(Preview) Apple Enters the Uncanny Valley, The SpaceX Play for Cellular, Q&A on The Ringer, Smartphones, AI Parenting

Ben and Andrew begin with reactions to Apple’s HomeView, including backlash to one of the company’s worst commercials ever, why the product category should exist, and whether Apple is the right company to execute in this space. From there: SpaceX moves full speed ahead with its plans for cellular coverage, why some airlines and carriers balked at partnering with SpaceX, and challenges the company will face going toe to toe with cellular incumbents. At the end: The Ringer’s new, Substack-forward model, the future of sports TV rights as AI spending continues, more on Amazon prices and the company’s logistic moat, building AI apps for iOS, the maddening centrality of smartphones in daily life, solidarity with Ben in his cupboard strategy and smart home instincts, the AI pitch that more companies should be emphasizing, and AI show & tell on a parenting use case that has paid dividends.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Hello and welcome to a free preview of Sharp Tech.

• 0:09Speaker 00

  Hello and welcome back to another episode of Sharp Tech. I'm Andrew Sharp and sitting across from me in a hotel room, Ben Thompson. Ben, how you doing?

• 0:20Speaker 01

  Well, not just sitting across from you, sitting across from you on the floor in solidarity. Because your, your desk chair is the creakiest chair in history.

• 0:30Speaker 00

  It's a great setup today. Absolutely. I sat down in the guest chair and I was like, ah, this is actually not going to work. The desk chair, that is not the guest chair.

• 0:39Speaker 01

  Yes, the, the guest chair is fine, but I felt bad for you. So I'm also sitting on the ground.

• 0:44Speaker 00

  So we're both sitting Indian style here, recording a podcast as God intended. Um, how you doing?

• 0:51Speaker 01

  I'm doing, I'm doing okay. Um, just excited to give my life completely to Apple, I think is where we're at.

• 0:58Speaker 00

  Well, that's where we will begin today, the Home View. So I'll read the beginning of a press release from Apple. They released the Home View this week, designed to be central to the home and personal to everyone in it. With a stunning seven inch liquid retina display, Home View brings entertainment, connection, and smart home management together in one place. From playing music and making FaceTime calls to home monitoring and hands-free automations with voice control, all designed with privacy and security at the core. And there will be Siri AI baked into that product throughout that product.

• 1:40Speaker 00

  The announcement was paired with a commercial showing the Home View at the center of a family kitchen, a family with three teenagers. Many people found that commercial to be very stressful and dystopian. What was your reaction to the commercial?

• 1:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, I guess we should start with the commercial because I think this is one of the worst marketing videos ever.

• 2:03Speaker 00

  It was shocking.

• 2:05Speaker 01

  And you almost have to get, put that out of your mind to even talk about this product.

• 2:11Speaker 00

  Like evaluate the product objectively.

• 2:13Speaker 01

  No, well, so it was bad on multiple levels. So number one, um, I think technology should make your life easier.

• 2:20Speaker 00

  Mm hmm.

• 2:20Speaker 01

  The impression you got from this device, it was, it was like making everyone's life more difficult and more challenging. It was like increasing the stress level. And then

• 2:30Speaker 00

  They were fighting over the Home View at one point.

• 2:33Speaker 01

  Also, number one, uh, so dad puts a recipe on there to make French toast. Um, setting aside, do you really need a recipe to make French toast? Uh, we actually know the answer is no, you don't, because while he's cooking, mom takes the Home View to look at her calendar.

• 2:50Speaker 00

  And he figures it out.

• 2:51Speaker 01

  He figured it out. So I guess he didn't really need the recipe a lot, which it's funny because that is actually, I think, just a very small, little compelling use case. Like there, you, there is a, um, uh, someone showed, I think in person, bringing your iPhone up next to the device and it just seamlessly passing over and then boom, up pops a recipe.

• 3:10Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 3:11Speaker 01

  That's like, oh, that actually

• 3:12Speaker 00

  On a bigger screen, which is useful.

• 3:14Speaker 01

  Right. And it's like always on, like you, I mean, you can have your phone on a little mount, but then you have to, the phone always goes to sleep and it's kind of a big pain. Like there's little use cases here. Basically, the long and short of it is that video left me longing for an overly packaged, sterile, Apple product launch video. I'm like, okay, maybe you had it right. Um, so there, there's aspects of this that I think are actually getting short shrift by people generally.

• 3:43Speaker 00

  Mm hmm.

• 3:43Speaker 01

  Because the video was so bad. And almost everything in the video also was like, just do it on an iPhone.

• 3:49Speaker 00

  Yeah. Well, I mean, that's definitely one of my reactions to the product itself. I mean, people were saying that the commercial was giving them a panic attack and they just couldn't even finish the video, which it was a three and a half minute or three minutes and 13 seconds was the length of the commercial. So

• 4:06Speaker 01

  We do our research here.

• 4:06Speaker 00

  It did take, I looked at it right before we came on and I, I, it did take some like endurance to make it through this stressful morning with all these teenagers. It's funny because as someone who's a parent, I think an outsider looking in on parenting would be like, holy crap, I don't want any part of that. Parenting to toddlers, for instance. And I'm sure teenagers have a whole different spectrum of stresses and whatnot. What I found depressing though, was like seeing them use more technology is not what I would want to romanticize. Um, and that was the piece of it. There was like, everybody has these stressful mornings and actually there's some sort of tenderness to it. And

• 4:49Speaker 00

  like, I don't actually hate it, but the product at the center of it and more technology in that context is not really a good thing.

• 4:58Speaker 01

  Well, so I would just refine that slightly. So number one, the whole family's all together for breakfast. Like there's something like kind of charming about that, right?

• 5:07Speaker 00

  That's the thing. There's a charm to the chaos that you only experience if you're actually a parent.

• 5:12Speaker 01

  That's right. And the, the issue I think is not that there's more technology, it's that there's more screens.

• 5:19Speaker 00

  Mm hmm.

• 5:20Speaker 01

  This is one where I think the way to understand this device and the way to understand, I think the Apple TV accentuates this, given they kind of went, made it more expensive and more capable. This is about Siri AI. But it almost speaks to Apple being a device company and maybe just a lack of confidence in Siri AI. You, you open with the press release, they don't get to Siri AI till like the fourth or fifth sentence.

• 5:49Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 5:50Speaker 01

  And this is a device that only makes sense in the context of Siri AI.

• 5:54Speaker 00

  If Siri AI is really good and transformative.

• 5:57Speaker 01

  Like if you're with your family and you want to know something, it would be convenient to be able to just talk to the device. You're still looking at your family. There's the, I, I do think there's this vision of a sort of ambient assistant that is there, that you can just pick something up on. Uh, like, do I, but it's, and that's what was so weird about it. Like, I don't need this device to have another way to look at my iMessages from like my boyfriend I don't want my family to know about. Like, yeah, that's how realistic is that? Oh, like, I'm just going to use the device in the middle of the counter that I don't want anyone to see.

• 6:35Speaker 00

  Or the whole family gathers around to watch the security cameras out front.

• 6:40Speaker 01

  Right. Uh, I mean, there's, it's so funny because I just recorded with Gruber. It's not posted yet, but, um, he was more negative than me. And I like came into this saying, look, I already said a week ago, I have no interest in this. So I'm like trying to not be, and I felt more, I felt, I came across as more positive, even though I'm not super positive about this product, in part because I can see there, there's something here. There's something about, like, for example, recipes next to the stove. There's something about being able to actually have doorbells or cameras and it all just works. If you get it all from Apple, that was, I think, the most encouraging thing. Their partnership

• 7:24Speaker 01

  with LG and Schneider Electric for these devices, no apps, no logins. You just buy them and they work. And that's exactly, I think, the angle that Apple should be going for, which is you go on in with us, you're going to get this, like all these capabilities that people are talking about, but you don't have to do all the hard work to sort of stitch them together.

• 7:45Speaker 00

  And we just make it easy.

• 7:46Speaker 01

  And that did not get conveyed in this, in this video, in this video at all.

• 7:51Speaker 00

  Well, and it's funny because a friend of ours reacted to the commercial on Wednesday and said, this is like the polar opposite, or on Tuesday, that is, this is the polar opposite of the iconic iPhone Christmas commercial. And the iPhone Christmas commercial benefited from having a product to advertise that everybody wants and solves all sorts of problems for everybody. And I just don't know that right now, this solves that many problems for anybody.

• 8:21Speaker 01

  But I think, I mean, this is the challenge in a new category is you, you have to like, and this was what they were trying to do. You're trying to highlight points of pain, make people aware they actually have this need and then show how this product solves it.

• 8:36Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 8:36Speaker 01

  The problem is, um, this commercial's failed. That's why I said it's, we have to start with the commercial in part to get rid of the commercial. I feel like I, like this idea of, uh, having an Apple device. So it was, let's zoom out. Commercial sucks, put it out of your mind.

• 8:53Speaker 00

  Well, I think the commercial sucks because the product sucks, to be clear.

• 8:56Speaker 01

  Which is fair, but I think the commercial sucks more than the product. At least the theory of the product, the theory of the product. So there is this world where you have things like doorbells or recipes next to the stove or thermostats or what's my calendar like today? I have bits and pieces of this. So I have like a display right next to the entrance of the mudroom that has my calendar on it and it has the weather and it has a rotating thing of, of pictures and it's actually quite delightful. Like everyone always enjoys it. They, everyone looks at the pictures when they're up there. Um, and it's very useful. Just glance at it, see what the weather is.

• 9:36Speaker 00

  I love it. I go to your house. I see your family photos. It's terrific.

• 9:39Speaker 01

  Well, but for example, one of the issues I had with doing it and putting it there was like, I'm putting my calendar right there in the kitchen that anyone can see.

• 9:50Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 9:50Speaker 01

  And so right there, it's like, that is actually a valid use case. For me to set that up, this up, I have this thing called like DAC board. It's like this Linux distribution that does like the display and it's kind of shaky. I have to reset it like every week because there's like a memory leak in the app and like, and it sort of stops working. And it's all, you know, you have to wire it together and it's connected to a folder with my, with my iCloud. There's a lot of fidgetiness that went into getting this to work.

• 10:17Speaker 00

  Mm hmm.

• 10:17Speaker 01

  Once it worked, it was great and I love having it. We, I've had that DAC board concept. I first set it up in Taiwan like a decade ago.

• 10:24Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 10:24Speaker 01

  And it's so great. Like it, it is genuinely useful. Everyone knows exactly where to look to get the weather. I know exactly where to look to get a handle on my calendar for the day and the pictures are delightful.

• 10:34Speaker 00

  Mm hmm.

• 10:35Speaker 01

  But it's a pain to set up.

• 10:36Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 10:36Speaker 01

  Right? This is

• 10:37Speaker 00

  Streamline that for normies and maybe there's a product.

• 10:41Speaker 01

  Well, yeah. So, so just like, that's just sort of one small example of what Apple at its best is, yeah, the nerds can set something up cool. You're not a nerd. You're trying to just live your life. Wouldn't it be nice to have some cool photos in, in, in the kitchen? And oh, by the way, I, in this specific angle, you see your calendar and not everyone sees theirs. I can kind of see the value in that.

• 11:05Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 11:05Speaker 01

  Right? Um,

• 11:08Speaker 01

  Number two, yeah, I mentioned the like the recipe thing and it sounds trivial.

• 11:12Speaker 00

  It does sound trivial for the record.

• 11:14Speaker 01

  Number one, do you cook?

• 11:15Speaker 00

  I cook a little bit.

• 11:16Speaker 01

  Do you ever use like chat GPT or recipe apps or like?

• 11:20Speaker 00

  No, but my wife does. My wife uses chat GPT for recipes pretty religiously.

• 11:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, I use chat and I also have, there's a great app called Paprika. Okay. Um, you can like send any webpage to if you have like a recipe there, it like ingests it all and puts it in an easy display thing. It does the easy like multiplication of recipes like two X three X whatever and it's great app. Uh, the problem is that, so we have a little stand, I have a little stand in the kitchen, like a MagSafe stand that can put my phone on. So I can look at the recipe when I'm cooking, but.

• 11:48Speaker 00

  But then it just goes asleep.

• 11:49Speaker 01

  The phone was asleep and your hands are messy and all this sort of thing. And so like I said, someone posted a separate video somewhere on Twitter of this idea, like I could have my recipe on my phone. I basically, you basically just put it next to it. You don't even tap it.

• 12:03Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 12:03Speaker 01

  It's just like, because you can do the thing with two phones right now where two phones come together and you like do airdrop. Maybe it's using airdrop, I'm not sure, but like boom, it's there, it's always on, it's not going to disappear. It's easy to reference in the kitchen. I should be able to talk to it, ask it, oh, what's the next ingredient sort of thing? Actually,

• 12:22Speaker 01

  the fact that it sounds trivial in some respects is actually the point.

• 12:29Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 12:29Speaker 01

  It's little edges in life that actually this can make it much nicer and much better. Like that use case in and of itself, actually to me would be worth, what is it? $300, $350? Like, I might get it just for a recipe display.

• 12:46Speaker 00

  Interesting.

• 12:46Speaker 01

  Like, because this is honestly super annoying. Your phone just goes to sleep all the time. Your hands are dirty.

• 12:50Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 12:51Speaker 01

  Um, and, and so there's like little pieces here or another thing. Smart like thermostats. I have a home automation system and I have thermostats that's made by another company. And the integration breaks constantly. It's such a pain and the apps are all terrible. And so the idea that, oh, if I just buy this one from Apple.

• 13:14Speaker 00

  Control every thermostat.

• 13:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, right. There's a real opportunity or doorbells. Someone shows up, you could see who's at the door. I have a, my doorbells are from another company than my home automation system and the link breaks all the time. It's super annoying. I actually got the doorbells from the company that makes my, which is Ubiquity. The, um, just to, as a backup, because I don't trust it's going to go through my home automation system.

• 13:37Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 13:38Speaker 01

  That like all this stuff is genuinely useful and no one should be doing any of this stuff because it all sucks.

• 13:45Speaker 00

  So somebody should be, you should be able to just do it in one place.

• 13:49Speaker 01

  There is, so the, the, there's an, and I've actually been on Apple to do home stuff for ages for this reason. It actually is useful if it works and Apple at its best delivers stuff that just works.

• 14:04Speaker 00

  Yeah. You're selling me, I'm not going to lie as I'm sitting here Indian style across from you. I'm now envisioning a future, having like an iPad that could control my entire house would be appealing to me.

• 14:18Speaker 01

  Well, people are saying, why don't you get an iPad? Because an iPad is a battery powered device that had, makes different compromises than these sorts of things. Now the, the, now here's the flip side.

• 14:27Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 14:28Speaker 01

  So I just, uh, I just came across a tweet just now. Uh, it was very, very good timing. Someone vibe coded an entire menu bar app for their Mac. Where basically the AI went in, they had a menagerie of different smart devices. It figured out the interfaces to all of them, how to control all of them, put them all in one place. And then he did like a scan of his house. It constructed like a visual. He clicks on it. He sees his whole house. Can click on different items and have controls on them. It's insane. It's like the, the, and the reason to bring this up is not that that is this product, this vision of what Apple is bringing

• 15:12Speaker 01

  one year ago, two years ago, three years ago, incredibly compelling. I would be sitting here saying, yes, I've been saying Apple should do more in the home for ages. Now I sit here and say, do you know I'm going to fix my thermostat problem?

• 15:26Speaker 00

  I'm going to fix my thermostat problem.

• 15:28Speaker 01

  I'm, and it's going to be amazing. It's going to be spectacular. And there's, and it's funny, there, there is the, you're doing the home stuff, you're doing it for years. Right? And do I want to lock in on all progress on my home stuff is limited to what Apple deigns to do or design? Or do I want to actually be able to do lots of new stuff?

• 15:58Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 15:58Speaker 01

  Which means I don't want to be in the Apple ecosystem. So I, again, it's just this product a year or two ago, I think I could be remarkably full throated. Again, it's amusing to me that it appears I'm more half throated.

• 16:14Speaker 00

  I seriously. But, um, well, and I mean, from my perspective, watching the commercial, reading the press release. It just strikes me that Apple is creatively exhausted right now and trying to find reasons for a product like this to exist. And not just because the creative itself was a complete disaster, but like the recipe thing, it reminds me of the Vision Pro with the Vision Pro is so useful for surgeons and there are going to be all these different use cases. And it turns out there's not really any utility to a Vision Pro beyond an entertainment device that's enjoyed by like me and maybe 50 other people in the United States.

• 16:56Speaker 00

  And I'm curious to see whether they could execute on this and find other use cases that people find compelling. That will be the question and I'm just not sure, I, I'm certainly not a believer that there will be.

• 17:10Speaker 01

  Well, the, the issue is this is a ultimately, again, it's weird. Apple didn't sell this, but this only makes sense as like a Siri AI device. That is the core interface. And do you trust Siri AI?

• 17:25Speaker 00

  Well, that's the issue for sure.

• 17:28Speaker 01

  You know, the, the Apple TV I thought was interesting. This is actually a good example of, of the, it's almost if this product is in an uncanny valley. So on one end, you have the like fire sticks and Google TVs or Roku's or whatever of the world. Which it's always been bizarre to me. Apple never went more down market with the Apple TV device. Actually, you know, they've, even before the price raises, I think it was $150 get in, then it jumped up to 200 or more than that. And, and also the form factor was kind of annoying because you had this box that you need an HDMI cord as opposed to something you just plug into the back of your TV. So especially if you wanted to travel with it, um, which again, weird edge case, but still the, uh,

• 18:14Speaker 01

  and so they're kind of like more expensive, but it was still great. People like the user interface, you like the user interface. It's very powerful. So you can do like, there's just more capabilities of stuff you could do. If you want to have like, say, four different streaming things with through channels as we've sort of discussed. And this new product, instead of going down market, they actually raised the price even more. So now it's $300 and.

• 18:42Speaker 00

  How will it be better?

• 18:44Speaker 01

  Well, the reason it's more expensive is now it has a far field microphone.

• 18:48Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 18:48Speaker 01

  So basically you can talk to it. It's another Siri AI device. And I assume you talk to it to not just control your TV, but to be like, what's on my calendar? Or who's at the door or turn up the temperature. It's part of this. They're, they're trying to deliver a home ecosystem and they didn't talk about that. They talked about devices. We have a new Apple TV. We have a new home view. Instead of we have a new home ecosystem of which these are sort of component parts. It was, it was a weird framing.

• 19:22Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 19:24Speaker 01

  The uncanny valley though, is I'm on the extreme side. Again, not the representative customer, but I have a bunch of Apple TVs, all of which are like down in my rack in my basement and are like piped to my TVs around the house. So for me, a more expensive with a microphone is totally useless, like not even a part of like my, my use case. Which again, I'm not the representative customer. I'm not saying that's the case. But when you're going up market and making your stuff more and more expensive, the likelihood you're getting to a consumer who actually wants way more, wants way more control, wants way more possibilities for integration, doesn't want to be constrained to just your devices is sort of increasing. And the customer that just wants Apple to do it for them is

• 20:09Speaker 01

  are they going to pay $300 for, for an Apple TV device? It's like in this weird.

• 20:13Speaker 00

  And what are the far field microphones actually going to deliver? Like what's the utility of Siri AI? I mean, in the press release, they talk about profoundly more capable and conversational with broad world knowledge that powers rich music discovery, richer music discovery and on screen awareness. I think the issue is that for Siri AI, it's such a inferior product to what you can find elsewhere and what you can use elsewhere. All of those use cases, I'd rather use different AI than Siri AI. And a lot of the other use cases, an iPhone is just as capable or an iPad is just as capable.

• 20:55Speaker 00

  And that's where Apple is sort of in an uncanny valley where their other products are so great. And their AI products are just like a non-event and often frustrating.

• 21:05Speaker 01

  Right. That's exactly what I'm talking about. If you're aware enough of the possibilities of say a smart home, such that you're going to go in and buy a home view and buy a Apple TV with a far fung microphone. You're going to get all these capabilities. You're going to go buy a thermostat and buy a lock.

• 21:21Speaker 00

  That person is currently using far better AI right now.

• 21:24Speaker 01

  Exactly. That's the, that's the, that's exactly it. And, and the, so that it's the challenge that I think they're facing where I do think, again, this vision, which again, it's frustrating, this vision, I feel like I'm articulating the vision better than they were in this event.

• 21:39Speaker 00

  And the vision that you're articulating is clearly a product category that should exist. I just amazingly enough, don't really trust Apple to do it at this point.

• 21:49Speaker 01

  Well, so I already was thinking about my article next week and it was going to be some variation like, do you trust Apple?

• 21:57Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 21:57Speaker 01

  And it's like a play on, obviously their.

• 22:01Speaker 00

  Their whole thing is trust. Sure.

• 22:03Speaker 01

  Right? And trust us with your data and all the stuff they did with this, like you only see your stuff when you look at it. Which again, I can see the use case. It does feel like, is that actually the most important thing for this product? Actually a general's display for everyone is more useful. But the real issue is do you trust Apple to deliver a good product? If the root of the product is good AI.

• 22:27Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 22:27Speaker 01

  And.

• 22:28Speaker 00

  I don't, I don't. I don't. Um, and I also don't want a giant screen that my whole family is going to be fighting over in the mornings as we're getting out of the house.

• 22:37Speaker 01

  It's not that big, I think. What I understand is it's pretty small.

• 22:41Speaker 00

  Bigger than an iPhone and still we don't need more screens in our family lives. Which you would think Apple would be clued into, but again, it's kind of hard if you're advertising a product that is an additional screen for the entire family. So.

• 22:55Speaker 01

  I'm talking cooking screen, underrated. They should just, just give me the cooking, cooking use case.

• 22:58Speaker 00

  Maybe, I look, I have to keep my recipes very, very simple. Um, but I'll run it by my wife, see what she thinks. Um, shifting gears here, other news this week, the Wall Street Journal, SpaceX reached a deal to buy cellular spectrum licenses from investment firm Grain Management, its biggest move yet into a wireless market dominated by traditional telecom companies. All right. And that is the end of the free preview. If you'd like to hear more from Ben and I, there are links to subscribe in the show notes or you can also go to sharp tech.fm. Either option will get you access to a personalized feed that has all the shows we do every week.

• 23:39Speaker 00

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