Gregg Thurman on Trump, Xi, Huang, Cook - 'After the Ternus announcement, I speculated that responsibilities of the CEO position had become too great for one person. But that a co-CEO would have too complicated. To address this conundrum Cook moved to a new position, Executive Chairman of the Board of Directors, and Ternus became CEO. Cook oversaw the political aspect of Apple, and Ternus oversaw the operational aspect of CEO, effective splitting duties that Cook performed while he was CEO into two distinct responsibilities. This bifurcation of responsibilities enabled continuity of leadership, but maybe more importantly, allowed Ternus to focus on Apple’s product future to a greater extent than would have been possible without the bifurcation. This tells me that Apple has great expectations for its product future, starting now.'
on Meet the market for Apple Intelligence - 'Upvoted, Bart. Is a “deal” building between Apple and Microsoft? Apple’s clearly the best hardware/Cloud to run “super-Copilot” on…. Microsoft has Surface, but Apple has unified memory down pat AND all the built-in security. Plus, as you say, trust, which takes a long time to build up.'
on Meet the market for Apple Intelligence - 'Would you trust Microsoft, OpenAI, ChatGTP and Antrhropic? Well, I’d trust each of those SLIGHTLY more than I’d trust Meta. But yeah, trust is A Very Big Deal. The flip side, by the way, is liability. I’ve been arguing for software vendor liability for decades. Maybe AI and its failures will be sufficient to get legislatures to start holding software companies legally and financially liable for their failures.'
on Meet the market for Apple Intelligence - 'https://finance.yahoo.com/technology/article/microsoft-ceo-satya-nadella-on-ai-trust-is-going-to-be-the-biggest-issue-for-us-163733897.html Daniel Howley • Technology Editor Fri, September 25, 2026 Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella on AI: ‘Trust is going to be the biggest issue for us’ “Microsoft (MSFT) on Friday unveiled a revamped version of its Copilot software, combining its chat, coding, and agentic capabilities into a single package, which it calls Autopilot. The platform is designed to serve as a kind of one-stop shop for your work needs, such as preparing a pitch document or putting together a spreadsheet, then having AI reason over the data to provide users with insights they may not see. But to ensure it wins over customers, CEO Satya Nadella said, Microsoft will need to win users’ trust. “Trust is going to be the biggest issue for us,” Nadella told Deirdre Bosa. “Can I really trust [AI] with all of my credentials when it does autonomous activity? How do I make sure that this is something that I can feel that I’m in control of? And in the enterprise, this is everything,” he said. The new Copilot also offers two billing options: standard per-user plans for general AI work and a pay-as-you-go option for long-tail, multistep agentic work. Nadella said the dual offerings will prove especially beneficial to users as AI model makers and providers gradually reduce customer subsidies. ((Oh, that’s what AI providers have been doing, subsidizing customers to get them used to AI before asking big per token costs or subscriptions?)) “The way I think about our subscriptions [is] it’s ultimately going to deliver more value every day of the week as models improve. And then on top of that, we have usage-based functionality that any user at any time can use with no limits,” the CEO explained. “And so that combination gives us, I think, the right business model to be able to both deliver broad access, deliver the [return on investment] that’s expected, and most importantly, continuously be aligned with where customers will see value,” he said. Microsoft said Copilot will automatically route user prompts to the best available model from OpenAI (OPAI.PVT) and Anthropic (ANTH.PVT), though you’ll also be able to manually choose models. The company said it will add additional options from other model makers in the future. The Windows maker said that the per-seat option will have token limits that most people will never hit. Those who need additional capabilities, however, can opt for usage-based billing.” Gee, running AI on local Mac based single or clusters and get similar if not faster, less expensive, less power expended, and wholly owned computers & AI output, using the same providers and others of your own choosing, sure seems competitive. Especially if you consider the security and privacy issues. Trust has to be earned, then it is given. Which tech company has that trust (already) and has built it with everyday consumer who happen to be the people populating “enterprise”? Would you trust Microsoft, OpenAI, ChatGTP and Antrhropic?'
on Meet the market for Apple Intelligence - 'I’m betting the current market for solo operators among LLM peddlers is small. Mainly because the cost, utility and ROI to a user at that level is crystal clear, and they’re able to spin on a dime in changing what and how they do things without having to work through an often-resistant corporate bureaucracy. They also have multiple options for LLMs to use, which means they will pay as little as possible, always. I think the market for enterprise AI is eventually going to be ripe for Apple (not that it isn’t already, but most companies of any size move slowly, especially with IT and not really tracking associated costs very well – and we’re already seeing that with AI and its associated costs and lack of quantifiable ROI). And that’s because if Apple delivers on AI as it looks like it’s going to, then as with the days of enterprise being absolutely dominated by the blackberry and internal IT types refusing to permit or support Apple machines or smart phones, eventually they’ll be forced to follow their employees’ very strong preferences and let Apple in the door. And then, even ignoring the lack of reliability of today’s LLMs for quality output, its unclear ROI, and the total lack of security, organizational leaders will discover that the costs of AI-associated internal IT and external AI tokens far exceeds costs of Apple Intelligence, and that the Apple users are significantly more efficient in the work-place than the non-Apple users. AI’s trajectory is hardly an original story, and Apple’s path with it, internally and quite possibly in its business and dominance, is similarly not original. Assuming Apple delivers on AI with the same quality standards as everything else it’s put out, in 3 years it’s going to be a global power in AI. And the majority of today’s US LLM peddlers will have been displaced.'
on Trump, Xi, Huang, Cook - 'Thank you Apple for being an energy leader and leading the charge for change. Fossil fuel data centers are not helping our world predicament.'
on Meet the market for Apple Intelligence - '30 million sole traders pulling in $1.8 trillion. Sounds impressive until it isn’t. That’s an average of $60,000 each. That doesn’t leave a lot of room for shiny new kit from Apple. (Especially at current prices). And sure the author notes relevance to the ‘top slice’ of that cohort, but how big is that relevant slice? 1 million, 2 million, 5 million? Does that move the needle much for Apple?'
on Apple's market cap keeps bouncing off $5 trillion - 'I am neither recommending or endorsing Broadcom as an investment. I do follow the company in part because it’s an important Apple supplier. I’ve been quite curious why generally conservative Morningstar has such a high Fair Value Estimate – $650 – for an enterprise that closed today at $350.36. https://apple.news/A7o4-ppmJSoScDyHLpoqNcQ I think this article from Morningstar is good reading for anyone interested in a key Apple supplier, chip makers and the tech market in general. Personally I do like the company and I’ve been fascinated by how and by how much it has grown.'
