daring-rss

Christopher Mims, writing for The Wall Street Journal (News+):

The company’s core business is under siege. People are
increasingly getting answers from artificial
intelligence. Younger generations are using other
platforms to gather information. And the quality of the
results delivered by its search engine is deteriorating as the web
is flooded with AI-generated content. Taken together,
these forces could lead to long-term decline in Google search
traffic, and the outsize profits generated from it, which prop up
its parent company Alphabet’s money-losing bets on things like its
Waymo self-driving unit.

The first danger facing Google is clear and present: When people
want to search for information or go shopping on the internet,
they are shifting to Google’s competitors, and advertising dollars
are following them. In 2025, eMarketer projects, Google’s share of
the U.S. search-advertising market will fall below 50% for the
first time since the company began tracking it.

The accompanying chart (“Estimated share of U.S. search advertising revenue”) suggests Google’s decline has been Amazon’s gain. Basically, Google may still dominate the market for general web search, but people more and more are searching using apps and services that aren’t (or aren’t only) general web search engines. And the reason why is that Google web search has gotten worse.

 ★ 

Christopher Mims, writing for The Wall Street Journal (News+):

The company’s core business is under siege. People are
increasingly getting answers from artificial
intelligence. Younger generations are using other
platforms to gather information. And the quality of the
results delivered by its search engine is deteriorating as the web
is flooded with AI-generated content. Taken together,
these forces could lead to long-term decline in Google search
traffic, and the outsize profits generated from it, which prop up
its parent company Alphabet’s money-losing bets on things like its
Waymo self-driving unit.

The first danger facing Google is clear and present: When people
want to search for information or go shopping on the internet,
they are shifting to Google’s competitors, and advertising dollars
are following them. In 2025, eMarketer projects, Google’s share of
the U.S. search-advertising market will fall below 50% for the
first time since the company began tracking it.

The accompanying chart (“Estimated share of U.S. search advertising revenue”) suggests Google’s decline has been Amazon’s gain. Basically, Google may still dominate the market for general web search, but people more and more are searching using apps and services that aren’t (or aren’t only) general web search engines. And the reason why is that Google web search has gotten worse.

Read More 

Special guest Allen Pike joins the show to talk about the state of generative AI and how Apple Intelligence measures up (so far). Also: some speculation on Apple’s pending acquisition of the ever-difficult-to-pronounce Pixelmator.

Sponsored by:

WorkOS: The modern identity platform for B2B SaaS — free up to 1 million monthly active users.

 ★ 

Special guest Allen Pike joins the show to talk about the state of generative AI and how Apple Intelligence measures up (so far). Also: some speculation on Apple’s pending acquisition of the ever-difficult-to-pronounce Pixelmator.

Sponsored by:

WorkOS: The modern identity platform for B2B SaaS — free up to 1 million monthly active users.

Read More 

Amazon is running a holiday discount on M3 MacBook Airs, but it’s tricky — you need to click around through various color choices and watch the prices and ship dates. My main link on this post goes to the config that looks like their best deal for price-conscious gift buyers: the 13-inch M3 MacBook Air in space gray, with 24 GB RAM and 512 GB of storage for $1,299, a $200 discount from the list price, with delivery in a few days. They’ve also got the same configuration, at the same price, with the same delivery window in silver. Starlight only has “5 remaining in stock” (and that was at 8 just a few minutes ago, so they’ll likely be gone by the time you read this), and midnight is already out of stock.

The 13-inch configuration with 16 GB RAM and 512 GB storage is just $1,099, but delivery dates are in early January. They’ve got the configuration with 16 GB RAM and 256 GB storage for just $899, but only in midnight and starlight, and with delivery windows of “1 to 2 months”.

The best option for 15-inch M3 MacBook Airs is the configuration with 24 GB RAM and 512 GB storage for $1,424 — a $275 discount from the regular price of $1,699. That’s available at that price, with next-week delivery, in all four colors. They’ve also got $200 discounts on various configurations with 16 GB RAM, but delivery on those models is out in January.

Needless to say, all of these links are using my make-me-rich affiliate code. And Amazon still has USB-C AirPods Pro 2 for just $154, almost $100 off the regular price.

 ★ 

Amazon is running a holiday discount on M3 MacBook Airs, but it’s tricky — you need to click around through various color choices and watch the prices and ship dates. My main link on this post goes to the config that looks like their best deal for price-conscious gift buyers: the 13-inch M3 MacBook Air in space gray, with 24 GB RAM and 512 GB of storage for $1,299, a $200 discount from the list price, with delivery in a few days. They’ve also got the same configuration, at the same price, with the same delivery window in silver. Starlight only has “5 remaining in stock” (and that was at 8 just a few minutes ago, so they’ll likely be gone by the time you read this), and midnight is already out of stock.

The 13-inch configuration with 16 GB RAM and 512 GB storage is just $1,099, but delivery dates are in early January. They’ve got the configuration with 16 GB RAM and 256 GB storage for just $899, but only in midnight and starlight, and with delivery windows of “1 to 2 months”.

The best option for 15-inch M3 MacBook Airs is the configuration with 24 GB RAM and 512 GB storage for $1,424 — a $275 discount from the regular price of $1,699. That’s available at that price, with next-week delivery, in all four colors. They’ve also got $200 discounts on various configurations with 16 GB RAM, but delivery on those models is out in January.

Needless to say, all of these links are using my make-me-rich affiliate code. And Amazon still has USB-C AirPods Pro 2 for just $154, almost $100 off the regular price.

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Ian King, Liana Baker, and Ryan Gould, reporting for Bloomberg:*

Intel Corp. Chief Executive Officer Pat Gelsinger was forced out
after the board lost confidence in his plans to turn around the
iconic chipmaker, adding to turmoil at one of the pioneers of the
technology industry.

The clash came to a head last week when Gelsinger met with the
board about the company’s progress on winning back market share
and narrowing the gap with Nvidia Corp., according to people
familiar with the matter. He was given the option to retire or be
removed, and chose to announce the end of his career at Intel,
said the people, who declined to be identified discussing
proceedings that were not made public.

Intel Chief Financial Officer David Zinsner and Michelle Johnston
Holthaus are serving as interim co-CEOs while the board searches
for Gelsinger’s replacement, the company said in a statement.
Frank Yeary, independent chair of the board of Intel, will serve
as interim executive chair.

See also: Techmeme’s roundup.

* Bloomberg, of course, is the publication that published “The Big Hack” in October 2018 — a sensational story alleging that data centers of Apple, Amazon, and dozens of other companies were compromised by China’s intelligence services. The story presented no confirmable evidence at all, was vehemently denied by all companies involved, has not been confirmed by a single other publication (despite much effort to do so), and has been largely discredited by one of Bloomberg’s own sources. By all appearances “The Big Hack” was complete bullshit. Yet Bloomberg has issued no correction or retraction, and their only ostensibly substantial follow-up contained not one shred of evidence to back up their allegations. Bloomberg seemingly hopes we’ll all just forget about it. I say we do not just forget about it. Everything they publish should be treated with skepticism until they retract “The Big Hack” or provide evidence that any of it was true.

 ★ 

Ian King, Liana Baker, and Ryan Gould, reporting for Bloomberg:*

Intel Corp. Chief Executive Officer Pat Gelsinger was forced out
after the board lost confidence in his plans to turn around the
iconic chipmaker, adding to turmoil at one of the pioneers of the
technology industry.

The clash came to a head last week when Gelsinger met with the
board about the company’s progress on winning back market share
and narrowing the gap with Nvidia Corp., according to people
familiar with the matter. He was given the option to retire or be
removed, and chose to announce the end of his career at Intel,
said the people, who declined to be identified discussing
proceedings that were not made public.

Intel Chief Financial Officer David Zinsner and Michelle Johnston
Holthaus are serving as interim co-CEOs while the board searches
for Gelsinger’s replacement, the company said in a statement.
Frank Yeary, independent chair of the board of Intel, will serve
as interim executive chair.

See also: Techmeme’s roundup.

* Bloomberg, of course, is the publication that published “The Big Hack” in October 2018 — a sensational story alleging that data centers of Apple, Amazon, and dozens of other companies were compromised by China’s intelligence services. The story presented no confirmable evidence at all, was vehemently denied by all companies involved, has not been confirmed by a single other publication (despite much effort to do so), and has been largely discredited by one of Bloomberg’s own sources. By all appearances “The Big Hack” was complete bullshit. Yet Bloomberg has issued no correction or retraction, and their only ostensibly substantial follow-up contained not one shred of evidence to back up their allegations. Bloomberg seemingly hopes we’ll all just forget about it. I say we do not just forget about it. Everything they publish should be treated with skepticism until they retract “The Big Hack” or provide evidence that any of it was true.

Read More 

My thanks to Crunchy Bagel — the company of developer Quentin Zervaas — for sponsoring this week’s DF RSS feed to promote Streaks, their excellent app for iPhone and Apple Watch. Streaks is a to-do list that helps you form good habits. The point is to motivate you to tackle the things you want to do: anything from daily exercise goals, learning a new language, taking your vitamins, or quitting a bad habit. Anything. I’ve brushed my teeth daily since I was a child but I’ve never been good about flossing — until, generally, a few days before a scheduled dental cleaning. I’ve been using Streaks lately to groove a daily flossing habit. (I expect a pat on the back the next time I’m at the dentist.)

Streaks first sponsored DF back in 2016 and everything I wrote about it then remains true today. It’s a brilliant design, both visually and conceptually. I’ve tried a few apps like this over the years — including a few new ones in recent years — and what kills most of them is friction. If it takes too many fiddly steps to mark off the things you do, you stop using the app. Streaks makes it incredibly simple and fast to mark things done. For anything activity-related, you don’t have to do anything at all — it just tracks information from HealthKit (with your permission, of course) automatically. And in terms of the visual design, Streaks is both highly distinctive and very iOS-y — it doesn’t look like a stock iOS app, but it very much looks and feels like a good native iOS app. That’s a combination that takes a great eye to pull off. (Unsurprisingly, Streaks won an Apple Design Award a few years ago, and has often been featured by Apple in the App Store.)

iOS has not been standing still over the last 8 years and neither has Zervaas. Streaks supports all the latest stuff you’d hope for in an iOS app, including interactive widgets. Streaks’s interactive widgets reduce even further the friction of marking things done — interactive widgets were practically made for apps like Streaks. Streaks also has a great Apple Watch companion app.

I only accept sponsorships for products or services that I’m proud to support. But Streaks is so good that I want to go out of my way to draw attention to it (again). I’m not praising it with superlatives because it’s my sponsor; I’m doing so because it’s superlatively good. It’s a one-time purchase, and the latest update has added seasonal themes, just in time for Christmas (and your New Year’s resolutions).

If you have any sort of interest in an app to help reinforce daily habits (or an interest in great UI design), go check Streaks out.

If you have young children, be sure to also try Little Streaks. It’s a great way to help kids focus on routines: meal time, bedtime, learning to ride a bike, brushing their teeth (and flossing!) — anything. Little Streaks is free for one routine, or use code “DARING” for 50% off the first year of a subscription for unlimited routines.

 ★ 

My thanks to Crunchy Bagel — the company of developer Quentin Zervaas — for sponsoring this week’s DF RSS feed to promote Streaks, their excellent app for iPhone and Apple Watch. Streaks is a to-do list that helps you form good habits. The point is to motivate you to tackle the things you want to do: anything from daily exercise goals, learning a new language, taking your vitamins, or quitting a bad habit. Anything. I’ve brushed my teeth daily since I was a child but I’ve never been good about flossing — until, generally, a few days before a scheduled dental cleaning. I’ve been using Streaks lately to groove a daily flossing habit. (I expect a pat on the back the next time I’m at the dentist.)

Streaks first sponsored DF back in 2016 and everything I wrote about it then remains true today. It’s a brilliant design, both visually and conceptually. I’ve tried a few apps like this over the years — including a few new ones in recent years — and what kills most of them is friction. If it takes too many fiddly steps to mark off the things you do, you stop using the app. Streaks makes it incredibly simple and fast to mark things done. For anything activity-related, you don’t have to do anything at all — it just tracks information from HealthKit (with your permission, of course) automatically. And in terms of the visual design, Streaks is both highly distinctive and very iOS-y — it doesn’t look like a stock iOS app, but it very much looks and feels like a good native iOS app. That’s a combination that takes a great eye to pull off. (Unsurprisingly, Streaks won an Apple Design Award a few years ago, and has often been featured by Apple in the App Store.)

iOS has not been standing still over the last 8 years and neither has Zervaas. Streaks supports all the latest stuff you’d hope for in an iOS app, including interactive widgets. Streaks’s interactive widgets reduce even further the friction of marking things done — interactive widgets were practically made for apps like Streaks. Streaks also has a great Apple Watch companion app.

I only accept sponsorships for products or services that I’m proud to support. But Streaks is so good that I want to go out of my way to draw attention to it (again). I’m not praising it with superlatives because it’s my sponsor; I’m doing so because it’s superlatively good. It’s a one-time purchase, and the latest update has added seasonal themes, just in time for Christmas (and your New Year’s resolutions).

If you have any sort of interest in an app to help reinforce daily habits (or an interest in great UI design), go check Streaks out.

If you have young children, be sure to also try Little Streaks. It’s a great way to help kids focus on routines: meal time, bedtime, learning to ride a bike, brushing their teeth (and flossing!) — anything. Little Streaks is free for one routine, or use code “DARING” for 50% off the first year of a subscription for unlimited routines.

Read More 

Cal Paterson:

Large language models (LLMs) like Chat-GPT and Claude.ai are
whizzy and cool. A lot of people think that they are going to be
The Future. Maybe they are — but that doesn’t mean that building
them is going to be a profitable business.

In the 1960s, airlines were The Future. That is why old films have
so many swish shots of airports in them. Airlines though, turned
out to be an unavoidably rubbish business. I’ve flown on loads of
airlines that have gone bust: Monarch, WOW Air, Thomas Cook,
Flybmi, Zoom. And those are all busts from before coronavirus –
times change but being an airline is always a bad idea.

That’s odd, because other businesses, even ones which seem really
stupid, are much more profitable. Selling fizzy drinks is,
surprisingly, an amazing business. Perhaps the best. Coca-Cola’s
return on equity has rarely fallen below 30% in any given year.
That seems very unfair because being an airline is hard work but
making Coke is pretty easy. It’s even more galling because
Coca-Cola don’t actually make the Coke themselves – that is
outsourced to “bottling companies”. They literally just sell it.

This is such a crackerjack essay. Clear, concise, and uncomplicated. I find it hard to argue with. I’ve repeatedly mentioned an internal paper that leaked out of Google last year, titled “We Have No Moat, and Neither Does OpenAI”. The fact that OpenAI has lobbied for stringent AI regulation around the globe suggests that they fear this too — their encouragement of regulation could be explained by seeking a regulatory moat because there is no technical or business model moat to be had.

Paterson, expounding on his comparison to the airline industry, observes that commercials airlines have only two suppliers: Boeing and Airbus. He continues:

LLM makers sometimes imply that their suppliers are cloud
companies like Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, etc. That
wouldn’t be so bad because you could shop around and make them
compete to cut the huge cost of model training.

Really though, LLM makers have only one true supplier:
NVIDIA. NVIDIA make thechips that all models are
trained on — regardless of cloud vendor. And that gives
NVIDIA colossal, near total pricing power. NVIDIA are more
powerful relative to Anthropic or OpenAI than Airbus or
Boeing could ever dream of being.

At this moment, there are three companies in the world with market caps in excess of $3 trillion: Apple, Nvidia, and Microsoft. There are only two more with market caps in excess of $2 trillion: Amazon and Google. Engineering, training, and providing LLMs isn’t the business with a moat. The business with a moat is making the cutting-edge computer hardware that trains LLMs, and that belongs to Nvidia.

I have more to say about Paterson’s essay, but I really just want you to read it for now.

 ★ 

Cal Paterson:

Large language models (LLMs) like Chat-GPT and Claude.ai are
whizzy and cool. A lot of people think that they are going to be
The Future. Maybe they are — but that doesn’t mean that building
them is going to be a profitable business.

In the 1960s, airlines were The Future. That is why old films have
so many swish shots of airports in them. Airlines though, turned
out to be an unavoidably rubbish business. I’ve flown on loads of
airlines that have gone bust: Monarch, WOW Air, Thomas Cook,
Flybmi, Zoom. And those are all busts from before coronavirus –
times change but being an airline is always a bad idea.

That’s odd, because other businesses, even ones which seem really
stupid, are much more profitable. Selling fizzy drinks is,
surprisingly, an amazing business. Perhaps the best. Coca-Cola’s
return on equity has rarely fallen below 30% in any given year.
That seems very unfair because being an airline is hard work but
making Coke is pretty easy. It’s even more galling because
Coca-Cola don’t actually make the Coke themselves – that is
outsourced to “bottling companies”. They literally just sell it.

This is such a crackerjack essay. Clear, concise, and uncomplicated. I find it hard to argue with. I’ve repeatedly mentioned an internal paper that leaked out of Google last year, titled “We Have No Moat, and Neither Does OpenAI”. The fact that OpenAI has lobbied for stringent AI regulation around the globe suggests that they fear this too — their encouragement of regulation could be explained by seeking a regulatory moat because there is no technical or business model moat to be had.

Paterson, expounding on his comparison to the airline industry, observes that commercials airlines have only two suppliers: Boeing and Airbus. He continues:

LLM makers sometimes imply that their suppliers are cloud
companies like Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, etc. That
wouldn’t be so bad because you could shop around and make them
compete to cut the huge cost of model training.

Really though, LLM makers have only one true supplier:
NVIDIA. NVIDIA make thechips that all models are
trained on — regardless of cloud vendor. And that gives
NVIDIA colossal, near total pricing power. NVIDIA are more
powerful relative to Anthropic or OpenAI than Airbus or
Boeing could ever dream of being.

At this moment, there are three companies in the world with market caps in excess of $3 trillion: Apple, Nvidia, and Microsoft. There are only two more with market caps in excess of $2 trillion: Amazon and Google. Engineering, training, and providing LLMs isn’t the business with a moat. The business with a moat is making the cutting-edge computer hardware that trains LLMs, and that belongs to Nvidia.

I have more to say about Paterson’s essay, but I really just want you to read it for now.

Read More 

Kind of wild that this entire sub-site is still standing on Apple.com, including working video. (Fingers crossed that my linking to it doesn’t bring it to the attention of someone who decides to 404 it.)

 ★ 

Kind of wild that this entire sub-site is still standing on Apple.com, including working video. (Fingers crossed that my linking to it doesn’t bring it to the attention of someone who decides to 404 it.)

Read More 

From Nathan Edwards’s 6/10 review of the M4 iMac for The Verge:

I also do not love that the stand has no height adjustment, and
you can’t swap it for a more ergonomic option without buying an
entirely different computer. Apple sells a version of the iMac
with a VESA mount, but it doesn’t come with a stand at all,
and most height-adjustable VESA mounts are not as pretty as the
iMac. The Studio Display has a height-adjustable stand option, so
we know Apple can make one it’s willing to put out into the
world. It just hasn’t done so here. But whatever. I have hardcover
books. It’s fine.

It wasn’t Edwards, but Nilay Patel, who reviewed the Studio Display for The Verge, but in that review the $1,600 cost — which called out the $400 surcharge for the optional adjustable stand — was one of the three bullet items under “The Bad”. So it’s not hard to guess that if the M4 iMac had an optional adjustable stand, it would still be listed a con, because surely that option, from Apple, would cost at least $300.

(I’ve used a Studio Display with the pricey options for nano-texture and adjustable height ever since it came out, and consider both options well worth the cost.)

But the weird thing about Edwards’s review is that the whole thing is predicated on his not seeing the appeal of an all-in-one computer. I feel the same way, personally. My primary computer is a MacBook Pro that I connect, lid-closed, to the aforementioned-in-parenthetical-aside Studio Display most of the time. If I were to buy a dedicated desktop Mac I’d get either a Mac Mini or Mac Studio and connect that to a Studio Display. But the iMac is obviously intended for people who want an all-in-one.

It makes for a very strange, dare I say pointless, review. It’s like a bicycle review from someone who admits that they only ever walk or drive a car and don’t see why anyone else doesn’t walk or drive everywhere. Does anyone make a better all-in-one PC than the iMac? If so, who? If not why is this a 6/10?

 ★ 

From Nathan Edwards’s 6/10 review of the M4 iMac for The Verge:

I also do not love that the stand has no height adjustment, and
you can’t swap it for a more ergonomic option without buying an
entirely different computer. Apple sells a version of the iMac
with a VESA mount, but it doesn’t come with a stand at all,
and most height-adjustable VESA mounts are not as pretty as the
iMac. The Studio Display has a height-adjustable stand option, so
we know Apple can make one it’s willing to put out into the
world. It just hasn’t done so here. But whatever. I have hardcover
books. It’s fine.

It wasn’t Edwards, but Nilay Patel, who reviewed the Studio Display for The Verge, but in that review the $1,600 cost — which called out the $400 surcharge for the optional adjustable stand — was one of the three bullet items under “The Bad”. So it’s not hard to guess that if the M4 iMac had an optional adjustable stand, it would still be listed a con, because surely that option, from Apple, would cost at least $300.

(I’ve used a Studio Display with the pricey options for nano-texture and adjustable height ever since it came out, and consider both options well worth the cost.)

But the weird thing about Edwards’s review is that the whole thing is predicated on his not seeing the appeal of an all-in-one computer. I feel the same way, personally. My primary computer is a MacBook Pro that I connect, lid-closed, to the aforementioned-in-parenthetical-aside Studio Display most of the time. If I were to buy a dedicated desktop Mac I’d get either a Mac Mini or Mac Studio and connect that to a Studio Display. But the iMac is obviously intended for people who want an all-in-one.

It makes for a very strange, dare I say pointless, review. It’s like a bicycle review from someone who admits that they only ever walk or drive a car and don’t see why anyone else doesn’t walk or drive everywhere. Does anyone make a better all-in-one PC than the iMac? If so, who? If not why is this a 6/10?

Read More 

Holiday shopping bundle of 13 excellent Mac Apps, with two ways to buy. Get the whole bundle of 13 apps for $74 (a 76 percent discount from the combined regular prices), or, pick and choose a la carte and buy apps at 50 percent off.

Included in the promotion is Stairways Software’s astonishingly powerful and useful Keyboard Maestro, which almost never goes on sale. There are many longstanding Mac apps and utilities that I enjoy, appreciate, and recommend. There are very few that I can say I’d feel lost without. Keyboard Maestro is one of those.

Other apps in the Space/Time bundle that I use: TextSniper (instantly OCR any text you see on screen), DaisyDisk (disk space visualizer/cleanup), CleanShot X (advanced screenshot utility), and Bartender (menu bar item manager).

 ★ 

Holiday shopping bundle of 13 excellent Mac Apps, with two ways to buy. Get the whole bundle of 13 apps for $74 (a 76 percent discount from the combined regular prices), or, pick and choose a la carte and buy apps at 50 percent off.

Included in the promotion is Stairways Software’s astonishingly powerful and useful Keyboard Maestro, which almost never goes on sale. There are many longstanding Mac apps and utilities that I enjoy, appreciate, and recommend. There are very few that I can say I’d feel lost without. Keyboard Maestro is one of those.

Other apps in the Space/Time bundle that I use: TextSniper (instantly OCR any text you see on screen), DaisyDisk (disk space visualizer/cleanup), CleanShot X (advanced screenshot utility), and Bartender (menu bar item manager).

Read More 

Borderline incredible discount on AirPods Pro 2 at Amazon. This is just short of $100 off the retail list price of $249. (Buy through this link and I’ll get rich on the affiliate commission.)

 ★ 

Borderline incredible discount on AirPods Pro 2 at Amazon. This is just short of $100 off the retail list price of $249. (Buy through this link and I’ll get rich on the affiliate commission.)

Read More