2026-04-01 04:32:42
When it comes to television, there is only really one show that truly matters: the NFL. Programs that win awards and have robust viewership are nice. But they're icing on the cake. The NFL is the cake. Everyone already knows this stat, but it's no less incredible: of the top 20 most-watched programs last year, either 18, 19, or all 20 were NFL games (there's some discrepancy in various ratings).
Which is to say that the NFL has an insanely strong hand when it comes to rights negotiations. Either you have an NFL package or you're simply not a player. It's undoubtedly part of the reason why Warner Bros Discovery had to sell. Yes, they were silly in fumbling their NBA rights, but it's the lack of NFL rights that kills them – or, specifically, keeps their networks shrinking. Their buyer, Paramount Skydance, of course, owns CBS. And CBS owns an NFL package. It's their most important asset. They can leverage it. And boy are they!
And actually, because of the earlier deal which saw Skydance take over Paramount, a change-of-ownership clause was triggered that allows the NFL to renegotiate that package even though the deal isn't up yet. And that, in turn, is going to lead to every other NFL rights holder renegotiating their rights. They technically don't have to, but what are they gonna do, tell the NFL no? Good luck on that next rights negotiation in a few years.
Instead, the holders will agree to a new, much higher fee, especially since the NBA just wrapped up their own massive new packages while dunking on WBD. The NBA is great. But the NBA brings a fraction of the viewership of the NFL (though yes, with many more games). The NFL can certainly make the case that any renegotiation isn't so outlandish with that in mind. Meanwhile, the current holders will try to trade that for a far longer deal so they don't have to do this all over again in a few years. But they will always have to do this all over again in a few years. Because the NFL is that powerful. And because there are a range of new players on the board.
Netflix has been in the news a lot recently thanks to their own attempt to take over Warner Bros. But the truth is that they don't need it. They're going to dictate the future of streaming regardless, and that's in part because they have yes, an NFL package! Granted, it's tiny right now – just two games on Christmas. But as some say 'NFL' stands for, not for long.
Here's Jessica Toonkel and Joe Flint for The Wall Street Journal:
Netflix is ready for more football.
The streamer is looking to expand its current two-game package to four games, according to people familiar with the matter. It is interested in adding the National Football League’s new Thanksgiving Eve game and an international game, likely in the season’s opening week, those people said.
Netflix is in the final year of its three-year Christmas Day game package, for which it paid about $75 million a game.
For as much grief as Netflix took over their backtracking on their movie theater stance to try to secure the Warner deal (which they were inevitably going to do anyway), their long-stated position that they were not interested in sports – and in particular, live sports, was even more ridiculous. This was always the end game for Netflix. Because the end game is taking over television.
Granted, they have competition now beyond the traditional rights holders. And wouldn't you know it, all of them would like more NFL rights too:
Google’s YouTube, which last season carried an international game and has the rights to the Sunday Ticket package offering out-of-market games, has expressed interest in additional games, people familiar with the situation said. Some broadcast partners and Amazon, which carries Thursday Night Football, are also open to potentially adding more games, said people familiar with their plans.
The traditional players, naturally, are freaking out about this possibility. They're lobbying the FCC to intervene to make sure the NFL doesn't keep moving towards these newfangled services. But that will just delay the inevitable. Cable television has been dying for years – the death isn't even particularly slow any more. The only thing propping it up has been sports rights. Broadcast television is in a slightly better position because they don't rely on cable subs, but that's only because they rely on advertising – and that advertising is driven by those NFL games. If those go away. Bye bye.
The aforementioned CBS is by far the best performing of the networks, but it's also by far the oldest when it comes to demographics. It's dying because, sadly, its base is literally dying. The FCC isn't going to change that. Again, they may delay it – well, to be clear, not the deaths of those demographics – but the game is over.
The NFL, of course, knows this. Much like Disney had to do with ESPN back in the day, they're doing a delicate dance. You might think the NFL would just go with the highest bidder for all these rights and no one can bid more than Big Tech. But the NFL (and all the leagues – but the NFL in particular) also cares about reach. Broadcast TV, for all its faults, is still everywhere, even if you're increasingly using the internet to access it.
The big argument to the FCC by broadcasters is that these games are getting locked behind paywalls which isn't good for consumers. That's not wrong. But the obvious answer is going to be for the streamers to open free ad-supported tiers (FAST, in the industry parlance). Many other streamers have been doing this for a while, but the big boys are doing a bit of double-dipping – putting these games on their lower-priced ad-supported tiers.
But as they all ramp up their ad networks, it only makes sense to go for the widest reach possible for these games, and really, all of sports. Live television is the last-remaining place where ads aren't just tolerated, they're a feature! And the NFL has made the single greatest advertising delivery mechanism this side of Google and Meta. There is a comically small amount of actual gameplay in a 60-minute game, there are far more ads. Including all over the field, the stadium, soon enough jerseys, etc.
So we're looking at a world in which all the streamers have free tiers that are driven by live sports. Just like broadcast TV! YouTube is already there, but they have the smallest premium rights packages right now. (Yes, they have NFL Sunday Ticket, but that's on the other end of the spectrum – a super expensive tier.) That will change. As they continue to compete with Netflix for eyeballs, it has to.
Netflix, meanwhile, is also competing with Amazon, which was far earlier to the streaming sports rights game and seems positioned well. As mentioned, ESPN was later than it should have been due to Disney's legacy commitments, but is here now with a chance to be the main player as well. Apple, as is their way, is ever-so-slowly joining the party with sports they can more fully control. But they too will get-in-the-game John Madden style eventually.
So depending how these new negotiations go, we're looking at a world, perhaps in a decade, but at most two, where the NFL games are on Amazon, Apple, ESPN, Netflix, and YouTube. All of them.
The broadcasters will hang on for as long as they can, but again, demographics and time will do their inevitable thing. As badly as Paramount Skydance needed Warner Bros Discovery to try to be a player, this upcoming re-negotiation with the NFL is far more existential. As such, any price will be on the table. They simply cannot lose the NFL. And David Ellison is insisting that they will not.
And they undoubtedly will not – right now. Again, the NFL likes the current situation where they dominate every and all ratings. But they're simply trying to time it right for when those ratings transition over to the newer players. It will kick off a new flywheel where dominate ratings thanks to the NFL super-charges their advertising. And as such, streaming will look a lot like broadcast TV to many!1
Assuming I'm right, the main issue is that Netflix doesn't actually have any of the major NFL rights beyond this small special package and so it will be years before they can truly be a player with the NFL. But I think that works well for them too, as they can slowly but surely ramp up other sports content – while continuing to deny their broader ambitions – until the next NFL rights become available and then boom goes the dynamite.
The match has been lit...
One more thing: the wildcard in all this is if the NFL decides to "go direct" as it were. Again, they already do with Sunday Ticket, but what if they tried to control the entire package for all the games exclusively? It's simply hard to see that happening due to the economics outlined above. Other leagues, with less reach, sure. But the NFL has started what will be a successful transition from broadcast and cable to streaming, with the rights just going up from here...
1 Though, good luck finding those games! Someone will eventually fix this right? RIGHT? ↩
2026-03-30 17:54:26
Smart angle by my friend Steven Levy to not ask Apple about the past on the verge of their 50th anniversary – which Levy was right in the center of covering for nearly the entire run, of course – but about the future. And fitting that Apple dispatched John Ternus – he who would be king – rather than Tim Cook to talk (though Levy also managed to get a comment from Cook at an event, and Apple's longest serving executive, Greg Joswiak – 40 years! – was there too).
When Levy brought up the notion of Apple being behind in AI:
These gentlemen disagree. Apple, they insist, is already at the forefront of the AI revolution. “We were doing AI before we called it AI!” says Joswiak. “Every single great chatbot works great on our products.” Ternus argues that even if Apple didn't take the lead in developing AI technology, it would still benefit. “Our products are the best place people will use the existing AI tools.”
It's not quite as gaslight-y as the interview that Joswiak and Craig Federighi gave after last year's WWDC when asked about the clear downplaying of AI at the event (after touting it the year before and well, you know...), but I just wish they would frame this decidedly less defensively. Something like... "look, we view it as still the very early days of AI, and while we've been working on it for a while, and there have been some fits and starts, no one yet knows exactly how it's going to play out, so we're trying to take a pragmatic approach in our build out and ensure that our devices and platforms are the best place on which to build for that future."
Ternus is much closer in that regard, which is great to see, if he is indeed the next CEO of Apple. After Levy pushes back on their answers, wondering how they can ensure that Apple is the company making the devices of the future if they're not building the cutting edge of AI themselves:
“I would assume you want one of them to be an Apple device, right?” I asked.
The answer seemed to be not necessarily. “Let’s not lose sight of the fact that nothing you just said is incompatible with the iPhone,” Joswiak says. “The iPhone is not going to go away. iPhone is going to serve a very central role in any of those things you’re talking about.”
In the short term, no doubt. Even in the medium term, sure. But Levy reminds him of the framing he's asking about:
Wait—Apple thinks that people will be using the iPhone 50 years from now?
“It's hard to imagine not,” says Joswiak. “That's where everybody else struggles. They don't have an iPhone, and so they’re scrambling for what to do. A lot of what they talk about ends up being accessories for an iPhone. We’re not going to get into future road maps, but I will tell you, iPhones are not going anywhere.” (Despite this bravado, I will be shocked if Apple does not come out with some AI-powered gadget in the coming years.)
50 years from now will be 2076. While it some ways it does feel like technological breakthroughs are happening slower than 50 years ago on the consumer tech end, in other ways, things are moving far faster – including, of course, AI!
Beyond Apple's founding, 1976 was about color TVs, early video games, and microwaves. Big, chunky tech starting in the home that would be refined and miniaturized as things moved digital. It's probably reasonable to think we'll have something akin to an iPhone 50 years from now, but the form factor will be far different. Perhaps something you wear, or a tiny piece of tech that still lives in your pocket, but unfolds into (or syncs with) something more robust depending on the use case. Will that still be an 'iPhone'? That's harder to see. It would be wild if the same branding exists by then – the concept of a "phone" is already a bit silly. But again, some sort of main computing hub still may be around...
That could, of course, be our robots back in our homes running computing workflows agenticly for us and pinging us as needed...
Later in the day I have my greeting with Cook, and immediately ask him about Apple’s next 50 years. He launches into a rhapsodic description of Apple’s people, values, and culture, predicting that no matter what twists lie ahead, those factors will continue to make Apple unique and super successful. “Yes, the technologies of the future will change,” Cook says. “Yes, there will be more products and more categories. All of those things are true, but the things that made Apple. Apple will be the same for the next 50 years, and the next 100 and the next 1,000.”
It's a nice sentiment, but a bit silly. While companies like Nokia, Siemens, and GE are all over 100 years old, they all started life quite differently, of course – Nokia famously as a paper mill! More "pure" tech still around today is probably IBM, which is 125 years old. Given that tech is now central to pretty much everything in modern life, it's certainly reasonable to think some of the current companies will be around in 100 years – 2126 – but undoubtedly most will not. That's just the reality of business. Things go boom and bust – or they get merged out of existence.
A thousand years? 3026. I would make a joke about hoping the world exists by then, but that's too morbid and depressing. So instead I'll make a joke about hoping that Apple has fixed Siri by then to run well on the iPhone 1018 Pro.
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
2026-03-27 07:27:59
It's not about the money, it's about the message. With the news that Meta and YouTube were being held liable in a case about the harms of their addictive features just two days after Meta was found liable in a separate case around child safeguards, the writing isn't so much as on the wall as it's on the docket. Big Tech is facing a reckoning.
I would say it's about "social media", but well, YouTube isn't really social media.1 And actually I think you can tie this into other tangential topics around the broader tech industry at the moment. Most prominently, the simmering backlash against AI as well. Meta may be the poster child, but again, it feels like the entire Big Tech family is going to get wrapped up in this.
Regardless of the merits of the individual cases, the real read of the (court)room is the macro one. This isn't a moment, it's a movement. And it's spreading. In part because lawmakers have failed to act, and the companies themselves have failed to adequately self-police, now the people are taking matters into their own hands. Those citizens seem sick of everyone glued to their devices at all times. Yes, children especially, but I suspect this distaste runs far deeper. Including within Silicon Valley itself! Add this animosity to the growing anxiety around AI from these very same companies coming to potentially upend livelihoods and... kaboom.
Nearly every story about this latest verdict draws the comparison to the "Big Tobacco" cases from 30 years ago. It doesn't matter what the parallels are, all that matters is that every story is drawing them. This is an absolute optics disaster for Big Tech. And it feels like it's just getting started.
Again, Meta is low-hanging fruit. YouTube perhaps thought they could get away here because again, they're not actually social media. But they cannot. And while TikTok and Snap opted to settle rather than risk this verdict, they're not going to get away from every case. You have to wonder if and when Apple gets roped in as well since they largely control the devices which enables these services. Google will get hit here as well. Perhaps even Microsoft if the contagion spreads to PCs.
When the AI backlash starts in full, certainly OpenAI and Anthropic will be right in the crosshairs. And maybe NVIDIA gets pulled in as well for enabling all of this. Probably even SpaceX, now that they own Xitter and xAI, which are already in the midst of their own various shitshows due to deep fakes and other sketchy content. And once Tesla and SpaceX inevitably merge, we'll have basically all the largest companies in the world wrapped up in these cases. Maybe there's a way to bring Amazon in too thanks to AWS. Or maybe it's Alexa, which seems to want to get more racy at the moment too. Have I mentioned that Oracle is a primary owner of TikTok now?2
Yes, this remains very strange.
In many ways, none of this is surprising. Again, merits of the cases aside, these are the largest companies in the world. I mean that both in terms of market cap and reach, but also in terms of numbers of people they employ. Yet every day now seems to bring a headline about mass layoffs while at the same time posting record profits. It has long been a very weird "best of times/worst of times" dichotomy and AI is accelerating it. People must look at the layoffs constantly happening at Meta and wonder what shot they possibly have to make it in this new world.
And as I've written about before with AI in particular, all of these companies seemingly have some very real messenger issues. That is, the public by and large doesn't seem to like the people peddling the future here. And that's undoubtedly in part because they don't trust them from the immediate past when they were peddling social media and then VR and then crypto and then every other thing seemingly purpose-build, at least narratively, to freak people out or piss them off.
And so here we are, at the dawn of yet another "techlash".3 But this one could be far larger because the fallout from yesterday is running right into the fears for tomorrow.
I'm not saying this is right or wrong, I'm just saying it's happening. And it's happening in no small part because Big Tech is awful with their positioning and posture. Does Facebook cause cancer? No, but you'd never know it based on the backlash. Before long, it will be framed as being worse than cancer.
Big Tech will be fined the equivalent of coins in their couch cushions over and over again and they'll shrug it off over and over again. Has Europe taught us nothing? No, because Europe has learned nothing. Honestly, their endless fines have probably helped teach Silicon Valley the wrong lessons, and to look past the real issues. After all, these are admired companies – in no small part because they're so successful! Which will be true until it is suddenly not. And what I think you can see here is the trend bubbling up that people increasingly don't want to like these companies. They're too big and too powerful. They're like the government. But one you can sue over and over again.
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
1 Increasingly, it's just media. Yes, there are algorithms at play, but the same is true at any modern media company now. Which is why it was silly not to frame YouTube as a Netflix competitor in the would-have-been Warner Bros deal. Going forward, YouTube is the main Netflix competitor. Not some other "streaming services" which Netflix long ago left in the dust. ↩
2 And at the rate that Snap's stock keeps falling – now just a $6B company – someone is going to end up owning them too. ↩
3 Strange how Meta/Facebook always seems to be right at the center of these... ↩
2026-03-26 03:55:18
Well, I'd like to say it was fun while it lasted. But the reality is that it barely lasted. I speak, of course, of Sora. And specifically the productized version of OpenAI's video models which launched to much fanfare just a few months ago and quickly rocketed to the top of the App Store. OpenAI brought the axe down so quickly that it apparently surprised both their key partner Disney and even the team internally working on Sora. Even by OpenAI standards, this seems pretty wild.
Of course this also wasn't totally out of left field. A couple weeks ago, a report suggested that Sora was over as a stand-alone app and service. And that seemingly made sense. After the aforementioned initial surge, Sora slowly slid down the download charts and usage seemed to be dwindling over time. As it turns out, much like the Studio Ghibli situation before it, it was a mere viral moment in time. OpenAI is great at creating these, but they're fleeting. That's a problem when you've built a whole service around one.
Sora was the most fun I recalled having with a new app in a while, but I also noted that the key probably wasn't the TikTok-style network, but instead how it eased the creation process for video. I thought individual sharing of such videos was more interesting than pushing them out publicly because clearly most of the novelty was around the insertion of people you knew in the videos. Celebrities inevitably tried to tap into this, but it all felt a bit insincere at best, and cash-grabby at worst.
So yes, it made sense to shift the focus from the app to bring such tools into ChatGPT itself. In particular as the service tried to do more social/collaborative things there – bringing more chat into ChatGPT, as it were.
But a funny thing happened on the way to the roll-up: OpenAI clearly started to freak the fuck out about the traction Anthropic was suddenly seeing.
That mixed with the building push to go public is undoubtedly a big part of what shifted a move to bundle Sora to a move to murder Sora. This is all related. Anthropic is also said to be making moves to go public. And because of their position in the market – in the enterprise market in particular – and their path to profits looking much clearer, this was always going to be a problem for OpenAI. But the moment Claude Code – and tangentially, Claude Cowork – is having probably pushed it all over the edge.
Last week came news that "side quests" would no longer be a part of OpenAI's path. And was there any bigger side quest than Sora? Again, you'd think they could just kill the app and stand-alone service, bringing it into ChatGPT itself – as seemed to be the plan – but the reality there remained just how expensive it was to actually create such videos. OpenAI probably ran then re-ran the numbers. There was just no way to justify it with a straight face if they were truly hoping to paint a path to profitability picture to Wall Street any time soon.
Fine. No fun, but we get it. OpenAI has bigger GPUs to fry.
But what's really wild is shafting Disney in the process. I mean, they're without question the most important entertainment and content company in the world. And OpenAI seemingly did them dirty. The fact that Disney is no longer looking to do the major investment which sure seemed like a good idea to them – checks notes – just three months ago, seems to say a lot.1 You have to imagine OpenAI would still welcome such an investment. They need any and all money! Even without Sora, you have to imagine there was a path to future partnerships here. But no. Not the way OpenAI executed this. Ouch.
And my god how incredibly awkward for Josh D'Amaro, just one week into his new role as CEO of Disney. While Bob Iger put his name on this deal and subsequent PR around it, all indications were that D'Amaro was the one who really pushed for it. And it played up to technology prowess being a key point of his ascension and plan. This plus the news that Fortnite maker (and key Disney partner/investment) Epic is doing massive layoffs this week.. Again, ouch.
Anyway, back to Sora. This sucks. Not because Sora was particularly useful – though I maintain it was good fun, even now opening it, I get sucked into a rabbit hole that I fill with laughter. I wasn't getting sucked in nearly enough for it to make sense stand-alone, but certainly the technology was compelling! Which is why Google, Meta, and others have been working on video models as well, obviously. It looked like OpenAI had played them with the Disney deal, until they realized that they played themselves.
Was it an IP minefield? No doubt. Did it raise some very real ethical questions about raising the dead to have them do dumb shit in viral videos? For sure. But it was also pretty fun. And very funny. And wonderfully simple to use.
All this sucks because it points to a world in which OpenAI is definitely less product-focused going forward and much more about drilling down on the business. That's undoubtedly the right move for the company given everything going on, but that doesn't make it the right move for me, the end user.
Goodnight, not-so-sweet viral prince. We hardly knew ye. I'm so Sora for our loss.
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
1 Also, why do weird things keep happening around promised OpenAI investments?... ↩
2026-03-25 19:43:29
Look, let's try to be nice to Apple. They're a little slow on this whole "AI" thing. After spending years and years downplaying the role of the technology, most notably with several senior executives reported to have directly disparaged the whole "chatbot" movement as a passing fad, they're now playing catch up. Including, naturally, racing to build their own chatbot.
But those initial reports about how they would implement their upgrades to Siri indicated that there wouldn't be a stand-alone app for the service – again, that was undoubtedly too chatbot-like for Apple's taste – and instead it would be a system-wide integration, just like the current Siri. You know, Apple's "AI" system which has completely and utterly sucked for the past 15 years running.
Granted, Apple would be upgrading the technology powering Siri – going so far as to outsource the work largely to Google, their Big Tech frenemy which was also caught flat-footed in the early days of the current Age of AI. But their miss wasn't due to a lack of belief, but rather a corporate timidity and culture that they had to overcome. Which they seemingly now have. As such, they're right there in the thick of the AI race, miles – no, lightyears – ahead of Apple. So it was obviously wise of Apple to partner with one of the leaders in AI to give Siri a brain transplant. It was there own way to jump back into the race, at least from a product-perspective.
Just one little problem. The product itself.
Again, all the reports (and previous work) on Siri indicated it would remain this nebulous AI thing running in the background. But that's just not the way people are now trained – from the get go – to interact with AI. Much to the chagrin of Craig Federighi (now leading up Apple's AI efforts) and John Giannandrea (now since "retired" from Apple's AI efforts), the chatbot won.
But as Meta, Google, and others have learned, it's not enough to have a chatbot that resides amorphously everywhere. Users needs a centralized place to go to use AI. At least for now, in these early days. Which is to say, there needs to be an app.
You might have thought the company most synonymous with apps would have understood this from the get-go. But again, all indications were that they did not. They were clearly going to have to learn the hard way, a likely mistake that I noted over and over and over again. But I'll highlight what I wrote all the way back in June 2024, right after Apple unveiled Apple Intelligence:
The one thing I still wonder/think about post-WWDC is if Apple does still have a go-forward plan on the chance that the chatbot paradigm isn't just a fad. I'm using "chatbot" as a catch-all here – I also believe chatbots are a feature – but it's more about the overall interaction paradigm. That is, what if ChatGPT has taught a new generation that the best way to interact with AI is to ask "it" something (be it via text, voice, images, etc) and get something back – not just from your content, but from beyond. Apple doesn't currently have a way to do that – aside from the ChatGPT fallback. What if Apple needs to answer this call still?
Logically, this would be through Siri – assuming they can get Siri up to snuff, which is still a big assumption. And maybe we get to the point where "she" merges with Spotlight? And then Apple could just swap-out ChatGPT/Gemini/Claude/etc with their own LLM output. But the brilliance of their model here is that they can do this slowly and subtly over time. This doesn't have to be a rip-out Google Maps and shove a wonky Apple Maps in users' faces situation. The query routing system Apple has built should allow them to just slot in their own results as they're confident in them.
Or perhaps they do decide that this is just like the web search paradigm. In that case, they strike a deal with one of these players to be the default chatbot in exchange for a handsome fee and/or revenue split.
Well, it's happening. (Right down to striking those deals.) And it didn't even require getting it wrong (again) in iOS 27 before inevitably doing it correctly in iOS 28! Here's Mark Gurman reporting for Bloomberg:
As part of the shift toward this approach, Apple is testing a dedicated Siri app for the iPhone, iPad and Mac later this year. It rivals outside AI tools while also giving users a central place to access their past interactions.
Yeah, so just like every other AI service. Thank you.
But perhaps the most wild element of this report is that Gurman has either seen the new app or been in touch with someone who has and can describe it in great detail. (The leaks he's able to pull out of Apple remain increasingly wild to me.)
The app’s main interface will display prior conversations in either a list or a grid of rounded rectangles with text previews. Users can pin favorite chats, save older conversations, search across interactions and start new chats via a prominent plus button.
The conversation view resembles a thread in Apple’s Messages app, with chat bubbles and a text entry field. It also includes a toggle for switching in and out of voice mode and an option to upload attachments — such as documents and photos — for analysis. These features have already become standard in modern chatbot interfaces.
When starting a new conversation, Siri will offer suggested prompts based on prior usage. The interface adapts to light and dark modes, with a white background and dark text or the inverse.
Again, all of that sounds good/standard. And amazingly, he goes even more in-depth on the UI Apple is clearly at least testing:
Users will still be able to trigger Siri via the power button or voice command, but Apple is testing a redesigned interface that replaces the glowing edges effect introduced in iOS 18.
One new design in testing places Siri at the top of the screen within the Dynamic Island, the mini-interface that Apple introduced in 2022. After it’s activated, Siri will prompt the user to “Search or Ask.”
When processing a request, a pill-shaped indicator labeled “Searching” appears, alongside a glowing Siri icon. Once results are ready, the interface expands into a larger translucent panel with Apple’s Liquid Glass design. Users can pull the menu down further to begin conversing back and forth.
This points to the stuff that other AI apps/services can't do because they don't control the iPhone, Apple does. Again, Apple went about this at first all wrong because the chatbot interface won, but being able to do both will likely be pretty killer here. I "hack" this together by using the iPhone "Action Button" to invoke ChatGPT, but it just launches the app, it's not as seamless as, say, hitting a button and talking to Siri.1 Assuming Siri actually works now – thanks, Google – we could be getting the best of both worlds from Apple. And that could actually push the AI interaction paradigm forward.
Beyond the chatbot!
This points directly to Apple's potential power here. Yes, in AI. Yes, despite years of missteps and setbacks. If they can come in now with an actually working Siri – I know, I know! – in both app and system-wide form, they could actually vault right back to the top of the AI conversation.
The other players are all working on hardware to try to counter the hold Apple has with the iPhone. But they're not going to replace the iPhone – at least not anytime soon, so... Again, there's a world in which Apple, despite the endless wandering through the AI desert, spending basically nothing on CapEx while their peers spend hundreds of billions, wins. Again.
The bigger issue remains that if by outsourcing the core work to Google, Apple never is able to catch up from a pure technology stand-point and this encumbers the true "what's next" shift in hardware. But again, that's likely years away. The hope would be that Apple is simply buying themselves more time to meet that moment as well. I'm more skeptical of that longer term if AI really does change everything, which is why I don't think it's completely insane to try to buy Anthropic right now. (It's just mostly insane.)
Anyway, it all starts with getting Siri right. And that includes implementing Siri right. And that means there needs to be an app for that.
One more thing: Back to Gurman's report:
Apple is also working to replace its existing on-device search system, Spotlight, with Siri. The new unified interface helps users find local content or submit broader queries in one place.
Yes, this obviously needs to happen. Per my point two years ago, Siri and Spotlight should merge into the one search to rule them all.
I don't know about the reported "Search or Ask" functionality per above – sounds sort of like the 'Dr. Know' system from the movie actually called A.I. which confuses the user. In this case, an AI android. "Flat fact?"
1 You can sort of "hack" this together too thanks to Apple's Shortcuts app, but it's still a bit more wonky than a true system-level integration. ↩
2026-03-24 22:19:32
The opening is almost like the beginning of the music video for U2's "Where the Streets Have No Name". Just about a minute in, we see him getting mic'd up, ready to take the outdoor stage. Not Bono. Steve Jobs.
The year is 1999. There is no black turtle neck, but rather a gray long-sleeve tee. The jeans are ripped in a very 1990s way. The music fades as Jobs walks up, looking a bit tired but healthy. He is just 44 years old.1
Yes, a new video of Jobs has been unearthed. And yes, it simply must be written about. This is the way.
And it seems like perfect timing for this video to surface given that Apple has just unveiled the MacBook Neo – the first laptop to come in fun colors since the candy-colored iBooks back in the day. This video is that day. The setting is 1 Infinite Loop – Apple's main HQ before the spaceship landed – and it's a breezy day in July 1999. Jobs and a lot of the team has just returned from New York where they used Macworld to unveil the consumer laptop. Notably, the final piece of the puzzle Jobs laid out when he returned two years prior to the company he founded.
Yes, the quadrant was now complete.
Jobs clearly felt great about the unveiling. "Everyone is going nuts – including our competitors," he said to laughs. Again, it sounds a lot like today.
He goes on and on about how "awesome" the iBook is – especially since it had to follow the iMac, an incredibly tough act to follow. And while others had struggled to do consumer portables well because of all the corners that need to be cut in order to make such devices affordable Jobs believed Apple nailed it and seemingly couldn't help but grab one to show it off, just like he would in a normal keynote.
Speaking of, he told the crowd of employees about his favorite moment in his presentation when he was able to walk around with the iBook, surfing the web. As he told it, everyone was trying to figure out what was going on. "And then we told them about AirPort."
It's nearly impossible to think about now, but in 1999, wireless internet was not ubiquitous. So this must have seemed like pure magic. And Jobs describes how they were able to make this work on a consumer device thanks to some technology from Lucent – which Jobs noted that Apple was able to "extract" out of their labs.
The resulting AirPort product was something Jobs was clearly proud of. "It just works." Hearing such praise now, it's especially wild to me that Apple was so quick to kill the product off a decade ago – which I wrote about at the time as their "ErrorPort" moment.
Steve Jobs, famously, didn't like to look back. But he also clearly recognized the moment here, two years after returning to the company, with Apple having just completed that all-important quadrant.
"You've completely overhauled Apple," he beams to his employees.
With the iBook in place, completing their original deceptively "simple" plan, Jobs notes that they can now enter a mode where they're turning over those four key products as fast as they can to stay ahead of the competition. The same basic strategy Apple has today, of course. Albeit with a product lineup not quite so simple.
But Apple was a very different company in 1999. This was a couple years before the iPod, so all that mattered was moving Macs. Jobs noted that Apple was selling about 4 to 5 million computers a year. Last year, Apple likely shipped just north of 25 million Macs. And about 75 million iPads. And maybe another 250 million iPhones.
Jobs pulled out a piece of paper to close with "one last thing":
"A lot of people have declared our turnaround officially complete. And you would have to say that’s true. We’ve had seven consecutive profitable quarters. We made $200M last quarter. That’s a lot of money! And we’ve got great products. But, you know, I never looked at it that way. The reason I came here had nothing to do with turning Apple around. Because that’s about the company. And I know we all love this company, but what we love even more is putting these great products out into the world and seeing people use them. And so the reason I came back here. And I’m sure the reason you’re here isn’t to turn Apple around, it’s to make Apple great again. Right? And I think we now have that possibility. We now have that possibility with the work you’ve all done in the last two years. The foundation we have now is really great."
This is a great message delivered in a very Jobsian way: this wasn't about a turnaround, this was about putting great products into the world. The turnaround was a byproduct of that.
Oh and did you catch it? Yes, Steve Jobs may have invented "MAGA" before anyone in Donald Trump's orbit did. Make Apple Great Again.
Jobs went on to note that the real secret to Apple's success is that they're the last company willing to "make the whole widget". And because they don't have to constantly convince endless partners to do the work they believe will make for great products, they have a unique advantage over the Dells and Compaqs of the world. Even yes, Microsoft.
Talking about their wireless breakthroughs, Jobs noted that the PC guys simply couldn't do it even though the technology has been there for the taking. But when Dell or Compaq go to Microsoft to get the software to make it all work, they'll get: "Well, it’s not high volume. We’ve got 38 million things wrong with our software. We’ll put it at the bottom of the list." This drew huge laughs from the audience.
Nothing beats a shot at Apple and Jobs' old foe.
"We can break through those things and bring innovation to customers because we’re the last people in this business that give a shit about making great computers."
Finally, Jobs spoke to focusing on Apple's core markets with creative professionals, consumers, and education. He lamented how Apple has slipped a bit in the latter market and wanted Apple to renew focus. Which seemingly worked for a time, before focus was lost again – only to be regained again with the MacBook Neo! It all comes back around...
"I happen to know all the things in the pipeline. And I can tell there are so many more great things coming. It’s unbelievable. The products are just unbelievable. The best stuff i’ve ever seen in my life. So I think we’re really gonna be able to rock and roll the next few years."
Indeed, they did.
1 Holy shit, I realized when doing the math that Jobs in this video is almost the exact same age that I am right now. That's sort of wild to think about... ↩
