2025-11-17 19:57:08
For the past several months, there's been a steady drumbeat of Apple not just shifting to a more fluid "year round" iPhone launch strategy, but word that it would start in 2026. There's enough reporting on the matter from various sources now that it seems to be happening:
In recent years, including 2025, Apple has released four main iPhones — two Pro models and two mid-tier versions — in the fall. And it occasionally debuted a lower-cost SE or “e” model in the early part of the year. But in 2026 and beyond, the company’s smartphone release schedule will look markedly different.
Apple plans to unveil three high-end models — the iPhone 18 Pro, iPhone 18 Pro Max and a new foldable — in fall 2026. Then, roughly six months later, it will roll out the iPhone 18, iPhone 18e and potentially a refreshed iPhone Air. I expect this pattern to continue for years to come, with Apple launching between five and six new models annually.
The shift to "Premium" models in the Fall, followed by "Regular" models in the Spring is in line with the earlier Wayne Ma report for The Information. As I wrote at the time in May, this is both a massive change, but also seemingly makes some sense:
This would be a massive shift in strategy. Releasing the more premium models of the iPhone before the "regular" models would clearly shift the lineup more towards the former in terms of sales. But it would probably also help the lineup overall in allowing Apple to be constantly shipping new devices at different price points. And it would shift the hardware back to a state more in-step with software, as iOS is increasingly now released year-round, versus all-at-once in the fall.
This is the old tried and true "if you really care about the latest and greatest, pay up" model. But it also has the side benefit of perhaps allowing Apple to stagger production a bit more, which in turn could help diversify production a bit more – as in, to other countries outside of China for the latest models.
But with the more recent news that the iPhone Air may be "delayed" to be on the Spring schedule next year as well (more on this in a minute), I'm now wondering if this won't be too large of a change for Apple when it comes to consumer expectations. That is, every year, for nearly two decades now, everyone is well aware that new iPhones are launched in the Fall. And while many such people who buy in the Fall buy the Pro models, many others do not, opting for the more affordable "regular" variety. In fact, it hardly seems a stretch to think that those less in the know about Apple rumors and shipping schedules are more likely to go with those "regular" models. And so next year, that customer may head to the Apple Store thinking they're going to get a new iPhone 18, only to find that, sorry, only the iPhone 18 Pro and Fold models are available. And those are far more expensive than what they're used to buying.
To be fair, that same customer may be okay going with last year's iPhone 17 model, but it won't be a new iPhone model. And that also raises the question if Apple still plans to drop the price of last year's models by $100 with the Fall releases or if they'll do that now as well in the Spring alongside the new "regular" models? That would be a pretty raw deal for my hypothetical customer.
With all that in mind, I've been wondering why Apple doesn't do a more balanced option along the lines of:
Fall 2026:
Spring 2027:
But again, all of this reporting suggests Apple is already locked in with the "Premium" Fall and "Regular" Spring cadence, at least for the coming year. Maybe they could do the above in '27/'28, or maybe my worries above won't matter. It's just such a big change to the way Apple has sold (and marketed) the iPhone to date that there's obviously real risk with such a change. Of course, Apple has a lot of such changes coming to the lineup.
Regarding the iPhone Air in particular, back to Gurman:
The Information reported that a second-generation iPhone Air had been postponed from next fall into 2027 in order to add a second rear camera (and that a vapor chamber and beefier battery are in the cards). The news outlet also cited poor sales as a cause for the schedule change.
But from what I’ve heard, the second-generation iPhone Air hadn’t actually been earmarked for next year — at least not in recent months. So this wasn’t a delay due to the phone’s sales performance. The fact that Apple named the device the iPhone Air (rather than the iPhone 17 Air) signaled that it didn’t want to tie the product to an annual release schedule.
Here's where I'll point out something sort of humorous, as I wrote about that same Information report last week:
It will be interesting if Apple attempts to push back on this report at all – perhaps on background to other publications? Maybe there will be some casual comment that the device was never meant to be on a yearly cadence? They could even point to the fact that it was called the 'iPhone Air' and not the 'iPhone 17 Air' – which led to immediate speculation that it wouldn't be on a yearly release cycle.
Now I'm not saying that Apple officially fed this to Gurman – if anything, he's constantly on their shit list for breaking so many stories about the company – but I am saying that someone at Apple (his source) likely did with regard to that narrative which I correctly guessed. And that doesn't mean it's misdirection, of course. In fact, it's exactly in line with what I speculated when the 'iPhone Air' name was officially unveiled:
The worst kept secret in Cupertino (this year) is here: iPhone Air. Notably, it's not 'iPhone 17 Air', just 'iPhone Air' which stands out in the line up with iPhone 17 and iPhone 17 Pro. And it leads to the obvious question if Apple views this as a one-off design, perhaps if it doesn't sell well? That seems unlikely, so perhaps they'd just do an 'iPhone Air 2' next year? But that would be a bit awkward and confusing if they stick with the standard naming schemes for the other iPhones – i.e. do I buy an iPhone 18, an iPhone 18 Pro, or an iPhone Air 2 next year? Then again, next year should also see the 'iPhone Fold' introduced, so perhaps we're slowly moving away from the bigger numbers, which were always untenable at some point. Were we really going to get an 'iPhone 37' in 2045?
I certainly think it's fair and interesting to wonder if Apple did choose that name to give them such optionality here. Perhaps they never intended to release an Air every year, but maybe they would have, had it been a huge hit. Which it's clearly not out of the gate.
Anyway, Gurman's sources suggest the big change with the 'iPhone Air 2' may be less about another camera lens and more about a move to the 2nm process for the chip, which Apple is expected to shift to next year and yes, should help with battery life – something, of course, where the iPhone Air has a more acute need.
He also suggests that the real driver behind doing the Air was building up some expertise and production capabilities ahead of the 'iPhone Fold' – a notion I've written about before as well. Still, it's almost impossible to imagine Apple would release a product they thought would be a dud just to gear up for another product (one which, I may add, also may have sales challenges based on the likely price points).
Then again, they did release the Vision Pro...
One more thing: the most interesting element of Gurman's latest newsletter may not be any of the above (which again, was already largely known/reported), but instead that Apple may be killing off the Mac Pro. For whatever reason, Apple has had some real commitment issues when it comes to that device in the past many years. But they keep coming back to it, promising this time will be different. Before they go back to neglecting it. Now the success of the Mac Studio may have been the final death blow... Many professionals – true professionals who needed the tower and all its extensibility (or as much as Apple would allow anyway) – will not be happy.
M.G. Siegler
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M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
2025-11-16 23:43:12
Two weeks ago, Tim Cook turned 65. Technically, he has two years to go until "retirement age" for his cohort of workers in the US, but I'm not sure how much Cook needs to ensure his full social security payouts at this point. Undoubtedly far more important for his would-be exit from Apple is timing.
To that end, here is some reporting from Tim Bradshaw, Stephen Morris and Michael Acton, and Daniel Thomas for the FT:
Apple is stepping up its succession planning efforts, as it prepares for Tim Cook to step down as chief executive as soon as next year.
Several people familiar with discussions inside the tech group told the Financial Times that its board and senior executives have recently intensified preparations for Cook to hand over the reins at the $4tn company after more than 14 years.
The fact that there are four reporters bylined on this 330-word post suggests that this is more than just idle speculation based on some loose chatter and more that this is a potential trial balloon on the idea that at least some people "in the know" are floating out there...
That doesn't mean it will happen, of course. Ultimately, the decision is Cook's. While there had been some speculation over the past year that perhaps he would get nudged out the door, that talk quieted quickly when Apple's stock came roaring back to life on the back of some better-than-expected earnings (not to mention some inkling that perhaps Apple isn't in such a bad position to have largely missed the AI boat to date – certainly from a cost perspective!). As the story notes, Cook took Apple from a $350B company at the time he took over for Steve Jobs to a $4T company – a full order of magnitude leap from an already insane base.
Perhaps the only chief executive with a better run is Cook's counterpart Satya Nadella, who not only took Microsoft from around a $280B market cap to also hitting that $4T mark (well before Apple, though they've since slid back a bit), but also had to take over a company in need of an actual change in direction after a lost decade under Steve Ballmer. Cook, of course, just needed to execute on the vision Jobs laid out – and he was the person best suited for that task perhaps in the entire world.
"Just" obviously undersells Cook. He's actually been CEO of Apple longer than Steve Jobs ever was (people forget that Jobs was not the CEO during the early years of Apple through when he was infamously ousted – his actual CEO tenure, including his "iCEO" time, started in 1997 and ended when he handed the reins to Cook in 2011). And much of the past several years have seen Cook execute upon strategies that went far beyond what Jobs may have envisioned, in particular with Services. Which is now gunning for the iPhone business itself in terms of size and importance to Apple.
My point is that no one (with any actual power or sway) is telling Cook to leave. I don't care how embarrassing Apple's AI miss has been. But this is also perhaps a unique moment in time for him to leave, if he wanted to.
Beyond the aforementioned stock price being right back at all-time highs, with a market cap second only to NVIDIA now, Cook seems on the cusp of delivering a "blockbuster" holiday quarter, which will likely be reflected when Apple reports their next quarterly earnings in late January. Apple previewed as much in their last earnings report, which is why the stock is back to where it is after under-performing the rest of Big Tech for the past couple of years (yes, in part thanks to the AI issues but also the tariff/China issues). When thinking about legacy, as anyone in Cook's position after his long tenure now must, certainly there's a desire to go out "on top". And there may be no better time than after that next earnings release.
The company is unlikely to name a new CEO before its next earnings report in late January, which covers the critical holiday period.
An announcement early in the year would give its new leadership team time to settle in ahead of its big annual keynote events, its developer conference in June and its iPhone launch in September, the people said.
Again, the FT reports that "although preparations have intensified, the timing of any announcement could change". And this could just be a matter of teeing it up for Cook if he decides he wants to make the move after thinking about it, say, over the holidays. And the key part of that will obviously be having the succession plan in place. Which it sure seems to be:
John Ternus, Apple’s senior vice-president of hardware engineering, is widely seen as Cook’s most likely successor, although no final decisions have been made, these people said.
This, of course, backs up the reporting Mark Gurman put out there for Bloomberg last year about Ternus likely being "the chosen one". This was somewhat of a surprise at the time because Jeff Williams held the all-important COO title that Cook held before his elevation. But Williams is only slightly younger than Cook and sure enough, earlier this year, Williams announced his own retirement – something which just formally took place last week. That sure seemed to set the stage for the 15-years-younger-than-Cook Ternus...
And Ternus also seems well placed given the fact that while he's younger than most of Apple's other senior leaders, his tenure at the company is still impressive: he'll mark 24 years at the company next May – nearly half his life has been spent at Apple. And that's something which clearly matters to Apple. And the fact that he's been overseeing hardware for many years now also makes him seem particularly well-suited to take over now. Again, with the AI work in flux, it feels like Apple's answer has been to double-down on their strengths, the biggest of which is something else no other company can seemingly match: hardware. Ternus feels like the right guy for the right time in Apple's history.
At the same time, it's also a company clearly in need of some changes as has been showcased so overtly in public by the AI situation. The cultural changes seemingly needed to be able to execute in the Age of AI are the main reason I might argue for Apple to do some major M&A – i.e. it would be less about the tech than the talent and the shift in mindset. But perhaps a "simple" change at the top of Apple will be enough to change things. That plus the fact that many of those other top lieutenants will undoubtedly be retiring soon alongside Cook and Williams.
Might one of Ternus' first moves be to significantly change the App Store rules? Wishful thinking? Probably. But it could be an Microsoft Office-for-iPad-like moment, which Nadella quickly executed to signal change, if nothing else?
Cook has voiced his preference for an internal candidate to be chosen as his replacement, saying the company has “very detailed succession plans”.
“I love it there and I can’t envision my life without being there so I’ll be there a while,” he told singer Dua Lipa on her podcast in November 2023.
Aside from going to Dua Lipa for my Apple news, I also often turn to John Gruber, who notes that while Cook may retire from the CEO role, that doesn't mean he has to fully leave the company (a notion I've put out there before as well)1:
I would also bet that Cook moves into the role of executive chairman, and will still play a significant, if not leading, role for the company when it comes to domestic and international politics. Especially with regard to Trump.
I would just note that the only (loose) retirement policy Apple has in place is for board directors, who typically step down by the time they're 75. That would give Cook another solid decade of being involved, if he chooses. And the company would probably be wise to choose that for at least the next several years for the Trump and China angles, if nothing else, as Gruber notes. Wouldn't it be nice to usher in Ternus and not have him have to worry about delivering golden trinkets to Trump on day one? Ideally, he wouldn't have to deal with any of that nonsense, Cook could still do it. That feels like a very Cook maneuver too – being willing to take that bullet for Apple, as it were.
So yeah, it's pretty clear that Cook is going to retire soon and it's just a question of when. And while he might have liked to wait to get one more product – in particular, the Smart Glasses, which other reports had him very focused on – out the door, he also has to be considering the macro picture. Not only do things look nice and stable for Apple now, but there are potentially storm clouds on the horizon with AI bubbles and what not. If the stock market were to tank – for any reason, independent of Apple – Cook might have a harder time leaving.
I mean, just look at what happened to Disney when Bob Iger left, handing over the reins to Bob Chapek just as COVID was hitting...2 Things got so bad that Iger had to come back! And now he's trying to get it right this time, leaving in early 2026...
One more thing: for what it's worth, the aforementioned Gurman noted that "I don’t get the sense anything is imminent" around Cook retiring. But for as good as Gurman's sources are within Apple, this one is very likely a need-to-know situation. And anyone with such info might be willing to let it be known in a targeted way so there's not a market shock when it happens...
M.G. Siegler
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M.G. Siegler
1 I would also note that another company where the CEO stepped into the executive chair role is Nike, where Cook is on the board. Mark Parker executed that move before John Donahoe – someone Cook helped directly recruit – stepped in (though that didn't turn out so well)... ↩
2 Iger also stepped off the board of Apple a year before leaving his Disney post the first time... ↩
2025-11-15 22:28:31
Launching a new chat app is just about the hardest thing you can do in tech. And with each passing year, as the incumbents are more entrenched with more users, it gets harder. In 2025, everyone already has their chat app of choice and it's not just getting one user to switch, it's getting that user and all their friends/connections they wish to chat with to switch. Even if they're able to pull over a few people, it will fragment the connections, now requiring people to use multiple apps. These days, many of us may use two or three chat apps (or more!) for different purposes (work, friends, etc) but even those are pretty well established at this point.
Of course, it's slightly easier if you're not doing it from scratch. Which is why apps like Spotify and now Xitter keep trying to do it. The thought is if hundreds of millions of people are already using your app, why not let them do the most social thing of all (at least online): chat? This has worked to some extent with Instagram, but that was also in part because Meta already had other chat apps and could leverage those graphs/connections. But for the most part, layering in chat to an app doesn't really work because it's not really the core function of the app and it feels tacked-on at best. Now OpenAI is going to try their hand at this:
Today, we’re beginning to pilot a new experience in a few regions that makes it easy for people to collaborate with each other—and with ChatGPT—in the same conversation. With group chats, you can bring friends, family, or coworkers into a shared space to plan, make decisions, or work through ideas together.
Whether you’re organizing a group dinner or drafting an outline with coworkers, ChatGPT can help. Group chats are separate from your private conversations, and your personal ChatGPT memory is never shared with anyone in the chat.
This is a pretty limited test, only available in Japan, New Zealand, South Korea and Taiwan.1 But I suspect it will expand fairly quickly, because I suspect it might actually work – at least to some extent. The reason why here should also be obvious: ChatGPT is already a chat app.
Sure, it's not a chat app in the traditional sense in that to date you haven't been chatting with people, but you have been chatting with AI. And it's by far the most popular chat-with-AI service. It's a chat app quickly approaching a billion users.
In that sense, it's almost strange that you can only chat with AI and not the other people you know that are clearly using it. So that's what OpenAI is now enabling.
Granted, this being-social-with-humans element is not the normal behavior of the service to date, so the already-large user base could reject it. But just as likely is that it makes ChatGPT more sticky because you can now not only chat with AI, but with your friends too, and rope in that AI as needed/wanted.
The main problem may be getting the UI/UX correct for this shift. You can see a world in which trying to make ChatGPT more traditionally social muddles the message, quite literally. And there's already an increasing amount of stuff going on in ChatGPT as OpenAI keeps adding in more functionality. But if they can keep it relatively simple, I could see this working.
And actually, group messaging is the exact functionality that I felt was missing from OpenAI's other app, Sora, from the get-go. The TikTok-like social feed has been fun, but once the novelty wears off, it's going to be more fleeting for many people. The real key to Sora are the "cameos" – inserting people into the videos. This has worked at viral scale for famous people, but that's obviously problematic for OpenAI as well. "Regular" people are far less problematic (assuming they opt-in to letting cameos be created of course!) but it's always going to be weird for many people to post those to an open-ended feed that anyone can follow. Having the ability to make and send these types of Soras to smaller groups makes a lot of sense.
And clearly OpenAI knows this as it's one of the first major tweaks they've made to the app. Rather than default to posting to everyone, the share flow now includes picking people/groups to send your Soras to. That's good, and it could be even better as a feature of, say, a social layer of ChatGPT itself with it's nearly one billion users.
Of course, the biggest push back on all of this will be the privacy/safety angle. (OpenAI's help page on the matter is actually quite informative and straightforward – notably, they can use the contents of the chat for training unless one person in the group has opted out.) And that's why OpenAI is leaning heavily on the messaging around that aspect, as they reiterate in their post:
Group chats are separate from your private conversations. Your personal ChatGPT memory is not used in group chats, and ChatGPT does not create new memories from these conversations. We’re exploring offering more granular controls in the future so you can choose if and how ChatGPT uses memory with group chats.
You’re in control. You have to accept an invitation to join a group chat. Everyone can see who’s in the chat or leave at any time. Group members can remove other participants with the exception of the group creator, who can only be removed by leaving themselves.
Additional safeguards for younger users. If someone under 18 uses group chats, ChatGPT automatically reduces exposure to sensitive content for everyone in the chat. Parents or guardians can turn group chats off entirely through parental controls(opens in a new window).
Of course, users have long been fine entrusting Meta with such data (though WhatsApp is different as it is encrypted) so the question is if the AI angle in particular changes that equation in some way. Meta has already inserted AI into their own chat apps from Messenger on down too, it's just not the main/leading functionality of those apps.
In that light, this is interesting/risky:
We’ve also taught ChatGPT new social behaviors for group chats. It follows the flow of the conversation and decides when to respond and when to stay quiet based on the context of the group conversation. You can always mention “ChatGPT” in a message when you want it to respond. We’ve also given ChatGPT the ability to react to messages with emojis, and reference profile photos—so it can, for example, use group members’ photos when asked to create fun personalized images within that group conversation.
One imagines that some people won't like the idea of AI just "lurking" in their chats. But you can also see a world in which that's actually fun and potentially useful. Especially since this started as an AI chat app! Still, this will be pretty polarizing, I imagine.
I also imagine that OpenAI would love continuing to show up Meta on their own turf: social. Just as Mark Zuckerberg is betting his entire company on trying to compete in AI.
One more thing: while I don't hit on it above, there are clearly some potentially interesting business use cases with ChatGPT groups as well. Ones that could be far more lucrative for the company, which seems important going forward...
1 A VPN is your friend if you wish to try it out – but yes, your connections, unless they're in one of those countries, will have to VPN-in as well. ↩
2025-11-15 01:17:50
Happy Friday. There is a lot below after writing a lot this week and it has been a while since I sent out a Signal. Enjoy.
Spyglass Signal is a newsletter featuring links and commentary from M.G. Siegler on timely topics found around the web.
💸 Apple's Mini Cut From Mini Apps – While the concept of "mini apps" aren't new from a classification standpoint for Apple (they've been called out in the guidelines since 2017), this is the first time they get their own monetization distinction: a 15% cut. Obviously, this comes from Apple agreeing with Tencent for WeChat mini games, but rather than keep it a China-only rule, they're opening it up – perhaps to continue to alleviate the pressure on the overall App Store cut. What was once a simple (but silly) 70/30 cut is now fractured into about a hundred different pieces and rules. Can we just shift to 80/20 (and 90/10 for small devs)? That's effectively what Google has agreed to do (thanks to Epic). Though, to be fair, they were dealt even more of a losing hand thanks to being "open". Apple, it seems, will continue to fight the losing battle. [TechCrunch]
🍿 The Battle for Warner Bros (and HBO) – With the initial bids due next week, it's shaping up to be Paramount vs. Comcast vs. Netflix. Paramount continues to have the first-mover advantage and the fact that they're willing to buy the entire company whereas Comcast and Netflix are said to just want the studio and streamer. But WBD also keeps rejecting their offers, clearly wanting to entice a bidding war – or perhaps prolong what seems inevitable so that David Zaslav can execute his splitting of the company in two and get some sort of bonus and perhaps better price. And if he can last that long, might Apple be lurking? Regardless, David Ellison is already making the case that Paramount Skydance is the only company that will be able to get this past the regulatory goalie. He knows a guy or two... But Comcast is also clearly polishing their golden trinkets to present... Wild that Netflix is this far along, in the data room and in the running, but hard to see them doing this deal. (Though certainly they can make a better case than the rest of Big Tech – to Wall Street, at least.) [WSJ 🔒]
🚗 Telsa + Apple CarPlay – There's seemingly a few things going on here. First and foremost, Tesla clearly needs a way to spur sales and they clearly think CarPlay could help. And that's wild considering how many of the automakers are going the other way, and pulling support for such systems because they're worried about handing the keys to Apple or Google (or just want to build their own software, which they always all suck at). At the same time, tensions may be starting to thaw between Elon and Apple – App Store silliness aside – we're now a long way from Apple's own (failed) car project and after some turbulence around Starlink + iPhones, they might be on the verge of working together there too. Personally, I wouldn't buy a car without CarPlay – it's just infinitely more convenient to use (assuming you're an iPhone user) than any shitty system a car manufacturer can draw up – even Tesla. You hear that, Rivian? [Bloomberg 🔒]
M.G. Siegler
For members of The Inner Ring ⭕️🔒
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
For members of The Inner Ring ⭕️🔒
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
For members of The Inner Ring ⭕️🔒
"One AI bubble has already burst — the bubble in saying there’s a bubble."
– The opening of a Deutsche Bank report from September, noting that Google Searches for the term "AI Bubble" had collapsed.
Well, so much for that! Queries for the term exploded higher than ever in October and that is continuing into November.
And now we have that very same bank exploring ways to hedge their data center exposure! Life comes at you fast – especially when AI is involved.
Below, members of The Inner Ring will find thoughts on:
• Thinking Machines at $50B
• Apple Bundling MLS into Apple TV
• Michael Burry's Bubble Bet
• 'Toy Story 5' Goes After the iPad
• and more...
2025-11-14 04:45:58
Without question, one of the most fascinating dynamics of the past few years has been the relationship between Microsoft and OpenAI. Drama aside, at the highest level, one of the largest companies in the world made one of the best investments in history. I mean that both monetarily (at least on paper) but also in terms of how it positioned Microsoft perfectly as one of the key players in what many believe to be the most important industry going forward – and perhaps ever: AI.
While much has been made about Satya Nadella being spooked by "The Blip" – the weekend where Sam Altman temporarily fell victim to a coup at OpenAI – and that clearly kicked off a series of events which saw Microsoft start to hedge their bet, it felt like that could have and perhaps should have been water under the bridge given OpenAI's continued growth and increasing prominence as the most important company in AI. At the highest level, that's why it has always felt so wild to me that Microsoft would not only be okay with creating more distance between the two companies, but was clearly pushing for it. This was a relationship that anyone in tech would kill for – or certainly pay any amount of money for, and they were! But instead of bear-hugging OpenAI and keeping everyone else at arm's length, Microsoft was basically saying "nah, we're good." Satya was famously good for his $80B, but not a penny more. Sorry Sam. How about an intro to Masa Son?
Obviously, there is a strategy here beyond simply fear or spite. But what was Microsoft thinking? As it turns out, all you had to do was ask Satya.
To be clear, in his appearance on The Dwarkesh Podcast, Nadella doesn't exactly come out and give a direct answer to the above. But thanks to some good lines of questioning from Dwarkesh Patel and his co-host for the episode, Dylan Patel of SemiAnalysis, it sure feels like we can triangulate enough data points to arrive at some answers...
2025-11-13 02:56:30
The most surprising element of Yann LeCun's reported exit from Meta is that he stayed as long as he did. Once Mark Zuckerberg swiftly executed his $14.3B hard reset of the company's AI efforts in June with the "hackquistion" of Scale.ai, the writing was on the wall – or at least, all over Meta's internal Workplace Chat, I suppose.
