Full Interview: Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman on Apple’s AI Stack, Anthropic, and the Future of Siri

This is our full interview with Bloomberg’s Managing Editor, Mark Gurman, recorded live on TBPN. TBPN is a live tech talk show hosted by John Coogan and Jordi Hays, streaming weekdays from 11–2 PT on X and YouTube, with full episodes posted to podcast platforms immediately after. Described by The New York Times as “Silicon Valley’s newest obsession,” TBPN has recently featured Mark Zuckerberg, Sam Altman, Mark Cuban, and Satya Nadella. TBPN.com is made possible by: Ramp - https://Ramp.com AppLovin - https://axon.ai Cognition - https://cognition.ai Console - https://console.com CrowdStrike - https://crowdstrike.com ElevenLabs - https://elevenlabs.io Figma - https://figma.com Fin - https://fin.ai Gemini - https://gemini.google.com Graphite - https://graphite.com Gusto - https://gusto.com/tbpn Labelbox - https://labelbox.com Lambda - https://lambda.ai Linear - https://linear.app MongoDB - https://mongodb.com NYSE - https://nyse.com Okta - https://www.okta.com Phantom - https://phantom.com/cash Plaid - https://plaid.com Public - https://public.com Railway - https://railway.com Ramp - https://ramp.com Restream - https://restream.io Sentry - https://sentry.io Shopify - https://shopify.com Turbopuffer - https://turbopuffer.com Vanta - https://vanta.com Vibe - https://vibe.co Sentry - https://sentry.io Cisco - https://www.ciscoaisummit.com/ai-virtual-summit.html Follow TBPN: https://TBPN.com https://x.com/tbpn https://open.spotify.com/show/2L6WMqY3GUPCGBD0dX6p00?si=674252d53acf4231 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/technology-brothers/id1772360235 https://www.youtube.com/@TBPNLive

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00John Coogan?

  And without further ado, we have Mark Gurman.

• 0:02Jordi Hays?

  The Gurman editor.

• 0:03John Coogan?

  Managing editor of Bloomberg in the Ultra Dome. Welcome to the show. Thank you so much for taking the time to come on down. Yeah, right here. We'll have this microphone for you. You have Diet Coke, so you're locked in.

• 0:18Mark Gurman?

  Ready to go.

• 0:19John Coogan?

  How have you been? How's your new year going so far?

• 0:21Mark Gurman?

  Oh, frickin' great.

• 0:23John Coogan?

  Yeah?

• 0:24Mark Gurman?

  Yeah, had a... My wife and I had a baby at the end of last year.

• 0:27Jordi Hays?

  Gong, gong, gong. Big gong.

• 0:32Mark Gurman?

  I maybe get one of those things that you guys make on the Twitter. And it's me.

• 0:37John Coogan?

  The card.

• 0:38Mark Gurman?

  Baby.

• 0:38John Coogan?

  Baby? Oh, we'd be happy to do that.

• 0:40Jordi Hays?

  We're happy to do it. We never, we never... Yeah, we never, we never know. Some people, some people want to be, you know, more low-key about it.

• 0:46Mark Gurman?

  Oh, I am low-key about it. I just figured, you know, in front of you.

• 0:49Jordi Hays?

  But how do you, how do you rate parenthood? How does it, uh... How does it feel being in it versus, you know, all the expectations that people have?

• 0:58Mark Gurman?

  Just taking care of this individual and they're being so reliant on us and getting to, to teach them. But shout out to my wife for being the one really pulling the strings there and taking care. So it's great.

• 1:16Jordi Hays?

  I feel like, I feel like reporting and parenthood are especially hard to balance in some ways.

• 1:24Mark Gurman?

  Still early.

• 1:25Jordi Hays?

  Well, I would, yeah, no, I would, I would just, like, obviously, it's completely possible and you're, you're clearly doing fine. But the nature of the work means that, like, a story is happening and you want to be the first to provide the best coverage. And sometimes, you know, baby's crying.

• 1:42John Coogan?

  And you might not be able to pick up the phone.

• 1:45Jordi Hays?

  But...

• 1:45John Coogan?

  But you get through.

• 1:46Mark Gurman?

  You know what? People, people have been hearing crying babies over the phone for, uh...

• 1:50John Coogan?

  That's true.

• 1:51Mark Gurman?

  For, for forever, so they'll have to deal with it. I just can't wait till we go on an airplane.

• 1:56John Coogan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:56Jordi Hays?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:57Mark Gurman?

  I already told my wife, like, you know, we're gonna get, like, banned from American Airlines.

• 2:01Jordi Hays?

  No, I've said this on the show before. I, like, the funniest thing is, growing up, I assumed that when a baby was crying on the airplane, it means that the parents... Were bad parents, like they were doing something wrong.

• 2:11John Coogan?

  Totally, totally.

• 2:12Jordi Hays?

  And in reality, babies just cry for a million reasons and it's totally possible that there's no solution sometimes. They just need to.

• 2:19John Coogan?

  Yeah, I saw like an Instagram reel of a mother talking about her kid and the kid was crying in the background. I was like, why would you take advice from her? Like, that's such a bad mom.

• 2:28Mark Gurman?

  Yeah, it has nothing to do with that.

• 2:29John Coogan?

  And not at all. It's like now, it's like, baby's always crying. It's crazy.

• 2:32Mark Gurman?

  Hungry, they have gas, they don't like the sweater they're wearing.

• 2:36John Coogan?

  There's a million reasons.

• 2:37Mark Gurman?

  You know, they didn't like my article, you know, like, who knows? But anyways.

• 2:41John Coogan?

  Anyway.

• 2:42Mark Gurman?

  Let's talk about Apple.

• 2:42John Coogan?

  Yeah, let's talk about Apple. I mean, we've been talking about new Siri, expectations there. The big news yesterday was Claude Bot. Have you been, do you think that there's anything about, have you been, how have you been processing the Claude Bot, now MultBot story? What's possible there? Expectations around AI assistance feel sky high in the open source community. What do you, do you think, like, anyone at Apple's, like, updating on Claude Bot and MultBot and what's possible?

• 3:12Mark Gurman?

  Well, let me just take a step.

• 3:13John Coogan?

  Please, yeah, yeah.

• 3:14Mark Gurman?

  You know, with Apple and AI.

• 3:15John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 3:16Mark Gurman?

  So in 20, what is it, 2018, they hired John Jean Andrea. He was this high flyer at Google. He ran AI in search and Apple thought they had a coup here. Apple thought they would hire this guy and really just hit the ground running and be at the forefront of artificial intelligence. Just seven years earlier, they announced Siri. In 2011, there was absolutely nothing like it. It was breakthrough.

• 3:40John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 3:40Mark Gurman?

  But then it just became utter junk, right? Google Assistant lapped it, Alexa lapped it. So they thought they were going to bring this guy in and it'd be a game changer. Turns out, and maybe this will be Tim Cook's fate accompli, but this was the biggest mistake, this hire of Tim Cook's tenure, I think it's easy to say. Apple is so behind in AI. There's been so much ink spilled on this and so many conversations on this and I've written about it and talked about it half a million times. I think it does, you haven't even scratched the surface about how big of a problem this is for Apple, right? They've completely screwed up AI in every which way and it comes down to just hiring the wrong people and entrusting

• 4:25Mark Gurman?

  the wrong people.

• 4:26Jordi Hays?

  But is it a do nothing win scenario? Because I think we're seeing a situation now where the Mac Mini might end up selling out everywhere.

• 4:32John Coogan?

  Stocks is fine. Are you seeing like financial impact?

• 4:36Mark Gurman?

  Well, the stock, that's the problem, right? When you've had no real negative hit, it's hard to...

• 4:44Jordi Hays?

  Go wartime.

• 4:45Mark Gurman?

  Go wartime, right?

• 4:46John Coogan?

  And acknowledge that there is a failure because all the numbers are folded.

• 4:50Mark Gurman?

  But it is wartime, right?

• 4:52John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 4:53Mark Gurman?

  The numbers are great. Tomorrow, they might report their first 135 billion to 140 billion dollar quarter, right?

• 5:02John Coogan?

  What's going on?

• 5:03Mark Gurman?

  Like, I don't, you know, the problem is, how can you put 140 billion dollars and Tim Cook needs to go retire in the same sentence?

• 5:14John Coogan?

  You can't, yeah.

• 5:15Mark Gurman?

  Right? It doesn't make sense. But when you think about the long term, you think about the future, these things are going to need to get rectified. And I guess the good news is they are on a path to rectifying it to some extent. This Google Gemini deal is a breakthrough for Apple. It's embarrassing. I mean, it's absolutely crazy that...

• 5:36Jordi Hays?

  You poached their guy and then years later you're paying them billions.

• 5:40Mark Gurman?

  And you're paying, he screws you up, okay? You pay him 25 million a year for eight years, right? And then now you're paying basically 4X that, 8X that, maybe a little bit more in order to get, you know, the new good stuff. And so they'll announce a new Siri next month. The thing with this new Siri is basically a replay of everything they announced in June 2024. So it's basically everything they announced two years ago coming very late. Things like using what's on your screen to fulfill Siri queries, being able to control your apps. And then in June is when the good stuff launches. That's when Apple launches its first chatbot. It's interesting because they've spent the last two years saying nobody likes chatbots, everyone hates ChatGPT, it's terrible, it's ruining the world. Okay,

• 6:22Mark Gurman?

  then you have ChatGPT with nearly a billion, right, active users. They're like, okay, we kind of got to do this or we're screwed. So they're doing it. And it's actually going to run on Google servers, Google Cloud Platform, Google TPUs.

• 6:35John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 6:36Mark Gurman?

  This is great for Google too. And I think some people at Apple think this is going to be like a short term thing. You know, we're going to partner with Google till we get our act together. No, I definitely think that this is more of a long term play unless these models continue to get commoditized, which they will eventually, but this is not a 12, 24, 36 month thing. This is, this is longer term, I think, than people expect.

• 6:59John Coogan?

  And Apple can't just go wrap Llama because of the Terms of Service that Meta's put around, put that around. They said you can't use Llama.

• 7:07Mark Gurman?

  Well, I don't think they want to use Llama. I don't think they want to work with Meta.

• 7:11John Coogan?

  Chinese open source model, so there isn't, there aren't that many games in tech.

• 7:13Mark Gurman?

  Well, let's take a step back here. So they're using Google in the US, right? But they're going to have to do something in China.

• 7:22John Coogan?

  Okay.

• 7:23Mark Gurman?

  And so you'll see them use a combination of Alibaba and, and Weibo, I think it's Weibo or Tencent or one of those different AIs for different features. And so they'll use them. And just because they're partnering with Google Gemini on, on Siri in this chatbot doesn't mean they're not using other players. There's a lot of OpenAI and a lot of applications. They launched their creative cloud competitor today and a lot of those AI features are powered by ChatGPT, like some image generation stuff. I still think on an image generation side, you're getting a little bit better on OpenAI than you're getting from Google. And then a lot of stuff internally, like Apple runs on Anthropic at this point.

• 8:07Mark Gurman?

  Anthropic is powering a lot of the stuff Apple's doing internally in terms of product development, a lot of their internal tools. So that's a big one to watch. They have custom versions of Claude running on their own servers internally too, because this Google deal, this just came together a few months ago, they were not going to use Google. Apple actually was going to rebuild Siri around Claude. But Anthropic, they were holding them over a barrel. They wanted a crap ton of money from them, several billion dollars a year, and at a price that doubled on an annual basis as well for the next three years or so, from what I understand. At the time, Google was really an afterthought because they were in the middle of the trial with the Department of Justice.

• 8:52Mark Gurman?

  And then, for some reason, the judge ruled that Apple and Google's deal was kosher, even though everyone knows it's a huge issue and our monopoly and all that. I'm not here to be a judge. I write. I don't make judgments for legal proceedings. But anyways, Apple and Google get off scot-free. They can do whatever they want now, and, you know, they're not being held back at all. And then, obviously, OpenAI, that is a real firestorm for Apple right now. Like, OpenAI, obviously, they're working on these AirPods competitors, the ChatGPT built in.

• 9:23Jordi Hays?

  Sweet P.

• 9:24Mark Gurman?

  Sweet P. Johnny Ive is, you know, running the show and design there. That's a big frickin' deal. Okay, he raided the whole design team, all of the Apple designers that were there under Johnny Ive. Not all of them. Ninety-five percent of them are gone. You know, a ton of them are now working at Love from and OpenAI and other companies. Some of them have retired. But the crux of it is, like, how do you partner with a company that's trying to put you out of business, right? So there's no way that they were gonna work with OpenAI, no matter how good the.

• 9:55Jordi Hays?

  What do you think about some of the projections that you've seen, or kind of estimates around, I forget, was it Foxconn was saying, like, preparing?

• 10:06John Coogan?

  Forty-five million units.

• 10:06Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, preparing to be able to produce something like that in the first year. It feels like a massive number, but at the same time, you have a billion users.

• 10:17Mark Gurman?

  Talking about the OpenAI earbuds?

• 10:18Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, the sweet.

• 10:20Mark Gurman?

  You know, it's so interesting.

• 10:21Jordi Hays?

  And one more thing there.

• 10:23Mark Gurman?

  Yeah.

• 10:23Jordi Hays?

  That your, the earbuds, the benefit of them versus some of these other AI hardware is like, if you can just take calls and listen to music, like, already you have some functionality that people are using all day long.

• 10:35John Coogan?

  Sure, sure.

• 10:35Jordi Hays?

  So it's not the same as, like, wearing a pendant or having some other little gadget that, like, actually serves no real use case, or at least not a powerful use case. If I can just listen to calls, or sorry, take calls, listen to music, at least there's like some, like, base level functionality, and then you layer on AI, and maybe it turns into this amazing, you know, super differentiated experience.

• 10:57Mark Gurman?

  I just don't see it. I just don't see them selling forty-five million units. I just don't see it being a success. The barrier to entry for a new hardware company, as you know, is extremely high. Like, can you even think of one hardware company that just? Came into being and became an immediate success, like I just don't see it. And I also think the reason they're doing earbuds is because it's more low hanging fruit, to your point, and it's easier to accomplish. It's not what they wanted to do. What OpenAI wanted to do is they wanted to create an iPhone killer. Instead, now they're trying to create an AirPods killer. And I don't think they're going to be able to accomplish that. Will they look nicer than the AirPods? Probably. Will they have better AI than the AirPods? That's an open question, right? What stops Apple from expanding this Gemini deal to its AirPods?

• 11:40Mark Gurman?

  And just basically adding a bunch of AI functionality to the AirPods? They have very fast processors, very tight iPhone integration. Apple can replicate whatever OpenAI is going to do pretty quickly by relying on Google and Gemini and whatever they can cook up functionality wise there.

• 11:57Jordi Hays?

  Do you think that AI, specifically products, you know, that we had the creator of Moltbot on yesterday, and he was saying like, there's so many applications, and he was referencing like MyFitnessPal. Do I really need MyFitnessPal if I can just take a picture and just send it into my agent?

• 12:15Mark Gurman?

  No.

• 12:15Jordi Hays?

  And it'll track it? And so what I was thinking there is like, does that make the App Store broadly potentially less of a hurdle with OpenAI is launching, eventually launches a new phone? And they have a new OS? And they don't have an App Store, they don't have an App Store on day one.

• 12:32John Coogan?

  It instantiates the equivalence of apps on the fly.

• 12:33Mark Gurman?

  Well, if you ask me, you know, we're already in the territory where iOS and the App Store are legacy features, right? Like, the App Store is a legacy world. The iOS user experience, the macOS user experience, where you're jumping between applications, where you're going into something to get information, where you're going back to your home screen and launch another app. Apps are the past. AI agents are already here, and that's the move forward. And whenever OpenAI comes out with a phone, and I do eventually anticipate them coming out with a phone. And when I say phone, I'm not talking necessarily about something you put to your ear, like a classic phone, like an iPhone. I'm talking about, I feel like people are always going to have some sort of slab in

• 13:17Mark Gurman?

  their pocket, right? Because it's convenient, you get the display, you get the sensors, you get the battery, you get the cameras. It's not a replicable experience, no matter how many different gadgets you want to put on your body.

• 13:28Jordi Hays?

  Like a banana, like a plastic banana, smart banana.

• 13:32Mark Gurman?

  That would be fun. Yeah. So, yeah, AI agents are where the the world is going. And I totally expect Apple to move in this direction. This new Siri campo that they're launching at the end of this year. That is a huge step towards the AI agentification of different features on the phone. And being able to, for instance, tell your phone, pull up this photo that I I took at the studio. Find photos where I have bottles of water and remove the bottle of water from the from the from the photo. And email or to text it to Mark, right? Like, the AI agentification of iOS is happening.

• 14:14John Coogan?

  Sure.

• 14:14Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, and theoretically Siri should have killed like the weather app a long time ago. Because I don't like, when you think about, like, if you're just going to navigate to the weather app and you're traveling somewhere. And you're like, oh, where is this city? Oh, I don't have it saved. I'm going to search and add it. And then you're like finally looking at it and it should just be a prompt.

• 14:33John Coogan?

  You sort of can ask, but then when you try and click a level deeper, when this in the current Siri experience, you just can't get.

• 14:39Mark Gurman?

  That is the big problem with Siri and the big difference from ChatGPT and Gemini is it has the going a level deeper problem. There's no back and forth. It forgets context very easily. It has no memory. It doesn't have that tight integration with applications because the app developers, they know Siri is so terrible. You know, here's a question. So what if I told you that you could call an Uber with Siri, right? Like, you guys probably know that, but like, does anyone use it? I don't have the data, but I can tell you that they announced support for that and they actually rolled out.

• 15:10John Coogan?

  Five years ago?

• 15:11Mark Gurman?

  No, ten years.

• 15:12John Coogan?

  Ten years ago?

• 15:13Mark Gurman?

  Okay, it doesn't work because nobody uses it because it's too cumbersome.

• 15:18John Coogan?

  Totally.

• 15:19Mark Gurman?

  Okay, like, I'm very tech forward, as anyone watching this probably knows. You know, it's right up my alley to have Siri call my Uber for me, but like, I've never done it. Because you know what? I don't fricking trust it.

• 15:30John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 15:31Mark Gurman?

  It's not, I don't think it's gonna work, and it's just going to be a time suck.

• 15:35John Coogan?

  And people didn't trust ChatGPT with 3.5, but now on 5.2 Pro.

• 15:40Mark Gurman?

  I would trust ChatGPT with ordering an Uber. I would trust ChatGPT with my life.

• 15:46Mark Gurman?

  But Siri?

• 15:48John Coogan?

  Okay, so on the Siri rollout, it seems like there's a couple milestones that we're gonna be tracking throughout this year. When will, when do you think I'll be able to go to Siri and just say a general Google-able question? You know, uh, give me the history of the Roman Empire. The type of thing that any LLM can just pull up a couple paragraphs on, but current Siri does not have that ability.

• 16:13Mark Gurman?

  Okay, I can't tell you that you're going to be able to do it. I can tell you that you're supposed to be able to do it. How's that? I'll speak, I'll speak.

• 16:19John Coogan?

  I just mean, I just mean, is that?

• 16:20Mark Gurman?

  Like, what's the goal?

• 16:21John Coogan?

  No, no, I just mean like, there's knowledge retrieval.

• 16:23Mark Gurman?

  End of March.

• 16:24John Coogan?

  And then, and then there's, and then there's like agentification, like making, interacting with the apps, doing all the things like pulling what's in your camera roll together with your iMessage and all that.

• 16:34Mark Gurman?

  End of March.

• 16:34John Coogan?

  And that feels harder for both of those end of March.

• 16:36Mark Gurman?

  They're supposed to be end of March.

• 16:38John Coogan?

  Okay.

• 16:39Mark Gurman?

  But the latter, in terms of the app manipulation and the AI agent, that's going to be split probably between.

• 16:44John Coogan?

  Because that seems harder than just integrate Gemini and just give people the Gemini answers when they, when they ask Siri for a question.

• 16:51Mark Gurman?

  You know, it's so funny. I look back to WWC 2024, and obviously I made a big deal about all the delays because of course I did. But then you think about it, it's like, was anyone gonna use these, any of these features anyways? Like, we're talking about a few features that were delayed, and you look back at the announcement of these features at WWC 2024. It's like, Apple totally downplayed them too. Like, they gave a few cool demos, but it's like, this is some game-changing stuff if it's marketed correctly.

• 17:19John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 17:19Mark Gurman?

  So not only did they pre-announce it, not only did they delay it, but like, they didn't even market what they had in the hand correctly. Which, I guess in hindsight, like, you should have realized that it wasn't that compelling, uh, or, or ready to go if they weren't gonna market it. Because I'm telling you, they can market anything.

• 17:34Jordi Hays?

  How does, how do you see search? Fitting into Siri, because so much of what people are using L L Ms for is search now. And you're seeing more commerce integrations. And I've always thought the labs, like obsession with the browser was interesting. Because in many ways, like, I feel like using L L Ms, it already feels like you're using a browser. It's just kind of a new experience. And and a big question is like, OK, so Google's powering the new Siri. What happens when people start doing searches with high intent in Siri?

• 18:10Mark Gurman?

  Do you Google search anymore?

• 18:12Jordi Hays?

  I do.

• 18:12Mark Gurman?

  I don't.

• 18:13Jordi Hays?

  I I specifically still Google search when doing like product research, shopping, etc.

• 18:19Mark Gurman?

  I don't.

• 18:19John Coogan?

  I still go to Google if it's something that I know is fastest in Google. So today, I wanted to know what year the Avengers movie came out. And I know that that's half a millisecond in Google. And I know that that's five seconds in any L L M. And so I'll Ctrl T to go there. But for any level deeper, I also wanted to know about the V F X house that worked on it and what technology they used and when that happened, that was an L M query.

• 18:47Mark Gurman?

  Yeah. Yeah, I don't really use Google anymore. I have my action button on my phone sent to Chat G P T. And I'm just like living in Chat G P T.

• 18:55John Coogan?

  Sure, sure, sure.

• 18:56Mark Gurman?

  You can't ask it the weather. Can't ask it to do anything on your phone.

• 18:59John Coogan?

  Sure, sure.

• 18:59Mark Gurman?

  That's, I guess, the the differentiator for what the new Siri is going to be. They've built a feature called World Knowledge Answers, it's the internal name. And it's basically a perplexity ripoff or a web search ripoff in Chat G P T, which is to to bullet out summaries and information and give you citations and context.

• 19:17Jordi Hays?

  Is it using Google directly for that? Or is it some other?

• 19:21Mark Gurman?

  It's an Apple solution.

• 19:22John Coogan?

  OK.

• 19:22Mark Gurman?

  It's an Apple solution. But the the what they've been trying to do now is, under the hood, change that to the Gemini model. Again, all this stuff was supposed to come out.

• 19:34Jordi Hays?

  Because Gemini is very good at Google search.

• 19:36Mark Gurman?

  Gemini is very good at Google search, but there's no Google services in this new Siri. It's literally a model. It's basically like they hired the Google Deep Mind team to develop the model to power its A I in Siri.

• 19:50Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, so I guess what I'm getting at is, is will I ever get, if I'm doing, using Siri to research a product? Will I ever get an ad powered by like a Apple ad network? Because it is a high-intent search.

• 20:05Mark Gurman?

  Like ever?

• 20:05Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 20:06Mark Gurman?

  I think the end game for all these guys is to put ads in this stuff.

• 20:09Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 20:09Mark Gurman?

  You know, one thing that I haven't talked about in a while now.

• 20:11Jordi Hays?

  And I just feel like that's been somewhat under discussed because people are so obsessed with just make Siri work.

• 20:20Mark Gurman?

  Yeah.

• 20:20Jordi Hays?

  That if it does end up working really well, then you would have a effectively a search engine.

• 20:26Mark Gurman?

  Well, yeah, if it works, they have all the tools to a search engine and if it does work well. Yeah, they'll probably eventually put ads in it. A couple of things that haven't discussed in a while. One is they're, you know, working on a new Safari web browser and you're going to see AI search at the forefront of that. The other thing is the adsification, the advertisingification of of the Apple operating systems that starts this year. You're going to see them up the ad slots in the App Store in search, in search in particular.

• 21:01John Coogan?

  Give it up for more ads.

• 21:03Mark Gurman?

  Yeah, ads. Any sponsors you want to give a shout out to over here?

• 21:10Jordi Hays?

  Don't tempt Joe.

• 21:11John Coogan?

  I will do it.

• 21:13Mark Gurman?

  And then you're going to see ads in Apple Maps.

• 21:15John Coogan?

  Oh, interesting.

• 21:17Mark Gurman?

  You know?

• 21:17John Coogan?

  That's been one of the main differentiators in the different apps.

• 21:21Mark Gurman?

  Well, you know, it'll be all AI and it'll be targeted to based on things that you're searching. Like if you see a sushi restaurant, search for sushi, whatever, you may see some search results get elevated. It's kind of like what Yelp does.

• 21:33John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 21:33Mark Gurman?

  Right? By the way, it's so funny on Siri, like there's this Japanese restaurant in the valley I like. And it's named after a city in Japan or a province in Japan. And it's like, take me to Chiba.

• 21:46John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 21:46Mark Gurman?

  Right? And I've been, that's the name of the place. Shout out to Chiba.

• 21:49Jordi Hays?

  Okay, boss, you're going to need to get in a boat.

• 21:51Mark Gurman?

  Oh, my God, it's like, oh, it immediately pops up. Seven thousand, six hundred and fifty-two miles away. I'm like, I've been to this place fifty damn times. You should know by now. Talking about the restaurant.

• 22:03John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 22:03Mark Gurman?

  Twenty miles away.

• 22:04John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 22:05Mark Gurman?

  Not the city. Eight thousand miles away. It's really amazing.

• 22:09Jordi Hays?

  Hiring, chartering an aircraft, sir.

• 22:11John Coogan?

  Yeah, I, I, I got a bunch of other stuff in the Apple ecosystem. First, Starlink is reportedly planning to integrate, uh, Apple's reportedly planning to integrate Starlink connectivity into the iPhone 18 Pro.

• 22:24Mark Gurman?

  You know, I saw, you saw this stuff on Twitter the last couple of days. There's been no reporting on this recently, by the way. This is another, see, this is one of the downsides to AI. People just spew BS on Twitter.

• 22:34John Coogan?

  Oh, interesting.

• 22:35Mark Gurman?

  Okay, so Apple already does work with Starlink.

• 22:38John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 22:39Mark Gurman?

  Right?

• 22:39John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 22:39Mark Gurman?

  You can hook in, if you have a T-Mobile iPhone, you can get on to, to Starlink.

• 22:43John Coogan?

  Okay.

• 22:44Mark Gurman?

  So that already exists.

• 22:45John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 22:45Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, I have, I've experienced, I experienced, I think during the fires last year. So, no, all the cell service was down.

• 22:53John Coogan?

  I'm on Verizon.

• 22:54Jordi Hays?

  If you want, if you want satellite.

• 22:55John Coogan?

  Satellite on the 17, but it's not, what?

• 22:58Mark Gurman?

  You don't want to be on Verizon.

• 22:59John Coogan?

  I, I should get off of it, but, uh, but it's not, it's not, uh, Starlink, it's the old network.

• 23:04Mark Gurman?

  On which? On the Verizon one?

• 23:05John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 23:05Mark Gurman?

  You're talking about on the, the Apple network?

• 23:07John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah, like, like if I'm in an emergency situation, I can get out like one text message, it's really, really slow. And it's clearly going with like, I think ViaSat.

• 23:13Mark Gurman?

  The Apple network is just super legacy.

• 23:15John Coogan?

  Yeah, it's just older.

• 23:16Mark Gurman?

  They've got a, they've got to strip that down and partner and rebuild or something. Anyways, the iPhone 18 is going to have enhanced satellite connectivity.

• 23:24John Coogan?

  Sure.

• 23:24Mark Gurman?

  Uh, and they'll, you know, obviously work with Starlink and, you know, whoever, whomever. So that's coming. What else have you got on our plate? You want to talk about John Turnus?

• 23:32John Coogan?

  Absolutely.

• 23:33Mark Gurman?

  Talk about Turnus.

• 23:34Jordi Hays?

  Turn us around, John.

• 23:35John Coogan?

  Yes.

• 23:36Mark Gurman?

  John, okay.

• 23:38John Coogan?

  Yes, I, I, so I have a bunch of questions, let's start with like, uh, how, like, wh- wh- what is going on behind the scenes of this campaign? It feels like there's, it feels like, it feels like internally, politics, there could be like people like pushing for him, pushing against him. There's this weird quote that keeps going out that people say he's never made a decision in his life.

• 23:55Jordi Hays?

  Everybody keeps making the most underhanded compliments that I've ever seen.

• 24:00John Coogan?

  Yeah?

• 24:00Jordi Hays?

  It's like, it's like, yeah, he's shipped a lot of products, but.

• 24:06John Coogan?

  He's never had to make a hard decision, that's the one, but.

• 24:08Mark Gurman?

  Just wait for my profile on Bloomberg.

• 24:10John Coogan?

  Okay.

• 24:10Mark Gurman?

  You'll get the real story soon.

• 24:11John Coogan?

  Fantastic.

• 24:12Mark Gurman?

  I'm not going to give it all away today.

• 24:13John Coogan?

  Of course.

• 24:14Mark Gurman?

  But I'm here.

• 24:15John Coogan?

  Yes.

• 24:15Mark Gurman?

  For the company.

• 24:16John Coogan?

  Appreciate it.

• 24:16Mark Gurman?

  Got to give the shout out, stay tuned for the article.

• 24:18John Coogan?

  Of course.

• 24:19Mark Gurman?

  Uh, subscribe to Power On.

• 24:20John Coogan?

  Yes.

• 24:21Jordi Hays?

  Of course.

• 24:21Mark Gurman?

  Tech bundle.

• 24:22John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 24:22Mark Gurman?

  Uh, it's great value. Okay, Turnus, he's 50. Mm-hmm. Everyone else on the Apple executive team, late 50s through their mid 60s. Yeah. Turning 66 this year, in the case of Tim Cook. Mm-hmm. You're Apple's board, you like continuity, you like an insider, you like people who know what they're doing, have been there for a while, they know where the bodies are buried. Mm-hmm. Okay? These guys all have hundreds of millions of dollars, if not more. Uh, yeah, at 50, he's the only one who is, if let's say, Tim Cook hangs out another three to five years, you're not gonna appoint another CEO who's 65, 70 years old. Yeah. He's the only guy. Mm-hmm. Apple, they get vast majority of the revenue from hardware.

• 25:07Mark Gurman?

  He's the hardware guy. Yep. Have they screwed up any hardware since he's been in charge? No. No, he's a steady hand, knows what he's doing. He's really the only choice. Mm-hmm. You know, there was this New York Times report a few weeks ago, basically saying that it could be Greg Jaws, we act, it could be Eddie Q, it could be Deirdre O'Brien, it could be Craig Federighi. It's for sure not gonna be Craig. It's not gonna be Deirdre, it's not gonna be Eddie, it's not gonna be Jaws. Mm-hmm. The only category that makes sense is an operations person, because you look at the current CEO, Tim, obviously, comes out of the ops world. You look at the guy who would've been CEO if Tim Cook didn't stay so long, I'm not saying he shouldn't have stayed so long, he's done, obviously, a fantastic job for shareholders and employees and what have you, would've been Jeff Williams.

• 25:52Mark Gurman?

  He was the COO. Mm-hmm. Uh, so, Sabi Khan, he was named COO, you know, a few months ago, but he's really been in that job for the last half a decade, I would say. Uh, so anyways, it'll be Turnus, or Sabi, or someone completely out of left field. I don't think this is imminent. Mm-hmm. Um, so, we'll see what ultimately happens, but all signs are turning towards Turnus. Mm-hmm. Everyone has an opinion that Turnus is gonna be the next CEO, fine. I've been shouting this from rooftops the last two years, but no one has given evidence, like, what is this based on, right? Has there ever been a baton handoff? Is he getting more responsibility?

• 26:27Jordi Hays?

  Do they have a, like, a big baton?

• 26:29Mark Gurman?

  They've got one of these.

• 26:30Jordi Hays?

  Golden baton?

• 26:31Mark Gurman?

  You know what you have? You have white smoke coming out of the... Sure. Well, actually, no, there's no, there's no smoke. There's no smoke. Very environmentally friendly. Environmentally friendly, yeah. Um, so, you know, maybe out of the parking garage. White reflection out of the sun, the solar panels. Yeah. A glint off the solar panel. Exactly. Uh, so what? You want evidence? Yes. You wanna hear that he's been getting more responsibility? Okay. One, a few months ago, took full control of the Apple Watch engineering team that was co-run with the old COO till he retired. Okay, there's something for you. When they started soft firing the head of AI, the guy we were talking about earlier, they took the robotic

• 27:12Mark Gurman?

  stuff away from him. They gave that to Turnus. And then the real news, as they broke last week, is that even though on paper, Tim Cook is running the Apple design teams, it's not. It's Turnus. He took over at the end of last year for a variety of reasons. But you look at who's run design at Apple over the course of history. Well, like Steve Jobs, Tim Cook himself, between 15 and 17, Jeff Williams, who was the number two in heir apparent for a long time, and then obviously, all heard of Johnny Ive. Now you add John Turnus to that list. It's a big sign. It's a big indicator because you look at what Apple is known for as a company and its design, right? That design function. And it's not just hardware.

• 27:54Mark Gurman?

  It's hardware and software that he's overseeing as the manager of both of those teams. So I would say that is your first piece of evidence that he's getting some more material.

• 28:04John Coogan?

  What does he have to do, since he's the hardware guy, to communicate that he has a steady hand on the tiller as Apple transitions into the AI age? Like, the narrative is that they have delivered on hardware. They have not delivered on AI.

• 28:19Mark Gurman?

  No, they haven't.

• 28:20John Coogan?

  And so how is he going to communicate that he's forward-thinking and can be the one to keep him on the cutting edge?

• 28:26Mark Gurman?

  Taking a step back, you think about succession at all of these big tech companies, right? Like, who's gonna take over Google one day? Who's gonna take over Microsoft one day? Who's gonna take over Amazon one day, right? Like, it's probably gonna be the AI guys at all of these companies, right? Apple doesn't really have an AI guy. They're trying to make Craig Federighi the AI guy, but he's not CEO material. He's voiceless himself, so don't get mad at me, Craig. But, yeah, Turnus, can he become the AI guy at Apple? Like, I think it's too early to tell, and I think that is a big question there. Like, do you put a hardware person in charge of the AI era?

• 29:04Jordi Hays?

  People have been speculating that Apple would do some...

• 29:09Jordi Hays?

  Big M and A deal to bring some AI native talent in house.

• 29:13Mark Gurman?

  They wanted to buy perplexity.

• 29:15John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 29:15Mark Gurman?

  So the origin story, they were really talking about it. Like Eddie Q was seriously considering Adrian Parek, other head of corp development M and A reports to Tim Cook. They were looking at this pretty closely. Uh, then they pulled out, why were they going to buy perplexity? To power the search stuff we were talking about earlier. Became less important after the Google, uh, deal was about to live.

• 29:38Jordi Hays?

  And do you think they would have done it if perplexity hadn't been marked up to oblivion?

• 29:46Mark Gurman?

  Uh, I think they would have done perplexity at a reasonable price.

• 29:50Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, like.

• 29:50Mark Gurman?

  Apple doesn't overpay.

• 29:51Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, that's the thing, low, single digit.

• 29:53Mark Gurman?

  I think they would have done it up to five or six billion.

• 29:56Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 29:56Mark Gurman?

  Yeah, but like at this 15, 20. And then perplexity started, you know, trying to say they're going to buy Google Chrome if it got divested and all that. So, uh, and I think they would have done it if the Google search deal was torn apart.

• 30:10Jordi Hays?

  Mm hmm. Yeah.

• 30:11Mark Gurman?

  In order to bring a search product to market faster. They like to buy companies to, I'm not trying to do Apple corporate speak here, but this is like legit. They buy companies to accelerate their roadmap. You'll hear Tim Cook use those exact words tomorrow.

• 30:24John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 30:24Mark Gurman?

  Okay, by the way, but literally.

• 30:27John Coogan?

  Tomorrow?

• 30:28Mark Gurman?

  Apple earnings.

• 30:29Jordi Hays?

  This guy.

• 30:29Mark Gurman?

  Apple earnings.

• 30:30Jordi Hays?

  This guy.

• 30:31Mark Gurman?

  My God. Come on, head in the game.

• 30:34John Coogan?

  But, but is there specifically a deal that he'll be talking about tomorrow?

• 30:38Mark Gurman?

  No, no, no, no, no.

• 30:39John Coogan?

  Like he will be asked about.

• 30:40Mark Gurman?

  I bet he'll mention the Gemini thing.

• 30:42John Coogan?

  Cause he was asked that in the last earnings and everyone was like, why haven't you done a mega deal?

• 30:46Mark Gurman?

  He says this every.

• 30:47John Coogan?

  Okay, so it's just gonna be more of the same, got it.

• 30:49Mark Gurman?

  You know, what is fair to say is their pace of deal making has decelerated significantly.

• 30:55John Coogan?

  Interesting.

• 30:55Mark Gurman?

  Significantly.

• 30:56John Coogan?

  And so, so he will be, I mean, in the last earnings, he was sort of like managing that and saying like, oh, we're still doing deals, but we're selective and we only do it to.

• 31:04Jordi Hays?

  Well, they also don't care to announce like 95% of the deals.

• 31:08Mark Gurman?

  Well, they're big enough, they have to, you know, like Golden State Warriors, they want Giannis, but they don't want to make a big trade. They don't want to give up other draft picks, right? They're like. Yeah, the same with the Lakers. This is like my existential crisis. The Lakers like, yeah, we'll trade the picks if the right guy becomes available. Yeah, and they know the right guy's not going to become available, right? Just like Apple knows, these companies are always going to be out of the price range they want to pay.

• 31:29John Coogan?

  Sure, sure, yeah.

• 31:30Mark Gurman?

  The thing with Apple is like, they're very frugal, money-wise, extremely frugal. The other thing is, is they've been burned countless times with acquisitions. Like, that Beats deal, terrible process for integrating that company.

• 31:43John Coogan?

  Sure.

• 31:44Jordi Hays?

  Well, and even then, I think it was like a 3X revenue multiple. Weren't they doing, wasn't Beats doing like a billion dollars a year?

• 31:49Mark Gurman?

  Oh, from a financial standpoint, it was just like a home run. People criticized that deal, but they made it back in months.

• 31:55John Coogan?

  Oh, interesting.

• 31:56Mark Gurman?

  Oh, Beats?

• 31:56John Coogan?

  They made the money, but it was a nightmare from a...

• 31:59Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, no, but it's worth noting, because like, even paying for perplexity at 5, 6 billion, it would have been...

• 32:07John Coogan?

  It's going to be years until you monetize that, probably.

• 32:09Mark Gurman?

  Yeah, I mean, Beats was monetized from day one. Obviously, you're selling the headphones, which are terrible, by the way, but everyone loves them. And then Apple Music, they, you know?

• 32:17John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 32:18Mark Gurman?

  Beats started the whole subscription services business at Apple. And so, if you look at it, Beats is one of the most wildly successful technology acquisitions of all time.

• 32:28John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 32:29Mark Gurman?

  And then you compare it to how much criticism it got, because it's, oh, Dr. Dre, and Jimmy Iovine, whatever, whatever, whatever, and the headphones are crap. You know what? From a financial standpoint, home run. Home run.

• 32:40John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 32:40Mark Gurman?

  You know? But integrating into Apple's culture is not easy.

• 32:45John Coogan?

  Yeah. Speaking of hardware, what's going on with the robotic arm that will live in your kitchen?

• 32:50Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, the Pixar lamp?

• 32:51Mark Gurman?

  It's the Pixar lamp.

• 32:53John Coogan?

  The Pixar lamp.

• 32:53Mark Gurman?

  As you said, it's, you got this 9-inch display, it's like an iPad display, on a robotic arm, it can float around your desk, it can twirl and turn around. Like, you know what we'll do? A few years when this thing comes out, you'll have me back on. And instead of me actually being here, you'll have this on here.

• 33:09John Coogan?

  Oh, yeah, maybe.

• 33:10Mark Gurman?

  And then, you know, leave my head floating around.

• 33:12John Coogan?

  Yeah. I mean, Meta tried to do something like that with the...

• 33:14Mark Gurman?

  Meta tried to do something like that. You know, these things are big in China.

• 33:17John Coogan?

  They are.

• 33:17Mark Gurman?

  It's a big thing in China right now.

• 33:18John Coogan?

  Okay, interesting.

• 33:19Mark Gurman?

  Uh, no one really talks about them, but it's a, it's a category that has some potential.

• 33:24John Coogan?

  Okay, yeah. But it's years away, just because Apple moves slowly?

• 33:27Mark Gurman?

  I think it's, uh, stay tuned.

• 33:29John Coogan?

  Yeah. What about the foldable phone?

• 33:30Mark Gurman?

  That's not years away.

• 33:32John Coogan?

  That's closer?

• 33:32Mark Gurman?

  Yeah, no, that's decades away. No, that's coming out in the fall.

• 33:36John Coogan?

  Okay, that'll be fun.

• 33:37Mark Gurman?

  I can't wait for that.

• 33:38John Coogan?

  Yeah, that'll be.

• 33:39Jordi Hays?

  Are you, are you gonna be a buy?

• 33:40Mark Gurman?

  Twenty-two hundred dollars on it.

• 33:41John Coogan?

  Oh, it's gonna be?

• 33:42Mark Gurman?

  It'll be at least, it has to be.

• 33:43John Coogan?

  Is it gonna be the highest tier, the biggest, the most powerful?

• 33:47Mark Gurman?

  For Apple? Yeah, that's gonna, it's gonna sit at the top of the line.

• 33:50John Coogan?

  It's gonna sit at the top of the lineup, okay. New status symbol.

• 33:52Mark Gurman?

  Sorry, what were you?

• 33:53John Coogan?

  I like that.

• 33:53Jordi Hays?

  Uh, we had Ben Thompson on maybe before the end of the year.

• 33:57Mark Gurman?

  Feel bad for Ben. You know, he's a big Milwaukee Bucks fan and they're about to ditch Jonas.

• 34:02John Coogan?

  The Milwaukee Bucks, that's sports team?

• 34:05Mark Gurman?

  Really?

• 34:06John Coogan?

  I don't know.

• 34:06Mark Gurman?

  Yeah, it's sports. Oh, okay.

• 34:08John Coogan?

  I do know it's a basketball team, and I do know that it's Ben Thompson's favorite team.

• 34:10Mark Gurman?

  Yeah.

• 34:11John Coogan?

  He was talking about the Apple Vision Pro.

• 34:12Jordi Hays?

  Yesterday, we didn't know what the, when the Super Bowl was.

• 34:14John Coogan?

  He, he was talking about the Apple Vision Pro. Uh, I wanted to demo the, you know, you can watch the NBA live.

• 34:19Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, basically Ben, Ben.

• 34:21John Coogan?

  You liked it, he didn't.

• 34:22Jordi Hays?

  Ben's pitch was like, screw the, screw the, the Apple produ-, highly produced, you know, they're cutting around all the time and he's like, just invest the money to set up like the actual hardware in every single stadium.

• 34:36John Coogan?

  Cameras.

• 34:37Jordi Hays?

  The cameras, so that anybody can just drop in.

• 34:40John Coogan?

  So you can just sit there, watch the game like you're courtside.

• 34:42Jordi Hays?

  You don't need the, you don't need the, the Apple announcer. Because you can just look at the scoreboard, you can listen to what's going on.

• 34:48John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 34:48Mark Gurman?

  So he's saying strip the guys out of it?

• 34:50Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 34:51Mark Gurman?

  Look, I watched it.

• 34:52John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 34:52Mark Gurman?

  It was great.

• 34:53John Coogan?

  You watched the whole thing?

• 34:54Mark Gurman?

  Yeah.

• 34:54John Coogan?

  Yeah?

• 34:55Mark Gurman?

  Yeah, yeah. Trust me, people at home are not happy that night.

• 34:58John Coogan?

  Oh, yeah, because you're just sitting there.

• 34:59Mark Gurman?

  You put that thing on, crying baby, crying baby, and then you're completely isolated. I mean, I'm telling you,

• 35:04John Coogan?

  Wire.

• 35:05Mark Gurman?

  VR does not work for, for families.

• 35:07John Coogan?

  It's true, yeah.

• 35:08Mark Gurman?

  It just doesn't.

• 35:09John Coogan?

  It's really, yeah, it is one of the major, because then, I mean, the family people have the disposable income more likely, so then they buy it, but they can't use it.

• 35:16Mark Gurman?

  It doesn't work.

• 35:16John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 35:16Mark Gurman?

  Uh, okay, here's the problem.

• 35:18John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 35:18Mark Gurman?

  It's like once a month. They've got like five games on the calendar.

• 35:21Jordi Hays?

  Well, and that, and that was Ben's point, is like, just set up the infrastructure and sell me a pass so that I can drop into any game and sit courtside.

• 35:29John Coogan?

  Because right now they have to pull up with a production truck, they need editors, they need voiceovers, they need pre-game, post-game show.

• 35:34Jordi Hays?

  He's saying, like, there's, there's, you know, basically one-time fixed cost of like, he, he did the math.

• 35:39Mark Gurman?

  Put them in all the NBA's.

• 35:40Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, he said it's like forty grand. It's like, not like a huge amount of money. And you have no incremental cost per show. You're not dealing with producers and running a live, you know.

• 35:51Mark Gurman?

  Yeah, but they need to decide if this hardware is going to continue to exist before they keep investing in the content strategy. Right? It's a chicken and the egg problem, right? How do you sell this thing if there's no content? But why invest millions in the content if you're not planning to sell this thing anyways and you're pivoting to smart glasses? Don't forget, they were supposed to come out with the Vision Air in 27, a product called N100. They, I forgot when my article came out. It's time is a blur, a few months ago, six months ago? Anyways, they killed that thing.

• 36:20John Coogan?

  Killed it entirely.

• 36:21Mark Gurman?

  Killed it.

• 36:22Jordi Hays?

  And the smart glasses.

• 36:23Mark Gurman?

  The Vision team on that, by the way.

• 36:25Jordi Hays?

  The smart glasses, that, was that just completely reactionary to Meta?

• 36:32Mark Gurman?

  Oh, yeah. They started toying with the smart glasses in terms of like this non-AR smart glasses, right? First of all, AR smart glasses, that has been the vision from day one for a decade plus. But in terms of like this non-display smart glasses, that is a concept that Meta has really popularized. And, you know, when these things started to gain a little bit of steam in 22, 23 is when they started taking a very hard look at it. And they're gonna do it. And I think they're gonna destroy Meta with them, I'll be honest.

• 36:59John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 37:00Mark Gurman?

  Feel bad.

• 37:01John Coogan?

  The styling, the pricing, the features, the integration.

• 37:03Jordi Hays?

  The integration, to me, to me, the challenge is if you can't deliver me iMessage.

• 37:12Mark Gurman?

  Yeah. Apple has the ingredients, because of their login, to destroy any company in any hardware. It's just about them figuring out how to do it and get it done and not waiting too long. You know, the biggest problem with them is they just take too long and over-engineer everything.

• 37:28John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 37:28Mark Gurman?

  Like the Vision Pro is the most over-engineered device ever, right? They could have got that out three years earlier with a little bit less fit and finish and maybe would be more successful today.

• 37:37John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah. It does feel like there was a cycle where the iPhone was ahead of the curve on so many things, touchscreen. And then you, then in the, like that middle decade period, you had the Android folks being like, "Oh, we've had this Apple feature for a year. We've had this for two years."

• 37:54Mark Gurman?

  Yeah, people don't care, it doesn't matter.

• 37:55John Coogan?

  Now it's like five years.

• 37:56Mark Gurman?

  There's, you know how many people wouldn't be caught dead with a non-iPhone?

• 37:59John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 37:59Mark Gurman?

  You know, like. Doesn't matter, but AI changes that equation.

• 38:02John Coogan?

  Sure.

• 38:03Mark Gurman?

  That changes the equation.

• 38:04John Coogan?

  Especially if it's a Johnny Ive product and it's expensive.

• 38:07Mark Gurman?

  Well, you know Johnny Ive, obviously he's done amazing things.

• 38:09John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 38:11Mark Gurman?

  And the new headphones or whatever they come out with are gonna look amazing and probably work amazing.

• 38:16John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 38:16Mark Gurman?

  It's just the barrier to entry on hardware is so high.

• 38:19John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 38:20Mark Gurman?

  There's so much risk there.

• 38:21John Coogan?

  Yeah, I, I, I just, I still wonder if the, like the Claude bot, these like open source agents, I don't know that everyone's gonna adopt those, but something like that, that sort of opens up the ecosystem just by brute forcing it. We were debating this earlier, like, you can't get iMessage notifications on the Meta Rayto Band displays.

• 38:38Mark Gurman?

  I have them, do you guys have them?

• 38:39John Coogan?

  Uh, I think we do.

• 38:41Jordi Hays?

  We have some pairs around.

• 38:42Mark Gurman?

  I've got one at home.

• 38:43John Coogan?

  We've used the, the, the, the non-displays a bunch and then we demoed the displays and have used them a fair amount. And it's, it's just a hard sell if you're an iMessage user.

• 38:51Mark Gurman?

  A hard sell if you're an iMessage user, but the potential is just oozing with potential.

• 38:56John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 38:56Mark Gurman?

  Like, they've got a, they've got a solid product there.

• 38:59John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 38:59Mark Gurman?

  And like a couple iterations on that, make them a little lighter, get the display resolution up, work better outdoors.

• 39:06John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 39:06Mark Gurman?

  It's compelling.

• 39:08John Coogan?

  And, and it, and in a world where you have some sort of agent running on your Mac Mini, scraping all your iMessages and then putting them into WhatsApp or something.

• 39:17Mark Gurman?

  You know, maybe I'll do that, maybe you guys will do that.

• 39:19John Coogan?

  It's rare, yeah.

• 39:21Mark Gurman?

  It's rare, nobody wants to deal with that.

• 39:23John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 39:23Mark Gurman?

  You know, nobody wants to deal with that.

• 39:25John Coogan?

  Even if it's just an app that you download like Napster, you don't think so?

• 39:28Mark Gurman?

  People, people don't have time for that.

• 39:30John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 39:30Mark Gurman?

  People don't care.

• 39:31John Coogan?

  Probably not, probably not.

• 39:32Jordi Hays?

  What, uh, what's the latest?

• 39:33Mark Gurman?

  I feel like nobody cares about anything anymore. You know? I just feel like.

• 39:37Jordi Hays?

  Back in my day, we used to care.

• 39:38Mark Gurman?

  The world has changed.

• 39:39John Coogan?

  Yeah, you know, no.

• 39:40Mark Gurman?

  The world has changed. They just want everything in front of them, they want everything in their eyeballs, they all want it set up from the get-go, they don't wanna put any work in, and they just want it to start working, right? And I think that's been the Apple ethos from the beginning, which is just like, give people what they need, let it get up and running and not deal with any of the BS.

• 39:55Jordi Hays?

  What's going on in China?

• 39:57Mark Gurman?

  Lots going on in China.

• 39:58Jordi Hays?

  With Apple, are they shutting down more stores?

• 40:01Mark Gurman?

  Shutting down more stores? No, not that I know of. I don't see Apple just shutting stores at this point. I think the retail arm still is extremely profitable and, and successful.

• 40:12John Coogan?

  Sure.

• 40:12Mark Gurman?

  All the shutdowns.

• 40:13Jordi Hays?

  But in China, there's less of the, you're, you're not, somebody's not embarrassed to not be using an iPhone.

• 40:20Mark Gurman?

  Problem, yes, the problem is, is that Apple hasn't done anything bespoke for the Chinese market. The competitiveness there is just unbelievably, just, it's amazing. It's like no other part of the world.

• 40:35Jordi Hays?

  Are there compelling AI hardware?

• 40:39Mark Gurman?

  Yes, yes, I mean, I mentioned the robotic thing, I mentioned, well, like the foldables are taking over the universe there, right? And so, you know, Apple's an American company launching American devices, European devices, and they're trying to shoehorn it into the Chinese market, and they've never really done anything just for the Chinese market or built around the Chinese market.

• 41:01John Coogan?

  What about the sock?

• 41:02Mark Gurman?

  I thought, okay, maybe that was, I mean, I don't know.

• 41:05Jordi Hays?

  But why, why, it's such a massive, it's such a massive market, why not?

• 41:10Mark Gurman?

  Because they're a global company, but I think the foldable is going to do extremely well in China, you know? It might do better in China than it does here.

• 41:18John Coogan?

  Interesting.

• 41:19Mark Gurman?

  I don't know, I'll be having one, I'll tell you that much right now.

• 41:21John Coogan?

  What's the future of the iPhone Air?

• 41:25Mark Gurman?

  It's like, the price difference.

• 41:28John Coogan?

  Sam Altman's got one.

• 41:30Mark Gurman?

  Great.

• 41:31John Coogan?

  But he doesn't care about money.

• 41:34Mark Gurman?

  The price difference.

• 41:34John Coogan?

  He just breaks it and buys a new one. And he doesn't get paid by OpenAI.

• 41:37Mark Gurman?

  He's probably got both.

• 41:38John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 41:39Mark Gurman?

  Yeah, he doesn't get paid, yeah.

• 41:40John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 41:41Mark Gurman?

  The iPhone Air and the iPhone Pro, it's like negligible pricing wise. It's the same price if you get the battery pack.

• 41:48John Coogan?

  Oh, yeah?

• 41:48Mark Gurman?

  Right? It's like ninety-nine, ninety-nine plus a hundred, yeah, right? You're not buying it, you're going to get the battery pack.

• 41:53John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 41:55Mark Gurman?

  So, I don't know, like, you look at the features comparison, you look at the cameras, I mean, most people are going to always pick the Pro over the Air. There needs to be more of a price gap.

• 42:06John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 42:06Mark Gurman?

  Between the two. And eventually, you know, those two lines are going to merge. It could take five years, but like, eventually, you're going to be able to get a Pro. As thin as an air or an air with the same bells and whistles as a Pro. I mean, you look at the MacBook Pro and the MacBook Air today from a performance.

• 42:23John Coogan?

  These are different laptops and they're exactly the same.

• 42:25Mark Gurman?

  Yeah, so what, you've got the

• 42:26John Coogan?

  I have the Air.

• 42:27Mark Gurman?

  The Air, he's got the Pro.

• 42:28John Coogan?

  And they're identical.

• 42:29Mark Gurman?

  It's the same thing because the chips, right? The big differences between the two are it's a little lighter. Okay, the display is terrible on that thing compared to that thing. Like if you use, like I tried out the 15 inch MacBook Air, okay?

• 42:44John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 42:44Mark Gurman?

  The thing is sleek and slick and awesome.

• 42:47John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 42:47Mark Gurman?

  But like I've been ruined visually by how amazing the display is on the MacBook Pro.

• 42:51John Coogan?

  Okay, maybe I gotta upgrade now.

• 42:52Mark Gurman?

  And so, you know, you have to think about the different changes.

• 42:56John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 42:56Mark Gurman?

  You want to talk about big things happening at Apple this year, it's that new MacBook Pro.

• 42:59John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 43:00Mark Gurman?

  Right? You've got the OLED, you've got the thinner, you've got the touch.

• 43:03John Coogan?

  Okay.

• 43:03Mark Gurman?

  Cannot wait to drop $4,000 on that thing.

• 43:06Jordi Hays?

  It's gonna be a touchscreen?

• 43:07Mark Gurman?

  Yeah.

• 43:08Jordi Hays?

  I cannot wait to get my fingerprints all over. When somebody, if somebody's looking at my computer and they touch the screen, I'm just like.

• 43:17Mark Gurman?

  Isn't it the worst thing ever?

• 43:18Jordi Hays?

  Like, I, like, what world?

• 43:22John Coogan?

  You gotta be carrying the Apple official polishing cloth.

• 43:24Mark Gurman?

  20 bucks.

• 43:25Jordi Hays?

  Maybe Apple could make a Pixar lamp that. Well, Apple makes one of the.

• 43:28Mark Gurman?

  That's funny.

• 43:29Jordi Hays?

  Apple makes a Pixar lamp that just kind of polishes your touchscreen.

• 43:32Mark Gurman?

  That'd be great in AI for screen cleaning.

• 43:35John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 43:35Mark Gurman?

  Yeah, you know, the Apple polishing cloth, they got so much, you know, flack for that thing. Like, you would think that it was $75, but it was $20. Come to think of it, like, it's really not that big of a deal.

• 43:46John Coogan?

  Also, I know someone who is OCD and is obsessed with keeping their screen perfectly clean.

• 43:51Mark Gurman?

  Yeah.

• 43:51John Coogan?

  And I was like, what's the secret? Like, you must have some secret formula, like Windex or something that you're using. And he's like, no, just the Apple polishing cloth. Like, that's the one that works the most.

• 43:58Mark Gurman?

  You know what, I need to get one of those.

• 43:59John Coogan?

  I was like, that's glowing.

• 44:00Mark Gurman?

  You know, one did come with my Vision Pro, so.

• 44:02John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 44:02Jordi Hays?

  There you go.

• 44:03John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 44:03Jordi Hays?

  They threw one in as a bonus.

• 44:05Mark Gurman?

  Isn't that nice of them?

• 44:06Jordi Hays?

  That's so nice of them.

• 44:07Mark Gurman?

  $34.99, you get a free polishing cloth.

• 44:09John Coogan?

  That's 20 bucks off. Uh, yeah, maybe, maybe the, the turnus narrative can center around, like, as the models commoditize, like, the hardware becomes more important, you want to be able to run different models locally. And so pushing that, like.

• 44:24Mark Gurman?

  The hardware's great, the chips are great.

• 44:26John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 44:27Mark Gurman?

  The software, I'll even tell you, is. Maybe not. It's between good and great.

• 44:32John Coogan?

  Sure.

• 44:33Mark Gurman?

  Okay, I'm not gonna say it's only good.

• 44:34John Coogan?

  Sure.

• 44:34Mark Gurman?

  I'm not gonna say it's as great as the hardware.

• 44:36John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 44:36Mark Gurman?

  But it's good enough.

• 44:37John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 44:37Mark Gurman?

  How's that? The AI is like

• 44:39John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 44:40Mark Gurman?

  the worst in the industry.

• 44:41John Coogan?

  Yeah, but I mean, right now, you're seeing people go out and buy Mac minis to run AI.

• 44:46Mark Gurman?

  Okay, let's think about it. You see these people on Twitter doing that, right?

• 44:49John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 44:49Mark Gurman?

  How many extra Mac minis do you think were sold because of all this jazz? I would guess, I would put the over/under on 500 units.

• 44:56John Coogan?

  500?

• 44:57Jordi Hays?

  Nah.

• 44:57John Coogan?

  I thought it was 10,000.

• 44:58Jordi Hays?

  I've seen it on Instagram.

• 45:00John Coogan?

  There's 40,000 GitHub.

• 45:01Mark Gurman?

  Okay, if it's on Instagram, maybe I'm wrong.

• 45:02John Coogan?

  Yeah. So there's 40,000 GitHub stars. It's clearly a big.

• 45:05Jordi Hays?

  60.

• 45:06John Coogan?

  Maybe it's in the thousands, but yes, I mean, it's a quarter million, a quarter or something like that.

• 45:09Jordi Hays?

  And I think so much of it is just performative.

• 45:11Mark Gurman?

  Go on the Apple Online Store.

• 45:13Jordi Hays?

  No, people.

• 45:14Mark Gurman?

  Go to the Mac mini.

• 45:15John Coogan?

  They're in stock.

• 45:16Mark Gurman?

  Are they all in stock?

• 45:16John Coogan?

  They're in stock.

• 45:17Mark Gurman?

  Look at the ship dates.

• 45:18John Coogan?

  Funny thing, two weeks ago, I go to the Pasadena, uh, I go to the Pasadena Mac Store. You know what's out of stock? Apple Vision Pros.

• 45:27Mark Gurman?

  What?

• 45:27John Coogan?

  Probably just because they're like not making them anymore.

• 45:29Jordi Hays?

  To me, a lot of, a lot of the buying, I think, is purely status oriented and just signaling. No, no, selling the Mac mini and people just saying, I want to signal that I'm AI native and I'm at, I'm at the.

• 45:41Mark Gurman?

  They're gonna use it for two weeks.

• 45:42John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 45:42Jordi Hays?

  Uh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 45:43Mark Gurman?

  And then forget about it.

• 45:44Jordi Hays?

  I'm, I, I think that's gonna be, uh, a real thing.

• 45:47Mark Gurman?

  I mean, how many people actually need to live in these type of workflows?

• 45:51John Coogan?

  Not many, just the hackers, which is a niche community.

• 45:54Mark Gurman?

  It's a niche community. It's a great community.

• 45:55Jordi Hays?

  But it has made me think, maybe I should start using Apple's native file system and like actually bring my data out of the cloud, out of Drive and store it locally.

• 46:09John Coogan?

  You don't need to because, uh, Claude Bot will go and access your.

• 46:12Mark Gurman?

  So what's the deal with the Mac mini?

• 46:13John Coogan?

  Uh, it's shipping. Order now, pick up in store today. It's available. Order by 3:00 PM. Delivers two hours from the store.

• 46:22Mark Gurman?

  They have them in all the stores?

• 46:23John Coogan?

  Tomorrow, it has, yeah, it's everywhere. They're, they're widely available. They're widely available.

• 46:27Mark Gurman?

  So maybe I am right.

• 46:28John Coogan?

  Available tomorrow at the Americana brand. Today, it's the Apple.

• 46:31Jordi Hays?

  They sell like somewhere between a quarter million and.

• 46:34John Coogan?

  It's literally available at every Apple store.

• 46:35Jordi Hays?

  Mac minis a year.

• 46:36John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 46:37Mark Gurman?

  I think that's it?

• 46:38Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 46:39Mark Gurman?

  Yeah.

• 46:40Jordi Hays?

  And so, and so it doesn't take that many if they're projecting out, hey, we're gonna sell. It's not like they, I would imagine they don't have all of them that they're going to sell this year sitting in stock already.

• 46:51Mark Gurman?

  I'm curious how the Mac quarter is going to go tomorrow, right? Like, there might be a little bit of a drag on that. Sure.

• 46:59Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, what should people pay attention to?

• 47:01Mark Gurman?

  Well, the China number, to your point. The iPhone number is basically everything tomorrow, right? Either they, they grow 10% as they say they will, or they won't. Either Tim Cook has to keep his job or he doesn't. No, just joking. But you think about like the product, right? Like, they didn't do much iPad or Mac last year, right? This year is going to be the biggest year for the Mac in a long time. New MacBook Pro is about to launch, same design as those ones with the faster chips. You've got the iPhone chip-powered, low-cost MacBook, which is going to destroy PCs and Chromebooks and be like just this utter game changer.

• 47:47Mark Gurman?

  You've got the touchscreen MacBook Pro end of year. You've got a refreshed Mac Mini, you've got a refreshed Mac Studio, you've got the M6 chip. You've got the first new monitors from Apple in four years.

• 47:58John Coogan?

  Where will those sit?

• 47:59Mark Gurman?

  The monitors?

• 48:00John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 48:00Mark Gurman?

  In terms of, they'll sit on my desk.

• 48:02John Coogan?

  Yeah, but is it going to displace the Studio or the Pro XDR?

• 48:09Mark Gurman?

  The one I know about is going to replace the Studio. But there's a new XDR also.

• 48:14John Coogan?

  Oh, okay.

• 48:15Mark Gurman?

  Yeah.

• 48:16John Coogan?

  Because the XDR, remarkably long-term. Like, I cannot believe how-

• 48:21Mark Gurman?

  Why is there no camera on that thing?

• 48:23John Coogan?

  Because it was, it was created 15 years ago. Like, it's so old and you, and you go and you look at like, you could YouTube search for the Pro Display XDR right now and there's guarantee a new video, why you should buy one in 2026. It's still good in 2026. Like, it's still the best option.

• 48:40Mark Gurman?

  I mean, the display is just remarkable.

• 48:42John Coogan?

  It's just amazing that it didn't commoditize fast enough.

• 48:45Mark Gurman?

  What are you guys using here?

• 48:46John Coogan?

  We have mostly Studios.

• 48:47Mark Gurman?

  Studios.

• 48:47John Coogan?

  We don't have a lot of XDRs, but we have been eyeing that new Dell monitor that Michael Dell has been rapaciously pumping on X.com.

• 48:54Mark Gurman?

  I saw it on Twitter, yeah.

• 48:55John Coogan?

  It's amazing that he's so enthusiastic about that thing.

• 48:58Jordi Hays?

  I'm sure you've answered this 100 times and I'm sorry, but why, why would they never do a TV? Is it just commodity space?

• 49:07Mark Gurman?

  Commodity, margin, differentiator.

• 49:11Jordi Hays?

  You don't, you don't think people would happily spend-

• 49:13John Coogan?

  They're gonna buy a Pixar lamp before they buy a TV.

• 49:16Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, no, for me, for me.

• 49:17John Coogan?

  You got the Apple TV. I've heard that's good.

• 49:19Jordi Hays?

  As somebody who's like, you know, been an Apple. I can't describe myself as an Apple fanboy anymore, but as a teenager and a kid, I was, right?

• 49:27Mark Gurman?

  What the hell happened?

• 49:29Jordi Hays?

  Uh, the photos.

• 49:30John Coogan?

  The photos. Ruined Jordy.

• 49:33Jordi Hays?

  It just like, you know, a 20 year relationship just over. But I do think there's enough people out in the world that if you made a 10, if you made the $10,000 TV, that they would buy it.

• 49:48Mark Gurman?

  You know, the.

• 49:50Jordi Hays?

  Because, because when I'm buying a computer, a TV, sure, it's different, but when I'm buying a computer, it's not.

• 49:56Mark Gurman?

  The upgrade cycle.

• 49:57John Coogan?

  Look at the premium on the Samsung Frame TVs. Those are flying off the shelves and they're not better than an LG.

• 50:03Mark Gurman?

  So my TV in my living room, I bought in 18.

• 50:05John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 50:05Mark Gurman?

  What are we in 26 now? Eight years?

• 50:07Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, but Apple would figure out a way to deprecate the hardware. This is what they do. They're the best in the world at it.

• 50:13Mark Gurman?

  If they did, they would do it.

• 50:14John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 50:15Mark Gurman?

  They were, they were.

• 50:16Jordi Hays?

  They're like, Tim's like, where's my TV? He's like, sir, we haven't found a way to deprecate the hardware.

• 50:22Mark Gurman?

  They got pretty down the road on a TV about 10 years ago and then they, they killed that thing. They had teams working on it. It was a big deal. Um, but then they went off and did a car and went off and did a Vision Pro. Like, if you think about like their two big moon shots over the last decade, they were both utter failures. The car obviously is just like your quintessential failure. Yeah, pretty much. Um, but you know, they did get some good stuff out of it, right? Like, I would say the saving grace for Apple's AI, and you've said this a few times now, has been the AI chip and the AI hardware. The only reason they have an AI chip, the neural engine they launched in 2017, was because of the Apple car. That was designed to power the AI needed for a self-driving car and they shrunk it down for the phone.

• 51:02Mark Gurman?

  So if the Apple car project didn't get ignited, you know, back in 2014, 15, they would be even further behind in AI than they are today. And so give a shout out to the Apple car team.

• 51:14Jordi Hays?

  Legend.

• 51:17Mark Gurman?

  And you know, the Vision Pro.

• 51:19John Coogan?

  With a naturally aspirated V12. Can you imagine?

• 51:22Mark Gurman?

  It'd be crazy.

• 51:23John Coogan?

  Be great. Real wheel drive only.

• 51:24Jordi Hays?

  Gated manual.

• 51:25John Coogan?

  Gated manual.

• 51:26Mark Gurman?

  I think they would have just destroyed Tesla if they just didn't set their bar so high.

• 51:30John Coogan?

  Sure.

• 51:31Mark Gurman?

  When we talk about over engineering.

• 51:32John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 51:32Mark Gurman?

  Can you imagine like a Model Y or a Model 3 or even an S, whatever? Just like with that Apple interior and the Apple ecosystem, the Apple interface?

• 51:39John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 51:40Mark Gurman?

  Like, why did they have to go bananas, remove the steering wheel, remove the pedals? Have everyone facing each other, like, why'd they have to go toll? They overshot it. Why'd they have to go like all Apple on us?

• 51:49John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 51:50Mark Gurman?

  Right? Like, why couldn't they just do, just do a car?

• 51:53John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 51:54Jordi Hays?

  Just be a luxury brand.

• 51:55Mark Gurman?

  Just be a luxury brand. Would have been amazing.

• 51:57John Coogan?

  Yeah, and we got a sock instead.

• 51:59Mark Gurman?

  We got a sock instead.

• 52:00Jordi Hays?

  We wanted...

• 52:01John Coogan?

  Well, the sock project shipped, okay, so you gotta give it a sock.

• 52:04Mark Gurman?

  It did, and you know what? That was a success.

• 52:06John Coogan?

  Yes.

• 52:06Mark Gurman?

  Sold out, got people talking.

• 52:08John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 52:09Mark Gurman?

  You know, we did a review of the sock on Bloomberg.

• 52:11John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 52:11Mark Gurman?

  And people ate that thing up.

• 52:13John Coogan?

  They loved it. They subscribed. That's great.

• 52:16Jordi Hays?

  Where's your sock?

• 52:17John Coogan?

  Smashing down the pavement.

• 52:18Mark Gurman?

  I've got socks, I've got, you know what I have? I've got sushi socks on right now.

• 52:21John Coogan?

  Oh, no way. He's a sushi fan.

• 52:24Mark Gurman?

  No, not from Apple.

• 52:25Jordi Hays?

  No, no, they're your favorite restaurant in the valley.

• 52:27Mark Gurman?

  No, no, these are from my mother-in-law.

• 52:29John Coogan?

  Okay, that's fantastic.

• 52:30Mark Gurman?

  Yeah.

• 52:31Jordi Hays?

  Uh, but we kept you, uh, super late.

• 52:33John Coogan?

  Yeah, we kept you much longer, but thank you so much. This is so much fun. I'm so glad you're in LA.

• 52:36Mark Gurman?

  Do I get to do the gong?

• 52:37Jordi Hays?

  Of course.

• 52:37John Coogan?

  Hit the gong. Uh, how, uh, give us a number. How long you been writing? How long you been following Apple?

• 52:43Mark Gurman?

  Uh, writing since '09.

• 52:45John Coogan?

  '09! Overnight success. There we go. Hit the gong.

• 52:48Jordi Hays?

  There you go.

• 52:50Jordi Hays?

  With authority!

• 52:51John Coogan?

  For the Gervinator!

• 52:52Jordi Hays?

  The Gervinator!

• 52:52John Coogan?

  Live on TV. Yeah, thank you so much.

• 52:55Jordi Hays?

  Ah.

• 52:56John Coogan?

  Have a great rest of your day.

• 52:57Jordi Hays?

  Let's, let's do this again.

• 52:58John Coogan?

  So, yeah, we gotta do this again soon.

• 52:59Jordi Hays?

  We'll be following your coverage tomorrow.

• 53:01John Coogan?

  Yes, tomorrow.