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Jony Ive + OpenAI take on Apple! (CultCast #700)
May 24, 2025
This week: Jony Ive’s new best friend, Sam Altman, bought his secretive startup for $6.5 billion! What are they working on? Who knows! Is this Apple 2.0? Also: iPhone 17 Air battery life might not suck, AirPods Pro 3 might not come this year, the next big steps for Apple Intelligence and Siri, and more listener voicemails! Chapters: 0:00 Preshow 3:43 Intro 6:56 Squarespace 8:47 Jony Ive + OpenAI 42:48 Apple Intelligence in 2025
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0:04
great Louis i'm not even sure if we're alive i
0:09
actually have no idea i wonder if people can hear you this time because that's been a problem the past few weeks check
0:15
check check oh they can hear me all right oh okay and we're
0:21
live can they hear you that's the question
0:28
no got some warning from Louis that's great why can't they heard it all they've been listening
0:34
to us for actually the last hour so that news that inappropriate terrain you went
0:39
on Lewis that's in the public record now so good luck i suggest you move to a different country
0:47
you can work more right change my name maybe grow a longer mustache diet black
0:57
all right everyone do we have anyone here i can't tell let me go ahead and send the tweet out which I'm going to
1:03
craft here um on the fly live tweet crafting oh boy
1:09
that's my Twitch channel name
1:14
okay it's a big one though this
1:20
week got the tweet action right here
1:27
this is the part that gets them rolling in you got to write the come hang out exclamation
1:34
point and we're ready we got Dipsydoo there johnny Jobs
1:44
is in the house that might be him we don't know
1:49
there we go um since we have almost no time let me just make sure this is working should we just go ahead and just
1:55
dive right into it we can't wait for the full panel to show up here
2:01
might as well we got Sleepy Spirit i'm back two weeks in a row oh baby what
2:06
time is it there in Australia 6 a.m oh my gosh good grief listening at 6 a.m
2:12
can you imagine having to endure i don't know if I want to wake up and listen to us three as soon as I get you know what
2:19
though if I had to wake up at 6 a.m and smell the and smell the Louiswis
2:25
wake up and smell the Louiswis that's what you want to do at 6 a.m yeah we're still ironing out the technical details
2:32
here my friends uh little quirks here and there as we get things dialed in
2:38
still um let's go ahead and get this thing rolling oh Mrs d
2:47
[Laughter] i'm D oh I like to get things dialed in
2:53
oh really that doesn't sound too bad sensually with Elani of course i should have
3:00
known uh well Mrs d no one wants to hear anything about that if you don't mind we'd love to get into this show because I gota be walking these sweet buns out
3:07
the door I think in 50 minutes it took us so dang long to like get to the actual
3:12
uh live button um this week that we're gonna have to talk at at 2x speed which
3:19
is probably how people want to listen to us anyway um I had the coffee i know you
3:24
made a huge mistake you should have had it i'm going to go ahead and cue the music i did i I had some oh you did
3:30
that's the only way I can keep up oh man i wish I had gotten some it's too late for me but I'm glad that you made the
3:37
right choice all right I'm going to start the music we'll get this thing rolling in three
3:43
two hello and welcome to the podcast best 30 plus Apple conversation you're
3:48
going to hear all week long i'm your host Jeff L join me today he's a big believer in the
3:55
power of food fasting wow it's a curveball yes sometimes he'll go three five or even seven days before filling
4:02
the trough in the cult rider room oh wait i get it now it's resulted in a 7% rise in focus and productivity so he's
4:09
fasting for them not for himself oh my god he's the managing editor of Cult of Mac louis Wallace is here
4:17
need to take some of my own advice also with us like Johnny he's had direct Oh
4:23
he's had a direct movers helping him relocate to bring along his collection of ancient Apple and tech devices as
4:30
they originally thought it was just a room full of garbage and we're ready to scrap it all alas it's stuff he wants to
4:35
keep he's a writer for Cult griffin Jones is here
4:41
well that's why I moved all of my computers and things independently i drove up separately completely filled my
4:48
car with computers that's right and drove them off separately from the moving truck is that a Lisa behind you
4:53
is that that is that what that is no i wish I had a Lisa this is a uh Brother
4:59
WP75 word processor oh wow from 1990 that thing probably cost you boot it up
5:04
and it's it's it's not a full computer it's just a like a word processor you just type things and it has a built-in dot matrix printer okay that's what you
5:11
were talking about before mhm okay so it's literally like a printer computer combined yeah yeah a print
5:19
cuptor and the screen looks like matrix 2 doesn't it
5:25
the screen looks like matrix 2 right uh no it's it's an orange CRT oh man
5:31
beautiful that's very fun mhm and it's wide screen so you can fit like a full like 80 columns of Wow it is it is
5:36
really wide it It looks like the like like a control computer from um like the movie Aliens you know yeah yeah it's
5:44
like what that's what the ship can you can fold the keyboard up on top of the screen and then it has like a big handle
5:50
no way you can carry it around and it weighs a spry 18 pounds how did we survive the 80s and 90s you know not
5:57
very well it's like people actually got work done with these things mhm it's completely mind-blowing
6:05
all right look we got to we got to rush along because unfortunately we had some more tech problems as you know we've switched um streaming platforms it's
6:11
been nothing but a thorn in my buttocks um and it took us a little while to get going and and I have to be walking out
6:18
the door here in in 49 minutes so but we don't actually have a ton of stories this week but we've got probably some of
6:23
the biggest tech stories we've covered in years to be honest with you um we've got Johnny IV and Sam Alman joining
6:31
forces and I I think that this is like Apple 2.0 to be honest with you like
6:37
this is where Apple I think wanted to head and there are a lot of really interesting parallels between what
6:42
happened with Johnny IV and what happened with Steve Jobs when he left and came back with technology that that
6:48
made Apple better and now here Johnny IVive is like off doing a devices company powered by AI which is kind of
6:54
what Apple wanted to do so we'll talk about all that before we do let me give a very hearty thank you to Squarespace
7:01
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squarespace.com/cultast and the offer code at checkout is colcast okay let's dive right in absolutely massive story
9:12
this week uh German was tweeted about this i kind of joked this is not on my
9:17
bingo card i've been diving deep into like what OpenAI is working on and just AI in general and the more you look into
9:24
it the more you realize how revolutionary and transformative it's going to be in fact there's like this
9:30
massive project in Texas called Stargate it's just like an
9:35
absolutely huge um AI um facility that's
9:42
going to be filled with GPUs to power the next generation of AI and it's being funded by this company called SoftBank
9:50
which is committed up to 500 million for the project 500 500 million 500 billion I think it's
9:58
500 billion it is 500 billion 500 million is nothing I think that um like
10:04
The industrial designers at Apple get probably get paid $500 million a year it's $500 billion dollars to build this
10:11
GPU location to fund the next wave of of um AI and you may remember from a while
10:19
ago that Johnny IV well you knew that he started his own company called Love from which is a design company but he also
10:26
started another company called IO which has been really secretive and I'm actually curious about
10:33
this because I know you've been paying more attention to this space than I have did you know about IO before yesterday
10:40
when all this news broke i did but no one knows what they've been doing so we
10:45
don't know what IO has been doing but apparently it's exciting enough for OpenAI to purchase them i wasn't sure if
10:52
that maybe just like a a ghost company that they invented like last week just to be acquired for $6 billion just to
10:59
facilitate the transaction or Yeah 6.5 um I don't know what they do but OpenAI
11:05
purchased the company from Johnny for $6.5 billion that's absolutely massive
11:11
and I don't know if OpenAI is just doing it because they want to acquire the talent i mean Johnny IV has been slowly
11:18
um bringing in Apple um industrial designers to his company which is like
11:25
the heart and soul of Apple right and Johnny IV has been focused on building
11:31
AI focused products which I think is what makes the story so interesting and
11:36
why it sounds to me like when when Johnny IV picked up and left Apple he took the company with him and I never
11:43
thought that he would be doing anything like this or anything major after he left Apple i mean you know Love From was
11:49
like a cool side project did any of us think it would turn into anything major i don't think so it was just the company
11:55
that clown nose that's true they had a really cool clown nose that folded up which I have back here but I just
12:02
figured this was going to be Johnny Ives you know like boat project you know like you retire and you work on a boat and
12:08
like you finish it that he was going to work on until he was actually done working but I saw an interview this week
12:15
with with um Sam Sam Alman and talking about the work that OpenAI is doing i've
12:21
read some stuff from Johnny Iive and Johnny IVive was saying that he he thinks that this is going to be the most important work that he's worked on in
12:28
his career and I was like dude that's a pretty significant thing to say i mean
12:33
that's the kind of thing you have to say if you want to be acquired for $6.5 billion with 55 of your closest friends
12:39
sure maybe for $6 and a half billion dollars I'll be anybody's best friend
12:44
and do a weird interview video where I'm being fed scripted questions and saying about how amazing everything is maybe
12:52
you're right but it seemed pretty genuine to me and does Johnny IV want or
12:58
need more money i don't know that he's motivated by that he may be but he's
13:04
he's now this this move has probably made him the richest that he's that he's ever been would be my guess
13:10
and maybe even surpassed like the the wealth of Steve Jobs in like this one
13:15
maneuver um and and now he's going to be working with OpenAI on AI powered
13:22
hardware which is the space that Apple has been trying to move into which is
13:27
why I think that the story is so intriguing he in a in a way outappled
13:33
Apple this could be Apple 2.0 and his departure is what allowed him to
13:40
get to this point i think Apple being Apple is so restricted by their own
13:45
technology and their own business practices and their reputation and their brand that they're not able to take
13:52
action as easily as Johnny IV could and the parallel here is when Steve Jobs was
13:57
ousted from Apple and said that it freed him to have one of the most creative
14:03
periods of his life and allowed him to basically develop the technology that saved Apple he went and he built Next
14:10
which Apple then purchased and brought back in which I think in large part
14:16
contributed to the success of Apple's future years and I kind of wonder if
14:21
that's in Johnny IV's future here right it's like Apple's really struggling with
14:27
AI they're really far behind as well at least it seems we have a story here later that indicates that maybe they're
14:33
not as far behind as we think but I wonder if a acquisition is in is in IO
14:40
OpenAI's future to bring Sam Alman and Johnny IVive into the company and catch
14:45
Apple up and bring back i mean Microsoft has has
14:51
dumped so much money into Open AI i don't think that's true i don't know I don't know much about
14:57
that partnership but I don't know if it's just like a service agreement or if Microsoft has some level of ownership in
15:03
OpenAI which in in that case you know would indicate that that's probably not going to happen but I still think that
15:09
the departure is really interesting um there's a bunch of stuff here from Gur
15:15
who was talking about this this week um I don't know that any of this is actually that
15:20
interesting and none of it communicates anything that we don't already know huh
15:26
i'm I'm not even gonna necessarily bother going into the details of the story um actually there are some
15:32
interesting bits here openai's acquisition brings um 55 IO engineers
15:39
into OpenAI including several former Apple
15:44
executives who worked alongside IV on iconic products like iPhone iPad Apple Watch this is all according to Bloomberg
15:52
the team will continue to work from IO's San Francisco offices which they have some like really beautiful offices there
15:58
was there's an interview on YouTube actually going through their offices if you want to check it out johnny Hive
16:03
Johnny IV hosts that Johnny Hive to he bought like didn't he what's that
16:11
what's that yeah he's bought a whole bunch of buildings with like a common courtyard and and he you know every interview you you see with him or every
16:19
news article about it i mean it's all just like "Oh we just love San Francisco san Francisco is a a priceless place and
16:26
we're you know building something beautiful here." Uh I mean it sounds
16:32
awesome i I wish I was working in an office down there at Johnny Ives Quadrant but uh it's it's down um what
16:39
is it it's down near the financial district and it's kind of between the financial district and North Beach
16:45
beautiful area really old part of town really uh bunch of big old buildings
16:51
he's bought and it's just kind of wild i mean nobody has a bad thing to say about him you know everybody's like "Oh he's
16:57
really great." You know he comes into our our fly fishing shop and and talks fly fishing with us now you know it's it
17:04
just sounds like he's having a great old time man i mean h San Francisco probably is fantastic if you got you know
17:09
millions and millions of dollars i was literally going to say the same thing if you have unlimited money and to be
17:15
sherford around the streets in a Rolls-Royce then yeah I'm sure you have a pretty rosy view of the city and you can completely like you know revamp the
17:23
internal of some historic building so that you can have your offices there that sounds awesome
17:28
yeah and you know like Lorine Pal Jobs is in on this i mean there's a whole bunch of big people in you know hooked
17:34
up with this it's just a It's a crazy kind of thing yeah man well we'll see what happens
17:40
from this partnership i This This picture almost doesn't even look real does this picture look real to you guys
17:46
like Johnny Ives's face is like lit very strangely it almost looks like a composite image it looks like they like
17:54
photoshopped or chat GPT his face onto like this body it doesn't look like they
17:59
were actually standing together in this photo a lot of people are making jokes that it almost looks like a a a baby
18:04
announcement or like a an engagement invitation something like that hilarious oh I'm so so happy for for your new
18:10
child IO are they a boy or a girl yeah it is a weird looking picture but Well
18:17
yeah johnny Johnny himself I I it's oddly enough there's just like last week
18:22
a he did a talk I think with Stripe you know it's long interview and man he just he kind of is a fidgety weird dude he
18:30
his arms don't even move like a human being it's he's it's strange man british he's British but have have you seen him
18:37
i mean he he's he's like always going like this and that's why all those Apple videos were just shot from the shoulders
18:43
up underneath those in those white void he's just gesticulating and moving his waving his arms around i could tell if
18:49
he's just you know buzzing on his new bromance or or what you know it's just it's just wild i
18:56
I don't remember him being like like looking like that but then as you say like he was always uh pre-recorded
19:04
the other part I want to mention from this story actually is Johnny IV apparently has some AI hardware
19:10
prototype that they're going to be releasing in the next year or something
19:16
so we actually have more news on that in the next story do you want to move on to that well one last thing I just want to mention real quick was Eddie Q's comment
19:23
completely unrelated to like this story but in the in in the recent past that AI
19:30
could eventually replace the need for an iPhone and now here we are with Johnny
19:35
IV partnering with like probably like the preeminent AI company in the entire earth and he's bringing his hardware
19:43
expertise and combining it with their software expertise in this space i just think this is an extremely interesting
19:50
development and an exciting one for sure and now OpenAI is you know constructing
19:56
like this massive AI um super center to power all of their future operations in
20:01
Abalene Texas called um Starfield not Starfield did I call it Starfield before
20:08
stargate stargate stargate i don't know i don't know it's Stargate for sure um
20:13
and just a lot of potential and it kind of reminds me of when
20:19
um the company Bungie left Microsoft and released their game Destiny and it was
20:25
like oh this is what should have happened with like Halo the previous game that they made and for some reason
20:32
that didn't end up coming out when they were part of Microsoft and then they left and it's like oh shoot like this is what they were working on and I kind of
20:37
wonder if we got a similar situation here where Johnny I been working on something that he probably couldn't have developed inside of Apple but now that
20:44
He's free he's free to out Apple Apple which I think remains to be seen but
20:50
that's the part about this story which I find to be the most interesting i think it seems kind of hard to believe that he wouldn't have been able to do whatever
20:55
he wanted at Apple well he could within the constraints of Apple no I just think
21:00
that it's the same reason that Steve Jobs couldn't create next from within Apple you know like he had to leave and
21:06
and be unrestrained to to have the creativity and the freedom that he wanted to do that next thing i mean when
21:13
you're within a company that has business operations and a reputation and a brand there's certain things that you
21:18
just ne can't necessarily do because it could impact revenue or you're busy doing other all these other things i
21:24
don't know you know like it's restrictive like there's those golden handcuffs you're making all this money
21:30
and you feel like you should have the freedom to do what you want to do but you can't for for a variety of reasons and when Johnny departed he had
21:36
unlimited money and complete freedom to do whatever he wanted a lot of the a lot of why Steve Jobs succeeded at Next to
21:43
the degree of being bought back by Apple is just luck of timing because when they were developing the Macintosh they were
21:49
the the the hardware was so constrained uh to the 68K processor and like the
21:55
operating system had to be really tight under these you know obscene memory requirements of 128K he left at the
22:01
exact moment where it was reasonable to start building a computer architecture built entirely on Unix like the modern
22:07
operating system that that scales you know as well as we can today like the
22:12
next step was built on Unix so that like it by by the time the late 90s rolled around it they they had a real desktop
22:19
operating system that they could put on consumer level computers i mean I'm sure luck plays into this at
22:26
least in some part but I mean just the fact that Johnny Ivan Sam Alman have
22:32
even worked together at all I think is incredibly lucky right like this
22:37
partnership was grown out of this connection that they made and this
22:45
relationship that they've built and wouldn't have happened unless the right conditions had happened
22:51
they need a hardware designer and they have the money to buy the best designer
22:56
and his team of people yeah but I don't know that OpenAI's strategy has been to
23:02
create hardware when you hear Sam Alman talk about what they're building it's very software ccentric like he wants to
23:08
build tools that empower people to be more productive and and do their work better and now you have Johnny IV coming
23:14
from the hardware space thinking about okay if we were to imbue a piece of hardware with the power and capabilities
23:22
of AI what would that piece of hardware look like and somehow because Sam Samman
23:27
doesn't have any expertise in that area and so you know by by bringing in Johnny Ies team they're you know adding that
23:34
they're adding like decades of industry knowledge to their to to their base of
23:40
you know to to their employee Yeah I just don't know that he was looking to get into the hardware
23:45
business is my only point so their their connection is somehow serendipitous in
23:50
my mind but it's also extremely exciting yeah all the uh the way that they talk
23:58
about each other in that video is just kind of kind of you know kind of gross i mean just like like what's the the thing
24:04
you know find somebody who looks at you like that right yeah find find someone who looks at you like uh Sam Alman looks
24:11
at Johnny I mean it was definitely Johnny I talking about how you know basically comparing Alman to Steve Jobs
24:18
and you know how it's so great to be working with somebody remember how every Steve Jobs keynote opened with a voiceover of Steve up the executive team
24:26
and saying definitely friends in real life I mean oh this is this is on their
24:32
website I don't know if you happen to look at their you know the the Sam and Johnny website definitely
24:38
Johnny IV says you know I wish I could do a serviceable Johnny IV accent but uh
24:43
I am reminded of a time three decades ago when I immigrated to America as a
24:48
designer I was drawn to the exhilarating and innocent optimism of Silicon Valley to collaborate with people driven to
24:55
create amazing products that elevate humanity if that's not comparing Altman to to Steve Jobs without literally
25:02
saying he is Steve Jobs I don't know what is i wonder what Tim Cook thinks this week
25:08
he's got to be incredibly squinty you know he could probably barely see i I'll
25:13
bet he's just I mean he probably knew this was coming but I don't know i mean when when I've left Apple right they
25:20
they had the smoke screen of like oh he's going to continue to collaborate with Apple which I think they honestly thought happened at all huh i think they
25:26
honestly thought that and then it just ended up not happening probably for a reason i think he honestly did i I
25:31
remember reading that he did some of the work on the Vision Pro he he nailed the Google eyes uh I'll bet
25:40
you that um I'll bet you they just did that just just as we were talking a week or two
25:46
ago about how they haven't cut loose that Google guy who's been you know running their AI department but they've
25:52
like basically taken Siri away from him and made all these other changes they can't say hey they can't fire him
25:59
because if they do it's going to be like wow they really don't know what they're doing when Johnny Iv leaves they can't
26:04
say like "Wow he's gone forever and now we're screwed." They they just have to say like "Oh he's going to continue to
26:11
you know it's this giant like forgive I can't think of a better word but it's like ass covering mode right you're just
26:17
saying "Oh yeah you know uh we're still really we're still really tight we're still he's going to really help us in
26:23
the future." You know I mean it I I I mean I don't have any idea but it doesn't seem like
26:29
he actually contributed to Apple products in any real way right what started happening was just like oh look
26:35
at all these things that are reversing Apple or Johnny Ives design trends right like things are getting thicker and
26:42
slightly more usable i don't know that AI is going to
26:47
replace the need for an iPhone eddie Q said that i I don't see that if it I I think that your iPhone
26:55
will remain an indispensable tool and will probably become a way that you can interact with AI i don't know that we're
27:02
ever going to get rid of screens people are very visual and so I think there will always be a need for that but for
27:08
for sure Apple's going to need to tightly integrate with AI tools ai is
27:13
going to transform software it already is transforming software and I think the inflection point will be once AI becomes
27:21
broadly agentic meaning autonomous like once there are tools that can go do things for you and I mentioned this
27:27
before at this point you can use AI to like go give you an answer for something
27:33
right but the next step and this is already what's happening is AI agents
27:39
where you say instead of asking for a piece of information you say go do this thing for me if this thing happens then
27:45
do another thing and if that thing happens then go do this other thing and it will go and do all that stuff for you like you could say "Hey I want you to go
27:53
and scour Zillow find me the houses
27:58
within this state that meet these conditions and once you've located that list identify and call the real estate
28:07
agents in that area in those areas and set up appointments for me to talk with them or negotiate something on my
28:14
behalf." Like all that stuff is going to be possible like we're probably only maybe a year away from that because
28:20
that's already happening there already are agents in fact if you watched Google's IO this week oh my gosh that
28:26
it's moving at a break neck speed and once we move into agentic ubiquit ubiquity it's going
28:35
to be hard to know if you're even dealing with a person when you get an email when you get a call when you get a
28:40
chat because these agents are going to be so good um and so I think all that stuff is going to have to be integrated
28:47
into the iPhone in a way that helps you live in like this new age where all of
28:52
this stuff is possible anyway we should probably continue on um this is a pretty
28:57
funny photo it looks like a dad who just who's proud of his son for graduating high school that's what it reminds me of
29:04
he should be wearing like one of those graduation hats let's talk about um the
29:10
mysterious prototype that might be in the loop um
29:16
I'm just noticing now that my name is on the story which I didn't see before so I'm going to just read this what yeah sorry
29:23
new details leak about Sam Alman and Johnny IV's coming AI companions this This is a prototype or a render can you
29:30
believe is this you levis's name is on that story where you Oh my bad i thought this was me you're hallucinating like an
29:36
AI yeah thank goodness well I mean I did replace myself with AI um you guys haven't spoken to the real me in
29:42
probably six months no one seemed to notice real Airs in Barbados
29:50
all right sorry Liz go for it so almost as soon as they made that announcement you know new details start leaking out
29:56
um Sam Alman OpenAI CEO uh apparently briefed it employees Wednesday after the
30:03
big announcement about the company's ambitious plans to produce 100 million AI companion devices that could reshape
30:10
how users interact with artificial intelligence alman described it to employees this is coming from the the uh
30:16
Wall Street Journal by the way alman described it to employees as quote chance a chance to do the biggest thing
30:22
we've ever done as a company which I don't know i mean they've done some big things but they're still kind of a small
30:29
company or newish company right yeah for sure uh he he went on to talk about it tell
30:35
people about it and then uh later on this morning uh TF International Security's analyst Mingchi Quo one of
30:41
our favorite sources weighed in with possible details about Open AI's wearable device i'm just going to read
30:46
these off because I can't do it better than the man himself he says the current prototype and this is the one that's supposedly uh this this was mentioned by
30:54
Altman in the video like oh I had this this device this prototype one of Johnny's prototypes it's really fantastic and and you know flash cut to
31:02
Johnny Ry smile oh my god they're so in love uh Mingchi Quo says the current
31:07
prototype is slightly larger than the AI pen you if you remember that's a thing from Humane that was such a bomb uh with
31:15
a form factor as compact and elegant as an iPad iPod odd shuffle um this is kind
31:21
of weird one of the in intended use cases is wearing the device around the neck so that'll be nice you have a
31:26
little AI necklace uh although that's probably better than something you have
31:31
to pin onto your shirt uh let's see uh it will have cameras and microphones for environmental detection with no display
31:38
functionality uh it is expected to connect to smartphones and PCs utilizing their computing and display capabilities
31:46
um Quo says that the mass production is expected to start in 2027 a little bit
31:51
later than what uh Sammy Boy was talking about uh and of course he points out that design specifications could change
31:57
before then this is just a side note assembly and shipping will occur outside China to reduce geopolitical risks with
32:05
Vietnam currently the likely assembly location so my thoughts on
32:11
this after the humane AI pin flopped after the rabbit R1 is basically proven
32:17
to be a complete smoke show that never worked in the first place I think the question they need to ask is like and
32:22
Johnny I even
32:29
mented video that they that they randomly dropped saying that like you know oh you know there were early movers
32:34
in this field but you know they didn't get the mark quite right something like that so I guess the question I would ask
32:39
and I think is a natural question to ask is okay so what are you going to be doing that's different i think one of
32:45
the biggest problems with the humane AI pin is that fundamentally
32:52
um the it was held back by the fact that uh it try they had to pitch it as a
32:59
device that replaces your phone because they were not able to you know integrate
33:04
with the phone you already have the iPhone doesn't let anything else integrate with it as well as the Apple
33:10
Watch does you know you can't you can't even design a product that does what the Apple Watch does if you're a third-party
33:16
company only Apple can do that and so the human AI pin was kind of nerfed from
33:21
that starting point because they have to pitch it as an as a replacement because it can't integrate with what you already
33:27
have and secondarily another equally bad mark
33:32
against it it can't replace your phone because it doesn't have a screen and people want things with screens to look
33:38
at stuff and anything that wants you to get rid of that is immediately going to fail so I have big questions as to
33:47
they're saying they're going to build a hundred million of these things in the first year like that or you know as soon
33:53
as they're they're going for like straight out of the gate they're going to make that many of them uh that's
33:58
calls that's calling some serious things into question as to whether they're going to do anything marketkedly better
34:04
than humane another point I would say is like you know it's not that the iPhone is
34:10
indestructible forever you know nothing nothing lasts forever something could be
34:16
the next huge thing to replace the iPhone
34:21
but when Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone he didn't stand up on stage and
34:26
say "No Blackberry your time is up you're a dead man walking we're going to take over and change the entire world
34:32
and create and Apple's going to be worth $3 trillion and we're going to create whole new economies of businesses all
34:38
around this new brand new thing all of those things did end up being true but the thing is Steve Jobs didn't say that
34:44
right when he introduced the iPhone he said "We're shooting for 1% market share after a year."
34:51
Like if you promise to change the world you're inevitably going to
34:57
disappoint everybody because the first product of anything doesn't change the world the first iPhone did not change
35:02
the world it was like the iPhone 4 by the time that everybody started to like really buy iPhones until the iPhone 5S
35:08
that you know they you know 2013 they started to become really common and then
35:13
around the iPhone 6 6 Plus oh you can get a big one now okay everybody's going to buy an iPhone like that that is like
35:20
you know six versions in it took for the iPhone to like become absolutely indispensable to the world they're
35:27
ordering a hundred million of these things that again don't have a screen and can't fully integrate with your
35:35
phone i don't see what what it would be then that's what I'm curious about as
35:41
well what is this thing going to do we just don't know yet and to your point
35:46
it's silly to say that you're going to build something that's going to change the world because you don't really know
35:52
how people are going to react to the product the the phone integration thing I actually think is a really huge one
35:58
because if anything Apple could copy the device and make it compatible with
36:03
iPhone and even if it wasn't as good it would do better because it integrates that yeah exactly just because it works
36:08
with your iPhone like that integration is actually really important but I am curious to see where they go with these
36:13
like it reminds me of the movie Her i don't know if you guys saw that with Walkin Phoenix where he has a
36:18
relationship with an AI and there's this device that he uses that everyone carries that just kind of fits in your
36:24
pocket and it has a camera that peaks up over your pocket and it's like analyzing what it sees in real time and I actually
36:30
think that there is a real need or maybe not a need there would be some serious
36:35
um use cases for something like that like if it were if it were good enough if this were even possible I don't even
36:40
know if it is if you have a device in your pocket that's like listening to the conversations that you've had that's taking video of things that are
36:46
happening in your life and then at the end of the day like it it sh it creates a video for you of things that have
36:52
happened of conversations that you had that were important of s of moments with your kids of cool moments from your
36:59
vacation you know without you having to do any effort it just does that for you i actually think that's something that
37:05
people would want to use it's something that I would be interested in um it's almost like a dash cam for your life you
37:11
know like in the car you you have like your dash cam now of course the problem is how do you do all that processing and video storage and editing and everything
37:18
with such limited amount of battery power but it does make me curious it's
37:23
like if they say they're building these AI devices like what are these devices going to do for you that are so
37:30
compelling that open AAI is willing to buy your company for $6.5 billion which
37:35
I feel like is kind of a lot of money 6.5 billion i mean you never fy yeah you've never even bought you never even
37:41
created a product you haven't sold a single thing and and yet they're valuating you at 6.5 billion like is
37:50
again is it just a talent play do they just do they know they want to build hardware he's the greatest industrial
37:55
designer in the world he's the if you ask anybody to name a designer he's the first name anybody would say and maybe
38:01
the only name yeah and maybe the only name that people even know um and again
38:06
it's not just him it's it's him and his jolly men right it's like his entire team that is basically Apple's
38:13
industrial design team i mean and just just talking about it out loud that value is immense right like how can you
38:20
get the design talents of Apple you can't buy their industrial design team and just bring it in in house oh now you
38:27
can now you can do that you can actually just buy this company and you're going to get Johnny IV their leader and and
38:32
and all of his merry men and women to come and be your in-house design team
38:38
like what is that worth well clearly it's worth more than $6.5 billion how much does Apple make every year so I
38:45
just think that this again is a really interesting um development even if this product ends up not being something that
38:51
we all love OpenAI is poised to I think become
38:56
one of the most valuable companies on Earth and they're going to have money to do things with hardware and like what do
39:01
they see as the future of AI integrated hardware no one's really figured this out everyone's just building assistance
39:08
google Google's going after it hard for sure um but I don't even know that they know what's going to be popular at this
39:14
point it seems like a lot of people are just throwing things at the wall although Google has had some I don't know if you guys watch any part of the
39:20
the Google IO this week um some of their AI features are totally bonkers um
39:27
really I I would say industry changing features like they
39:34
built this engine this is the one that I think everyone's talking about and the one that I found to be the most interesting they built this new video AI
39:43
video creation engine that can essentially just create movies and well
39:49
maybe not full length movies but you know scenes from movies with real life looking actors it does all the fully
39:54
work and all the like the noise stuff in the background and the voices everything in it is AI and you can like edit it
40:01
with AI so you could do a cut in your video and you can say "Hey instead of making the video do um for example I'll
40:07
use the example they showed um there's a guy in a car old guy in a car and he
40:12
wants to make his car fly so through prompting they make it so that this guy
40:17
this old guy is driving like this convertible through the desert it must be like near like the um Grand Canyon or
40:24
something and there's a scene where he's driving the car and the car drives off a cliff and they're like "Well we don't want that to happen." So they back it up
40:30
in the timeline and they're like "Instead of having the car drive off the cliff have the car fly." And so I forgot
40:36
to mention there's a giant chicken in the car with him so the chicken grabs the car and instead of the car flying
40:41
off the cliff now the chicken starts flapping its wings and the car flies off into the sunset well the part that's
40:46
incredible about that I mean besides the fact that AI can do all this without any actual humans or anything in it it's all
40:52
just completely made up including all the soundwork and all the music and everything and the fact that it looks completely real is when you make AI or
41:02
when you when you direct AI to recreate something that you've already made a lot of times it will remake it but it looks
41:08
totally different and so it you can't really like piece the things together or stitch them together in any real way
41:13
because they just don't really connect but this AI engine was able to completely maintain the aesthetic of the
41:18
entire video and continue the scene and that's something I've never seen before
41:24
that's a huge development um and anyway so Google is going to be
41:29
releasing all the these really cool features but they're all behind like these I'd say very
41:34
um well very high pay walls that most people are not going to be willing to fork over i mean we're only asking five
41:40
bucks a month i think their Google AI ultra plan is $250 a month now you do
41:46
get YouTube premium with that so there is that but all these crazy AI features are all locked behind payw walls which
41:52
is true of everyone um I'm using Chat GPT's um plus plan right now which 20
41:59
bucks a month which I'm like okay I can handle 20 but $100 $200 $300 a month that's what's going to be happening with
42:04
all these like AI companies because these features are so compute heavy like
42:10
I saw a stat that you know a a a uh OpenAI query uses 10 times the power of
42:18
a Google query right and I'm not even sure that was accurate like I might be misremembering that but like they're
42:24
very very resourceheavy currently so these companies are trying to figure out
42:29
a way to monetize all this stuff so if you want to use like the best AI stuff it's all hidden behind pay walls this is
42:35
not a tangent I was planning on going on where are we going next uh can we skip to our last story here because we're
42:40
running out of show here we have 10 minutes left yeah you're right i want to do this all right let's do third party
42:46
developers one so last story of the show apple plans to
42:53
open AI models to third party developers this is Apple's move that they're probably going to make this year at WWDC
43:01
apple plans to release a software development kit that will enable outside developers to build new AI features
43:06
using the same large language models that power Apple intelligence the company's AI platform according to Mark German that's a selling point right
43:13
there now you can harness the power of Apple intelligence that might be the the the cynical first
43:19
take on this but I I got I got something to say here the initiative will initially focus on giving developers act
43:24
access to Apple's smaller ondevice AI models rather than the more powerful cloud-based versions that require server
43:30
resources this approach represents part of Apple's broader strategy to establish itself as a leader in generative AI a
43:36
field where the company has struggled to keep pace with competitors despite launching Apple intelligence last year
43:42
currently developers have limited options for integrating Apple intelligence into their apps they can
43:47
implement features like notification prioritization and summaries they they actually can't even really do summaries
43:53
that's just done automatically for them um so I'll skip to the point here
43:59
um I think this could actually be pretty major for third party apps right now
44:06
they you know they they can add a you know image generation button into their app but giving developers the access the
44:14
full access to Apple's foundation models could be huge and also it's worth noting
44:19
you know oh Apple intelligence that's that's garbage whatever at WWDC they're
44:24
probably going to announce the second wave of their of their Apple Foundation model i think a big part of why Apple
44:30
feels like they're behind is because they're treating Apple intelligence the way they treat all of their software and that it gets one major release once a
44:38
year and that's just not how the rest of the AI industry works i'm kind of hoping that going forward Apple will release
44:45
like you know updated versions of their their foundation model you know maybe four times a year and that
44:54
that sounds ridiculous compared to everybody else because like there's a new version of chat GPT every single
45:00
week with a completely different naming system but you know if they update if
45:05
they update the foundation model more regularly and there's another story in here that we're sort of uh merging into
45:11
this one that Apple's next version of the internal version of the foundation model that they're working on right now
45:16
is actually pretty comparable to chat GPT now granted Chat GPT is al OpenAI is
45:22
also probably working on something that's ahead of that so Apple is still probably behind a little bit but they
45:28
might not be as behind as you think and giving thirdparty developers access to
45:34
be able to run AI tasks in their apps on device instantly like that is going to
45:41
be the thing that supercharges because that's the thing that the nobody else has easy access to right now that
45:48
is what Apple can flex as part as as their advantage as being like one of the
45:54
big platform owners in the world one of only two we saw Google do that with Google IO and they're announcing
46:01
you know versions of what Apple announced a year ago except they're actually probably closer to shipping it with regards to you know agentic AI
46:09
control you know having AI that can power and do things for you inside Google apps but that's all they can
46:15
promise right now what Apple can do is they can say hey all every third party developer you can adopt AI into your app
46:22
you can have summarization features in you can adopt you know you know more writing tools features like that
46:28
anywhere you want you can have access to the foundation model and that would really bring uh you know tangible AI
46:36
features that you can actually use every day into the apps that you use every
46:41
day i think that's a smart take i think I think the other piece is just the privacy aspect of it right it's like if
46:47
you can do everything on your phone and know that it's not going anywhere I I think that would be something that
46:53
people would be interested in and also it reduces Apple's cost like everyone that's doing AI has to pay for like
46:59
these massive data centers i may have just told you about you know Stargate i mean $500 billion to build an AI center
47:05
now obviously your iPhone isn't going to compete with that but like if you can offload all of that AI stuff to your
47:10
iPhone or your iPad or your Mac or whatever and do it locally and you don't have to do it with some kind of cloud
47:16
expense attached to it I I makes it much more attractive to developers because they they already know that all of their
47:22
users have a powerful you know powerful hardware in their hands to run it and
47:28
they don't have to you know they don't have to figure out like any cost they don't have to pay any API fees to a third party company or monetize their
47:35
app like somebody can make a free open-source app that that can take advantage of the Apple Foundation model
47:41
just because it's already built in and you already have you know what do you what do they call it the um the the the the part of the part of
47:48
the Apple the the chip the ML the neural engine the neural engine say okay every
47:55
phone has a neural engine you know yeah and uh there are certain applications that that would be incredibly useful
48:02
like I I I spent some time um recently trying to to take AI notes on a video that's uh
48:10
like a video seminar I participated in but like they gave me the video but I didn't get the notes or anything and so
48:16
I tried it in chat GPT but the video was too long it wouldn't do it for me and so I was trying to figure out how to
48:21
transcribe this video and then use it to summarize into notes and all these AI
48:27
services wanted to charge me for it and I was trying to figure out how to do it on my local machine you can do it um in
48:34
fact OpenAI has some open- source software called Whisper uh that you can use yeah good luck getting it installed
48:41
on your machine unless you're a developer like I'm going through I got to install Python and and and all these
48:47
other like Python tools which I'm having to use like like terminal or uh on
48:53
Windows like the command prompt to do and I'm like I have no idea what I'm doing the directions just presume that
49:00
you are a developer and that you know how all this stuff works and I'm like I bet now you wish you bought a Mac Studio with a Mac chip don't you well you know
49:06
even doing it on the two gigs of memory to to be fair I have you know the the
49:11
MacBook Pro M4 Max you know maxed out edition so I could do it on my Mac but but even still my point is is that there
49:19
there I want to do this locally on my machine but there's like no easy way to do it right so like Apple can make this
49:24
happen in an easy way so that you can like transcribe videos and take notes um in live situations or whatever without
49:31
having a cost attached to it cuz like there's a ton of web services that do what I just suggested you know like transcribing video and taking notes but
49:37
they all want to charge you money to do this stuff right and like I don't mind waiting a little while longer because my
49:43
iPhone doesn't do it as quickly um as long as I can do it for free so I think that that's going to be a huge benefit
49:48
for Apple um yeah I've been trying the story that I wanted to bring up um
49:53
additionally Apple previously planned to introduce enhanced app intense functionality according to the report
49:58
that would give users more precise control over app features using Siri the company now aims to introduce this
50:04
capability in iOS 19 beginning in September and continuing into 2026 so
50:10
this is you know Apple's version of that agentic AI leveraging the other advantage they have developers already
50:16
building out app intents into their apps like these are existing APIs that have been on their platforms for years
50:23
leveraging that into the smarter Siri that can you know do things for you except for realies this time we swear
50:31
hopefully Apple We had a story here which we can't do because we're out of time um about about Apple letting you
50:37
ditch Siri for a smarter assistant um Bloomberg is reporting that to meet EU
50:42
regulations um the company Apple is now allowing people to switch Siri to
50:49
another you know to another agent on your phone as like the default agent which that would be huge i don't know
50:55
lewis doesn't think it's going to come to the US maybe not but wouldn't that be great if you could like switch from Siri
51:02
to chat GPT i mean that would be something that works yeah something that works exactly and not only something
51:08
that works but like yeah it would be such it would be like going from you
51:14
know an infant to someone with a PhD like that's the difference between Siri and Chat GBT it's really that that much
51:21
of a difference right i mean chat G chat GBT's ability to answer your questions
51:26
accurately and with eloquence is like really astounding um Grock the same
51:31
perplexity the same i mean there's so many good tools then you use Siri and you're like "Oh my gosh there's nothing
51:37
here." It's another goo gaga if you go back to your Apple and Steve Jobs analogy it's like you could say Siri is
51:43
analogous to classic Mac OS and chatbt and all these modern AI tools are the equivalent of NextStep yeah you know the
51:49
modern the modern powerful Unix based operating system yeah you know and Siri which just had to be developed 15 years
51:56
ago before any of this technology was around to make it you know modern and powerful okay look I would love to
52:04
continue this discussion but I got to be walking these sweet buns out the door in 3 minutes so we got to queue up the music that's it that's all the cult we
52:10
have for you guys this week but you know what the party continues in the very exclusive cult club it's so exclusive i
52:15
think it's just Griffin in there and like you know people who are corporate enough they don't even let me in anymore
52:21
i got to make sure I show up you can uh support the show uh tuxedos only Louis
52:26
you know that and your fee don't forget about your fee uh you can support the show and also get access to the co club
52:32
at support.theccast.com you can also come hang out with me and Lewis we're both on the allnew X i'm at Airf uh Lewis is at
52:39
Lewis Wallace and of course D Griffin Jones just search that in your AI engine of choice if you want to find all of
52:44
like the secluded places that Griffin likes to hang out this has been the Coldcast the best 30 plus minute app
52:50
conversation you're going to hear all week long new episodes of the Cultcast come out every Thursday night i want to
52:55
thank everyone for listening for hanging out live and we will catch you guys Looks that was quick feel like I need to
53:03
speed it up just get it over with it's like ripping off the band-aid don't you think Louis
53:08
yeah yeah just anything to get it over with you know part of me thinks I should just
53:14
turn off my computer just hold the power button until it just shuts off what does cult get there i don't
53:21
know i don't know how you shift gears from a high powered podcast like this to a mind-numbing uh meeting oh yeah well
53:27
it's not easy you'd have to share pro tips on that somewhere [Music] uh all right everyone hope you have a
53:34
great weekend if not well there's always next weekend thanks for hanging out oh
53:41
jeez see y'all next time bye y'all hey this was episode 700 did you even
53:47
mention that 700 can't believe it i'm not sure that's accurate but
53:54
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