2025-07-10 22:01:21
Just two weeks after I wrote a post entitled "Begun, the AI Browser Wars Have", outlining some thoughts on The Browser Company's new entrant Dia and where the general space is likely heading, two more key players seem poised to emerge.
Yesterday, Perplexity formally unveiled their Comet browser. And while it's still being slowly rolled out to their waitlist, anyone who wants to pay can play with it now. The cost? Signing up for Perplexity's 'Max' plan, which is $200/month.
I'm certainly tempted given my use of Dia over these past many weeks, but I'll continue playing Perplexity's waitlist game for now. And so here's an overview of some of Comet's features from Maxwell Zeff at TechCrunch:
Comet’s headline feature is Perplexity’s AI search engine, which is pre-installed and set as the default, putting the company’s core product — AI generated summaries of search results — front and center.
Users can also access Comet Assistant, a new AI agent from Perplexity that lives in the web browser and aims to automate routine tasks. Perplexity says the assistant can summarize emails and calendar events, manage tabs, and navigate webpages on behalf of users. Users can access Comet Assistant by opening a sidecar on any webpage, which lets the AI agent see what’s on the webpage and answer questions about it.
It's interesting that Dia and Comet have different starting points in this "AI Browser" race, but it also makes sense. Comet is ultimately Perplexity's way to ensure their other core products get into consumers hands. Dia is The Browser Company's core product. Granted, the chatbot built into Dia is essentially a product too – and one, I suspect, you'll have to pay for in order to get full access to features and functionality at some point – but they're also happy to have you fall back to Google Search if that's what you want to do. Comet? Not so much. As Perplexity co-founder and CEO Aravind Srinivas makes abundantly clear on Xitter, their aim is to go squarely after Google on all fronts.
Still, beyond the web search element, in usage, Dia and Comet sound similar:
My favorite way to use Comet Assistant, so far, is loading it in the sidecar while I’m browsing the web. Perplexity’s on-browser AI agent can automatically see what I’m looking at, so I can simply ask it questions without needing to open a new window or copy and paste text or links. It’s right there, and it always has the context for what I’m looking at.
Comet Assistant was able to answer questions about posts on social media, YouTube videos, and even sentences I just wrote in a Google Doc. I imagine this will streamline workflows for millions of people that are sending screenshots, files, and links to ChatGPT all day.
Where they really start to diverge is the "agentic" work that Comet aims to do. Presumably, Dia wants to get there as well, but Comet is doing it from day one – or at least trying to. It sounds a bit rough at the moment:
But Comet Assistant fails at more complicated tasks. For example, I tried asking it to help me find a long-term parking spot at San Francisco’s airport for an upcoming trip, specifically places with good reviews that cost less than $15 a day.
The assistant offered up several options that seemed to fit the criteria, so I asked it to book me a spot at one of the locations for the dates I’d be away. The agent navigated the parking lot’s website for me, entered in dates, and even some of my information, then asked me to review what it did and check-out.
Turns out, Comet Assistant hallucinated and entered completely wrong dates, later telling me that the dates I wanted were booked, but still wanted to have me complete the check-out anyways. I had to tell the AI agent that the dates were non-negotiable, and asked it to find another location. It ran into the same problem again.
This is also likely to be a big part of OpenAI's push into the browser space. Back in January, upon playing around with 'Operator', ChatGPT's first agentic product, I wrote a piece with the following headline: "OpenAI's 'Operator' Shows Why They'll Build a Web Browser". It was obvious – OpenAI was using a custom-built version of Chrome to do their agentic workflows in the cloud. Clearly, they were going to build their own browser to do this eventually.
And here we are. As Kenrick Cai, Krystal Hu and Anna Tong report for Reuters:
OpenAI is close to releasing an AI-powered web browser that will challenge Alphabet's market-dominating Google Chrome, three people familiar with the matter told Reuters.
The browser is slated to launch in the coming weeks, three of the people said, and aims to use artificial intelligence to fundamentally change how consumers browse the web. It will give OpenAI more direct access to a cornerstone of Google's success: user data.
Yes, and:
A web browser would allow OpenAI to directly integrate its AI agent products such as Operator into the browsing experience, enabling the browser to carry out tasks on behalf of the user, the people said.
The browser's access to a user’s web activity would make it the ideal platform for AI "agents" that can take actions on their behalf, like booking reservations or filling out forms, directly within the websites they use.
This follows a report from last year in The Information that OpenAI was considering going after this market and had made some key hires from, where else, Google to go after it – specifically people who help build Chrome. With that in mind:
OpenAI's browser is built atop Chromium, Google's own open-source browser code, two of the sources said. Chromium is the source code for Google Chrome, as well as many competing browsers including Microsoft's Edge and Opera.
Naturally, Dia and Comet are built on top of Chromium as well. Fascinating to think that Google's open source work here could be their downfall in this market...
And while the DoJ would like Google to have to sell off Chrome, that's not going to happen – certainly not to OpenAI – in part because AI is creating a new lane here. Both in Search and in web browsing. Google seems confident enough that they're keeping Chrome to go so far as to bake Gemini right into their browser too. It's risky given the regulatory heat on them, but also what choice do they have? Should they have to just sit back and be disrupted? Instead, if Chrome is disrupted it will be because these newer AI browsers are simply better and more useful than Chrome. Again, while being built on top of Chromium.
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
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M.G. Siegler
2025-07-10 00:54:26
The last time Apple had a COO transition, it was a big deal. In 2015, Tim Cook elevated Jeff Williams to the role, which had been vacant since 2011, when Cook himself vacated it to become CEO following Steve Jobs resignation over his health concerns. With Williams appointment, it seemed as if Cook had found his own Tim Cook. Not only someone who was able to steward Apple's ever-increasingly-complex supply chain, but also make many more of Apple's trains run on time. And, presumably, someone who could step in for Cook if, as was sadly the case with Jobs, he was no longer able to perform his CEO duties.
This made Williams the heir-apparent to Cook. The only problem there was that they were quite close in age, with Williams just a few years younger than Cook. So in any normal retirement situation for Cook, Williams was likely to be around that age as well.1 As it turns out, Williams, approaching a decade in the COO role, is now retiring before Cook.
Of course, as the reporting of Mark Gurman seemingly made clear last year, with the two men creeping up in age, Apple had started to shift their attention elsewhere when it came to transitions of power. (More on that below.) And so without a clear path to CEO and after one hell of a good run, now feels like as good of a time as any for Williams to step back.
But it's still a big deal right? Apple's number two stepping down! Internally, sure. But externally, not really.
Before I get to that, a few quick thoughts I jotted down upon seeing the news:
The most interesting element of this announcement may be the fact that Williams is handing over the COO reigns to Khan immediately, but is staying on in an unnamed role (still reporting to Cook) through the end of the year to continue to oversee the design team and Apple Watch. This is clearly an important enough bit of information that it's right there in the first paragraph.2
As anyone who has watched an Apple keynote in the past few years will know, Apple Watch was Williams' baby. To the point where I'm sort of surprised he's not saying on as an "Apple Fellow" to continue to oversee just that product, just as Phil Schiller has been doing in that role with the App Store for years. Apple is famous for their step-back-but-not-fully-retiring roles – most recently with former CFO Luca Maestri. Williams real retirement, seemingly, will happen far faster.
At the same time, Apple clearly doesn't want to hand Design and Apple Watch/Health to Khan. Seemingly, such things are just not his strong suit. Mark Gurman got some great quotes for Bloomberg from former Apple executives and employees on the retirement announcement that sheds some light on this:
“Sabih is very much cut from the Tim Cook cloth,” said Matthew Moore, a former Apple operations engineer. “Jeff was a little more product-minded; Sabih is just a really brilliant operator and methodical in the same way that Tim would operate.”
Moore added that Khan has already been running Apple’s operations group and that the team “won’t miss a beat.” The concerns will be in the other areas that Williams currently oversees, he said.
As Gurman notes, much of the functional work for Apple Watch has already been quietly divvied up between John Ternus (more on him in a minute) for hardware and Craig Federighi for software (just like pretty much every other product line). It still matters quite a bit – to Tim Cook, no less – but it's seemingly in good hands.
Design is a far trickier topic. Once Williams actually retires to start 2026, that team will transition to noted design expert Tim Cook.
I kid, I kid. But really, it's weird. But it also feels like they don't really have another option here. Though I might note that if Ternus really is in line to be the next CEO now – something that obviously seems more likely than ever with this news – perhaps it would be good to get him that experience? Perhaps especially while Williams is still there to oversee that transition?
Then again, Ternus clearly already has a lot on his plate. And that might be too explicit a signal that both he's next and that he's next soon. If Cook isn't ready to retire himself in the next couple of years – I'm working under the assumption that he wants to get at least one more big hardware product out the door, perhaps the "smart glasses", ensure the tariff/China situation is under control, and fix the AI mess before he hands over his own duties – perhaps they make that move down the road a bit.
Or maybe, just maybe, they actually bring in a C-suite executive to oversee design once again? It's sort of wild that the company perhaps most synonymous with design hasn't had one since Jony Ive left Apple six years ago (yes, there was Evans Hankey post-Ive, but she was never elevated to SVP level before she left – to eventually join Ive, of course). As John Gruber writes on the news today:
I’ve long found it curious, if not downright dubious, that Apple’s design leaders have reported to Williams ever since it was announced in 2019 (the very same day that Khan was promoted to SVP of operations) that Jony Ive would be stepping down as chief design officer and leaving Apple to found the (as-yet-unnamed) design firm LoveFrom. Williams had no background in design at all. Apple’s design teams reporting to an operations executive makes no more sense than it would for Apple’s operations teams to report to, say, Alan Dye. Well, maybe it made a little more sense than that—having design report to Williams sort of felt like a way to give Williams experience across the breadth of the company in the case that he ever needed to step in to replace Cook as CEO, either temporarily or permanently, as Cook was asked to for Jobs.
But when that was announced in 2019, I expected it to be temporary, while Apple took its time to properly identify a new senior design leader. Someone with, you know, design leadership experience, and strong opinions about and deep knowledge of the craft of design. That was six years ago, and Apple has seemingly made not one move toward naming a new chief design officer or (the more likely title) SVP of design. It seems like time for that now.
It's certainly possible that Apple is going to try to spend these next five months finding that design executive. It's also possible that they promote Dye to such a role – he did have one of the most prominent slots at the WWDC keynote this year thanks to "Liquid Glass" – though as Gruber notes, in hindsight, it may have been a mistake to have one person overseeing hardware and software design – something that only happened because Ive stepped in on the software side after Scott Forstall was forced out in 2012. And Dye is firmly on the software (HI) side.3
Anyway, regardless of what happens with design, this overall shift doesn't change much of anything at Apple. Khan is not some fresh face about to shake things up – again, he's been at the company longer than Tim Cook has! And while that's probably a good thing in operations, with each passing week, Apple is seemingly a company in need of a good shake.
I've long been of the mind that Apple now feels like a company increasingly stuck in the past. From their App Store policies on down, they're seemingly just operating like it's 2010, not 2025. And if you just look at the leadership page, the reason why should be pretty clear: of the 12 listed execs, only Katherine Adams (Apple's GC), John Giannandrea (SVP of AI and ML – and not in the best position internally at the moment, to say the least), and newly appointed CFO Kevan Parekh joined the company after the Steve Jobs-era.4
Meanwhile, Apple's Board – which feels awfully small at just 8 directors (one of whom is Cook) for a company this size, scope, and scale – has an average age of 68 years old (which Cook brings down as a youthful 64 year old). If you truly believe we're entering the Age of AI, this feels like it could be a problem. (Ya think?) But honestly, even if you aren't a true believer in AI, there are myriad problems across the board as Apple feels increasingly out of touch.
So again, when you hear the news of a COO shift at a major company, your mind may naturally go towards it being a big shake-up. But that's clearly not the case here. This is almost the opposite: meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
That's good for Apple's operations, but I'm not sure how good that is for Apple.
One more thing: all that said, the retirements and/or whispers of retirements have been ramping as of late – as you might expect for such a long-tenured group of people, many of whom are now into their 60s. To that end, Tony Blevins – aka "The Blevinator" – might have the key quote and insight to Bloomberg:
"Jeff’s importance and contributions to Apple have been enormous, although perhaps not always obvious to the general public. As a shareholder, I am saddened. Time takes its toll, and it’s almost as if the band is dissolving. Jeff will be sorely missed."
During his time as COO, Williams saw Apple become the first company to hit a $1T market cap (2018), a $2T market cap (2020),5 and a $3T market cap (2023). In an interesting bit of timing, today saw the first company hit a $4T market cap. But it wasn't Apple. It was NVIDIA. Apple's market cap today? $3.1T. The times, they are...
M.G. Siegler
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M.G. Siegler
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M.G. Siegler
1 Sort of wild to see Bob Mansfield, himself a former SVP long-since retired from Apple, commenting on the record to Bloomberg with, "Clearly he wasn’t destined to be the Tim Cook replacement. He’s about the same age as Tim, so that wouldn’t make much sense. The operations team at Apple is really going to miss Jeff."
2 Though, humorously, apparently not important enough to run a spell check before publishing the press release, as both Matter (my read-it-later service) and Gruber capture the mention of Apple's "Heath" initiative (They have since corrected the typo.)
3 Surely there's a reason that Richard Howarth, whom Ive recruited to Apple in 1996 and has been there since, isn't in such a position? This Fast Company excerpt from Tripp Mickle's book from 2022 seemingly holds the answers... tl;dr: he tried, but was clearly a better contributor than manager.
4 And Parekh joined just about 18 months after Jobs passed away.
5 Okay, technically the first company to $2T was Aramco, right after their IPO pop in late 2019, but Apple was the first US company.
2025-07-09 22:11:55
First a quick word. I finally saw F1 last night. As god – or at least, Christopher Nolan – intended, on an IMAX screen. It was quite literally spectacular. As everyone is undoubtedly well aware by now, the movie itself is sort of a throwback to the sports/action movies you might see in the 1980s or 1990s. Yes, yes, Top Gun and Days of Thunder, but also the plot has shades of Major League of all things.
Anyway, it's good fun. Definitely worth seeing on a big screen and yes, the biggest screen possible. With all due respect to Killers of the Flower Moon, which was obviously well made but sort of tedious to watch and certainly far from enjoyable for most of it, this is by far the most watchable movie that Apple has made to date. It's good without any caveats needed.
I feel the need to say that because I know some people think I'm ragging on Apple too much for the movie. But that has nothing to do with the movie itself – which I suspected and predicted would be good from the moment I first saw the trailer – but because of how much it cost Apple to make.
It just feels like we're grading on some weird curve with Apple as a studio both because all of their movies have flopped to date. and because they don't technically need to make money on their movies for the company overall to perform well financially. In fact, it's hard to imagine that even a massive blockbuster would move Apple's financial needle all that much. Certainly not the top line. Apple is simply too big of a company to care about this business from a fiscal perspective. That's just the reality of the situation.
Luckily for us, they do seem to care about it for other reasons. Whether it's the "intersection of technology and the liberal arts" Steve Jobs mantra or its the halo effects that Hollywood can bring to their products – their actual products (Brad Pitt seems to have AirPods Pro glued on to his ears from scene one forward, which is sort of humorous since part of the plot is also that he's constantly broke and filing for bankruptcy – I might suggest he finds some cheaper headphones?). It's a good thing that Apple is in this business, spending top dollar when it results in top quality movies, as it did here.
Having said all that, it's still worth pointing out that Apple is very unlikely to make money on F1 – at least not at the box office. The movie was simply too expensive to produce and certainly to market. And that matters because if the company ever were to hit tough times, such lavish spending would be the first thing on the chopping block – I mean, it already has been in ways – and certainly if it's not profitable spending. Which it's not. It's a top line "hit" movie but it's very unlikely to be a bottom line one.
But again, there are other reasons to do F1. As Samuel Agini and Michael Acton report today for The Financial Times:
Apple is in talks to acquire the US rights to screen Formula 1 as the tech group chases the success of its hit movie based on the race car series and delves further into showing live sport.
The iPhone maker is challenging Disney’s ESPN — Formula 1’s current American broadcaster — when the broadcast contract becomes available next year, according to two people familiar with the discussions.
The interest comes as F1 starring Brad Pitt becomes the company’s first big box office success since moving into the business of making original content for its Apple TV+ streaming service.
To beat the dead engine: it depends on how we want to define both "big" and "success" here. But this is certainly the perception now, which is good for Apple. Of course, the perceived success of a movie is not reason enough for Apple to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on expensive sports rights, so let's not pretend they're only doing this because the movie is a "hit". I can say this confidently because I predicted they would be a bidder here, six months ago, well before the movie was released. As I wrote back then (on the news that Netflix was weighing bidding on the F1 rights):
One more thing: Apple remains a wildcard given their own sports ambitions. And the fact that their biggest swing yet for Apple TV+, the Brad Pitt-starring, Joseph Kosinski-directed F1 movie, is coming this summer. Then again, they seemingly like deals such as the one they have with MLS for worldwide rights. Per this report, F1 would prefer to spread such rights out and Sky Sports in the UK already has a much longer deal with F1, so worldwide is likely out of the picture. Still, it would be cool to see an F1 race in 'Immersive Video'. And I'd bet that Eddy Cue agrees (and don't forget)...
This F1 deal would be an outlier for Apple because other entities hold the rights around the world and because F1 itself has a streaming service for the true die-hards of the sport. And yes, Apple's own movie may have just made those rights more expensive – back to the Agini and Acton report:
The race car series makes in the region of $85mn a year from its existing broadcast partner ESPN. F1 also streams live races on its own streaming service in the US, charging fans directly.
Analysts at Citi have previously estimated that F1’s next US broadcast deal could be worth $121mn a year, although that was before the release of the F1 film. Its total global media rights revenue grew almost 8 per cent to about $1.1bn in 2024.
ESPN actually had an exclusive window to renew the rights but let them lapse. This led to the reports that Netflix might swoop in given their Drive to Survive show which has clearly bolstered the popularity of the sport. It was always a bit weird that different entities owned the streaming rights to the races, the show, and the movie. Now Apple is perhaps trying to consolidate two of those.
The problem may actually be on the other side: Apple TV+'s audience remains tiny compared to the other streaming services – and certainly compared to what ESPN can offer on cable. Would F1 be okay signing up for far smaller reach potential? Again, they already have their own, more niche, streaming service. The NFL and other sports like to spread the rights around to ensure they can maximize both money and reach, so that's seemingly working against Apple here.
But the relationship thanks to the making of the movie clearly helps them here. Especially if, as feels inevitable now, we're going to get a sequel – please, please call it 'F1 2' – as does a certain Apple executive who negotiates such rights being on the board of Ferrari... As I wrote a couple months ago after a new F1 trailer hit:
The new trailer for F1 — aka, the movie that will make or break Apple’s feature film ambitions after some comically bad decisions — continues to look great. The exact type of movie that demands you see it in a theater. Ideally, an IMAX. And it should cement Joseph Kosinski as the king of big budget action movies in Hollywood. Still weird that Apple isn’t pushing harder for the actual F1 rights in light of this?
Weird.
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
2025-07-09 06:16:22
Okay, we’re three (developer) betas in now. The public beta is undoubtedly coming very soon. I feel like I have a good enough sense of iPadOS 26 at this point, and where I think the final builds will end up, to say a few words about it. Namely, the new features that make the iPad operate more like a Mac.
To that end, my key takeaway and thought is sort of a funny one: my god, Apple has made a Mac Jr.
That sounds derisive. And it sort of is! I don’t hate the experience by any means, but it seems sort of funny what Apple has done to iPadOS to avoid letting the iPad boot macOS. It’s now this pretty weird hybrid operating system that feels like it exists between iOS and macOS. It’s still a bit more iOS than macOS, but it’s pretty close to the halfway point with iPadOS 26...
2025-07-08 16:30:16
Let's check in on how things are going with Apple and the Trump administration:
White House trade advisor Peter Navarro criticized Apple CEO Tim Cook on Monday over the company’s response to pressure from the Trump administration to make more of its products outside China.
“Going back to the first Trump term, Tim Cook has continually asked for more time in order to move his factories out of China,” Navarro said in an interview on CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street.” “I mean it’s the longest-running soap opera in Silicon Valley.”
So not good then.
On one hand, it's sort of wild that the administration has zeroed in on Apple here given not only all of Cook's legwork over many years now to get into the President's good graces, but also because the entire idea of manufacturing the iPhone in the US is just pure crazytown fantasy. Even if it were possible for Apple move such manufacturing, it would take years to get all the pieces up and running. And it would all-but destroy Apple's business as we know it today because it would destroy the economics of their most-important device.
On the other hand, the iPhone is not only Apple's most-important device, it's arguably the pinnacle of technology devices and it is the product of an American company, so of course Trump's team is going to focus on it given the agenda here. Cook clearly thought he could win the day, and the argument, by making rational points about the realities of such manufacturing in our current world.1 But then his mistake was in trying to be rational in any way. Trump needs talking points and things that look like "wins" even if they're not and/or never come to pass.
It's not that complicated. Cook should just say they're going to move iPhone manufacturing to the US – and then never actually follow through with it. Sure, this takes some amount of soul-selling to do, but honestly, we're past that point already. How many other companies have promised things to give the President a good soundbite that simply are not going to happen? Undoubtedly a lot.
Oh but our current world is changing, Navarro has apparently heard:
With all these new advanced manufacturing techniques and the way things are moving with AI and things like that, it’s inconceivable to me that Tim Cook could not produce his iPhones elsewhere around the world and in this country.
Ah yes, AI will solve this. Tim Cook should just take Apple's entire logistics operation and run it by a chatbot to see what it says. But preferably not Siri.
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
1 Something you'd think might resonate with the President's team given their own efforts to build an American-made smartphone. Which may have to hold off on the "America" part.
2025-07-07 19:07:13
The way the Hollywood box office is reported has long been ridiculous, since, at the highest level, almost no one cites inflation-adjusted numbers yet insist on comparing new release revenue (box office receipts) to historical numbers. It's like comparing the price of a banana in 2025 to the price of a banana in 1950 and every headline screaming: "Wow, record banana prices!"
But it's even worse than that because it's not as if the box office numbers are in-line with 1950 numbers, they're actually way down. There's nuance to this, of course as a lot is different in the industry beyond just ticket prices. But we have a way to actually compare bananas to bananas here – just report number of tickets sold, not the revenue based on the price of those tickets.
Of course, Hollywood doesn't want to do that as it would look awful in comparison. It would look like an industry that is slowly dying...
