(Preview) Three Weeks of Meta Momentum, The Ultimate Muse Upside, A King Kong vs. Godzilla Aggregator War

Delivery delays and frustrating customer service

0:00Hello, and welcome to a free preview of Sharp Tech.

0:09Hello, and welcome back to another episode of Sharp Tech. I'm Andrew Sharp, and on the other line, Ben Thompson. Ben, how you doing? Horrible. Absolutely horrible. I'm sorry. I'm going to have to rant. It is ruining my life. The delivery windows. UPS and FedEx. They can both, seriously. It's unbelievable. Okay, where do I start? This is a building problem. Good.

0:39So number one last week, iPhone week, right? I know, very busy. Get it. I was home alone. I had to go pick up my son from school. Of course, they come in the window and I'm not here. I'd heard they are now just leaving iPhones. I guess not in my neighborhood. But it's fine. No, it's fine. It's fine. I get it. It's an iPhone. One of the best resell items ever. I get it. Sure. So on the next day, did I complain about this already? I can't remember. No, you've complained about it privately, but I'm glad you're taking it public here. No, no, it's building. No, it's building. So yes, I was not going to complain

1:12about this, but it's building. So on Saturday, I wake up early and I'm like, because it said it's going to be there like throughout any time during the day. And then I opened the UPS app and it says, we'll be there between 1230 and 430. So like, oh, the specificity. I appreciate like, I'm so beaten down by these companies that I'm happy that it reduced from a 12 hour window to a four hour window. Give me a four hour window. I will be available. Sure. No, I canceled an appointment that I had in the afternoon. I made sure that I was going

1:43to be there. And because my wife was flying in from Taiwan that evening, I had to drive down to O'Hare. It's a late flight that arise. I knew I'd be up late driving. So like, I'm going to need to take a nap because I woke up early. Yeah. I can't take a nap in the afternoon because I don't want to miss my delivery. So I'm going to take a nap now at 10 a.m. So I lay down and I take a nap. Great nap. Actually, one of the best naps I've had in a while, right up until I wake up at 11 and it says, your UPS driver came at 1030 to try and deliver your package. You were not there. And if you don't get it

2:14the next time they come, it's going back to sender. Oh, God. Wow. I, of course, like Damocles hanging over your head here with this iPhone. I get ahold of someone. I'm very mad, very upset. They're like, oh, we'll have the driver circle back around. We'll have someone from the ground. We can't contact the driver directly. Someone there will call you within an hour. No call. I call back three hours later. Like, oh, it says on here you're scheduled to get a call on Monday morning. I'm like, anyhow, I do get the iPhone on Monday. There's a, we can get to the iPhone. I have an iPhone

2:48review, which we can get to later in the show foreshadowing. So anyhow, this is just dangling. I'm kind of annoyed about this. You might've heard I built a new rack. It's a nice rack. It doesn't have my new server in it, which is obviously, you know, the critical part of the rack to say the least. Been a little delayed. It's finally on its way. It was supposed to ship like last Monday. They didn't ship like Thursday tracking this, whatever. My server is tripsing around the state of Illinois right now. I'm not sure exactly why. Okay. It was supposed

3:19to be delivered on Wednesday. Then it was delayed to Thursday. Now, apparently it's delayed to Friday. You have to sign for it. Someone has to be here. Guess what? I'm not covered for deliveries on Friday. Oh my God. Anyhow, no one cares other than like, bring me the AI drones, bring me the AI customer service, automate all of this for the love of God. Yes. There is a, everyone is anti AI, you know, right now, broad general public. There is an aspect though, where corporate America has so seated the

3:55ground for AI. Like I saw a tweet about someone bemoaning the end of customer service. There's an angle to muse. Like people are like, well, it's cool. Muse is finding you discounts and refunds, but like once all this stuff becomes like, it's just going to become much more adversarial between companies and their customers. And I'm like, we're already there. These are my two mortal enemies. I despise them with the fire of a thousand suns. I don't care what happens to them. So anyhow, well, your story finds every single dollar they owe every customer. It does have a happy ending because you did get the

4:30iPhone and you hated it, which as far as I'm concerned, it's wonderful. So I have to completely

iPhone impressions and hardware weight

4:36retract everything I said last episode. I said, oh, that one day you need batteries worth the other 64 days. That is totally a lie. The, the, I cannot believe. So by the way, I don't know. I didn't realize the 18 pro max looks the exact same as the 70 pro max, substantially heavier. Like, like, uh, yeah. And, and actually if you look at all the numbers in front of me, but it is every iPhone has gotten heavier and heavier since the iPhone 15 pro, which I think was actually the best one of

5:07this generation. Uh, it's a chunky phone. There's a bit where thick with three C's. Well, the air exists. If that's what you care about, Apple sells you an alternative. Now we'll see how many, I think we'll get the air too. I don't know if we'll ever get an air three. I, uh, air two, I will, you know what I'm going to do with the air to what buy it in person, not get it delivered. I'm going to be standing in line. No, no, there's an Apple store here in Madison. Look, we're not that backwards. Give me a break. I will be in line to get my air too. I cannot wait. Also look, the burden is mine.

5:43If you bought an air, you're doomed to forever want that phone, not anything else. But I got to tell you at 18 pro 18 pro max users, your phones feel cheap. It's just, it's just like shade at the 18 pro max community. The air, it's not just that it's beautiful and it's so light and so thin. You get the sense it can take a beating and it can take a beating. I've dropped my phone multiple times. It's like it's solid. Yeah. The 18 pro is like this flimsy aluminum. I mean, it's fine. The 17 pro is

6:19probably my favorite iPhone I've ever owned in part because the 16 was such a piece of crap. So it's felt miraculous to upgrade to the 17. Uh, but I'm just thrilled that your love affair with the air is alive and crap upgraded to 17. Well, uh, what a privileged statement that is. Well, all I can say is the battery life is better. The camera is fantastic. It's really the camera for me. I could never go to the air because I need the best possible. 100%. If you have little kids, you should be getting the pro, the pro or the pro max. Like I'm sure the camera is spectacular.

6:52Like the duo piqued my interest, but I'm not settling for a worse camera at this point in my life. Um, not only, not only should you have the absolute best camera, you should actually also upgrade every year because that's the one piece that generally gets better every year and you get one opportunity to take pictures of your kids at the particular age they are. So it's like, this is the beautiful rationalization. You can justify getting a new iPhone every year. And I think it is a legitimate justification. It's like one of the few that actually exist. There you go. I'll take it. No one is better at coming up with justification for spending money on electronics than me,

7:24but this is one that I think is actually, is actually a real one. Makes sense for everybody. Absolutely.

Meta Connect and the shifting perception of Meta

7:29Well, all is right in the world. You're back in the fold as an air evangelist. Uh, as for the show today, we will begin with Meta Connect. Meta Connect was held Wednesday night in Menlo Park. I've already made, put in my request, stop having events on Wednesday. Please accommodate my publishing schedule. Um, reasonable request. I think Wednesday night, come on meta, uh, at least do it during the day. I had a good time reviewing the Meta Connect

8:01event at like 1 a.m. as I was lying in bed. There was a lot going on out there. Okay. What was great about it? 50 minutes. Yeah. Nice and tight. Live audience. Yeah. Zuck doing it the old fashioned way. Love to see it. Live is so much better. Like I just blew through it. Like when I was going to watch it, I just started watching at night, locked in, just watch the whole thing. Why? Cause live is compelling. Apple puts out these marketing videos. I'm like drifting off into space within like 30 seconds. Like they're live is just better.

8:32They actually pulled it off with all successful demos. Uh, so congratulations to them. I think that's the first one they made it all the way through keynote without a failed demo. Yeah. Uh, but yeah, 50 minutes. Love it. Well, and news mania is also sweeping the United States as we speak. So we have a lot to wrap our arms around with respect to Meta. Let me start with a general question though. Facebook changed its name to Meta on October 28th, 2021. If we consider the past three weeks as one moment in time, is this the first time since the name change that Meta has officially

9:05been cool? What do you think? Ooh, there's a bit where you can lean too much into it and the cool thing becomes cringe. That's a good observation. I mean, I think if you're an investor, Meta was pretty cool from like the 2023 period or 2022, I think it was, uh, on, um, probably, I mean, it's first time they've probably been cool in, in a very long time. Um, it's a, it's a good, I don't know. You're, what do you think? You're the normie here. I do probably have a better sense for what's cool.

9:36Um, and zooming out like Metaverse was a creepy disaster that almost instantly became a nationwide punchline. The headsets never really moved the needle. Llama was a cool idea that never gained any real traction. The glasses, they are a hit in relative terms. It's not a Google glass situation, but I wouldn't say they've swept the nation or captured anyone's imagination really. And I think of our past podcasts after Meta keynotes where you would come on and say,

10:12you know, I really admire this risk that they're taking. They're committed to it. And some of the innovations in the glasses space are pretty cool. Did I say that? Well, you've been generally pro what they're doing with that initiative. Uh, look, I don't want to mischaracterize. Look, I've had a bad week. Okay. I was on TVPN, uh, and making the point that, that look, you might, I don't know if you know this Andrew, but I'm very enthusiastic about agents. Um, you may have heard about this on and offline and racks and like hardware

10:47to run my agents and my own hardware agent for my thing that I've spent weeks and like blown past my subscription multiple times, spent real money on this. I believe in agents to say the least. When Muse came out, I said, when Muse came out, this is the same day as open AI, solve that math equation or sorry, that sounds so trivial. Navier, Stokes. Yeah. Millennium prize. Sure. No. One of the math, math questions that is so significant. I knew about it well before this AI moment. Like it's a super big deal,

11:20like to be clear, but I made the case, like, look, this is a bigger deal. Muse is a bigger deal. Yeah. Like just what it represented, uh, giving literally everyone a computer. Like that's, that's the core of it. It's not just AI. It's actually giving people a computer and an entity that can use that computer on your behalf. It's, it's actually incredible. Like I have told everyone that in my regular life that they should try Muse, like just because, and it's because I believe in agents so much. I think they're so helpful and so useful. What I don't think is useful

11:50is trying to sell people on productivity. People don't want to be productive. Enterprises want to be productive. What you sell them on is making annoying stuff in their life go away, making life more convenient. This is about a marketing, eliminating hassles is what people will buy. So I make this point on TBPN and I'm talking about the framing of this question. Somehow I get clipped and it's all over the internet that I think agents are stupid as pointless. Muse is a failure. It is

12:23so aggravating. Like, like the clipping thing is out of control. Like, like it's fun to go on these other podcasts. It makes me not want to go on. I don't blame the TBPN guys, but like, but it's really annoying. This happened with when I went on Packer O'Shaughnessy thing too. Like it's like the, the clipping. Oh, well, every couple hours I will see you responding to someone new on Twitter being like, actually I've written the exact opposite of what you just said. I said, so stop mischaracterizing me. I don't want to mischaracterize you as far as Meta Connect. All I'm saying is

12:54Anyhow, what I'm saying is, what I'm saying is don't stop. What I'm saying is as annoying as this week of clipping has been, do you know the basis on which I met Mark Zuckerberg for the first time? I don't know. Enlighten. So this was, this was in 2020. It was the week before everything shut down and he invites me in. And the reason he wanted to talk to me is he wanted to understand why for seven, for six years, however long it had been, I had been relentlessly

13:27opposed to what they were doing with the metaverse and reality labs. And it actually increased my respect for him a ton. Like he, he just, he wasn't, you don't want to argue with me. He did argue with me, but it was, it was a, it was a Socratic sort of like, I want to really understand what you think. I obviously didn't change his mind about it at all, but he's like, I just want you to come and meet because I want to really understand your thinking about this because I want an outside perspective. Like, why do you think I'm doing the wrong thing? And we went back and forth,

13:59had a good discussion. And then he's like, okay, you know, great to meet you. And then kept doing the same thing, which by the way is very Mark. Yeah. Which is fine. Uh, all that to say is like my discomfort with and issue with meta doing this whole space and spending all this money and doing hardware when they're a horizontal services company that should be serving everyone and hardware diverts you and sets you into competition with folks that should be your partners. All of which happened by the way. And then you get on this podcast and say you who have

14:34been defending their glasses effort all along. It's unbelievable. I didn't even get clipped. All I'm saying is in those podcasts, after past connect events, I have felt like the wet blanket who has to come out and say, look, I don't think anybody's actually going to use these. And there's not anything that right. I've been enthusiastic about the technology. Correct. I've always been at a problem with meta specifically doing it. And in fact, I think there's an argument that meta actually killed the technology by virtue of bringing all the talent in house. It was, it didn't develop

15:05organically. Yeah. It didn't develop in the broader ecosystem. Anyhow. But after this year's connect, UPS, Andrew Sharp, TBPN, I'm like Arya Stark right now. And lots of random people on Twitter who've been driving you insane for the last 72 hours. Uh, I was sitting there last night thinking, Holy crap. They nailed it with the VR glasses. Like, what did you think of meta's VR headset? I just look at this now and I'm like, they're nailing it on all these different vectors.

15:37And I'm wildly impressed with where the company is only a couple months after everybody was freaking out saying, what the hell is meta doing? You wrote a script for Mark Zuckerberg to get his messaging on point. And now here we are a couple months later. It's the hottest company in technology.

How Muse transforms Meta device strategy

15:55There's a sport you might've heard of called basketball. So like, um, I tried to come from the quickly familiar. Um, in basketball, there's this interesting dynamic that happens like when a player is injured or when a team like acquires a player, say at the deadline where, uh, you can have a team that seems woefully deficient and you add one more player and they get way better, not just because they added that player, but because everyone slots into a position that's much more suited to

16:27them. Right. Like, uh, like of course, you know, what a number one needs to be, you know, everyone knows it's coming. They still score. Like they draw the defense, they kick it out. You need a number two who can carry the offense with the number ones on the bench, who can be a secondary ball maker needs to depending on if number one is a distributor or not. If they're not, they need to be a distributor. If number one is more distributor, number two needs to be a score. Like, and then number three is like basically the guy who you can put them on the best player to defend and will knock down every single open shot. And then you have the, like, you have the dirty guy who does all the dirty work,

16:59grunt work. It's like, imagine the Knicks without Carl Anthony Towns. Carl Anthony Towns is a second best player. And then he allows their role players like OG Ananobi and Mikael Bridges to slot into their proper roles as opposed to asking those guys to do too much and being inevitably disappointed. So the problem is that if you're missing your number two, then your number three seems worse. Cause he's a bad number two. Your number four seems worse. He's a bad number three. Like all the way, it goes all the way down the chain and you, you can slot just one guy in and a team gets massively

17:30better because everyone is now in their proper position. Meta's problem is they were missing a number one. Okay. And what I mean is the reason why the glasses seem compelling is just not because they're small and thin and like, you know, even the VR ones, like I thought it was a great reveal. Actually, they've been sitting out here the whole time and you didn't notice because they look kind of like, that was the best part of it. Like just from a showmanship perspective, because he kept saying, Oh, look, here's all our glasses. Here's our glasses. Like he was, he was kind of setting it up the whole time. And, uh, once you have muse and muse is the thing. Now you're not selling VR

18:07glasses. You're not selling AR glasses. You're selling muse delivery devices. And it just, it's so obvious. Muse is something that wants to break out of the phone. You see it in your little app up in the little corner, typing away and doing work for you. It's like, Oh, poor little muse is stuck in my, like, you're not thinking this clearly, but you're getting a sense of, I would like muse in more places. How can I get it more? Oh, Meta has devices on which I can interact with muse. It isn't ethereal AI glasses. These are now muse glasses. Your little Tamaguchi is

18:43a muse Tamaguchi. And that is what, that's why the keynote comes along, feels so focused. It's why you feel so excited. It's because they had VR as their number one player. Yeah. Not a number one player, right? They, they had kind of VR, they had AI as their number one player. Also not a number one player. Your number one player is a product that resonates and the product doesn't need to be pushed on people. People pull it because they want it. And once you have that

19:14pull effect, everything else slots into place. Muse is the number one, their AI models. Number two, the VR glasses. Great. Number three, clay Thompson, not a number two, terrible. Number two, can't dribble the ball. The best number three in history walks down the opposing guards. Doesn't miss a shot. Like that's why the glasses feel better now. And as tech, the glasses also, they look better. They weigh a hundred grams, same weight as a deck of cards, Zuckerberg pointed out. And they're set to retail for $1,300. I would call them a Vision Pro killer,

19:46but I think the Vision Pro is already effectively dead. But a third of the price and basically all of the performance that you're getting with Vision Pro. Vision Pro is like real 4K and these aren't quite as high resolution, but just a super impressive product. And a lot of what we've imagined should exist in our conversations about the Vision Pro over the last couple of years, not nearly as heavy and an entertainment device. They've secured sports rights. They secured football, UFC. I'm curious to see what it turns into. I think it's a little oversold. I think ESPN

20:21has like 180 degree cameras at some of these games. So it's not like the immersive camera stuff that Apple is doing. Yeah. It's going to be more like if you go on YouTube with your Vision Pro and you can access some of these 180 degree videos, which are still, it's still super cool. It's cooler, but yeah, not quite as transformative and transportive as the, well, that's why it's so frustrating is Apple went to the trouble to make these incredible cameras that actually delivers is fully immersive and they don't really use them. So, uh, yeah, the, and we'll see what,

20:52you know, so I'm wary also of it being delivered by a company that is focused on 2d video. Cause the whole point is learning a 2d experience when you're wearing 3d glass, you know, 3d and immersive sort of thing. So we'll see how that works, but yes, to your point for what the vision pro is actually used for, uh, if it's used, um, I do want to see the resolution. I mean, you could argue the 4k or the resolution on the vision pro is amazing. It's also still not good enough. Uh, you know, you could pick that up with the immersive video thing sort of things. So we'll see how these

21:25work out would a little bit bigger with more resolution better. I don't know. Also, they're only $1,200. So, um, only $1,200, all things considered. Uh, yeah, it, those are great, but then you, everything else makes sense. Like the glasses with no camera, like number one, way less creepy. Thank you. Uh, that's good. The, you know, the fact you can talk, uh, their muse devices, the muse delivery vehicles, it's all coming together. It makes so much more sense. The muse charm is going to be ready as early as the holidays. I believe that's when they're trying to have it

21:58ready. Uh, so yeah, by the way, uh, yeah, yeah. The muse charm article in Bloomberg about, oh, this is like what Alan Dye did. Uh, complete BS by the way. Okay. Good note. There, there is some, there is, uh, some drama about like do everything that everyone hated him at Apple for already doing it at, at, at, at, at meta. Well, out of curiosity, do you think that's Alan Dye driving that confusion there? Like, how does that happen? That's what Alan Dye does. That's how Alan Dye became the VP of industrial design at Apple is by being terrible at his job. So he's like good reputation manager. Alan Dye could good to know. Um, well, do you think

22:34failing with the other product launches or failing in relative terms with past product launches has helped meta refine its product instincts with respect to muse? Because I've been pretty stunned at how well they're executing across basically every vector with this product. The ads are great. The character is memeable and wonderful and perfect for the internet right now. And they're shipping new features literally every day. They're developing new partnerships

23:07literally every day. And it's all come together and looked pretty seamless, which is not how it's

Executive talent and leadership at Meta

23:14felt in past eras of meta, at least from my perspective. You get what you pay for. Okay. Just bringing in talent that knows how to do this stuff and has good instincts. Yeah. I mean, I'm biased because this is a previous checker inner subject, but I don't think it's an accident that Mark Zuckerberg called out Nat Friedman by name. Um, I think anyone who's worked with him knows he's one of the greatest operating executives in tech. Yeah. Swore he would never do it again. I don't know what it took to get him back, but, uh, whatever, whatever Mark paid to get him

23:45back, uh, was the bargain of a lifetime. Like there's just an aspect to that. That is, that is real. If you're a big company like meta that has to deal with all the internal politics, like the Alan dies of the world, like a better does, you don't have people like that. They have left long ago left. If they were there, uh, everyone who's still there has their own little kingdoms and fiefdoms in their own right. They're not going to be able to, you know, and so this is a, all this is ultimately down to Mark Zuckerberg for sure. Yeah. Pivot like a year ago, a year and a half ago,

24:17I did that interview with him, which I've referenced multiple times. That was bizarre. He was out to see and to his credit, he didn't know how to solve it, but he realized he was out to see. Yeah. And in the end, fired basically their whole AI team, uh, brought in a completely new AI team and didn't just bring an AI team, brought in a product team and they delivered the first new product from meta since the original. I know. Like, like, again, we're only two weeks in what's not overstated.

24:51Let's put in all the caveats, but the reason to be hyped up is number one, the momentum is obviously real. You could like, you could see it feel number two, this category is real. I promise you it's real. The hard thing is selling it and getting people to understand what they can do and muse delivers on the promise of this product by and large. Of course, there's rough edges for sure. We're at the very nascent edge of it, but there's a reason for it to be taking off. Yeah. And then number three, the implications of winning the space are astronomical.

25:26This is like, this is the winner take all of like consumer everything. This is the aggregator of aggregators. You reduce the connection to the human to one cute little character that fits in a Tamaguchi and it mediates everything online. All right. And that is the end of the free preview. If you'd like to hear more from Ben and I, there are links to subscribe in the show notes, or you can also go to sharp tech.fm. Either option will get you access to a personalized feed

25:57that has all the shows we do every week. Plus lots more great content from Stratechery and the Stratechery plus bundle. Check it out. And if you've got feedback, please email us at email at sharptech.fm.