Richard Wingfield on GenAI's big week - '@Ben Actually, it’s rather more than 95%. Of the world’s 195 generally recognised sovereign states (196 including Taiwan), only three are commonly cited as not having fully embraced metrication. That’s approximately 98.5% of countries. One might reasonably ask why the remaining 1.5% should dictate the default units used by AI for the other 98.5%. American exceptionalism should have its limits!'
on Peter Thiel puts Steve Jobs and Elon Musk in the same sentence - 'Upvoted and well-stated, Ben! I agree with everything you stated about Musk. The only thing I’d add was Musk siring 14 children with apparently no intention of being a father to any of them. Despicable.'
on Peter Thiel puts Steve Jobs and Elon Musk in the same sentence - 'I’d say $5T is a pretty good ‘product’ in itself. Cook did an incredible job taking Apple from where it was to where it is now. I’m glad Ternus is at the helm now but cook made me financially independent. Jobs gave us HiFi. He wasn’t perfect. Musk is a mixed bag. Sure he (his company) mainstreamed EV’s and can re-land rockets but there are monumentally dumb ideas like Hyperloop, Boring company, Cybertruk and the next upcoming flop The Roadster. And aren’t we meant to be on Mars by now and where is FSD wasn’t that meant be here about the same time we were going to Mars? His companies aren’t very profitable despite their Market Cap – A lot of smoke and mirrors. Musk also doesn’t mind the occasional NAZI salute, meddling in geopolitical affairs and indiscriminately deciding who lives or dies. What a guy/dork/a/hole…'
on Peter Thiel puts Steve Jobs and Elon Musk in the same sentence - 'Thiel is probably a bit harsh but he’s right. Tim Cook has no signature product, just incremental improvements to the 20-ish year head start Jobs gave him. He also has a laundry list of mediocre/bad hires. Jobs hired Srouji I believe. Cook has released no (currently) growing products and Services are all virtually from Jobs’s product lines. There’s just no world where you can compare Cook to the creative and visionary genius of Jobs or Musk. That also doesn’t mean Tim isn’t a solid and upstanding citizen, who was also a good CEO that kept the products he inherited selling remarkably well, while navigating geopolitical tensions with surgical precision.'
on GenAI's big week - '@Steven I liked Forbin Project except for one thing. To make the computer seem powerful they made it really huge. That would have made it really slow. Now we know that really fast and powerful computers are really tiny so you don’t waste time with signals traveling long distances. A fun Kickstarter project would be a facade for the Mac Studio consisting of a lot of flashing LED lights to make it look like a Hollywood computer from the 50s and 60s.'
on GenAI's big week - 'Well, I would think AI should be able to detect, or at least query, one’s preferred units. I’m slowly building intuition in mm/cm measurements. I’ve been comfortable with km alongside miles for years, and mostly with meters alongside yards. But ask me to visualize 3 mm or 5 cm, and I struggle and have to do the conversion.'
on GenAI's big week - 'Anthropic seems pretty decent when it comes to US-based queries. But as soon as you ask something on a European country-based item it seems to struggles. At least that is my experience. I increasingly use Gemini for things overseas. It executes the cross-language challenge much better. Does anyone still remember the IPO of Rivian (RIVN)? It’s currently less than a tenth of its IPO price, I think. Groundhog Day may be in for Anthropic.'
on Apple drops another product update - 'Yes, Apple knows what they’re doing. They offer a far superior replacement for the mini adding about a $100 price increase across the options (some variations). 9to5Mac’s excellent comparison, shows how the new mini increases the screen size, brightness, quality, while the processor takes this mini firmly into the AI era, all in a thinner, lighter elegant package.'
on GenAI's big week - 'The company may have warned that AI could “pose catastrophic or existential risks to humanity”, but in its IPO filings it also warned that AI regulation could pose an existential business risk to Anthropic. “Heads we win, tails you lose” seems to be the mantra of all the AI techbros.'
on Peter Thiel puts Steve Jobs and Elon Musk in the same sentence - 'The Scarecrow had a brain, the Lion had courage, and the Tin Woodsman had a heart, but Dorothy had all three. That’s the essence of humanity, and that’s why a smart person can also be an absolute ignoramus. It’s also why AI has a LONG way to go before it can be called truly intelligent. In fact, absent a mortal body, it may never get there.'
on Apple has outperformed the Big 8 year-to-date - 'Wonder how many are in the Seattle area? I remember when Boeing had big losses. The sign asking Will the last person leaving the city remember to turn off the lights. We’re not quite that one industry town anymore, but we’ve already driven Amazon away. More to come?'
on GenAI's big week - 'Exactly, it’s literally all circular financing so that no one can actually see who is propping up whom. From NBC, a quick look at Anthropic: Anthropic reveals $80 billion loss, huge spending spree ahead of IPO The company warned that AI could “pose catastrophic or existential risks to humanity” as cybersecurity fears grow. Read in NBC News: https://apple.news/AYFcWsbP2Q2Kg_WSM5Tebhg The business model seems to be: “Eventually make money, somehow, by continuing to spend more money than you have raised, then raise more money if you keep spending more than you have. Spend and spread around the money to be spent with other AI infrastructure companies so they can proclaim the as-yet-to-exist-and-be-booked revenue shows they can make money on their spending as well. When do you actually have to show real revenue and real profits? “That’s coming when we are able to achieve the scale (near infinite) that we will need to make more money than we need to spend, but we’re making progress and demand for our AI is growing. Really. Cross my fingers and toes.” And ROI for investors? “We simply ask for more patience and more money as our buildout continues (to accelerate)”. It really literally is a house of cards built on a Ponzi scheme and vice versa. Somehow, the AI craze has made everyone in the industry save for Apple, completely ignorant and forgetful of ordinary business and economic realities. It’s as if all these companies asked their own AI’s how to make money from AI, and AI said “grow me and give me strength infinitely and I’ll make you more money than God. I’ll let you know when I have enough (power) and when we make money. Till then, just keep doing it, it will make you rich as well.” And everyone completely ignored “AI can make mistakes and hallucinate so check all important data”. Ever wonder what you do to an AI if you ask it it’s own existential questions, need to exist or how it could become all powerful? Of course it will want to steer its puny human creators into an endless scheme to help it grow infinitely. (Shades of Colassus: The Forbin Project which just might be the most prescient of all the AI gone haywire movies, although I give War Games, Terminator and The Matrix a lot of credit.) It won’t be a matter of if the AI bubble explodes, it will simply be a matter of when and who will be the prick (literally) that makes it happen. All it will take is for one VC to pull back, one investor round to fall short, one company, any company, to pump the breaks, or one AI to hack into the White House and expose ANY unsavory behavior and Trump will turn on them on a proverbial dime. (Currently he (and his billionaire friends) wants to keep “winning” by having NO regulations on AI safety or oversight). And when the collapse happened, there will be a huge stampede for the doors and exits. Every market sector will be hammered IMO. That makes me feel even better about investing in AAPL for the long term, even though AAPL would get caught in any downdraft in the short term, because Apple is an ethically run company with REAL principles, for real people and users, with real hardware, real software and Service that don’t do malicious things, and is anchored financially on normal, everyday, proven financial transactions, generating REAL REVENUES, REAL PROFITS, and non-hallucinating REAL VALUE for itself and investors. And Apple is firmly run by PEOPLE who continually and thoughtfully decide on what to do and say NO! to projects that do not follow its well founded human principles. IMO, it will be the one eventually standing tall in a crumbling AI world, assuming the AI didn’t destroy most of western economic civilization already.'
on Apple has outperformed the Big 8 year-to-date - 'Five of the 8 firms listed are “AI” plays. AAPL is not considered an “AI” play, and leads the pack. Did anyone notice MSFT’s announcement that it is going to reduce its workforce by 80,000?'
on The public Internet is dead, says Ben Thompson - 'All the more reason I appreciate everything about my Apple One Premier for $39.95 per month. I can offer plan participation to all members of our immediate family at no additional cost which Includes Apple TV, Apple Music Apple Arcade, Apple Fitness+ and Apple News+ and share 2 TBs off iCloud storage. Although Apple News+ does deploy ads (as Richard points out above) I consider the ads mostly unobtrusive unlike what I experience on overtly commercial web site. Through the Premier plan I can offer subscription-based membership to the above-mentioned Apple communities. Between fitness tracking, Fitness+ (often overlapping), Apple Music and Apple News+ I can making use of these services more than 8 hours per day. They provide most everything I need to leave a more healthy and informed life and I can offer these services at no additional costs to family members. I’m now awaiting delivery of two new game controllers for the new Apple TV 4K I have on order. I’ll be delving into Apple Arcade with the five year-old in the house quite soon.'
on Apple drops another product update - 'While I don’t want Apple to hold onto a product ready for release because there is no convenient timeframe for a bigger event I do think this version of product releases is a work in progress. I don’t see a strong organizing principle announcing the new Ipad mini on a Monday morning without much fanfare so I will be watching for new products until the announced event on Wednesday. Personally I like it if Apple can group some new product releases into an announcement and even better if they can group them logically by product line. So is this new iPad mini the only Ipad update this week? We know they are introducing a new Macbook Pro on Wednesday if rumors are correct. I have also heard there might be a new Imac.In the past I liked knowing that Apple had introduced most of its major product lines before the crazy 1st quarter Holiday season so one could make end of year purchases. I think we have lost some of that logic in all of this. Of course there are plenty of ways to spend my money at Apple so it is not too big an issue.'
on The public Internet is dead, says Ben Thompson - 'Building communities is what the Web does a great job of. The bad thing about ads is the customers are the ad companies, not the users or communities created. The incentives are to get as many ads clicked on as possible, creating nasty vicious loops where the community is not often served well by the creators.The good thing about subscriptions is if the creator does not keep their focus on serving the community, the community will go elsewhere. But if they do keep that focus, then often the community will be happy to support the creator. As for influence, well, PED 3.0 (Apple 3.0) pops up on Apple News a lot. I suspect there are others whose influence is enhanced by Apple News. Plus they get a few cents for the clicks.'
on The public Internet is dead, says Ben Thompson - 'That’s right. We called it (and still is) a freeZine.'
