WWDC Dispatch: Apple Refines in a Reinvention Era

Channel: Alex Kantrowitz

Published at: 2025-06-10

YouTube video id: zGU6XHPVAlo

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGU6XHPVAlo

Apple just held its WWDC developer
event, little AI light, big operating
system changes, and plenty more to
discuss. We're here in Apple Park in
Certino with the Steve Jobs Theater
right behind me. As you can see, I'm on
the broadcast riser, so I'm just going
to get off this stage for a moment, find
some quiet, and talk to you about what
we saw today. Welcome to Big Technology
Podcast special edition coming to you
from the parking lot now outside of
Apple's WWDC conference. We're going to
do a short solo podcast the same way
that I did it last year, although with a
very different type of setting here, uh,
right outside of Apple Park. Last year,
if you recall, was the big Apple
Intelligence reveal. And this year, a
much more subdued event. It was quiet at
WWDC this year. that is the word I would
use to describe it and a event that
focused largely on operating system
design which we're going to get to in a
bit. Uh but to preface I just want to
talk a little bit about what I see as
two different modes of tech company
operation. You have invention mode and
refinement mode. And this might be
familiar to some people uh who've read
Always Day One, but basically the big
tech companies have been able to be so
successful because after periods of
refinement, they've always went to
invention or reinvention mode. If you
think about Amazon, Amazon has been in
reinvention mode basically throughout
its history. It started as a bookstore,
online bookstore. It became a
first-party marketplace. Then it
transitioned to a third party
marketplace. became a device maker with
the Kindle, cloud hosting service with
AWS, voice computing with Alexa.
Microsoft started as a desktop operating
system, then became a cloud hosting
company with Azure. While these legacy
businesses like Windows are still
important, the growth and the optimism
around these companies are in the latest
reinventions. Azure, of course, is
driving Microsoft's $3.5 trillion
valuation today. Apple, of course, also
no stranger to reinvention. started as a
desktop computer then became a portable
music player even though those desktops
were important but the iPod really
solidified the second generation of
Apple and then of course the mobile
phone the smartphone which cannibalized
the iPod uh but became the flagship
product of the company today then
there's errors of redefinement uh making
the iPhone thinner and more powerful
after the company invented the iPhone is
one of those for Amazon improving the
Kindle has been an era of refinement
Uh and you also have areas of refinement
in software, not just hardware. Uh for
instance, meta. Making Instagram better
with new formats and algorithms beyond
simply thinking uh about that square uh
image has been what's led Instagram to
become what it is today. So eras of
invention and errors of refinement today
at Apple Park
WWDC25. This was a refinement event. We
didn't see the reinvention talk like we
saw with the Apple intelligence roll out
last year. We saw a tremendous amount of
focus on refining the existing product
and that starts with the iOS liquid
glass uh design motif. So iOS or the all
the operating systems within uh the
Apple product suite will now have more
transparent, translucent and glossy
elements. For instance, when you play a
movie, instead of those controls showing
up and superseding the movie, you're
going to start to be able to see through
the controls in some way, they'll be a
little translucent. Uh, it's very nifty
and it's beautiful uh design elements.
There's also 3D design elements uh as
you change and move uh the screen. So,
images that pop out of the phone. But
these are really beautiful changes.
Beautiful changes. It's going to make
the iPhone and Apple devices uh more
delightful to use and that's important
because they were already the most
delightful devices to use uh in in tech.
And that's just my opinion. Um they also
had current experiences that they
improved. So funny when you think about
refinement like why not refine the phone
call and Apple did. They refined the
phone call with a new feature called
hold assist. when you uh when you are
put on hold and that hold music is going
uh Apple will now basically kind of hold
the call for you and when a
representative or somebody else picks up
they'll alert you and you can pick up
the phone. Why not refine text messages
and Apple did that. Now there's going to
be a new basket for unknown senders so
you won't hopefully you won't have your
um your text message inbox filled with
spam messages. There's also going to be
live captions in FaceTime or live
translations in FaceTime. So, you're
FaceTiming somebody and they're speaking
a different language. You can uh see
what they're saying in real time with
live uh translated captions and there'll
also be live translations in phone call
phone calls. So, an era of refinement or
actually an event of refinement in an
era of reinvention. That's what we saw
from Apple today. The context is super
important and Apple last year with the
Apple intelligence event told us that it
believes that the moment of reinvention
has arrived and that artificial
intelligence would dominate the
operating system. That is uh consistent
with what's going on throughout the
entire tech ecosystem where you have
companies like Google reinventing in a
big way with AI and Amazon uh with Alexa
plus. Now, we've seen a rise of AI
companies all over the place, but
there's this broader bigger idea that
only a few companies can really e
execute on. Uh, and that is the idea or
the vision of a contextually aware
assistant that knows everything that
you're up to and can help you get things
done uh in a much more efficient and
easier way and make sense of your life.
um you know Amazon's Alexa plus demo was
all about this but just to bring it back
to Apple last year Apple told us that
that was something that they could build
with the Apple intelligence I won't call
it a roll out but the preview because it
was all effectively uh video and none of
it was working. Uh they showed us what
they want us what they want to be able
to do for us. Uh that is for instance
being able to um you know search your
email and tell you when your flight is
or help you connect that flight
information with maps uh and uh let you
know when you have to get to the
airport. Now everybody wants to build
this. Uh nobody has built this but this
is something that again only a few
companies can build. Apple can build it,
Google can build it. Maybe Amazon can
build it. Perplexity isn't going to
build this, right? It's got to come from
somebody big that has access to all your
information and something hopefully uh
that you trust and that's where Apple
is. Uh but again we saw uh after a year
promising that they decided to return to
this era of or this moment or this motif
shall we say of refinement and put that
off. Now we all know why that is. They
tried to build this uh they weren't
successful over the past year. It's not
just them. Amazon also tried to build
this over the past year. uh they
announced uh Alexa plus in uh in
February and it isn't out yet at least
not broadly and Google we know has made
some improvements on the product front
uh but we still use traditional search
we still use traditional Android really
it's not an AI operating system but the
point is uh that this will come as I try
to fight the sun here this this will
come and when it comes it's going to
come fast and uh you better be ready as
a company and that's why it's a threat
for Apple but it's also an opportunity
because uh Apple again if it gets this
right this will help its services
business it will help its devices
business it will help everything if you
have an assistant that is that useful uh
people are going to gravitate to it and
so it was very interesting that this
year that vision uh of an assistant from
Apple disappeared to me this made the
event pretty underwhelming uh and it
showed the gap between Apple and the
other AI leaders
Now I think it's important to have some
perspective here because we're also
talking uh in the context of what will
happen to devices and there is an idea
that the screen is going to fade away
and we'll be left with the assistant
inside Johnny IV of course who is doing
this multiboo who sold his IO device
company to open AI for billions of
dollars or 6.5 billion somewhere in that
neighborhood. Um he's called the iPhone
a legacy device. This is the guy that
designed the iPhone. So, there's this
idea that screens are going to go away.
Personally, I don't think we're going to
see the end of screens uh anytime soon.
Uh which makes this a pressing challenge
for Apple. Uh but not a sort of
potentially fatal challenge for Apple.
If you think about what we need screens
for, we need them for work. We need them
to look at photos, watch videos, take
FaceTime calls. If anything today, Apple
talked a lot about the primacy of the
screen and we didn't really even see
anything about the AirPods updates. So,
or if we did, it was a minor footnote.
So, Apple obviously the device maker,
the designer doesn't think that screens
are going away and I don't either. But
there there is a sense of urgency here.
This is a changing technology world. Uh,
every big tech company has told us that.
Apple told us that last year. Amazon's
told us that this year. Google of course
has been banging the drum for a long
time. Uh sometimes with updates that are
so similar, you wonder what's changed
from year to year, but inside that
company, they are working on building
it. Meta has told us that with the
primacy of Llama, and of course, there's
been some challenges there. But the
company believes that the next social
interaction is going to be talking with
chatbots. And that's sort of the mood
with which I leave Apple.
company is still right around $3
trillion, but it's lost the lead as the
most valuable company in the world to
Nvidia and Microsoft, which are each
about $500 billion uh more valuable than
Apple. Now, the one positive note you
can say thinking about today, company
certainly didn't overpromise and that
means it won't o underdel. Uh I was just
on CNBC and one of the pan one of the
panelists there had he basically said,
"Look, it's so low so now's time to buy.
can't go any further down. But again, in
a moment of transforming technology,
it's not where you want to be. So, a
stark difference this year's WWDC versus
last year's WWDC. The screen will
survive. Apple has refined the operating
system through which many billions of
people or two billion people plus uh use
those screens. Uh but ultimately if you
think a wave of AI is coming uh and and
I certainly do and it will take time and
Apple has time to catch up uh but status
quo and refinement is the best way to
get left behind. It's all about
reinvention. any new wave of technology
desktop to mobile uh for instance
requires a determination to reinvent a
determination to make mistakes learn
from them and ultimately build into that
next generation of technology. So again
on this show we talk a ton about when is
AGI coming? Uh you know are we going to
have devices without screens? Uh first
and foremost, AI will probably change a
lot of things about the way that we use
those screens even before AGI if we ever
get there. Uh and that is the context
through which I view this year's
WWDC. Underwhelming era of reinvention,
but ultimately still some time for Apple
to make this work. All right, I have
plenty of questions that I want to ask.
MG Seagler of Spy Glass, he will be on
this Wednesday. I'll drop that 6:00 a.m.
Eastern time. And we're going to talk
plenty about uh Apple AI screens or not
screens and also this new paper from
Apple talking about how uh reasoning
models don't actually reason. So please
stay tuned. If you're here on Spotify or
YouTube, thank you for watching. If
you're listening, thank you for
listening and we'll see you next time on
Big Technology Podcast.