（预告）夏日休假读者问答：内存狂热、Vibe Coding、黑帮公关、咖啡因摄入、车库，以及如何拯救足球
Thompson 将 Apple 在产品周期中段涨价解读为看空信号，因为 Apple 在内存冲击上连续两次失算：先是采购，随后是3月定价。 Jensen Huang 明显在锁定供应，而“9个月前我们没看到 Tim Cook 喝烧酒”；Apple 随后推出新 Mac 时没有涨价，却在产品周期外突然上调数百美元。这个动作打破了 Apple 稳定定价的承诺，说明管理层“根本不知道”AI正在发生什么。
Apple 可能仍能在2026年交付一款不错的 Siri，但 Thompson 认为它体现的将是2024年已经能够做到的水平。 当时的AI已经足够好，能够支撑“大量产品”，因此 Apple 可以兑现旧承诺，却与2026年及以后AI真正能做到的事情“相去甚远”。Sharp 的说法更尖锐：Apple 已经变成“库比蒂诺的一群普通人”。
内存短缺可能让中国借助一条能够盈利的学习曲线，最终成为内存领域的主导者。 Thompson 表示，中国厂商目前还做不出最新一代 HBM，但可以生产 HBM1 或 HBM2，而行业前沿已经到了 HBM4。DRAM 具备可替代性，随着3大供应商转向 HBM，供给短缺将让中国以有利可图的价格销售较老的 DRAM，扩大产量并持续改进。
出口管制和试图锁定稀缺供应，可能反而加速其意图遏制的竞争对手。 如果 Nvidia 不能采购中国内存，Huawei 和其他厂商就会接手。Thompson 的结论是“木已成舟”（“the die is cast”），中国将成为内存领域的主导者；Sharp 则认为，尽管经济性较弱，未来5年或10年美国仍可能出于安全考虑加大投资。
Vibe coding 让个性化需求与专用软件之间的距离大幅缩短。 Thompson 想要的是一套用于查找家中物品的系统，而不是库存管理或任务管理软件；系统围绕一名负责建档的助手，以及一个不想承担行政工作的物主来设计。“我不需要获得许可，也不需要雇一名开发者。”
最终的应用把实体位置层级、AI视觉和二维码结合起来，形成一套高度窄化的工作流。 助手决定每件物品应该放在哪里；拍照可以大致识别95%的物品；之后新到的物品只要扫描货架二维码，就能归入对应位置。传统软件为了服务数百万人不断堆叠功能，而AI让软件可以精确适配单个用户。
这场轻松的读者问答，展现的是两套截然不同的个人操作系统，而不是投资判断。 Sharp 每天喝一杯 Venti 冰咖啡、一杯 Grande Americano，并在5个工作日中的3天喝一瓶20盎司的 yerba-mate 饮料，尽管他已经“遇到了边际回报递减点”。Thompson 通常早上喝一壶咖啡，中午后不再摄入咖啡因。他更广泛的生产力原则也更加直接：“你不会修复自己的弱点；你要赚更多钱，好付钱让别人替你修复。”
1. Apple涨价重置，说明管理层没看懂内存新周期
Thompson 称 Apple 涨价是他“很长时间以来见过的、对 Apple 更偏空的指标之一”。他的第一个线索来自采购：他把 Jensen Huang 公开与 Samsung 展开“烧酒外交”视为 Huang 正在锁定供应的证据，而“9个月前我们没看到 Tim Cook 喝烧酒”。
Apple 的定价承诺是可预测，而不是便宜：“我的价格就是我的价格，只会朝一个方向走。”不同于 Dell 不断变化的报价，Apple 通常不会在产品仍在售期间调整价格，因此消费者也没有等待促销的理由。
3月本来是为应对更高内存成本给新 Mac 重新定价的绝佳窗口。Apple 当时没有行动，似乎希望这轮周期能够“自行过去”；随后在警告内存将在第二季度产生“一点点”影响、第三季度影响会明显加大后，又在产品周期外突然涨价数百美元。
Thompson 还欠 John Gruber 一顿牛排，因为他曾押注 Apple 会在3月涨价：“光是判断正确还不够，时机同样重要。”但这次延迟涨价反而强化了他的实质性担忧：Apple “根本不知道”AI正在发生什么。
2. AI落后的 Apple，仍可能交付一款成功的 Siri
Thompson 预计 Apple 会在2026年交付一款兑现其2024年承诺的产品，而且预计它会“很棒”，因为底层AI早已强大到足以支撑大量有用产品。
他区分的是产品质量与技术演进速度：Siri 可能做得不错，但它代表的是“2024年的技术”，与AI在2026年及未来能够做到的事情相去甚远。
Sharp 的说法更尖锐：Apple 已经变成“库比蒂诺的一群普通人”。他同意延迟推出的 Siri “相当不错”，但没有对 Thompson 关于 Apple 已经落后的判断提出实质性反驳。
3. 供给短缺让中国内存厂商获得可盈利的学习曲线
Thompson 的分析从可替代性出发：眼下真正需要的是 DRAM，即使中国厂商还无法生产当前一代 HBM。他表示，中国可以制造 HBM1 或 HBM2，而“我们现在已经在 HBM4 了”，这意味着技术差距真实存在，但并不等于中国厂商的产品没有需求。
随着3大供应商把产能转向 HBM，中国可以用更老或更不先进的技术填补 DRAM 缺口，尽管其 DRAM 可能存在更严重的问题。过去，中国必须“吞下”低端生产的成本来积累经验；如今，供给短缺让它可以在盈利状态下沿着学习曲线向上爬。
通过出口管制或商业手段锁定供应、切断中国供给，只会创造“不可避免的竞争条件”。如果 Nvidia 不能采购中国内存，Huawei 和其他厂商就会接手；Thompson 毫不犹豫地得出结论：中国“将成为内存领域的主导者”。
Sharp 指出更长期的政策矛盾：美国投资内存产业在经济上可能并不划算，但随着中国能力提升，未来5年或10年，这类投资可能具备安全层面的合理性。
4. 从咖啡因过量到把纪律外包：截然不同的个人系统
Sharp 形容自己“严重上瘾”：每天早上喝一杯 Venti Starbucks 冰咖啡，下午早些时候喝一杯 Grande Americano，并在大约5个工作日中的3天喝一瓶20盎司的 yerba-mate 饮料。如果摄入过量，他的大脑“到了某个点就会直接关机”。
过去的深夜录音里，Sharp 曾在晚上9:45或10:00左右用 Diet Coke 试图解决这种状态。他说每天喝一罐 Red Bull 可能不是好主意——“我不是医生”——同时也承认自己在努力控制咖啡因摄入。
Thompson 每天早上用现磨咖啡豆煮一壶咖啡，偶尔会在夜里写作时喝 Diet Coke，通常中午之后不再摄入咖啡因。他说自己可以一周不喝咖啡；他看重 Starbucks，是因为“每次都一样”，而不是因为它有多出色。
Thompson 更广泛的弱点在执行力：他会根据解决问题的想法购买网络设备或其他零部件，然后一直等到出现某种强制性触发条件才行动。“你不会修复自己的弱点；你要赚更多钱，好付钱让别人替你修复。”
5. Vibe coding让定制软件具备经济可行性
Thompson 的车库问题本质上是一个协调循环：多批货物被匆忙塞上货架，但在每个类别都有一个长期固定的位置之前，他不愿意把剩下的物品真正收好。助手可以负责整理一切，但这样一来，Thompson 自己又会完全不知道东西放在哪里。
现有的家庭库存产品让他感觉像是“给你家用的企业软件”。Thompson 把这种臃肿与软件经济学联系起来：Word 和 AWS 需要庞大的功能集合，因为面向数百万用户销售的产品必须覆盖大量不同的使用场景。
他的应用拒绝了这套模式。它只是一个“查一样东西、找到它在哪里的系统”，专门为愿意负责建档的助手，以及“完全不想做任何工作”的物主优化。
整个房屋的层级依次是房产、房间、结构，再到具体存放位置。助手负责决定摆放位置；AI 对拍摄到的物品大约有95%的识别准确率；之后新到的物品只需拍照、上架，再扫描对应位置的二维码，就能与该位置绑定。
一瓶专用挡风玻璃清洗液浓缩液，成了检验某件物品是否已经录入系统的测试对象。这个项目让 Thompson 找回了1990年代“又变回一个玩电脑的孩子”的感觉，但他最后的现实检验也很直接：做出来“比你想象的更费时间”。
Hello, and welcome to a free preview of Sharp Tech.
Apple's price increases this week are one of the more bearish indicators for Apple that I've seen in a long time.
Okay.
And the reason is that, number one, I don't think they saw this memory increase coming at all, right?
Mm-hmm.
1. Apple Missed The Memory Shock
Because they would've made the moves that they made in the past. Remember Jensen Huang being out there drinking soju with the Samsung CEO or whatever, like all those pictures?
Oh, yeah.
He saw it coming. He was out there securing supply such that everyone else is having a hard time.
Yep. That's wild, yeah.
And we didn't see Tim Cook drinking soju nine months ago.
... didn't see Tim Cook out there securing memory supplies. So, number one, I don't think they saw this coming generally.
Mm-hmm.
Number two, I made a steak-dinner bet with John Gruber that the new Macs they introduced in March were going to include a price increase.
Yeah.
How could they not, given what was happening with memory? It blew my mind that they did not increase prices then, because layered on that is one of Apple's brand promises: We don't change prices.
Mm-hmm.
Now, part of that is that we don't decrease prices, so you can always buy with confidence.
Right.
And I believe this: There's never been a strategic resale because I don't want someone in the moment of decision—
Someone who paid full price—you don't want them to feel like they got gypped.
No, no, it's not that. Someone is sitting on that page deciding whether to subscribe or not. I don't want even a hint in the back of their mind that they could just wait for the sale.
I'll wait for the August deal.
That's right.
Yeah. Okay.
Like a once-a-year sort of thing, right? No. My price is my price. It's only going in one direction. It will increase at times; it is never going to be cheaper.
Now, Apple is not cutting prices, for sure. But they also usually never want to change prices while a product is in the market. You should be able to count on Apple's prices being what they are.
Mm-hmm.
You go to Dell, and a computer is a different price every single day, right?
Sure.
That's fine.
Yep.
That's part of their promise, right? You can customize whatever you want, and the price will be whatever you want. Who knows? If you need a computer, just buy it.
Apple doesn't do that. So, by not raising prices in March, what that suggests to me is that even in March, when all this agentic stuff was working its way into the market—
There was just no appreciation for what was coming.
They seemed to be like, "Well, maybe it'll blow over," right?
It's pretty unbelievable.
Maybe it's like the old cycles, right?
It's going to be 6 months, and it'll be temporary.
Right. We have a lot of
temporary
inventory. Let's wait as long as we can to see if we can make it through. They said on the earnings call, "Oh, this is definitely going to impact the second quarter a little bit, but it's definitely going to impact the third quarter."
I think they're like, "We're still in the second quarter," and they're like, "Oh, we're out there. Prices are up hundreds of dollars." It suggests to me this is a company that still has no idea—
It just doesn't get it.
—what's going on with AI.
Yeah.
2. Apple Still Lags In AI
The Siri thing, like I said, that's 2024 technology. Now, we said in 2024 that this stuff is so good, there are tons of products to be built on what exists right now. And that governs the fact that Apple is going to ship in 2026 what they promised in 2024, and it's going to be great.
It's pretty good, yeah.
And because AI is amazing. It is also nowhere close to what AI is capable of right now in 2026, much less going forward.
It's not just that Apple missed the memory thing. Fair enough. But the fact that they didn't raise prices in March, when they could have at least preserved their brand promise that when we launch a product at a price, it stays at that price no matter what, and they're having to increase prices out of band in this very awkward sort of way, suggests that they just don't know what's going on.
Flying blind.
Yeah. It's not great.
Apple has become a bunch of normies out there in Cupertino. Look, you lost the bet with Gruber, so you do have to buy the steak. Do you think Gruber should have to give you a third of the steak—a good chunk of the rib eye that you buy him—whenever this bet is finally paid off?
Absolutely not. A bet is a bet, number one. Number two, it's not enough to be right; timing matters. I got the timing wrong.
Timing does matter.
So it's still—
I don't know, though. I think directionally you had some good instincts. Chris says, "We'll keep it going." We went long on the first question, but let's bounce through the rest of the mailbag here.
I know, you always promise these fun episodes, and then—
I know. Well, look, that one was very interesting to me, and obviously it's germane to the China podcast as well.
3. China Will Dominate Memory
Well, just on the China bit, remember, DRAM is fungible, right?
Mm-hmm.
No one's going to let Chinese DRAM—well, number one, the Chinese can't make HBM yet. They can make HBM1 or HBM2. We're on HBM4 now.
Yeah.
So there's all that complexity that goes into it.
The concern would be that this allows them to climb the ladder and make better HBM long-term.
We just need DRAM, right?
Yeah.
And so if the big 3 are going to be super focused on HBM, China said, "We can make DRAM." Maybe their DRAM isn't the most advanced, or maybe it has bigger problems.
How do you get more advanced, and how do you solve your problems?
You make a bunch of it.
Okay.
And so, like a lot of China—if you go back to our discussion of China building up its fab capacity before—it was, well, China's willing to bear the cost of selling old stuff.
Just eating it at the bottom of the ladder.
Eating it.
Sure.
Because you have to move down the learning curve, right?
Mm-hmm.
And no one else is going to eat it, but China will eat it, and so they'll make it down. China now can move down the learning curve profitably. They can sell old tech at profitable prices because there's such a shortage in the market.
Soon enough, they're going to be good at memory, and they're going to be competitive with these companies. If Nvidia's not allowed to take it, Huawei will take it; other people will take it.
We're creating the conditions. This is the problem with cutting stuff off: cutting stuff off legislatively through export controls, cutting stuff off from a business perspective because you're trying to capture the market. You are creating the conditions for inevitable competition.
I think the die is cast. China is going to be a dominant player in memory. There's no question, because the conditions could not be better to become one.
Hmm.
Well, you mentioned earlier that it doesn't really make sense for American companies to invest in memory, at least from an economic standpoint. But potentially, from a security standpoint, it will at some point over the next 5 or 10 years here.
4. Caffeine Becomes A Habit
Chris says, "How much caffeine do you guys consume on a daily basis?" as you drink from a coffee cup while I read the question. "What's the pattern? Morning and afternoon coffees? What's the energy-drink policy? My wife is making me quit having a Red Bull every single day, so this is top-of-mind fun stuff for me."
What do you think, Ben? I don't know how much of a caffeine guy you are.
Yeah, you're the one that needs to answer this question. One of my all-time favorite segments on The Greatest of All Talk was when you guys did—in the summer, it's a little more loosey-goosey. It's kind of like a holiday mailbag, but every week when nothing's happening in the NBA.
Right.
And so you have your top 5 things, and you did a top-5 candy-bar episode.
Mm-hmm.
I've never been more flabbergasted in my life than when the episode starts and you're like, "I'm not much of a candy guy." And I'm like, "This guy has—"
No, what I said was—
—has something—
I love candy, but I don't really eat candy anymore.
Whatever it was.
I don't know.
It was the biggest crock of BS I've ever heard in my life. No one loves eating terrible stuff more than you. And what was great about that episode is you basically undressed yourself in front of the entire audience. You had so many candy takes. You had so many anecdotes in recent memory—
That's what happened.
—about candy, that it was so obvious that you have a problem, and you exposed what a lie it was immediately.
It was like Hunter Biden talking about crack cocaine on that episode. I talked for about 45 minutes about all my favorite candy, memories of candy, and it got pretty deep.
A hierarchy of candy interspersed with the right times to have the candy and proper storage for different types of candy. It was unbelievable.
Oh my, that's right. You gotta keep certain candies in the freezer, no question about it. On caffeine, I'm not as passionate. I am just as addictive.
Oh, okay. Not as passionate, but as addicted. I'll give you that.
Yes.
Deeply addicted. I consume a Venti Starbucks iced coffee every single morning, and then I will go in the early afternoon with a Grande Americano from Starbucks, and then I will sometimes layer on a yerba mate drink in the late afternoon. They have these 20-ounce teas.
Whoa, just a second. Wait a minute. We already had a Sharp Tech discussion about 2 daily Starbucks visits.
Yeah.
I didn't realize there was frequently a third. Holy cow.
Well, there is a third—it depends on the day—but every now and then, I would say 3 out of the 5 workdays, I will have a late-afternoon yerba mate. In general, though, the challenge with caffeine is I hit a point of diminishing returns if I drink too much of it, and my brain just shuts down at a certain point. So I do try to moderate it. And energy drinks, like a Red Bull—Chris, I think your wife is probably right about a Red Bull a day being a bad idea. I'm not a doctor, but I think she's on the money with that one, so I stick to coffee for the most part.
The other thing, when I was considering moving back, it was a very fraught decision, very difficult for lots of different reasons. One of them was that we would record Sharp Tech at night for you because you're on the East Coast, in particular. Particularly rough with Taiwan. And sometimes it's like, yeah, Andrew went too far on the caffeine. He's barely functional right now because he's too on edge. And I'm like, "I need to get back so you can be aware."
That's 100% true. There would be some nights where I'd be just completely fried and trying to solve it with more Diet Coke at 9:45 or 10 o'clock at night. I feel great now as we sit here recording this, so I'm glad to have you back in the United States of America.
Yes.
But are you still dodging the question?
No, not at all.
How much caffeine do you drink?
I make a pot of coffee in the morning. I absolutely love it. I'm not super fussy about my coffee. I buy very good beans. I grind them right before I make them, but I use a coffee maker. I think I have the—
Okay.
The Moccamaster. I like them, so I buy, like, 5 of them. There's a new one out there that's like a Moccamaster, but it uses all-stainless-steel parts on the inside, so there's no plastic, which is good for microplastics, whatever. It's still sitting in my garage. I haven't actually set it up yet.
You'll get there.
The microplastics aren't really moving the needle one direction or the other—
Yeah, that's fair.
—as far as I'm concerned.
I'm kind of in the same boat, to be totally honest. I make a pot of coffee in the morning, and then I'm usually good for the day. I will occasionally get a Diet Coke, particularly if I'm writing at night and in the evening. I don't like caffeine past noon because I don't want to have any issues falling asleep or whatever. But it might all be theoretical. I'm not sure if I have issues falling asleep. I fortunately have the constitution where I don't really get addicted to anything.
On the weekend sometimes, I wake up slowly or whatever, and I just don't have any coffee. One of my good friends, if he goes longer, he's like, "Oh, shoot, it is at night." He's like, "I forgot to have my afternoon coffee." I'm like, "But you're going to bed." He's like, "I know, but I'm going to wake up in the middle of the night with a headache because I went too hard." I'm like, "Oh my God, you have a problem."
That's what happens.
Yeah.
Been there.
Yeah, so I'm pretty sure I'm not addicted. I could go a week without coffee; I have.
Okay.
No issue. I greatly enjoy it. It's one of the pleasures of life. But that is basically it. I love coffee.
There we go.
I have it in the morning. Just regular coffee.
Healthy relationship with it.
If I go—
Healthier than me
An Americano is my go-to—Starbucks Americano.
Mm-hmm.
Starbucks is a great store. I think I've given this take before. I have.
You have.
Not because it's great—
But—
—but because it's the same every time.
It's a Starbucks-forward podcast here.
That's right. We are pro Starbucks.
Save your bespoke coffee houses. All right, keeping it moving, we have Daniel, who says, "Sharp, I couldn't help but notice that Ben implied on the last episode that you have a messy garage when you said you didn't want to charge your car. Throwing a little shade at you."
I don't think that's throwing shade; that's just a—
Well, I'll explain that.
statement of fact.
"My summer mailbag question for Ben," he says, "is what is his version of that garage? Is there something that Ben walks by at his house all the time and thinks, 'I need to take care of it,' but he never touches it? If the answer is no, I won't be shocked, but it will be revealing in its own way, perhaps. Maybe he could use a backup antenna on his roof, or a third generator, or more storage space for generators. You always could use a backup generator for your backup generator."
Well, it is funny. I did just buy— we're going into the middle of nowhere. I think they supposedly have solar panels and batteries. I guess there's a backup generator, but just in case, I did get this big Anker battery. It's this big.
Great.
It has its own solar panels, so you can charge it and always have power. But I figure it's a backup to the backup. I could have an extra battery around.
If you stay ready, you don't have to get ready. You're ready for anything as you undertake this fishing expedition. I love to see it.
Yeah, no, yes, unfortunately, I have a lot of stuff that I want to get to. One of the problems is I have ideas of how to solve things, I acquire the components to solve it, and then they are never actually implemented or used.
Assembled.
Well, no, they are, but I need a forcing function to get it done.
Okay.
So I have a bunch of networking gear because I have a few ideas of some things I want to do. Then something will happen and I haven't installed it yet, and then it's a flurry of a weekend of getting this all in and then it's done. But I had the supplies on hand, so it does get done eventually. I would say in general—
Halfway there.
Yeah, organization—I love being organized. I love knowing where stuff is. I love being clean, and I hate organizing, I hate cleaning, and I hate picking up after myself. So there's a real tension about what I enjoy and what I'm capable of accomplishing, and that is why I don't like talking about how I hire people and have assistants. That's why you hire someone.
There you go.
You don't fix your weaknesses; you make more money so you can pay for someone else to fix them.
Well, I'm glad that Daniel picked up on the garage comment during the last episode, because what you were referring to there was not necessarily a messy garage at my house. But when I bought the house, the previous owner had converted half of a pretty small one-car garage into an exercise room and put up a wall halfway through the garage. So the garage I have doesn't actually fit a car and is full of storage. Maybe my garage project would be knocking down the extra wall and just recreating an actual garage for myself, but it's pretty small. It pales in comparison to your massive Midwestern garage. So it's probably not big enough to fit a modern SUV.
No, I realize this. It's that the coastal elites don't appreciate a good garage.
Super important.
I'll tell you what: not having a garage has made me appreciate a good garage. I go out to Madison and I'm like, “Man, this is what I need.” I feel like you answered this question in part on Stratechery this week, so I wanted to use this as an on-ramp to the vibe-coding discussion. So tell people about your problem and your vibe-coding solution to the problem.
Well, so I put this one out. It's just super fun. There are a few people who took it way too seriously, like I make pronouncements about the future of AI.
And I was just like—there was a bit about, look, there's this delightful aspect of AI. Number 1, there's a bit where I don't think people fully appreciate how good this stuff is.
But then number 2, I feel a bit like a kid again, back in the '90s, putting computers together, acquiring different parts, trying to do different things, having all these delusions of grandeur about all these businesses I'm going to start—like helping people put up websites, and all the bits and pieces.
And just loving the work. I love the piece on Wednesday because it was pretty whimsical, and you felt the joy throughout, having a great time with computers. That's the vibe-coding experience—
Right.
—that I came away with.
Which is about organizing my garage. So the issue I have is I moved back and took 1 week off of work when moving back, but then I had shipments arriving at multiple times. I had 1 air shipment, and I had 1 that came by boat. I had a bunch of suitcases that we brought when we came back in June, then we went back in July to pack up and brought more stuff back then. Just a lot of stuff coming in.
I'm also still working full time, and I have a house with lots of good storage opportunities, but the problem is that the first storage run is super important because you have to figure out: This is the cord area. This is the fishing-stuff area. This is the car-stuff area. And so, in the future, when you need to find something, you know where it is.
You know where to go.
It doesn't help to have stuff put away if you can't find it.
Yeah.
The problem, though, is there was so much stuff. The reality I live in is that the house looks relatively neat and organized because all that stuff was put on shelves with no organization. It's just like, “Oh, people are coming over. We're hosting. Let's get all this stuff out of the garage. We need to park the cars.”
It's actually great. Your basement is spectacular and looks really clean and organized. And then I stepped into your office last time I was in Madison, and I was like, “Whoa. There's a lot going on in here.”
That's a job that still needs to be done.
The problem is it's so messy because I don't want to put stuff away because I need to figure out where it needs to be put away first so that I can find it in the future. So you can see I'm in this doom loop, right? It's just a total mess.
Now, I mentioned I do have someone here who works with me, a friend from high school, and it's great. My wife is back and forth. She spends a lot of time in Taiwan and is part here. So primarily when I'm here by myself, sometimes he's just driving the kid to school or going to pick stuff up.
Mm-hmm.
It's very beneficial, and he's the one who put all the stuff on the shelves in the first place because it was a panic: “Oh, we need to get this stuff out of here. Just do something with it.” Of course, the answer is to have him organize everything.
Yeah.
But if you organize everything, I don't know where it is. So I need to be involved. The reality is, the answer is I need to not be involved. How can we get a situation where everything is organized and put away—
Centralized resource—
—but I can—
Sure.
—still find it? What I need is software. I need the ability to look something up and know where it is.
So there are lots of home-inventory products on the market, right? If you want to imagine having enterprise software for your house, that sounds horrible. There are a gazillion little forms with a checkbox because they're trying to cover everything.
This is the issue with software. What's the magic of it? You write software once, and then you can sell it to a gazillion people at zero marginal cost.
Mm-hmm.
The problem is, to sell to a gazillion people, you have to cover—
Serving a gazillion—
—a lot of use cases.
Needs. Yeah.
Right? I think this is a point that Steven Sinofsky has made before. Everyone complains that Word has so many features. “I only need these 5 features.” Everyone feels this way. The problem is their 5 features are all totally different, and they cover the entire gamut of features.
The reason why there are so many things there—or AWS is the modern version of this. AWS is so complicated. There are so many services. Have you tried navigating their dashboard? It's unbelievable.
But everyone feels that way, and what they want is all totally different. That's also very profitable because you get scale on this. You sell it to a bunch of people. Everyone uses Word and complains about how cluttered it is, but it has the 1 feature they need, and then Microsoft makes a gazillion—
So everyone uses Word—
—dollars along the way. Right? So yeah. It doesn't need to be this way.
Mm-hmm.
What I want is software that will solve this problem, and I think the unique constraint is I don't have a large staff. I have 1 staff member. The brilliance of having someone that you pay is you can make them do stuff that normal people don't want to do. Who wants to go through—
Yeah.
—and actually do all the cataloging, right, and do that sort of stuff? Well, if you're getting paid to do it, it's a lot more acceptable to get it done. And honestly, he's happy about it too because instead of us doing a scramble to find something every other day—
This nonstop dialogue—
Yeah, where is—
—with you.
That's right.
It's clearly better for him.
That's right.
So this is a unique dynamic where I have a human to do a lot of this work, so I don't need a lot of complexity. What do I want? I want software that's perfectly tuned to someone like me and how I work and perfectly tuned to having an asset like this person to implement these pieces and make it super simple, super approachable, not having a single feature I don't need, only what's there.
This isn't an inventory system. These are important notes. I'll come back to this. It's not like a task-management system. It's a look-up-something-and-find-out-where-it-is system, and that's it. It's tuned to there being someone available and capable to do the grunt work, and the other person involved in this transaction doesn't want to do any work at all. He just wants to be able to—
Mm-hmm.
—find stuff.
So because of this, the magic here is I can make software that's going to solve this problem, and I don't need permission to do it. I don't need to hire a developer. I don't need to try to bend stuff on the market to fit into my niche. I can build a perfectly fitting piece of software to this exact need, and that's awesome.
And what you're doing is you're using QR codes, right, to categorize some of it?
Well, okay. The details of the system, I don't— You know. Basically, the idea is I'm defining the house by—
I have other properties here. My parents' place is right down the street. They've got their own place. I have some stuff stored there as well, of course. That's actually where the fishing stuff will go long term.
Mm-hmm.
So I have the property, and then within the property, there are rooms. Within the rooms, there are structures like a shelf or a dresser or whatever. And within the structure, there's an actual storage spot, which is a single shelf or a single drawer or whatever.
Okay.
And so the idea is he—my assistant—now owns storage. I'm not going to own the storage. Everything's going to be organized and put away, and I'm going to have zero input into it. He does what makes sense to him.
So he decides—
That's right. He decides—
—and records—
And—
—and we're set.
And then after he's done, he's going to go through space by space, and this is where the AI is super awesome.
How do you catalog everything? Ninety-five percent of stuff, you take a picture of it and it gets it perfect.
Mm-hmm.
And then there's the edge case where you need to make changes or whatever. There's a little bit of flow—
Ah.
So you can check it.
So you just take an iPhone photo and it just adds it automatically—
Yeah.
—to the app?
Yeah, you just take a picture—
Wow.
Yeah, and it fills in all the details.
That's incredible.
Yeah, and so you organize everything. So where the QR codes come in is he doesn't necessarily do QR codes at the start, but later, say you have something new show up in the mail, right? And he's like, “This should go here.” So he gets the thing, takes a picture of it, puts it on a shelf, scans the QR code of that shelf, and boom, it's in the system, in that spot.
Mm.
And then you can always find everything. So you search for something. I have right here a windshield washer concentrate with antifreeze. That is a specific kind of windshield washer concentrate for, of course, winter—
Winter.
Yeah. You get a nicer car, you pay up in all sorts of ways. One of these is you have to buy special windshield wiper fluid.
Okay, great.
Right? I have this next to my desk because this was a test object: taking pictures of it to see whether it already exists in the system or not. So I have it sitting around. But the idea is, yeah, if I need this, I can—
I love that you're up late at night testing different objects for your new vibe-coded app. How long did it take you to build the app?
It takes longer than you think.