Tech Brew Ride Home - Fri. 05/10 – Apple Apologizes For The “Crush” Ad

Episode Date: May 10, 2024

Well that was fast. Apple apologized for the “Crush” Ad, saying they missed the mark on that one. Microsoft is launching a mobile game app store. Elevenlabs is getting into the music generating game. And of course, the Weekend Longreads Suggestions. Links: Apple apologizes for iPad ‘Crush’ ad that ‘missed the mark’ (The Verge) Apple doesn’t understand why you use technology (The Verge) Microsoft Plans Mobile-Game Store, Vying With Apple, Google (Bloomberg) Apple to Power AI Tools With In-House Server Chips This Year (Bloomberg) ElevenLabs previews music-generating AI model (VentureBeat) Weekend Longreads Suggestions: Tim Cook Can’t Run Apple Forever. Who’s Next? (Bloomberg) World’s Biggest Construction Project Gets a Reality Check (WSJ) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On April 4th, 2023, around 2 in the morning, a man was found stabbed multiple times on a sidewalk in downtown San Francisco. Hey, who did this to you? What happened next turned the story into a political firestorm. Reports have identified the victim as Bob Lee, the founder of Cash App. From Bloomberg Podcasts, this is Foundering, the Killing of Bob Lee, beginning April 16. Welcome to the Texas. me right home for Friday, May 10th, 2024. I'm Brian McCullough today. Well, that was fast. Apple apologized for the Crush ad, saying they missed the mark on that one. Microsoft is launching a

mobile game app store. Eleven Labs is getting into the music generating game. And of course, the weekend long read suggestions. Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. Apple has apologized for that Crush iPad Pro ad. They're not going to even run the ad now on TV, quoting the Verge. In a statement provided to Ad Age, Tor Myron, Apple's vice president of marketing, said the company, quote, missed the mark. Creativity is in our DNA at Apple, and it's incredibly important to us to design products that empower creatives all over the world, Myron told Ad Age. Our goal is to always celebrate the myriad of ways users express themselves and bring their ideas to life through iPad. We miss the mark with this video, and we're sorry, end quote. On Tuesday, Apple introduced the M4 powered iPad Pro, which the company,

described as its thinnest product ever. To advertise all the creative possibilities with the iPad, it released a crush commercial that shows things like a piano, record player, paint, and other works flattening under the pressure of a hydraulic press. At the end, only one thing remains, an iPad Pro. The ad rubbed some creatives the wrong way. Hugh Grant called it a destruction of human experience, while Handmaid's Tale director Reid Morano told Apple CEO Tim Cook to read the room in a post on X, end quote. Also from The Verge, Elizabeth Lapado did a better job than I did yesterday explaining how Apple exactly missed the mark here. Quote, we are surrounded by stuff that's meant to endure. Technology in a much broader sense is innately hopeful. It's a bright golden

thread between our past and our future. This ad does highlight a particular Silicon Valley attitude. It scorns the past as outdated rather than respecting it as clever. In some sense, these companies have to. They've got products to sell. If Apple were to build something as durable as a piano, it would sell a lot fewer computers. In fact, the company has a history of kneecapping its own products in order to sell more of them. It deliberately slowed its older iPhones, for instance. It also has a history of making repairing and maintaining its products difficult. In this ad, technology is disposable. I flinched when that piano got crushed, but apparently no one inside the company did and a lot of people had to sign off on this ad.

The emotional valence of crushing is unmistakable, simply reversing the ad as Reza 60 Sathai did so that the creative tools spring from the iPad immediately improves it. After all, the iPad can also be a creative tool, and isn't that what the commercial was meant to suggest? Apple has a habit of suggesting its older devices are obsolete by releasing new versions that change their shells and styling

without altering what they do in any meaningful way. The point of this ad is not about, the iPad's creative uses, it's that it's skinny. That's the big selling point, the skinniest ever. Apple was so focused on its exciting new marketing feature that it lost sight of what's really important, the tools that make the things we love, end quote. Microsoft plans to launch its mobile game store in July on the web, first with its own games, including Candy Crush Saga, and later opening the store up to other publishers. Quoting Bloomberg, The browser-based store will debut with Microsoft's own games, offering discounts on in-game items associated with titles like Candy Crush Saga.

Xbox President Sarah Bond announced the move Thursday at the Bloomberg Technology Summit. Later, Microsoft will open the store to other publishers. Bond says the store is launching on the web versus an app, so it's, quote, accessible across all devices, all countries no matter what independent of the policies of closed ecosystem stores, end quote. Microsoft saw an opportunity to create a store that, quote, truly across devices where who you are, your library, your identity, your rewards travel with you versus being locked into a single ecosystem, Bond said. The company's intention is to facilitate gaming across consoles, computers, and mobile devices. Microsoft's Blockbuster cross-platform

game Minecraft may be an early addition to the web store, Bond said. This web-based store is the first step in our journey to building a trusted app store with its roots in gaming, an Xbox spokesperson said in an email. Apple and Google dominate the app stores where game developers release titles charging an approximate 30% fee on sales. In late 2023, Microsoft Gaming Head Phil Spencer shared that the company is in talks with partners to launch its own Xbox app store. Microsoft lagged behind game industry competitors and entering the $90 billion mobile gaming market. Now the company's Xbox unit is poised to make a big splash after its $69 billion takeover of Activision Blizzard, owner of the Candy Crush and Call of Duty franchises.

Candy Crush has been downloaded five billion times since its 2012 debut and Generative rated $20 billion in revenue, end quote. Sources say Apple's first server chips for its upcoming AI features will be the M2 Ultra. Simpler AI tasks will still be processed directly on iPhones, iPads, and Macs, but those chips will be in Apple's servers as soon as this year, quoting Bloomberg. The company is placing high-end chips similar to ones it designed for the Mac in cloud computing servers designed to process the most advanced AI tasks coming to Apple devices, according to people familiar with the matter. Simpler AI-related features will be processed directly on iPhones, iPads,

and Macs, said the people who asked not to be identified because the plan is still under wraps. Apple's plan to use its own chips and process AI tasks in the cloud was hatched about three years ago, but the company accelerated the timeline after the AI craze, fueled by OpenAI's chat GPT and Google's Gemini, forced it to move more quickly. The first AI server chips will be the M2 Ultra, which was launched last year as part of the Mac Pro and Mac Studio computers. the company is already eyeing future versions based on the M4 chip. Relatively simple AI tasks, like providing users a summary of their missed iPhone notifications or incoming text messages, could be handled by the chips inside of Apple devices. More complicated jobs, such as generating

images or summarizing lengthy news articles and creating long-form responses and emails, would likely require the cloud-based approach, as would an upgraded version of Apple's Siri voice assistant, end quote. 11 Labs, that startup that I use to clone my voice in our earliest AI experiments on this podcast, is previewing a music-generating AI model showing samples of songs with lyrics generated from text prompts. Quoting Venture Beat, founded by former Google and Palantir employees, 11 Labs specializes in using machine learning for voice cloning and synthesis in different languages. It offers many tools, including one capable of dubbing full-length movies.

Unsurprisingly, the company has set its sites. on the music industry. Imagine the possibilities of using this model. Generate a fun lullaby to play for your kids, to put them to sleep, produce a clever jingle for a marketing campaign, develop a snappy music intro for your podcast and more. Could there be a chance that someone might use 11 Labs AI to develop the next hit song? Many AI music startups are already popping up, including Harmoni, Nirical Labs, Suno AI, loudly, and more. It's also feasible that users could sell these AI-generated songs on the 11 Labs marketplace, which it launched in January. The company's voice library currently allows users to sell their AI-cloned voice for money

while maintaining control over its availability and how they're compensated. However, AI music generation isn't welcomed by all, as with all generative AI applications. The question is, what 11 Labs train this model on and if it included copyrighted materials? And if so, whether it obtained permission from the rights holder or if it believes training without permission is protected by fair use. Some oppose the development of such technology because artists may find themselves out of a job. The concern is that the AI will be easily able to replicate the style of a particular artist, and then you no longer need them to put out new music. They don't want to do that Christmas album, no problem, just use AI for that. And let's also not forget about the possibility

of this being used to produce deep fakes, end quote. Time for the weekend long read suggestions. First up, Tim Apple can't be Tim Apple forever. Mark German has an in-depth look at potential successors to Tim Cook as CEO of Apple. Sources say Apple's hardware engineering chief, John Ternis, who we saw extensively at this week's iPad event, is maybe the most likely long-term successor. Quote, he's served for far longer than the average Fortune 500 CEO, and at 63, Tim Cook is older than many of his peers. But if it seems like a logical time for Cook to start planning for someone else to shape Apple's next chapter, the situation is complicated by the lack of someone who's both ready immediately and likely to be a long-term successor.

Cook hasn't made many changes to Apple's executive team, which is mostly comprised of close colleagues he's worked with since the jobs era. Other than the high-profile exit of designer Johnny Ive and the arrival and departure of retail head Angela Arendt's, the team has stayed mostly intact for the past decade. Like Cook, the key people in his inner circle are old enough and rich enough that they could have retired years ago. Tony Sakanagi, an analyst at Stanford C. Bernstein, who's covered Apple for two decades, said, Succession has become a topic among investors. You look down the list of executives and it's really not clear how this all pans out, he says. You wonder why there hasn't been more transparency and exposure for the next leaders.

It raises a broader question. Does Apple have a comprehensive and deliberate set of succession plans, end quote? Several people familiar with Apple's inner workings recently discussed the issue with Bloomberg Business Week, requesting anonymity to speak about the sensitive subject. If Cook were to step down soon, these people say he would almost assuredly be replaced by chief operating officer Jeff Williams, who emerged as the top candidate to be Cook's successor a few years ago. In 2015, Cook named Williams Apple's first C-O, since Cook himself held that role under Jobs. That same year, Williams shepherded the first major new product in the Cook era,

the Apple Watch to market. And four years later, he replaced Ive as the head of hardware and software design. But Williams, who is 61 this year, is only two years Cook's Jr. And company insiders say they think it's now unlikely he'll be the new long-term chief. Apple's board would probably want an executive who, like Cook and Jobs, could stick around for at least a decade. If you asked me five years ago, it was very clear Jeff was leading the pack to become CEO, says one long-time Apple executive, but the slowness to refresh the C-suite leaves a problem with who you can bring on board, end quote. While Cook hasn't given any indication how long he'll remain in charge, people close to him believe he'll be CEO at least another three years. After that,

they say he'll start a charitable foundation to donate the wealth he accumulated at Apple. If Cook were to stay that long, people with an Apple say the most likely successor would be John Ternis, the hardware engineering chief, in a company whose success has always come from building category defining gadgets, the ascension of a hardware engineering expert to the CEO job would seem logical. Terranus, who's not yet 50, would also be more likely than other members of the executive team to stick around for a long time, potentially providing another decade or more of Cook-esque stability. Terranus is well-liked inside Apple, and he's earned the respect of Cook, Williams, and other leaders. Tim likes him a lot because he can give a good presentation. He's very

mild-mannered never puts anything into an email that is controversial and is a very reticent decision-maker, says one person close to Apple's executive team. He has a lot of managerial characteristics like Tim. Christopher Stringer, a former top Apple hardware designer called Ternus a trustworthy hand, whose, quote, never failed with any role he's been elevated to. Eddie Q, the Apple executive known as Cook's closest confidant, has privately told colleagues that Ternus should be the next CEO, according to a person with knowledge of the matter. Apple has increasingly made Ternus the face, of new products. He was at the forefront of the May 7th iPad announcement, leading the introduction of the new iPad Pro and iPad Air. Last year, he toured Europe to discuss the company's environment

initiatives, a key area for Cook. But perhaps the biggest sign of Ternis's increasing prominence was a 30-minute TV interview primarily about chips in December. That was huge, says a longtime Apple executive. They had him on morning TV talking about something that's not even his bellywick, and he came across as presidential, end quote. Finally, this is not tech exactly, but were you aware of Neom, that huge new city being built in northwestern Saudi Arabia? Did you know the project included what is called the line? I did not, but it's wild, quoting the Wall Street Journal. Nothing in the Neum project is more brazen than a multi-trillion dollar pair of skyscrapers taller than the Empire State Building,

designed to run 105 miles long, and house 9 million. people. The flagship development dubbed the line. Its champion, Saudi crown prince and de facto ruler Muhammad bin Salman, has likened the project to Egypt's great pyramids. The line would be longer than the state of Connecticut or the width of Italy in the middle of the boot, but the kingdom in recent months downsize the line's first phase, facing the reality of costs at a time the country is spending far more than it's taking in. Now organizers plan to initially build around one and a half miles of the structure by 2030, rather than the roughly 10-mile first chunk that had previously been envisioned, multiple people briefed on the plan said. Still, even that truncated section

would be by far the world's largest building, the equivalent of more than 60 Empire State buildings of square footage. A mountain of challenges lies ahead. More than 100,000 additional construction workers must be housed in a barren corner of the kingdom's vast desert, two hours drive from any sizable city. Neum's needs for steel, exterior glass and other materials are so massive, they may push up global prices and be difficult to source. Planners worry the unique central concept of the line, a vertical city housed in twin skyscrapers the length of Delaware could prove to be an unappealing place to live. Even for one of the world's largest exporters of crude oil, Neum might just be too expensive.

Its official cost estimate is $500 billion, 50% more than the country's entire federal budget for the year, and more than half the value of its sovereign wealth fund. executives working on the project dismissed that number as unrealistically low. The first one and a half miles of the line alone is estimated internally to cost more than $100 billion, two people familiar with the plan said. If it were fully built, Neum employees expect the true price of the line would be well in excess of $2 trillion. Construction costs per square foot are more than double what is standard on other Middle East towers, they said, end quote. No bonus episodes this weekend, but again, if you're listening to me right now,

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