From Afar (2025)
Columns published in 2025. Those which are exclusive to paid members are denoted below, outlined in SEA GREEN.
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December 2025
10 Big Predictions for 2026
Here we are again, the final day of the year. Just like last year, I thought I’d use the countdown to 2026 to jot down some predictions. Last year, I thought most of my predictions wouldn’t happen, but actually many ended up being at least partially correct, so I’ll go
M.G. Siegler
Manus: The Hands of AI Fate
Meta acquires an AI business model…
M.G. Siegler
2025 Predictions Revisited
As we head into 2026, a look back at 2025... 🔮
M.G. Siegler
Apple’s ‘Pluribus’ Slop
As season one ends, it’s unclear if Apple shared AI slop or if they’re just sloppy, or both, or neither. What if they’re allegorically subversive?
M.G. Siegler
NVIDIA’s Christmas Eve ‘Hackquisition’ Miracle
NVIDIA gets a creator of the TPU, access to inference tech & IP, and stops anyone else from getting such things. All for a mere $20B…
M.G. Siegler
The AI Chaos Ladder
Where do the leaders in AI fall?
M.G. Siegler
THE INNER RING 🔒
YouTube Hands the Best Acquisition Oscar to Netflix
With YouTube poaching The Academy Awards, it sure feels like Netflix is going to be allowed to buy Warner Bros now…
M.G. Siegler
Conflicts & Interests in AI
*Of course* Amazon is investing in OpenAI, next up…
M.G. Siegler
THE INNER RING 🔒
Congrats Regulators, You Killed Roomba
Actually, you just put a Chinese robot in every home…
M.G. Siegler
The Grand Netflix Hollywood Unification Theory
Warner Bros/HBO is phase one of Netflix’s bigger play here…
M.G. Siegler
THE INNER RING 🔒
The Trillion Dollar Business Staring Apple in the Face
Apple needs a new hit product. Well, needs is relative. They want a new hit product. And Wall Street clearly wants them to have it. The new iPhones are a hit. But eventually Apple needs that new product. Services are doing great, but that’s not a singular sexy product. The
M.G. Siegler
THE INNER RING 🔒
OpenAI Strikes Back
OpenAI’s deal with Disney deals a blow to Google…
M.G. Siegler
Meta Bought a Headache
Is the internal AI pain ultimately going to be worth the price?
M.G. Siegler
THE INNER RING 🔒
Has Netflix Truly Found Religion in Movie Theaters?
They’re *saying* the right things, will they follow through…
M.G. Siegler
Apple Turnover
The recent executive and talent exits at Apple are both ordinarily orderly and completely chaotic…
M.G. Siegler
THE INNER RING 🔒
Oh No, a Tech Company is Buying a Movie Studio
This is the end of Hollywood? Come on.
M.G. Siegler
The Albanian Army Closes in on Warner Bros
In a stunning turn, Netflix enters pole position to take over Warner Bros and HBO…
M.G. Siegler
Drop the ‘Meta’. It’s Cleaner.
Meta contemplates a step back from the Metaverse…
M.G. Siegler
Live and Let Dye
The exit of Alan Dye augurs another Apple shift in UI
M.G. Siegler
OpenAI’s One Battle After Another
Beyond the Google threat, if Anthropic were to IPO before OpenAI…
M.G. Siegler
THE INNER RING 🔒
The AI Snow Globe is Shaken
2025 is ending with “Code Reds”, “retirements”, new models, worries about old models, new chips, worries about old chips, crushed earnings, stock shorting, oh my…
M.G. Siegler
November 2025
DeepMind Should Make the UK Proud and Embarrassed
A growing sense that growth will never return to the UK…
M.G. Siegler
THE INNER RING 🔒
NVIDIA’s “Delight”
Passive-aggressive tweets aside, NVIDIA has a point, but also a potential problem…
M.G. Siegler
Big Tech’s Wild Market Cap Ride
3 different leaders of the 6 this year, Google soon to be a 4th?
M.G. Siegler
NVIDIA Evokes the ‘E’ Word
Because they invoked it! Multiple times! In a memo!
M.G. Siegler
THE INNER RING 🔒
Failing to Realize Why Modern Antitrust Keeps Failing
Tim Wu is back with another misguided op-ed…
M.G. Siegler
‘Pluribus’ as AI Allegory
Not sure that was the intent, but it feels like a commentary on LLMs…
M.G. Siegler
Google Starts to Bridge OpenAI’s Product Moat
Gemini’s “Dynamic View” is a terrible name for a profound product…
M.G. Siegler
Big Tech Cash Was a Hammer Seeking an NVIDIA
How do you become a $5T company? It’s simple, really…
M.G. Siegler
THE INNER RING 🔒
When Steve Jobs Fused Silicon Valley & Hollywood at Pixar
“It’s the story, stupid.” Well, and the talent.
M.G. Siegler
Judge Rules FTC Wasted Everyone’s Time with Meta Case
Highlighting how Big Tech antitrust is broken in our current era…
M.G. Siegler
Collect Them All (AI Edition)
An ongoing list of the tangled web of Big Tech investments in Big AI…
M.G. Siegler
The Small NVIDIA Short
The stakes keep rising for NVIDIA’s earnings as bears & bubbles loom…
M.G. Siegler
LLMs vs. the World (Models)
A key schism in AI heading into 2026…
M.G. Siegler
THE INNER RING 🔒
Let Tim Cook
Might Tim Cook retire as CEO of Apple in early 2026? There are signs…
M.G. Siegler
Group ChatGPT
OpenAI has a shot at layering social on top of their AI…
M.G. Siegler
Why Microsoft Pushed OpenAI Aside
Satya Nadella’s vision for the future of computing makes it pretty clear that they feel the need to fully control their own AI destiny
M.G. Siegler
THE INNER RING 🔒
Meta AI vs. the World (Models)
The writing was on the (Facebook) wall for Yann LeCun; now can he run an end run around Zuck to AGI?
M.G. Siegler
THE INNER RING 🔒
The Wearable iPhone
The ‘iPhone Pocket’ continues a trend…
M.G. Siegler
Two AI Roads Diverged...
Anthropic goes for profit as OpenAI goes for broke
M.G. Siegler
THE INNER RING 🔒
“Hey, There’s a Bubble.”
Yes, it’s a bubble. Yes, that may be a good thing. Yes, it will hurt.
M.G. Siegler
IPOpenAI
What might an OpenAI IPO look like? Can the market hold to get them there? What if it doesn’t? Backstops? Government guaranteed loans?
M.G. Siegler
OpenAI’s Local AI Device Dreams
What if their would-be AI device doesn’t require a connection…
M.G. Siegler
Apple Finally Agrees to Fix Siri
They’ll swap Google billions for Gemini trillions (of parameters)…
M.G. Siegler
Google’s Epic Play Store Trade Puts More Pressure on Apple
Is 80/20 (86/14 or 91/9) the new 70/30 (85/15)?
M.G. Siegler
AI is Breaking the Browser’s Back
And it may fragment web usage across different tools depending on BD deals in place…
M.G. Siegler
How Low Will Apple Go?
With regard to the price of a lower-cost MacBook…
M.G. Siegler
October 2025
Buyer Beware Big Tech Gains (and Losses) Boosted By Big AI
On paper gains from valuation markups and paper losses from burn…
M.G. Siegler
OpenAI Gets Their Cake and Microsoft Gets Their Stake
Microsoft signs off on OpenAI’s PBC conversion in exchange for some more clear-cut and friendly terms
M.G. Siegler
Microsoft’s Halo Mary
It’s starting to feel like Xbox is dead, and Microsoft’s pricey gaming buys were huge blunders…
M.G. Siegler
Netflix Thaws Their Theatrical Stance
Stranger Things. Frankenstein. KPop. Narnia. AMC. Oh my…
M.G. Siegler
Some Thoughts on ChatGPT Atlas
OpenAI’s web browser enters the AI Browser Battle…
M.G. Siegler
AGI or Bust
Forget a “Bubble”, OpenAI has made this all a very binary bet…
M.G. Siegler
Apple’s AI Brain Bleed
Meta keeps poaching Apple’s AI talent and that’s a real problem…
M.G. Siegler
Spotify & Netflix Gun for YouTube’s Eyeballs
The video podcast partnership may portend a bundle…
M.G. Siegler
Apple TV+ Minus the Plus
A simple solution to confuse more people…
M.G. Siegler
OpenAI’s Rising Tide Strategy
Betting on virtuous cycle financing during a boom time…
M.G. Siegler
OpenAI’s Digital Assistant Device
Obvious challenges aside, it’s starting to come into focus…
M.G. Siegler
Sora’s Slop Hits Different
It’s about creative comedy creation, stupid
M.G. Siegler
Apple Confronts the Vision Pro Mistake
By fully shifting focus to smart glasses…
M.G. Siegler
Sora Soars
Another viral product hit for OpenAI, this time in video…
M.G. Siegler
September 2025
Thoughts on New Apple Things
A trip to the Scottish Highlands with a very orange iPhone 17 Pro Max (and Apple Watch Ultra 3 and AirPods Pro 3)…
M.G. Siegler
Grading Alexa+ on a Curve
Hopefully new devices bring a better version, because Alexa+ sounds like a miss for Amazon thus far…
M.G. Siegler
One Box Office Battle After Another
‘One Battle After Another’ is by all accounts fantastic. The marketing hasn’t been.
M.G. Siegler
The Mysterious “New Ideas” for AI Data Center Build Outs...
Perhaps not that mysterious, maybe more circular…
M.G. Siegler
TikTok’s American Dream
As investors take over a hot consumer product: what, me worry?
M.G. Siegler
OpenAI Sells Its Stake to Win AI
They need NVIDIA to beat Google, and Microsoft may live to regret it…
M.G. Siegler
NVIDIA (Intends to) Invest (Up to) $100B in OpenAI (Over Time)
Look, it’s a massive deal. But right now, it’s all about the optics…
M.G. Siegler
Meta Reframes Their Reality
They’re trying to back AI and Smart Glasses into the ‘Metaverse’…
M.G. Siegler
Apple’s Flight to Safety
A refocusing on design and hardware might be a good sign…
M.G. Siegler
Meta Looks to Overcome the ‘Glasshole’ Stigma
With Ray-Ban, they can keep the pressure on in the ‘smart glasses’ space as it shifts back to screens…
M.G. Siegler
OpenAI & Microsoft Agree to Agree, Tentatively
An important step – but one of many – as they clearly try to race towards PBC conversion…
M.G. Siegler
Paramount Skydance’s Blockbuster Bid for Warner Bros Discovery
One good idea, so many names…
M.G. Siegler
Apple’s ‘Plateau’ Event
Some no-brainer upgrades to AirPods, Apple Watch, and iPhone…
M.G. Siegler
Sony’s ‘KPop’ Gift
It shows them a path forward for a new flexible distribution deal…
M.G. Siegler
OpenAI Needs to Build Google Cloud Before Google Can Build ChatGPT...
Or: how to burn $100B+ in real time…
M.G. Siegler
A Cynical Read on Anthropic’s Book Settlement
$1.5B. Damn. Who can afford to pay that?
M.G. Siegler
Apple and Google Are So Back
The famous frenemies seems awfully aligned again…
M.G. Siegler
Instagram is No Longer Instagram
The iPad app – 15 years in the making – makes the priorities clear…
M.G. Siegler
Google, Apple, and Mozilla Win in the Antitrust Case Google Lost
Chrome stays. Payments stay. Exclusive placement goes. Some Search data goes.
M.G. Siegler
A Standing Ovation Epidemic Breaks Out in Venice
There is no known cure…
M.G. Siegler
August 2025
My Expensive Streaming Bundle
It’s less than I thought, but still completely untenable…
M.G. Siegler
Apple Weighs the Voting Machine
Will they do a big AI deal? Should they?
M.G. Siegler
Google Lost a Search Antitrust Case. Will Gemini Take the Blame?
As the remedies loom, AI is top of mind…
M.G. Siegler
The 3 iPhone Problem
An interesting dilemma coming soon to iPhone users: choice.
M.G. Siegler
KPopping Netflix’s Theatrical Stance
Netflix just had the number one movie at the box office – yes, Netflix.
M.G. Siegler
Peering Back at the OpenAI “Constellations”
The aggregate valuation looks to surge past $400B…
M.G. Siegler
Google’s Distractingly Smarmy Pixel Event
Next time, let’s not use the talk show host or infomercial set?
M.G. Siegler
The Scale is New, the Idea Isn’t
A fictionalized movie about BlackBerry feels familiar…
M.G. Siegler
Meta Shoves More Shit Into IG
Reposts and Snap-ish Maps add new problems & cruft to Instagram…
M.G. Siegler
M.S.N.O.W.
MSNBC, peacockblocked from the ‘NBC’ bit, goes acronym wild…
M.G. Siegler
I Decree: Paramount Should Buy IMAX
A new idea for a new company looking to double-down on theatrical…
M.G. Siegler
THE INNER RING 🔒
Perplexity’s Perplexing and Positively PR Offer to Buy Chrome
Why not offer a quadrillion dollars?
M.G. Siegler
OpenAI Moves Fast and Breaks ChatGPT
The GPT-5 roll-out backlash is a product story as old as time…
M.G. Siegler
The Art of the Quid Pro Quo
Forget tariffs, Trump gets a direct taste of NVIDIA & AMD Sales…
M.G. Siegler
The Captains of CapEx
...and then there’s Apple.
M.G. Siegler
Tim Cook’s Golden Gift
The fealty payments get more ridiculous – and embarrassing…
M.G. Siegler
THE INNER RING 🔒
OpenAI Figures Out Their Path Back to “Open”
The open weight model is important but also a bit subversive…
M.G. Siegler
“Open” Comes Back to Bite Google
As badly as I now want to bite into a Chick-fil-A thanks to the judge…
M.G. Siegler
THE INNER RING 🔒
Marvel, We Have a Superhero Problem
The fantastic fall of ‘The Fantastic Four’ at the box office…
M.G. Siegler
Meta’s ‘Anti-Godfather’ Offers
As we cross into ten-figure territory, people keep turning them down…
M.G. Siegler
Apple Backed Into an AI Corner
Tim Cook tries to rally the troops. Can he?
M.G. Siegler
July 2025
A Personal Read of ‘Personal Superintelligence’
Ahead of Meta earnings and with mega offers being turned down, Mark Zuckerberg aims to change the conversation around AI…
M.G. Siegler
IMAX is More than Just a Bigger Screen, You Morons
Movie theater chains aim to slaughter their last remaining cash cow
M.G. Siegler
Marvel’s ‘Fantastic’ Path Forward
...which they’re seemingly *not* taking with the new ‘Avengers’ movies
M.G. Siegler
The Have Lots & the Have Nots
A time of $100M+ job offers and also layoffs at the same companies…
M.G. Siegler
A Mere Thought of a Flick of the Wrist
With an AI assist, Meta nears the productization of CTRL-Labs gesture (and non-gesture) interface wristband
M.G. Siegler
Big Tech’s Big Hedge with Big AI
Large investments means sizable stakes for the last wave of technology in the next wave of technology…
M.G. Siegler
THE INNER RING 🔒
ESPN Looks to Ride the NFL to Streaming Success
There was one key partnership to make the new ESPN streaming service a must-have on day one…
M.G. Siegler
AI Can Reproduce Writing, But Not the Process of Writing
And that’s the most important part…
M.G. Siegler
THE INNER RING 🔒
‘Stargate’ Gazing
With the original partnership slow to start, OpenAI shifts the goalposts…
M.G. Siegler
The Endless Rebranding of AI
From AI to AGI to Superintelligence to... brands trying to make Granular Superintelligence happen
M.G. Siegler
The Killing of a Sacred Late Show
The message sent by the end of ‘The Late Show’ was obviously always going to be political even if it was driven by financial reasons…
M.G. Siegler
The Great Okay Part II
Netflix continues to churn out decidedly mediocre hit movies
M.G. Siegler
Meta’s AI Relativity Theory
Mark Zuckerberg defends his shift in strategy with AI…
M.G. Siegler
Open Source AI was the Path Forward
...until it wasn’t for Meta
M.G. Siegler
We’re Seemingly Still in the “Throw Money At It” AI Era...
...and that’s great news for xAI, Meta, and maybe Apple!
M.G. Siegler
THE INNER RING 🔒
An OpenAI Acquisition Turns Into a Google ‘Hackqusition’...
A rough few weeks may signal some real talent trouble for OpenAI – at the worst possible time
M.G. Siegler
Escalated, the AI Browser Wars Have – Quickly
Right after Dia, Perplexity’s Comet is here – with OpenAI inbound…
M.G. Siegler
Apple is Ripe
...for change, as their COO steps down. Can they avoid rot?
M.G. Siegler
Apple’s Formula for F1
The movie is good, will the actual rights to the sport be for Apple?
M.G. Siegler
iPadOS 26 Turns the iPad Into a Sort of ‘Mac Jr.’
It’s not bad, but it’s also not really for me. Maybe that’s the point.
M.G. Siegler
THE INNER RING 🔒
Taking a Bite Out of the Latest Box Office “Records”
With ‘Jurassic Park 7’ and ‘F1’, the goalposts keep shifting as the reporting around recent box office numbers remains ridiculous…
M.G. Siegler
THE INNER RING 🔒
Can Meta Buy the Future of AI?
No.
M.G. Siegler
THE INNER RING 🔒
Meta’s ‘Godfather’ Offer
Which, amazingly, everyone has seemingly refused – so far…
M.G. Siegler
Zuck’s Eleven
7 from OpenAI, 2 from Google, 1 from Anthropic, 1 from Sesame... But just as interesting, what’s *not* mentioned.
M.G. Siegler
June 2025
Hey Siri, Time for that Lobotomy
As predicted, Apple may outsource Siri to ChatGPT (or Claude)!
M.G. Siegler
Meta’s Open Source AI Mistake
The writing isn’t just on the wall for Llama, it’s on the new paychecks…
M.G. Siegler
THE INNER RING 🔒
Apple Finally Has a Hit Movie, But at What Cost?
I mean that both literally and figuratively as ‘F1’ was beyond expensive to make and beyond in-your-face to market
M.G. Siegler
$100M AI Signing Bonuses
Exaggeration, conflation, a game of Telephone, directional accuracy, brinksmanship, or all of the above?
M.G. Siegler
Apple’s Pitt Stop
The drive to survive the theatrical box office starts anew…
M.G. Siegler
THE INNER RING 🔒
Dr. Yes
With Denis Villeneuve, James Bond enters his Auteur Era…
M.G. Siegler
Begun, the AI Browser Wars Have
Dia ushers in a new day for the web browser…
M.G. Siegler
Apple Lives Long Enough to Become the Ad Villain
Apple pushes too far in their need for ‘F1’ to be a hit…
M.G. Siegler
Whittling Down Apple’s Big AI M&A Options
I’ll bring my list of five down to four…
M.G. Siegler
Pixar Peters Out
It has less to do with quality and more to do with our current reality…
M.G. Siegler
Meta Hackquires a VC Fund
“Team Superintelligence” continues to assemble at Meta, but it’s getting even more awkward…
M.G. Siegler
Does Emo AI Dream of Mundane Tasks?
Is an emotional Alexa setting our timers really what we want here?
M.G. Siegler
THE INNER RING 🔒
You the User
2012 WhatsApp just eviscerated 2025 WhatsApp
M.G. Siegler
OpenAI and Microsoft Risk Open War
Forget biting hands and back-stabbing, this fight keeps escalating…
M.G. Siegler
Big Journalism Is Finally Losing... It
Big Tech Is Finally Losing
A technology landscape we deserve is finally within reach. The New York Times
Julia Angwin There are many ongoing investigations into Big Tech™ and Julia Angwin is excited: It’s easy to miss it amid the nonstop avalanche of news, but we are on the
M.G. Siegler
Hackquisitions & Hackquihires
A look at Meta’s Scale deal in relation to other such deals…
M.G. Siegler
THE INNER RING 🔒
The Mind-Blowing Mac-ness of iPadOS 26
Apple embraces the blurring lines between iPad and Mac. Finally.
M.G. Siegler
Liquid Glasslighting
There are no issues with AI within Apple, why do you ask?
M.G. Siegler
Apple Tries to Hide AI Under Liquid Glass
WWDC 25 certainly wasn’t six out of five stars…
M.G. Siegler
Meta’s $10B+ AI Reset
Zuckerberg recruits a band of pirates to shake up and wake up their AI efforts – including a new don’t-call-it-a-deal for Scale AI talent…
M.G. Siegler
Reasoning About the Reasoning of Reasoning Models
Did Apple just nuke the AI industry? Lol, no.
M.G. Siegler
Atlas Would Have Shrugged at ‘Mountainhead’
Playing it straight would have been a better absurd commentary on our current times than this absurdity
M.G. Siegler
Can Meta Make Headsets Happen?
Can Apple? Can anyone?
M.G. Siegler
THE INNER RING 🔒
App Store Changes Here to Stay with the Denial of Apple’s Stay
At least for the foreseeable future, and potentially forever…
M.G. Siegler
Alphabet is Literally Worth Less Than the Sum of Its Parts
Forget the DoJ, this is the best case for a “break up” of Google, which won’t happen…
M.G. Siegler
The Washington Post’s Plan to Become Forbes, or HuffPo, or Substack, or Something
Using AI to improve the quality prospects, naturally…
M.G. Siegler
A Samsung Deal Makes An Apple One More Complex for Perplexity
But it still makes a ton of sense for the AI company, obviously…
M.G. Siegler
Around Many Horns
At the end of ESPN’s ‘Around the Horn’
M.G. Siegler
With AI, Email May Actually Morph Into a Task List
The end of email might look like bots emailing other bots for you…
M.G. Siegler
THE INNER RING 🔒
May 2025
Profiles in Courage: Apple Edition
When an event decline is sign of decline…
M.G. Siegler
Apple Veers Into Microsoft Branding Territory
‘iOS 26’ will naturally follow ‘iOS 18’ in 2025…
M.G. Siegler
Might Apple’s Gaming Ambitions Have a Hidden Quest?
A new gaming-focused app could solve one big problem for Apple…
M.G. Siegler
THE INNER RING 🔒
Apple’s Star Wars with Elon Musk
Tim Cook didn’t want to build a Starlink, but they sort of backed into a weird, weak competitor…
M.G. Siegler
A Cook In Trump’s Doghouse
One missed roadtrip cost Apple hundreds of billions…
M.G. Siegler
THE INNER RING 🔒
Burning the Browser Boats
The Browser Company aims to move on from Arc to fully embrace AI…
M.G. Siegler
Apple Still Searching For the Fountain of Good Movies
‘The Fountain of Youth’ is the latest Apple TV+ mediocre movie…
M.G. Siegler
Apple’s No Good, Very Bad Week
Hard to recall such a series of bad beats for one company…
M.G. Siegler
Out of Pocket
Mozilla fails to save the beloved read it later service…
M.G. Siegler
The Anti iPhone
Jony Ive’s antidote to the smartphone obsession he helped usher in…
M.G. Siegler
OpenAI & IO
Sam Altman & Jony Ive aim to take the AI race into the real world…
M.G. Siegler
Google Slams on the AI Gas
Does it leave Apple in the dust?
M.G. Siegler
An Epic Game
5 years after Tim Sweeney went to war with Apple, he won. For now.
M.G. Siegler
There’s No Free Lunch at Apple
The culture and history have naturally doomed their AI aspirations…
M.G. Siegler
Epic’s Feigning Floundering to Keep Apple Under Pressure
Tim Sweeney’s insanely expensive pressure campaign continues…
M.G. Siegler
Microsoft Zoom, Zoom, Zooms to the Defensive About AI
This is not such a great look and posture for the company…
M.G. Siegler
Goo Goo Google
Apple ceding the education market to Chromebooks gives Google a unique counterposition in the age of AI... (And it may help square the Apple falling searches circle...)
M.G. Siegler
On the Road to Airbnb’s Reinvention
Yet again, they’re trying things that historically don’t scale. But AI! Maybe!
M.G. Siegler
“Not a Normal Company”
But OpenAI may finally be making moves towards becoming one…
M.G. Siegler
The Inner Ring 🔒
Digital Skeletons in the AI Closet
I don’t think we want our AI to know us before we knew it…
M.G. Siegler
Hollywood’s ‘Black Bag’ Problem
When it comes to more subtle adult fare, good luck…
M.G. Siegler
Just Jony
A couple takeaways from Jony Ive’s Stripe Sessions chat
M.G. Siegler
Apple Hits Google’s Battleship
Eddy Cue’s comments on the witness stand may have been meant to be a shot across the bow – whoops
M.G. Siegler
“Get Book”
A button to buy something within the app you’re using. Imagine that.
M.G. Siegler
Microsoft’s OpenAI Equity Jigsaw Puzzle
With the non-profit maintaining a controlling stake and an FMV floor set by Elon Musk, OpenAI still has a hell of a challenge…
M.G. Siegler
The Inner Ring 🔒
OpenAI Attempts to Have Their For-Profit Cake and Eat It Too
OpenAI leaves the for-profit path, maybe, with a trail of questions…
M.G. Siegler
Big Tech’s Big Stakes in Big AI
As the valuations get bigger, the stakes go higher, quite literally…
M.G. Siegler
The Inner Ring 🔒
Tim Cook Chose Poorly, Now Apple Can Choose Wisely
Tear down the App Store wall
M.G. Siegler
Apple’s Low Energy Earnings
I guess boring is good in this environment, but that was rough…
M.G. Siegler
Epic Won Because Everyone Won, Because Apple Lost
And Tim Sweeney continues to poke the bear…
M.G. Siegler
Tim Sweeney’s Last Laugh
A federal judge just dismantled Apple in the most Epic way possible…
M.G. Siegler
April 2025
Meta’s Sloppy AI Social Network
The new ‘Meta AI’ is exactly what you’d expect, in ways good and bad…
M.G. Siegler
The Inner Ring 🔒
Hey Jealousy
Are OpenAI and Microsoft back bickering yet again?
M.G. Siegler
In the Chat Where It Happens
These high-profile group chats are probably decidedly less interesting than you think they are…
M.G. Siegler
The Inner Ring 🔒
Buy, Build, or Bury
The strategy permeating the Big Tech antitrust trials will go into overdrive in the age of AI
M.G. Siegler
The Inner Ring 🔒
HBO Became HBO Before HBO Could Become Netflix
Well, technically ‘Max’, but you get the quip…
M.G. Siegler
Why Buy the Llama When You Can Get the Model For Free?
Meta would like their rivals’ help in offsetting their AI costs. Good luck.
M.G. Siegler
The Inner Ring 🔒
OpenAI Open to the Idea of Buying a Browser with a Few Billion Users
But really, it highlights that they should (and will) build a browser
M.G. Siegler
Antitrust’s Hindsight Problem
The government keeps trying to litigate problems that are already being naturally disrupted…
M.G. Siegler
The Inner Ring 🔒
The Dumbfounding Dropping of the ‘Google Domains’ Ball
Google’s web registrar was great, so obviously they had to ruin it
M.G. Siegler
o3, o4-mini, o4-mini-high, o My
Introducing OpenAI o3 and o4-mini
Our smartest and most capable models to date with full tool access OpenAI Blog
OpenAI I know that OpenAI knows that this naming scheme is ridiculous. No less than Sam Altman has tried to front-run everyone making fun of this. And I know that they’re
M.G. Siegler
The Meta Points of Meta’s Trial
The FTC’s weak case collides with Meta’s miscalculations…
M.G. Siegler
Apple’s “Faster Horses” Fallback Strategy
The Vision Pro and iPadOS may be going down this path…
M.G. Siegler
The Inner Ring 🔒
Terminating the AI vs. Hollywood Tropes
James Cameron has some interesting – and some refreshing – and some controversial – thoughts about AI…
M.G. Siegler
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Failure Has Many Fathers at Apple Right Now
The dysfunction seemingly runs deep at the most valuable company…
M.G. Siegler
An iPhone, Swiped
The iPhone was right there in my hand and then it was gone…
M.G. Siegler
A Call to AI
Shopify goes all-in on AI – other companies are sure to follow…
M.G. Siegler
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Trump Throws Apple Under the Tariff Bus
I’m sorry for your margins, Tim, we have a trade war to win…
M.G. Siegler
Terror Riffs
Trying to apply Occam’s razor to the Trump Tariff situation…
M.G. Siegler
March 2025
The Debt of Damocles
A sword hangs over Elon Musk, CoreWeave, and OpenAI…
M.G. Siegler
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Netflix’s ’Electric’ Mistake
Which simply doesn’t matter for Netflix, but would sink any other studio…
M.G. Siegler
A Spirited Debate Around AI
There are fundamental questions likely without good answers; let’s focus on how this needs to work for everyone
M.G. Siegler
Artificial Iconoclasts
A foil might be needed for artificial intelligence…
M.G. Siegler
That Loving Feeling
OpenAI’s product launches are stirring something which Apple hasn’t in a while
M.G. Siegler
Whittling to Perfection
A few thoughts on the new (and blue) M4 MacBook Air…
M.G. Siegler
The Vibe Shift Amongst Apple Developers
User-facing AI is still a debate, developer-facing AI is not. And Apple might be in *real* trouble here without some changes.
M.G. Siegler
Five “Game Change” AI Deals for Apple
A few ideas for how they might (but likely won’t) change the AI equations, fast…
M.G. Siegler
It Wasn’t the Apple TV+ Spend, It Was the Apple TV+ Strategy
And the hope is that they’ve now corrected it…
M.G. Siegler
The Case for Twitter Going Public — Again
It takes some squinting, and quite a bit of adjusting, but it’s there — thanks mostly to xAI…
M.G. Siegler
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My God, It’s Full of Stargates
xAI and NVIDIA join another $100B AI data center initiative…
M.G. Siegler
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Hollywood vs. AI: The Movie
My god, the open letter is full of stars -- especially Cate Blanchett
M.G. Siegler
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Enter Vision Pro
Metallica’s “Apple Immersive” concert is... stunningly awesome
M.G. Siegler
Apple Joins the Navy
They need to find the pirate mentality again…
M.G. Siegler
The Curious Case of Amazon’s Anthropic Stake
Using Google’s stake to back into Amazon’s likely much larger stake…
M.G. Siegler
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WeaveWork
CoreWeave stumbled upon a model that works well in a certain type of market…
M.G. Siegler
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Bing When You’re Winning
Microsoft had a window to win consumer AI — and perhaps the future of search
M.G. Siegler
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Did Apple Flub an AI Feature, Or Are They Blowing the AI Moment?
Sometimes a delay is just a delay. Sometimes it’s not…
M.G. Siegler
It’s the End of the Web as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)
AI is disrupting web search and publishing, perhaps for the better…
M.G. Siegler
Thin Is In Before a Foldable Is Out
Gaming out some ‘iPhone Air’ and ‘iPhone Fold’ options…
M.G. Siegler
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The OpenAI Constellations
The out-of-this-world funding numbers in OpenAI’s orbit
M.G. Siegler
Is Amazon Writing Checks that Alexa+ Can’t Cash?
There’s a lot of vagaries and obfuscation around this launch…
M.G. Siegler
The Inner Ring 🔒
Apple Should Swap Out Siri with ChatGPT
Not forever, but for now. Until a new, better Siri is actually ready to roll — which may be *years* away…
M.G. Siegler
February 2025
OpenAI’s EQ Upgrade to Hold Us Over to the IQ Upgrade
They’re clearly angling GPT-4.5 as being an emotionally intelligent update about getting the “vibes” right
M.G. Siegler
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Meta Is Unbundling... Again
The strategy behind the stand-alone apps for Reels and Meta AI…
M.G. Siegler
Alexa, I’m Skeptical
Alexa+ brings a lot of table-stakes stuff to the table in 2025…
M.G. Siegler
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Early Provocative AI Chatbots, Revisited
Two years ago, we were up in arms over Bing’s AI “Sydney”…
M.G. Siegler
Rewatching ‘A.I.’ in the Age of AI
The 2001 film holds up intelligently on some points, artificially on others
M.G. Siegler
Somehow, Star Wars Returned
With Kathleen Kennedy set to retire, the Force awakens again…
M.G. Siegler
The Art of the Old Deal
Tim Cook calls up some old plays to deflect Trump’s tariffs…
M.G. Siegler
Microsoft Outsources OpenAI’s Ambitions to SoftBank
There’s a new capital partner in town as they march towards ‘superintelligence’
M.G. Siegler
ESPN Balks, MLB Walks
And it’s partially Apple’s fault!
M.G. Siegler
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Live and Let Buy
James Bond now fully works for Amazon. Die Another Same Day Delivery?
M.G. Siegler
Majorana’s Mask
A tale of two trillion-dollar companies…
M.G. Siegler
Apple Sherlocks the iPhone 16
The new iPhone 16e sounds great -- at a far cheaper price…
M.G. Siegler
Oh, the Humane-ity
Humane’s bad strategy exacerbated their bad timing with the Ai Pin
M.G. Siegler
The Inner Ring 🔒
The One AI to Rule Them All
Trying to grok the outlook for general-purpose consumer AI…
M.G. Siegler
The AI Will Come Out Tomorrow
Alexa and Siri struggle to get out the door in the Age of AI…
M.G. Siegler
The Age of Ultracrepidarians
Right or wrong, just say it loud, with conviction — just like AI
M.G. Siegler
The Great AI UI Unification
ChatGPT starts cleaning up the cruft…
M.G. Siegler
Amazon & ESPN’s Sports Streaming Collision Course
With Netflix drafting behind them…
M.G. Siegler
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Liquidity Now
A new standard model for VCs and secondaries…
M.G. Siegler
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What You DeepSeek Is Seeking You
Two weeks after the latest AI panic, has anything really changed?
M.G. Siegler
Observations About Sam Altman’s Observations
He’s seeking for something deep…
M.G. Siegler
The Inner Ring 🔒
Apple’s Elegantly Expressive Pixar Lamp
Forget glasses, Apple’s Next Big Thing™ may be a robot…
M.G. Siegler
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Earth to Lina Khan
Nearly every point in her NYT op-ed is wrong
M.G. Siegler
Growing Up AI-First
Pondering how kids might navigate the world post-ChatGPT
M.G. Siegler
FaceFeed
How Mark Zuckerberg might rejuvenate Facebook with a feed of Meta content, a Fediverse twist, and a splash of AI
M.G. Siegler
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The IPOpenAI
A step-back way to frame OpenAI’s rumored mega raise…
M.G. Siegler
January 2025
Apple’s Record-Breaking Quarter Was SO BORING
Apple wins as the AI tortoise in a field of scared hares -- for now…
M.G. Siegler
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SoftBank, Indeed
10 thoughts on OpenAI’s would-be new massive funding round…
M.G. Siegler
Post-Explosion, Seeking the DeepSeek Fallout
A guess: DeepSeek itself will matter less than the reaction to it…
M.G. Siegler
The Inner Ring 🔒
Should Apple Switch Off Siri?
In our Age of AI, Siri continues to embarrass Apple…
M.G. Siegler
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AI, Uh, Finds a Way
Has DeepSeek changed the AI game or just some equations?
M.G. Siegler
OpenAI’s ‘Operator’ Shows Why They’ll Build a Web Browser
To me, the most interesting aspect of OpenAI’s new ‘Operator’ product – their first real agent – is not what it can do, but how it does it. Unlike the early iterations of similar products from Anthropic and Google, ‘Operator’ doesn’t take over your computer, it outsources the work you want to
M.G. Siegler
Meta’s March to Make the iPhone ‘The Thing That Gets Us to the Thing’
The company will build anything and everything to end the smartphone era…
M.G. Siegler
One Year Undercover
Onwards to year two of Spyglass…
M.G. Siegler
‘Stargate’ Squares Some AI Circles
OpenAI, Microsoft, SoftBank, Oracle, Trump, MGX, ARM, and NVIDIA all get double-dip wins in the announcement
M.G. Siegler
My 2025 iPhone Homescreen
Some actual shifts thanks to AI and social stratification…
M.G. Siegler
TrickTok
With the TikTok ban, the Trump administration starts dealing…
M.G. Siegler
2 Switch 2 Similar?
Nintendo’s Switch 2 strategy seems conservative, perhaps smartly
M.G. Siegler
With the Tok Tikking, Twitter Talk Makes Some Sense...
China selling TikTok to Elon Musk would be quite the deal. You know who loves deals…
M.G. Siegler
May Your First Startup Be A Masculine Startup
Mark Zuckerberg’s heel turn this past week has been all sorts of fascinating.1 For one thing, I don’t think it’s all an act. I think it’s likely a short-sighted and misguided maneuver born out of years of various frustrations, but I don’t think it’s just to curry favor with
M.G. Siegler
The Inner Ring 🔒
About-Face(book)
Mark Zuckerberg’s new stance on speech can be both real and really political
M.G. Siegler
Venu, Vidi, Vici
Disney aims to conquer streaming sports with endless confusing options
M.G. Siegler
The Witching Hour
‘Dune: Prophecy’ fails to live up to its legacy
M.G. Siegler
$1M Knee Pads
There’s a cost to be the boss -- and to bend the knee…
M.G. Siegler
The Inner Ring 🔒
Meta’s Next Big Blunder
Social AI “characters” are so obviously and hilariously going to fail
M.G. Siegler
Apple Comes to Google’s Defense, But the Opposite
Eddy Cue does declare that Apple must intervene in Google’s antitrust case
M.G. Siegler