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iPhone's last stand? More like Microsoft's last stand. Nobody wants their garbage hardware and software outside of enterprise shmucks more interested in filling their pockets with fat contract money than delivering value.

> The reason is obvious when you think about it: enterprises are paying for their employees’ time, so of course they are willing to pay for tools that make those employees more productive

Is that why there are billions dollars wasted in useless Microsoft subscriptions and services?

> consumers, on the other hand, are mostly looking to waste time, which is why attention-harvesting advertising is the only software business model that works at scale for consumer services.

What a callous view of people. Who's your benchmark? TikTok addicted kids?

> What they do want to do is watch short-form video

Yeah, it seems so.

i was under the impression that the 2024 apple intelligence rollout was something of a victory: Apple realized that the majority of people don't actually want this stuff forced on them at the os level, and the ai maximalists all used apple anyways via clawbot (including purchasing an additional apple device, the mini!) because of apples non-ai-specific commitment to phone computer interop.

Certainly the copilot button in ms paint did nothing to attract the clawbot ecosystem to windows

They see "thin is in" and I see remote servers now watching everything on your screen or within audio visual range. Eventually the only jobs will be at the intel agencies watching the data feeds from all the rabble so they can ascertain who is mouthy enough to whack and charge the others by the word for what used to be processed locally for free.

Of all the things they could build, why must they pick this future...

    you will be surrounded by an ecosystem of
    devices, none of which stand alone, but are
    more like portals to interact with your agents

And then a minute later I could ask it "Is copilot done yet?" and it replies "No, looks like it is still working on it". And then a minute later I ask again. It replies "Yes, it finished. It changed chart.py and styles.css. Do you want me to tell you what specific changes it made to the files?".

But it looks like none of the chat agents with voice interface have such a connector at the moment? An SSH connector would be the most useful. But a "GitHub Codespace connector" or something like that would also do.

I wonder if that will be a missing piece for long. If so, I would build an agent with voice mode and ssh connector myself. But I guess it should come out from the big guys any moment now?

Who is paying for all of this AI usage on the Iphone? I didn't see anything about a new AI subscription (maybe I missed it?), and I doubt Apple will want to pay million/billions a year to do it indefinitely.

I've valued Ben Thompson's opinions less over time. He was super into goggle-like devices and remote meetings. I own Apple Vision Pro. It's a technical achievement, but not compelling beyond immersive video (too bad). He harps on Dems trying to clean up monopolies (Lina Khan during Biden, who had good principles but didn't get much done; probably blame her boss) and is quiet through republican bullshit (T2). He seems to interview huge tech figures as though he was the was the Verge or Nilay Patel does: with a soft touch.

Just not doing it for me. Think I'm gonna stop reading anything he says.

Edit: missing words, thinking faster than typing

After the blowout success of the Macbook Neo, I'd think the bet would be on a cheap iPhone. Maybe not, as so many people finance their expensive phone through their carrier, but I suspect a $300 iPhone would eat the mid-range Android market.

I am still convinced that Apple is slowly working its way to smart glasses. And that *this* is the Next Big Thing. Frankly, the future is very good AR glasses that just work.

- iPhone Air to cram everything into a small space

- Vision pro - a new OS for looking at things and interacting

- Better Siri and AI that works with voice

- Smart local model / routing to big models in the cloud

- integration with wearables (air pods and watches)

If you're excited about voice AI but frustrated with Siri's limitations, ZenMic is a practical tool that actually generates professional-quality voice content today.

Not sure why the article is titled the way it is. Ben’s take on Siri AI being just good enough for the vast majority of consumers makes sense. The iPhone is the most consumer facing product because it’s a consumption platform. Some folks use it to create stuff, but most people use it to consume media or interact with another human.

iPadOS also did not receive any product specific updates because I think Apple understands that device well: it’s also a consumption device with a bit more productivity capability. They know they can ship a full macOS on iPad, as witnessed by the lower performance A18 chip in the Neo running the full OS, but what’s the point? Using a desktop UI with a touch interface is terrible. So you’d need a mouse and keyboard. By the time you get that accessory, you’ve already exceeded the cost of a Neo or MacBook Air. There’s also no size, weight or space difference between a fully accessorized iPad and MacBook Neo, Air or 14” Pro.

I think Apple will be fine regardless of whether this new Siri AI stuff actually works well or not. I think deep down they don’t really care because they don’t have to. All of their devices are perfect clients that can interact perfectly fine with cloud inference. And their devices are such a joy to use. That’s what Apple is good at.

Now the confusing part is the new Microsoft hardware project. Is Solara a laptop? Tablet? 2-in-1? Phone? They already have a great hardware run with Surface, so I wonder if this new project is a more powerful local inference push?

Last Stand? This is rather strong language and overselling the situation, for clicks I guess.

You might re-title the article instead, "The iPhone holds its ground", and it would be a more realistic title. But perhaps garnering less clicks.

I've always thought Ben Thompson is strong on enterprise and b2b topics but super weak on everything consumer related, he simply doesn't seem to understand consumer behavior (he has zero empathy or ability to project his mind into the average person's mind)

E.g. Ben was sure iPhone air would be a massive hit because he himself loved it. (It's struggled as people don't like the smaller battery life).

Ben was sure the Vision Pro would be a huge hit because he himself loved it. (It was a total failure as the average person doesnt want to pay huge amounts for a ridiculous looking dork helmet).

Ben raving about Meta's hand controller which he was sure was going to be the future of consumer electronics (The Neural Band). He was discussing how you could use it while your hand is in your jeans/pants pocket. Not quite thinking about how this would look while you're sat on the subway with someone sat opposite you.

Ben discussing how the future of watching sports is in VR. Not considering how weird it would be to go to a friends house to watch the game and everyone has their own VR headset. Also not considering the fun of watching sports is doing it with other people.

Basically, he has a huge issue with extracting his own liking of techy products to the average consumer who are basically nothing like Ben Thompson.

This Microsoft notion of “devices that don’t stand alone but surround you” sounds an awful lot like Google’s “ambient computing” of yonder.

On step into the markets in Shenzhen and you will know it is not over. That new foldy iphone is a bit dodgy tho..

> Apple is targeting consumers, for whom traditional chatbot functionality is probably sufficient for the vast majority of their AI needs.

I disagree strongly here. The chatbot is the furthest thing from sufficient for the average consumer. Take the newly announced feature that groups your compromised passwords together and offers to agentically change them all for you. Really cool! Could you do that via a chatbot interface? Sure. Would the average consumer? No.

title is too biased and sensational

first paragraph begins the article upon 2 very big and flawed statements:

> Apple fans would, for years and years, sneer at Microsoft’s penchant for talking about products that may or may not ship, deriding them as vaporware.

maybe some would, but as a whole I would say this is not a common thing

> After Apple’s bungled 2024 launch of Apple Intelligence and new Siri, however, vaporware is fair game

no it's not

I didn't know about Project Solara so learned a new thing from the article, but I got the impression that it's not as big as the author tried to make it seem, felt very distant and forced.

Wait what, is this a Microsoft ad in disguise?

What struck me reading this is that everyone seems focused on who gets to own the next computing platform: Apple, AI companies, the cloud, agents, whatever comes next.

I wonder if the bigger question is what happens to us.

Convenience is great, but if we optimize away every moment of reflection, tradeoff, and decision-making, we risk becoming passengers in our own lives. The goal shouldn’t be to hand over our judgment to increasingly capable systems. It should be to use those systems to help us think more clearly and act more intentionally.

The future I want isn’t one where AI lives my life for me. It’s one where it helps me live it better.

Having watched Microsoft try and fail to launch countless new ideas into the market over the past couple decades, I have 0 faith in their ability to deliver something people actually use. Others, often Apple, seem to succeed where Microsoft had previously tried and repeatedly failed.

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