Alex Heath live from WWDC: no Siri upgrade announced, Apple stock drops, China regulatory risk mounts

difficult language and you can't immediately integrate with cursor. At least not at least not Apple is working with enthropic. They're starting to work on it. They are solving it now. Anyway, uh we have our WWC correspondent Alex coming in the studio. Welcome to the stream. How you doing? What's going on, guys?

I'm uh at the Steve Jobs Theater. This is handheld. Hope that's okay. Oh, it's great. Looks fantastic. Great job. Can Can you show us what's behind you? Can you can you give us a little tour? Wow. And then uh behind me is the is the Steve Jobs Theater. Well, it's below me technically.

This is the This is the dome above it. That's beautiful. Amazing. Give us your reactions. Uh break it down. What have you seen? What have you liked? Uh, what what what would you put in the bucket of like needs for everything time in the oven? Let's see. Um, okay. I hear I I hear you now. Perfect. Break it down for us.

What's going on? Yeah. Um, I haven't gotten to obviously catch the show yet, but I'm curious what you guys think. I mean, to me, the big headline is no new Siri. Yep. And that means no new Siri for at least a year because that's how Apple works, right? They're not going to talk about it again.

in a way that's like expansive for developers until WWDC next year. I think we saw the stock slide literally as WWDC kicked off because people were hoping for that.

I think Apple, you know, having just come out of some meetings that I can't really talk about, but I can just say like I think Apple is wanting people to go, look, we've got all this other stuff. Uh the iPad is more advanced. Uh you know, be excited about the new design.

But I think underneath this is this um simmering angst about where Apple is at on AI. And I don't think they have a good answer yet. Do you guys? No. It's it's it's I mean the the internet will destroy them for being like, "Hey, don't don't worry about the AI stuff. We made your icon see-through. " Yeah.

I think there's two things going on. And rightfully so. Right. It's sort of it's it's somewhat I I wouldn't go so far as to say it's unacceptable because chat GPT is still great on an iPhone.

You get a lot of value out of it, but I forget who we had earlier that was like it would be really great if it chat GPT was integrated with photos and iMessage and and all these other things. And so yes, Apple from from an investor standpoint, I look at Apple and and we've talked about this a lot.

Apple miss search, but they get 20 billion a year from it, so they're fine. They can miss AI. They can Yeah. Yeah. Sure. And they can miss AI, but it does um you know, we have they might be able to still value capture is what you're saying.

Yeah, I think they can still value capture, but as a consumer, it's easy to be frustrated. And if they auction off this button, the action button, uh, to the highest bidder, they that could be a multi-billion dollar deal for sure if they act as the front door to AI. Yeah.

I mean, I was thinking about the same day as WWDC open AI hitting 10 billion in ARR, right, which is 3x year-over-year, like on a massive base already of billions a year and a healthy chunk of that is flowing directly into Apple's pockets, right?

Because those are GPT subscriptions that people are paying for through iOS. So, yeah, you're right. They benefit. I think the question is like what happens if people start to buy phones less because AI makes other devices more interesting. So like the boogie the boogeyman here on the ground today is Johnny IV, right?

It's like what is he doing with Open AI? Is Apple scared about it? You can't get an answer either on or off the record. But I think that's the real fear and that's probably years out.

So to be like near-term bearish on Apple's probably not correct, but like in 5 years are people buying phones less because we have all these AI wearables that take interactions away from the phone. Maybe is Apple going to be winning there? So far doesn't look like it.

So I think that's like that's more like fiveish years out, but that's that's a serious concern. Yeah. And the China the China question is interesting.

We had uh Patrick uh the author of Apple and China on earlier today and he was just saying Apple is going to be fine in the United States in the near term even if they're kind of miss you know missing missing uh AI functionality but in China if there's phones like Huawei and and other players that can offer these deeply integrated AI features you're going to fall behind in that market and you have to imagine that the dynamic between Deep Seek and Huawei is going to be radically different than the dynamic between open AI and Apple.

Totally different. Yeah, that's been a big topic here too. I was running into another member of the press from China who's here and he was saying everyone there is super mad that they don't have Apple intelligence which is like everyone here has it and it's like what does that even mean, right?

Like wait, so they didn't even roll it out? They didn't roll it out? No, it's blocked. It's blocked by the regulators and now it's caught up in the trade war there.

So the regulator, I was just reading the Financial Times actually had a great report on this, how the local regulator was blocking it because of the trade war. And so caught in all these geopolitical tensions that are really messing up their AI strategy.

And to not be able to sell the marquee feature of the phone you shipped last year in your second largest market. I don't know. Maybe China is their first largest. I don't know about users. It's probably close. That doesn't seem good. And so that's that's a big question I have. Yeah. Yeah.

I I I think the other interesting thing is that like this is a developers conference, but all the consumers are watching and consumers are the ones that are I feel like they're the noisiest online about various redesigns.

I'm more interested to dig in as we get more details this week into some of the olive branches that Apple could extend to the developer community on the AI side.

Uh because even if they're not going to give up the Siri button to chat GBT, there are a bunch of different um there are a bunch of different small LLMs and different summarization functionality and and different access to parts of the chip that could be used at a lower level by all companies including uh upstarts that just want to build a cool app that maybe needs a little more horsepower on the AI side.

and the chips are great and so giving people more access to that at a deeper level that feels like a narrative that could be completely drowned out by oh we didn't get new Siri but if the developers are are increasingly happy and see that there's more opportunity to just build cool things we might we might just wake up in a couple months and be like oh wow there's this amazing new app that's clearly using the chips more effectively like my phone feels faster it feels more advanced and it's not an Apple product but it's enabled by by the way Apple kind of uh you know opened up the ecosystem just a little bit.

Even if they didn't go full, anyone can build the next Apple. That's right. I think opening up their models that they announced today to developers could be a big deal, but it remains to be seen if the models are good or not.

I had a developer come up to me who's building this like AI social network and he's doing everything on device because he wants it to be privacycentric and Apple's perfect for that. That's what they do. It's like their models run locally.

They're probably not the most performant, but they're going to they're free and they run locally. So for him, it's a win. He's an indie developer trying to build a cool AI thing. Is that something that huge apps are going to use? I doubt it. Yep.

So, is it going to be enough to shift the narrative on like, yeah, Apple's good at AI now for developers? I'm not sure. I'm kind of skeptical. What's up with that uh research paper that an Apple intern put out? It was an intern. I think he was an intern. Did you any any chatter about that?

They basically said uh RL is on reasoning. Yeah. Uh well it's like on the test time compute stuff. So like basically saying like which it kind of makes sense like these are these are fancy parrots at the end of the day right they just repeat things back.

So if you just like layer on a bunch more of that does it actually get to some semblance of intelligence like I'm totally down to the most fancy parrot though. Give me a fancy parrot. I would buy a fancy parrot today. I think that's what Apple's discounting is like how much we love fancy parrots. Totally. Yeah.

I don't care if it's actually thinking or actually sentient. like did it book my flight or not? Did it turn on my alarm? It's the argument of like the Android user being like the iPhone is not the best phone. It's it's the camera on the Android is, you know, a little bit better.

It's like, do the pictures look good or not? When I take a picture of my dog, does it is the exposure like roughly correct? Yeah. Is a is liquid glass uh hot or is it ass? How do we feel? Is it liquid ass? Uh John doesn't get I Yeah. I mean, it it seems like I I I don't know.

Like people were kind of like like ready to chomp at anything and and being very like negative. Uh I'm I'm I I I I don't think it's as unprecedented as anyone has ever said because uh like like this has been tried in other apps. It does kind of work. I'll need to kind of play around with it.

Have you Have you had a chance to play with any? I think it looks I personally personally I think it looks cool. It I I remember jailbreaking early iPhones, iPod touches to have that functionality and it was cool.

I never once in the last 10 years have been thinking I wish I could go back to that jailbroken UI that I had when I was a kid, you know? So I don't give them any credit like this is the kind of thing that they should announce at WWDC and move on quickly and not try to be like, "Hey everybody, look at this.

" Revolutionized it. I would just be very surprised if Apple whiffed on like a UI design feature because that's like what they're great at.

I'm not I'm not like like the the unexpected upside is like can they train a huge foundation model and build a gigascale hypers scale data center like that's kind of out of their wheelhouse new territory but I would imagine that whatever they do on the UI UX side like it might be a little jarring like when they went from skuorphic to flat design there were a lot of people oh I like the old one but then you get used to it and it's fine so I I would imagine that in the in the fullness of time we all get used to this and it's no big deal um although you know people are still upset about the photos app.

I feel like I'm getting used to it now. It's still like pretty rough. Some people aren't updating, but it it hasn't been as jarring. I I've gotten used to it. I don't use any of the new features yet. Yeah, it's it it feels like like I've retrained myself on a bad what I think is a bad user experience.

It feels very search bu built the photos app. It feels like it's designed for you to go and just start searching, but the actual categorization of images and videos isn't quite there yet.

So, if you're looking for like, oh yeah, like there was a video of my dog, but there was a newspaper in the video, I should be able to just type in like video of dog and newspaper and the actual AI that's running to tag that stuff isn't the issue.

The AI is not there and people think of your photos are for capturing memories and people think of memories in sort of a Yeah. Yeah. an order and they're going to kind of go back to the to the moment in time where they capture that moment. So, I don't I don't think they've nailed that. Yeah. Yeah.

Anyway, yeah, the only the only other thing that stood out to me was Vision Pro. They're really positioning it as like an enterprise device now. Interesting. Um, and I think that's because that's who's willing to pay that price point for it right now, right?

And so it's like, you know, some of that stuff's cool, but I didn't sense a lot of energy around the Vision Pro beyond that, right? Um, and I think that product is still kind of a question mark in terms of like is it going to be a bigger thing or not?

And positioned as like, hey, we just want you to buy these for your employees so they have a bunch of monitors. How how what was or like Yeah, like you're working on an assembly line or something which is like That's so odd. Oh, interesting. That's so odd because they apparently they pulled the plug on a focus device.

Tyler, would you have benefited from having an Apple vision today? Tyler built the first Americanmade iPhone. Our intern We had our intern build a iPhone. We assembled it in in under three hours. Would you have helped you today? Uh graphical overlays while you're building. I think it would have helped.

I mean I I didn't have any instructions at all. So I think kind of the the bar is just any instructions instructions pro, you know, I I think it would it would have been helpful. It could have been good. Okay. long after.

But but my my my my takeaway on Enterprise Vision Pro is that it's odd because I I heard that they were building a uh like a like a version that was specifically for pairing with a desktop setup and multimonitors and that was kind of the the uh like one direction they were going and Ben Thompson was writing like that's what I want.

That's that's the perfect product. I've always thought that the uh that the the the win like like they have to win in one category before they win in all of them. Like the iPhone first and foremost was a phone and it replaced a phone and then it earned the right to win everything.

And the Apple Watch first and foremost was a watch and then it became a fitness tracker and everything else. Uh and so I've always thought that the Apple Vision Pro should have been, hey, we're Apple. We've never built a TV. This is a replacement for your TV.

It's going to be really, really good at Apple TV, movies, IMAX, 3D. Like, this is what you buy it for. It's It comes pre-installed with a ton of movies and and and and TV shows. We're not even shooting 3D movies or or spatial video. That's not even relevant.

It's just a device and we're just going to super optimize it for for for watching movies because I got one. That was my favorite thing to do on it, but it wouldn't work in the dark.

So, I would I would turn off the lights when I'd go to bed and my wife would just be sitting next to me and and I'd be like turning the headset on and off because it would lose the tracking and it would pop up like your Vision Pro is not working right now.

And it would clearly wasn't it never been used in just like dayto-day when people watch movies. And so I feel like wait, it still doesn't work at night. It doesn't work in a pitch black room because it has cameras that track the world around you. And so so you can't even watch a movie lights up. Yeah. Yeah.

And then and then the plane mode was a little iffy, too. And they had a special they had a special like mode that you could flip it into. But it just it was trying to do too much. And I feel like they should have just been like this is a home theater for people that can't afford a home theater.

And that's a lot of people. And that's a lot of iPhone owners. A lot of iPhone owners can afford a $2,000 TV, but they can't afford a a whole cinema room in their house because real estate's expensive. Uh and and and I even heard that one of the one of the leads on the Apple Vision Project was from Dolby.

It was a Dolby executive on Yeah. Mike Brockwell, the head of it is ex Dolby. That's right. And so I thought it was like, okay, just lean into that fully. Think about what the experience is. You put this on for two hours, you watch a movie.

And but there's a whole bunch of different uh decisions that you make if that's the case. And they clearly kind of did 90% of that and then 10% of the other stuff, and now they're all over the place. And uh and and I still just want the home theater on my face.

Uh, did you guys see they showed two people wearing the Vision Pro in the same room on the same couch watching a movie together? I didn't see that, but something they showed in the keynote. Everyone hates that, but I actually think that's totally reasonable. I don't think that that's crazy. I think it's fine.

I think it's fine. We're all just alone together. Yeah. Yeah. No, no, no, no. Because you look over, you see the person. It's the same experience as watching a TV on the wall. It's It's the same thing, but it's just a bigger TV. It's great. You can still as long as you can you can hold hands. I'm super bullish on that.

Okay. Yeah. I I I I this is weird. The bull case for that is that somebody can get up to go to the bathroom or get food and they don't have to pause the movie. Yeah. No, no. I I I think I think it's the future, but they need to make it lighter. They need to make it cooler.

Like maybe some sort of fan because your face gets hot. Like there's a lot of there's a lot of industrial design challenges to get it to be like fun to actually watch a 2-hour movie or three-hour movie. It's still in the demo phase. You you you you put it on for 15 minutes and then you're done.

Are you going to be moving over to the iPad for everything? For all my content creation. Yes. I thought that was actually really interesting that they position the iPad as like the podcaster device instead of the Mac. Um shots fired. Shots fired. Maybe maybe for weekly weekly podcasts. I don't think we could run.

Man, I like my iPad. I I just until they invent a way on the iPad to multitask as well as the Mac where I can tab between things fast, like I just Well, so that was a big that was the big focus.

I I haven't seen it entirely either, but the big focus was on multitasking, allowing you to have multiple windows open at once, but I don't I don't know if still um who knows. Anyway, thank you so much for hopping on. This was fantastic. Uh pleasure. Go get some scoops. Go get some scoops. That's what I'm here for.

Amazing. I'm out of the spaceship. Scoop lord. Beautiful. Bye, spaceship. Honestly, the grass is looking amazing. So, there's that. Nice out. Cheers, Alex. Thanks for coming on. Good to see you. We'll talk to you later. Bye. Um, I am deeply disappointed that they did not launch a mahogany iPhone.

That would have been the best. The official wood of business. The official wood of business. The business class of wood. Yep. Um, liquid glass. I'm watching the video from Tim Cook here. It looks good. I don't know. I think it look I think it looks cool. I think it's going to grow on me. I think it's fine.

I think it looks cool. I just don't think and I'm I'm excited to play around with it. I The idea that Apple's going to whiff on that is so ridiculous to me. Like that. This is This is They have all the best people for this. They whiffed on photos a little bit. I think you'll get used to it over time.

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kind kind words absolute legends of technology and finance I think um from Derson base takes gong hits and vibes of techno capital abundance are a few words I'd use to describe the showing order really enjoy it seriously and they do a great job curating guests some of which are now in my ex rolodex it's time to accelerate love it um anyways thank you for all the kind words folks we love each and every one of you and uh go leave us a review, but please put an ad in the review for your business or your company.

We love ads or your fund. Uh put an ad in the review and we'll read it out here on the show. Everybody have a fantastic rest of your day. I'm going to go hit take us on with a gong hit and then we'll check it on Tyler. It's a historic day. Tyler Cosgrove, intern at TVPN, has assembled the first iPhone in America.

He did it, folks. He did it. There are no pieces left with scraps in a cave with scraps. He did it in a cave with scraps. Is it signed now? Show us off. Show show us what you got. Can we go to the Oh, he's signed it. There we go. Right there. Yeah. Let us know if you want that. We'll mail it to you.

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