Will Apple Join the Silicon Valley Midlife Crisis?

Speaker 1: Silicon Valley is having some sort of midlife identity crisis. Long established tech giants are changing names and changing logos, and it all just feels kind of sad as companies desperately claw at this idea that they're part of something new and fresh, even to the point of changing the focus of their products. Speaker 2: Starting today, our company is now Meta AI is ai, ai, ai, ai, ai, ai. It uses ai. Speaker 3: Alright. Elon Musk rebranding Twitter to X this morning. He says, [00:00:30] no more birds, Sarah. Speaker 1: It's a bit dramatic and it makes things feel unstable in the text space right now, but there is one company that tends to stay out of drama. Apple, it's buttoned up approach to tech announcements, keeps firm control over messaging. Everything is strategic, it's focused on hardware. Nothing too shocking, right? Speaker 4: Introducing Apple Vision Pro. Speaker 1: There is a situation brewing right now that gives me worry, it gives me a little pause that we could lose our predictable apple right when we need [00:01:00] it. Most developers are now applying for early access to Vision Pro headsets and Apple needs to incentivize companies to make flashy experiences to get attention and make it worth the investment so it doesn't look like a flop. No pressure, right? And add to that, the news that Apple has created its own version of chat G P T AI Folks. We could be entering the Wild Apple era, but we don't need one more tech company following praise with the lure of looking like they're doing something trendy and wild because they wanna look cool. [00:01:30] We need Tim Cook and Apple to just beat the normal one, please. I'm Bridget Carey, and this is one more thing. Let's begin with Apple's newest star, the Apple Vision Pro headset. Speaker 1: The only way to really know how to program for a new device like that is to use the device. So Apple's going to pass out. Vision Pro Headset says to developers before anyone else can buy one this week, developers could apply to get a Vision Pro headset loaner as part of the developer kit. Of course, this is not too surprising. Companies need to make [00:02:00] sure their apps will behave on it correctly, but not everyone who applies will get a temporary loaner of this $3,500 face computer. Apple decides who gets one based on what else you've done as an Apple developer. And if you agree to the terms and conditions, conditions like confidentiality reports, say the device will likely require that it remains at the address it was shipped to. It can't be used in public and it must be locked away in a hard case when it's not in use. Speaker 1: No talking about it on social media. No family, no friends touching it. Sure Jan. [00:02:30] No one's gonna show their friends until it comes out next year, right? Yeah. Apple does have to let go of some control to get people to build for it, and I imagine we're gonna be hearing more leaks and opinions about the headset as developer kits start to go out. Bloomberg's Mark Gurman recently reported that developers may not be flocking to it. They may not rush to make app for it right away, especially when you look at how it's expensive for consumers and they don't know if it's worth their time. Not every Apple product [00:03:00] has a special app. The Apple Watch App Store isn't as popular as the iPhone, Twitter, Facebook, Uber. These are just a few of the apps that are no longer on the Apple Watch. As it turns out, there may be a number of apps because of iPad apps. Speaker 1: You see, iPad developers don't have to do much to put their app on the Vision Pro. They can run their apps unmodified, but that is not a creative, unique experience that Apple needs to sell this thing. If there are not enough creative apps, apple may feel some pressure to do things it may not normally [00:03:30] do. Apple may need to reactivate the reality distortion field, convincing the world that it's really cool to want this thing that you can have a better life with it. Maybe Vision Pro is the future of all computing. Maybe it's the most important Apple product ever. I'm curious if Apple will put so much attention on the Vision Pro that the company loses track of what consumers really want, or if Apple will have patience even if they lose some control by having devices out in the world early. The Apple Vision Pro [00:04:00] is an exciting time in tech, but you don't always want exciting in tech. Speaker 1: Elon Musk thinks he is exciting. He's changing all of Twitter to become some x.com payment Super Apple all because of some obsession he has with the letter accent sinking the company's future. We saw Mark Zuckerberg pivot Facebook so hard toward the metaverse that he changed the company's name, the logo and the mission. You haven't heard a lot of Metaverse talk from them lately. Apple wouldn't get that bad, but even a giant [00:04:30] like Google has been acting very strange lately. When it was time to announce new Google Pixel phones, the company dwelled more on AI than the actual hardware it was presenting. Google execs were trying so hard to impress the world that it was still interesting that AI was mentioned 143 times in a two hour presentation because you know they're hip with the ai. Now, apple a company that makes money off hardware where privacy is a selling point. Speaker 1: Didn't have to say AI once in its June developers conference, [00:05:00] and yet it is reported that Apple has created its own AI chatbot. According to Bloomberg, apple created its own generative language AI tool that could be similar to chat G P T. Some Apple engineers are said to be calling it Apple G P T. And the report goes on to say that the company does not have a clear strategy yet for releasing this technology to consumers. Yeah, they probably don't have a clear strategy because their business strategy is not chatbots. That's not why we buy Apple products. Apple doesn't need to help you [00:05:30] create essays with fact errors that rip information from other sources. We don't need faked photos and video. We need tools to help us sort through the truths. We need tools we can trust. Big tech. Jumping on AI lately is midlife crisis. Speaker 1: Dad buying a big boat a boat isn't your thing Dad, Tim Cook said during a make conference call that AI has a number of issues that need to be sorted. Yeah, they do. And Apple can afford to sit back and sort those out. So let's hope it's not in a rush to throw it in its customers faces to look trendy. [00:06:00] Although it doesn't gimme much hope when I read Bloomberg also reporting in that same story that Apple is quote aiming to make a significant AI related announcement next year. AI generally isn't new. It's used in Apple products before we hear it often called machine learning. That's no secret. These types of smarts are in fall detection. It's in crash detection. AI is in personal voice. It can replicate the way you sound for people who are losing the ability to talk. I did a whole video about that, but how can generative AI like a chat G P t, make an [00:06:30] iPhone better, make a MacBook experience better? Speaker 1: 'cause we don't need whizzbang new for the sake of it. We need reliable. Samsung revealed new Galaxy devices this week, including the Z fold five, the Z flip five and a new Galaxy Watch six classic. And it bothered me that the big takeaway from a lot of people was, oh, Samsung didn't wow us with anything snazzy. It was nothing exciting. We're in trouble if it's always exciting. Exciting means new untested concepts are coming at you. Companies take risk, but we need [00:07:00] to do big change in smart, thoughtful ways in an unstable world where everything is changing around us. A company that does not change drastically is the one you can trust. Let's hope an all of this experimentation. Apple remembers the iPhone is the most important device in our life and we just want that working well. Tech companies don't need to X out everything we know in an attempt to look cool. Share your thoughts in the comments and yes, I do read them. I love hearing from you last week. I am glad I was not alone in thinking Apple's music app was hard to navigate [00:07:30] and find friends. I got to add a few of you. So yes, now I have friends in my Apple Music app. Maybe Apple will use its AI to fix Apple music. Or what should Apple use its AI to fix next besides Siri? Of course. Thanks for watching. Catch you next week.