Dispatch 047: For the Road
I've been documenting my iPhone homescreen since 2013 and whereas it used to change quite a bit in those earlier year as new apps were still popping into popularity all the time and Apple was still tweaking pretty major things about the OS back then, these days, it's a far more static situation. But this year quite a bit has changed thanks to what else? AI...
M.G. Siegler
I Think...
✍️ Trump Signs Executive Order in Attempt to Stall TikTok Ban – One of the first very important orders of business for the new administration: a decree giving the company 75 days to find a buyer. Why 75 days versus, say, 90 that the original law permitted (if a deal was in process)? Nobody knows. Well somebody does, but I doubt we'll hear anything about it because the reason is probably completely arbitrary. More pressing: it's still not clear if the order has any sort of legal standing to overrule the actual law. It seems like "no" but it also seems like no one really cares. Well, Tom Cotton does, but is he really going to stand up to the new President? That would also be a "no". So the question really is if we're going to go through this whole thing again in a couple months or... [NYT]
🇨🇳 Donald Trump Says China Tariffs Could Hinge on TikTok Deal – This seems to get closer to the heart of what is actually going on behind-the-scenes here. It sure seems like Trump is holding off on his initial tariff plan for China in order to buy the time – practically literally – to find a deal for TikTok. And, crucially, to get China to agree to a deal. He's seemingly using both a carrot and stick approach here, at the same time, which is sure to confuse and frustrate everyone involved. But that's also how he likes to do deals: complete chaos until the sane party yields out of exhaustion. China is now signaling they may be open to a deal... As silly as it all is, it always felt like this would play out exactly as it is now with TikTok as a key component of international tariff negotiations. This timeline is stupid and it's only day one. Does a deal actually get done? You have to imagine some kind of deal does, but will it adhere to the actual law? Or will the law have to be amended? Does the US "get half of TikTok"? What does that even mean? Nobody knows... [FT 🔒]
💰 Could Trump Be Considering a Revised TikTok Deal From 2020? – To that end, I brought this up towards the end of my piece the other day, wondering if the 2020 TikTok deal that Trump was seeking might be what he was thinking about here as well. Back then, Microsoft issued a rather remarkable and rather ridiculous statement that they would be happy to pay the US Treasury a "finders fee" as it were, per the President's request. That didn't happen, of course, but a deal that got much closer was the creation of a subsidiary, TikTok Global, with 20% ownership going to Walmart and Oracle, and the remaining 80% to ByteDance – given the ownership of ByteDance at the time, with many US investors holding massive stakes, it pushed overall "US ownership" past 50%. Of course, that never happened either. Instead, Oracle just ended up with a data/server deal to sequester TikTok US data. Walmart is a name that hasn't been put out there this time around, but might Microsoft be willing to sub in alongside Oracle? Or would Elon Musk get first dibs on such a deal? Nobody knows. [Information 🔒]
🎞️ IMDb Founder Col Needham Steps Aside as CEO – I don't know what is more wild, that Needham started the site 35 years ago and has been CEO ever since – or that it was acquired by Amazon in 1998 (one of their first deals) and he remained as CEO under the parent company for 27 years after that. Both are pretty unheard of these days. But it highlights how well Amazon quietly has done with some of those early acquisitions. And it's a testament to acquiring something and largely leaving it to do its thing. (See also: Don Katz, who ran Audible from 1995 until 2019.) As a movie buff, IMDb was easily one of my favorite sites in the early years of the web and it's still a go-to for up-to-date film credits – though, yes, it has gotten decidedly more cluttered with ads over the years. It's also awesome that Needham created the site out of his own personal database of movie information he created as a teenager. As someone who had their own movie tracking spreadsheet back then, I can relate. [Variety]
I Wrote...
I wrote this back over the holiday break: a sort of wild (though hardly surprising) dynamic playing out in court as Apple must fight harder than Google to keep the default search placement intact, or at least figure out a way for Google to still pay Apple a cut of search revenue from any similar agreement...
M.G. Siegler
And more recently, some thoughts about the Switch 2. It looks good, but it also looks very similar to the first Switch. That will undoubtedly ensure it's a hit, but also that it probably won't be a truly breakout one, as the Switch itself was. The floor and ceiling seem capped.
M.G. Siegler
I Note...
- More on the potential legal issues with Trump's EO on TikTok – one big lingering question: will Apple & Google allow it back on their app stores? Unlike Oracle and others, they haven't budged yet... [WaPo 🔒]
- And even more perspectives on the matter, including the notion that one of the tech companies may bring the order to court to get an actual ruling before they go ahead (or don't). [NPR]
- While President Trump was busy signing new executive orders within hours of being sworn-in, he was also revoking others, including the AI safety one that President Biden had put in place in 2023. [Reuters]
- As relayed by a journalist who introduced them, Elon Musk actually met TikTok founder Zhang Yiming over a decade ago (before TikTok existed). Though Musk didn't recall the encounter, there was even a picture taken! “He is my hero,” Zhang apparently said, while comparing Musk to Steve Jobs, but "bolder and had greater vision" – this seems like it could be important... [WSJ 🔒]
- The U.S. Digital Service (USDS) created under President Obama is now the U.S. DOGE Service (also USDS) following an executive order from President Trump. Given that DOGE itself is already an acronym, this is like the Russian Nesting Doll of names. But dumber. [TechCrunch]
- Another executive order on "government censorship" points pretty directly to Meta's recent shift on content moderation. [WaPo 🔒]
- Instagram is offering to pay $10,000 - $50,0000 per month for popular TikTok creators to move over to use Reels. Alongside feature cloning, this is their standard playbook, of course. And it never lasts, of course. [Information 🔒]
- Just how dominant is Fox News in cable news? Since the election, they've held the top 500 spots in terms of viewership. Yes, all of them. The first non-Fox News show is CNN's election coverage, which comes in at 507. [Mediaite]
- AI at Davos:
- Mistral is not for sale, which is something you tend to hear more often from a company's leadership team when a company is for sale, or would like to be. See also the closely-related cousin: "we're not raising money". [Bloomberg 🔒]
- Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei thinks AI could surpass human intelligence in two or three years – 2027, as WSJ confidently puts in their headline. [WSJ 🔒]
- Finally, some feel-good news: Nate the Great makes a not-so-subtle hint that the fourth season of Ted Lasso should be announced shortly. [9to5Mac]
I Quote...
"Ultimately [Beijing] would approve it because we’d put tariffs on China. I’m not saying I would, but you certainly could do that."
– President Trump, upon signing the executive order giving TikTok another 75 days to do a deal. Which is really just an order to shield the various US tech companies from penalties for keeping TikTok up and running in that timeframe. Which still may not be legal. But by the time that is sorted, the deadline will undoubtedly be up.
Of course, there's still future risk of retroactive liability (per the link up top). So the real question may be: can a President grant a company a pardon? AI seems to think so, so let's go with that. Oracle may be in line for a pardon.
I Spy...
How thin would an 'iPhone Air' be? Well, if it's 5.5mm (there are conflicting rumors if it's 6mm or 5.5mm), MacRumors did some nice mocks...
