Inklings #008 📧
Is such a deal going to happen? Not anytime soon. But you can make a case (both for and against) it happening at some point. Especially as Apple keeps growing and Disney keeps trying to grow... Have I mentioned that both companies have new CEOs in place? Interesting times and timing. Worth at least thinking through...
M.G. Siegler
Thoughts On...
🥦 Bleaching Our Broccoli in a Cloth Mask – Not the first to draw the parallel between the early days of the pandemic and the early days of AI – and, of course, far fewer people are dying, but it's also not zero, sadly – but I think Mat Honan captures the angst many are probably feeling, well. Everyone is constantly being told that everything is fine or that everything is not fine. But the reason for both, AI, still isn't being used, let alone understood, by most people on a regular basis. They hear they should be using it. Or that they should not be using it. But when they try to use it, they're just not sure what to do with it. Or that it's doing anything. It's both a constant promise and a constant fear existing at the same time, in the same space. It's the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle for everyday life. "The 21st-century average American lies in bed staring at their phone. They should be sleeping. They should read a book. They should take a melatonin. Instead they are deep in conversation with a math equation." [MIT Technology Review]
📈 Samsung Hits $1T – What's wild is that the smartphone business isn't nearly as hot as it used to be. And some of their other electronics businesses, led by television, actually seem like a mess at the moment. And then... All of a sudden... Their stock has 5x'd in the past year alone. They're on the verge of passing Meta as the 10th most valuable company in the world. And again, it's not the businesses they've been historically known for, but thanks to their chips – a division which itself was struggling in the face of TSMC and SK Hynix until quite recently. Now it's so dominant within Samsung that workers are threatening walkouts if they don't get a higher share of profits. And that one group now accounts for so much of the profits that there's talk of spinning it out so the rest of "One Samsung" can continue to operate in peace. All of this just reminds me of my what-if: imagine if Apple used their chip expertise to sell silicon into the AI boom? While we're all constantly looking for that Next Big Thing™ from Apple, what if it's already there, in-house? Google is now selling TPUs to others. If nothing else, Wall Street would love that narrative. Apple would immediately shoot past $5T, one imagines. I mean, just look at Samsung! [FT 🔒]
🍎 Supreme Court Rejects Apple's Stay – Their 30% cut remains in serious jeopardy after Justice Elena Kagan sent Apple back to U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers – who is a bit busy at the moment with that other high-profile tech case – hat in hand, to try to figure out what a "fair" commission should be after their farcical "27%" (which, with other fees taken into account, ends up as more than 30% out of developers' pockets) failed to fly. To be clear, this is for transactions done outside of the App Store, but the entire system now feels on the brink as this ruling is going to embolden further attacks on the App Store fees all around the world. That plus Google teaming up with Epic (after losing their own case) to kill their own 30% cut, just has Apple looking increasingly isolated. You know what would be great? New CEO John Ternus stepping on stage at this Fall's iPhone event to announce a "new deal" with developers. Much like Satya Nadella sent a signal at the start of his era at Microsoft by immediately announcing Office for iPad. Of course, such a change would be better suited for WWDC in a month, perhaps it could be a great "one more thing" from Tim Cook? (I know I'm dreaming with this, but still, the writing is not just on the wall here, it's in neon.) This rejection of the stay request perhaps also signals that the Supreme Court may reject Apple's eventual overall appeal. [Reuters]
I Wrote...
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
I Quote...
"She was waiting to see which way the wind would blow and she didn’t realize that she was the wind."
– Helen Toner, the former OpenAI board member, in her deposition about the role Mira Murati played in the ouster of Sam Altman back in late 2023 (aka "The Blip"). Just an all-time quote right there.
I Spy...
The FT made a chart showing what the CapEx ramp is doing to Big Tech's free cash flow – which is now at its lowest levels since 2014.
Well, aside from you-know-who... Will it bounce back as quickly as the others are projecting? We'll see..
Below, members of The Inner Ring will find thoughts on:
• OpenAI's Aim to Own Vocal Computing
• Google Gunning for OpenClaw
• Anthropic's Colossal Compromise
• and more...