(Preview) Apple Enters the Uncanny Valley, The SpaceX Play for Cellular, Q&A on The Ringer, Smartphones, AI Parenting
- Ben Thompson calls Apple’s HomeView launch ad “one of the worst marketing videos ever” — bad enough that evaluating the product requires putting the commercial “out of your mind.” The 3:13 spot showed a family fighting over the screen and raising its own stress level; Ben said it left him longing for an overly packaged, sterile Apple product launch video. Andrew Sharp’s sharper read: “the commercial sucks because the product sucks.”
- The device only makes sense as a Siri AI product, yet Apple buried Siri AI until “the fourth or fifth sentence” of its press release — which Ben reads as “maybe just a lack of confidence in Siri AI.” Apple pitched devices (“we have a new Apple TV, we have a new HomePad”) instead of a home ecosystem with those devices as component parts — “a weird framing.”
- The genuine opportunity is integration that “just works”: Ben flagged the LG and Schneider Electric partnership — “no apps, no logins, you just buy them and they work” — as the most encouraging detail. His own setup illustrates the need: a DAKboard calendar display that needs weekly resets, and doorbell and thermostat integrations that “break constantly.” He said an always-on kitchen recipe display alone might be worth $300 or $350 to him, and that he might get it just for recipes.
- Ben sees AI vibe coding as a challenge to Apple’s “just works” advantage. He cited a tweet about someone vibe-coding a Mac app that figured out how to control different smart devices and displayed them in a clickable house map. “One year ago, two years ago, three years ago,” he said, this vision would have been compelling; now he thinks he can fix his thermostat problem himself.
- The new Apple TV went upmarket to $300, adding a far-field microphone, rather than going downmarket against Fire TV Sticks, Google TVs, and Rokus. Ben sees an “uncanny valley”: the customer aware enough to buy into the smart-home setup may already be using better AI, while he questions whether the customer who wants Apple to do it for them will pay $300.
- Both hosts answer “I don’t” to Ben’s question: “do you trust Apple to deliver a good product if the root of the product is good AI?” Andrew goes further: Apple looks “creatively exhausted,” searching for use cases as he says it did with Vision Pro, which has little utility beyond entertainment for him and “maybe 50 other people in the United States.”
- The preview ends after Andrew introduces a Wall Street Journal report that SpaceX reached a deal to buy cellular spectrum licenses from Grain Management — “its biggest move yet into a wireless market dominated by traditional telecom companies.”
1. The commercial was so bad it has to be cleared away before the product can be discussed
- Ben’s opening move: “you almost have to put that out of your mind to even talk about this product in any sort of positive way.” His case: technology should make life easier, but the ad showed the HomeView “making everyone’s life more difficult... increasing the stress level,” with the family fighting over it. Even the showcase use case undercuts itself: Dad pulls up a French toast recipe, Mom takes the device to look at her calendar, and Dad figures out the recipe anyway — “so I guess he didn’t really need the recipe.”
- Andrew’s parent’s-eye refinement: there’s “a charm to the chaos” of a family breakfast “that you only experience if you’re actually a parent” — what he found depressing was romanticizing more technology in that moment. Ben’s correction: “the issue is not that there’s more technology, it’s that there are more screens.”
- The disagreement is worth keeping: Andrew says “the commercial sucks because the product sucks.” Ben says “the commercial sucks more than the product. At least the theory of the product.” Ben notes he came off more positive than John Gruber in a recording that wasn’t posted yet, despite having said a week earlier that he had no interest in the product.
2. The theory of the product: an ambient Siri AI home Apple failed to pitch clearly
- Apple’s press release doesn’t reach Siri AI until “the fourth or fifth sentence,” yet “this is a device that only makes sense in the context of Siri AI.” Ben reads that burial as Apple being a device company and “maybe just a lack of confidence in Siri AI.”
- The most encouraging detail in the launch, per Ben: partnerships with LG and Schneider Electric — “no apps, no logins. You just buy them, and they work.” That’s the angle Apple should push: go all-in and skip the work of stitching things together.
- His lived example of the category’s potential: a DAKboard display near the mudroom entrance showing his calendar, weather, and photos. The Linux-based setup is “genuinely useful,” but has a memory leak that requires weekly resets and takes work to put together. Ben first set up the DAKboard concept in Taiwan about a decade ago. He also described the Paprika recipe app on a MagSafe stand: “the phone goes to sleep and your hands are messy.” He said an always-on recipe display alone would be worth $300 or $350 to him, and that he might get it just for recipes. “The fact that it sounds trivial in some respects is actually the point.”
- His thermostat integration breaks constantly; his doorbell connection to his home-automation system also breaks, and he bought Ubiquiti doorbells as a backup because he doesn’t trust that connection. “No one should be doing any of this stuff ’cause it all sucks.”
3. Vibe coding raises a challenge to Apple’s “just works” advantage
- Ben cites a tweet he’d just seen: someone vibe-coded a Mac menu bar app where AI figured out how to control different smart devices, then displayed the house as a visual the user could click to control them. “It’s insane.”
- The timing is the point: Ben says this vision would have been “incredibly compelling” a year, two years, or three years ago. Now he thinks he can fix his thermostat problem himself. He also questions whether he wants home progress limited to what Apple chooses to build — “which means I don’t want to be in the Apple ecosystem.” He finds it amusing that he appears “more half-throated” about the product.
4. The uncanny valley: pricing upmarket toward a customer who may already have better AI
- Instead of going downmarket against Fire TV Sticks, Google TVs, and Rokus, Apple raised the Apple TV price to $300. Ben says a major reason for the higher price is the far-field microphone, which makes it another Siri AI device. His framing complaint: Apple announced devices, not “a new home ecosystem, of which these are component parts.”
- Ben’s uncanny-valley concern: a consumer aware enough to buy a HomeView and a microphone-equipped Apple TV, and to add a thermostat or lock, may already be using better AI. That was Andrew’s point, and Ben agreed. Meanwhile, Ben questions whether the customer who wants Apple to do it all for them will pay $300 for an Apple TV.
- Andrew’s harsher structural read: Apple looks “creatively exhausted,” searching for reasons for the product to exist. He compares the pitch to Vision Pro use cases such as surgeons, and says Vision Pro has little utility beyond entertainment for him and “maybe 50 other people in the United States.”
- Andrew also questions Siri AI’s promised “broad world knowledge,” richer music discovery, and on-screen awareness: for those use cases, he’d rather use a different AI than Siri AI.
5. The verdict is a trust question — and both hosts answer no
Ben says he was already considering an article for the following week framed around “Do you trust Apple?” Apple’s pitch is trust with your data, but “the real issue is: do you trust Apple to deliver a good product if the root of the product is good AI?” Ben: “I don’t.” Andrew: “I don’t.”
Andrew adds that his family doesn’t need more screens, and says Apple should understand that when advertising an additional screen for the whole family. Ben’s parting emphasis: “I’m dialing in on the cooking screen. Underrated.”
The preview ends after Andrew introduces the Wall Street Journal report that SpaceX reached a deal to buy cellular spectrum licenses from Grain Management, “its biggest move yet into a wireless market dominated by traditional telecom companies.”
Full transcript
Hello, and welcome to a free preview of Sharp Tech. Hello, and welcome back to another episode of Sharp Tech. I’m Andrew Sharp, and sitting across from me in a hotel room, Ben Thompson. Ben, how are you doing?
Well, not just sitting across from you. We’re sitting on the floor in solidarity because your desk chair is the creakiest chair in history.
It’s a great setup today. I sat down in the guest chair and thought, “Ah, this actually isn’t going to work.” The desk chair—that is not—
Yes.
—the guest chair.
Yes. The guest chair is fine, but I felt bad for you, so I’m also sitting on the ground.
So we’re both sitting Indian-style here, recording a podcast as God intended. How are you doing?
I’m doing okay. I’m just excited to give my life completely to Apple, I think, is where we’re at.
Well, that’s where we’ll begin today: the HomeView. I’ll read the beginning of Apple’s press release. They released the HomeView this week: “Designed to be central to the home and personal to everyone in it. With a stunning seven-inch Liquid Retina display, HomeView brings entertainment, connection, and smart home management together in one place. From playing music and making FaceTime calls to home monitoring and hands-free automations with voice control, all designed with privacy and security at the core.” And Siri AI will be baked into that product, throughout it. The announcement was paired with a commercial showing the HomeView at the center of a family kitchen, with a family that has three teenagers. Many people found the commercial very stressful and dystopian. What was your reaction to it?
Yeah, I guess we should start with the commercial because I think this is one of the worst marketing videos ever.
It was shocking.
You almost have to put it out of your mind to even talk about this product—
Like, evaluate the product—
—in any sort of positive way.
—objectively.
Yeah. It was bad on multiple levels. Number one, I think technology should make your life easier.
Mm-hmm.
The impression you got from this device was that it was making everyone’s life more difficult and more challenging. It was increasing the stress level.
They were fighting over the HomeView at one point.
Well, also, Dad puts a recipe on there to make French toast. Setting aside whether you really need a recipe to make French toast, we actually know the answer is no, you don’t. While he’s cooking, Mom takes the HomeView to look at her calendar.
And he figures it out. Good for him.
He figured it out, so I guess he didn’t really need the recipe that much. It’s funny because that is actually a small, compelling use case.
Mm-hmm.
Someone showed, I think in person, how you bring your iPhone up next to the device, it seamlessly passes over, and then, boom, a recipe pops up.
Yeah.
That actually looks—
—useful on a bigger screen.
Right. And it’s always on. You can have your phone on a little mount, but then you have to deal with the phone going to sleep, and it’s kind of a big pain. There are little use cases here. The long and short of it is that the video left me longing for an overly packaged, sterile Apple product launch video. I thought, “Okay, maybe you had it right.” There are aspects of this that I think are actually getting short shrift from people generally because the video was so bad. Almost everything in the video was also like, “Just do it on an iPhone.”
Yeah. That’s definitely one of my reactions to the product itself. People were saying the commercial was giving them a panic attack and they couldn’t even finish the video. It was three and a half minutes—or 3 minutes and 13 seconds long.
We do our research here.
I looked at it right before we came on, and it took some endurance to make it through this stressful morning with all these teenagers. As a parent, I think an outsider looking in on parenting would say, “Holy crap, I don’t want any part of that.” Parenting two toddlers, for instance—and I’m sure teenagers have a whole different spectrum of stresses and whatnot. What I found depressing, though, was that seeing them use more technology is not what I would want to romanticize. That was the piece of it. Everybody has these stressful mornings, and there’s some tenderness to it. I don’t actually hate it, but the product at the center of it—and more technology in that context—is not really a good thing.
I would just refine that slightly. Number one, the whole family is together for breakfast.
Right.
There’s something kind of charming about that, right?
That’s the thing. There’s a charm to the chaos that you only experience if you’re actually a parent.
That’s right. The issue, I think, is not that there’s more technology; it’s that there are more screens.
Mm-hmm.
This is one where I think the way to understand this device—and the way to understand the Apple TV, given they kind of made it more expensive and more capable—is that this is about Siri AI. But it almost speaks to Apple being a device company, and maybe just a lack of confidence in Siri AI. You open with the press release, and they don’t get to Siri AI until the fourth or fifth sentence.
Yep.
And this is a device that only makes sense in the context of Siri AI.
If Siri AI is really good and transformative.
If you’re with your family and you want to know something—
—you can just talk to the device.
It would be convenient to be able to just talk to the device.
Yeah.
You’re still looking at your family. I do think there’s this vision of a sort of ambient assistant that’s there, that you can just pick something up on. But I don’t need this device to have another way to look at my iMessages from, like, my boyfriend I don’t want my family to know about. How realistic is that? I’m just going to use the device in the middle of the counter that I don’t want anyone to see.
Or the whole family gathers around to watch the security cameras out front.
Right. It’s so funny, because I just recorded with Gruber. It’s not posted yet, but he was more negative than me.
Hmm.
I came into this saying, “Look, I already said a week ago I have no interest in this.” So I was trying not to be too negative, and I felt like I came across as more positive, even though I’m not super positive about this product. That’s in part because I can see there’s something here.
Okay.
There’s something about, for example, recipes next to the stove. There’s something about being able to have doorbells or cameras and having it all just work. If you get it all from Apple, that was, I think, the most encouraging thing: their partnership with LG and Schneider Electric for these devices.
Mm-hmm.
No apps, no logins. You just buy them, and they work. That’s exactly the angle Apple should be going for: you go all in with us, and you’re going to get all these capabilities people are talking about, but you don’t have to do all the hard work to stitch them together.
And we just make it easy.
That did not get conveyed in this video at all.
Yeah. It’s funny because a friend of ours reacted to the commercial on Tuesday and said, “This is the polar opposite of the iconic iPhone Christmas commercial.” The iPhone Christmas commercial benefited from having a product to advertise that everybody wants and that solves all sorts of problems for everybody. I just don’t know that right now this solves that many problems for anybody.
But I think this is the challenge in any new category: you have to highlight points of pain, make people aware that they actually have this need, and then show how this product solves it.
Yeah.
The problem is this commercial just failed. That’s why I said we have to start with the commercial in part to get rid of the commercial. I feel like this idea of having an Apple device—let’s zoom out. The commercial sucks. Put it out of your mind.
Well, I think the commercial sucks because the product sucks, to be clear.
Which is fair, but I think the commercial sucks more than the product.
Okay.
At least the theory of the product.
Fair enough.
The theory of the product. There’s this world where you have things like doorbells, recipes next to the stove, thermostats, or “What’s my calendar like today?” I have bits and pieces of this.
Mm-hmm.
I have a display right next to the entrance of the mudroom that has my calendar on it, the weather, and a rotating set of pictures. It’s actually quite delightful. Everyone always enjoys it. Everyone looks at the pictures when they’re up there. It’s very useful to glance at it and see what the weather is—
I love it.
—and see what the calendar is.
I go to your house, I see your family photos. It’s terrific.
One of the issues I had with putting it there was that I was putting my calendar right there in the kitchen, where anyone could see it.
Yeah.
That’s actually a valid use case. To set this up, I have this thing called DAKboard. It’s a Linux distribution that runs the display, and it’s kind of shaky. I have to reset it every week because there’s a memory leak in the app, and it sort of stops working. You have to wire it together, and it’s connected to a folder with my iCloud. There’s a lot of fidgetiness involved in getting it to work.
Mm-hmm.
Once it worked, it was great, and I love having it. I first set up that DAKboard concept in Taiwan about a decade ago.
Yeah.
It’s so great. It is genuinely useful. Everyone knows exactly where to look to get the weather. I know exactly where to look to get a handle on my calendar for the day, and the pictures are delightful.
Mm-hmm.
But it’s a pain to set up.
Yeah.
Right? This is—
So streamline that for normies, and maybe there’s a product.
Yeah. That’s just one small example of what Apple at its best is. The nerds can set something cool up, but you’re not a nerd; you’re trying to live your life. Wouldn’t it be nice to have some cool photos—
Mm-hmm.
—in the kitchen? And, in this specific setup, you can see your calendar, but not everyone can see theirs. I can see the value in that.
Yeah.
Right? Number 2: I mentioned the recipe thing. It sounds trivial, but I use—
It does sound trivial, for the record.
Number 1: Do you cook?
I cook a little bit.
Do you ever use ChatGPT or recipe apps?
No, but my wife does. My wife uses ChatGPT for recipes pretty religiously at this point.
Yeah. I use ChatGPT, and I also have a great app called Paprika. You can send any webpage with a recipe to it, and it ingests everything and puts it in an easy-to-read display. It makes it easy to scale recipes—2x, 3x, whatever. It’s a great app. The problem is that I have a little MagSafe stand in the kitchen where I can put my phone to look at the recipe while I’m cooking, but—
But then it just goes to sleep after 5 minutes.
—the phone goes to sleep, and your hands are messy and all that. Someone posted a separate video on Twitter with this idea: I could have my recipe on my phone, and basically just put it next to the other device.
Tap it. Yeah.
You don’t even tap it.
Okay.
It just works because you can do the thing with 2 phones right now where they come together and you use AirDrop.
Mm-hmm.
Maybe it’s using AirDrop. I’m not sure. But, boom, it’s there. It’s always on, it’s not going to disappear, and it’s easy to reference in the kitchen. I should be able to talk to it and ask, “What’s the next ingredient?” The fact that it sounds trivial in some respects is actually the point.
Okay.
It’s little edges in life that this can make much nicer and much better. That use case by itself would be worth, what is it, $300 or $350 to me.
Mm-hmm.
I might get it just for a recipe display.
Interesting.
No, because it’s honestly super annoying. Your phone just goes to sleep all the time, and your hands are dirty.
Yeah.
There are little pieces here. Or take smart thermostats. I have a home automation system, and my thermostats are made by another company. The integration breaks constantly. It’s such a pain, and the apps are all terrible. So the idea that I could just buy this one from Apple—
One interface to control every thermostat.
—and it just works.
Yeah.
Right? There’s a real opportunity. Or doorbells: someone shows up, and you can see who’s at the door.
Mm-hmm.
My doorbells are from a different company than my home automation system, and the link breaks all the time. It’s super annoying. I actually got the doorbells from Ubiquiti as a backup because I don’t trust them to go through my home automation system.
Yeah.
All this stuff is genuinely useful, and no one should be doing any of it because it all sucks.
So somebody should be able to just do it in one place.
There’s an opportunity. I’ve been on Apple to do home stuff for ages for this reason. It actually is useful—
Mm-hmm.
—if it works, and Apple at its best delivers stuff that just works.
Yeah. You’re selling me, I’m not gonna lie. As I’m sitting here Indian-style across from you, I’m envisioning a future. Having an iPad that could control my entire house would be appealing to me.
People are going to say, “Why don’t you get an iPad?” Because an iPad is a battery-powered device that makes different compromises than these sorts of things. Now, here’s the flip side.
Okay.
1. AI Breaks Apple’s Home Advantage
I just came across a tweet. It was very good timing. Someone vibe-coded an entire menu bar app for their Mac where the AI figured out the interfaces to all their different smart devices and how to control them, then put them all in one place. The person scanned their house, and it constructed a visual. They can click on it, see their whole house, click on different items, and control them. It’s insane.
Mm.
The reason to bring this up isn’t that this product, this vision of what Apple is bringing, wasn’t incredibly compelling a year ago, 2 years ago, or 3 years ago.
Fancy.
I would have been sitting here saying, “Yes.” I’ve been saying Apple should do more in the home for ages. Now I sit here and say, “Do you know how I’m going to fix my thermostat problem?”
I’m gonna fix my thermostat problem.
I’m going to, and it’s going to be amazing. It’s going to be spectacular. It’s funny: you’re doing the home stuff, and you’ve been doing it for years. Do I want to lock in to all progress on my home stuff being limited to what Apple deigns to do or design, or do I want to actually be able to do lots of new stuff?
Yeah.
Which means I don’t want to be in the Apple ecosystem. Again, with this product a year or 2 ago, I think I could have been remarkably full-throated. It’s amusing to me that I appear to be more half-throated—
Seriously.
—but—
2. Apple’s Creative Exhaustion
From my perspective, watching the commercial and reading the press release, it strikes me that Apple is creatively exhausted right now and trying to find reasons for a product like this to exist—not just because the creative itself was a complete disaster. The recipe thing reminds me of the Vision Pro: it’s supposedly so useful for surgeons, and there are going to be all these different use cases. It turns out there isn’t really any utility to the Vision Pro beyond being an entertainment device that’s enjoyed by me and maybe 50 other people in the United States. I’m curious to see whether they can execute on this and find other use cases that people find compelling. That will be the question, and I’m just not sure. I’m certainly not a believer that there will be.
3. The Siri AI Trust Problem
The issue is that this is ultimately—again, it’s weird Apple didn’t sell this—but this only makes sense as a Siri AI device. That is the core interface. Do you trust Siri AI?
That’s the issue, for sure.
The Apple TV, I thought, was interesting. This is actually a good example of the issue. It’s almost as if this product is in an uncanny valley.
Mm-hmm.
On one end, you have the Fire TV Sticks, Google TVs, Rokus, or whatever. It’s always been bizarre to me that Apple never went further downmarket with the Apple TV device. Even before the price increases, I think it was $150 to get in, then it jumped up to $200 or more. And the form factor was kind of annoying, because you had this box that needed an HDMI cord, as opposed to something you could just plug into the back of your TV.
So especially if you wanted to travel with it—which, again, is a weird edge case—it was less convenient. They were more expensive, but it was still great. People like the user interface. You like the user interface. It’s very powerful, so there’s just more you can do. If you want to have, say, four different streaming services through channels, as we’ve sort of discussed.
Mm-hmm.
And this new product, instead of going downmarket, they actually raised the price even more.
Yeah.
So now it’s $300, and they—
How will it be better?
Well, the big reason it’s more expensive is that now it has a far-field microphone.
Okay.
So basically, you can talk to it. It’s another Siri AI device. And I assume you talk to it not just to control your TV, but to ask, “What’s on my calendar?” or “Who’s at the door?” or “Turn up the temperature.” It’s part of this home ecosystem they’re trying to deliver, but they didn’t talk about that. They talked about devices.
Mm-hmm.
“We have a new Apple TV. We have a new HomePad,” instead of, “We have a new home ecosystem, of which these are component parts.” It was a weird framing.
Yeah.
The uncanny valley, though, is that I’m on the extreme side—not the representative customer—but I have a bunch of Apple TVs, all of which are down in my rack in the basement and piped to my TVs around the house.
Mm-hmm.
So for me, a more expensive one with a microphone is totally useless. It’s not even part of my use case. Again, I’m not the representative customer, and I’m not saying that’s the case. But when you’re going upmarket and making your stuff more and more expensive, the likelihood that you’re getting to a consumer who actually wants way more—way more control, way more possibilities for integration, and doesn’t want to be constrained to just your devices—is increasing. And the customer who just wants Apple to do it for them: are they going to pay $300 for an Apple TV device?
Right.
It’s in this weird middle ground.
Well, what are the far-field microphones actually going to deliver? What’s the utility of Siri AI? In the press release, they talk about it being “profoundly more capable and conversational,” with “broad world knowledge” that powers richer music discovery and on-screen awareness. I think the issue is that Siri AI is so inferior to what you can find and use elsewhere. For all of those use cases, I’d rather use a different AI than Siri AI. And a lot of the other use cases are just as well served by an iPhone or an iPad. That’s where Apple is in an uncanny valley: their other products are so great, and their AI products are a non-event and often frustrating.
Right. That’s exactly what I’m talking about. If you’re aware enough of the possibilities of, say, a smart home—
Mm-hmm.
—such that you’re going to buy a HomeView and an Apple TV with a far-field microphone, you’re going to get all these capabilities. You’re going to go buy a thermostat and a lock—
That person is currently using far better AI right now.
Exactly.
Yeah.
That’s exactly it. And that’s the challenge I think they’re facing. I do think this vision—again, it’s frustrating. I feel like I’m articulating the vision better than they did at this event.
And the vision you’re articulating is clearly a product category that should exist. I just, amazingly enough, don’t really trust Apple to do it at this point.
Well, I was already thinking about my article next week, and it was going to be some variation of “Do you trust Apple?”
Yeah.
It’s a play on, obviously, their—
Their whole thing is trust.
—their whole thing is trust. Right? Trust us with your data, and all the stuff they did with this, like, “You only see your stuff when you look at it.” Again, I can see the use case. But is that actually the most important thing for this product? Actually, a general screen for everyone is more useful. The real issue is: do you trust Apple to deliver a good product if the root of the product is good AI?
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
I don’t.
I don’t.
I don’t. And I also don’t want a giant screen that my whole family is going to be fighting over in the mornings as we’re getting out of the house.
It’s not that big, I think. From what I understand—
Well—
—it’s pretty small.
Bigger than an iPhone, and—
Yeah.
—still, we don’t need more screens in our family lives. You would think Apple would be clued into that, but again, it’s kind of hard if you’re advertising a product that’s an additional screen for the entire family.
I’m dialing in on the cooking screen. Underrated. They should just give me the cooking use case.
Maybe. Look, I have to keep my recipes very, very simple. I’ll run it by my wife and see what she thinks. Shifting gears here, other news this week: The Wall Street Journal reported, “SpaceX reached a deal to buy cellular spectrum licenses from investment firm Grain Management, its biggest move yet into a wireless market dominated by traditional telecom companies.” All right, and that is the end of the free preview. If you’d like to hear more from Ben and I, there are links to subscribe in the show notes, or you can also go to sharptech.fm. Either option will get you access to a personalized feed that has all the shows we do every week, plus lots more great content from Stratechery and the Stratechery Plus bundle. Check it out, and if you’ve got feedback, please email us at email@sharptech.fm.