Spyglass Modify

2026-07-28 05:17:41

With the impending – well, or possibly imploding – merger of Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros Discovery, there was clearly an odd man out in the big streaming race: Peacock. Thanks largely to recent massive sporting events like the Olympics, it wasn't dying, but it also wasn't thriving. It simply was not in a position to compete with Netflix, Prime Video, Disney+, and soon, HBO Max + Paramount+. So it could keep going, scraping and clawing to barely eek out a profit, as it finally did this past quarter, or it could find a new home.

With the news that Comcast was splitting itself in two – again – it felt like the ground was being laid for just that. But we were all of us deceived. For another option was on the table. A big one.

Here's Lillian Rizzo for CNBC:

NBCUniversal’s Peacock is officially landing on YouTube.

All of the streaming service’s content — including NBC Sports’ portfolio of the NFL and NBA, Universal films like the Minions franchise, and original Peacock and Bravo content like the Real Housewives franchise and “Love Island USA” — will be included in YouTube Premium subscriptions in the U.S. starting early next year.

Google’s YouTube Premium is the subscription version of the streaming platform that offers videos without ads and the ability to download most videos, depending on the subscription tier. The service offers a variety of plans beginning at $8.99 per month. Peacock Premium currently costs $10.99 per month.

While we don't yet know all the details in terms of the financial arrangements between the two sides, on the surface, this is a wild deal. It sure looks like Comcast is selling Peacock to YouTube without actually selling Peacock to YouTube. Yes, it seems like sort of a "hackquisition" but for the media world.

You know, effectively buying something without the headache of actually buying it.

Perhaps that is the point here as well. Would regulators allow YouTube to buy Peacock? Maybe, but probably only if they spun-off YouTube TV? The key would obviously be who actually owned NBC and Universal, but if Comcast kept those, what's the point of owning Peacock? Regardless, any such deal would be bogged down in hearings and challenges for months, if not years. Again, see: Paramount/Warner Bros.

So yeah, this seemingly makes more sense. Certainly for YouTube. Who now quickly gets to offer their Premium subscribers – long held as one of the best deals in streaming thanks to the removal of YouTube ads – a whole new bundle of carrots.

Honestly, it looks like such a good deal that you have to believe YouTube is going to raise the Premium price, pronto.¹

As for why you’d now sign up for Peacock stand-alone versus YouTube Premium? I don’t know. We‘ll have to see if there are new pricing tiers, I guess. But again, this just sort of looks like YouTube de facto bought Peacock and is now tying it into their offering.

Yes, it's a bundle. But it's likely bigger and better than your typical bundle because it sure sounds like all the Peacock content will be deeply integrated within YouTube itself. It even sounds more integrated than your typical "Channel" offering, since again, it's included with your YouTube Premium package, no separate subscription required.

All of this also further blurs the lines with the aforementioned YouTube TV. But I suspect Google is fine to simply keep that as the mechanism with which to bleed the other cable companies – including Comcast – dry until cable itself is fully dead. And Comcast, knowing that's coming, smartly hitched the wagon:

The partnership announced Monday also extends NBCUniversal’s multiyear distribution agreement with YouTube TV, the streaming-only TV bundle run by YouTube, as well as distribution of YouTube, YouTube TV and Premium on Comcast’s Xfinity-branded cable TV and Xumo platforms.

It will also see enhance the advertising partnership and capabilities between the two companies, allowing NBCUniversal to monetize advertising for its Peacock content on YouTube’s platform. Advertising has become a key driver of streaming growth across media companies.

So yeah, this seems pretty good for Comcast too, if they're simply reading where all of this is heading and getting ahead of it. And that's sort of the framing here:

NBCUniversal’s partnership with YouTube was formed after Comcast co-CEO Brian Roberts reached out to YouTube CEO Neal Mohan about nine months ago, according to a person familiar with the matter. Following a meeting between the executive teams that took place at Google offices, the two companies began to brainstorm partnerships such as this, the person added.

The biggest question remains how the actual deal is structured. Beyond direct monetization of their content on YouTube, presumably there's a broader revenue share in place too. The bigger question is if there was some sort of up front, lump-sum payment, or ongoing licensing payments. That feels likely, but we'll see. And if so, that may give some level of exclusivity to YouTube? Maybe Comcast can keep their existing partnerships in place as long as they're more of the aforementioned "Channels" or straightforward bundle variety? Maybe YouTube would even prefer that lest they draw the eye of regulators here. But this type of deep integration may be exclusive to YouTube?

Or maybe YouTube is feeling confident enough in their offering that they don't care about any level of exclusivity here. And maybe they should given that they have 125M Premium subscribers and can upsell the over 2.5B – that's billion – monthly active users of YouTube itself. No one can compete with that. It will be interesting to see how YouTube brands this new premium Peacock content and tries to upsell it.

It will naturally move YouTube into more direct competition with Netflix, shocking no one. That "UGC" label, long affixed as an almost Scarlet Letter on the service is fading, fast. YouTube will now get premium shows and movies but without having to directly commission them. Oh yes, and sports:

Live sports nab the biggest audiences for both streaming and linear TV. YouTube has been increasingly getting into the mix acquiring live sports rights. Last year it aired its first ever live NFL game, and since then the NFL has continued to hold talks with non-traditional media companies like YouTube and Netflix.

YouTube has become a platform for both sports leagues and media companies to host highlights and other game-related content in a bid to attract younger audiences. NBCUniversal’s sports-heavy streaming portfolio could complement that effort.

As part of partnership between YouTube and NBCUniversal, NBC Sports will be a production partner for select live sports on YouTube, such as it was for the NFL game last year.

Will this help YouTube attract more NFL games? It certainly can't hurt! And even if they don't, they'll now have access to those on Peacock/NBC! That's on top of the Sunday Ticket which is tied to YouTube TV, but is actually available on YouTube itself as well.

All of this is clearly not great news for Netflix. Not only were they said to be exploring a Peacock add-on option – which still could happen, again presumably as a "Channel" within Netflix as a way for Comcast to continue to hedge – but the bigger issue is that this seemingly vaults YouTube into pole position as the default UI for streaming.

As I wrote just 11 days ago, it felt like that was the real battle brewing between the two – with YouTube now surging ahead. And actually, about five weeks ago, I had an, um, inkling that something like this deal could be the next shoe to drop:

As YouTube TV continues to eat traditional cable's lunch, might we see other regional cable providers in the US hand over the keys to Netflix? Comcast, the largest, would presumably try to do it through Peacock? But Peacock remains a far smaller player. More interesting would be if YouTube tries to get into this game. There's probably too much conflict with YouTube TV, but it increasingly feels like Netflix and YouTube are on a collision course to be the main hub/UI of streaming. I mean, they already are in many ways, but with others' content – including perhaps Peacock and the like.

And here we are. It's beginning to look a lot like Comcast, indeed.

One more thing: This tie-up will certainly help Paramount make the case that they should be allowed to buy WBD. Then again, I’ve felt that way before...

¹ Sigh. Though I guess removing one potential bill from the current streaming insanity is worth it. Hopefully literally! ↩

2026-07-27 22:54:40

As someone who has been writing daily – both professionally and for pleasure – for the past quarter century or so, I'm always trying to dial in the perfect routine. Not writing at all, while obviously the easiest, is also the worst. But writing too much, in my experience, can also be bad. Your brain gets fried and the output suffers – it's not fulfilling for you, the writer, or your audience (if you have one – or hope to keep one).

Anyway, while the Ernest Hemingway method was famously to write first thing in the morning, often around 500 words (which was the inspiration for an old site of mine), and quit while there was still fuel in the tank and then go about his day, I've personally found my natural inclination is to write more words – and more often. So of course when I saw an encapsulation of Ian Fleming's days making the rounds on social media, it resonated.¹

To be clear, the image below is a simple schedule recreated from an interview the James Bond author gave to Playboy in 1964.² I don't know why it's going around again this week other than it's summer time and it's awesome.

It's just about 5pm here,³ I'm just out of the pool, you know what that means...

¹ And, of course, the whole "spy" motif as part of the inspiration for this very site. ↩

² Other accounts of his writing routine and schedule vary slightly. ↩

³ Though I'm in Italy at the moment, not Jamaica (as Fleming often was at his estate, "Goldeneye"), which honestly feels even more like Bond. And, in fact, the opening of the mostly unfortunate Quantum of Solace was filmed right near where I am at the moment [via Daring Fireball]... ↩

2026-07-27 04:29:13

Everyone remembers Steve Jobs’ 'Thoughts on Flash' open letter, written in 2010, because it absolutely eviscerated Adobe and effectively started the long, slow death of one of their key technologies at the time. But a few years before that, Steve Jobs had other “thoughts” — on music, and digital rights management specifically.

The result of 'Thoughts on Music' was a much faster outcome.¹ Within two years, DRM vanished from iTunes and the industry at large. It was a masterstroke by Jobs with Apple facing growing pressure — especially in Europe (sound familiar?) – to open up iTunes and cede control over the industry. But with his essay, Jobs shifted the blame and focus to the record labels (many of which were European-controlled!), knowing it was unlikely to dent the all-important (at the time) iPod sales.

Anyway, this is the framing that pops into my head when thinking about the open letter from many of the biggest players in tech calling for 'open weight' models to underpin America’s AI leadership. The situation is far different — obviously, given the geopolitics at play here if nothing else — but this feels a bit like the same type of rallying cry that’s going to be hard for the industry to ignore.

And unlike with DRM, this isn't just one leader of one powerful company calling for change, it's nearly all of them.

In fact, two of the three big players in AI that weren’t initial signatories, OpenAI and Google, almost instantly got on board once they saw the weight behind this movement. Both would point to the fact that they offer “open” models already — in fact, they’re both pointing to that very fact. Still, it’s impossible to ignore their initial absence. Either the other players kept them out of the loop to send a message, or they kept themselves out of the loop to try to avoid the outcome.

There are a few other elephants that seem impossible to ignore in this particular waiting room — notably, Amazon — but the big one is obviously Anthropic.²

While it’s easy to see everyone just getting in line and saying, “yeah of course the US should be leading in open models”, it’s hard to see Anthropic saying the same. Because from Dario Amodei on down, they’ve railed against the notion in the past.

Why? Security, of course.

Critics will say it’s a fig leaf to cover their obvious conflict as the de-facto leader in closed AI models at the moment.³ But it’s still a pretty decent sized fig leaf! Each day seemingly brings new major security risks uncovered (or created) by AI.

Of course, others would use the “offense is the best defense” argument here and they might be right too, if for nothing else than it feels like this genie may already be out of this bottle. So perhaps that’s the notion that causes Anthropic to bend here, if they do. But they’re undoubtedly going to hold out as long as they can.

And they now find themselves with an unlikely ally in this regard: the US government!

Yes, their old nemesis is now the one that seems most aligned with locking down the models rather than going the other way. They have their own reasons, of course. Security is still one of them, but geopolitics and negotiating leverage loom large as well.

Everyone is conflicted here. NVIDIA has been leading the US open weight charge of late because they obviously don't want one (or two) model(s) to rule them all and gain the leverage they now enjoy over the industry. Jensen Huang also undoubtedly believes the "open" route will help remove at least some of the political pressure on their hardware. Is this the path to fully unlocking the Chinese market? Probably not, but if the US fully locks down models, NVIDIA is unlikely to ever grow their business there. (It is worth pointing out that NVIDIA is not open sourcing CUDA, even though that’s exactly what Alibaba is doing in China with their would-be competitor in AI chip software.)

Microsoft now seems all-in on the idea of being a “Switzerland” for models, and Satya Nadella clearly doesn’t want to see OpenAI and Anthropic simply run away with the market — which is more than mildly awkward given the ownership stake Microsoft has in each! I mean, they still own around 25% of OpenAI!

Speaking of awkward, how weird is it that no sooner does Meta spend hundreds of billions of dollars to shift their focus away from open weight models, do such models become ground zero for this debate? They’re signed on to this letter, but their actual actions are mainly in the closed camp for now. Was this another big mistake for Meta?

Perhaps a key thing worth pointing out: the letter doesn’t suggest open weights is the only path forward, simply that the US shouldn’t ban them or even just dissuade the building and use of them. In this world, the closed models still have their place, but the question left unanswered is what that place is relative to the open models and vice versa.

In some ways, this has been the debate in AI from the get-go. Again, Meta bet on open before they switched to closed. Alibaba did the same in China, before they just shifted back to open in light of President Xi Jinping’s recent outlining of China’s stance. That stance is obviously that stance because they’re not at the forefront of the frontier at the moment, otherwise it would probably be a very different stance!

So yeah, conflicts all around. Still, the shift towards "open" has a groundswell, at least right now. But the main reason seems decidedly capitalist: cost.

The price of frontier AI keeps growing more untenable — both to use and to build, as Google can attest this week with the hit to their stock price on the news of yet another jack up in CapEx. Meanwhile, everyone from the biggest enterprises like Microsoft to the smallest startups are feeling the token burn. If someone can come up with the “good enough” open model… unfortunately, it seems like it was a Chinese company, Moonshot, that just did it with Kimi K3.

But even that is not so straightforward! Because these models are only open weight and not fully open source, what exactly goes into making them, and what they’re going to output for certain queries is… largely unknown. And potentially problematic! Further, there’s the fundamental question of just how much they relied on distillation from the closed frontier models. And if those go away, you have a real chicken-and-egg problem.

This is all angling towards a world where frontier models remain closed but are perhaps used to distill open variants that are closer to the cutting edge after some set period of time. Yes, this is essentially what OpenAI, Google, and others have been doing, but if it’s more formalized and streamlined, everyone might feel better. Especially if those models can then legally be used to distill others – at least in the US. It would keep some power in the hands of the frontier, while trickling down more flexibility with some regularity.

But who knows, that’s just a guess this week. After one hell of a week of news.

Still, the vibes right now are clear. Everyone seems to be falling in line quickly behind this notion of not only protecting "open" models, but pushing for the US to combat China to take the lead in their build and spread. Well, everyone except Anthropic.⁴ And their strange bedfellow here, the US government. And that obviously matters – especially when the stakes are higher than, say, DRM.⁵

¹ It's really weird/sad/annoying that Apple no longer hosts these pivotal posts on their site. You'd think they would embrace the history and importance?! ↩

² Other notable ones missing include Oracle, Intel, Databricks, Snowflake, and yes, Apple. Though none of those, aside from perhaps Apple (thanks to Google), really make their own large models at the moment. To that end, SpaceX/SpaceXAI (and Tesla) also weren't initially included in the list, though Elon Musk quickly voiced his support publicly as well. (As has Marc Benioff, though Salesforce hasn't officially signed on.) ↩

³ The same rationale Apple turns to time and time again, I might point out. ↩

⁴ And it's still not entirely clear that OpenAI is fully on board with this given that their apparent actions behind the scenes suggest otherwise! ↩

⁵ Man, does the industry miss Steve Jobs' voice and gravitas right now... ↩

2026-07-26 20:57:51

I've been on the road this past week-plus and as such, haven't been able to Monitor the Situation™ with AI in real time – which it feels like is needed even more so at the moment given the constant stream of news and reports. Not even about the latest model breakthroughs and products, but just about the ongoing debate over "open" versus closed models, which itself has turned into sort of a proxy war for America versus China.

But it's also not that simple – not nearly. In fact, it's so intertwined and convoluted that it makes the Marvel Cinematic Universe look like a quaint, cohesive narrative. As such, I feel the need to write this out a bit, just to try to wrap my own head around it. To keep things simple and streamlined, let's just focus on the last 10 days:

• July 16: The Kimi K3 model is released with performance close enough to the frontier – actually besting those models in some use cases – that basically everyone starts freaking out. Is this a second "DeepSeek Moment" or actually something more? Moonshot AI, the Chinese company behind the model hasn't yet released the weights, but promises to by tomorrow (July 27).
  • That same day, Hugging Face disclosed a breach of their systems but doesn't give more details.
  • Reports surfaced that Gemini 3.5 Pro is now "months" behind schedule, which given that it's mid-July and the model was promised in June, duh.
• July 17: At the World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai, Chinese President Xi Jinping gives a keynote addresscalling for more collaboration around "open" models and seemingly planting a flag for China's strategy. This is amidst reports that China was debating restricting their homegrown models.
  • Dean Ball, writes up his Kimi thoughts, outlining what he believes is China's strategy here to beat the US in AI and making the case that if the US pushes open weights, it will necessarily deter the current AI build out at the frontier. He believes the US will act to try to keep the current status quo in place. Seemingly a lot of people do not like these thoughts, in particular coming from someone who now, of course, works at OpenAI.
  • A study suggests the gap between the frontier and open weight models may now be down to 4 to 7 months, from 6 to 10 months last year.
• July 18: A report that OpenAI and Anthropic employees are far outpacing those at their Big Tech brethren when it comes to political donations...
  • Alibaba moves to open source their SAIL software which competes with NVIDIA's CUDA in AI chip software.
  • "Woke lobotomized models" is the recently departed US "AI Czar" David Sacks new framing for Claude in the wake of Kimi...
• July 19: Alibaba then quickly follows Moonshot in announcing Qwen3.8-Max-Preview, which they say will be open weight – which would be a reversal from Alibaba's last few releases which had been closed (after initially starting with the "open" model).
  • Reports suggest Moonshot will aim to IPO within the next 6 months on the heels of the Kimi K3 momentum.
• Sacks then rants about how Anthropic and OpenAI want to eliminate open source competition to maintain the current "duopoly" situation.
• That's not a rant, this is a rant: Under Secretary of War Emil Michael labels Ball the "supreme village idiot" of AI for his essay (and stance).
• July 20: The first reports that the US is debating restricting access to the Chinese "open" models.
  • Is the "open" movement as simple as China implementing a "dumping" strategy to undercut and thus, destabilize the market? Is Kimi and the like really just 'Temu AI'?
  • Moonshot had to halt Kimi subscriptionsdue to demand.
  • Ben Thompson makes the case for the US forcing the AI labs to allow for distillation for other US companies.
  • Bill Gurley writes an op-ed arguing for open models (seemingly conflating actual open source with open weights but I digress...)
• July 21: Scott Bessent goes on TV to threaten sanctions over IP theft around AI distillation. Reports indicate this is all positioning ahead of the next talks between China and the US on AI in September.
  • OpenAI admits/brags that they were the ones that (unintentionally) hacked Hugging Face due to GPT-5.6 Sol (and a new, unreleased model) breaking out of their sandbox. They note they've been working with the company to fix the situation, which Hugging Face praises.
    • Hugging Face also notes that because of the current security restrictions on the frontier models, they had to turn to Chinese open models to help halt the hack. Pretty damning indictment of current policy...
  • Google ships a few new Gemini 3.5 'Flash' models (still no 'Pro') including one focused around cyber security.
• July 22: Michael Kratsios, the science and tech advisor to the President, furthers the Chinese distillation fears/rhetoric, specifically calling out Moonshot for "large scale distillation against U.S. models" (and also illegally accessing some NVIDIA servers/chips).
  • The "Little Tech Association" – nearly 200 startups – sends a letter to Trump and Howard Lutnick arguing for continued access to open weight models, including the Chinese variants.
• July 23: Pushback against the notion that K3 is mainly the result of distillation.
  • The FT publishes a post outlining China's "open" AI strategy as a sort of new 'Belt & Road Initiative' for tech.
• July 24: Jensen Huang signs up for X clearly just to post the "Open Wights & America AI Leadership"letter signed by seemingly everyone except the current three leading model makers: Anthropic, OpenAI, and Google.
  • Sam Altman later tweets in support of the notion, as does Sundar Pichai.
  • Crickets from Anthropic – but some shade! Oh, and a new model! Opus 5clearly aims to take some (pricing) pressure off of Fable...
• July 25: OpenAI formally adds their actual name to the letter, just as new reports suggest they are quietly but heavily lobbying, alongside Anthropic, against the open weights push in Washington.
  • You know what might help push Washington over the edge to keep tighter controls on AI? The notion that it can be used for "deadly biological weapons"...

That's 10 full days with an insane amount of activity – activity that could reshape the world technologically, societally, politically, and geopolitically.

Update: With my mind now reset, some further thoughts on the topic of the push towards "open" models:

2026-07-20 06:32:15

As bad as things may be product-wise (not to mention potentially legally?) at OpenAI at the moment with the stumbling out of the gate of the ChatGPT super crap “Super App”, it could be worse. It could be Google. A company which not only lacks a “Super App” but lacks a true frontier model at the moment.

It wasn't a great look when Google I/O came and went in May without Gemini 3.5 Pro. But far worse was that Sundar Pichai said on stage that the flagship model would be coming next month (which Google echoed in a blog post). That would have been June. It's now the end of July. Google says the model is still in testing but it's now not just "not a great look", it's a bad look. This is a $4.2T company seemingly unable to compete with several far smaller players. But worse is that this is after the company already moved heaven and earth once to get out of their own way to effectively compete in AI. And it worked. They had caught up or perhaps even surpassed everyone else.

The timely analogy would be to England going up 1-0 on Argentina and then... shifting to a defensive strategy and getting run over as Argentina stormed on to the World Cup final.

But whereas a few years ago, the problem seemed to be just as much about timidity – that is, Google had much of the technology ready to roll internally (as you might hope given their central role in inventing the ideas behind LLMs), they were just afraid to release it – now it seems firmly rooted in bureaucracy:

The delay has been a source of frustration for Google engineers, AI researchers and managers, many of whom are concerned the company risks losing an edge in the market as rivals Anthropic and OpenAI produce models that exceed Gemini’s capabilities, according to 10 current and former employees. Google has multiple layers of stakeholders involved in preparing models for release, working to weave AI across a vast product portfolio, including search, maps and YouTube, which can cause delays, said the people, who declined to be named discussing internal concerns.

Of course, that's also nothing new at Google. That's largely what was blamed for the 'Bard' fiasco. You know, Google's first attempt to catch up with ChatGPT. That stumble was seemingly only corrected when DeepMind and Google Brain were united under one leader, Demis Hassabis, with a single, unified vision for AI.

But it seems like, as was the case for OpenAI, coding sort of blindsided them. Pichai said as much after I/O that Google was behind in this regard, which must have been a particularly embarrassing thing to admit for the company. But whereas OpenAI was seemingly able to course-correct quickly with Codex, Google has seemingly not been able to. Perhaps it's as simple as one of those big company versus small company dynamics, where being more nimble actually matters more than pure resources.

Then again, resources also seem to matter here quite a bit:

Google’s popular products are a gateway to generative AI for everyday people, and can yield data that makes their answers smarter. But encouraging leadership of every department to move in the same direction is like trying to boil an ocean, one ex-employee said. When mandates shift or efforts end up duplicated in multiple departments, it gets even more difficult to maintain a cohesive strategy, current and former employees said. It’s also a challenge for any one offering to get the resources it would need to succeed, and to gain traction in the market, they said.

I mean, Google probably should hope it's that simple and not as bad as the Llama situation for Meta, as there are definitely shades here of the "Behemoth" model of Llama 4 which was perpetually promised but never came. And soon, Llama itself was put out to pasture. There are no real signals of that here, but well, there are signs that other things are amiss internally at Google at the moment.

After the launch of ChatGPT in late 2022 sparked concerns that Google’s search engine would become obsolete, the company declared a “code red” — a useful tactic for cutting through the layers of bureaucracy and internal competition that often slow Google’s product efforts. But now, racing in AI is the normal state of the company, one employee said.

Google co-founder Sergey Brin and others were advocating for Google to move faster to seize opportunities in AI coding, but their efforts were slowed by competing factions within the company, two former employees said. Cloud computing unit Google Cloud, research lab Google DeepMind and the team behind the Android operating system are all building AI coding tools for developers, with involvement from some consumer product teams, too, people familiar with the work said.

Yeah, this is Highlander, not chat apps, Google. There can be only one. Or, if you prefer another movie analogy, it's clearly time to unite the clans. Again.

Google's earnings report is certainly set up to be interesting this week.

2026-07-17 18:18:29

Let's give OpenAI some credit, once they realize they made a mistake, they act quickly to correct it. Today's case in point: with an update, ChatGPT now features ChatGPT once again. No, that's not a joke, and yes, it does speak to a very obvious self-own.

To quickly recap: the strangest thing about the "Super App" update to ChatGPT a week ago was that they completely buried the actual chat functionality. It was shoved into the sidebar and made into a sub-feature of the service. A service which, mind you, was still called ChatGPT. But instead of that brand front-and-center, the new app launched into something confusingly called 'ChatGPT Work'. As it turned out, ChatGPT Work wasn't ChatGPT for Work, but OpenAI's Claude Cowork competitor. And even though this new app was clearly an extension and expansion of Codex, their Claude Code competitor, that too was now a secondary option.

There were several other UI issues to boot – and many of those remain. But first and foremost, OpenAI just needed to make this new ChatGPT app far less confusing and jarring to actually use. And now they have: gone is 'ChatGPT Work' front and center at start, back is simply 'ChatGPT' with our old, trusted chatbox asking you to simply 'Message ChatGPT'.

To be clear, 'Work' is still there, but it's now a secondary tab in that main ChatGPT area – just as it is on the web, which as I noted last week was the far better UI. Also back are your 'Projects' and 'Recents' (recent chats) in the sidebar. 'Temporary Chats' too! Again, OpenAI basically made ChatGPT ChatGPT again.

Albeit a more bloated and less performant version. Still no GPT-Live. Baby steps.

Codex is here too, in that same main drop-down. You can also set it as the default if you're coming up from the old Codex app (which auto-updated into this app). It's still the same non-native, now-Electron-y app that those users are used to. That still sucks for users of the old ChatGPT Mac app (this version seems to use a shit ton of virtual memory), but you can also still use that for now as 'ChatGPT (Classic)'.

And everything now apparently syncs between desktop, mobile, and web. Why it didn't in the first place, I don't know. This all felt a bit rushed out the door. In case you haven't heard, OpenAI has had one hell of a week.

Anyway, all of that is in a positive direction. But it also begs the question as to why on Earth OpenAI didn't realize all of this obvious stuff before launch? Perhaps beyond being rushed to get the first "Super App" out the door, it seems like a situation where the team was far too focused on simply cloning Claude. Specifically, what Anthropic had done with the Claude desktop app. This new ChatGPT app was – and remains– largely that.

And you could argue it's even more like that now because it actually opens into chat mode, just like Claude does. As I noted, this was perhaps the most confusing thing of all. OpenAI cloned Claude except for this one key bit of functionality. Now they have that too. Clearly, they were too Codex-pilled.

We all get why. Claude Code (and Cowork) has been killing it, rocketing Anthropic into not just a viable OpenAI competitor, but into a more highly valued company bringing in more money. OpenAI's answer, Codex, was clearly showing progress in combating that turning of the tides, so they decided to go all-in, chat be damned.

The problem is that pesky one billion or so ChatGPT users that OpenAI seemingly forgot they had. Obviously they didn't forget, they just view that user base as far less valuable than the ones focused on coding and other agentic angles. And yeah, I mean it is literally less valuable of a user base when it comes to bringing in money right now. I might argue that longer term, if OpenAI really believes they can crack the AI advertising nut, having the widest base of users would be far more valuable, but it's still unclear if that will happen.

In that light, we can see the dilemma. But there were also probably about a dozen better ways to do this roll-out – as highlighted by how fast they're fixing these things – and they just missed the mark. While they undoubtedly knew there would be some backlash, they probably didn't realize there would be this much. Again. All that points to perhaps a disturbing trend where OpenAI doesn't really understand their user base. Which you almost can understand given how they clearly stumbled into ChatGPT in the first place. Still, here they are with those billion users. A problem that all of their competitors would love to have. But still a problem if you want to fundamentally change what you are as a product..

But those are bigger, existential issues. All I wanted was chat back in the ChatGPT app. Front and center. And I got it. It's not perfect. It's still bloated. But at least it's usable again now and not a confusing mess of ideas out of the box.

Update July 18, 2026: Some good/fun pushback from John Gruber who thinks I'm going too easy on OpenAI for quickly fixing some (but hardly all) of the issues:

Two excerpts to call out:

The only good solution is to pretend this last week didn’t happen and go back to calling ChatGPT “ChatGPT” and Codex “Codex”. If they want to give one of them a new name, don’t call ChatGPT “ChatGPT Classic” — instead rename Codex “ChatGPT Codex”. There, done. All problems solved.

This occurred to me after I published, but while Gruber (in another post) analogizes this to the whole 'New Coke'/'Coke Classic' fiasco in the 1980s, what if a more modern analog is when Netflix unveiled 'Qwikster'. The year was 2011, and the company really wanted to go all-in on their streaming efforts and viewed the DVD-by-mail business as yesterday's news. The problem was that to millions of their loyal users it wasn't yesterday's news, it was the service they still knew and loved and used. Worse, they saw it as a ploy to raise prices.

The stock crashed, millions quit, and Netflix had to backtrack, fast.

It was the one huge mistake Reed Hastings made in his tenure as CEO of Netflix and now it's a literal case study in what not to do. That was a worse situation, but mainly because software can be fixed faster than physical/logistics changes to your business. Also, Netflix was a public company at that point, OpenAI, famously, is not (yet). One has to wonder what the market reaction would have been to this ChatGPT shitshow...

But it's also worth noting that overall, Hastings wasn't wrong with the call, he was just too early – which I noted was a possibility here as well in my original post. Regardless, Hastings didn't read his room correctly, just as OpenAI didn't here. That said:

The Codex app is clearly capable of amazing things. But the reason that there are a billion users of ChatGPT but only a few million users of Codex — by OpenAI’s own accounting — is because ChatGPT is simple and focused and based on a single coherent concept: chat. The frustration of the eggheads now running product at OpenAI is obvious: how come these hundreds of millions of morons using ChatGPT aren’t running Codex instead? Somehow they thought they could fix this by giving Codex the ChatGPT name. This is like if Apple had gotten rid of the Messages app on the Mac and replaced it with Xcode, which they renamed to “Messages”. Now they’ve put an “iMessage” tab in the Xcode sidebar and re-released the Messages app everyone knew and loved as “Messages Classic”.

OpenAI separated itself from its competition — especially Anthropic — by being good at product. Now their product decisions are being made by people who don’t understand why Apple makes both iMovie and Final Cut Pro, or GarageBand and Logic Pro.

I'm compelled by the idea that there should be a 'Pro' version of ChatGPT and a simple version for consumers. Which, yes, is how it basically was with Codex! Sure, it's more work when it comes to upkeep, but it feels like we're still a ways away from everyone wanting to use all the agentic capabilities. Especially since it's so bloated and convoluted. Could they even get a billion users had they started here? I doubt it!

I know OpenAI hopes that's not the case, that everyone will want to switch to Codex – aka New ChatGPT – but that's projecting fueled by their own business needs. A very stupid – and dangerous – way to do product development, obviously.