00:00:02 Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios. Podcasts. 00:00:05 Speaker 2: Radio. 00:00:06 Speaker 3: News. They know there's no real reason to go from a 17 Pro to an 18 Pro. 00:00:12 Speaker 2: So what do you do? You call in the influencers. 00:00:20 Speaker 3: Welcome to the Power On Podcast. I'm Mark Gurman, and we talk about Apple in the larger consumer tech industry. On this episode, we're going to talk about Apple's next big thing, an AI-powered smart home hub, as well as the larger Apple Home ecosystem that the company has in the cards for the year ahead. We'll also get into our first impressions of the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max and how Apple's rolling out the latest iPhones. And lastly, we'll get into the influencer takeover at Apple events and coverage of the company's latest products and what that means for Apple and the industry. Today I'm with Vlad Savov, a Bloomberg tech editor who's dialing in from Hong Kong. Vlad, I'm curious, what was the last iPhone you used as. 00:01:04 Speaker 2: A daily driver? I know for the most part, you're kind of an Android guy. Yeah, you're right, Mark. 00:01:09 Speaker 1: You know, when the Google Pixel came out, I was smitten by the Android camera system and I've been with it for a long time. But I will say the iPhone 13 Pro is the last time that I had committed my entire life to the iPhone ecosystem. But what about you? I got to imagine your first iPhone was probably like a Steve Jobs prototype. 00:01:25 Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. Let's just say I'm pretty familiar with the iPhone. 00:01:28 Speaker 3: I've had every model since the original and looking forward to picking up a Duo come October. 00:01:34 Speaker 2: So I've been an iPhone lifer. 00:01:36 Speaker 1: Well, you have been covering Apple for 17 years now, and you've made guest appearances on plenty of other podcasts. And now the question that many people will be asking is, why now? Why are we doing the Power Run podcast now? 00:01:48 Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a good question. 00:01:49 Speaker 3: And you say that I've been covering Apple for 17 years. 00:01:51 Speaker 2: I really can't believe it. 00:01:53 Speaker 3: Just to give you some context, when I started covering Apple, Steve Jobs was still CEO, okay? Tim Cook had not yet become CEO because Steve Jobs had not taken that last medical leave yet. The original iPad had not yet been announced. The iPhone 4 had not yet been announced. And so my first sort of big cycle of covering Apple was was the iPad, was the iPhone 4, which obviously were two pinnacle level products in Apple history. And then the transition from Steve Jobs to Tim Cook. And I've been writing about the company over the course of the entire tenure of Cook. And in terms of why is now the right time? Well, it's a new era, not only for Apple with new CEO, John Ternes, but it's a new era for the consumer technology industry with artificial intelligence and how fast everything is moving these days. 00:02:47 Speaker 2: And there are so many different. 00:02:48 Speaker 3: Technology podcasts out there, and I've noticed that there's sort of a gap there in terms of Apple-specific coverage. There are so many people who want to get a podcast and learn and hear more about Apple. It seems like a good time. It's a new era for Apple, and so it's a new era for me, too. Finally doing a podcast now, and I hope you all enjoy it. And Vlad, glad to have you here, too. And it's nice to have you as someone who will be. 00:03:13 Speaker 2: A regular because. 00:03:15 Speaker 3: You have a perspective of the larger consumer tech industry. I'm deep, deep, deep in the Apple ecosystem. 00:03:21 Speaker 2: Obviously, I use everything. 00:03:23 Speaker 3: But it's nice to have sort of a sparring partner here who uses Android on the day-to-day and is also very familiar with everything that's going on. So good to have you here, too, along with your expertise on all things AI in the Asia region. Absolutely. 00:03:36 Speaker 1: And I will say my mission here is going to be to get you to use an Android device at some point for some extended period of time. 00:03:43 Speaker 3: I've got a drawer. I've got a drawer with the the new Z Fold 8. I've got plenty of S series Samsung phones. I've got all the recent Google Pixels. But obviously, I'm an Apple guy through and through, as hopefully most of you know, listening to this show. 00:03:59 Speaker 1: And I will add, just to throw back to the history before we jump to the future, for myself, when I started out doing any technology coverage at all, The iPhone 3GS was one of my formative memories. I will tell you, I first was messing around with feature phones, Nokia phones. Remember Nokia used to make smartphones. And Android was just its inception, really. Like you had Google Maps and it had a couple of nice features. And then I got a hold of the iPhone 3GS and I looked at Google Maps on the iPhone 3GS and the speed and fluidity of the entire user experience. And I said to myself, what are we doing, guys? Like this thing is so far ahead of everything else. And the really compelling thing to me, and especially sitting here in Hong Kong, being here in China and seeing the pace of Chinese innovation, is the fact that the competition is not that far behind the iPhone right now. I am going to be here to remind people that Vivo has amazing cameras, that Xiaomi is putting in laptop-sized batteries and all of that. So to add context, that's really the point. 00:04:56 Speaker 3: Okay, so we're going to start off every episode with some listener questions. And so if you have a question for me, shoot it over as an email to poweron at bloomberg.net, and we'll get to it on a future episode. So Vlad, what great questions do we have this time around? 00:05:11 Speaker 1: Well, the first one, and it's one I'm very curious about myself, is when are we going to see the redesigned MacBook Pro? 00:05:17 Speaker 2: Yeah, so just to give. 00:05:19 Speaker 3: Some context here, back in, I would say, January of 2023, so almost four years ago, I can't believe it's almost 2027, I got a tip that Steve Jobs would be very unhappy because Apple is gearing up seriously this time to develop a touchscreen MacBook Pro. And I've been covering this in and out since 2023. 00:05:47 Speaker 2: And this is about to happen. 00:05:49 Speaker 3: Apple, I believe, will introduce its first touchscreen MacBook Pro this fall, as early as October. Could slip to November, but as early as October. And Apple is testing it internally. using macOS 27.2, which is a beta that they've already put out to developers in recent weeks. So this thing is approaching. They've redesigned the OS to a large degree in GoldenGate, similar to the iPhone Duo redesign, in order to make it more touch-friendly, things around volume controls, buttons and control center, app icons, what have you. And the other part of this MacBook Pro, in addition to having the touchscreen, it's going to be the first Mac with two other things, a dynamic island, which is obviously that cool interface you have on the iPhone, and they're making big use of it on the Duo, and OLED. So for the first time, bringing OLED to the Mac. And you know what that means, Vlad? 00:06:38 Speaker 1: Pricey. Question number two, and this pertains to new Apple CEO John Turner. He just had his first Apple event, but he was very much in line with the Tim Cook Apple event of recent times, which is highly produced. It's like a mini movie produced by Apple. The question is... Do you anticipate John Turner's ever returning to live keynotes like Steve Jobs used to do? 00:06:59 Speaker 2: I don't see it. 00:07:00 Speaker 3: Apple has become the ultimate play it safe company. And when it's prerecorded, you can't make mistakes. You can't mess up a demo. And so for that reason alone, I don't see it ever happening. The other thing is by pre-filming these things, you can create social video pretty easily. You can chop these up pretty easily. And the ability to share these things if you're Apple and market them has gone to a whole new degree compared to where they were when they did live on-stage demos. So the genie's out of the bottle here, and there's no going back in my view. I want to talk to you about a product today inside Apple. It's called J490. Now, these numbers, these code names, they don't really mean anything. But internally, if you've been at Apple for the last, I would say, three to five years, you've been hearing about it a lot because this is their solution to their smart home problem. When Steve Jobs was running Apple, he said they need to own all the places that consumers are, the home, mobile, and in the car. The car they try to do, and really at this point, there's no going back to that project. Mobile, obviously they've owned with the iPod, the iPad, the iPhone, MacBooks, et cetera. 00:08:17 Speaker 2: Home, you have home computers. 00:08:19 Speaker 3: But Apple doesn't really have a smart home strategy. You've had HomeKit, you've had HomePods, but there's really been nothing effective there. J490, the company's AI smart home hub, is the solution. It's basically like an Amazon Echo Show built by Apple for the Apple universe. Features like FaceTime, facial recognition, a brand new operating system. This is Apple's next big thing, and it's just weeks away. 00:08:46 Speaker 1: First of all, when you say it's a brand new ecosystem, is this primarily going to be voice-based? Is that what we're going to lean into? 00:08:53 Speaker 3: So the new operating system is basically, what would an OS look like if Siri AI had an OS? If Siri AI was not just an app on the phone, if it wasn't just an interface on the phone, what if it was an operating system? And although this device is going to have a roughly six-inch square touchscreen, a new operating system that looks like a cross between watchOS and standby mode, some of the iPhone Duo features you've seen on iOS, voice is going to be the primary interface element. Now, Apple tried launching this product several times. Originally, they wanted to get it out at the tail end of 2024, alongside the new Siri features that were announced at WWDC that year as part of Apple intelligence, and then actually delayed until September of this year. Then they kept trying to get it out. So they tried spring. 00:09:44 Speaker 2: 2025, summer 2025, late 2025. Then again, spring 2026, summer 2026. 00:09:52 Speaker 3: Now we finally arrived at fall 2026 and they're ready to go. There are warehouses around the world with these new Siri AI smart home hubs stacked up top to bottom, ready to go, ready to ship to customers. So they are really inching towards this release and it's going to be a huge deal for them. So to answer your question, it's a Siri AI based device. It's all about voice control. It's all about doing things proactively on the user's behalf. And it's all about this concept of personal search and personal context, being able to ask for songs, podcasts, notes, calendar. 00:10:27 Speaker 2: Items, photos that are bespoke to you. 00:10:30 Speaker 3: And so it has a very highly technical AI-based facial recognition system where you can walk up to it and it would recognize if it's me, it would recognize if it's Vlad, and it will show my Siri content for me and your Siri content for you. And it uses AI-based facial recognition instead of Face ID, so it's probably not as secure. But for a device in your home, it does the trick, I think. 00:10:53 Speaker 1: I do have one correction. It will show your Siri content. It will show me an iPhone ad, to be clear. It doesn't have any Siri content for me. I do start off as a skeptic as far as any of these smart home hubs go, because Amazon's Alexa you mentioned is the one that's had the most success to date, but it's still not a truly successful product. And again, going back to our years and years of coverage of this sector, Mark, samsung google amazon microsoft even everyone has tried to tell us this is your home hub right sony with the playstation microsoft with the xbox everybody wanted to be the centerpiece of your home electronics so what do you think gives apple a greater opportunity here or a greater chance of success outside of oh maybe this is the key thing the fact that it has so much of your personal digital life in there as a iphone user I would. 00:11:46 Speaker 3: Argue that Apple has done less than a half-baked job on smart home devices to date. 00:11:51 Speaker 2: I mean, you remember the HomePod, not the HomePod. 00:11:54 Speaker 3: The iPod Hi-Fi from, what was that? That must have been 2005, 2006. It was the super high-end speaker built specifically for the iPod and the iPod ecosystem. It was, I think, $ 349. 00. And it had powerful speakers, powerful bass. 00:12:10 Speaker 2: It was terrific. 00:12:11 Speaker 3: And it was built bespoke for the Apple user and the Apple ecosystem. They ended up discontinuing it in a year because nobody bought it. It was terrible from a ecosystem standpoint. It was terrible from a usability standpoint. And then, you know, not too long after, in 2017, they announced the HomePod. had the same problems built for the iPhone, built for Siri, built for the Apple ecosystem. And I think Apple coming out with a uniquely designed square device, a new operating system, using features that people care about, being able to get your personal data, being able to control it using a Siri that actually works, will be quite compelling. And I do think it will sell much better and do way better than any of Apple's smart home devices to date. 00:12:53 Speaker 1: And when you say sell much better... This is the other thing we need to discuss. What will be the price mark that you think Apple will need to price this at in order for it to succeed? 00:13:03 Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a good question. 00:13:04 Speaker 3: I mean, if you look at the landscape right now, you look how much time Apple has spent developing this thing, you look at the memory shortage and what that's doing to the consumer electronics industry in total, the price that they're going to come in with this product is not going to necessarily be aligned with what they need to come into for it to be a massive success. 00:13:22 Speaker 2: I think that's the big concern here. I mean, ideally, this is a product. 00:13:25 Speaker 3: That would cost $ 200, $ 300. But given the display, given the technologies, given that you're going to have a speaker base in there, I would be very surprised if it came in south of $ 300. 00:13:39 Speaker 1: And the key feature here, which we really can't judge until it's out in the open, people start testing the device, is the strength and the quality of the Siri AI as a home hub orchestrator, right? This is the thing. But I do want to ask you, this is John Ternus' first significant new product under his leadership. How important do you think that is? 00:14:00 Speaker 3: You know, it's interesting because we know how Siri AI works on an iPhone and on an iPad, on a Mac, because we've been using the betas and now it's been released to customers already in September. But to your point, we don't know how Siri AI will operate as the operating system. We're familiar with it as a layer, as a co-pilot, as a helper in Apple's existing operating systems. But how does it operate as the operating system, as the primary input method? And in my tests, Siri AI many times could be slow to respond. It could be slow to understand. And so there's a lot of room for Siri AI to improve. And let me be clear, they could not launch this product with anything short of Siri AI because it would have been disastrous and it would have been impossible to use, would have been completely ineffective. But Siri AI does need to get better for this product to be something stellar, something that people want to put around their home. And in terms of Ternus, obviously the iPhone Duo was his first big announcement. And obviously, they timed the transition from Tim Cook to Ternus to have that be his first product rollout. But this is really the first wholly new product category, right? You can argue that the foldable is a new product category. I would say it is. But a smart hub home display, that is something they've never done before. They've had variations, obviously, without displays. But a foldable phone is a variant of a phone. This display is something entirely new. And it's actually so much more than this product. That's why I wanted to talk about it so badly. This is the beginning of a big push into the home. This is just the first product. It's the beginning of a Siri AI home strategy that includes this device. There's going to be a brand new HomePod mini with a bigger chip to support Siri AI for the first time. So a screenless version of Siri. 00:15:48 Speaker 2: AI in the home. 00:15:49 Speaker 3: Then there's also going to be a beefier Apple TV in terms of the chip to support Siri AI. So there will be an ecosystem, a new Apple smart home ecosystem where you're going to see third party companies be able to create new smart home devices that will fit and play nicely with these other Siri AI devices. And they're also building home security products, both first party and third party home security products. And the biggest thing is a program called J450, And this is an offshoot and a companion product to the J490 Smart Home Display. And these are little cameras that you can put around your house. They have very low frame rate. It looks like a cylinder. It looks like a metal giant chapstick. 00:16:34 Speaker 2: And what does that mean? No video recording. 00:16:37 Speaker 3: So it's a sensor that cannot actually pull in real video footage. It's analyzing your environment in your home and around your home simply using AI. It's a very similar technology that they're going to be using for the AirPods with cameras. So that's going to be pretty cool. And You really need to get these products into the universe for them to get better and improve over time. I'm not saying there's gonna be massive amounts of data collection here, but by getting user feedback, by testing the products, by running into use cases that you simply can't run into for thousands of Apple employees testing these things at home, which by the way, thousands of Apple employees have these smart home hubs, have these AI security cameras at home and other home devices. They're really testing these. This is the way to improve them quickly is to get them into users' hands. And so I know a lot of people, including myself, are excited to take these for a spin. 00:17:30 Speaker 1: Well, and then there's the other aspect of it, which is that flock cameras have been in the news lately because there's been this pushback, because people in general feel like they're probably just having a bit too much surveillance in their lives, a bit too much tracking. What's your take on that? And how does the Apple product fit into that, say, global wider narrative? 00:17:50 Speaker 3: Well, first thing first, I totally understand the narrative, right? Tim Cook is tight with Donald Trump. Everyone is talking about how some of these cameras are being used to siphon data and take pictures of people and create a facial recognition database for the government and for ICE and whomever to use. But I think anyone who covers Apple close enough... or even remotely close enough, would know that that would be hogwash for Apple, right? Like, I'm sure people will accuse Apple of doing that, and it's just going to be ridiculous. But I think we all know the reality is far different, that Apple won't be doing that with our data. Even though this product will have facial recognition to be able to determine and tell the user, hey, Mark just walked into the living room, or Vlad just walked into the kitchen, or whomever just left the house, or the dog is in the dining room, right? 00:18:34 Speaker 2: It will be able to do that. 00:18:35 Speaker 3: But again, they could pitch this as an alternative to that very disturbing idea of mass surveillance because you're not getting anything but text descriptions. There's nothing you can do with it. There's no video recording. And so this is going to be the first mainstream video camera that's a home video security camera that doesn't give you any footage. And I think that's a pretty compelling pitch. And people will be like, hmm, you know, maybe I should try that. Maybe that's a little bit more interesting than a Ring camera or a Google Nest camera. And then on the other hand, you think about it, there are so many use cases where you want that actual footage, right? Like, what can you really do with a home security camera that doesn't show you the actual video, right? And so I'll be curious to see if this can give you stills at least. But in many cases, video's gonna be necessary, right? Like, if you have a burglary and you catch it on a camera, What are you supposed to do with a description? You're just going to give it to the police? They're not going to be able to do anything with a description. You need the actual tape. So it'll be interesting to see really how they market this thing. 00:19:37 Speaker 1: Now, this is a fascinating one because you're right. One of the big issues with AI lately has been the fact that it is not 100% reliable. But I do wonder, because you and I, as we watch the app with, that introduced the new iPhones, the iPhone 2, et cetera, we both noticed that John Turner spoke extensively about your personal information hub, personal information hub. He was effectively selling us this product without announcing this product. 00:20:02 Speaker 3: Exactly, and there were so many people that I know at Apple who were watching the keynote, and they were like, wait, wait, wait, is he about to announce J490, the home product? They were like, no, no, no, it's not ready yet, it's not ready yet. And he didn't, but it set us up for a nice teaser. And here's a little scoop for you. They were originally, during the development of that keynote, planning to introduce the smart home hub during that presentation. And now a lot of signs are pointing to October. 00:20:40 Speaker 1: Well, this wouldn't be an Apple podcast without us talking about the iPhone. It is still the biggest seller of anything in the company's portfolio. The iPhone 18 Pro has just come out. Mark, what are your initial thoughts about this year's generation? 00:20:53 Speaker 3: So I've played a bit with the iPhone 18 Pro and the iPhone 18 Pro Max, and this is a classic through and through S-year. And it even feels like one of the, I would say, smaller S-years in the two-decade history of the iPhone. You're essentially getting a faster processor that doesn't actually feel faster in practice. You're getting some nifty new camera features, the variable aperture being one. that I think 99.9% of people, A, aren't going to figure out how to use, B, be able to take advantage of and actually care for. You've got better battery life, which is a real improvement. But in my testing, in my history of using iPhones, like every generation where they've come out with a new iPhone and have touted massive boost in battery life, man, these batteries degrade. And over the course of the first year of using these things, like the battery life, it falls, right? You sort of return to the mean, you know, I would say. And so over time, you stop noticing that improvement in battery life. And so this is not a big upgrade. If you've got an iPhone 17 Pro or iPhone 17 Pro Max, wait till next year, wait till the 20th anniversary candy bar phone, or look at the iPhone Duo. There's absolutely no reason to upgrade. Looking at the colors, the black is cool. The glacier is cool. I think the burgundy is a big step down from the cosmic orange. I've got a cosmic orange phone with me right now. I love the color and sad and excited to give up that phone at the same time when the Duo comes out in a few weeks. But there's definitely not a lot to like about this year's upgrade if you're upgrading on an annual basis. Now, of course, many people will argue that That's the whole point. This is for people who upgraded years ago or haven't got a new iPhone in five years. That's why people are buying it. But at the same time, there are a lot of people going from the 17 to the 18. And I think for the most part, it's nonsensical. And that's why programs like the Apple upgrade program are even more relevant. Obviously, prices have gone up. And so that's an interesting program. But at the same time, it is a lever for Apple to still sell phones, even when they're not really doing anything new on an annual basis anymore to them. 00:23:06 Speaker 2: What do you think? Have you played with it? 00:23:08 Speaker 1: The new thing is always the pricing because this year and last year, Apple did some of that subtler price raise where it just eliminates the cheapest device in the lineup and just kind of nudges everybody up. And I would say that's an industry-wide phenomenon. When we were talking about the smart home hub, I was reminded that thing is going to have memory in it. And memory now is more valuable than gold. So don't expect anything reasonably affordable for the smartphone hub. All of these things are going to be effectively luxury purchases. 00:23:38 Speaker 2: That's what I'm saying. 00:23:39 Speaker 3: I'm saying like it would make a lot of sense at $ 200, $ 300, but this memory situation could push it up. 00:23:45 Speaker 1: That's right. And likewise with these new iPhones, I will say when John Turner's came out, he gave four priorities at Apple's event about the future of Apple. And I actually loved them. Well, three of them. AI is one of these priorities, which companies now just say in the same way that people on LinkedIn say, I'm really passionate and excited about accounting. It's like, you just got to say it, right? You want to do some business, so you say, I'm excited about AI. I don't think necessarily John Turner or so many people who went into Apple are excited about AI in the same way that people go into open AI. But beside that, he said the three priorities, performance, battery life, cameras, right? Those to me are always going to be the fundamental things that build a good smartphone. And I totally get it. Being somebody like yourself, who's always using the most upgraded iPhone 17, 16, 15, every generation, you're not going to see that incremental improvement. But I will say I reviewed the budget version of the iPhone last year, last summer. 00:24:44 Speaker 2: The 16E, I remember. It was a good review. 00:24:47 Speaker 1: And I was impressed. I was like, hey, hang on a second. This is actually very good. Apple's baseline for so many things, whether it's the vibration engine, the smoothness of the interface, et cetera, et cetera, is always so. 00:24:58 Speaker 2: Good that even me- And that's why we hold them to a high standard. 00:25:01 Speaker 1: That's exactly right. But even me coming from the ultra editions of Android, I found things to appreciate. I found things to enjoy. And likewise- I'm surrounded by colleagues here in the Hong Kong Bureau who are exchanging lightning cables between them because that's the generation of iPhone that they're on because they're fine, they're happy with it. I think those people, if you give them like the battery life difference for them is going to be huge. And Apple is leaning into cameras because again, this is me being the advocate for the Chinese smartphone ecosystem. Those guys are just zealots about camera technology. They go into Sony and they're designing custom chips in partnership with Sony. custom image sensors, right? So Apple feels that pressure. The consumer is going to get the benefit of it. To my mind, the challenge is, since we're talking really like luxury product pricing now with the iPhone Duo, you're well above $ 2, 000. It's justifying that because to my mind, it's just going to extend the period of time that people are just going to go between upgrades, right? Like those same lightning people will maybe upgrade, but the ones on the 14, 15 generation and so on may hold off again. 00:26:09 Speaker 2: Now, Apple knows that. 00:26:11 Speaker 3: Apple knows that its upgrades are getting smaller on an annual basis at this point. They know there's no real reason to go from a 17 Pro to an 18 Pro. 00:26:20 Speaker 2: So what do you do? 00:26:22 Speaker 3: You call in the influencers. You call in the Instagrammers. You call in the TikTokers who are going to come, probably being paid for, flying to Cupertino, go to these Apple events. In a lot of cases, instead of media members who are going to give an honest opinion. They're making Instagram videos, TikTok videos, and they're talking about how this is the greatest thing since sliced bread. They're talking about, oh my God, this is the most beautiful product, the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. And you're literally looking at the same thing that came out last year. And I don't think it's good for consumers. It's good for Apple sales. It's good for Apple's marketing. But I don't think it's good for consumers to essentially be given Apple-sanctioned dishonest opinions. Now, I'm not saying these influencers are doing it intentionally to be dishonest, but come on. And I'm not saying that Apple says, hey, we're only paying for your trip, we're only giving you this phone if you write positive things. But I think everyone knows that if you start saying negative things after a trip that Apple paid for or after being given a device for free from Apple that you don't have to give back, I think that you know that they're not going to do it again if you write something negative. So it's quite an interesting sea change for how Apple is allowing events to be covered. It's vast majority, if it's streamers, it's influencers, it's a new type of marketing because they are increasingly needing those people to help sell the devices. And having someone coming in and asking honest questions, it's the same vein for why they don't want to do live on stage interviews because doing a live on stage interview, you're leaving things to chance. you have the potential for issues. When you have an influencer, someone on Instagram or TikTok, asking questions of Apple executives like, oh, what's your favorite color? And then Apple executives responding every time, oh, that would be like asking me to pick who's my favorite child, right? 00:28:22 Speaker 2: That is a no-risk situation for them. 00:28:27 Speaker 3: A risky situation is having a tried-and-true journalist come on stage and asking you about your ties to the Trump administration, asking you about product development cycles, asking you why did the foldable iPhone take so long to develop? How do you feel about Samsung launching a Z Fold 8 a month ago with a very similar aspect ratio? How do you think you're going to compete with foldables? The first foldables came out in 2019 and went nowhere. Why in this case, even though you have better fit and finish and hardware, why do you think your phone is going to do well when Samsung, even with great global appeal and high market share itself, wasn't able to penetrate? What do you think of the idea of selling $ 2, 000 phones right now? 00:29:12 Speaker 2: Are people going to want to pay for that? 00:29:13 Speaker 3: And so there are real questions that could be asked to Apple executives that I think are extremely fair questions, and we're not seeing a whole lot of that. And to Steve Jobs' credit, and obviously this was before the Instagram and TikTok age, Steve Jobs would talk to reporters. 00:29:27 Speaker 2: He would answer questions. He would go on the news shows. 00:29:31 Speaker 3: And even if he was asked a very tough question, it almost felt like he respected the question. 00:29:36 Speaker 2: And even if he didn't like it, he answered it. And maybe you didn't like his answer. but he did it. And it wasn't that big of a deal. 00:29:42 Speaker 3: When Tim Cook took over for Steve Jobs, he was interviewed multiple times by different major news outlets. Kara Swisher, Walt Mossberg interviewed him at their D conference multiple times. I was in attendance for those. That's not really something we've seen with John Ternus so far. He's been doing Instagram and influencer interviews. And I hope Ternus, even though he's new to the CEO role, will eventually take the tougher questions. And I'm not talking about like really, really serious questions. These are questions about your technology and your products that go beyond what's your favorite color. Yeah. 00:30:15 Speaker 1: And I will say Apple is adopting some of what I would call the automaker marketing technique. Because what car companies tend to do is they have their brand new super shiny vehicle that may have an audience of say a few thousand people who can actually afford it. And then they fly our journalists to like a Spanish Island and then test drive it on the beach or test drive it in the Swiss Alps. And honestly, If you test driving a car in the Swiss Alps or one of those picturesque mountain roads, it's really tough to not enjoy the damn thing, right? It's super specced. It's in the best possible circumstances. And then you walk away with a very positive impression. Likewise, I would think the people who don't have experience attending Apple events are going to be at least a little bit starstruck. You go to that spaceship campus. You see all the excitement. You see all the smiling faces around you. And you're going to be predisposed to get swept up in the hype. I mean, oftentimes part of the challenge with even covering a live Apple event is that you have to convey what Apple says. And then Apple tells you like, this is three times the performance. Well, guys, I don't have the benchmark suite in front of me to tell you whether it actually has that much. We just have to go with it. We have to convey that. 00:31:28 Speaker 3: Well, that's why we say, you know, in many cases when a company, not only Apple, claims a battery life metric or claims a resolution metric or claims, performance metric, we say, according to the company, according to Apple, they claim, they say, right? We have to, you know, give that context. And then in our reviews, we follow up with the benchmarks and we call it as we see it. So that's what we'll keep doing. 00:31:51 Speaker 1: I do want to ask you, and I'm sure you've given this some thought. If you do get a few minutes with John Turner's, what would be the top couple of questions you would ask of the new CEO at Apple? 00:32:01 Speaker 2: I would ask how. 00:32:03 Speaker 3: He feels about the structure of where he's the CEO of the company, but he has an executive chairman who was his boss, may still. 00:32:12 Speaker 2: Be his boss in some respects as. 00:32:14 Speaker 3: The chairman of the board, still running things and still being a public face and still tweeting about new Apple product launches, still attending Apple product launches, being in the thick of things. How does he feel about there not being a clean break? And obviously, he'll give a very polite answer and He probably likes Tim Cook being around, having to deal with some of the things like dealing with governments that he doesn't really want to necessarily handle. But at some point, Ternus is going to have to handle those things because, you know, as young and spry as Tim Cook seems, he's not going to be able to do that forever. And sometime a transition will need to take place. The other question I would ask him is, do you think there needs to be some new game changing. 00:32:56 Speaker 2: Product to Ternus? 00:32:58 Speaker 3: Take Apple past the iPhone, just like you went from the Mac to the iPhone to the iPad, kind of back to the iPhone. 00:33:08 Speaker 2: Do we need the next product? 00:33:10 Speaker 3: Or is it about, for the very long term, talking about a 15, 20-year CEO tenure, having the phone at the center and building peripherals around it? And then if I had time for one more question, I would ask him his thoughts on autonomy. I would ask him his thoughts on cars. And given that Apple killed their self-driving car project a couple years ago, do you think that Apple should get back in that game? Because really, that's their long-term lever to go from a $ 4, $ 5 trillion market cap company to. 00:33:39 Speaker 2: A $ 10 trillion market cap company. 00:33:42 Speaker 3: Obviously, he won't answer any of those questions, but they're certainly worth a shot. 00:33:47 Speaker 1: Honestly, the most signature Mark Gurman thing I can think of is to squeeze in an extra question. 00:33:52 Speaker 2: It's what I do. 00:33:58 Speaker 3: For more from Mark, subscribe to the Power On newsletter at Bloomberg.com forward slash Power On and follow at Mark Gurman on all social platforms. 00:34:07 Speaker 1: Power On is a production of Bloomberg Podcasts. 00:34:10 Speaker 3: Our show is produced by Alexis Haught and Kesha Pandya. 00:34:14 Speaker 1: Our supervising producer is Magnus Henriksen. 00:34:17 Speaker 2: Audio engineering by Blake Maples. 00:34:19 Speaker 1: Original music is by Taka Yasuzawa and Alex Segura. Our video editor is Bobby Krause. 00:34:25 Speaker 2: Our executive producer is Amy Keene. 00:34:28 Speaker 1: And Cheryl Brumley is our head of podcasts. Special thanks to Nick Turner and Tom Giles. 00:34:33 Speaker 2: Thank you for listening.