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Mark Gurman:

Apple Inc. will introduce a new homegrown app next week called
Passwords, aiming to make it easier for customers to log in to
websites and software, according to people with knowledge of
the matter.

This isn’t an all-new app, but rather it’s breaking the Passwords panel out of the Settings app sidebar and into its own proper standalone app. I’ll bet Apple introduces new features, too, but Gurman doesn’t describe any. The Passwords panel in Settings, including the system-wide integrations with Safari and WebKit, already has the scope and breadth of an app. I’ve personally been all-in for many years on using iCloud for my own passwords, authentication codes, and now passkeys. For me it’s proven robust and trustworthy.

Making Passwords its own proper app is overdue, though. Apple tries to manage a good balance with how many standalone apps ships as part of the system on iOS. On the Mac, there’s an easier split: Apple puts a dozen or so of the system’s most-used apps in the Dock by default, and puts 46 apps in the Applications folder, and another 18 nerdier apps in the Utilities sub-folder within Applications. On iOS Apple puts some of its own apps within folders, but that still adds to the visual complexity of the default home screens. Password management is so important, and Apple’s own system is so good, that it deserves more prominence. Making Passwords its own app won’t just make it more discoverable, it will (correctly) set the perception that Apple Passwords is a serious personal security management tool that users should considering adopting.

 ★ 

Mark Gurman:

Apple Inc. will introduce a new homegrown app next week called
Passwords, aiming to make it easier for customers to log in to
websites and software, according to people with knowledge of
the matter.

This isn’t an all-new app, but rather it’s breaking the Passwords panel out of the Settings app sidebar and into its own proper standalone app. I’ll bet Apple introduces new features, too, but Gurman doesn’t describe any. The Passwords panel in Settings, including the system-wide integrations with Safari and WebKit, already has the scope and breadth of an app. I’ve personally been all-in for many years on using iCloud for my own passwords, authentication codes, and now passkeys. For me it’s proven robust and trustworthy.

Making Passwords its own proper app is overdue, though. Apple tries to manage a good balance with how many standalone apps ships as part of the system on iOS. On the Mac, there’s an easier split: Apple puts a dozen or so of the system’s most-used apps in the Dock by default, and puts 46 apps in the Applications folder, and another 18 nerdier apps in the Utilities sub-folder within Applications. On iOS Apple puts some of its own apps within folders, but that still adds to the visual complexity of the default home screens. Password management is so important, and Apple’s own system is so good, that it deserves more prominence. Making Passwords its own app won’t just make it more discoverable, it will (correctly) set the perception that Apple Passwords is a serious personal security management tool that users should considering adopting.

Read More 

“Jamie I”, in the MacRumors forums, all the way back on April 14:

We have been expecting M3 iPad Pros for a while now but I was just
browsing through some of the rumors and I noticed something
interesting.

There was information from a private X account with a proven track
record that shared chip identifiers for the new WiFi + cellular
iPad Pros and it’s apparently using a T8132 chip. However, T8132
is not the identifier for the M3 chip which is T8122.

In fact, based on the pattern that the M series chips have been
following, it seems like it’s the M4 chip.

This was exactly right. It was also two weeks before Mark Gurman’s “I’m hearing there is a strong possibility that the chip in the new iPad Pro will be the M4, not the M3” eye-opener in his Power On column.

 ★ 

“Jamie I”, in the MacRumors forums, all the way back on April 14:

We have been expecting M3 iPad Pros for a while now but I was just
browsing through some of the rumors and I noticed something
interesting.

There was information from a private X account with a proven track
record that shared chip identifiers for the new WiFi + cellular
iPad Pros and it’s apparently using a T8132 chip. However, T8132
is not the identifier for the M3 chip which is T8122.

In fact, based on the pattern that the M series chips have been
following, it seems like it’s the M4 chip.

This was exactly right. It was also two weeks before Mark Gurman’s “I’m hearing there is a strong possibility that the chip in the new iPad Pro will be the M4, not the M3” eye-opener in his Power On column.

Read More 

Still available, but edging each day toward selling out:

Location: The California Theatre, San Jose
Showtime: Tuesday, 11 June 2024, 7pm PT (Doors open 6pm)
Special Guest(s): Yes
Price: $60

At least one fun surprise is in store.

 ★ 

Still available, but edging each day toward selling out:

Location: The California Theatre, San Jose
Showtime: Tuesday, 11 June 2024, 7pm PT (Doors open 6pm)
Special Guest(s): Yes
Price: $60

At least one fun surprise is in store.

Read More 

Chance Miller, reporting for 9to5Mac:

Over the weekend, we reported that Apple had updated its
website to say the new iPad Air’s M2 chip features a 9-core GPU,
despite originally advertising it as a 10-core GPU. An Apple
spokesperson has now confirmed this change to 9to5Mac, while
also saying that all performance claims remain accurate and were
based on a 9-core GPU.

Here’s the full statement from an Apple spokesperson:

We are updating Apple.com to correct the core count for
the M2 iPad Air. All performance claims for the M2 iPad Air are
accurate and based on a 9-core GPU.

The second part of that sentence is key. Apple is saying that all
the performance claims it made about the M2 chip in the iPad Air
are accurate, despite the 9-core versus 10-core GPU mix-up. For
example, Apple’s claim that the M2 iPad Air is nearly 50% faster
than the M1 model still stands.

This is not a big deal, at all, but still — what a surprising mistake from Apple. Really strange.

 ★ 

Chance Miller, reporting for 9to5Mac:

Over the weekend, we reported that Apple had updated its
website to say the new iPad Air’s M2 chip features a 9-core GPU,
despite originally advertising it as a 10-core GPU. An Apple
spokesperson has now confirmed this change to 9to5Mac, while
also saying that all performance claims remain accurate and were
based on a 9-core GPU.

Here’s the full statement from an Apple spokesperson:

We are updating Apple.com to correct the core count for
the M2 iPad Air. All performance claims for the M2 iPad Air are
accurate and based on a 9-core GPU.

The second part of that sentence is key. Apple is saying that all
the performance claims it made about the M2 chip in the iPad Air
are accurate, despite the 9-core versus 10-core GPU mix-up. For
example, Apple’s claim that the M2 iPad Air is nearly 50% faster
than the M1 model still stands.

This is not a big deal, at all, but still — what a surprising mistake from Apple. Really strange.

Read More 

Wes Davis, The Verge:

Humane is telling AI Pin owners today that they should
“immediately” stop using the charging case that came with its AI
gadget. There are issues with a third-party battery cell that “may
pose a fire safety risk,” the company wrote in an email to
customers (including The Verge’s David Pierce, who reviewed it
when it came out).

Humane says it has “disqualified” that vendor and is moving to
find another supplier. It also specified that the AI Pin itself,
the magnetic Battery Booster, and its charging pad are “not
affected.” As recompense, the company is offering two free months
of its subscription service, which is required for most of its
functionality.

Ugh. I’m all for cracking jokes at Humane’s expense, but this news fills me with nothing but sincere empathy for everyone at the company. Hardware is so fucking hard. I’m glad that there’s seemingly no news of any actual incidents or injuries, and hope there aren’t any.

 ★ 

Wes Davis, The Verge:

Humane is telling AI Pin owners today that they should
“immediately” stop using the charging case that came with its AI
gadget. There are issues with a third-party battery cell that “may
pose a fire safety risk,” the company wrote in an email to
customers (including The Verge’s David Pierce, who reviewed it
when it came out).

Humane says it has “disqualified” that vendor and is moving to
find another supplier. It also specified that the AI Pin itself,
the magnetic Battery Booster, and its charging pad are “not
affected.” As recompense, the company is offering two free months
of its subscription service, which is required for most of its
functionality.

Ugh. I’m all for cracking jokes at Humane’s expense, but this news fills me with nothing but sincere empathy for everyone at the company. Hardware is so fucking hard. I’m glad that there’s seemingly no news of any actual incidents or injuries, and hope there aren’t any.

Read More 

The AP:

It’s a notable blow to American Express, whose customers are often
the most attractive among merchants and spend the most money per
month on their cards. But it’s not the first time merchants have
voiced opposition to AmEx’s business practices by walking away,
most notably the warehouse chain Costco nearly a decade ago.

“After careful consideration, eBay has decided to no longer accept
American Express globally effective Aug. 17 due to the
unacceptably high fees American Express charges for processing
credit card transactions,” said eBay spokesman Scott Overland, in
a statement.

One-off dispute, or the start of a trend?

AmEx has been on an aggressive campaign, under its current CEO
Steve Squeri, to be a more universally accepted payment option
across all merchants in an effort to combat the negative image
that AmEx is less accepted and only available for its cardmembers
for travel, dining, high-end shops or in dense urban areas. AmEx
says its cards are now accepted at 99% of the places that Visa and
Mastercard are accepted in the U.S., a metric it achieved in 2019.

As a longtime Amex cardholder who more or less lives through it, that’s my experience. But a few weeks ago I stopped at a Sonic Drive-In and when I tried to pay, they told me my transaction was rejected, which didn’t sound right. Turns out they don’t accept American Express, and the clerk at the window didn’t know.

 ★ 

The AP:

It’s a notable blow to American Express, whose customers are often
the most attractive among merchants and spend the most money per
month on their cards. But it’s not the first time merchants have
voiced opposition to AmEx’s business practices by walking away,
most notably the warehouse chain Costco nearly a decade ago.

“After careful consideration, eBay has decided to no longer accept
American Express globally effective Aug. 17 due to the
unacceptably high fees American Express charges for processing
credit card transactions,” said eBay spokesman Scott Overland, in
a statement.

One-off dispute, or the start of a trend?

AmEx has been on an aggressive campaign, under its current CEO
Steve Squeri, to be a more universally accepted payment option
across all merchants in an effort to combat the negative image
that AmEx is less accepted and only available for its cardmembers
for travel, dining, high-end shops or in dense urban areas. AmEx
says its cards are now accepted at 99% of the places that Visa and
Mastercard are accepted in the U.S., a metric it achieved in 2019.

As a longtime Amex cardholder who more or less lives through it, that’s my experience. But a few weeks ago I stopped at a Sonic Drive-In and when I tried to pay, they told me my transaction was rejected, which didn’t sound right. Turns out they don’t accept American Express, and the clerk at the window didn’t know.

Read More 

Me, yesterday:

What’s next for Long, a spot in a Huawei commercial slagging on the Qualcomm modems in iPhones?

Business Insider in 2017:

Justin Long, the actor probably best known for his role as the “I’m a Mac” guy from Apple’s classic TV commercials, is now appearing in a commercial promoting the Huawei Mate 9 Android phone.

 ★ 

Me, yesterday:

What’s next for Long, a spot in a Huawei commercial slagging on the Qualcomm modems in iPhones?

Business Insider in 2017:

Justin Long, the actor probably best known for his role as the “I’m a Mac” guy from Apple’s classic TV commercials, is now appearing in a commercial promoting the Huawei Mate 9 Android phone.

Read More 

The core genius at the heart of the original “Get a Mac” campaign is that while Long’s Mac character was likable, John Hodgman’s PC — ostensibly the foil — was lovable.

At the conclusion of Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon’s keynote yesterday at Computex 2024 in Taipei, he unveiled a new ad starring Justin Long, who played the Mac in Apple’s long-running “Get a Mac” (“I’m a Mac …” / “… and I’m a PC”) campaign in the mid-2000s. The 30-second bit was seemingly removed today, by Qualcomm, from the YouTube video of Amon’s keynote, but there’s a copy of just the ad here. Warning: it’s excruciatingly awkward.

I don’t know what Qualcomm was thinking here (nor what has happened to Long’s acting career), but the most bizarre aspect of this is that Intel used Long in the exact same way just three years ago. I wrote then, of the Intel take on this dumb idea:

I find it cringey, and kind of hard to watch. It’s neither parody
nor sequel. It’s an attempt at comedy from writers who have no
sense of humor. The concept isn’t actually anything beyond
“Let’s hire Justin Long as our new pitchman, that’ll show
them.” One gets the feeling, early on, that there was an
uncomfortable phone call to Justin Long from his agent that
began, “Before you say ‘no’, at least let me tell you how much
money they’re offering.” The concept wouldn’t really work with
anyone other than Justin Long.

Qualcomm’s spot is even worse. The premise is that Long is searching the web for “where can i find a snapdragon powered pc?” because his MacBook is inundating him with a nonstop barrage of notifications and warnings for things like his printer not being found because he’s not connected to Wi-Fi (yet somehow he’s searching the web?), an app that needs to be “optimized” for his Mac, and an email from his mom asking if he’s eaten lunch yet. These supposed technical problems aren’t actually problems on MacOS, and switching to a Snapdragon-powered Windows PC isn’t going to stop his mom from emailing him.

It’s not like there’s a joke here that falls flat. There is no joke, nor even an attempt at one. It’s just “Hey look, we hired the ‘I’m a Mac’ guy.” Even the production values on the commercial are bad. How is Greg Joswiak going to sleep at night?

The core genius at the heart of the original “Get a Mac” campaign is that while Long’s Mac character was likable, John Hodgman’s PC — ostensibly the foil — was downright lovable. In lesser creative hands, the Mac character would’ve been the hero and the PC would’ve been downright loathsome — and the campaign would have consisted of a single ad that ran for one month, tops, and no one would remember it today. Instead, by making Hodgman’s PC the lovable-but-doomed-to-lose protagonist — a la Rodney Dangerfield’s genius can’t-get-no-respect comic persona — the campaign wasn’t just funny, it worked. It actually did what for two decades had seemed impossible — it convinced PC users to switch to the Mac.

In 2020, a year before Justin Long went rogue for Intel, it was Hodgman, solo, whom Apple brought back for a “one more thing” coda to the announcement of the first batch of Apple silicon-based Macs.1 Now that spot was funny, and that’s the character whom everyone remembers with abiding affection.

If Apple were to work in a bit with Hodgman on screen in this Monday’s WWDC keynote, the crowd at Apple Park would go bananas, and the clip would go viral on social media. If they put Long on screen, by himself — which, clearly, after his serial brand betrayals,2 is never going to happen — there’d be a lot of “Who’s that?”

Read More 

Wayne Ma, reporting for The Information (paywalled, alas; 9to5Mac has a summary):

Apple was in talks last year to launch its Apple TV+ video
streaming service in China via a deal with China Mobile, the
country’s largest telecommunications provider, according to people
with knowledge of the matter. If successful, the talks would make
Apple TV+ the only U.S. streaming service to be available in
China, one of the world’s biggest markets. The status of the talks
is unknown. […]

Under the terms of the deal being discussed last year, China
Mobile would offer Apple TV+ for a monthly fee and feature Apple’s
video content prominently on Mobile HD, a set-top box that is
included with China Mobile’s broadband service. Apple and China
Mobile would split revenue from Apple TV+ subscriptions, the
person said.

Apple charges $9.99 for its video streaming service in the U.S.,
but it would likely have to charge less in China due to the weaker
purchasing power of its consumers. For example, Apple Music costs
only $1.55 a month in China, compared with $10.99 in the U.S.
Video-streaming subscription services in China cost anywhere from
between $3 to $5 a month on average.

Ma focuses on the business implications of such a deal. My mind wonders about the content implications. Remember this report by Alex Kantrowitz and John Paczkowski for BuzzFeed News back in 2019, with the subhead “We thought trade would bring Western values to China. Instead, it brought Chinese values to Apple”:

In early 2018 as development on Apple’s slate of exclusive Apple
TV+ programming was underway, the company’s leadership gave
guidance to the creators of some of those shows to avoid
portraying China in a poor light, BuzzFeed News has learned.
Sources in position to know said the instruction was communicated
by Eddy Cue, Apple’s SVP of internet software and services, and
Morgan Wandell, its head of international content development. It
was part of Apple’s ongoing efforts to remain in China’s good
graces after a 2016 incident in which Beijing shut down
Apple’s iBooks Store and iTunes Movies six months after they
debuted in the country. […]

Apple’s tiptoeing around the Chinese government isn’t unusual in
Hollywood. It’s an accepted practice. “They all do
it,” one showrunner who was not affiliated with Apple told
BuzzFeed News. “They have to if they want to play in that market.
And they all want to play in that market. Who wouldn’t?”

I wouldn’t. To hell with the money. The entire rest of the world is more than large enough. It’s a disgrace to have rules in place to avoid upsetting the thin-skinned tyrants who rule the largest totalitarian regime in the history of the world. How is it anything less than cowardice to forbid portraying China as the villains in a movie or show when the CCP is, in fact, villainous? Back in 2020 I wrote:

Ben Thompson beat me to the punch on yesterday’s edition of
Dithering, observing that a rule like this about Russia
during the Cold War would have blocked the entire James Bond
franchise from existing, not to mention just about any lesser spy
movies from the era. Or what of Stanley Kubrick’s Dr.
Strangelove? Like the Soviet Union in the decades after WWII,
China is not some obscure small player on the world stage, and
they systematically do things that deserve to be portrayed “in a
poor light”. To take China off the table is to take much of what’s
going on geopolitically in the world today off the table.

I get it, of course. I don’t agree with it, artistically or
ethically, but I get it: money talks, and China is where Apple
assembles most of its products and a big market where it sells
them, too. But just because it’s so transparently obvious why
Apple would forbid any negative portrayals of China doesn’t make
it any less outrageous. […]

Which studios or streaming services would bankroll today’s
equivalent of Charlie Chaplin’s classic The Great
Dictator, with Xi Jinping in Hitler’s place as the
deserving target of satiric mockery? Netflix — which doesn’t
offer its service in China and has no dependence on
theatrical box office revenue — maybe?

What’s next, removing the Taiwanese flag emoji from the keyboard for users in Hong Kong because Winnie the Xi’s feelings are hurt that Taiwan remains staunchly independent? Oh, wait, that happened 5 years ago.

 ★ 

Wayne Ma, reporting for The Information (paywalled, alas; 9to5Mac has a summary):

Apple was in talks last year to launch its Apple TV+ video
streaming service in China via a deal with China Mobile, the
country’s largest telecommunications provider, according to people
with knowledge of the matter. If successful, the talks would make
Apple TV+ the only U.S. streaming service to be available in
China, one of the world’s biggest markets. The status of the talks
is unknown. […]

Under the terms of the deal being discussed last year, China
Mobile would offer Apple TV+ for a monthly fee and feature Apple’s
video content prominently on Mobile HD, a set-top box that is
included with China Mobile’s broadband service. Apple and China
Mobile would split revenue from Apple TV+ subscriptions, the
person said.

Apple charges $9.99 for its video streaming service in the U.S.,
but it would likely have to charge less in China due to the weaker
purchasing power of its consumers. For example, Apple Music costs
only $1.55 a month in China, compared with $10.99 in the U.S.
Video-streaming subscription services in China cost anywhere from
between $3 to $5 a month on average.

Ma focuses on the business implications of such a deal. My mind wonders about the content implications. Remember this report by Alex Kantrowitz and John Paczkowski for BuzzFeed News back in 2019, with the subhead “We thought trade would bring Western values to China. Instead, it brought Chinese values to Apple”:

In early 2018 as development on Apple’s slate of exclusive Apple
TV+ programming was underway, the company’s leadership gave
guidance to the creators of some of those shows to avoid
portraying China in a poor light, BuzzFeed News has learned.
Sources in position to know said the instruction was communicated
by Eddy Cue, Apple’s SVP of internet software and services, and
Morgan Wandell, its head of international content development. It
was part of Apple’s ongoing efforts to remain in China’s good
graces after a 2016 incident in which Beijing shut down
Apple’s iBooks Store and iTunes Movies six months after they
debuted in the country. […]

Apple’s tiptoeing around the Chinese government isn’t unusual in
Hollywood. It’s an accepted practice. “They all do
it,” one showrunner who was not affiliated with Apple told
BuzzFeed News. “They have to if they want to play in that market.
And they all want to play in that market. Who wouldn’t?”

I wouldn’t. To hell with the money. The entire rest of the world is more than large enough. It’s a disgrace to have rules in place to avoid upsetting the thin-skinned tyrants who rule the largest totalitarian regime in the history of the world. How is it anything less than cowardice to forbid portraying China as the villains in a movie or show when the CCP is, in fact, villainous? Back in 2020 I wrote:

Ben Thompson beat me to the punch on yesterday’s edition of
Dithering, observing that a rule like this about Russia
during the Cold War would have blocked the entire James Bond
franchise from existing, not to mention just about any lesser spy
movies from the era. Or what of Stanley Kubrick’s Dr.
Strangelove? Like the Soviet Union in the decades after WWII,
China is not some obscure small player on the world stage, and
they systematically do things that deserve to be portrayed “in a
poor light”. To take China off the table is to take much of what’s
going on geopolitically in the world today off the table.

I get it, of course. I don’t agree with it, artistically or
ethically, but I get it: money talks, and China is where Apple
assembles most of its products and a big market where it sells
them, too. But just because it’s so transparently obvious why
Apple would forbid any negative portrayals of China doesn’t make
it any less outrageous. […]

Which studios or streaming services would bankroll today’s
equivalent of Charlie Chaplin’s classic The Great
Dictator, with Xi Jinping in Hitler’s place as the
deserving target of satiric mockery? Netflix — which doesn’t
offer its service in China and has no dependence on
theatrical box office revenue — maybe?

What’s next, removing the Taiwanese flag emoji from the keyboard for users in Hong Kong because Winnie the Xi’s feelings are hurt that Taiwan remains staunchly independent? Oh, wait, that happened 5 years ago.

Read More 

Lora Kolodny, reporting for CNBC:

On Tesla’s first-quarter earnings call in April, Musk
said the electric vehicle company will increase the number of
active H100s — Nvidia’s flagship artificial intelligence chip — from 35,000 to 85,000 by the end of this year. He also
wrote in a post on X a few days later that Tesla
would spend $10 billion this year “in combined training and
inference AI.”

But emails written by Nvidia senior staff and widely shared inside
the company suggest that Musk presented an exaggerated picture of
Tesla’s procurement to shareholders. Correspondence from Nvidia
staffers also indicates that Musk diverted a sizable shipment of
AI processors that had been reserved for Tesla to his social media
company X, formerly known as Twitter. […]

By ordering Nvidia to let privately held X jump the line ahead of
Tesla, Musk pushed back the automaker’s receipt of more than $500
million in graphics processing units, or GPUs, by months, likely
adding to delays in setting up the supercomputers Tesla says it
needs to develop autonomous vehicles and humanoid robots.

The argument against one person being the CEO of multiple companies is generally about distraction/attention — that each CEO gig demands all of one’s available time. But here’s a case where two of Musk’s companies are in direct conflict with each other. Musk seemingly treats all of his companies as subsidiaries of his own personal fiefdom conglomerate, but that’s not the case. And unlike X Corp, Tesla Motors is publicly traded.

Matt Levine, in his Money Stuff column:

The extremely obvious answer is that you should not be the CEO and
controlling shareholder of two different companies that compete
for the same inputs! There is not a good answer! You can’t,
like, put this problem into the Good Governance Machine and have
it come out clean. The problem is that you have a fiduciary
obligation to the shareholders of one company to put their
interests first, and you have a fiduciary obligation to the
shareholders of the other company to put their interests first,
and you cannot do both. This is why one person is not usually the
CEO of two different companies that compete with each other, and,
when someone is, people get mad at him all the time.

I can’t recall a situation like this when, say, Jack Dorsey was CEO of Twitter and Square, or, going back further, when Steve Jobs was CEO of Apple and Pixar. In those cases it was more like an athlete who played two different sports, like Bo Jackson or Deion Sanders. Fans of one their teams might argue that they could do even better in that one sport by concentrating on it year-round, but you couldn’t argue that the Kansas City Royals were competing against the Oakland Raiders. With Musk and AI, it’s like he’s playing on several competing teams within the same league.

 ★ 

Lora Kolodny, reporting for CNBC:

On Tesla’s first-quarter earnings call in April, Musk
said the electric vehicle company will increase the number of
active H100s — Nvidia’s flagship artificial intelligence chip — from 35,000 to 85,000 by the end of this year. He also
wrote in a post on X a few days later that Tesla
would spend $10 billion this year “in combined training and
inference AI.”

But emails written by Nvidia senior staff and widely shared inside
the company suggest that Musk presented an exaggerated picture of
Tesla’s procurement to shareholders. Correspondence from Nvidia
staffers also indicates that Musk diverted a sizable shipment of
AI processors that had been reserved for Tesla to his social media
company X, formerly known as Twitter. […]

By ordering Nvidia to let privately held X jump the line ahead of
Tesla, Musk pushed back the automaker’s receipt of more than $500
million in graphics processing units, or GPUs, by months, likely
adding to delays in setting up the supercomputers Tesla says it
needs to develop autonomous vehicles and humanoid robots.

The argument against one person being the CEO of multiple companies is generally about distraction/attention — that each CEO gig demands all of one’s available time. But here’s a case where two of Musk’s companies are in direct conflict with each other. Musk seemingly treats all of his companies as subsidiaries of his own personal fiefdom conglomerate, but that’s not the case. And unlike X Corp, Tesla Motors is publicly traded.

Matt Levine, in his Money Stuff column:

The extremely obvious answer is that you should not be the CEO and
controlling shareholder of two different companies that compete
for the same inputs! There is not a good answer! You can’t,
like, put this problem into the Good Governance Machine and have
it come out clean. The problem is that you have a fiduciary
obligation to the shareholders of one company to put their
interests first, and you have a fiduciary obligation to the
shareholders of the other company to put their interests first,
and you cannot do both. This is why one person is not usually the
CEO of two different companies that compete with each other, and,
when someone is, people get mad at him all the time.

I can’t recall a situation like this when, say, Jack Dorsey was CEO of Twitter and Square, or, going back further, when Steve Jobs was CEO of Apple and Pixar. In those cases it was more like an athlete who played two different sports, like Bo Jackson or Deion Sanders. Fans of one their teams might argue that they could do even better in that one sport by concentrating on it year-round, but you couldn’t argue that the Kansas City Royals were competing against the Oakland Raiders. With Musk and AI, it’s like he’s playing on several competing teams within the same league.

Read More