Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio News. You're listening to Bloomberg
Speaker 1: Business Week with Carol Masser and Tim Stenoveek on Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 2: We want to get to Apple headline crossing just a
Speaker 2: moment ago, Apple plotting. It's AI come back, artificial intelligence
Speaker 2: with an ambitious late of new devices, including robots and
Speaker 2: a lifelike version of Siri. There's a lot more. Let's
Speaker 2: just get to the guy who knows this company and
Speaker 2: put out this story. Here's our own Mark German, and
Speaker 2: he's Bloomberg News Managing editor for Global Consumer Tech. He's
Speaker 2: out there on the West coast. All right, walk us
Speaker 2: through your exclusive What did you learn about what AI?
Speaker 2: Apple is up to when it comes to AI?
Speaker 3: Mark, So, the conventional wisdom is that Apple is lagging
Speaker 3: right now. It has no future, The product pipeline is
Speaker 3: very limited. They're struggling in AI. The world is ending,
Speaker 3: and Tim Cook should be fired as CEO. I think
Speaker 3: I came on here a few weeks ago tell you
Speaker 3: that there's no way Tim Cook is going anywhere. And
Speaker 3: it is true that they are struggling terribly in AI.
Speaker 3: But at the end of the day, Apple is a
Speaker 3: hardware company, and they have been planning this big new
Speaker 3: hardware pipeline. At the center of it is robotics, a
Speaker 3: push into smart home and home security, multiple new versions
Speaker 3: of Siri, and a slew of other devices from smart
Speaker 3: glasses to headsets to foldables. The centerpiece of the renewed
Speaker 3: AI hardware strategy is a tabletop robot that's coming in
Speaker 3: twenty twenty seven sometime around then. This is a device
Speaker 3: that would sit on your desk, sit in your kitchen,
Speaker 3: sit in your living room. It would have an iPad
Speaker 3: like display with sensors and a robotic arm, and the
Speaker 3: arm would be able to push the display around the
Speaker 3: room to follow people, to look at you, to summon
Speaker 3: you or be summoned by you, help you get work
Speaker 3: done throughout the day. The idea is to bring artificial
Speaker 3: intelligence to life in a way that hardware companies have
Speaker 3: not done so before, blending the AI with hardware manipulation
Speaker 3: and robotics. The companies also working on a home pod
Speaker 3: with a screen for next year.
Speaker 4: This is a variation of that robotic device.
Speaker 3: This would not have the robotic arm, but would have
Speaker 3: a similar display and functionality. There's also several new versions
Speaker 3: of Siri in the works. There's a redesigned Sery visually
Speaker 3: for the iPhone, the iPad of the Mac. There's new
Speaker 3: underpinnings to that Sery we've talked about that. Apple has
Speaker 3: signaled that this is a revamped to Sery coming in
Speaker 3: the spring. There's also a new visual version of SIY
Speaker 3: for home devices. It uses something similar to Microsoft Clippy
Speaker 3: from twenty thirty years ago, remember that virtual assistant yep.
Speaker 3: And then you also, I know there's a lot. I
Speaker 3: have a push it to home security with a new
Speaker 3: home security camera system taps into a home door bell
Speaker 3: as well. This would compete with Ring and Nest and
Speaker 3: ADT and other companies, and also is the sensors at
Speaker 3: the center of a home automation strategy.
Speaker 1: So, Mark, you gave us a lot to think about.
Speaker 1: We have a couple of minutes left with you. We
Speaker 1: don't have a Crystal Ball, but we have Mark German,
Speaker 1: which is the next best thing. If there is sort
Speaker 1: of a single device in here that's iPhone like in
Speaker 1: the sense of it being the center of the universe
Speaker 1: for Apple, does one of them stick out to you
Speaker 1: as that I.
Speaker 3: Don't think the iPhone in the next five to ten
Speaker 3: years is going to go away as the center of
Speaker 3: the universe.
Speaker 4: What I do think is going to happen.
Speaker 3: Is the next generation of ecosystems. You know, instead of
Speaker 3: being built around the phone and the cloud, it's going
Speaker 3: to be built around AI.
Speaker 4: So all the devices right including.
Speaker 3: The phone, are going to get demoted a bit and
Speaker 3: AI is going to become the center of the universe.
Speaker 4: And so you're going to have your phone, your home.
Speaker 3: Devices, your earbuds, your glasses, your watch, your computer, et cetera,
Speaker 3: and those are all going to be built around AI
Speaker 3: as the center, moving away from the phone and the
Speaker 3: cloud as the center.
Speaker 2: So the prototypes all ready to go. H oh, they're
Speaker 2: getting up the assembly lines and they're going to hit
Speaker 2: the stores, right, they're all ready to go, or not yet.
Speaker 3: In terms of these devices, everything that I'm talking about today,
Speaker 3: those are mostly forward looking. We're talking about things coming
Speaker 3: out twenty six, twenty seven. There's a mention in the
Speaker 3: story of a robotic arm for retail stores and manufacturing
Speaker 3: that's probably five seven to seven years away, so we're
Speaker 3: talking twenty thirties.
Speaker 4: There. I mentioned the.
Speaker 3: Foldable iPad MAC device that's going to be at the
Speaker 3: end of this decade. The foldable iPhone is going to
Speaker 3: be at the end of next year. This year, in September,
Speaker 3: a little less than a month from now, Apple's going
Speaker 3: to introduce its first redesigned iPhone in several years. This
Speaker 3: is the iPhone seventeen line, also the slim down iPhone,
Speaker 3: new AirPods, and new Apple Watch Ultra with a slightly
Speaker 3: larger display and satellite connectivity for hikers. So in the
Speaker 3: near term, some good stuff. In the long term, some
Speaker 3: much cooler stuff.
Speaker 1: You know, the hardware that you've highlighted is nothing without
Speaker 1: the software mark, and you've documented the struggles that Apple
Speaker 1: has had when it comes to its own work with
Speaker 1: AI software talking about potential acquisitions. Can Apple pull off
Speaker 1: this hardware with the way the software is now?
Speaker 4: Yes.
Speaker 3: So, as I mentioned in the story, they're looking at
Speaker 3: two directions for revamping the underpinnings of Siri.
Speaker 4: One is called Linwood and one is called Glenwood.
Speaker 3: Linwood is using upgraded versions of the company's own internal
Speaker 3: foundation models. That's the team that Meta has been poaching
Speaker 3: a bunch of people from, including the head of the team.
Speaker 3: We talked about this a few weeks ago. Glenwood is
Speaker 3: using a third party provider to rebuild Siri, so building
Speaker 3: Sirie around models from a third party, and obviously third
Speaker 3: parties like Anthropic, like open Aiye, like Google, they've proven
Speaker 3: out their models, they work extraordinarily well. And so Apple's
Speaker 3: backup plan essentially is to go external so they're able
Speaker 3: to get their internal models up to snuff. And honestly
Speaker 3: that makes a lot of sense, all.
Speaker 2: Right, kind to leave it there, Mark, thank you so much,
Speaker 2: of course. Bloomer's Mark German joining us with the latest
Speaker 2: on his exclusive on Apple. Mark is Bloomberg News Managing
Speaker 2: editor for Global Consumer Tech. He's out there on the
Speaker 2: West Coast. Shares of Apple have been as high as
Speaker 2: two point three percent interday high rising on Mark's story.
Speaker 2: The stock still up, but now only again of about
Speaker 2: one point four percent. But we have seen Apple shares
Speaker 2: popping since August fifth, so we have seen a move
Speaker 2: in a big way to the website for Apple over
Speaker 2: the last week or so. So interesting reporter. Check it out.
Speaker 2: It's on the Bloomberg and at Bloomberg dot com.