iPhone's last stand? More like Microsoft's last stand. Nobody wants their garbage hardware and software outside of enterprise shmucks more interested in filling their pockets with fat contract money than delivering value.

> The reason is obvious when you think about it: enterprises are paying for their employees’ time, so of course they are willing to pay for tools that make those employees more productive

Is that why there are billions dollars wasted in useless Microsoft subscriptions and services?

> consumers, on the other hand, are mostly looking to waste time, which is why attention-harvesting advertising is the only software business model that works at scale for consumer services.

What a callous view of people. Who's your benchmark? TikTok addicted kids?

> What they do want to do is watch short-form video

Yeah, it seems so.

i was under the impression that the 2024 apple intelligence rollout was something of a victory: Apple realized that the majority of people don't actually want this stuff forced on them at the os level, and the ai maximalists all used apple anyways via clawbot (including purchasing an additional apple device, the mini!) because of apples non-ai-specific commitment to phone computer interop.

Certainly the copilot button in ms paint did nothing to attract the clawbot ecosystem to windows

This Microsoft notion of “devices that don’t stand alone but surround you” sounds an awful lot like Google’s “ambient computing” of yonder.

    you will be surrounded by an ecosystem of
    devices, none of which stand alone, but are
    more like portals to interact with your agents

And then a minute later I could ask it "Is copilot done yet?" and it replies "No, looks like it is still working on it". And then a minute later I ask again. It replies "Yes, it finished. It updated chart.py and styles.css.".

But it looks like none of the chat agents with voice interface have such a connector at the moment? An SSH connector would be the most useful. But a "GitHub Codespace connector" or something like that would also do.

I wonder if that will be a missing piece for long. If so, I would build an agent with voice mode and ssh connector myself. But I guess it should come out from the big guys any moment now?

I am still convinced that Apple is slowly working its way to smart glasses. And that *this* is the Next Big Thing. Frankly, the future is very good AR glasses that just work.

- iPhone Air to cram everything into a small space

- Vision pro - a new OS for looking at things and interacting

- Better Siri and AI that works with voice

- Smart local model / routing to big models in the cloud

- integration with wearables (air pods and watches)

On step into the markets in Shenzhen and you will know it is not over. That new foldy iphone is a bit dodgy tho..

Last Stand? This is rather strong language and overselling the situation, for clicks I guess.

You might re-title the article instead, "The iPhone holds its ground", and it would be a more realistic title. But perhaps garnering less clicks.

I've always thought Ben Thompson is strong on enterprise and b2b topics but super weak on everything consumer related, he simply doesn't seem to understand consumer behavior (he has zero empathy or ability to project his mind into the average person's mind)

E.g. Ben was sure iPhone air would be a massive hit because he himself loved it. (It's struggled as people don't like the smaller battery life).

Ben was sure the Vision Pro would be a huge hit because he himself loved it. (It was a total failure as the average person doesnt want to pay huge amounts for a ridiculous looking dork helmet).

Ben raving about Meta's hand controller which he was sure was going to be the future of consumer electronics (The Neural Band). He was discussing how you could use it while your hand is in your jeans/pants pocket. Not quite thinking about how this would look while you're sat on the subway with someone sat opposite you.

Ben discussing how the future of watching sports is in VR. Not considering how weird it would be to go to a friends house to watch the game and everyone has their own VR headset. Also not considering the fun of watching sports is doing it with other people.

Basically, he has a huge issue with extracting his own liking of techy products to the average consumer who are basically nothing like Ben Thompson.

> Apple is targeting consumers, for whom traditional chatbot functionality is probably sufficient for the vast majority of their AI needs.

I disagree strongly here. The chatbot is the furthest thing from sufficient for the average consumer. Take the newly announced feature that groups your compromised passwords together and offers to agentically change them all for you. Really cool! Could you do that via a chatbot interface? Sure. Would the average consumer? No.

title is too biased and sensational

first paragraph begins the article upon 2 very big and flawed statements:

> Apple fans would, for years and years, sneer at Microsoft’s penchant for talking about products that may or may not ship, deriding them as vaporware.

maybe some would, but as a whole I would say this is not a common thing

> After Apple’s bungled 2024 launch of Apple Intelligence and new Siri, however, vaporware is fair game

no it's not

I didn't know about Project Solara so learned a new thing from the article, but I got the impression that it's not as big as the author tried to make it seem, felt very distant and forced.

Wait what, is this a Microsoft ad in disguise?