We'll have to see how this plays out, but along with the supposedly revamped HomeKit, this might be what Apple probably needs. Strategically, Apple has always had two issues with its home strategy: 1. This is a game where you need compatibility with a wide range of vendors, and Apple has failed to accomplish this. 2. Apple has never been very clear about how they would monetize the smart home. Item 1: The smart home cannot be dominated A home has tons of appliances. Some of them benefit a lot from being smart, like thermostats, light switches, ovens, and doorbells. Some of them could benefit from being smart but no one has cracked it yet, like fridges, washing machines, and dishwashers. Some of them probably have little to no benefit, like a blender. Either way, there are almost infinitely many appliances. You can't make them all. So in order to be a true smart home platform, you need to have wide compatibility. Apple has utterly failed here. Partly, it is because, like everyone else, Apple has failed to create a true value proposition for integration. There are a few devices that naturally work well together, but most systems are perfectly fine with their own app. Partly, it is because Apple's HomeKit integration is more complex than the Alexa or Google Home integrations. Some vendors, like MyQ and Racchio, have had to cut their support for HomeKit over the difficulty of working with Apple. Partly, it is because Apple has had no leverage. Apple tried to rely on the draw of attracting iPhone users, but this has turned out to be pretty weak. The big smarthome players are Amazon/Alexa, Google/Nest, and Samsung. They all have their own range of tentpole devices. Other device makers choose to integrate not to get access to the broader universe, but to access the tentpole smarthome products. Apple has lacked this. The LG partnership could fix that. Item 2: How to come in late, and how to monetize Apple makes its money primarily through selling devices, and increasingly through subscriptions. The smart home is not amenable to either of these. The idea that Apple will sell more iPhones through the smarthome is laughable. However, consumers also expect the smart home to operate more like a standard, which is free for them, so you can't charge a subscription. And because Apple is on the backfoot, it probably can't charge OEMs to integrate with HomeKit. (In fact, it might have to pay them.) The best approach, therefore, is to make like the top players and come out with its own line of products. Like the AirPods, it can charge a premium price and think of it almost like an attach rate to the iPhone. The problem is, since the ecosystem is already quite developed, Apple can't come in with just one product. Especially given how weak the HomeKit ecosystem is, it needs to come in with a running start. That makes LG the perfect partner. It makes really good home appliances, already has distribution and a business here, and has aspirations to be a smarthome player through ThinQ, which is promising but floundering. Apple can not only partner with LG to make the premier Apple Home products--which has some truly new compelling features around things like privacy, facial detection, and smart locks--but it can bring in its world-class design (many smart home products aren't pretty) and leverage this relationship to bring Apple Home to LG's products that aren't traditionally smart home products, like washing machines, through some kind of native ThinQ integration. Notably, Apple can also bring something unique with Siri. The smart home has always suffered from the problem that the integrations and automations aren't actually that smart. With a local LLM, it becomes possible and cost-effective to have really smart automations. This also could offer monetization, where Apple wants to have a "Siri+" in the future for heavy users; this could be part of that, solving the monetization problem that has plagued the smarthome. And Apple sells speakers and Apple TVs as Thread routers, so this could boost sales for those products. My hope is that this goes well, and I'm genuinely excited for this. I have several LG products, which are often the best option for home appliances. LG quality, plus Apple design, could be a real winner here. To @johnternus (now that you're on X; I hope you're listening!) a few things I'd put in: -Try to make the HomeKit redesign have backwards compatibility -Make the product list supported by Apple Home _way_ larger than anyone else. I want to add my smart oven, my smart dishwasher, etc -Think about how to allow Siri to use a local LLM to do truly smart integrations -Be willing to pay obstreperous vendors, like Liftmaster, to come into the Apple Home fold, and aggressively pursue minor players like Breville and Racchio -Try to get LG to build native ThinQ support into Apple Home so that all of its appliances are there from day 1 of the partnership -Make the Apple Home rooms smarter in terms of design; why should my kitchen and media room blocks look the same? -Think hard about how to make Apple Home a single management system. Why can't I use it to manage my electricity, my backup power, my water and gas, and much more in a single place?

Shower floor with surfers paddling out to the drain.

IP law is, to me, "natural" in that it is hard to see how it could have evolved any other way. One piece of evidence for that is that they evolved at the exact historical times they were needed, and they developed rather quickly. The oldest form of IP that was broadly protected was trademark, starting in 1266 when bakers in England were required to stamp their bread to indicate quality. You might say, isn't 1266 a little random? Well, no--the 13th century was the beginning of the Commercial Revolution, which is when international trade picked up and society began a millennium-long journey of getting richer. Makes sense that you'd need to know more about the quality of the source when your trade increases, especially if you are a seafaring people with a need to trade. Patent law came next in Venice in 1472. Again, this is not a random time and place: 1474 was the heart of the Renaissance, the first time since the Roman empire that technology had started to explode, and Venice was arguably the most advanced society on the planet at that time. It's worth noting that the countries that would pick up the patent torch from Venice a couple centuries later were England and the United States, which were the centers of the Industrial Revolution. After that was copyright law, most famously the Statute of Anne in 1710. Before the printing press, creative works were reproduced in very small quantities, so protections for creative works were mostly in the form of individual privileges. It was only the mass production of creative works that necessitated control. Conveniently for the state, this also created an opportunity to suppress dissent. Same with trade secret law. The first real trade secret laws emerged in the United States in 1834 and England in 1817, around the time they were reforming their patent laws too. It is no surprise these evolved together and at the same time: these were the centers of the Industrial Revolution, and alongside the need to protect inventions is the need to protect the secrets of production. There is other evidence too. The vast agreement of basically every country as to the broad outlines, and even many specific contours, of IP law so quickly after it was created suggests that there is something natural to it. Though I'm not a natural law theorist, it is quite arguable that there is only one logical outcome in IP, and that it was not invented but discovered.

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New technology is never a moat. It’s what gives you the right to play and gives you the means to build your moat. But technology will always diffuse somehow, eventually. You need something more.

This Thursday, I’m launching the Power On Podcast and it’s all about Apple and consumer tech. It’ll be available anywhere you can get your podcasts, including on Apple and Spotify. It’ll also be a video podcast on YouTube and Bloomberg’s website. Enjoy! bloomberg.com/poweronpodcast

This is a challenging situation, made more interesting logistically given that it uses Disney IP. Under copyright law, the copyright holder generally holds the right to derivative works. So for example, if you create Star Wars, you own the right to make a sequel. Fair use is where things get tricky. In order to protect creativity and free expression, copyright law gives exceptions. One of those is parody. Another one is educational excerpts. And so on. There are differences between countries. One of those is parody. The US is generally much more permissive of parodies and fan fiction as long as it isn’t for profit. But there are cases allowing reverse engineering of software, collage of other creative works, and even the reworking of photographs. That said, it’s a grey area and a sliding scale. Bass Windu uses Disney IP in an interesting way in that it is creating new IP derived from existing IP. I doubt there’s a single frame from an actual Disney movie, but it clearly uses their characters. There hasn’t been a case yet on whether this kind of use is “transformative,” which is the key element. There are other issues of law as well. It clearly uses the likeness of Samuel Jackson, and likeness law is more protective than copyright law. The source is also unclear, and a consumer could confuse this for an official song, so you could imagine a trademark issue as well, since Disney has tons of registered Star Wars marks—a quick Certus search shows that Lucasfilm alone has had nearly 1500 registered marks in its history in the US. Two more complicating factors: (1) it’s online, which means it’s been distributed in the EU and other jurisdictions less permissive towards fan-made works; and (2) online platforms usually turn on monetization for creations that become this popular, which gets rid of an important element of the fan fiction defense. As a practical matter, it’s possible that none of this matters at all. On YouTube, you see tons of supercuts, like the various anime abridged series that basically rewrite anime using original TV series clips. While it’s true that remixes are often fair use, it’s a bit of a grey area, and non-legal enforcement (think brand registries, takedown notices, sending private C&Ds) can mean that behind the scenes there’s a settlement agreement. Even in cases where creators would probably win, they usually settle with the rightsholder. When Andy Baio remixed “Kind of Blue”, he didn’t fight the Davis estate. He paid them $32,000. Same with the abridged series—behind the scenes, they write a check for their supercuts to Japanese rightsholders. This IP is owned by Disney. They are the most litigious company in entertainment. They once made a daycare center paint over a Mickey Mouse mural. They have the ability to make your life hell. And they are known to never settle without a cessation of misuse.

California's high speed rail system shouldn't be about connecting LA and SF (at least not at first). It should focus on "work and pleasure" routes that connect places where people travel frequently for work or play. Think Monterey-SJ-SF-SAC-Tahoe, or SD-LB-LA-Palm Springs.

I talk to my kids like adults. My 3 year old daughter asked me why I was at a conference and I started to get an avalanche of "why"s. I calmly explained what a conference is, why I go to get sales, and eventually she interrupts me with "ok" and doesn't ask another "why". I think this might be a first in history.

The most notable part of this rebellion is that Yale was willing to "fire" half of its student population over this rebellion. Does anyone believe that an organization would have that level of gumption today?

This is what the Vision Pro should have been.

Evidence that a Nobel prize in economics does not map onto sound policy recommendations below:

Bringing autonomy to the next fight: wildfires. Anduril has earned first place in the Autonomous Wildfire Response Track within the @xprize competition. Our solution manages the entire wildfire lifecycle with minimal human intervention. Lattice coordinates assets across air, land, and space to detect and respond faster. The award reflects Anduril's deep experience building firefighting tech including more than two years of dedicated work with XPRIZE. During the rigorous finals test in the Alaskan wilderness, our platform autonomously detected, fought, and suppressed live fires. Destructive wildfires are a global crisis. Anduril and XPRIZE are pioneering faster, more scalable and more automated ways to fight them.

Congratulations to @anduriltech on winning the @xprize wildfire prize! xprize.org/news/xprize-wildf…

A bunch of Nobel Prize-winning economists have endorsed California's proposed billionaire wealth tax. I can't oppose them on authority. But I know some academics who can.

“Corgi, the coffee chain that sells insurance…”

This kind of thing is real. I once met someone who built software that could determine what a computer was writing based on the sounds of a hard disk spinning, and another who built software that could tell what was being typed through a similar method.

One of my cousins is an 8 year old boy. “Claudeforce” is the product name he would come up with.

Putting this here: theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv…

When 9/11 happened, I was 8 years old. My dad was a commercial airline pilot, so on 9/11, my mom didn't allow us to watch the TV. She didn't want us to think the plane that hit the tower had my dad in it. Remember that most people didn't have cell phones, so imagine what it was like for airline families: spending hours not knowing what was going on. We're also a Jewish family. We didn't get to go back to school for a couple of weeks. Most people don't know this, but al-Qaida threatened basically every Jewish institution in the country. Given that 9/11 had just happened yesterday, every threat was taken seriously. When we went back to school, it was never the same. There were armed guards with guns. We couldn't freely leave and had to check in at a security desk. Every Jewish school I ever attended afterwards also had armed guards. And given the threats we've faced ever since, it was clearly necessary. The country never felt the same, but I was old enough to say that it also never was the same.