OpenAI's GPT-5 Looms, Apple's Antitrust Problem, Sports Betting's Big Scandal

The Information's Jessica Lessin and CNBC's Steve Kovach join us for a star studded Friday episode breaking down the week's news. Lessin is the CEO and founder of The Information and co-host of the More or Less podcast. Kovach is a technology correspondant at CNBC. We cover (with Lessin): 1) Rumors of GPT-5 being shown to founders, and what it might look like 2) Whether OpenAI is vulnerable now that model quality is converging 3) Satya Nadella's claims that Microsoft effectively controls all the value of OpenAI 4) Inflection leadership heads to Microsoft 5) Inflection investors are pissed 6) Why Inflection failed 7) Google and Apple's potential AI agreement 8) Would The Information use Google's new tool for newsrooms. And with Kovach: 9) Outline of the DOJ's case against Apple 10) How Apple is feeling about the case 11) Merits of the case 12) Shohei Ohtani's betting problems. Enjoying Big Technology Podcast? Please rate us five stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ in your podcast app of choice. For weekly updates on the show, sign up for the pod newsletter on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/6901970121829801984/ Questions? Feedback? Write to: [email protected] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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

• 0:00Alex Kantrowitz?

  OpenAI's GPT-5 is coming? How exactly did Microsoft hire a key AI CEO to run its copilot division? Is Apple so far behind in AI that it needs Google's Gemini to power its AI search? We'll also talk about Apple's big antitrust case, Shohei Ohtani's betting problems, and plenty more, all coming up right after this. This episode is brought to you by Genesis. What does it actually take to put a Gentic AI to work across an entire enterprise? I recently spoke with Genesis chairman and CEO Tony Bates about why orchestration is emerging as a competitive advantage in customer experience and what companies need to get right in the AI era. Then I sat down with Adam Mitchell, head of enterprise business solutions at Voya

• 0:44Alex Kantrowitz?

  Financial, to go inside a large-scale Agentic CX transformation, including the business decisions, trade-offs, and lessons along the way. You can watch both conversations now on my YouTube channel today. It's never been more challenging to get front to your computer. How do you know where to look, who to trust, or how much to pay? Akash is an open cloud that provides easy access, flexibility, and peace of mind. That's how companies like Razer were able to cut their inference costs by 15 times. Visit akash.network/alex for a free consultation. That's akash.network/alex for a free consultation. Welcome to Big Technology Podcast Friday Edition, where we break down the news

• 1:28Alex Kantrowitz?

  in our traditional, cool-headed and nuanced format. Rajan Roy is out this week. He's in France, but he'll be back on Wednesday, this upcoming Wednesday, to talk with me and Yahoo CEO Jim Lenzon. And yes, the Yahoo episode is coming on Wednesday. But we have a great show for you today because we have two great guests. Jessica Lessin, the founder and CEO of The Information, is here to talk about all things AI. And then after the break, Steve Kovach, a CNBC technology correspondent, is going to be on to talk about the Apple case. Jessica, so great to have you here. Thanks so much for coming on the show. How's it going?

• 2:01Speaker 01

  Thanks for having me, Alex. I love listening to the pod and man, what a week. So excited to dig in.

• 2:07Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, we got you on a great week. Your first byline on a big story at The Information. And by the way, kudos to you and The Information. Your publication has just been scooping like crazy on the AI. We reference it every week here. So we'll get into that in a moment. Let's start with this report that GPT-5 might be on the way. So Business Insider has this story that says OpenAI is expected to release a materially better GPT-5 for its chatbot mid-year. And they basically talk with CEOs that have been briefed by OpenAI about this new model that's coming. It says sometime mid-year, likely during the summer. And a CEO says it's really good, like materially better.

• 2:49Alex Kantrowitz?

  And they're actually demonstrating new capabilities, including what Business Insider says is the ability to call AI agents being developed by OpenAI to perform tasks autonomously. I mean, this could be the big one. So I'm curious what you think about this report and what we should be looking out for.

• 3:06Speaker 01

  So make no mistake, I think OpenAI is actively, constantly working on a new model. And my personal opinion is it's sort of arbitrary where they kind of slice it and say, okay, this isn't four, it's 4.5, or this isn't 4.5, it's five. I think a lot of that decision is frankly, kind of marketing and messaging to the talent out there, how they sort of benchmark their progress. But absolutely, they're working on new capabilities. We first broke the news at The Information about the agents a month or so ago.

• 3:42Speaker 01

  This would be, you know, AI not just being able to answer a question for you, but actually do a task, book you a reservation, something like that. So that's the agent concept. We know they're working on it. And yeah, they're trying to push the envelope. I mean, it is a full-on race between Gemini, OpenAI, Metas, Llama, Anthropic. And I think when I see a story like what Insider did,

• 4:13Speaker 01

  it just says to me also that OpenAI wants the ecosystem to start talking about their next capabilities, which I think, you know, makes sense. We're in this war for talent, war for enterprise customers, and While Gemini has kind of had mixed results in some way, there's no question that it is a hugely powerful model with incredible capabilities. And and OpenAI feels like they need to respond.

• 4:44Alex Kantrowitz?

  It's just interesting to hear that hear that perspective because it means OpenAI is vulnerable. And that's kind of like the theory that I've had this whole time is that these models are going to commodify or commoditize and then you're going to basically be left with these like seemingly impenetrable research houses now with products on par with the others. So is your understanding that this is sort of the beginning of that? And this rush to differentiate is kind of what we're seeing here?

• 5:09Speaker 01

  OpenAI is absolutely vulnerable, Alex. And and that doesn't mean that they haven't done incredible work and are incredibly well positioned in terms of talent. But, you know, think of their distribution relative to Google. And just the fact that Google can embed Gemini in products that billions of people use every day. OpenAI can't do that. And as we move into other phases of this AI war, I think that they face a lot of challenges as well as opportunities because of their sort of research and technical know how. So we are absolutely entering a phase. I completely agree that these models are converging.

• 5:54Speaker 01

  And, you know, when you secretly talk to the people who are building these models inside the big companies and you say, oh, look at that benchmark or whoop de doo, this thing's a little bit better at that, even they roll their eyes and kind of admit, you know, that's all the sort of pre work before these models are in the wild. They're all converging. And so it's a very exciting time, but it's also, I think, I think these companies internally face a lot of major challenges. On one hand, they have to keep that research going, right? They have to keep pushing the capabilities. But at the same time, they they really need to the the business models, the distribution models, you know, that's critical.

• 6:39Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, and you did get that agent scoop. How critical do you think this agent factor is going to be? Because there's risk there, right? If you trust agents to do things for you, they make mistakes and then who's responsible?

• 6:51Speaker 01

  Personally, I'm not like a agent hype person. I mean, I, I think, um, I, I think it is a step in, in a capability that can be used, but I don't think it means that, you know, these models are kind of fully autonomous and, um, that we can use them in new ways. But I also am struck by how early it is. You know, we, we recently wrote a story at the information where we asked early adopters and people building tech, you know, people at OpenAI and so forth, how they were using AI. And I read the piece and I was like, shoot, I'm doing it all wrong. Like I'm, I'm sort of querying these chatbots a little like search and, and, you know, meanwhile, there, there are

• 7:36Speaker 01

  all these use cases such as like teaching yourself French and then quizzing yourself. And, and so I, you know, it's hard to say any one feature is or isn't important at this point. Um, but it would be silly to think, you know, that this next model is the cat's meow and is, you know, a big leap towards AGI. I mean, we're, we're so far away from that.

• 8:01Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right. And so we're talking about all these different research organizations and the distribution that they might get, right? Google has obviously Gemini, they can throw it into any, any Google product. OpenAI has Microsoft. Um, there's a couple of interesting developments with the OpenAI Microsoft partnership this week. First of all, we're going to talk about the inflection deal. But first of all, did you see this quote from Satya Nadella? I think it was from like the Elon Musk lawsuit where he was like describing how Microsoft is so insulated from OpenAI's, you know, ups and downs. He's like, we're above them, we're below them, we're beside them. We own their data, we own their models. Like, what do you think that was all about?

• 8:40Speaker 01

  I love that quote, Alex, and I quoted in a column I wrote in our briefing column last night. So I thought a lot about it yesterday. I mean, what, now this is a quote that Elon is using in his lawsuit against Sam Altman and OpenAI from an interview Satya gave. And this was when OpenAI was, was imploding and Satya was trying to assure people that Microsoft could progress in AI without them. But to your point, he was saying, we don't even need them. We have their IP, we, we know how to train it, we've got all the talent and so forth. And I, I think. We're at this very interesting moment, also in the relationship between all these startups

• 9:23Speaker 01

  and emerging companies. I mean, OpenAI at, you know, almost $100 billion. It's hard to call it a startup, but you know, the reality is, we don't know a lot about the relationships between the big platforms that are investing in the next generation. If in the olden days, AKA five years ago, Microsoft would acquire a hot new technology, or Google would acquire it, Amazon would acquire it, for a host of reasons, including the fact that regulators are breathing down their neck and scrutinizing every acquisition, Microsoft and others are taking a different tack and structuring these investments where they, you know, put some

• 10:05Speaker 01

  money in, but they also are getting equity in exchange for credits on their own services, you know, so-called round tripping, or potentially. And it's crazy. So when we saw that Satya quote, it was like, aha, this deal is quite complicated between the two. And, you know, I think this is where you're getting to, but we broke some news this week with the terms of Microsoft's hiring the talent from a struggling AI company inflection. And I actually think the terms of those deals, that deal, which we can talk about, were very similar to the list of things

• 10:45Speaker 01

  that Satya said they have in OpenAI. And so I think that's a clue that there is a playbook at work here for how Microsoft is trying to consume as much talent in tech in the industry without acquiring it.

• 11:01Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, because, I mean, we're obviously like, we're in the week where the DOJ has brought this case against Apple. We already know the FTC is like, trying to shut down almost all M&A in tech when it comes to big tech at least. And that brings us, you're right, right to this inflection story. This is like a fascinating story. So this guy Mustafa Suleyman, he was a co-founder of DeepMind. I think he got pushed out or like sidelined because of Behavior like even this week, there were former or current DeepMind employees who were like, you know, look at this guy. He's so, so basically he his, he got hired into my into Microsoft to be the CEO of Copilot. It's a pretty big deal. And after he was the CEO of Inflection,

• 11:44Alex Kantrowitz?

  which raised like 1.5 billion dollars. So like, of course, there's like concerns about what's the deal with this guy, right? Like even for a CEO to leave a company like this in a lurch, really, and say, I'm going to go be the CEO at Microsoft and, you know, somebody will pick up the pieces when I'm gone. I think he took 70 employees or something like that. It is, it's a fascinating story. It just like, kind of leaves me scratching my head on a number of fronts. So would love to hear a little bit about, yeah, your reporting on, on what happened here, why it was structured this way. Are like the original investors in Inflection going to be pissed that they put all this money in and then he jumps ship? So yeah, why don't you break it down for us?

• 12:25Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's a fascinating story. And I think there are a couple of ways to look at it. But the facts are that Microsoft announced earlier this week that Mustafa and his co-founder were joining Microsoft to run their AI and that they would also offer Inflection 70 employees the chance to work at Microsoft. And instantly, I mean, my phone was ringing from the investors being like WTF, you know, you don't invest, you know, also the investors that invested in Inflection, which had a early product called Pi Chatbot that people liked, but really was not in the same league

• 13:08Speaker 01

  in terms of being able to compete. But Mustafa off his name, relationships, co-founder of DeepMind, you know, raised all this money. And but maybe I'm gonna say like they, the investors backed him.

• 13:25Speaker 01

  And then after two years, Microsoft was one of, one of the largest. Then after two years to find out that he had jumped ship with taking employees, it is not what you expect as a venture capitalist. Now, the deal is, it is so interesting because it's so complicated and you can kind of see the threading of the needle. But what changed hands is Microsoft paid Inflection, I think $620 million to license its IP. But what that is essentially doing is putting some cash in Inflection's pocket. And then Inflection says, okay shareholders, you'll get your money back and a little bit more.

• 14:10Speaker 01

  So if you were in the first tranche of investors, you got your money back in 50%. If you're in the second tranche, you got your money back in 10%.

• 14:19Speaker 01

  So they threw that bone there, but none of these investors invested to get their money back in 10% after two years, right? That is not the kind of return you expect. And these investors now still hold some equity in Inflection now, which is going to be a little more of a design studio or an AI studio and who knows, but it's really, you know, a shell of what it was. And I think it is, you know, Microsoft is taking pains to say to shareholders, this is not an acquisition.

• 14:53Speaker 01

  But, you know, you get access to the tech, which I don't think they really need, but was a way to structure some payment back for shareholders to recoup something. And then you get access to the talent, which I think, you know, all these companies are hoarding. So I think there are a couple of lessons from it too. I mean, to me, it's just very clear that if you're a traditional venture capitalist, I don't think you should be investing in AI. Like how, at least in the sort of LLM kind of models where the strategics are putting billions of dollars in. And then these complicated relationships that are, you know, really have the risk of like

• 15:36Speaker 01

  restructuring the deal on a moment's notice without the shareholders knowing, which also happened in a different way with OpenAI.

• 15:45Speaker 01

  And so I think it's just, it's a different kind of investment. It's a different kind of game. I think it shows. You know, the leverage that these big tech companies have, there's a flight to them from the world of startups because they have so many advantages and can compete in ways that the smaller guys can't.

• 16:09Speaker 01

  And Tim O'Reilly wrote an excellent op ed for us about this where he basically said, you're seeing, you know, really like the amassing of concentration with the big tech companies around AI is going to be very anti-competitive and squeeze all investors out. So I think it supports that. Now, I will say on the other side, if you talk to entrepreneurs about this deal, they'll say, "Look, companies fail sometimes and the best thing to do when companies fail is to acknowledge it for the founders to be honest with the team, not drag them along for years and years because you can get dragged for a long time on a billion and a half dollars and just kind of say, "Guys, it didn't work.

• 16:54Speaker 01

  We're moving on and by the way, come with us and we found you a kind of soft landing." So I think that is a very reasonable way to kind of look at it a bit from the point of the founders. I also think, you know, it's understandable why investors are pissed and so we'll see how it plays out. And I'm absolutely sure that Washington and Brussels are going to look at this. They've already said they're looking at these deals, so.

• 17:22Alex Kantrowitz?

  I mean, this is definitely a dodge in terms of like having to get an acquisition approved. But before we talk about that, I definitely want to talk about why Inflection failed. This is a tweet from Gavin Baker, an investor. He says, "Inflection will likely be the first of many VC-backed foundation model companies to fail. Foundation models without proprietary, real-time data and massive distribution for ROHF are the fastest depreciating assets in history." I mean, it goes right to what we were talking about in the beginning, right? Which is that these models, like you mentioned, coming together. And unless you have an edge, you can literally light a billion and a half dollars on fire overnight because you can't compete. Is that what's happening here?

• 18:06Speaker 01

  I think so. I also think there's the current reality and then everyone is preparing for the next phase of training and the next phase of compute. And I think we actually don't spend enough attention on that in the press sometimes because, you know, from, again, the people working on these, that's top of mind for them. Just, you know, even the architectures that got the training to this point aren't going to be the architectures that get it to the next point. And so the costs just compound. So absolutely, I think we saw this over exuberance, as we often see in private technology, for anything with AI, whether it's a foundation model or an app and so forth. I guess the only thing

• 18:51Speaker 01

  I'd add to Gavin's statement is, well, I completely agree with it in terms of the pace of erasing value. But I think all AI startups are vulnerable. I mean, we've seen companies that were trying to build features using OpenAI's APIs that have, you know, basically been obliterated because now you can do it in a model like OpenAI. So I think in the startup land, few areas are safe right now in this category.

• 19:22Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right. And then going back to this, I don't know, antitrust or anti-competitive angle or merge, whatever, regulatory side, this was an acquisition. So how is it possible? Is it just going to be the new way that companies try to do aqua hires without, I mean, it screws the investors. It doesn't have to go through regulatory approval. It's great if you're Microsoft. It's great if you're Mustafa Suleyman. But otherwise, it seems like you're right. And any regulator would be like a red flag city right now.

• 19:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, it's absolutely going to get scrutiny as it absolutely should. I think, you know, again, it is, it's not unreasonable. If this was a tiny company that was failing, you know, this kind of structure is logical, right? There's not, so you can kind of see why they go this route. I mean, it totally, it benefits Microsoft in so many ways. So I think it's also, you could look at it as They structured it this way to get around antitrust. You could also look at it. They structured this way because it's better for Microsoft. You don't have to get all the complicated stuff

• 20:34Speaker 01

  you don't want. You just get exactly the pieces you do want. So I think it's a win-win for them in terms of economics and structure as well as regulation. But we'll see, you know, I think it's so early in this industry, but at the same time, you know, regulators have their eye on it. At the same time, you know, you referenced DOJ and Apple. We've got, you know, a DOJ and Google search trial going on from, you know, a deal struck, I don't know, like when I was in high school, no, probably not. But like, we're, you can also, I mean, these big tech companies

• 21:17Speaker 01

  are right to kind of keep moving with their strategy. You can't wait forever. But it's just, it's going to be very interesting. And I think the piece I believe strongly is that we just need to know more about these arrangements. It may turn out that like, they're not anti- competitive because there's enough competition in the space. And but we just don't know. And that's why Satya's quote was so jarring, because it sort of said, oh, wait, this isn't, it reminded us, this isn't a traditional investment. You know, it's something, it's something much bigger.

• 21:54Alex Kantrowitz?

  Exactly. So this has been one of those weeks where like, every, every day, a bit of news has broken. And it's like, are they, is Microsoft trying to distract from Nvidia? And is Nvidia trying to distract from Microsoft? And what about Apple and Google? Like, are they trying to steal their fire? And actually, it just seems like this is just the pace of change right now, and the pace of the way that this stuff is moving. So it brings me right to this Apple and Google deal, because it was like, at the beginning of the week, and now almost forgotten. But it is a huge deal. And this is a Bloomberg story that Apples and talks to let Google Gemini power iPhones, the iPhone AI features. It just strikes me as a kind of a red flag around Apple

• 22:38Alex Kantrowitz?

  They're, you know, they just shut down their self-driving car program. They put everybody toward AI. They've been teasing this AI announcement coming at WWDC. To have to rely on Google to do your AI infrastructure and put Gemini in the iPhone, similar to the way that you couldn't do search and you have Google doing a search in the iPhone. Just, it seems to indicate that Apple is so far behind on this front that they, they are bringing in the cavalry, right? Which, I think there was this picture of it looked like Sundar and Tim Cook having dinner together. It's just like, man.

• 23:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think it was maybe Tamarind in Palo Alto, one of Tim's favorite restaurants.

• 23:14Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right.

• 23:14Speaker 01

  It's a fascinating, and also great reporting by Bloomberg on this topic. I, um, I think what's going on here is Apple has way more AI strategies than meet the eye. And some of those are hedges against their own efforts. But I do think they're doing a lot of other things. And within AI, we've got this big, large language model race. Where it appears that Apple is behind, you know, working to do their own thing. But as we know, I mean, Google, DeepMind, right? The roots there in talent go back a very long time. OpenAI has been a pioneer as well.

• 23:59Speaker 01

  So I think Apple's looking at their position and saying, okay, when it comes to like the small AI models, you know, doing cool things on your iPhone, we got that covered. And I, and I think, you know, we'll hear a lot more, but I expect that will be an area, you know, where they could, you know, you could open your eyes and your photos or, you know, those kinds of, of on-device kind of features. And then they're saying, look, we need, um, you know, kind of why not? Try partner with Google to jumpstart our efforts in larger models. And while continue on our own, their own thing. I mean, I was at the Wall Street Journal covering

• 24:44Speaker 01

  Apple when it was doing this playbook with search and maps and YouTube and all the other services that, um, they knew needed to be on iPhones and well-integrated into iPhones to make them popular, but they weren't experts in themselves. And so I think that's probably the thinking inside of Apple.

• 25:06Speaker 01

  It's complicated, though. I mean, this court case I mentioned, where I guess we'll find out later this year what was decided in the DOJ suing over the Apple Search Partnership, where Google powers Apple Search on iPhones and their devices. You know, a Gemini deal could look a lot like that deal. You know, that would be ballsy to announce that amid that probe. At the same time, it's also, it's so early, like, what are the economics around partnering? I think there are just a lot of questions. But it makes sense to

• 25:48Speaker 01

  me, given the history between those companies, that they would be attempting a partnership on this front. And I think it does show Apple being behind in a lot of ways. But I also feel like we need to look broadly across what AI is and why it's important to the next generation of these companies. And I suspect Apple has a lot up its sleeve that we don't know about.

• 26:12Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right. Okay. Do I have time for one last question?

• 26:15Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 26:15Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay, so I wrote about Google's AI, generative AI for Newsroom product today. So basically, this is the way that it's going to work. Newsroom would take like a primary source, maybe two. It could be a press release from a city council, or a 500-page report, or even a tweet. And then Google will build a draft of that story for them, and then would like indicate places where they should fact check, or, you know, make sure that, you know, that there's no plagiarism there, and then add, potentially add their own information. You run a pretty successful newsroom. Is this something you would ever think about using?

• 26:55Speaker 01

  I wouldn't use this tool, Alex. I think, you know, the information, we're all about original reporting from our own sources. And you can't piece together stuff that's out there in the world and get an information story by definition. I think there are a lot of potentially interesting ways AI can be used as a tool for reporting. Going through transcripts, searching transcripts, highlighting interesting parts of transcripts, you know, document research, data research, you know, basically taking

• 27:31Speaker 01

  All the the tools we try to use today and and, you know, putting them on steroids, right? I think that's incredibly exciting for the news industry. I also think AI will be used, you know, aggregating, summarizing, that sort of thing. And overall, I think that's probably fine. But make no mistake, it's it's not reporting.

• 27:56Alex Kantrowitz?

  All right, I definitely agree. All right, we'll be back in the second half with Steve Kovak to talk about Apple. Jessica, thank you so much for being here. And thanks again for all the great reporting that you and the information are doing. We're regular siders and readers of the work and keep it coming.

• 28:12Speaker 01

  Thanks so much.

• 28:13Alex Kantrowitz?

  All right. Thanks for being here. We'll be back right after this. This episode is brought to you by App Point. Everyone's racing to roll out AI right now. Copilots, chatbots, agents doing real work. But here's the part nobody loves talking about. All that AI runs on your data. And most teams have no single way to see it, secure it, and prove it's under control. That's exactly what App Point does. For 25 years, they've been the trusted layer beneath the world's most demanding data, now extended across your entire AI estate. Your data, your cloud, and the agents acting on your behalf. It's how more than 28,000 organizations deploy AI with confidence. So innovation

• 28:56Alex Kantrowitz?

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• 30:17Alex Kantrowitz?

  And we're back here on big technology podcast Friday edition. In this segment, we're going to talk about, or the really next half hour, we're going to talk a lot about this Apple case, huge anti-trust case that the Department of Justice brought against Apple. And then we're also going to touch upon the Shohei Ohtani betting scandal in baseball, which to me is such an amazing story. Before I bring in our guest, I just want to say, I definitely noticed a lot of reviews come in after last week and, and I can't thank you all enough. It's, it's so great to see such an awesome outpouring of support, so many five star reviews, that's going to help us a lot. Again, it's the only publicly available metric that people can really see about podcasts and that helps us show that we actually have listeners and, and it's worth coming on. So thank you all for that. All right.

• 31:02Alex Kantrowitz?

  Joining us for the second half is Steve Kovach. He is the CNBC technology correspondent, someone that I love watching on air. I appear with on air every now and again.

• 31:11Speaker 02

  Every once in a while, yeah.

• 31:13Alex Kantrowitz?

  You are the guy on Apple and Microsoft at CNBC. So major week for you. I'm sure there hasn't been a lot of sleep and I'm thrilled that you're here with us.

• 31:22Speaker 02

  Thanks. I am quite exhausted. I don't think I've slept much in the last 36 hours, but we're good. Let's see, let's see if I can make it through a podcast.

• 31:30Alex Kantrowitz?

  Oh yeah, you're, you're going to be great. The, the big thing of course, is that the Department of Justice suing Apple. What exactly are, is going on in this case?

• 31:39Speaker 02

  Oh boy, uh, let me try to boil down 88 pages.

• 31:42Alex Kantrowitz?

  I know you can summarize this well.

• 31:44Speaker 02

  And anti-trust, I did, I've done it on air many times, so. High level, the argument here is that the DOJ is making against Apple is first of all, they establish or tried to establish that the iPhone is a monopoly. And therefore, the ecosystem around the iPhone is designed such that it keeps you stuck in that ecosystem, in that Apple ecosystem. So when you're ready to buy a new smartphone, they make sure that new smartphone is an iPhone. And oh, by the way, not only do they make sure that happens, they've been steadily increasing prices on iPhone over the years. Merrick Garland, the Attorney General of the United States, in the announcement of

• 32:28Speaker 02

  this this week, basically said, you know, he held up an iPhone and said, these things cost as much as 1,600 bucks now. And Apple is going through all these different practices to make sure that happens. So part of the argument is the same App Store argument we've been hearing a bazillion times over the last several years. It's the only way to download software to the iPhone. We've seen this play out in Europe. The complaints from Spotify and so many other app makers about the fees that Apple collects and how that keeps Apple in control over what happens on the platform. But then some other stuff that we don't hear quite as often, such as accessories, like

• 33:09Speaker 02

  hardware accessories, smartwatches, Bluetooth headsets, basically saying things like if you buy a third-party smartwatch, maybe a Garmin or one of Google's Fitbits, it doesn't have the full capabilities or features that you might enjoy on an Apple Watch, like getting rich notifications, sending iMessages and things like that. It's kind of like a watered-down version. Same with AirPods. If you're used to having AirPods, you know that really cool feature where you hold it next to the phone, you flip open the case and automatically pairs. You put it, automatically pairs between your Apple devices. You can't do that on a third-party set of headphones.

• 33:47Speaker 02

  So they kind of point to instances like that as demonstrations of how Apple is keeping people locked in unfairly and keeping third-party competitors off the platform. And the other thing I'll mention is, and this is like probably the most accessible one, is iMessage. They say that is just a huge lock-in. It keeps people upset about the good old-fashioned green bubbles and it keeps people either convincing their friends to buy an iPhone or shaming people into buying an iPhone, maybe. And they even referred back to Tim Cook's famous comment, I think it was about two years ago, when someone complained about this issue to him at, I think it was the Code Conference. And he basically said, "Well, tell your mom to buy an iPhone if they don't like the green bubbles." If you're messed up with that.

• 34:32Speaker 02

  So, yeah, whoops. And then they also pointed to some emails, which we've seen before, between executives privately saying, "If we opened up some of these services, messaging and whatnot, that would just encourage people to buy an Android phone, and that's bad for Apple." So lots of things going on here. Apple, of course, denies everything. They are going to fight this till the very end. And like we've heard so many times from them, they say so many of their decisions are about privacy, about security, and providing the best experience for their customers on their own products. And that's why they do what they do. Partly true, but there's some holes in that argument, too.

• 35:11Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, now, Steve, before we get into the specifics of the case, I need to ask you about the vibe within Apple. Because so often, like, right now, we have Apple, Facebook, not Microsoft, actually, Google and Amazon. They all have caught cases from US regulators, big antitrust cases. But the vibe within these companies never is all too concerned about what's going on. And maybe that's just because, like, it's the frog boiling thing, where, like, it's actually a problem, but they don't feel it because it's in the background. But I also think it's an indication that they're dealing with relatively feeble US regulatory bodies, who aren't well-funded, who don't have, you know, senior staff working on these cases, who they can afford to kind of outlast.

• 35:54Alex Kantrowitz?

  And so I'm curious, from your perspective, you know the vibe within Apple. You talk to Tim Cook like every quarter after the earnings report.

• 36:03Alex Kantrowitz?

  Are they, how is Apple responding to this? Like, are they feeling within the company that this is a problem? Or that this is gonna blow over? This is a category five hurricane, or it's a drizzle?

• 36:15Speaker 02

  The impression I get is they know it's a problem. They know this is likely to be a distraction over the next several years. But publicly, they're trying to make it seem like everything's hunky dory and business as usual. You'll, you'll know, for example, at least it didn't leak out. If there was one, a memo from Tim Cook to employees, a sort of rally the troops type of messaging. He didn't even do that. He spent, by the way, the day this lawsuit dropped, he was in China just opening up a new Apple Store in Shanghai. He was not focused, or didn't at least publicly appear to be focused on this. So they're trying to play it both ways. At the same time, and I'm sure you've covered this already, but you know, in the last couple of weeks in the European Union,

• 36:56Speaker 02

  very similar allegations and rules and so forth being brought up over there. They have egg on their face. They really had a PR blunder with the Epic Games reversal. You know, they're kind of being, I don't know, humbled in a lot of ways. Thanks to these tough regulations in the EU. And I really think they're seeing that as a template for how things could end up here. But like you said, kind of a toothless regulatory body here in so many ways. We have yet to see Congress pass any meaningful tech legislation. For some reason, they're more interested in banning TikTok than they are potentially, you know, doing some, you know, protecting little kids online. So it really falls to the DOJ and the FTC to do this work, to make any changes.

• 37:40Speaker 02

  If there is an idea that there should be a change.

• 37:44Speaker 02

  That's what they're, that's what the focus is, I guess. But yeah, they're, they're just trying to pretend this is nothing, even though it's something.

• 37:52Alex Kantrowitz?

  And Tim Wu was on CNBC earlier this week talking about how like they regulatory bodies, like, you know, was it win or not? Basically what he was saying was that they just wanna let these companies know that they can't trample on other companies' ability to do business. Do you think that they're fine? The regulatory agencies would be fine just kind of giving Apple like a real headache and letting this drag out for a couple of years? Like, is that a win for them?

• 38:18Speaker 02

  Potentially. So if you ask Jonathan Kanter, who's the antitrust official who spearheaded this case, or Lina Khan, the chair of the FTC, who is very much in line and of the same thinking with Kanter on this kind of stuff, they would say, even though we haven't been successful in so many of the cases we've brought, even though we failed to do things like block the Activision merger and stuff, they say thematically it's kind of put this chilling effect on some of what they view as monopolistic activity. So they consider even their losses a win. So that's kind of how it's being viewed on that side of it, too. So even if this just causes a headache, they can also kind of claim victory.

• 39:03Speaker 02

  And victory at the end of this, let's just say we gamed this out for four or five years. DOJ loses this case, they can still try to claim victory by saying, well, we made Apple think long and hard about some of these things. Maybe they grab a concession or two and they still consider that a sort of win. I will also note that we have an election this year and there could be a very easily be a Trump administration again next year, a Trump Department of Justice. Now, of course, this Apple case and the Google case started under the Trump administration. A lot of people forget this investigation started back in 2019 and was carried on by this new Department of Justice under the Biden administration and then what we saw this week. So there's also a possibility, though,

• 39:48Speaker 02

  that because Biden did it, Trump won't want to do it and he might try to unwind or weaken this kind of stuff. Tim Cook, in the first Trump administration, did a really good job cozying up to Donald Trump, got some really fun China tariffs and things like that. Tim Apple, famous Tim Apple. It works, though. Right. Yeah, it's going to be really interesting to see how the election plays out to see what the next beat of that looks like, for sure.

• 40:15Alex Kantrowitz?

  Exactly. And so that's from the regulatory side. From the Apple side is the big problem here, this like you mentioned, the Europe thing. They had that big, you know, $2 billion fine. They also haven't grown very much. They've had, I think declines in revenue for the last five quarters and it's going to be five of six. Right? So is this just like the real risk here? Is that this just kind of adds to a malaise around the company? Like it doesn't have a good narrative, right? And Nvidia has the best narrative in the in the tech world on the market right now. I mean, I would say Microsoft has the second best. We're not used to a world where Apple is like third place.

• 40:54Speaker 02

  We're losing the narrative. And when you talk about the narrative, it's it's artificial intelligence. What is the AI narrative? And I've I've even noticed a shift. You you mentioned that I talked to Tim Cook every quarter on earnings. When I talked to him last quarter, he was almost not a defensive almost about, well, we have tons of AI in our stuff, you know? And he just started rattling off features like, you know, the fitness detection and the Apple Watch. And Vision Pro wouldn't even exist without artificial intelligence. All this stuff is happening under the hood, though. That's nothing new. In fact, it's just they're calling it something different. I also noticed those new MacBooks that came out a couple of weeks ago. They called it like something to the effect of the best AI PC ever.

• 41:37Speaker 02

  You know, because super AI PC you can buy.

• 41:39Alex Kantrowitz?

  Thou dost protest too much situation.

• 41:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And so but what they're also doing is really putting enormous pressure on themselves by teasing some sort of AI announcement later this year to really deliver. They call, you know, Tim Cook is calling it, we're going to saying, we're going to break new ground in AI. That's that's a hefty promise. And so the stakes are quite large. Presumably it's going to happen at WWDC in June for them to deliver some kind of mind blowing AI announcement to kind of ease these investor fears amid slumping sales, China looks bad and all these regulatory headwinds.

• 42:16Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, and it better not just be we're going to run Gemini on the iPhone. You know, there's gotta be more than that. Now, now let's talk about the actual case, right? Because the DOJ has these weird definitions of monopoly, right? It says that Apple is 65% of the iPhone market in the US, but 70% of the performance smartphone market in the US. Like, dude, did you just make up a new category to add 5% to the market? Share like, what's going on there? And from what I understand, I mean, 70% is not a monopoly to me. It's a dominant position, but not monopolistic.

• 42:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, and then on the other hand, and just to be fair, you have Apple trying to say, oh, we're just a teeny tiny little company here. We only, and they talk about their global market share, which is true. It's, you know, 20%, maybe less. Android is by far the dominant platform. But this is a, this is a United States case. And so therefore we're looking at United States market share. Let's get that out of the way. This reminds me of the FTC lawsuit against Activision, where they tried to make this case of there are different kinds of video game consoles. And there's the high performance video game consoles, PlayStation and Xbox, and then the, I guess, lower end consoles like Switch. And they tried to make this argument, they're two completely different markets. That didn't fly in the courts at the time. I don't see how this could fly either.

• 43:38Speaker 02

  If you're using a phone, you're using a phone. It doesn't matter if it's a phone with a super duper fast chip or if it's a phone that you got for free from AT&T for signing up with a contract. I don't think, that seems tough. And that's also the, the crux of it too, right? You know, they have to

• 43:55Alex Kantrowitz?

  Gotta be monopoly.

• 43:56Speaker 02

  Prove that they have, you gotta have your monopoly position. And, and you know, so many comparisons have already been made to the Microsoft case several years ago, where they did have a monopoly. It was very hard to find a computer that was not powered by Windows, period.

• 44:13Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, it was 90%.

• 44:14Speaker 02

  Not just in the United States, but globally. It's over, that is a monopoly. And it's harder and more difficult to, you know, make that argument here. But they're gonna try and we'll see what happens and if they buy that. And then another novel thing they could try is, well, most of the money is spent on the iPhone. You know, those are the wealthiest customers. So therefore there's more money at stake. I don't know. It's a novel theory. And if they can't even pass that bar, this whole thing's dead.

• 44:46Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right. So let's quickly get into a little bit of the harm as we round out this conversation. So the Department of Justice made some interesting accusations and some weird ones. I'll just run by like the most interesting and the most weird one for you. Most interesting to me is this pairing, like you mentioned of smartwatches, how the smartwatches don't pair well to the iPhone. And like, that actually is like real harm. Like it does harm. If you're a smartwatch company, you can't pair well because Apple has the Apple Watch. That sucks. And it is like real exclusionary conduct. So that is one area where I'm like, okay, I really agree with the DOJ here. On the other hand, it's like, that is kind of the Apple strategy, right? Is like locking you into their products.

• 45:30Alex Kantrowitz?

  Like, there was a line, I wrote it down because I was on air super early this morning, like Worldwide Exchange early. And I was like, we got to talk about this, that Apple locked, they say Apple locked in users and developers while protecting its profits. And it's like, yep, that's the Apple strategy, right? So I'm curious, like, you know, let's do the most interesting, then I'll do the other part. But, you know, as far as the smart, smart watches and wearables go, do you think the DOJ has a point here? And do you think Apple's defense will hold up?

• 46:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's true that it is exclusionary. I mean, yes, if you've ever tried to attach a Fitbit or a Garmin, which by the way, Garmin's super popular, especially among runners. Yeah, it just doesn't have that full feature set you can get on the iPhone.

• 46:18Speaker 02

  Does that cause people to stay locked into the ecosystem? I don't know. That's, that's, that's hard to quantify or say. But if they bring out evidence showing we were disabling these features because we will, you know, to do that, then we get, then it becomes harder to defend. So that is very interesting. I think they talk about smartwatches. I really think even more popular than the Apple Watch are these things I'm wearing right now, the AirPods. And that is such a mass market product, more, they, there are more AirPods in the world than there are Apple Watches for sure. And so, you know, if you take all that together, just the accessories in general.

• 47:00Speaker 02

  Maybe there's an argument to make there and maybe that's a concession Apple would have to make. Um, making pairing easier.

• 47:07Alex Kantrowitz?

  Which would be great for consumers.

• 47:08Speaker 02

  Notifications.

• 47:09Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, be awesome.

• 47:10Speaker 02

  Which would be great for consumers and you know, maybe not that bad for Apple if you think about it. The Apple Watch is by far and away the most popular watch in the world. Um, there are plenty of watches that work with Android phones well. But I really want to know the weirdest thing that you thought or the.

• 47:27Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay.

• 47:27Speaker 02

  How'd you frame it? Cause I have, I have one.

• 47:29Alex Kantrowitz?

  The most.

• 47:29Speaker 02

  So I want to know.

• 47:30Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, kind of the most ridiculous thing was the bringing up of iMessage. Like Merrick Garland seemed like.

• 47:35Speaker 02

  Oh, okay.

• 47:36Alex Kantrowitz?

  He seemed seized on this idea that you become a green bubble in Android. Uh, or an Android becomes a green bubble in the iPhone. And everyone's like, yeah, yeah, no, that's proof of the Apple lock in. And I for a while was on that side as well. And was like, look, look how, you know, what they're trying to do to make people switch to, to, uh, to, to prevent people from switching to Android. However, because Apple has been so insistent on this Apple iMessage lock in and they don't make it interoperable. People have been moving to WhatsApp in the U.S. Yeah, WhatsApp has really been on the rise in a real way in the U.S. I've reported the data and you could argue that Apple's actually hurt themselves by doing this and, um, and it shows there's real competition because people are going to another compatible messaging app.

• 48:20Alex Kantrowitz?

  Um, and effectively destroying value for Apple because, and that's how a market should work, right? Bad product, you lose your audience.

• 48:28Speaker 02

  And that, and that's the Apple market or Apple argument rather. Almost verbatim, they, they say they're gazy, I think, go in the App Store, look at the messaging app tab. I mean, there are billions of them, right? And WhatsApp is a perfect one. I personally use WhatsApp when SMS freaks me out, not because it's, it just does. It's, it's also just a worse experience. Forget the encryption, it's just not good. And so I, whenever I have to text, I use iPhone for the most part. And whenever I have to text someone who has an Android, I just use WhatsApp and it's fine and it's great. But all that said, I think a couple of things are happening here. One, Merrick Garland brings it up because it's such an easy to understand accessible thing. So many people have experienced that, right?

• 49:12Speaker 02

  Your group chat gets messed up because someone green bubbles in there, whatever, we all understand that. What they also do, though, is they show evidence. Like, there are literally emails from Apple executives saying, "We can't put, we shouldn't put iMessage on Android," or "We shouldn't open it up," or "Make it more compatible," because they know it's such a good lock-in, and we don't want people going to Android phones. So, that's kind of a smoking gun there. That's, Apple kind of ignores that part, that they said that as well. Everything's true that they said about messaging apps and, you know, good experience and so forth. The other true part that they don't talk about is that internally, they kept it that way, in part, to keep people locked in.

• 49:52Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right.

• 49:53Speaker 02

  Now, can I share my favorite thing?

• 49:54Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yes, of course.

• 49:54Speaker 02

  The weirdest thing?

• 49:55Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yes, please.

• 49:55Speaker 02

  And the funniest thing? The Apple TV argument. And saying, there's a line in this lawsuit, I'm just gonna paraphrase it, but basically saying, "Apple TV, you know, because of, Apple TV Plus, the service, not the box. Because of the monopoly power Apple has, it now has power over the flow of free speech because of Apple TV Plus," which just is a bananas thing to say.

• 50:22Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 50:22Speaker 02

  That's like saying HBO has the control over the flow of free speech, or CNBC has too much control over the flow of free speech.

• 50:31Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right, which it does.

• 50:32Speaker 02

  I don't think Ted Lasso really gives a shit about free speech. I think they're just trying to entertain you with Apple TV Plus. And, oh, by the way, Apple TV Plus is available on Roku, it's available on Android, it's available on Samsung TVs, it's not an Apple-only product. I think that, just, little things like that, in this case, just makes me scratch my head. It's like, have these guys ever used an Apple product before?

• 50:56Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, this is what I was saying about the junior developer, the junior lawyers. That's probably one of theirs.

• 51:00Speaker 02

  Yes, yeah, exactly, yeah.

• 51:02Alex Kantrowitz?

  So, okay, before we head out, I definitely want to talk about this Shohei Ohtani story. Have you been following it? It's definitely like, one of the wildest stories. So, for folks...

• 51:13Speaker 02

  And also, I'm a Mets fan, I think you are too.

• 51:15Alex Kantrowitz?

  I'm a Mets fan.

• 51:15Speaker 02

  So, I'm a little disappointed we don't have Sho, and this was not a Mets scandal.

• 51:20Alex Kantrowitz?

  But you wanted this to be a Mets scandal?

• 51:23Speaker 02

  If that meant having Shohei on her team, absolutely dude.

• 51:28Alex Kantrowitz?

  But he might, he might not play. So, I mean, there's a, I think there's a chance he gets suspended from this because there's definitely been a cover up. So this is from ESPN Dodgers fire Shohei Ohtani's interpreter amid allegation of a massive theft. So basically they found out that he made a 4.5 million in wire transfers from Ohtani's bank account to a bookmaking operation and his translator, a longtime friend and interpreter, he, they say that he incurred debts. Now, the amazing thing about this story is he sat down with ESPN and gave this entire, uh, basically deposition talking about how, yes, I, you know, incurred all the debts and Shohei was good enough

• 52:09Alex Kantrowitz?

  to pay them and I'm thankful, but he had nothing to do with it. And then he had, they basically had to go back and say, actually Shohei had no idea that this was happening and he stole all this money and it was a massive theft. And there's like a video of him and the interpreter hanging out in the dugout like 90 minutes before this news breaks and everything is fine. So like, did that all happen within that moment? Um, so for those, by the way, Shohei, by the way, is a $700 million batter and pitcher for the Los Angeles Dodgers. He's the biggest star in baseball. Um, I think this is interesting for a number.

• 52:44Speaker 02

  In sports, arguably, in a lot of ways.

• 52:46Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. And so I think this is interesting for a number of reasons, number of reasons. A, the crime is fascinating. Uh, but, but really it's just like, we've seen all these tech companies, uh, FanDuel, um, and DraftKings bring betting, uh, into the mainstream, right next to, you know, the broadcasts and sports leagues and stuff like that. And it, maybe it's become so commonplace that like now it's starting to have that negative effect where it's kind of starting to blend into the leagues. I'm curious what you think about this story and what the takeaway is from, from your end.

• 53:20Speaker 02

  Yeah. It's also, it's blending into the leagues. I mean, we've seen this at the NFL, you know, players getting in trouble for betting and so forth. And this is something that's kind of concerned me basically since the beginning of gambling apps. And, you know, I know it's state by state. Was it North Carolina that just, uh, approved it? I forget. Anyway. My point being, just seeing how, you know, the companies that you and I cover every day use their apps, you know, to get you sticky, to get you to stay in.

• 53:49Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yep.

• 53:50Speaker 02

  That's one thing, you know, scrolling through TikTok every day, I'm sure they're, but at least TikTok's not sucking money out of your bank account. And like, I understand FanDuel and all these guys, they have, you know, you could set your own limits and things like that, but just the ease of use. I mean, this is just ripe for stricter regulation, just gambling apps in general.

• 54:11Speaker 02

  The Shohei thing, the Shohei Ohtani and his interpreter thing is an extreme example. And whether or not, you know, and those are also league rules too, but, you know, a lot of bet on yourself or your own games or your own league. But, I mean, this is, this just is the kind of thing, it's, I'm almost shocked, like, regulators haven't taken such a deeper look at gambling apps because it is so easy to lose money and, you know, what kind of gamemanship are they using to kind of encourage betting and that, you know, sign up now and get a hundred dollars free and so forth. That's, that's really my takeaway. I feel like the, the shoe has yet to drop on gambling apps.

• 54:48Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 54:49Speaker 02

  And that could be, that could be coming.

• 54:51Alex Kantrowitz?

  It is interesting because it is sort of the product of a recent Supreme Court case that legalized sports betting across, well, allows states to make their, their, their decisions about whether they would legalize it or not and not prohibit it on a federal level. We'll definitely have more on that. It's a really fascinating backstory. But last question for you, do you think Shohei was, was participating in this gambling?

• 55:13Speaker 02

  Well, man.

• 55:14Alex Kantrowitz?

  Because I think, I, I mean.

• 55:15Speaker 02

  It's hard to tell.

• 55:15Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. This is just my, my own guess. I think he was. Yeah, he must have.

• 55:20Speaker 02

  I mean, even my closest friends, I don't give them access to my bank account.

• 55:26Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right. So. Story makes no sense.

• 55:29Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, the only people you give access to your bank account are maybe your accountant or like your, if you're married, maybe your partner. That's it.

• 55:38Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right.

• 55:39Speaker 02

  So, so he knew. He had to have known, which is bad. I mean, he's such an amazing guy, like otherwise, such an incredible athlete. What a, what a guy to watch. I mean, he's just, he's, he's like not even human to watch him on the field. Everything he can do and, oh, poor Dodgers.

• 55:57Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right. And now the question becomes, will Major League Baseball?

• 56:00Speaker 02

  Their loss is my gain.

• 56:01Alex Kantrowitz?

  Well, Major League Baseball has been, is in this moment where it's losing audience and losing fans. It needs to do anything it can to make it exciting. And, and now they're faced with like, do we suspend our biggest star and stand on principle? Or do we allow this to slide and, and, and, you know, let the games go on? And it reminds me of this amazing moment in The Simpsons where Mark McGuire is caught doing some terrible things and he goes up to like the town and he goes, you want to know the deep, dark truth about Major League Baseball? Or do you want to see me hit some dingers? And the whole town is like, dingers.

• 56:35Speaker 02

  Yeah. Right. Right. Yeah. So that, that could be it too. But anyway, anything that's bad for the Dodgers is potentially good for the Mets.

• 56:42Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, I'm cheering it. Let's go to a game this year. It'll be fun.

• 56:46Speaker 02

  Hell, yeah. Citi Field? Let's, as soon as it warms up. Yeah, I'm there.

• 56:49Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay. Sounds good. Steve, I know you got to go on air. Thanks so much for joining us.

• 56:53Speaker 02

  Yes. All right. Thanks, Ox. Take care.

• 56:55Alex Kantrowitz?

  All right, everybody. Thanks for listening and we'll see you next time on Big Technology Podcast.

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