2025-08-15 05:18:51
Prediction #3 for 2025, made on December 31, 2024 was as follows:
Intel gets bailed out – We'll see what ends up happening with the CHIPS Act under the new Trump administration, but regardless, I have a hard time believing they're going to just let Intel wither on the vine. Enabling/bolstering a true American player in chips is a win, no matter the political party. Could a new administration help broker a deal to get, say, Microsoft to support the rejuvenation of Intel? First things, first, Intel needs to put in place a new leadership team. I'll keep my (early) money on Lip-Bu Tan here – if he can overhaul the entire board as well...
Well, the path was perhaps a bit different than I imagined. While I nailed the Lip-Bu Tan element, I don't think I possibly could have foreseen President Trump then calling for the ouster of Tan – before meeting with him and seeing there was clearly a deal to be done.
As Ryan Gould, Josh Wingrove, and Liana Baker report after that meeting:
The Trump administration is in talks with Intel Corp. to have the US government potentially take a stake in the beleaguered chipmaker, helping support the company’s effort to expand domestic manufacturing, according to people familiar with the plan.
The deal would help shore up Intel’s planned factory hub in Ohio, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the deliberations are private. The company had once promised to turn that site into the world’s largest chipmaking facility, though it’s been repeatedly delayed. The size of the potential stake isn’t clear.
This follows, of course, the "unprecedented" deal for the US government to get a cut of NVIDIA and AMD chip sales to China. And that itself follows Tim Cook literally presenting a gold bar to the President at the White House to ensure the erratic tariff threats miss Apple's core business – again. We live in interesting times. Interesting, stupid, and dangerous times.
Still, I'm not sure the government shouldn't be helping Intel here. I mean, they already were with the CHIPS Act. But Trump hates the CHIPS Act simply because it's associated with Joe Biden, so... he clearly has been seeking a different way to get involved and get credit. And taking a stake in Intel, rather than just granting them money, is certainly a Trumpian way of getting involved!
I still think Intel would be better suited to have a strong and aligned fiscal private partner here in the vein of Microsoft or Amazon or Apple or even NVIDIA. But the Trump administration seemingly tried that approach with TSMC and it didn't seem to go very far. So... I hope Intel is ready to make some gold-plated chips!
One more thing: a lot of those other predictions are looking pretty good at this point, if I do say so myself...
Collect them all...
2025-08-15 04:44:46
I'm not really sure what to make of the apparent internal code leak at Apple that has led to a slew of chip/product-related scoops in the past 24 hours at both MacRumors and Macworld – more on those below – but this one is especially interesting:
Following the release of its first in-house 5G modem with the iPhone 16e, rumors have suggested that Apple has been quietly preparing for a major leap forward in its MacBook lineup, one that could finally bring built-in cellular connectivity to its laptops. Internal Apple code seen by Macworld now reveals that the company has indeed been testing an unreleased MacBook Pro model with an M5 Pro chip and Apple’s first 5G modem.
Granted, assuming these leaks are legit – and there seem to be too many of them across at least two different publications with good track records on such things for them not to be? – it's entirely possible and likely even probable that Apple is simply testing the 5G chip inside of their MacBook Pro lineup. I mean, of course they are. If they're going to eventually release them, which they are, they need to start testing at some point and now that they have the in-house built modem...
But I also wouldn't dismiss the notion that they could come as early as next year either alongside the M5-powered MacBook Pros (which have been rumored to launch in early 2026 for some time now). Just as with the first MacBooks with Apple Silicon which used the old school MacBook Air chassis, there's a good um, case, to be made that Apple would want to roll out their first cellular modems into MacBook Pro form factors that are tried and tested. And if they're really going to fully redesign the MacBook Pro in 2027, as has also been rumored...
That said, early 2026 is awfully close. Is it possible that Apple does a special mid-cycle update to the MacBook Pro lineup to unveil the first cellular Mac? Or they could just announce it alongside the other "regular" MacBook Pros and launch it a bit later? Certainly, it would be a massive upgrade point for many users, myself included – especially if these M5-powered MacBook Pros otherwise will look the same as the M4s, which looked the same as the M3s, etc.
One more thing: On the leak topic, again, it's pretty wild that seemingly the following products were revealed via their chip sets:
Of those, a few things stand out:
2025-08-14 21:20:08
Just over a year ago, with Skydance seemingly on the verge of buying Paramount, I outlined some ideas for how they might scale the combined entities to success. I think it still stands up despite the fact that it took, well, over a year for the deal to actually close thanks to some regulatory – um – challenges. Challenges which were finally overcome in – um – ways.
Anyway, with the deal now done, I found my mind drifting back to one of those ideas I had back then...
2025-08-13 05:38:23
I'll give Perplexity one thing: making the offer thirty-four-POINT-five billion dollars is a nice touch. It makes it seem precise. Like a business person put a lot of thought into this transparently silly marketing stunt. A non-serious offer would be, say, $30B. But $34.5B? There's clearly math there, somewhere!
Perplexity on Tuesday offered to purchase Google’s Chrome browser for $34.5 billion as it works to challenge the tech giant’s web-search dominance.
Perplexity’s offer is significantly more than its own valuation, which is estimated at $18 billion. The company told The Wall Street Journal that several investors including large venture-capital funds had agreed to back the transaction in full.
Yeah, I mean if a VC fund were offered the chance to invest in a piece of software with 3.5B active users, they would do it every day of the week. Even if it takes $34.5B? Well, we're narrowing down the funds that could help with such a buyout, but sure, why not? It would have the potential to transform Perplexity from a second-tier AI startup to the first-tier immediately. And that first-tier is currently worth $300B (soon, perhaps to be $500B), (maybe) $200B, and $170B, with OpenAI, xAI, and Anthropic, respectively. Perplexity's current $18B valuation with Chrome added-on would zoom right past $50B.
That sounds good and fine on paper, but how would it actually work? If the VCs are footing the bill for Chrome, presumably they don't then own 100% of it, and instead are giving the money to Perplexity to buy it which would then boost the valuation to something well north of that $50B? Again, given the ceiling with the other top-tier AI startups, there is room to grow here – though all of those other three players actually train frontier models, Perplexity still would not in this scenario. And how certain are we that Perplexity would be able to fully leverage that 3.5B user base? Certainly, there would be some churn – probably a lot when people got a new version of Chrome and were confused/weirded out by all the new Perplexity – a brand almost none of those 3.5B users will know – pimping being done inside.
And that's if the judge lets them move all or even some of that user base over. And if they weren't allowed to do that, what's Chrome worth to Perplexity? The brand certainly has some value, but it's probably closer to $0 than $3.45B!
And wait. I'm taking this all way too seriously now. Again, this is clearly a marketing stunt. As it was the first time Perplexity floated it. And just as it was when they floated buying TikTok too. Perplexity loves this shit. And the press eats it up. And now I'm eating up the leftovers! Because guess what? Google is not selling Chrome! So this is like a strawman at an auction.
Yes, the judge in the antitrust case against Google is set to rule soon on the Chrome remedy, but it still feels unlikely he will make Google do something so drastic with Chrome. Because it just doesn't make a ton of sense (though Google is trying like hell to make it make more sense for the judge by shoving Gemini into Chrome!). Even if anyone could figure out the math, gifting Chrome to one of the AI players would be like the judge anointing a new king in the space – certainly if he let OpenAI buy it! Maybe there's a solution where a non-profit consortium is set up to manage a spun-off Chrome, much as they do with the Chromium layer that underpins Chrome (and many other browsers – including Perplexity's new one). But how well do non-profit consortiums do when it comes to building and maintaining actual products? (Don't say ChatGPT given OpenAI's "non-profit" status here!)
Estimates of Chrome’s enterprise value vary widely but recent ones have ranged from $20 billion to $50 billion.
I actually think Chrome is worth far more than that – to Google. But it's possible that it's also worth far less than that to anyone else. Because a huge part of the value of Chrome to Google is not needing to pay other companies for default placement in their browsers – you know, like the $20B+ a year Google pays to Apple right now, which also may be going away with the antitrust changes. Imagine a world where Chrome doesn't exist, or more to the point, where Google doesn't own Chrome, they're going to be paying tens of billions more to others. Maybe even to Perplexity in this scenario! How much is not paying those fees worth to Google? A lot. Certainly far more than even $34.5B.
That said, the value to others is likely in that massive user base. And again, if you remove Google from Chrome, it's hard to know where those users go. Do they stay? A lot of them surely would if Chrome owned by someone else was allowed to simply update the browsers already installed billions of times around the world. But if they had to re-download this newfangled Chrome, the situation gets more complicated, fast.
Again, I'm taking this way too seriously! It's not happening. Just like OpenAI isn't buying Chrome. Still, it's a somewhat savvy, if farcical, move on Perplexity's part:
The Perplexity offer could be an attempt to signal to the judge that there is an interested buyer, should he force a sale. In a letter to Sundar Pichai, chief executive of Google parent Alphabet. Perplexity said its offer to buy Chrome is “designed to satisfy an antitrust remedy in highest public interest by placing Chrome with a capable, independent operator.”
They know that the judge has been trying to figure out if a spin-off/sell-off deal was even feasible, and that's why you had all the players coming out of the woodwork to say that they'd be happy to buy Chrome. Of course they would! A weakened Google, even if Perplexity or anyone else can't buy Chrome, is good for Perplexity and all of the other players here – certainly when you consider what a formidable rival that Google is in AI.
Perplexity told Pichai that, as part of the proposed acquisition, it would maintain and support Chromium, the open-source project that supports Chrome and other browsers. It also said that it would continue placing Google as the default search engine within Chrome, though users could change settings.
That's another savvy move as it directly answers a key question I had about all of this selling-off Chrome stuff. Perplexity says it would continue to maintain Chromium – which again, Perplexity itself and many other browsers now use. So that's a good/important thing to signal. For a deal that will never happen.
Look, I'm trying to be reasonable here. Perplexity's move is clearly a publicity stunt (which they'd never admit, obviously), and I respect the hustle to continually get outlets like The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and Bloomberg to write about your company. And it has the added benefit of adding pressure to the antitrust case, trying to showcase to the judge that others would be willing to buy Chrome from Google – just at the moment he's about to rule, no less.
All that said, Perplexity does this type of stuff a lot. Too much, in my opinion. They should focus on building great products and a great, sustainable business. The first product was good. I'm less sold on the other attempts – including, by the way, their first take on a web browser in Comet, which I got access to last week and am generally underwhelmed by – certainly versus what another AI-first browser, Dia, is doing. Though I will say, Comet is a lot like Chrome! A sort of uglier Chrome.
I've long thought it made some sense for Apple to buy Perplexity given not just the AI chops, but the Search element as well. But I've always been hesitant about the cultural fit. And this kind of stuff just adds to that problem. Apple would have to be pretty desperate to buy up a team that constantly pulls such shenanigans.
Then again, Apple is pretty desperate...
Update: As Drew Breunig points out on Xitter, if you ask Perplexity how many users Chrome has, it cites 3.45B (rather than the 3.5B cited in the WSJ report). This certainly seems like the way they came to the $34.5B number – they're paying $10 per user – which is arguably more ridiculous than pulling a number out of thin air. Per below, the user number is a rough estimate that is undoubtedly off by some amount. But even that aside, paying $10/user is far below what many – certainly Google! – estimate such a user to be worth. And again, all of that math assumes that Perplexity would get to move over all of those 3.45B guesstimated users – and if they could, that they could get them all to stick around...
Update August 13, 2025: And look at that, just a day later and now Perplexity is rumored to be raising more money, report Rebecca Torrence, Charles Rollet, and Ben Bergman for BI.
Sadly, it's apparently only at a $20B valuation – up from the $18B just a month or so ago, which was up from the $14B just a few weeks before that – so are we going to see a $34.5B raise at $20B post? Now that would be newsworthy.
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
2025-08-12 21:20:01
When you've been around long enough, you start to notice patterns. So it is in life, so it is on the internet. With that context, I found myself watching the backlash to the roll-out of GPT-5 within ChatGPT with great amusement. This is, of course, the same general reaction you see when any product of a large enough scale makes changes. The changes can be good or they can be bad. That doesn't really matter. All that matters is the change. If it's not a fundamental law of products, it should be: users hate change. And the more used and loved a product is, the more feelings of hatred the change evokes.
So does that mean you should never change things? I mean sure, if you want to die a slow death, that can be a strategy.1 But obviously your product has to evolve with changing user behavior at various points. You can overdo it, for sure – Snap seems to consistently run into this issue – but there's a balance. And the products that stand the test of time tend to ride that wave the best.
So did OpenAI just wipeout? Well at the highest level, no. They'll be fine. On a scale of zero to Qwikster, I imagine this is about a three in terms of magnitude. The recent Sonos software fuck-up was probably more like an eight or nine.2 Sam Altman acted quickly to rectify the situation here with the easy fix: putting the old model back in place as an option. That's fine. The more troublesome element is that they didn't seem to realize this would happen. Again, history – certainly the history of software and certainly the history of software on the internet – is rife with examples and lessons.
The one that immediately jumped to my mind was Facebook. Before they were "Meta", the social network had a long history of rolling out changes to their service and facing major backlash and user revolts. The most famous of these was undoubtedly the first: the roll-out of the News Feed in 2006. It seems crazy to think that there was backlash against it now as it became both the most vital part of the product and one of the best ideas in the history of the internet – at least when it came to engagement and monetization. But there was – oh boy was there! Fast forward nearly 20 years and Meta is a $2T company today because of the News Feed. But if they had listened to the users...
It's all just a variation of the perhaps apocryphal Henry Ford quote, "If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses." That's just an offshoot of users hating change – to the point where they can't really think about or imagine why something new and different might actually be better.
At the same time, the GPT-5 roll-out was different than the News Feed roll-out because it was less of a UI change and more of a UX change. It was a mostly – but not fully – behind-the-scenes model swap. So in that regard, it's perhaps more akin to the many algorithm tweaks that Facebook has done throughout the years in the name of boosting engagement in that News Feed. "Pivot to Video" was a big part of this for a while, but there were other changes over the years, such as when Facebook tried to snuff out Twitter by making their feed much more akin to a real-time news and micro-update feed. There were many, many other such updates, all of which had their own levels of backlash. All of which were reported at the time to be the end of Facebook. And Facebook just kept on growing, to the tune of 3 billion users and still, somehow, growing even now!
But again, this ChatGPT update wasn't entirely just a behind-the-scenes algorithm update, like Facebook or even Google used to do.3 OpenAI also took away something which was there previously: the model picker. Well, technically it was still there, but only to decide between a few GPT-5 flavors. Whereas before it was... well a mess! And so it's completely understandable why OpenAI wanted to change that – the UI was becoming like Microsoft Office, with toolbar cruft galore! Clearly if AI was really advancing towards AGI, it would be able to figure out the best model for a user's query on its own.
Of course, that fucks with user agency. Which is always a tricky thing, but especially tricky when it comes to AI and all the debates surrounding the technology. Clearly, a large subset of users liked being able to decide which model they wanted to use as it gave them at least the feeling of more control. And many built their own workflows around access to particular versions of particular models, models which OpenAI just took from their hands in an instant.
I mean, obviously that was dumb. Even if the overall change was the right one from a product perspective. Both things can be true – and are here.
Casey Newton at Platformer has the reasonable and obvious list of how OpenAI should handle such changes going forward. They basically boil down to giving users options – especially paying users, as John Gruber notes at Daring Fireball. And lest you risk the aforementioned Microsoft Office UI cruft, you set a time period for sunsetting older models – a lesson which, again, basically every company at a large enough scale has learned over time.
I also might argue – as I have in the past – that the general concept of the model picker with OpenAI's obtuse model naming strategy, is beyond confusing for "regular" users. As I wrote last February, outlining the potential "Great AI UI Unification" which OpenAI clearly needed:
Well, now we're up to eight options – six in the main drop-down and still those same two "left-overs" in the sub-menu. And technically it's nine options if you include the "Temporary chat" toggle.
And depending on which model you choose to use, you get other options from there, as various buttons will be enabled in the message box for 'Web Search' and now 'Deep Research'. Oh and I forgot the '+' button, which has more options depending on where you're using it. And, of course, there's the '...' button in this box too, giving you a sub-menu for the 'Image' or 'Canvas' options. Oh yes, and Voice Mode. (And voice transcription on certain devices.)
Forget Microsoftian, it's downright Gordian!
And while some of those "regular" users have clearly learned how to use that system out of need, assuming that OpenAI intends to grow ChatGPT even beyond its current massive scale, this one-model-to-rule-them-all UI is still undoubtedly the right change for the masses. You just need to show more transparency around what that model is doing and picking, per Newton's point and what Altman has said they were going to do (and one of the true takeaways from the "DeepSeek Moment").
The only thing I might add is the idea that with OpenAI's move to "open source" (read: open weight) some of their models, you could give the option for users to download older models that they loved for whatever reason, just with the disclaimer that they're older and undoubtedly less performant and potentially out of date... (presuming they could be cleared from a security and risk perspective to run locally, of course).
Back to what I wrote in February:
Imagine this: an input box with no options. You simply type something and ChatGPT figures out your intent. Insert the joke about needing to ask ChatGPT which ChatGPT model to use – except, really! That's how it should more or less work, albeit mostly transparently (unless you want to see the chain-of-thought!) to users. I mean, obviously there will be some options, but those will be more meant for power users, as is the case with many tools.
The timing of this revelation was also interesting in light of a new report by Stephanie Palazzolo for The Information revealing that the reason why Anthropic has been so slow to release a reasoning model is because they're aiming to take the same general unified approach that Altman outlined above. And it's coming soon. Model-pickers are so 2024. 2025 is going to be all about the model picking itself.
It is interesting that when Anthropic finally rolled out their similar change, there wasn't this level of backlash. Yes, yes, there was a "funeral" for Claude 3 Sonnet, but that's clearly more tongue-in-cheek. But they also kept the model-picker UI, just buried it, and clearly part of the difference in reaction here to the actual model transparency change can probably be chalked up towards just how much more – and how much more varied – usage ChatGPT gets versus Claude.
More to today's issue, OpenAI clearly missed the bit about options for "power users". And really, any idiot could have figured out what to do here, back in April:
I just want a prompt box and I want ChatGPT to sort out what model to use behind the scenes based on what I'm asking for 99% of use cases. Give us the full chain-of-thought flow to instill trust that ChatGPT is smart enough to make the right call here. For the other 1%, there can be some sort of streamlined model picker. This will mainly be for power users, obviously. But with ChatGPT now going fully mainstream, this all clearly needs to happen pronto.
On the surface, it's strange that OpenAI didn't realize how their implementation would result in such a backlash. But when you step back, you can probably see why: again, the product tweaks are clearly the right thing to do going forward and presumably the company was so busy hard-charging towards this important launch that they didn't stop to really consider that they're now one of those companies with a product that is at a scale where such changes are going to be hated. Always. Again, no matter if they're "right" or "wrong". They're just "different" and people generally hate change. And at scale, such hatred – even if just by a vocal minority – always spirals into backlash.
And yes, it's undoubtedly further exacerbated here by the fact that AI is a different beast when it comes to the feelings it elicits – good and bad – from people. And the fact that some people are already integrating it so deeply into their lives – both professionally and personally – that Thanos-snapping a model out of existence is harsh to the point where some people might even consider it cruel. That's not a judgement either way, it just seemingly is what it is here. Joanna Stern correctly read the room in this regard in her newsletter a couple days before OpenAI did.
At the same time, it's important for OpenAI to have the right read of this room now. This isn't a "revert everything" moment like with Qwikster, it's a "make some tweaks", learn some lessons, and move forward moment. Just like Facebook used to do. But let's hope those tweaks are more on the subtle side and not like what Facebook would do in their privacy controls area. An area which, after intense legal and political scrutiny, now makes that Microsoft Office toolbar look like a beautiful, seamless, and simple bit of UI.
I'll end by returning one last time to the end of my UI post from February:
In that way, I'm reminded of Google. It's easy to forget now, but one of the key aspects of the actual product was the spartan design. It was a search box. That's it. None of the noise that Yahoo had. None of the cruft of AltaVista. Just a name and a search box. And that's largely still true 25 years later! There are options, but mainly after you let Google try to sort it out for you.
In fact, I think one of the key understated elements of Google throughout the years is just how good it is at figuring out your intent. It's honestly a better spell checker than spell checkers are. You can type something that's borderline gibberish and Google will usually figure it out. Those types of intangibles breeds user trust and usage. ChatGPT is actually quite good at it too, so they should just remove some of the creeping cruft.
Well, they did. But they moved too fast and broke things – namely some user workflows and trust. But again, that original Google Search box is what they should aspire to here. Probably before Google itself does...
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
1 Yes, yes, there are some products that almost stubbornly refuse to change. And sometimes it can actually reinforce the user love over a long enough period of time, sort of like a warm blanket that users know will always be there. But for every Wikipedia, you run the risk of being Craigslist, which gets disrupted quite easily in a fast-evolving world, especially on the internet. Also, Wikipedia is currently facing its own challenges in the age of AI...
2 Honestly, the Sonos situation was probably even worse than Qwikster debacle because that was a relatively straightforward fix for Netflix – just don't make the change. Sonos seemingly did a ton of work behind the scenes to make their software changes which were incredibly hard to just roll back – something which my friend, Tom Conrad, has been doing the lord's work as the new CEO of the company to try to fix. And the brand trust was hit harder as a result, especially with how vital music can be in certain social settings (weddings, parties, etc). Anyway, "Qwikster" is just more fun to write and make fun of for its ridiculous name.
3 Google's algorithm tweaks would often cause an uproar within the SEO community more than with the user base, because those changes were often trying to stay ahead of spammers gaming SEO! But also, as we're now seeing more clearly with the AI changes, many sites that previously lived off of Google traffic are up-in-arms when such tweaks change those dynamics...
2025-08-12 03:53:41
A year ago, Disney, Fox, and Warner Bros. Discovery were gearing up to launch Venu, a streaming bundle of sports offerings from the trio. The idea of a sports bundle has always made sense – after all, it's essentially what the cable television bundle itself is for many consumers. But Venu was sort of a mess from the name on down. So much so, that it never saw the light of day. And yet, it sort of lives on...
In the latest streaming milestone, ESPN and Fox are forming a bundle of their soon-to-launch services, Deadline has learned.
Fox One, which brings together sports, news and entertainment from across Fox’s broadcast and cable channels, and ESPN’s dramatically beefed-up direct-to-consumer offering are both launching on August 21. Fox One is priced at $19.99 a month and ESPN has an introductory price of $29.99.
The bundle will launch October 2 and cost $39.99 a month, according to a person familiar with the rollout.
For those keeping score at home, this is basically Venu minus Warner Bros. Discovery content. And given that WBD quickly started losing the rights to sports content shortly after Venu was announced, that makes sense. Once they lost the NBA rights, it made little sense to still include WBD in such a bundle. In fact, WBD subsequently decided that their own entire company didn't really make sense as a bundle, as they're now splitting into – wait for it – Warner Bros. and Discovery, again.
Add to this the fact that both ESPN and Fox are on the verge of launching their own streaming services – on the same day, later this month, no less. Both having their own offerings and then giving an option to bundle then makes a lot more sense than trying to form a new company/joint-venture around that bundle – especially since ESPN had already announced that they would be launching the stand-alone ESPN streaming service separately from Venu.
And this new bundle will look more like marketing rather than an attempt by these power players in sports to crowd out the rest of the market – though Disney literally settled that issue as well thanks to the Fubo/Hulu + Live TV deal. Still, others might take issue with the power this new bundle will have over sports...
I realize I'm saying all of this and this new bundle is going to be a whole... $3 cheaper than the price Venu was targeting. A price which myself, and many others, thought was too expensive. But again, that had just as much to do with how much of a confusing mess Venu was. When you know that ESPN's new service is going to cost $29.99 and you know that Fox One is going to be $19.99, this looks like a nice $10 or so discount for anyone that was going to subscribe to both.
At the same time, it's not exactly a slam dunk "sports bundle" as Fox One will also include other Fox content such as Fox News, if you're into that sort of thing. Still, it's a pretty compelling offering simply given Fox's NFL rights – which will augment the NFL rights Disney just expanded in a major way thanks to the ESPN equity deal with the league. There will still be games on CBS, and NBC/Peacock, and Prime TV, and Netflix, but this one bundle will give you a lot of the meat and potatoes. It moves ESPN one-step closer to being the de-facto sports bundle. Can Amazon counter?
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
