Subscriber Q&A: Live @ Apple WWDC

So, I tried this first, a few weeks ago, Google I/O. I did a quick little subscriber, Q&A/live thoughts thing. People really liked it. And so I wanted to try it today. I've been here at Apple. I'm sitting outside of Apple Park. And sorry again for network stuff. This is blurry, but I'm sitting outside of Apple Park. And wanted to take some live questions, and also just share my raw kind of stream of consciousness reactions to the keynote today. In person for, and then also some on and off the record meetings I've been having with Apple leaders all day today. Hopefully you guys can hear me okay. I know I'm having some network issues, but hopefully you can hear me. The main takeaway I came today, not so far, is Apple really wants to make sure people understand this partnership that it has with Google. And how it actually works, because I think there's a lot of fear on the Apple side that people will think that they've given all of Siri and the AI strategy over to Google with the Gemini partnership. So if I were to like have one big headline, it would be that. It would be that, you know, the Apple Google partnership on AI is not, it's deep, like it's certainly really deep, but it's not all encompassing as I think some people maybe thought that was definitely a big message today. They should have just given Siri over Google Nick Wong says, yeah, I mean, there's a legitimate argument to that. What happened is that, and this is again, I'm kind of for those who are just catching on them, I'm synthesizing things I've learned from on and off the record conversations with Apple or on background conversations with Apple leaders today. I think things would open AI got a little hairy after that initial partnership where they had chat GPT and Siri. And again, some more reporting, it will take some more reporting reporting to fully know what happened. But yeah, let's just say it didn't seem like that partnership while multiple dimensions and up model, but they didn't want to give over everything. And so they got this really unique setup with Google where they're basically ingesting Google's frontier models and then doing a ton of post training custom reinforcement learning on top of it and then hosting it on their own kind of private infrastructure. So it's not, you know, the Google stack, the Gemini AI stack that you're using and, you know, the Gemini app at all. Something of hope says I love the shade. They threw on the ride. AI players during the announcement. Yeah, there was some shade. Also, by the way, please ask questions everyone. I'm here to take questions if anyone has any questions about any of this. Again, I've been spending all all day here at Apple meeting with people about their AI strategy. So happy to take questions. And I'll be sharing a lot of this reporting in the newsletter in a couple hours. So you'll get a lot of this later too. But wanted to just give you my raw reactions right here. I think it was very unusual today that I don't think Apple has ever done. Actually, I confirmed they've never done this is they had a on the record presentation slash Q&A for press after the keynote. They took us over to a theater right across the street from where I'm sitting right now across from the visitor center. I had Craig Craig, Federigi, you know, Air Force one and some of the other Apple AI executives Mike Rockwell, a new exec that heard from Google to run help run AI. Do it to an A with press on the record, which for those who cover Apple or who know Apple really well, that's pretty unique. And I think the main goal of that was that they want to do clearly explain and take questions on the Google partnership, because they know that it's easy for people to probably assume that they're just giving everything over to Google. They did not answer my question that I submitted about their philosophy towards other models, namely open AI and entropic. And if they would ever work with other AI models in the same way they're working with Google, they did not answer that. But yeah, this was about an hour briefing and I'll have the full write up of kind of my takeaways from the news that are soon. But Craig gave like what I would call an AI 101 talk where it was almost like a white board type thing he had behind him where he was explaining how AI works like elements work and like delivering a child experience works. And then how Apple's AI stack works and there's a lot of pieces. So it was actually pretty helpful to see it all kind of displayed that way and I'll include a photo in the news letter later. And this was not live streamed by the way you had to be in the room to watch this. It was probably 80, 50 to 75 press influencers, analysts. Ten cook and John turn us were sitting in the front row watching as well and cook hung around after and set set high to people I said hi to him after. But yeah, they about about the strategy but also taking some shots right like there was a remark Craig said about like we're never going to add ads, which is obviously a reference to to chat GPT and the ads that are in there. I think they really don't like direction that open and some of the negative headlines about how people have used chat GPT for horrendous things I assume that's also something that kind of reminds me of the Facebook social media narratives back in the day where they were doing all this kind of marketing. They're going over privacy versus surveillance and I think they're kind of sending that into I know. But maps as that's a point and also they're working with Google to platter fundamental AI model and Google was the largest advertising company on earth. Yeah, believe me, there's some contradictions in all of us. They're always has them with Apple. What else was the takeaway and by the way, ask questions if anyone has questions. Oh, here's one now he says is Apple do anything like Amazon's project NARA AI enhanced production infrastructure AI studio. You know, not to my knowledge. I mean, they showed a lot of image stuff today with their foundational models where you can basically I mean, they showed me in a briefing after where you could literally just change the backdrop and move the move the backdrop of a portrait of a photo. To like, I don't want that building there. Another one was like hiding the leg of a kid was head in the photo and you just tap it and it does cloud inference to like get rid of the thing in front of his leg so you can see all of them, you know, and like the cute photo. So they're doing stuff like in the photos app and their apps they don't have this like hub this like product experience and it is similar to not like a studio. They're not really calling stuff AI that much right they call it Apple intelligence. A lot of the photo stuff I saw which is they were saying today like their servers are melting with because a lot of this is already accessible and data. And yeah, their servers are melting and so on and for stuff on the photos is pretty so. It reminds me of being here a year ago actually. And again, it comes back to like maybe why the open app partnership is not been working for them. I remember being in the briefings here a year ago. And they were showing some of the chat to the animations and iOS and macOS and some reason I don't know why. I was having some kind of out of that day. And so in the briefings which you know Apple is like so meticulous with these briefings like everything so like, you know, there's so much thought and effort put into it. They're having all these auditors and stuff was working you could see the Apple employees like you know entered like inwardly fuming about this so maybe that also affected the open app partnership. But anyway, yeah, they're doing a lot of stuff with their own models on images, but no, they don't have like a concerted new product there. Steven, what's up, dude? What do you wish Apple would have announced but didn't? I don't know if there's a would have I kind of expected them to have something to answer the rise of quad code and cursor and all of these agent to coding tools. You know, they'll say, you know, Xcode uses all the frontier models and they've iterated on the interface which they have and you know, I'm sure it's still one of the not the largest developer platforms. But when you look at what's happening and coding, sorry, it's loud. There's a card in front of me here. When you look at what's happening with coding, I mean Apple, the interface just seems so far behind. I mean, you hear Boris who runs cloud code doing interviews saying like, you need to be doing loops now like you don't even like you shouldn't even be prompting your AI to code. You should be like writing loops that prompt the AI. That's like one extreme and you know the Apple over here that's like not doing a ton. And so I would say, you know, I don't know if I would have hoped but I would have not been surprised to see a bigger kind of splash around Xcode, but there wasn't. Maybe they're seating that kind of vibe code ground to the other tools and I did get that message for sure and especially in some of the on background briefings that they think all of this is super early vibe coding and agents to. And so maybe they're just taking you see approaching the benefit of Apple that's, you know, being Apple's they sell all the devices that power this AI and as long as people aren't switching to new hardware like Apple's going to be fine right like when open clock came out Mac many sales went through the roof right so. They're benefiting kind of no matter what right now now long term what happens is more interesting and something I couldn't really get out of anyone today. But now that that's coming to mind agents during the very interesting on the record Q&A earlier today with Craig and other Apple execs. He was asked about agents and he laughed and said, Oh, you almost has just been a Google IO. Because for those who don't know, like a Google I/O, it was all agents all the time. They set it over and over and over, like a buzzword. And everyone just laughed, like, crazy in the room when he said that. Because it's rare. It's honestly very rare for an Apple exec to have any kind of off script moment at all. But kind of throch. And basically, the idea that agents are here now in a material way beyond coding said they were exciting experiments, but very early. So yeah, at Bill last week or whatever, Microsoft went all in on OpenClaw. I had an issue about that last week in the newsletter. I don't expect Apple to do anything like that or embrace OpenClaw or anything like that any time soon. OK, great. I think that's some more questions coming in. I'm only going to do this for a few more minutes because I've got to actually write the newsletter guys. And believe me, it's going to be a good one. But please send any questions, and I'll get to them right now. Joshua asks, what is the vibe that you're getting about John Ternes' software strategy? You know, really interesting. I mean, Ternes was like-- he was not in the keynote today, which I think they wanted to do because it was Tim Cook's last keynote. Tim had a nice moment where he came out at the beginning and was acknowledging that it was his last. Ternes was around. Everybody's taking photos of them. He's walking around Apple Park. They actually came to the media reception last night that they old before WWDC, which is something Cook never did, which I think-- and I'll have this in the newsletter. But I'm sensing a media shift in the way that Apple approaches media. Maybe it's a Ternes thing. Maybe it's not. I don't know. But we definitely haven't seen anything about his strategy, sorry to see that. I mean, he's a hardware guy. So I assume a lot of strong opinions there, but CBD on software. Natalie asks, did they comment on those NAC mini-stells? And will this impact new devices? The market like that at some point. I don't think people market it as like their open claw machine. I think because, again, they're worried about agents being so early in the security risks. I was with an Apple exec literally just before I came here. And they were saying, you know, like talking about prompt detection as hacks and worried about the skill for people who don't understand all this stuff and people getting hacked, which is to me very understandable when you're Apple and you're like one of the largest platforms on Earth. They definitely love the MEC mini-stells, though. I mean, they love when anything drives their hardware cells. And again, it goes to my earlier point that they're benefiting from AI, even without being at the front here. Yeah. So with the pixelated video, as sub-stack, I don't know. I think I have good Wi-Fi. The signal looks good. I haven't had any issue with FaceTime. Sub-stack needs to get on it with my video. I'm sorry, but that's what I can do. If anyone wants to ask any more questions, then talk to me. I'll just spend all of it under a W.D. [AUDIO OUT] [AUDIO OUT] [AUDIO OUT] [AUDIO OUT] [AUDIO OUT] [AUDIO OUT] [BLANK_AUDIO]