The Six Five team discusses Apple Glowtime Event
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Transcript:
Daniel Newman: So, Glowtime, everybody was waiting. This was the moment, it was the time, we were going to have a super cycle. We’re going to get 5% more, 10% more. Everybody’s going to be running to their local store to get the next iPhone because Apple intelligence. This was the thing, this was the rage, this was the future. I couldn’t tell you if that was what happened, because I fell asleep in the 90-minute-long presentation, just kidding. But Pat, look, I’ll just start off. I’m going to be straight forward, disappointed. I’m not going to say I’m disappointed in perpetuity, I just think it was a setup problem. The setup was that this was going to be this moment, this game changing, life changing AI powered device. And what we ended up getting was a camera slider button on the side.
By the way, 2010 Windows phone did that as well. We got some camera enhancements that I still don’t think match the Samsung devices. We’ve got some new colors. Colors are cool. And we got basically, I think the theme of this week’s Glowtime event, Pat was something along the lines of coming soon. Meaning that, basically nothing that they’re talking about, whether it’s some of the photo and augmented reality capabilities, whether it was some of the automations and productivity tools, basically none of them are going to work out of the box. So what you got was a device that has an NPU, I personally think is a little light on memory coming out of the box at eight gigs of memory.
Patrick Moorhead: I know, I know. I’ll understand that.
Daniel Newman: That is supposed to be this next generation AI device and I think what it was, ended up being another kind of hype cycle. Now on the positive side, Pat, this is something I’m going to let you talk more about is, I thought they did some interesting stuff with the health technology. I think some of the new stuff with the watches, some of the health capabilities, I think the hearing aids offering and helping people take something that’s about 10% of the cost of a professional hearing aid and turn it into an enhancement that might enable people with hearing disabilities. Tinnitus, I talked about that a little bit when I was on Fox Business this week. But Pat, what I didn’t find at least personally was that convincing. I got to jump out of my chair, I got to run to the store and I got to buy.
Now I’ll leave it with this because like I said, there’s so much you could cover. We could cover A18, we could cover how this is good for ARM and V9. We could cover how this is good for TSMC and they’re basically boundless demand for their three nanometer process. But what I couldn’t talk about was that run out of my chair, have to go buy this next device. I’m sitting here now still with my 13 Pro Max, still unconvinced that I need a new device and I know that I need a 15 pro or newer to take advantage of Apple Intelligence, Pat. But I didn’t see enough features there, I didn’t get the run out of my chair moment. That’s what I wanted. Last thought, I do like that a lot of this can be done in software, but cannot fix the eight gigs of memory that will not be fixable. So when you don’t have enough memory, that’s going to cause some problems in terms of running significant large language models on a device. Having said that, a lot of these features will be upgradable. So as you’re using the device longer, you can add more Apple intelligence features as they come. Pat, C minus, D plus. That’s how I rate it over to you.
Patrick Moorhead: No, I think that’s pretty fair and I don’t want to make this an Apple slam fest, but let me explain first of all why I’m so tough on Apple. So they have a monopoly in the United States on smartphones. And their bad behavior with developers, competing app stores and not paying their suppliers to the point where they want them to go out of business. They steal intellectual property as we’ve seen with Qualcomm and Massimo. I mean, they’re just a nasty company and they can do better. But I do want to give them kudos on hearing aids. I do think that, I mean, hearing aids are very expensive, and I’m hoping that this will disrupt that market. I have my brother-in-law who is analyzing the signal wave intensity to see just exactly how well they compare to gosh, 1,000, %5,000 hearing aids that seemed to squeak and creak whenever I talked to my dad and my father-in-law.
So, kudos to Apple to take the risk to do this. After using a ton of health apps and really getting into the whole wellness thing, Apple is woeful on the software. They really give you no idea of how to mitigate stress, how to make your sleep better. Things to eat, not to eat, has no insights into recovery and resilience and it’s pretty horrible, they can do better. Now, I think sleep apnea was a good thing to add. Samsung has that in over 42 different countries. And oh by the way, Samsung also has blood pressure in 42 different countries as well and unfortunately not here, FDA approved in the United States. So, Apple can do better and I don’t know if it’s the risk profile. They certainly have more money than anybody, so it’s not funding. Or maybe on the app side they’re trying to give their third party developers like athletic, that I use on my iPhone. But you guys got to check out Samsung Watch and Samsung Ring. It’s an exceptional experience, I will tell you more. I can even do body segment analysis on the Samsung Watch where I totally did not believe it. They said it was 95% as accurate on body fat and muscle mass as a DEXA scan. But sure as heck it was the closest one. It’s even better than my dedicated segment withing scale that told me this morning that I’m gaining fat and losing muscle after going hardcore.
Daniel Newman: I did notice that.
Patrick Moorhead: It’s so weird. I asked, my trainer said, it’s probably fluid buildup. It doesn’t know how to distinguish between fat and fluid that comes into your muscles. And the blood that starts pumping. But anyways, I digress. A couple of things came up too.
Daniel Newman: Wait, wait, wait, wait. Did you think it could be the breakfast you’ve been posting online? I mean, I think the world should know Pat, that you eat four eggs, six ounces of steak, four pieces of sourdough and avocado and just a tiny taste of burnt hashbrown potatoes every morning for breakfast and then you like to tweet about how you’re burning fat.
Patrick Moorhead: That one blew up in my face, baby. We will see, but I think, anyways, I’ve got my trainer on KPI bonus plan that give me 10 pounds of muscle mass in six months and he gets a bonus. So I don’t know, we’ll see. This got me into a couple other conversations. Apple came out and said their Bionic processor was more powerful than a desktop processor. I think that’s on a Geekbench single thread. I got to tell you, I cannot wait for this new Qualcomm part to come out on the smartphones. And I don’t know how Geekbench ST and MT got leaked on the processor, but I think it’s time that Apple, I don’t know gets shown that they’re not the only game in town when it comes to smartphone processors. I mean the PC folks in Qualcomm surely showed Apple that they’re not the only game in town on a high performance, low power notebook chip. That’s for sure. We will see. And the final thing I’m going to say is what would it take for people who’ve had iPhones for five or six years to defect Apple as a monopoly in the United States at 51% market share, but the rest of the world, it’s more in the 20s and 30s. So it’s not about defecting. There are a lot of people out there who do not use Apple and sometimes we forget all of the goodness of the Android ecosystem and all of the people who buy that. Anything else you want to add, Dan?
Daniel Newman: No, I mean I think we hit that one on the head and we got a lot more to go buddy. So let’s rock forward.
Patrick Moorhead: Yeah, I thought the most interesting thing about Apple intelligence conversation with Craig Federighi doing parkour. I love that guy. I wish I could meet him someday.
