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

26:29They got one of these. You know what you have? You have white smoke coming out of the – well, actually, no, there's no smoke. There's no smoke. It's very environmentally friendly. Environment friendly, yeah. So, you know, maybe out of the parking garage. White reflection out of the solar panels. Yeah. A glint off the solar panel. Exactly. So what? You want evidence? Yes. You want to hear that he's been getting more responsibility? Okay. One, a few months ago, took full control of the Apple Watch engineering team that was co-run with the old COO until he retired. Okay, there's something for you.

27:04When they started soft-firing the head of AI, the guy we were talking about earlier, they took the robotic stuff away from him. They gave that to Ternus. And then the real news, as I broke last week, is that even though on paper Tim Cook is running the Apple design teams, it's not. It's Ternus. He took over at the end of last year. for a variety of reasons, but you look at who's run design at Apple over the course of history. Well, like Steve Jobs, Tim Cook himself, between 15 and 17, Jeff Williams, who was the number two in heir apparent for a long time, and then obviously all heard of Johnny Ive.

27:42Now you add John Ternus to that list. It's a big sign. It's a big indicator because you look at what Apple is known for as a company and its design, right, that design function. And it's not just hardware, it's hardware and software that he's overseeing as the manager of both of those teams. So I would say that is your first piece of evidence that he's getting some more material. What does he have to do, since he's the hardware guy, to communicate that he has a steady hand on the tiller as Apple transitions into the AI age? Like the narrative is that they have delivered on hardware. They have not delivered on AI.

28:19No, they haven't. And so how is he going to communicate that he's forward thinking and can be the one to keep him on the cutting edge? Taking a step back, you think about like succession at all of these big tech companies, right? Like who's going to take over Google one day? Who's going to take over Microsoft one day? Who's going to take over Amazon one day, right? Like it's probably going to be the AI guys at all of these companies, right? Apple doesn't really have an AI guy. They're trying to make Craig Federighi the AI guy, but he's not CEO material. He's voiced this himself, so don't get mad at me, Craig.

28:52But, yeah, Ternus, can he become the AI guy at Apple? I think it's too early to tell, and I think that is a big question there. Like, do you put a hardware person in charge of the AI era? People have been speculating that Apple would do some big M &A deal to bring some AI-native talent in-house. They wanted to buy perplexity. So the origin story, they were really talking about it. Like Eddie Q was seriously considering, Adrian Preek, other head of Corp Development M &A, reports to Tim Cook. They were looking at this pretty closely. Then they pulled out why were they going to buy Perplexity? To power the search stuff we were talking about earlier.

29:34It became less important after the Google deal was about to live. and do you think they would have done it if perplexity hadn't been marked up to oblivion uh i think they would have done perplexity at a reasonable price yeah like yeah that's the thing low single digit i think they would have done it up to five or six billion yeah yeah but like at this 15 20 and then perplexity started you know trying to say they're going to buy google chrome if it got divested and all that. And I think they would have done it if the Google search deal was torn apart in order to bring a search product to market faster.

30:13They like to buy companies to... I'm not trying to do Apple corporate speak here, but this is like legit. They buy companies to accelerate their roadmap. You'll hear Tim Cook use those exact words tomorrow, by the way, but literally... Tomorrow? Apple earnings. This guy. Apple earnings. This guy. My God. Come on. Head in the game. But is there specifically a deal that he'll be talking about tomorrow? No. No, no, no, no. I bet he'll mention the Gemini thing. Because he was asked that in the last earnings. And everyone was like, why haven't you done a mega deal? He says this every year. Okay, so he just says it.

30:48It's just going to be more of the same. Got it. You know, what is fair to say is their pace of dealmaking has decelerated significantly. Interesting. Significantly. And so he will be, I mean, in the last earnings, he was sort of like managing that and saying like, oh we're still doing deals but we're selective and we only do it to he's like well they also don't care to announce like 95 percent of the big enough they have to you know like golden state warriors they want yannis but they don't want to make a big trade they don't want to give up other draft picks right they're like yeah the same with the lakers this is like my existential crisis the lakers like yeah we'll trade the picks uh if the right guy becomes available yeah and they know the right guy's not going to become available right just like apple knows these companies are always going to be out of the price range they want to pay.

31:29Sure, sure. The thing with Apple is very frugal money-wise, extremely frugal. The other thing is, is they've been burned countless times with acquisitions. Like that Beats deal, terrible process for integrating that company. Well, and even then, I think it was like a 3x revenue multiple. Weren't they doing, it wasn't Beats doing like a billion dollars a year? Oh, from a financial standpoint, it was just like a home run. People criticize that deal, but they made it back in months. Oh, interesting. Oh, Beats? They made the money, but it was a nightmare from an interrelations. No, but it's worth noting because, like, even paying for perplexity at$5,$6 billion, it would have been.

32:07It's going to be years until you monetize that, probably. Yeah, I mean, Beats was monetized from day one. Obviously, you're selling the headphones, which are terrible, by the way, but everyone loves them. And then Apple Music, you know, Beats started the whole subscription services business at Apple. And so if you look at it, Beats is one of the most wildly successful technology acquisitions of all time. And then you compare it to how much criticism it got because it's Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine and whatever, whatever, whatever, and the headphones are crap. You know what? From a financial standpoint, home run.

32:39Home run. Yeah. You know? But integrating into Apple's culture is not easy. Yeah. Speaking of hardware, what's going on with the robotic arm that will live in your kitchen? Yeah, the Pixar lamp. It's the Pixar lamp. It's the Pixar lamp. As he said, you've got this 9-inch display. It's like an iPad display on a robotic arm. It can float around your desk. It can twirl and turn around. Like, you know what we'll do? In a few years when this thing comes out, you'll have me back on. And instead of me actually being here, you'll have this on here. Oh, yeah, maybe. You know, you'll leave my head floating around.

33:12Yeah. I mean, Meta tried to do something like that with the... Meta tried to do something like that. You know these things are big in China. They are. It's a big thing in China right now. Okay, interesting. No one really talks about them. But it's a category that has some potential. Okay. Yeah. But it's years away just because Apple moves slowly. I think it's stay tuned. Yeah. What about the foldable phone? That's not years away. That's closer? Yeah. No, that's decades away. No, that's coming out in the fall. Okay. That'll be fine. I can't wait for that. Yeah. Are you going to be a buy? I'm going to drop$2 ,200 on it.

33:42Oh, is that going to be? It'll be at least. Is it going to be the highest tier, the biggest, the most powerful? For Apple? Yeah. That's going to sit at the top of the line. It's going to sit at the top of the line. Okay, new status symbol. Sorry, what were you saying? I like that. We had Ben Thompson on maybe before the end of the year. I feel bad for Ben. You know, he's a big Milwaukee Bucks fan, and they're about to ditch Giannis. The Milwaukee Bucks, that's a sports team? Really? I don't know. I do know it's a basketball team, and I do know that it's Ben Thompson's favorite team. Yesterday, we didn't know when the Super Bowl was.

34:14He was talking about the Apple Vision Pro. I wanted to demo the, you know, you can watch the NBA live. Yeah, basically, Ben's pitch was like, screw the Apple highly produced. You know, they're cutting around all the time. And he's like, just invest the money to set up, like, the actual hardware in every single stadium. Cameras. The cameras, so that anybody can just drop in. So you can just sit there, watch the game, like your court side. You don't need the Apple announcer because you can just look at the scoreboard. You can listen to what's going on. So he's saying strip the guys out of it. Yeah.

34:51Look, I watched it. It was great. You watched the whole thing? Yeah. Really? Yeah. Yeah. Trust me, people at home are not happy that night. Oh, yeah. Because you're just sitting there. You put that thing on. Crying baby. Crying baby. And then you're completely isolated. I mean, I'm telling you, VR does not work for families. It's true. It just doesn't. It's really, yeah, it is one of the major. Because then, I mean, the family people have the disposable income more likely. So then they buy it, but they can't use it. It doesn't work. Yeah. Okay, here's the problem. Yeah. It's like once a month.

35:19They've got like five games on the calendar. Well, and that was Ben's point is like just set up the infrastructure and sell me a pass so that I can drop into any game and sit courtside. Because right now they have to pull up with a production truck, they need editors, they need voiceovers, they need pregame, postgame. He's saying like there's, you know, basically one-time fixed cost. Like he did the math. Just put them in all the NBA stadiums. Yeah, he said it's like 40 grand. It's like not like a huge amount of money. And you have no incremental cost per show. You're not dealing with producers and running a live program.

35:51But they need to decide if this hardware is going to continue to exist before they keep investing in the content strategy. It's a chicken and the egg problem. How do you sell this thing if there's no content? But why invest millions in the content if you're not planning to sell this thing anyways and you're pivoting to smart glasses? Don't forget, they were supposed to come out with the Vision Air in 27, a product called N100. I forgot when my article came out. Time is a blur. A few months ago, six months ago. Anyways, they killed that thing. They killed it entirely. Killed it. They shocked the Vision team on that, by the way.

36:25The smart glasses, was that just completely reactionary to meta? Oh, yeah. They started toying with the smart glasses in terms of, like, this non-AR smart glasses, right? First of all, AR smart glasses, that has been the Vision from day one for a decade plus. but in terms of like this non-display smart glasses that is a concept that meta has really popularized and you know when these things started to gain a little bit of steam in 22 23 is when they started taking a very hard look at it and they're going to do it and i think they're going to destroy meta with them i'll be honest yeah is it the styling the pricing the features the integration to me to me the challenge is if you can't deliver me iMessage yeah Yeah.

37:13Apple has the ingredients because of their login to destroy any company in any hardware. It's just about them figuring out how to do it and get it done and not waiting too long. You know, the biggest problem with them is they just take too long and over-engineer everything. Yeah. Like the Vision Pro is the most over-engineered device ever, right? They could have got that out three years earlier with a little bit less fit and finish and maybe it would be more successful today. Yeah. Yeah. It does feel like there was a cycle where the iPhone was ahead of the curve on so many things, touchscreen.

37:45And then in that middle decade period, you had the Android folks being like, oh, we've had this Apple feature for a year. We've had this for two years. Yeah, people don't care. Now it's like five years. You know how many people wouldn't be caught dead with a non-iPhone? Yeah. It doesn't matter. But AI changes that equation. Sure. That changes the equation. Especially if it's a Johnny Ive product and it's expensive. Well, you know, Johnny Ive, obviously, he's done amazing things. And the new headphones or whatever they come out with are going to look amazing and probably work amazing. It's just the barrier to entry on hardware is so high.

38:19There's so much risk there. Yeah. I just, I still wonder if the, like, the Claude bot, these, like, open source agents, I don't know that everyone's going to adopt those, but something like that that sort of opens up the ecosystem just by brute forcing it. We were debating this earlier. Like, you can't get iMessage notifications on the meta-rated band displays. I have them. Do you guys have them? I think we do have a pair here. We have some pairs around. I've got one at home. We've used the non-displays a bunch, and then we demoed the displays and have used them a fair amount. And it's just a hard sell if you're an iMessage user.

38:51It's a hard sell if you're an iMessage user, but the potential is just oozing with potential. Yeah. Like, they've got a solid product there. Yeah. And like a couple iterations on that, make them a little lighter, get the display resolution up, look better outdoors. Yeah. It's compelling. And in a world where you have some sort of agent running on your Mac Mini, scraping all your iMessages and then putting them into WhatsApp or something. You know, maybe I'll do that. Maybe you guys will do that. It's rare. Yeah. It's rare. Nobody wants to deal with that. Yeah. You know, nobody wants to deal with that.

39:25Even if it's just an app that you download like Napster, you don't think so? People don't have time for that. Yeah. People don't care. Probably not. What? I feel like nobody cares about anything anymore. You know? That's a good take. Back in my day, we used to care. We used to care. The world has changed. Yeah. The world has changed. They just want everything in front of them. They want everything in their eyeballs. They all want it set up from the get-go. They don't want to put any work in. They just want it to start working, right? Yeah. And I think that's been the Apple ethos from the beginning, which is just like give people what they need, let it get up and running, and not deal with any of the BS.

39:55What's going on in China? Lots going on in China. With Apple, are they shutting down more stores? Shutting down more stores? No, not that I know of. I don't see Apple just shutting stores at this point. I think the retail arm still is extremely profitable and successful. Sure. All the shutdowns. But in China, there's less of the, you're not, somebody's not embarrassed to not be using an iPhone. Problem, yes. The problem is, is that Apple hasn't done anything bespoke for the Chinese market. the competitiveness there is just unbelievably just it's amazing it's like no other part of the world are there are there compelling ai hardware yes yes i mean i mentioned the robotic thing i mentioned um well like the foldables are taking over the universe there right and so you know apple's an american company launching american devices european devices and they're trying to shoehorned into the Chinese market, and they've never really done anything just for the Chinese market or built around the Chinese market.

41:01What about the sock? The iPod sock? Okay, maybe that was, I mean, I don't know. But why, it's such a massive market. Why not? Because they're a global company. But I think the foldable is going to do extremely well in China. You know, it might do better in China than it does here. Interesting. I don't know. I'll be having one. I'll tell you that much right now. What's the future of the iPhone Air? It's like the price difference. Sam Altman's got one. Great. But he doesn't care about money. The price difference. He just breaks it and buys a new one. And he doesn't get paid by OpenAI. He's probably got both.

41:38Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, he doesn't get paid. Yeah. The iPhone Air and the iPhone Pro, it's like negligible pricing-wise. It's the same price if you get the battery pack. Oh, yeah? Right? It's like$9.99 plus$100. Sure. right? You're going to get the battery pack. So I don't know. Like you look at the features comparison, you look at the cameras. I mean, most people are going to always pick the Pro over the Air. There needs to be more of a price gap between the two. And eventually, you know, those two lines are going to merge. It can take five years, but like eventually you're going to be able to get a Pro as thin as an Air or an Air with the same bells and whistles as a Pro.

42:19I mean, you look at the MacBook Pro and the MacBook Air today from a perform. These are different laptops, and they're exactly the same. Yeah, so what? You've got the Air. The Air, he's got the Pro. And they're identical. It's the same thing because the chips, right? The big differences between the two are it's a little lighter, okay? The display is terrible on that thing compared to that thing. Like if you use, like I tried out the 15-inch MacBook Air, okay? Yeah. The thing is sleek and slick and awesome. Yeah. But I've been ruined visually by how amazing the display is on the MacBook Pro. Okay, maybe I've got to upgrade.

42:52And so you have to think about the different changes. You want to talk about big things happening at Apple this year. It's that new MacBook Pro, right? You've got the OLED. You've got the thinner. You've got the touch. I cannot wait to drop$4 ,000 on that thing. It's going to be a touch screen? Yeah. I cannot wait to get my fingerprints all over. If somebody is looking at my computer and they touch the screen, I'm just like. isn't it the worst thing ever like i like you gotta be carrying a polishing cloth you gotta be carrying the apple official policy 20 bucks you know just 20 could make a pixar lamp that will apple make one that's funny apple makes a pixar lamp that just kind of polishes your touchscreen that'd be great and ai for for screen cleaning yeah yeah you know the apple polishing cloth they got so much you know flack for that thing like you would think that it was 75 dollars but it was$20.

43:44Come to think of it, like, it's really not that big of a deal. Also, I know someone who is OCD and is obsessed with keeping their screen perfectly clean. Yeah. And I was like, what's the secret? Like, you must have some secret formula, like Windex or something that you're using. And he's like, no, just the Apple polishing cloth. It's amazing. That's the one that works. It's great. You know what? I need to get one of those. I was like, that's glowing. You know, one did come with my Vision Pro. Yeah. There you go. I'll try that one. They threw one in as a bonus. Isn't that nice of them? That's so nice of them.

44:07$34.99, you get a free polishing cloth. That's$20 off. Yeah, maybe the Ternus narrative can center around, like, as the models commoditize, like, the hardware becomes more important. You want to be able to run different models locally. And so pushing that, like, being the best hardware. The hardware is great. The chips are great. Yeah. The software, I'll even tell you, is maybe not. It's between good and great. Sure. Okay? I'm not going to say it's only good. Sure. I'm not going to say it's as great as the hardware. but it's good enough. How's that? The AI is like the worst in the industry. Yeah, but I mean, right now you're seeing people go out and buy Mac minis to run AI.

44:46Okay, let's think about it. You see these people on Twitter doing that, right? How many extra Mac minis do you think were sold because of all this jazz? I would guess, I would put the over under on 500 units. 500? Nah. I thought it was 10 ,000. I've seen it on Instagram. There's 40 ,000 GitHub stars. Okay, if it's on Instagram, maybe I'm wrong. Yeah, so there's 40 ,000 GitHub stars. It's clearly a big meme. 60. Maybe it's in the thousands. But yes, I mean, it's a quarter million a quarter or something like that. And I think so much of it is just performative. Go on the Apple online store. No, people.

45:14Go to the Mac Mini. They're in stock. Are they all in stock? They're in stock. Look at the ship dates. Funny thing. Two weeks ago, I go to the Pasadena Mac store. You know what's out of stock? Apple Vision Pros. What? No, it's always just because they're not making them anymore. To me, a lot of the buying, I think, is purely status-oriented. On the AVP? No, selling the Mac Mini and people just saying, I want to signal that I'm AI native and I'm at the... You're going to use it for two weeks and then forget about it. I think that's going to be a real thing. I mean, how many people actually need to live in these type of workflows?

45:51Not many, just the hackers, which is a niche community. It's a niche community. It's a great community. But it has made me think maybe I should start using Apple's native file system and actually bring my data out of the cloud, out of Drive, and store it locally. You don't need to because CloudBot will go and access your cloud. So what's the deal with the Mac Mini? It's shipping. Order now. Pick up in store today. It's available. Order by 3 p.m. Delivers two hours from the store. They have them in all the stores? Yeah, it's everywhere. They're widely available. They're widely available. So maybe I am right.

46:28Available tomorrow at the Americana brand. And today it's the Apple Glendale between a quarter million. It's literally available at every Apple store. It's a year. Yeah, yeah. I think that's it? Yeah. Yeah. And so it doesn't take that many if they're projecting out, hey, we're going to sell. It's not like they, I would imagine they don't have all of them that they're going to sell this year sitting in stock already. I'm curious how the Mac quarter is going to go tomorrow, right? Like there might be a little bit of a drag on that. Yeah, what should people pay attention to? Well, the China number, to your point.

47:05The iPhone number is basically everything tomorrow, right? Either they grow 10%, as they say they will, or they won't. Either Tim Cook gets to keep his job or he doesn't. No, I'm just joking. But you think about the product, right? They didn't do much iPad or Mac last year, right? This year is going to be the biggest year for the Mac, in a long time. New MacBook Pro is about to launch. Same design as those ones with the faster chips. You've got the iPhone chip-powered, low-cost MacBook, which is going to destroy PCs and Chromebooks and be just an utter game-changer. You've got the touchscreen MacBook Pro end of year.

47:49You've got a refreshed Mac Mini. You've got a refreshed Mac Studio. You've got the M6 chip. You've got the first new monitors from Apple in four years. Where will those sit? The monitors? Yeah. In terms of? They'll sit on my desk. I'll tell you that one. Yeah, but is it going to displace the studio or the XDR? The one I know about is going to replace the studio. But there's a new XDR also. Oh, okay. Yeah. Because the XDR, remarkably long term. Like, I cannot believe how. Why is there no camera on that thing? Because it was created 15 years ago. Oh, sure. It's so old, and you go and you look at, like, you could YouTube search for the Pro Display XDR right now, and there's a guarantee a new video, why you should buy one in 2026.

48:38It's still good in 2026. Like, it's still the best option in 2026. I mean, the display is just remarkable. It's just amazing that it didn't commoditize fast. What are you guys using here? We have mostly studios. We don't have a lot of XDRs, but we have been eyeing that new Dell monitor that Michael Dell has been rapaciously pumping on X.com. I saw on Twitter, yeah. It's amazing. that he's so enthusiastic about that thing. I'm sure you've answered this a hundred times, and I'm sorry, but why would they never do a TV? Is it just commodity space? Commodity, margin, differentiator. You don't think people would happily spend?

49:13They're going to buy a Pixar lamp before they buy a TV? You walk in, oh, you got the Apple TV? I've heard that's good. As somebody who's been an Apple, I can't describe myself as an Apple fanboy anymore, But as a teenager and a kid, I was. What the hell happened? The photos. The photos app. The photos app ruined Jordy. It's just like a 20-year relationship just over. But I do think there's enough people out in the world that if you made the$10 ,000 TV, that they would buy it. You know, the... Because when I'm buying a computer, a TV, sure, it's different. But when I'm buying a computer, it's not.

49:56The upgrade cycle. Look at the premium on the Samsung frame TVs. Those are flying off the shelves. And they're not better than an LG. So my TV in my living room, I bought an 18. What are we, in 26 now? Eight years? Yeah, but Apple would figure out a way to deprecate the hardware. This is what they do. They're the best in the world at it. Well, if they did, they would do it. Yeah. They were. They're like, Tim's like, where's my TV? He's like, sir, we haven't found a way to deprecate the hardware in 18 months. They got pretty down the road on a TV. about 10 years ago, and they killed that thing.

50:26They had teams working on it. It was a big deal. But then they went off and did a car and went off and did a Vision Pro. Like, if you think about, like, their two big moonshots over the last decade, they were both utter failures. The car, obviously, is just, like, your quintessential failure. Yeah, pretty much. But, you know, they did get some good stuff out of it, right? Like, I would say the saving grace for Apple's AI, and you've said this a few times now, has been the AI chip and the AI hardware. The only reason they have an AI chip, the neural engine they launched in 2017, was because of the Apple Car.

50:57That was designed to power the AI needed for a self-driving car, and they shrunk it down for the phone. So if the Apple Car project didn't get ignited back in 2014, 15, they would be even further behind in AI than they are today. And so give a shout-out to the Apple Car team. And you know, the Vision Pro. I'm still pulling for an Apple Car with a naturally aspirated V12. Can you imagine? It would be crazy. It would be great. Real wheel drive. Gated manual. Gated manual. I think they would have just destroyed Tesla if they just didn't set their bar so high when we talk about overengineering. Can you imagine like a Model Y or a Model 3 or even an S, whatever, just like with that Apple interior, the Apple ecosystem, the Apple interface?

51:39Like why did they have to go bananas, remove the steering wheel, remove the pedals, have everyone facing each other? Like why did they have to go – they overshot it. Why did they have to go like all Apple on us? Yep. Right? Like, why couldn't they just do a car? Just be a luxury brand. Just be a luxury brand. Would have been amazing. Yeah, and we got a sock instead. We got a sock instead. Those were the two choices. Well, the sock project shipped, okay? So you got to give them a sock. It did, and you know what? That was a success. Yes. Sold out. Got people talking. Yeah. You know, we did a review of the sock on Bloomberg, and people ate that thing up.

52:13People love it. They subscribed. That's great. Where's your sock? Smashing down the payroll. I've got socks. I've got, you know what I have? I've got sushi socks on right now. Oh, no way. He's a sushi fan. No, not from Apple. No, no, your favorite restaurant in the Valley. No, no, these are from my mother-in-law. Okay, that's fantastic. Well, we kept you super late. Yeah, we kept you much longer, but thank you so much. This is so much fun. I'm so glad you're in L.A. Do I get to do the gong? Of course. Hit the gong. Give us a number. How long you've been writing? How long you've been following Apple?

52:43Writing since 2009. 2009. Overnight success. There we go. Hit the gong. There you go. Boom. with authority for the carbonator the carbonate have a great rest of your day yeah we gotta do this again we'll be following your coverage tomorrow tomorrow