested to see how the whole Xitter-as-a-trusted-payments-service thing goes over... [TechCrunch]
Reddit is considering using World ID for authentication. Not a huge surprise given Sam Altman's involvement in both, but it would be a huge, um, validation combating the, um, optics problem for the eye-scanning orbs. [Semafor]
Beyond the big Peter Chernin name, I'm not sure how much Apple's new first-look deal with his North Road group for movies will matter. Some nice hits in the past, but Netflix clearly wasn't rushing to renew. Maybe he can help Apple with the keys for shipping popular movies? [Bloomberg 🔒]
Tesla started rolling out their 'Robotaxi' service – that logo and all – in Austin with a lot of skepticism of how it will scale. Right now, there are just about 10 vehicles on the road (with back-up drivers) The actual 'Cybercab' will come later – maybe. [NYT]
And just ahead of the launch, Texas – Texas! – enacted more strict rules around permits for self-driving technology. Sort of surprising to see such pushback in what is now Tesla's and Elon Musk's home state. Maybe it's a bit of a pulling up of the drawbridge with Tesla the last one in (since the law won't go into effect until September)? [Reuters]
Not much new in this report on the Meta AI Hiring Squad – now that would be a fun group chat to be accidentally added to! – though it does at least address one elephant in the room that other reports haven't: tension over the fact that Yann LeCun remains Chief AI Scientist but is skeptical of the work that many of the people Zuck is presumably trying to bring over. [WSJ 🔒]
Speaking of Perplexity, the BBC is threatening legal action against them for using their content without permission. Obviously, Apple won't like to see that – but it's also not clear that the BBC understand what Perplexity actually does? Are they trying to really go after Meta here for Llama? [FT 🔒]
Speaking of lawsuits, shareholders are now suing Apple for overstating their AI capabilities, which they have have hurt the stock price. Potential injury to insult situation here. [Reuters]
It's sort of wild that Warner Bros Discovery didn't scoop up the rights to the Village Roadshow library given how many of the titles are key films they partnered on: the Ocean’s Eleven series, The Matrix trilogy, the Sherlock Holmes franchise, Wonka, etc. Instead, Alcon got them for a song. Then again, maybe WBD didn't have the money either! [Deadline]
I Quote…
"Riders paid a flat fee of $4.20, Mr. Musk said on X, an apparent reference to 'The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy,' one of his favorite books. In the book, 42 is the ambiguous answer a supercomputer provides when asked to explain the meaning of life and the universe."
— Jack Ewing, in his article about the Tesla 'Robotaxi' rollout in Austin. Are we sure that’s really what it's in reference to, Jack?
I'm reminded of the line from About a Boy: "Shake your ass, is he Moroccan?" when Lindsey's mom hears the name of the Mystical song.
I Spy...
I remain both fairly intrigued and slightly confused by the Netflix-in-the-carcass-of-old-department-stores idea. But the first ones are coming soon to Philadelphia and Dallas (with Vegas being next). Perhaps most notable in the new details: they will each include a movie theater – which seems like a weird inclusion given Netflix's stance on theatrical releases. Unless, of course, they were going to change that stance... You know, for the fans.
