Andrew Sharp
Ben, how are you doing?
Ben Thompson
Well, at some point, maybe in the first half or early in the second half—
Andrew Sharp
Hm.
Ben Thompson
I was thinking about our Sharp Tech Knicks emailer and coming in hot—
Andrew Sharp
He did it to himself.
Ben Thompson
Too early.
Andrew Sharp
Yep.
Ben Thompson
I was telling him it was too early. I was thinking about how funny it was going to be when it all fell apart. I'm still not entirely sure what happened.
Andrew Sharp
I mean, I still can't believe what happened. I was thinking of a GOAT emailer, Cameron in Australia, who emailed me and Gulliver about a month ago asking whether he should buy tickets to the NBA Finals and fly to New York City from Sydney, Australia. I recommended at the time, “Do it. Life is short. It's going to be crazy expensive, but if this is a bucket-list item, this is your opportunity. Who knows when the Knicks will be back here? Just make the move.”
And then he did it, and he spent God knows how much on tickets to Game 3 and Game 4. I was sitting there after they lost Game 3, watching Game 4 with them down 30 at halftime, feeling really guilty that I was encouraging Cameron to go to the game. Then it turned into probably the most unforgettable game of his life—and any of our lives. So here we are.
Ben Thompson
There's no dollar figure that could have made it feel too expensive after last night.
Andrew Sharp
Oh my God. I'm so happy for him.
Ben Thompson
You messaged me about how worried you were about him, and I think you messaged it exactly at the nadir.
Andrew Sharp
Right.
Ben Thompson
I think they were down 29, and the game turned thanks to your care. So—
Andrew Sharp
The tide was turned. Oh my God.
Ben Thompson
That's right.
Andrew Sharp
The rest is history.
Ben Thompson
I was going to counsel you, “Look, you need to not take responsibility for other people's decisions. Cameron is his own person.”
Andrew Sharp
And he made that clear.
Ben Thompson
“He can make his own decisions.”
Andrew Sharp
To be clear, he didn't put it on me, but I still felt guilty during Game 4.
Ben Thompson
No, but maybe I'm wrong. If you were able to turn the tide, maybe you do need to care more about your advice. So—
Andrew Sharp
Indeed. And every Knicks fan—
Ben Thompson
Um.
Andrew Sharp
—in the audience, thank me over the next several days.
Ben Thompson
Well, let's let them win first. Let's let them finish the series.
Andrew Sharp
It is the Knicks.
Ben Thompson
Because now a Finals loss would be even funnier, so brace yourself.
Andrew Sharp
Absolutely.
Andrew Sharp
For now, Ben, we'll begin with WWDC. We're going to talk through Anthropic and its new Fable 5 model later in the show. But first, I look forward to WWDC conversations every year.
Ben Thompson
As a tech guy?
Andrew Sharp
As a tech guy, as a Vision Pro fanatic. The Vision Pro got a couple of mentions in this year's keynote, so I love to see that.
Ben Thompson
Not dead yet.
Andrew Sharp
It's not dead yet. We got Siri on the Vision Pro. But in general, it's sort of an Apple State of the Union. It's also how I mark the time on Sharp Tech. I still think back to the initial WWDC with Vision Pro—
Ben Thompson
Well—
Andrew Sharp
—Apple Intelligence.
Ben Thompson
I have an extra take here.
Andrew Sharp
Okay.
Ben Thompson
This was actually an incredibly important WWDC for you.
Andrew Sharp
Why is that?
Ben Thompson
Because the person at Apple most responsible for and most passionate about the Vision Pro is Mike Rockwell, who basically put up his hand and said, “Let me fix Siri, please.”
Andrew Sharp
Mm-hmm.
Ben Thompson
“Let someone else—like, we need to get rid of the clowns who are in charge. Put me in charge.” Despite the fact that he was, I think, from Dolby Logic originally, with no obvious connection to building AI. If WWDC went well, and if he pulls it off, he's going to rise in power.
Andrew Sharp
He'll keep his baby alive.
Ben Thompson
He's going to rise in power and prominence at the company. There have actually been questions about that, some political intrigue around his position there. If he were to leave, I think your Vision Pro might be in trouble.
Andrew Sharp
Mm.
Ben Thompson
And if he were to succeed, it might be good for your Vision Pro, so there's a lot at stake.
Andrew Sharp
It's funny because there was the line in Mark Gurman's report about that, and about the elevation of Rockwell, that prompted a double take as I was reading it. Apple looked to Mike Rockwell because Vision Pro was considered a technical success, if not a commercial success. I'm surprised that's the way it's interpreted internally. I think it's a technological marvel, but I'm surprised that Rockwell is getting any credibility out of what Apple has committed to over the last several years.
Ben Thompson
Well, maybe. We'll see. There were reports a few months ago that he's not super happy about reporting to Craig Federighi. That came out again the week before. If this works out and he gets put in charge of more stuff, that might be good for everyone. We'll see.
Andrew Sharp
There you go. Well, the palace intrigue will continue indefinitely here. For now—
Ben Thompson
Yeah, it's not really my beat, to be clear. But—
Andrew Sharp
Yeah. Well—
Ben Thompson
Because I know how important it is to you, I thought I'd bring it up.
Andrew Sharp
I look to Gurman. I enjoy reading his tea-leaf reading and insider reporting. But I have a six-pack of questions that we can run through quickly at the top of the show here. We got a lot of emails on the heels of WWDC, but I'll begin with Gabrielle, who wrote on the way into WWDC and sent this email last week:
“Ben and Andrew, is there any way for Apple to come out of WWDC leaving a good impression? If they play it safe and only deliver on features that were promised back in 2024, people will think it's just warmed-over news. On the other hand, if they show off new capabilities for Apple Intelligence, people will be wary of trusting them. Which of these approaches should Apple focus on? Is there any third option where they can leave the public excited about what they presented without the bitter aftertaste of the whole ‘something is rotten in the state of Cupertino’ debacle?”
There was no third option. A lot of people were pretty underwhelmed. What did you think? You were in Cupertino.
Ben Thompson
Yeah, I think Apple foreclosed the opportunity. What Gabriel is putting his finger on is that they foreclosed the opportunity for people to leave this keynote excited, for the exact reasons he said. They could show exciting things and no one would believe them, or they could show that they were actually doing basic stuff, but it worked this time.
Andrew Sharp
Yeah.
Ben Thompson
And then everyone's underwhelmed. So that's Apple's own fault. This is the cost of 2024: no one is going to leave 2026 genuinely excited and feeling like Apple is changing the world.
Andrew Sharp
Mm-hmm.
Ben Thompson
Given that constraint, I thought they did a great job. The most important aspect of doing a great job was the extent to which this was a fairly painful keynote.
Andrew Sharp
Yeah.
Ben Thompson
On one hand, it was shockingly short, and it was shockingly short despite the fact that it felt like approximately 23% of the keynote was watching—
Andrew Sharp
Watching the AI work.
Ben Thompson
—loading indicators. This was the keynote of all keynotes that could have benefited from being live.
Andrew Sharp
Mm-hmm.
Ben Thompson
Because what they needed to do was rebuild their credibility, and you rebuild your credibility by having stuff actually work. Now, I guess they're never going to do that again.
Andrew Sharp
They're allergic to that at this point, but I was texting Dummen[?] during the presentation that all the AI demos were pretty tedious. However, if you were doing them in front of a live audience and then watching them work—
Ben Thompson
Right.
Andrew Sharp
—in real time—
Ben Thompson
The anticipation. The “What if it fails?” Right?
Andrew Sharp
Yeah. Then it becomes—
Ben Thompson
No, exactly.
Andrew Sharp
—kind of thrilling, and they could have done that—
Ben Thompson
Honestly—
Andrew Sharp
—but didn't.
Ben Thompson
It's actually a testament to a weakness of the Tim Cook era. To go out there and do it live and say, “We're going to roll the dice. We think we've actually got it, and we're going to go out there and risk total embarrassment,” is itself an acknowledgment of the embarrassment they should already feel, given what happened in 2024.
And number 2, that is the third way. That's the way where you come out of it and you're like—
Andrew Sharp
We're hanging it all out there.
Ben Thompson
“Balls on those guys.” Yeah, they went out there. I use that term carefully, but that would've been the response. They went out there, they threw away their prerecorded keynotes, and they said, “We are doubling down. We're putting our chips on the table, and we're going to do live demos. Screw it.”
Andrew Sharp
Yeah.
Ben Thompson
And it actually works this time. In that case, given what they shipped, it's totally what they said in 2024.
There was almost nothing new. And you know what? That’s fine.
Andrew Sharp
Mm-hmm.
Ben Thompson
What they showed in 2024 was pretty compelling.
Andrew Sharp
Yeah.
Ben Thompson
That’s why we were excited in 2024. It’s compelling because—
Andrew Sharp
Well, crucially, it’s compelling for 90% of Apple customers, for whom high-end, expensive AI is not really what they want. They’re giving people table stakes.
Ben Thompson
It’s compelling for high-end AI customers. You knew something was in your data somewhere, and you wanted to surface it.
Andrew Sharp
Mm-hmm.
Ben Thompson
And they can do it because they’re the operating system. It’s because of their position with the iPhone that they are uniquely positioned to do something with AI that no one else can do. Even though it’s not technically impressive, it’s still differentiated.
Andrew Sharp
Yeah.
Ben Thompson
Highly differentiated. And that’s why I was so enthusiastic about 2024, because, aha, they have an angle here. They don’t need to do a bunch of capital expenditure spending. They can actually deliver something meaningful given their preexisting position. They’re leveraging their position as—
Andrew Sharp
They own the data that matters, yeah.
Ben Thompson
They own the data that matters, and they have a position to corral developers to use the App Intent system and their index system to give them their data, even though the developers don’t like Apple and all these bits and pieces. It was a very smart strategic play, and I was very enthusiastic about it in 2024. And if I step out of the “it’s 2026” framing and look at what Mythos—
Andrew Sharp
They’re so far behind.
Ben Thompson
—or Fable or—
Andrew Sharp
They should be so ashamed.
Ben Thompson
—Gemini’s doing—
Andrew Sharp
Yeah.
Ben Thompson
—it remains impressive and compelling.
Andrew Sharp
Mm-hmm.
Ben Thompson
And now I think where they fell short is that they didn’t go all the way. I think a live demo would’ve transformed this. It would’ve been a smash hit, especially because almost universally, the reports are that it works, and it works super well.
Andrew Sharp
Hm.
Ben Thompson
I have not installed it. I usually never install betas. I actually do plan on installing this one. This is part and parcel of the fact that I was still unpacking last year. I have to find my iPhone from last year.
Andrew Sharp
Okay.
Ben Thompson
My spare iPhone that I carry with me is actually an iPhone from 2 years ago. It’s been a busy week, so I apologize. I was not properly prepared for this show. But by all accounts, everyone who’s talked about it says it just works.
Andrew Sharp
Hm.
Ben Thompson
And it just works. That’s what Apple needs to get back to: It just works.
Andrew Sharp
Yeah.
Ben Thompson
And it seems like it does.
Andrew Sharp
Well, we shall see. Boyan, responding to your WWDC article on Tuesday, wrote in and said, “Apple is not thinking different. It is living in the past and becoming a victim of the ‘when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail’ mentality. That is exactly the mistake that Microsoft made with mobile. They tried to shoehorn everything into a Windows viewpoint. Apple is replaying the same playbook. If AI changes the world like its biggest proponents think it will, Apple will be in deep trouble. Fortunately for them, it is very likely that AI becomes just another very useful software layer, and Apple dodges a bullet.” What do you agree with there?
Ben Thompson
I’m sorry, was this one Boyan or 2 Boyans?
Andrew Sharp
One Bojan.
Ben Thompson
Because Boyan’s last sentence completely refutes the first 5 sentences. If, in fact, Apple AI is just another very useful software layer, then that means Apple is, in fact, thinking differently by not spending hundreds of billions of dollars—
Andrew Sharp
Yep.
Ben Thompson
—and going their own way and sticking with the iPhone paradigm. So which is it, Bojan? I feel I don’t even need to answer. The guy answered himself.
Andrew Sharp
I mean, I would say they are demonstrably thinking differently than the rest of tech, and have been over the last several years.
Ben Thompson
And they’re also demonstrably anchoring themselves in the iPhone paradigm.
Andrew Sharp
Mm-hmm.
Ben Thompson
That doesn’t mean it’s wrong. That was a point I was trying to make. I didn’t love my article this week for a few reasons, one of which was this: I had to rewrite the ending multiple times because I was trying to say, look, all these critiques, like Boyan’s critique, are totally legitimate. Apple’s totally doing what’s best for them. They’re totally doing what makes sense for their model. They’re totally not investing in things that they’re probably not good at. And all those reasons—
Andrew Sharp
And they’re not thinking any differently than they were over the last—
Ben Thompson
That’s right.
Andrew Sharp
—10, 15 years.
Ben Thompson
That’s right.
Andrew Sharp
Yeah.
Ben Thompson
When you articulate that companies are doing what is good for them and in their interest, it’s usually followed by a but.
Andrew Sharp
Mm-hmm.
Ben Thompson
The world’s different now, and this is totally wrong thinking. Sometimes it’s just right thinking. You’re just fortunate enough that the model actually works. And the fact of the matter is, I have talked about this multiple times. Boyan should give me a little credit here—or one of the Boyans, Boyan 1—
Andrew Sharp
Yeah.
Ben Thompson
—that there’s—yes, you can imagine—
Andrew Sharp
You’ve been warning about a downside.
Ben Thompson
—a future of a different—
Andrew Sharp
Sure.
Ben Thompson
—UI paradigm: just-in-time UI, there when you need it, gone when you don’t; agents working in the background on your behalf, much more anticipatory of your needs; all these ambient sensors and input devices. This is why I talked about it in the context of Microsoft’s Project Solera a bit, which, again, I love that demo, even though it will probably never ship. It’s going to be vaporware. But it was a tangible articulation of a completely different model of computing that is not like the iPhone at all. It’s the exact opposite. It’s what Boyan 1 says is coming, and Apple is screwed.
Andrew Sharp
Yeah.
Ben Thompson
But then Boyan 2 is here and saying, “Actually, the iPhone’s pretty phenomenal.”
Andrew Sharp
Mm.
Ben Thompson
And in a context where—what do consumers pay for? Give me 1 service that consumers pay for.
Andrew Sharp
What do you mean? Like a software service?
Ben Thompson
Yeah.
Andrew Sharp
I don’t know.
Ben Thompson
Netflix.
Andrew Sharp
Mm. Yep.
Ben Thompson
What is Netflix?
Andrew Sharp
Entertainment.
Ben Thompson
I should have put Netflix in the article because that actually helped make my point more. I just said customers don’t pay for productivity. They don’t pay for productivity; they pay for entertainment. The iPhone is a phenomenal entertainment device. That is its number-one functionality. It’s social media, vertical video, talking to your friends.
Andrew Sharp
Mm-hmm.
Ben Thompson
Now, is it also a productivity device? Absolutely. It’s one of the most useful productivity devices in the world, but it’s used by people to do work. I do most of my work on the iPhone. I do my actual writing—
Andrew Sharp
Yeah.
Ben Thompson
—and maybe some Excel spreadsheets. Someone was asking me for my software stack, and my software stack is funny. I have this superpowered MacBook Pro, which I rarely use as a text editor, and maybe for some Excel spreadsheets. I do most of my reading, most of my thinking, and a lot of my sketching out ideas or whatever on my phone. I use an iPhone like a Gen Z maniac.
Andrew Sharp
Mm-hmm.
Ben Thompson
And it is definitely a productivity device. But for most people, they’re not doing work most of the time. Entertainment is just as important—more important, in fact—than productivity. And on that vector, from that perspective, is any of these devices better than a phone?
Andrew Sharp
We’ll see. It might be 10 years before any sort of device emerges that could actually challenge the primacy of the phone.
Ben Thompson
So I’m with Boyan 2 here. I’m coming around to the idea that maybe Apple’s lucky to be in this situation. Better to be lucky than good.
Andrew Sharp
No, exactly. And I look at what they announced this past week, and Apple doesn’t need to hit home runs in AI to win in AI and to double down on all those advantages.
Ben Thompson
Well, they also don’t need to win in AI. They need to—sometimes it’s sufficient to maintain your position.
Andrew Sharp
Yeah.
Ben Thompson
Right? They’re not going to win in AI. They’re not. They’re not going to be the perfect AI.
Andrew Sharp
They’re not going to have the best AI—
Ben Thompson
They’re not going to be OpenAI.
Andrew Sharp
—the best model. No, exactly.
Ben Thompson
They might have the most-used AI, though.
Andrew Sharp
What about Apple as the Spurs in the second half of Game 4 last night? They’re up 25 points, and the key for them here is not to miss 9 threes in a row.
Ben Thompson
Right. Why are you taking 9 threes in a row like you’re behind? Just getting layups and free throws—
Andrew Sharp
And you’re set.
Ben Thompson
—would get the job done.
Andrew Sharp
Yeah. And I think that’s what WWDC was this year, and it’s perfectly sensible as far as I’m concerned. Jonathan says, “Goats.” I would love to hear some clarification on the Apple and Google AI deal. I thought Apple was using a white-label version of Gemini and/or using Google Cloud for off-device compute.
This quote from Craig Federighi, though, sounds like Apple is using nothing from Google? Here’s what Federighi said:
“Of course, we don’t have the Gemini app as our app. In fact, none of that client code is part of how we run on iOS. For these models, we use none of the models that Google deploys to their customers, nor do we use the infrastructure and means by which they deploy models to their customers. And then when it comes to the knowledge base, we of course don’t use Google Search or anything like that as the foundation of our system. So I hope that’s clear. The amount of the Google Assistant that we use is none.”
And Jonathan says, “I suspect the truth lies somewhere in the middle, but please help a normie make sense of this bizarre corporate speak.” Can you help Jonathan, Ben?
Ben Thompson
The funniest line that Craig Federighi said there is, “So I hope this is clear.”
Andrew Sharp
Mm-hmm.
Ben Thompson
Because he does not hope it’s clear. He did not lie anywhere in this statement, and he also created an impression that is totally wrong.
Andrew Sharp
Okay, great.
Ben Thompson
I don’t know. Should I break it down sentence by sentence?
Andrew Sharp
Yeah, go sentence by sentence. Fire Joe Morgan here.
Ben Thompson
I’m not sure how long this is going to take, but okay. “Of course, we don’t have the Gemini app as our app.” Duh. Of course. Gemini is an app that you actually download on your phone or go to a website to use. They don’t have that.
Andrew Sharp
Yeah.
Ben Thompson
Okay, fine. That’s clear. “In fact, none of that client code is part of how we run on iOS.” This is saying the same thing again. The code of the Gemini app supports the Gemini app. So, no, they did not take the code of the Gemini app, in addition to not taking the Gemini app, and put it in their app.
Andrew Sharp
Great.
Ben Thompson
Glad we’re clear.
Andrew Sharp
Yes.
Ben Thompson
Yes. Okay. Again, the code of the app has nothing to do with the model.
Andrew Sharp
Yeah.
Ben Thompson
The app is a means to access the model, okay? It’s just like my website is a way to access my writing, right? It’s like a container for it, okay?
Andrew Sharp
Uh-huh.
Ben Thompson
What’s next? “For these models, we use none of the models that Google deploys to their customers.” They don’t use the exact same model that Google gives their customers. That is correct. “Nor do we use the infrastructure…” But what are they actually doing?
Apple has, I think, 5 models, several of them on-device and then 1 that’s in the cloud.
Andrew Sharp
Mm-hmm.
Ben Thompson
All the ones that are on-device are Apple’s own models. Those models are, of course, because they’re on-device, very small. One of them is pretty interesting. It’s actually quite large, a 20-billion-parameter model in which only part of it is loaded in memory at the time.
It’s called a mixture of experts. Usually, for mixture of experts, you load or use a different expert every token, which means you have to have the whole thing in memory. In this case, you do an expert per query. So when you make a query, it’s like, “We need this part of the model.” It loads only that part of the model into memory, and then that’s in memory for all the tokens.
Regardless, all those on-device models are Apple models.
Andrew Sharp
Mm-hmm.
Ben Thompson
But how do you get small models?
Andrew Sharp
Distill it down.
Ben Thompson
Distilling, exactly. They won’t say “distilling.” I think they said they were Google-derived or made in conjunction with Google. Basically, what you do is ask the big model questions—
Andrew Sharp
Yeah.
Ben Thompson
—and then you get answers, and that’s how you build your model. These are Google-distilled models.
Andrew Sharp
This is legal, aboveboard distilling that’s happening between Apple and Google.
Ben Thompson
Right. And by the way, the reason it’s not just legal is that having actual access to the model—the whole idea of generating tokens—there are actually multiple layers underneath. If you’re only getting access to the final output, you can distill from that, but it’s way more inefficient, and you’re not getting as broad a coverage and understanding of the parent model.
If you have actual access to the model, your distilling is far more effective. And by the way, when you’re accessing most of these models online, including ChatGPT and Anthropic, you’re accessing a distilled model as it is.
Andrew Sharp
Sure.
Ben Thompson
No one’s getting access to the real model because it would be astronomically expensive and impossible to scale. So even the big models that are online are distilled to an extent, and they can do a good job of it because it’s their model. They can distill it better than anyone else can.
Andrew Sharp
Mm-hmm.
Ben Thompson
But all those models on Apple’s devices are not the models that Google serves. They are the models Apple serves because both Google and Apple distill from Gemini for the models they serve.
Andrew Sharp
Okay.
Ben Thompson
So they’re doing their own distilling with Google’s help, but it’s not Google’s. It’s not the same ones that Google has.
Andrew Sharp
Right.
Ben Thompson
The one in the cloud, as I understand it, is some sort of Gemini model at its base. But the way models are today, there’s so much post-training and so many things you layer on after the initial model is done that it’s effectively—not a different model, but there are multiple variations of models that can be accessed.
When you see all these companies saying, “Oh, new model, new model,” they’re releasing models all the time. Now, there are genuinely new models, like, say, a Mythos, that are a new training run. But lots of the new model releases are not new training runs. They’re new post-training and new reinforcement learning. You do 1 pre-training a year or a couple a year, and then you just iterate on the one that’s there.
Andrew Sharp
Yeah.
Ben Thompson
Apple has done that to Gemini. That’s what’s being served in the cloud. It is different from Google’s, and appropriately so. They’re tuning the model for their use case.
Andrew Sharp
Mm-hmm.
Ben Thompson
So all of this is intimately integrated with Gemini, and Craig Federighi went out of his way to make you think that wasn’t the case.
Andrew Sharp
Let’s obfuscate this. Sure.
Ben Thompson
But he didn’t lie, right?
Andrew Sharp
Mm-hmm.
Ben Thompson
“So I hope that’s clear.”
No, it’s not clear, and you did that on purpose. Now, do we use the infrastructure and means by which they deploy their models to their customers? No. They have their own setup with Intel head nodes and NVIDIA GPUs.
Andrew Sharp
Okay.
Ben Thompson
This is different from a standard NVIDIA rack, where NVIDIA has its own head node with its Grace GPU and then a Blackwell. That’s why it’s called Grace Blackwell. Blackwell is actually the GPU. Grace is the CPU. And then you have Vera Rubin. Vera is the CPU. Rubin is the GPU.
They’re using the NVIDIA GPU part—
Andrew Sharp
I never knew that. Okay.
Ben Thompson
—with Intel as the front part. The reason they have those is that both Intel and NVIDIA have secure-enclave technology that lets you ensure you get the Private Cloud Compute aspects, because the whole chain is fully verifiable: what got passed there, whether it got flushed, where it went.
It’s a whole cryptographic handshake between your device, the Intel head node, and the NVIDIA GPU. That whole chain is fully secured.
Andrew Sharp
Mm-hmm.
Ben Thompson
So they can continue to make their promise around Private Cloud Compute, even though it’s totally different from the Private Cloud Compute they tried to sell 2 years ago, which was their servers on their chips.
Andrew Sharp
Right.
Ben Thompson
But it is Google infrastructure. It’s running in Google data centers on Intel and NVIDIA chips. This is a total switch from what Private Cloud Compute was.
It’s still credibly Private Cloud Compute because of this technology embedded in these Intel and NVIDIA chips that lets you cryptographically guarantee that it’s totally private.
Andrew Sharp
Yeah.
Ben Thompson
But it’s a total change in infrastructure, and that’s not what Google uses. Google uses fleets of TPUs. They don’t have the cryptographic guarantees around it being private and all those sorts of things.
As for the knowledge base, we don’t use Google Search. Yes, apparently they have their own search index, which is sort of interesting. Then we get to, “So I hope that’s clear.”
The amount of the Google Assistant we use is none. Google Assistant is an app. We get it: you don’t use the Google Assistant; it’s the old app. So it’s like saying, “We don’t use the new app, and we don’t use the old app.” Thanks, Craig.
Andrew Sharp
Yeah.
Ben Thompson
We figured that out.
Andrew Sharp
So nonsense, nonsense. The first clause of the third sentence is also pretty misleading. They don't use the infrastructure and means by which they deploy models to their customers. That seems to be the most accurate claim there, and then—
Ben Thompson
No, everything in here is correct. It's just—
Andrew Sharp
The least misleading claim—
Ben Thompson
—meant to obfuscate.
Andrew Sharp
Yeah.
Ben Thompson
Yes.
Andrew Sharp
So, in any event, Jonathan, I hope that clears things up for you. Paul says, “If Siri AI is some sort of consumer harness for white-label Gemini, although the underlying model itself is an Apple, given Ben’s note today about the integration value of harnesses, is that circumstance enough to give Apple AI breathing room for a while to come, given their distribution advantages, OS device integration mode, installed base, et cetera?
“And assuming Siri AI was developed all in-house, if Apple was able to create a good harness lite for Gemini, isn’t that skill valuable enough to let them keep some competitive tension among the leading models? And finally, if Apple was able to make a smaller Gemini-derived model run on device, does that further help maintain competitive tension among model makers, all to Apple’s advantage?” Any thoughts there?
Ben Thompson
Yeah. I’m sorry, Paul. I’m going to have to pick on you a little bit, but I think this question stands in for a lot of people who don’t have an awareness of how advanced AI is right now.