2025-02-20 22:45:29
It was an interesting superposition for tech news. Yesterday, at the exact same time, the embargo lifted on two stories from two $3T companies. Apple's news? A new iPhone. Microsoft's news? A new form of matter.
Historically, the biggest mistake you can make in PR is failing to navigate around an Apple announcement. Such things tend to suck out all of the oxygen in the press room. But this seemed like a rather brilliant bit of counter-programming by Microsoft. Not only because the news could not be any more different, but because of how trivial it made Apple's announcement seem. Many immediately jumped on this humorous dichotomy.
Martin Peers highlighted the sentiment well in his Information briefing:
Yes, while Microsoft is trying to change the very nature of computing, Apple is reinventing cellular modems so that one day it won’t have to pay the industry leader, Qualcomm, to use its state-of-the-art modems. That’s what counts for ambition in Cupertino, Calif., nowadays.
Is that fair? I mean yes and no.
First and foremost, while Microsoft's stated breakthroughs in quantum computing sound incredible – topological qubits! Majorana fermions! – every story is also quick to couch the news with some skepticism or, at least, caution. After all, Microsoft has made promises in this realm before only to have to backtrack... At best, this is an "end of decade" thing, in terms of being put to practical use, even by Microsoft's own admission.1 If it's not exactly science fiction, it's not entirely science fact either. Not yet anyway.
On the other hand, if Microsoft is correct in their approach to quantum computing, which is more of a hybrid approach leveraging semi and superconductors versus the more "pure" efforts of others, the path may be paved for the next multi-billion (trillion?) dollar business. The next big thing after the current big thing, AI, where Microsoft also made a prescient early bet in the form of the OpenAI partnership. Even if there's just a small chance that they're right here, it's worth the bet every time. And it's why Google and others are also placing bets in the space, obviously.
Apple, meanwhile, is living in the present. They famously don't do science projects – at least not publicly! And this insulates them from vaporware.2 The iPhone is the best business in the world – perhaps the best ever. It's still really all that matters to Apple's bottom-line and so releasing a new iPhone, no matter how muted, is always a big deal. And it's shipping not in a decade, but next week.
While announcing the two projects at the same time certainly pales the iPhone in comparison, let's not get too high and mighty about being above announcing actual products, no matter how iterative.
At the same time, Apple does seem to be in a bit of a rut. As much of a rut as you can be in as the most valuable company on the planet. Their most-recent earnings were record-breaking, but still somehow underwhelming. Part of that was the aforementioned iPhone business slipping a bit (and a big part of that was China), but it's also because what has clearly proven to be the Next Big Thing™ for Apple is not another product like the Vision Pro, but instead is their Services business.
Essentially, they're milking the cash cow. That's what you-know-who was doing for years under Steve Ballmer!
I mean, is that fair? Not entirely. Apple still creates and ships great products. And the Apple Watch line in particular is doing some great things in health, which are truly profound. But directionally, Apple just feels to many as less innovative and more iterative. And the current AI boom has just exacerbated this feeling. Apple may actually and ultimately be correct in taking a slow and steady approach to the technology, but it certainly doesn't feel that way right now. It feels like they're behind. Certainly with Siri, comically so.
Back to Peers:
The diverging ambitions of these two icons of tech, both born in the mid-1970s, is striking. Microsoft isn’t the first company to claim a major advance with quantum computing—Google had a similar announcement in December. We have no idea which of these advances, if any, will end up doing anything practical. Still, it’s refreshing to see a tech CEO like Satya Nadella nerding out about the potential of quantum computing, after years of hearing Apple CEO Tim Cook talking breathlessly about infinitesimal improvements in each new iPhone.
No question, the quantum computing talk is refreshing and inspiring. The iPhone 16e? It's the "most affordable" iPhone – which is decidedly less affordable than the model it is replacing. Not inspiring stuff.
While there has been no chatter about Apple investigating quantum computing,3 perhaps that's the prudent thing. Still, it feels like the company needs something to inspire the masses again. It won't be a thin iPhone, but it could be a robot that evokes joy and a more emotional response out of users. That's my hope, at least.
One more parallel universe for these two companies: by one account, this quantum breakthrough has been 17 years in the making for Microsoft. Guess which product Apple was busy shipping 17 years ago... So in a way, the iPhone 16e has also been 17 years in the making!
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
1 Though this certainly beats Jensen Huang's 20 year time horizon for the technology (of course, he has his own biases there)...
2 The most famous example of Apple's announcing something that never shipped may be AirPower. They were clearly close, but couldn't get the product to their standards. So they killed it. Though the stakes, obviously, were far lower.
3 They are, of course, very secretive. And they do, of course, have one of the best chip teams in the world. Still, quanum is clearly a very different beast...
2025-02-20 03:23:19
On one hand, I like the move away from the 'SE' branding. 'SE', of course, stood for 'Special Edition'. And once you're on the verge of releasing a fourth iteration of such a device, it feels decidedly less special. This new name also cleans up the always awkward '____ generation' branding, which no other iPhone model carried. On the other hand, the new 'iPhone 16e' device is a rather confusing product.
Actually, that's not fair. The iPhone 16e makes almost total sense on paper. It brings the 'iPhone SE (3rd generation)' into the modern smartphone age. The A15 ("Bionic" – lol) chip is now an A18. The 12 megapixel camera is now a 48 megapixel one. The Lightning port is now USB-C – which means the device is now street-legal in Europe. The 5G modem is now a "superfast" one (more on this in a bit). Not specifically touted by Apple, but the RAM has been upgraded from 4GB to 8GB. This may end up the most notable change and it notably will allow the device to run Apple Intelligence. Not exactly a selling point – not yet, at least – but a nice future-proofing, perhaps. And, most prominently, the 4.7" "Retina" display is now a 6.1" "Super Retina XDR" display (more on this too, shortly). And you have have any color you like, so long as it's black (or white).
So yeah, it's a nice device. The problem is the iPhone 16. You know, the "regular" version of the iPhone. It's hard to imagine who buys this device now when this cheaper model matches it in most specs.
Yes, the iPhone 16 features the luxurious vacation spot for your eyes known as 'Dynamic Island'. And yes, the camera system is a bit more robust.1 And it has one more GPU core – something you'll likely never notice. And yes, it features MagSafe – which some people do seem to care about – and a few other smaller differentiating features.2 But the real difference may simply come down to color options.
And for that, you'll pay an extra $200.
In their launch video – the device got a 13-minute video on Apple's site in lieu of an event, and the video was MC'd by Tim Cook! – you can gather Apple's talking points here. The iPhone 16 comes in two different sizes, after all. I can see why people would buy an iPhone 16 Plus,3 but again, I'm talking about the iPhone 16 (regular) here. The device which features pretty much the same screen as this new iPhone.4 So perhaps a key differentiator is the Camera Control button – but as Apple touts in the video, they've made it so that the included Action button can do the same things, including Visual Intelligence. So maybe it's the 'C1' chip, Apple's first modem built in-house. To be clear, this is a big deal – and will likely end up as the most important part, quite literally, of this entire device – but not to purchasers. And let's all hope there are no issues moving away from Qualcomm – something this device will be seemingly testing on-the-fly, to get ready for bigger roll-outs out come.
I mean, is it too cynical to wonder if this entire device doesn't exist just to test the C1 chip at some level of scale? If it works, it will be a huge boon for Apple in that they'll be able to free themselves of the handcuffs to Qualcomm and it may just allow for a more efficient iPhone with a battery life boost to boot (more on this in a bit). We'll see.
The thing that perhaps makes the most sense is that the iPhone 17, undoubtedly launching in six months, will alleviate the differentiation issues, since presumably Apple won't be launching an 'iPhone 17e' at the same time.5 But the question there is if they'll simply move the iPhone 16 down the price curve, as they normally do, bringing it even closer in price to the iPhone 16e and even further blurring the line between the two. Unless they drop the price of the iPhone 16e then as well. Which is possible, but would be a bit weird so soon after launch.
Then again, maybe the strangest part of the iPhone 16e replacing the SE is just how much more expensive it is: $599 versus $429. That's... a big jump in price. Apple's "most affordable" iPhone is now decidedly less affordable. That's strange, especially given the push they're trying to make in more emerging markets (especially as China becomes a bigger issue, sales-wise). Nearly a year ago I tried to make the case for an 'iPhone E' – for "Emerging" as in the target market. Apple sort of did the opposite here. This 'e' stands for something else. Apple might try to paint it as "economical" but it's not compared to what it replaces. "Extremely not cheap" perhaps?
Speaking of extremes, all modern models of the iPhone are now massive. We're truly beyond the era of the 'mini'. It's six-inches-plus or Android for you. Sorry. People online are going to complain about this, but it's also Apple just reading the writing on sales charts, one assumes.
Also gone: Touch ID. RIP Home Button. You will now face it. Literally. Hopefully Apple figures out a way to bring back some sort of Touch ID baked into (behind) the screen eventually, but today is not that day. Goodnight, sweet prints.6
Aside from paying an extra $200 to get an iPhone 16 versus this iPhone 16e, I've perhaps buried the lede: this new device features 3 to 4 more hours of video playback and 10 more hours of audio playback. Apple doesn't state it, but presumably it means that regular usage will last far longer here as well. All presumably thanks to that C1 chip (both its size and efficiency). Of all the selling points of a phone, this must be near the top for many people. And you're getting it here in a slightly smaller package!
Have I mentioned it's $200 cheaper? (The Apple-made C1 chip undoubtedly helps to enable that aspect as well. Bye bye per-device royalties...)
So yeah, it's all a bit awkward. But Apple often does awkward things from a product/branding perspective. We're a long way from the entire product line fitting on a table. I think the iPhone 16e sounds like a great device. And the C1 chip could matter quite a lot moving forward. I'm just not sure why the iPhone 16 still exists.7
1 But if you really care about this, aren't you going to go with an iPhone 'Pro' model anyway?
2 Though the iPhone 16e does feature wireless charging, just oddly not MagSafe for whatever reason (costs? space?). Also, without it, the wireless charging will be quite a bit slower.
3 A product line which also may be going away soon if the rumors related to the 'iPhone Air' are to be believed. Supposedly the 'Plus' line hasn't been a big seller, maybe the iPhone 16e will provide one last boost for the big guy?
4 Technically, the screen doesn't get as bright, it seems -- one of the many strange differences here.
5 And it's worth wondering what they do here on a go-forward basis. The 'SE' has been a sort of every other year thing (or longer), so is the next 'e' device the 'iPhone 18e' in winter/spring 2027?
6 Yep, I came up with this on the fly. Get the Pulitzer ready...
7 But really, why is the iPhone 15 still for sale?! It's $100 more expensive with a slower processor and several other downgrades from the iPhone 16e!
2025-02-19 21:04:33
Last weekend, the Bay Area hosted the NBA Dunk Contest.1 Today, it will host the Humane dunk contest. We're going to get slam after slam after slam against the company after it was announced that they were acquired by HP for $116M.2 A regular person might read that headline and think, "wow, a startup sold for nine-figures – impressive." Of course, it's not impressive in this case. It's a fire sale for a company that has been under duress for months after their product, the Ai Pin, failed to catch fire in the market. Actually, that's not technically true. There was a literal risk of fire when charging the device, which led to a recall. And so you'll forgive me for sort of re-using a headline here – but this situation is much more akin to the Hindenburg disaster from which the phrase originates.
This is harsh. And some people won't like that – notably, the investors in Humane. But don't feel too badly for them, they can afford the zero dollars they'll be getting back here. And actually, a few might get some of that $116M – depending how much debt was on the books to pay off.3 Certainly not getting any money out of this deal are the employees of Humane. The company had raised something to the tune of $240M, so the purchase price wouldn't nearly clear the rest of the preference stack even if it could clear the debt. So feel badly for them. At least Humane was able to find a home that will ensure they all have jobs, if they want them. Kudos for that.4
Yes, Humane was a startup and startups are hard. Still, they clearly made it harder on themselves and there are some lessons to take away from that...
First and foremost, the PR strategy was an obvious disaster from the get-go. This is easy to say in hindsight, but many people were saying it in real time. From their grandiose but nebulous introduction video to their first product tease on stage at TED, it was seemingly less a sound strategy than a vignette of cliches. I don't know the founders Imran Chaudhri and Bethany Bongiorno, but from most accounts you hear, they absolutely wanted to leverage their Apple backgrounds and lay out a bold vision to try to make that proverbial dent in the universe. But as a startup, you obviously shouldn't do that.5 You shouldn't do that first and foremost because it's expensive and cash is king when you're a startup. But you also shouldn't do that because it paints just a massive target on your back.
And the Apple pedigree will actually just make that target even larger. I'm guessing there was some degree of "let's lean into it, not shy away from it, and play it up" but again, that's just a bad strategy. It just sets expectations way, way, way too high. And even in the case of product perfection – which will never happen with a first product, just ask, um, Apple – you're setting the company up for a let down.
And the let down came in a major way with those first reviews of the Ai Pin. That's a nice way of putting it. It was more like a beat down. But again, this was set up by that initial PR strategy for the company. So what could have been a "stealth startup tackling a new space with a big vision launches first product" morphs into "hyped-up, massively-funded product from team that helped make the iPhone, sucks". And that sucks for everyone involved, but again, namely the employees who obviously put a ton of work into bringing this product to market. They were all teed up for the takedown by the roll-out strategy.
That included a $699 price point which was obviously never going to work for this product. And on top of that, a monthly subscription fee. Yes, these may have been the prices needed so as not to just completely bleed out (money) right out of the gate, but that itself just speaks to the product roadmap failure here.
If the above was easier said in hindsight, this absolutely is, but it's still no less true: the first version of the Ai Pin should have been a much simpler, and thus, far less expensive product. They obviously thought about this, but perhaps wanted to "go for it" with a complete, iPhone-like product from day one. Again, you're a startup. You have to start far smaller than, say, a laser-projected screen. Make a pin that does one thing well, not four or five things ranging from just okay to poor.
Perhaps a second version does two things well. Maybe it adds a camera. Probably still not the laser-projector. Probably never the laser-projector, but I digress...
This leads to something they undoubtedly couldn't have fixed without that benefit of hindsight: timing. Humane started building in a world before ChatGPT kicked off the true AI revolution. Had they launched afterwards, I think it would have been obvious to create a simple pin where all it does is act as a wearable ChatGPT communicator. That's it. That's the product. Sort of like Siri, but with an AI that is infinitely better. And no screen. It would have to tether to your smartphone, but still, I think a lot of people would have been compelled into buying this just to try out. Especially if the price was right. Say, $199?
Why do I say this is obvious? Because many other startups have been trying to work on and launch this in recent months. Yes, even after the failure of the Ai Pin (and Rabbit, etc). Because again, they're learning from what not to do here. And their timing is better. But they also lack one key ingredient which Humane would have had: Sam Altman was not just an investor, he was their largest shareholder.
I mean, my god, what a timing miss here. Sure, that undoubtedly would not have stopped OpenAI itself from working on their own hardware and perhaps eventually competing, but well, it's 2025 and there's no sign of any immediate ChatGPT wearable. Had Humane have had better timing, they could have had a product which would have made a compelling case. Alas...
Anyway, it's basically impossible to time a market, but Humane simply didn't give themselves enough flexibility and optionality to be able to get in a better position to be right place/right time. They burned far too much money making far too complicated and expensive of a product and then painted a giant target on their backs to jack up the difficulty mode for no obvious reason other than hubris. Presumably someone around the table knew that the Ai Pin wouldn't be received well in the market, but either no one spoke up or the company had no choice given all the time and money burned getting to that point. And so they shipped.
That is something that many startups also fail to do – and certainly many hardware startups. But to question Alfred Lord Tennyson, tis better to have shipped and lost than never to have shipped at all? Hard to say here given all of the self-owns. Hopefully HP's printers benefit from the lessons...
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
1 Aka, the Mac McClung showcase.
2 Kudos to John Gruber for correcting calling an HP acquisition here. Sometimes, snark pays off.
3 Given this was a hardware startup, this amount may simply be used to pay off any outstanding debt, would be my guess.
4 In my experience, in such unfortunate situations, there are often other offers -- yes, even for a company as problematic as Humane as they undoubtedly have interesting patents, if nothing else. So perhaps there were other offers giving them slightly better terms, but wouldn't have found homes for those employees. Just a guess, but again, I'm glad they found landing spots.
5 This feels related to an issue you see come up a lot with many (not all, but a lot) of startups that launch from people who come out of long-time work at Apple: a startup is almost the opposite of Apple. You can't -- and shouldn't -- aspire to build the perfect product that millions will use out of the box after years of building in secret. And you shouldn't launch it on stage as if that's going to be the case. Obviously you want to dream big, but you have to be realistic too. Start smaller -- as Apple itself did -- and grow into that. That should be the aspiration. Put in the early, messy work to get to the point where you can become the next Apple and can ship products the way in which they do one day. One day far away.
2025-02-19 00:30:16
With xAI's 'Grok3' now out the door, we may be on the verge of yet another model war. But a smaller one. More like guerrilla warfare, fought in the weeds. It doesn't feel like it will be the big, all-out arms race we've seen in the past. That's in part because the gains, while real, are also increasingly expensive and granular. Grok, as a late entrant into the race, needed to catch up.1 It took a "Colossus" supercluster supercomputer datacenter, but it appears that they've now risen to or slightly above the competition, at least in some metrics. But with new models from Meta and OpenAI already stated to be on the horizon, that feat will probably be short lived. They'll all go back and forth with tweaks to stay atop the Chatbot Arena.
All of that is to say that we're seemingly reaching parity amongst the players. Again, they all have more specific areas of focus and sub-features which continue to make impressive breakthroughs and gains – OpenAI's 'Deep Research' being one key recent example – but at the same time, they're all working to consolidate their products and to simplify them for everyday use. Again, this is what you'd expect as progress continues and the space settles, even just a bit.
That leads to the next obvious question: which product will win? Sure, it undoubtedly won't be that black and white, but still, there's likely to be one break-away winner in the space, just as Google came to dominate search.
Right now, the early winner is pretty clearly ChatGPT. But again, that has been during a time of tumult. With so many companies popping up and so many products getting major updates on a weekly – if not more often – basis, OpenAI used its first-mover advantage to win the early adopter crowd, which seemingly crossed over into a more mainstream user base faster than we've ever seen. Said another way: if you wanted to "try" AI, you likely tried ChatGPT.
But that era of experimentation may be coming to a close. And the fact that almost all of these products now have paid tiers is likely to be a forcing function when it comes to choosing your "side".
Alongside Grok3, Xitter rolled out a new price for their premium tier which grants you access to the latest model. And that price is basically double what it was before.2 OpenAI now has their $200/month 'Pro' tier, which people (myself included) upgraded to in order to try the latest and greatest models and products – notably, the aforementioned Deep Research, but also their first agent, Operator. Not only are these products not cheap, they're expensive. So much so that it's unlikely most consumers will actually pay for them, but rather professionals will. But each of these models is also zeroing in on a more consumer-focused tier that again, may force you to pick one product.
To be clear, I'm just talking about the consumer-facing side of AI here. Professionals and power users will undoubtedly pay for, and get value out of, multiple models and products. But just as with the streaming wars, consumers are not going to buy all of these services. And unlike that war, where all of the players had differentiating content, again, the AI services are reaching some level of parity (for consumer use cases). So whereas you might have three or four streaming services that you pay for, you will likely just have one main AI service.3 Again, it's more like search in that way.
But search was never a paid service, despite many trying to make that happen over the years. Google won by being technically the best and eventually their brand carried them even as others got closer in quality. Even Microsoft with Bing and all the money in the world famously couldn't compete. Again, ChatGPT seemingly has that brand advantage right now, but it's early. The battle is just heating up with many levers about to be pulled.
The biggest of those will undoubtedly be Google baking Gemini into search itself. They've been doing this over the past year, and that's seemingly about to ramp up in a major way. And it makes sense, while these AI services haven't noticeably eaten into web search yet, they will. Some of it will be the "search-cutters" (those who start to use web search less and AI chatbots more) but a bigger eventual risk is the "search-nevers" – the kids who grow up using AI and not web search.
Google continues to put on a brave face in public (comments), but this is existential. And it's also one of those things that has a high risk of being an "anagnorisis" moment – realized later, because everything seems fine, until it's too late. But follow Google's actions here, not their words. They see this. They're racing to meet and beat the moment. Innovator's Dilemma, be damned.
Beyond search, they have Chrome and Android to use as levers, both of which have already started too. In a way, I'm guessing they'll run a Meta model (not to be confused with Meta's AI model, Llama) and plug any AI development/functionality that's working into their massive user base via those surfaces. And that could work. But it's definitely not guaranteed. Google has never been good about productizing such things, even when – and perhaps especially when – they have a technological advantage. From Google+ to Google Assistant, it's not as easy as shoving the products in everyones' faces.4
Speaking of Meta, they're already trying to do this as well. They're touting millions and millions of users of Meta AI – probably in a similar vein to how Google+ touted their millions and millions of users back in the day. What are users – people explicitly trying to use it – actually doing with it? It's not clear, but it's also clearly not the same use case as the more general chatbots like ChatGPT at the moment. To make that happen, Meta probably needs their own stand-alone app. I know, I know, Zuck hates apps because Zuck hates Apple. But Google learned this. xAI learned this. We need a Llama app.5
The fact that Meta's models have been "open source" (read: open weight) from the get-go now looks even better post-DeepSeek. But it doesn't negate the need for an actual product here. And because Meta isn't trying to sell their AI directly to consumers, they may have an advantage over ChatGPT, Gemini, Grok, and the like. But that also doesn't negate the need to monetize – especially if they have a service and not just a technology to help bolster their ads business.
Regardless, a free and focused Llama/Meta AI service would help keep the other competitors honest. They'll all continue to have some sort of free layer. The question will be if those free layers become more or less restrictive over time as all these players battle. Right now, there are limits on usage and cutting-edge models. And those limits are more than enough right now for most "regular" users. But if and when AI becomes more integral into many everyday tasks in everyday lives, we'll see how that shifts...
If some of these companies figure out a way to monetize beyond paid tiers, it could change a lot of equations. Google is trying with advertising, obviously. OpenAI has said they don't want to go down that particular path, but we'll see. It all depends on what works. Otherwise we continue down the path where "free" equates to old models (perhaps open sourced),6 operating more slowly.
Apple also doesn't aim, at least right now, to monetize AI directly. But they are helping OpenAI monetize thanks to the integration between the two sides. I still wonder if they won't eventually need their own answer to ChatGPT. And that's not Siri – at least not how she works right now. (Which is to say, barely.) It would be more akin to a stand-alone Siri app. As Apple often does, they're undoubtedly taking a wait-and-see approach as the market evolves and matures. But as that happens quickly, Apple is moving... pretty slowly. Probably far too slowly.
Anthropic and Perplexity would seem to be in trickier positions with their services since they don't have as many points of leverage to gain massive consumer adoption, fast. Of course, Anthropic is mainly monetizing through their API at the moment (sort of the inverse of OpenAI). While Perplexity is trying to differentiate on that all-important search focus in particular. Both have been fine and even good in the early days,7 but as everything matures it becomes more murky. Does Amazon bolster Claude by way of Alexa? The latter is on the verge of a major revamp to bring her up to parity (Amazon hopes) with the AI chatbots. And this upgrade will seemingly include a paid layer as well. Yet another major player in the arena...
And then there are the foreign wild-cards. Can Mistral ride on an API business or will they need Le Chat to become a major consumer player? Does being Europe's AI champion help them a bit – or hurt them? Meanwhile, DeepSeek, after lobbing a grenade into the heart of all of this a few weeks ago, also undoubtedly needs answers for all of the above. Do they become China's champion? Even in the face of Alibaba and Baidu? Again, for consumers, there is only likely to be one.
Oh yes, and Microsoft. Where do they play here? Clearly in the cloud and enterprise, but they obviously really, really want a consumer hit here too. And while the deep partnership with OpenAI pointed to a path for Bing, that window has seemingly already shut. Now it's all-in on their too nebulous Copilot branding and products. Can they capture consumers? (Um, TikTok?) It feels unlikely given Microsoft's history here, and at what point to they simply cede to that partner in which they'll own a massive, multi-billion-dollar stake? At least in consumer.
One more thing: I'm not including Siri or Alexa on this list until we see their actual approaches to consumer AI here – despite both being first/early movers in the general space! We should at least see that out of Amazon next week. Apple, it seems, will take longer. Even then, the "better" Siri is unlikely to be a truly conversational AI Siri, which instead is believed to be coming in, um, 2026. xAI clearly had a fire lit under them to compete in the space. Apple? Not so much, it seems...
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
1 Might they be the last of the AI "superpowers" at least when it comes to their own pre-trained LLM models? Or will there be one more still to come?
2 The Xitter premium model muddies this a bit -- you're also paying for the checkmark, no ads, etc. But it sounds like Grok will be getting its own paid tier/model as well...
3 I'm just talking about general purpose consumer AI services here. There will clearly be specialized, more granular ones -- there already are. But the jury is still out in terms of how much specialized functionality needs to exist outside of the main chatbots. Certainly, for some deep agentic behavior this seems likely. But how much of that will just be products/services that already own a particular market segment layering in AI (i.e. Airbnb adding in AI, etc)? More battles yet to come...
4 Including literally, with Google Glass...
5 Just think of the icon potential here...
6 It sounds like this is how xAI intends to utilize open source -- opening up older models, which is what they're going to with with Grok2 now. Might OpenAI follow this playbook too?
7 You continue to hear a lot of love for both products, but it also clearly seems to be more of the early adopter crowd versus true mainstream adoption
2025-02-16 23:53:03
There was a time, not too long ago, that Alexa and Siri were battling each other at the vanguard of so-called voice assistants. It's a space where Apple was an actual first-mover, for once (thanks to an acquisition done under Steve Jobs). But Amazon quickly zoomed ahead in the race thanks to a strategy that was basically the opposite of Apple's: cheap Echo devices, everywhere. Still, thanks to being baked into every iPhone, both Alexa and Siri were in the hands and homes of hundreds of millions of users. These days they find themselves battling in a new way: who can actually ship upgraded versions of their assistants in the age of AI without embarrassing themselves...
I would say "the race is on" except that the race actually keeps getting delayed.
In posts that were oddly, but seemingly coincidentally published within minutes of one another on Friday, Caroline O'Donovan wrote about the new version of Alexa being delayed, again, for The Washington Post. Meanwhile, Mark Gurman got the scoop that the new Siri also faces "possible" delays as well, for Bloomberg.
Those who have been following the "Remarkable" Alexa saga probably could have seen this coming. It was previously reported that Valentine's Day would be the go/no-go date to make the call if the new version was ready to ship. Alexa, it seems, saw her shadow. She will not be coming early:
The “smarter and more conversational” version of Alexa will not be available until March 31 or later, the employee said, at least a year and a half after it was initially announced in response to competition from OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
Internal messages seen by The Post confirmed the launch was originally scheduled for this month but was subsequently moved to the end of March.
Sure, the end of March doesn't sound too bad as far as delays go, but the problem is that the event is already in the books for February 26. Rather than saying that the new Alexa will be available at the event, they'll have to give some sort of "coming soon" message. And the problem there is that, as noted, they've been saying that for the past 18 months. But delay after delay after delay has kept this new Alexa quiet.
It's embarrassing for Amazon – but presumably not as embarrassing as launching a version of Alexa that doesn't work or underwhelms. I'm still pretty worried about both scenarios just given these delays and all the various reports over the past many months. But even without those, what Amazon – and Apple – are trying to do is extremely hard. As I wrote on this topic last year, "Being Too Early Is Worse Than Being Late" – in ways, this is actually more difficult than trying to launch a new AI assistant from scratch. Because they have so many legacy users of their previous products, there are expectations and undoubtedly gnarly backwards-compatibility issues. Amazon doesn't want to become Sonos.
Nor does Apple! Siri probably has more leeway to make major changes because she's been viewed largely as a joke. Harsh, but true! After launching as sort of a novelty with a lot promised, instead over the years we've been promised that this was the update which would make Siri actually good. Has she gotten better? I mean sure, in ways. But the reality remains that she gets far, far, far, far too much wrong to be considered reliable enough to trust beyond perhaps setting timers and playing music.
And that matters more for Siri because Apple is touting her as the one such assistant you can trust with your personal data, thanks to Apple's security practices. That may or may not be true, but I also know there's no way I'm trusting Siri to do something important until she proves herself. Over and over again. Over a long period of time. And so news of delays doesn't give a lot of confidence:
Apple hinted that the changes wouldn’t be released until 2025, but it wasn’t yet clear how long they would take to arrive. Internally, the company has been planning to introduce the technology as part of iOS 18.4, the version of its mobile operating system coming in April.
But now Apple is considering delaying or limiting at least some of the overhaul until iOS 18.5, which will be released as early as May, the people said.
Gurman does couch this information a bit. First and foremost, as he notes, Apple has never actually said when these new "trusted" Siri features would ship (despite showing them off last June at WWDC), and they could still technically ship them in the iOS 18.4 beta, just not enabled. But sorry, Apple gets no benefit of the doubt with regard to Siri. Does anyone doubt that they're having a hard time getting this new version of Siri to live up to her promise? No.
And part of it is the same issues that Amazon is facing: because of their previous "success" (in rolling out Siri far and wide, at least), they're more now handcuffed than if they were started from scratch. Google ran into this issue as well with the launch of Gemini on Pixel devices last year, and they made users choose whether to keep using the old 'Assistant' versus "upgrading" to Gemini, noting that some old features, such as yes, setting timers, wouldn't be available at first.
But again, Google didn't have the same ubiquity problem as Apple or Amazon. Sure, there are billions of Android devices, but the assistant features are fragmented depending on the phone maker. And the Gemini roll-out was limited to start. Apple and Amazon seem to be planning to go far and wide.1
And, of course, this isn't just about legacy users and features, Amazon and Apple are now (re)entering a market where OpenAI has changed the game with ChatGPT. LLM-based assistants make the older assistants seem stupid, quite literally. And now the market has Anthropic's Claude, Mistral's Le Chat, Perplexity, the aforementioned Gemini – even DeepSeek!
Again, the risk of embarrassment is high here for Apple and Amazon. As bad as it is to have to keep pushing back these roll-outs, it's not nearly as bad as rolling them out only for them not to work.
To that end, I continue to wonder if it wouldn't make more sense for Apple to temporarily outsource Siri to ChatGPT. I know this sounds extreme, but I'm really not sure it's the worst idea in the world, especially given the partnership with OpenAI already in place. You could keep Siri powering the simple stuff like timers and music, but just default all "world knowledge" queries to ChatGPT. Obviously, users would have to opt-in, but if I were Apple, and Siri really isn't ready to roll, I would definitely consider this option.
Same with Amazon given their massive investment in Anthropic. What if Alexa keeps powering timers and Claude handles most everything else? Various reports indicate this may be at least part of how the new Alexa works anyway. The problem with fully outsourcing until Alexa is ready for prime time may be the notion that Amazon is trying to charge users for this new Alexa. That's another added layer of complexity (and perhaps embarrassment) here. It's one thing if the free service baked into your device doesn't work. It's another if you buy a new device to use a service you have to also pay monthly for. There's a lot of risk for Amazon here.
All of this leads me to believe that both of these companies are probably going to be in the market this year to acquire teams/products to help their AI pushes.
Some reports now indicate that Amazon is starting to right the ship with their own internal AI work (though, it's perhaps extra complicated by many cooks in the kitchen) and that's good news since Anthropic may now be outside of the acquisition window (presuming Amazon even could do such a deal in the new regulatory environment) with their new round valuing them at $60B. Apple may be more primed to scoop someone up, but historically shies away from big deals. Still, to save Siri – again, one of their higher profile acquisitions from the Jobs-era – it may be warranted.
First, we'll see how Alexa and Siri perform post-launch. Assuming they launch. Tomorrow is always a day away, it seems.
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
1 There had been some talk that Amazon may keep a "legacy" version of Alexa around -- in particular for free users on older devices -- but it's not clear if that will actually be the strategy.
2025-02-16 07:00:12
To Apple's credit, they knew not to release The Gorge in theaters. As is the case with so many of their recent films, it would have bombed. Because it's not very good. Nor is it a particularly good movie for theaters. So kudos for going to direct to streaming. The right call.1 Sadly, that may have been the only right call here.
What I find particularly annoying about The Gorge is that the first half is actually half decent. I honestly sort of like the Miles Teller/Anya Taylor-Joy holding up their Love Actually love notes schtick.
The idea of trying to wrap this movie around Valentine's Day feels incredibly contrived – in fact, I'm going to guess the whole father's death bit was tacked on at the last minute – but still, the love story pen pal thing is sort of cute.
It's a meet cute... in HELL.
The mistake they make is having the creatures from the black lagoon show up too early and then when Levi and Drasa get together for the first time they, um, don't even bring it up. Lol. WTF?! Did they also tack that bit on at the end? I mean, it makes zero sense.
We didn't even get that. We got nothing! They killed a bunch of demon ents and never said a word about it! Come on, people. You obviously should have had the beasts from below attack while they're not on watch, too busy grooving to records and moonshine. This is what happens if you fool around, kids. And the action starts from there.
It's just as well that they messed this up because the second half of the movie is a total mess. Once we descend into the Gorge, it's sort of a bad version of The Last of Us meets a bad version of the White Walkers in Game of Thrones (mixed with some Children of the Forest). Honestly, it would have been much better if they made the Gorge literal Hell. Not some strange chemical Manhattan Project gone awry.
Why are different areas different colors? Because it looks cool, duh. Except it doesn't even look particularly cool. The whole part in the Gorge looks rather cheap.
Even the dialogue manages to get worse in the second half. It wasn't great in the first, but it descends into your typical cliches. And some truly great expository – from the 1940s? – explaining that they'll be fine down there because exposure for hours is okay, just don't stay for days. Then you're screwed. Also, there's some poetry. Truly. Not so much trying to connect this to the themes of T.S. Elliot's "The Hollow Men" versus just a love poem. Cool.
At least Sigourney Weaver is there to save the day – nope, she's bad in this too.
Why is Levi late to show up in the end? Is he infected?! Nope, just late. You know, just like life. That may have been the most realistic part of the entire movie. It ends not with a bang, but with a literal whimper.
1 Apple really needs to figure out the film side of the house. It's pretty strange how good the shows are and how bad the films are.