iPhone's last stand? More like Microsoft's last stand. Nobody wants their garbage hardware and software outside of enterprise shmucks more interested in filling their pockets with fat contract money than delivering value.
> The reason is obvious when you think about it: enterprises are paying for their employees’ time, so of course they are willing to pay for tools that make those employees more productive
Is that why there are billions dollars wasted in useless Microsoft subscriptions and services?
> consumers, on the other hand, are mostly looking to waste time, which is why attention-harvesting advertising is the only software business model that works at scale for consumer services.
What a callous view of people. Who's your benchmark? TikTok addicted kids?
> What they do want to do is watch short-form video
If enterprises were really focused on saving employee's time, Jira wouldn't sell. At least not the bog slow SaaS version
Saving time (==saving money) is something you can sell to companies. But above all, they are willing to spend on saving their managers time. The higher up the hierarchy, the better. If that involves wasting a lot more time for the underlings, then so be it. The underlings aren't the ones making the purchasing decisions after all
Thompson is speaking broadly about markets, not trying to put anyone down. The point he's getting at is that Apple and MS are just playing (or trying to play) to their strengths. Did you see anything in the new Siri AI demos that looked all that much like someone getting work done? I didn't. And that's fine, for Apple and the iPhone. Microsoft for better or for worse is what a large part of the American business world is using to get work done, and so Microsoft is trying to position their AI strategy towards that.
For what its worth I wish Apple would care more about those of us that want to use AI to actually do work and not these weird contrived examples asking if focaccia can be made gluten free. And I personally couldn't care less what Microsoft does as I'm lucky enough to never have to use their products outside of Github.
> What a callous view of people. Who's your benchmark? TikTok addicted kids?
It's not a "callous view," it's reality. Social media, entertainment/streaming/media, gaming, and porn make up the vast majority of minutes spent on the internet, and it's not even close.
Can you please not post to HN in the denunciatory/indignant style? I know it's popular on the internet but we're trying for curious conversation here, and those things can't co-exist.
That last quote is when I stopped reading the article. The opening with the premonition of personal computing moving to the cloud, followed by the heavy use of the word "consumer", made it clear that the author has a cynical view of humanity, but at that point it went too far.
I honestly think the use of the word "consumer" is intentionally dehumanizing, a way for corporate figureheads to ignore the humanity of the people they interact with directly or indirectly. This in turn makes them numb to the markets and institutions they are degrading.
> Apple is targeting consumers, for whom traditional chatbot functionality is probably sufficient for the vast majority of their AI needs.
I disagree strongly here. The chatbot is the furthest thing from sufficient for the average consumer. Take the newly announced feature that groups your compromised passwords together and offers to agentically change them all for you. Really cool! Could you do that via a chatbot interface? Sure. Would the average consumer? No.
first paragraph begins the article upon 2 very big and flawed statements:
> Apple fans would, for years and years, sneer at Microsoft’s penchant for talking about products that may or may not ship, deriding them as vaporware.
maybe some would, but as a whole I would say this is not a common thing
> After Apple’s bungled 2024 launch of Apple Intelligence and new Siri, however, vaporware is fair game
no it's not
I didn't know about Project Solara so learned a new thing from the article, but I got the impression that it's not as big as the author tried to make it seem, felt very distant and forced.
i was under the impression that the 2024 apple intelligence rollout was something of a victory: Apple realized that the majority of people don't actually want this stuff forced on them at the os level, and the ai maximalists all used apple anyways via clawbot (including purchasing an additional apple device, the mini!) because of apples non-ai-specific commitment to phone computer interop.
Certainly the copilot button in ms paint did nothing to attract the clawbot ecosystem to windows
Their most recent iPhone which had no major AI advertisements associated with it GAINED market share over competition[1]
They have no ground to make up on AI, and changing their operating system to center on AI would piss off every iPhone user I know outside of tech, and probably half of them within tech.
Genuinely, the day they start shoving "AI features" into my iPhone is the day I switch to a fairphone or something I can actually own. I don't care if they include optional features, but I am so tired of seeing chatbots and text manglers shoved into every fucking app. I can write my own emails, thanks google.
Avie Tevanian told the parable of not needing to outrun the bear if you can outrun your friend. These companies aren’t competing to be perfect, they’re competing for our money.
If Apple had to be the best at AI, it would be out of business already. But it just has to make things people want and the customers will use them to run local or remote LLMs.
Last Stand? This is rather strong language and overselling the situation, for clicks I guess.
You might re-title the article instead, "The iPhone holds its ground", and it would be a more realistic title. But perhaps garnering less clicks.
I've always thought Ben Thompson is strong on enterprise and b2b topics but super weak on everything consumer related, he simply doesn't seem to understand consumer behavior (he has zero empathy or ability to project his mind into the average person's mind)
E.g.
Ben was sure iPhone air would be a massive hit because he himself loved it. (It's struggled as people don't like the smaller battery life).
Ben was sure the Vision Pro would be a huge hit because he himself loved it. (It was a total failure as the average person doesnt want to pay huge amounts for a ridiculous looking dork helmet).
Ben raving about Meta's hand controller which he was sure was going to be the future of consumer electronics (The Neural Band). He was discussing how you could use it while your hand is in your jeans/pants pocket. Not quite thinking about how this would look while you're sat on the subway with someone sat opposite you.
Ben discussing how the future of watching sports is in VR. Not considering how weird it would be to go to a friends house to watch the game and everyone has their own VR headset. Also not considering the fun of watching sports is doing it with other people.
Basically, he has a huge issue with extracting his own liking of techy products to the average consumer who are basically nothing like Ben Thompson.
> E.g. Ben was sure iPhone air would be a massive hit because he himself loved it.
The Air was interesting because everyone I've seen hold it, loves it. But, everyone also loves battery life and the best camera more. The Air is proof of that (similar with the mini lovers).
What struck me reading this is that everyone seems focused on who gets to own the next computing platform: Apple, AI companies, the cloud, agents, whatever comes next.
I wonder if the bigger question is what happens to us.
Convenience is great, but if we optimize away every moment of reflection, tradeoff, and decision-making, we risk becoming passengers in our own lives. The goal shouldn’t be to hand over our judgment to increasingly capable systems. It should be to use those systems to help us think more clearly and act more intentionally.
The future I want isn’t one where AI lives my life for me. It’s one where it helps me live it better.
I am still convinced that Apple is slowly working its way to smart glasses. And that *this* is the Next Big Thing. Frankly, the future is very good AR glasses that just work.
- iPhone Air to cram everything into a small space
- Vision pro - a new OS for looking at things and interacting
- Better Siri and AI that works with voice
- Smart local model / routing to big models in the cloud
- integration with wearables (air pods and watches)
I'm not sure Apple will provide it or not, but I don't see a future that doesn't have nearly ubiquitous smart glasses. The potential usefulness is too great.
Obviously it'll be a big cultural conflict for a while. But again... the usefulness is too great for it not to happen. Cultural objections will give way, I think. Maybe it'll have to wait for a generation to die off.
They’ve been working towards this since the introduction of ARKit in iOS back in 2016. Maybe even earlier.
They’ve done a very good job at proving the required tech with stuff like putting LiDAR in iPhones which is key to the Vision Pro….which is their AR interaction model testing ground. They are taking a pretty measured approach.
I just don’t think the physical tech is ready for AR glasses that reach a level of polish that Apple would ship mass market. But all the other pieces are there.
you will be surrounded by an ecosystem of
devices, none of which stand alone, but are
more like portals to interact with your agents
I would be really happy with my phone + headphones as the device I use most. But only if I could use Gemini (or ChatGPT or Grok or any other chat agent) in voice mode and say "SSH into my GitHub Codespace soandso and implement feature soandso.". And it replies "Did it. I told copilot (or codex or whatever coding agent lives on that VM) to implement the feature".
And then a minute later I could ask it "Is copilot done yet?" and it replies "No, looks like it is still working on it". And then a minute later I ask again. It replies "Yes, it finished. It changed chart.py and styles.css. Do you want me to tell you what specific changes it made to the files?".
But it looks like none of the chat agents with voice interface have such a connector at the moment? An SSH connector would be the most useful. But a "GitHub Codespace connector" or something like that would also do.
I wonder if that will be a missing piece for long. If so, I would build an agent with voice mode and ssh connector myself. But I guess it should come out from the big guys any moment now?
> Yes, it finished. It changed chart.py and styles.css. Do you want me to tell you what specific changes it made to the files?"
A verbal diff sounds practically useless. Does it first read out the entire left-hand base, and then read out the entire right-hand target? Does it say loudly "REMOVING ... ADDING ... "? How would it read out something like Struct->Field? This seems lower fidelity than a visual confirmation, and I just don't think that voice commands make sense with this kind of work.
I like how people think that if LLMs get to the point where they write code you can ship without reviewing it, that humans will still be in the loop "sshing into a code space" and "implementing features". Do you really think you'll even know what files are in that repo? Or that you'll be a necessary part of the process whatsoever?
Ambient computing goes back far further than that... and we are getting there. I have digital control over most of the lighting in my apartment as well as several other items through various iot adapters (button pushers, stepper motors attached to my blinds, power outlet relays). Audio reactive agents like alexa/bedpodsiri/whateverrunsheygoogle can put you in control of all of that. Nothing is stopping anyone from building a audio reactive agent that dumps input into their AI model or models of their choice if they want it.
With the right set-top-box, you tvs become just another display for whatever you want to send their way. We are extremely close to startrek tng style spaces. I'm sure there is a github repo out there that may even be there.
Why do you think apple has the appletv, the apple watch, the phone itself is essentially a pocketwatch with an addressable display.
I think we have all the parts it's just now about knitting them all together and building up a ux that works for normal people.
They see "thin is in" and I see remote servers now watching everything on your screen or within audio visual range. Eventually the only jobs will be at the intel agencies watching the data feeds from all the rabble so they can ascertain who is mouthy enough to whack and charge the others by the word for what used to be processed locally for free.
Of all the things they could build, why must they pick this future...
Having watched Microsoft try and fail to launch countless new ideas into the market over the past couple decades, I have 0 faith in their ability to deliver something people actually use. Others, often Apple, seem to succeed where Microsoft had previously tried and repeatedly failed.
I've valued Ben Thompson's opinions less over time. He was super into goggle-like devices and remote meetings. I own Apple Vision Pro. It's a technical achievement, but not compelling beyond immersive video (too bad). He harps on Dems trying to clean up monopolies (Lina Khan during Biden, who had good principles but didn't get much done; probably blame her boss) and is quiet through republican bullshit (T2). He seems to interview huge tech figures as though he was the was the Verge or Nilay Patel does: with a soft touch.
Just not doing it for me. Think I'm gonna stop reading anything he says.
I think some of his advantage analyzing where tech can go is because he pushed the limits of it (eg working remotely early early).
He was disappointed in the Apple vision pro for just being an entertainment device (it seems like you two agree there?)
And then the interviews by media of tech should be viewed as an iterated game. He can ask interesting questions for an analyst, but he (and Nilay) do depend on access and that fundamentally constrains what types of questions they can ask if they want continued access
> Just not doing it for me. Think I'm gonna stop reading anything he says.
After the blowout success of the Macbook Neo, I'd think the bet would be on a cheap iPhone. Maybe not, as so many people finance their expensive phone through their carrier, but I suspect a $300 iPhone would eat the mid-range Android market.
Who is paying for all of this AI usage on the Iphone? I didn't see anything about a new AI subscription (maybe I missed it?), and I doubt Apple will want to pay million/billions a year to do it indefinitely.
Not sure why the article is titled the way it is. Ben’s take on Siri AI being just good enough for the vast majority of consumers makes sense. The iPhone is the most consumer facing product because it’s a consumption platform. Some folks use it to create stuff, but most people use it to consume media or interact with another human.
iPadOS also did not receive any product specific updates because I think Apple understands that device well: it’s also a consumption device with a bit more productivity capability. They know they can ship a full macOS on iPad, as witnessed by the lower performance A18 chip in the Neo running the full OS, but what’s the point? Using a desktop UI with a touch interface is terrible. So you’d need a mouse and keyboard. By the time you get that accessory, you’ve already exceeded the cost of a Neo or MacBook Air. There’s also no size, weight or space difference between a fully accessorized iPad and MacBook Neo, Air or 14” Pro.
I think Apple will be fine regardless of whether this new Siri AI stuff actually works well or not. I think deep down they don’t really care because they don’t have to. All of their devices are perfect clients that can interact perfectly fine with cloud inference. And their devices are such a joy to use. That’s what Apple is good at.
Now the confusing part is the new Microsoft hardware project. Is Solara a laptop? Tablet? 2-in-1? Phone? They already have a great hardware run with Surface, so I wonder if this new project is a more powerful local inference push?
I stopped reading when he mentioned "..beyond the fact that billions.." I looked it up and iphone users are much less than two billions. I can't expect much axcuracy from this opinion.
> [C]onsumers, on the other hand, are mostly looking to waste time, which is why attention- harvesting advertising is the only software business model that works at scale for consumer services.
I came here to talk about this, like some other commenters did, too :)
I think that this _is_ a predominant view amongst most of Silicon Valley but I think it's kind of a local maxima view... Easy to agree with, easy to see that it's a functional idea, but... people... (i.e. consumers) do lots more than just waste time on their phones even though I bet that's a huge amount of what people are doing across the US right now.
I guess the thing that _is_ true about this nugget is the "at scale" part. It's hard to find things _at scale_ that people would pay for on a phone. So the phone sort of falls back into this easy to monetize thing via advertising. But I think people (qua consumers) probably can clearly be a sustainable market for way more than attention harvesting (or dopamine fracking!) but it requires a lot more effort to think of things that you can build a market out of there. So people sort of lazy-back into attention harvesting via ads.
It kind of reminds me of Windows mobile and blackberry and palm os where apple was clearly behind but they eventually caught up. The first iPhone didn’t even have apps!
I think agents are scary and complicated and dangerous enough that it is genuinely scary to give an agent an instruction like go buy this ticket. It’s okay and apple can easily simplify and eventually win. The mainstream hasn’t really started using agents yet and no one has come close to delivering a platform that will get them there.
64 comments
[ 3.8 ms ] story [ 87.6 ms ] thread> The reason is obvious when you think about it: enterprises are paying for their employees’ time, so of course they are willing to pay for tools that make those employees more productive
Is that why there are billions dollars wasted in useless Microsoft subscriptions and services?
> consumers, on the other hand, are mostly looking to waste time, which is why attention-harvesting advertising is the only software business model that works at scale for consumer services.
What a callous view of people. Who's your benchmark? TikTok addicted kids?
> What they do want to do is watch short-form video
Yeah, it seems so.
Saving time (==saving money) is something you can sell to companies. But above all, they are willing to spend on saving their managers time. The higher up the hierarchy, the better. If that involves wasting a lot more time for the underlings, then so be it. The underlings aren't the ones making the purchasing decisions after all
For what its worth I wish Apple would care more about those of us that want to use AI to actually do work and not these weird contrived examples asking if focaccia can be made gluten free. And I personally couldn't care less what Microsoft does as I'm lucky enough to never have to use their products outside of Github.
It's not a "callous view," it's reality. Social media, entertainment/streaming/media, gaming, and porn make up the vast majority of minutes spent on the internet, and it's not even close.
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
I honestly think the use of the word "consumer" is intentionally dehumanizing, a way for corporate figureheads to ignore the humanity of the people they interact with directly or indirectly. This in turn makes them numb to the markets and institutions they are degrading.
I disagree strongly here. The chatbot is the furthest thing from sufficient for the average consumer. Take the newly announced feature that groups your compromised passwords together and offers to agentically change them all for you. Really cool! Could you do that via a chatbot interface? Sure. Would the average consumer? No.
first paragraph begins the article upon 2 very big and flawed statements:
> Apple fans would, for years and years, sneer at Microsoft’s penchant for talking about products that may or may not ship, deriding them as vaporware.
maybe some would, but as a whole I would say this is not a common thing
> After Apple’s bungled 2024 launch of Apple Intelligence and new Siri, however, vaporware is fair game
no it's not
I didn't know about Project Solara so learned a new thing from the article, but I got the impression that it's not as big as the author tried to make it seem, felt very distant and forced.
Certainly the copilot button in ms paint did nothing to attract the clawbot ecosystem to windows
Apple doesn't leak much but there has been coverage of this:
https://spyglass.org/apple-ai-fail/ (April 2025)
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/apple-fumbled-siris-... (paywalled)
https://appleinsider.com/articles/26/06/07/one-fateful-meeti... (2 days ago)
They have no ground to make up on AI, and changing their operating system to center on AI would piss off every iPhone user I know outside of tech, and probably half of them within tech.
[1] https://www.macrumors.com/2026/05/13/apple-q1-market-share-g...
things there don't seem to be going well
If Apple had to be the best at AI, it would be out of business already. But it just has to make things people want and the customers will use them to run local or remote LLMs.
You might re-title the article instead, "The iPhone holds its ground", and it would be a more realistic title. But perhaps garnering less clicks.
I've always thought Ben Thompson is strong on enterprise and b2b topics but super weak on everything consumer related, he simply doesn't seem to understand consumer behavior (he has zero empathy or ability to project his mind into the average person's mind)
E.g. Ben was sure iPhone air would be a massive hit because he himself loved it. (It's struggled as people don't like the smaller battery life).
Ben was sure the Vision Pro would be a huge hit because he himself loved it. (It was a total failure as the average person doesnt want to pay huge amounts for a ridiculous looking dork helmet).
Ben raving about Meta's hand controller which he was sure was going to be the future of consumer electronics (The Neural Band). He was discussing how you could use it while your hand is in your jeans/pants pocket. Not quite thinking about how this would look while you're sat on the subway with someone sat opposite you.
Ben discussing how the future of watching sports is in VR. Not considering how weird it would be to go to a friends house to watch the game and everyone has their own VR headset. Also not considering the fun of watching sports is doing it with other people.
Basically, he has a huge issue with extracting his own liking of techy products to the average consumer who are basically nothing like Ben Thompson.
The Air was interesting because everyone I've seen hold it, loves it. But, everyone also loves battery life and the best camera more. The Air is proof of that (similar with the mini lovers).
I wonder if the bigger question is what happens to us.
Convenience is great, but if we optimize away every moment of reflection, tradeoff, and decision-making, we risk becoming passengers in our own lives. The goal shouldn’t be to hand over our judgment to increasingly capable systems. It should be to use those systems to help us think more clearly and act more intentionally.
The future I want isn’t one where AI lives my life for me. It’s one where it helps me live it better.
- iPhone Air to cram everything into a small space
- Vision pro - a new OS for looking at things and interacting
- Better Siri and AI that works with voice
- Smart local model / routing to big models in the cloud
- integration with wearables (air pods and watches)
lol no you did not. A whole lot of nothing.
People spend several thousand on Lasik so they don't have to wear glasses all the time.
I don't see glasses as the ultimate form factor that everyone uses.
Obviously it'll be a big cultural conflict for a while. But again... the usefulness is too great for it not to happen. Cultural objections will give way, I think. Maybe it'll have to wait for a generation to die off.
They’ve done a very good job at proving the required tech with stuff like putting LiDAR in iPhones which is key to the Vision Pro….which is their AR interaction model testing ground. They are taking a pretty measured approach.
I just don’t think the physical tech is ready for AR glasses that reach a level of polish that Apple would ship mass market. But all the other pieces are there.
And then a minute later I could ask it "Is copilot done yet?" and it replies "No, looks like it is still working on it". And then a minute later I ask again. It replies "Yes, it finished. It changed chart.py and styles.css. Do you want me to tell you what specific changes it made to the files?".
But it looks like none of the chat agents with voice interface have such a connector at the moment? An SSH connector would be the most useful. But a "GitHub Codespace connector" or something like that would also do.
I wonder if that will be a missing piece for long. If so, I would build an agent with voice mode and ssh connector myself. But I guess it should come out from the big guys any moment now?
A verbal diff sounds practically useless. Does it first read out the entire left-hand base, and then read out the entire right-hand target? Does it say loudly "REMOVING ... ADDING ... "? How would it read out something like Struct->Field? This seems lower fidelity than a visual confirmation, and I just don't think that voice commands make sense with this kind of work.
With the right set-top-box, you tvs become just another display for whatever you want to send their way. We are extremely close to startrek tng style spaces. I'm sure there is a github repo out there that may even be there.
Why do you think apple has the appletv, the apple watch, the phone itself is essentially a pocketwatch with an addressable display.
I think we have all the parts it's just now about knitting them all together and building up a ux that works for normal people.
Of all the things they could build, why must they pick this future...
Just not doing it for me. Think I'm gonna stop reading anything he says.
Edit: missing words, thinking faster than typing
He was disappointed in the Apple vision pro for just being an entertainment device (it seems like you two agree there?)
And then the interviews by media of tech should be viewed as an iterated game. He can ask interesting questions for an analyst, but he (and Nilay) do depend on access and that fundamentally constrains what types of questions they can ask if they want continued access
> Just not doing it for me. Think I'm gonna stop reading anything he says.
Pretty sane take tbh
Yeah might as well cancel your subscription if you’re not gonna read it
iPadOS also did not receive any product specific updates because I think Apple understands that device well: it’s also a consumption device with a bit more productivity capability. They know they can ship a full macOS on iPad, as witnessed by the lower performance A18 chip in the Neo running the full OS, but what’s the point? Using a desktop UI with a touch interface is terrible. So you’d need a mouse and keyboard. By the time you get that accessory, you’ve already exceeded the cost of a Neo or MacBook Air. There’s also no size, weight or space difference between a fully accessorized iPad and MacBook Neo, Air or 14” Pro.
I think Apple will be fine regardless of whether this new Siri AI stuff actually works well or not. I think deep down they don’t really care because they don’t have to. All of their devices are perfect clients that can interact perfectly fine with cloud inference. And their devices are such a joy to use. That’s what Apple is good at.
Now the confusing part is the new Microsoft hardware project. Is Solara a laptop? Tablet? 2-in-1? Phone? They already have a great hardware run with Surface, so I wonder if this new project is a more powerful local inference push?
I came here to talk about this, like some other commenters did, too :) I think that this _is_ a predominant view amongst most of Silicon Valley but I think it's kind of a local maxima view... Easy to agree with, easy to see that it's a functional idea, but... people... (i.e. consumers) do lots more than just waste time on their phones even though I bet that's a huge amount of what people are doing across the US right now.
I guess the thing that _is_ true about this nugget is the "at scale" part. It's hard to find things _at scale_ that people would pay for on a phone. So the phone sort of falls back into this easy to monetize thing via advertising. But I think people (qua consumers) probably can clearly be a sustainable market for way more than attention harvesting (or dopamine fracking!) but it requires a lot more effort to think of things that you can build a market out of there. So people sort of lazy-back into attention harvesting via ads.
I think agents are scary and complicated and dangerous enough that it is genuinely scary to give an agent an instruction like go buy this ticket. It’s okay and apple can easily simplify and eventually win. The mainstream hasn’t really started using agents yet and no one has come close to delivering a platform that will get them there.