What apps exactly do you think people actually use that could be replaced or reimplemented with LLMs on demand?

Essentially every single non-builtin app on my phone fundamentally requires the internet to work, and is backed by some sort of SaaS with a proprietary API. And even if/when the APIs are open, I doubt any normal person is going to decide that from now on they want to somehow use YouTube or Tiktok or Feeld or Spotify by talking to ChatGPT.

> I think a ton of iOS apps will be replaced by ChatGPT/Claude

Sure, but I don't think it's usually the apps that people pay much money for. And on top of that, app store revenue is (from a rough estimation) 6-7% of total revenue (although it's high-margin). Apple would be entirely fine.

And if you're right that the phone of the future will be reimagined as centred around being an AI assistant: innovative device design, user experience, hiding technology, integrating software/hardware/cloud are all things that Apple is historically pretty good at (with hiccups and bad periods for sure, but other companies certainly aren't better in general).

> I think a ton of iOS apps will be replaced by ChatGPT/Claude. I think there is a big opening for a company to redesign the phone from the ground up purely around an AI assistant instead of apps

We've already seen several attempts to make devices purely around assistants like Humane Pin or Rabbit. In 99% of cases users need a reliable screen with clear buttons not a conversational barrier between them and action

even if what you say is true, having the best phone for local inference would strengthen Apple's position not weaken it.

I’m right here with you. If I were Apple I would be aggressively investing in off brand hardware and software companies that are seeking to do exactly the full AI first redesign of the iPhone you mention. This is how Microsoft pulled off a master stroke with OpenAI and ChatGPT, and this full redesign will never happen internally in Apple

I just asked Claude to use a specific timestamp in a deployment configuration equivalent to 12 hours before 13.5 hours from now, i.e. 1.5 hours from now, and it got it catastrophically wrong. I don't trust LLMs with ordering food for me.

Sometimes even DoorDash gets it wrong, but at least I trust DoorDash to deterministically improve their systems so it doesn't happen frequently. With LLMs I would have to think that sometimes it just gets it wrong due to nondeterminism and insufficient reinforcement learning in the area of "reliable food ordering".

It’s already been shown that higher chip prices = higher prices to maintain margins

They’ll be fine

Are you ready for a single app ( AI agent ) to have access and permissions on everything then?

> services are making it easy for AI agents to access directly without an app.

This is what we all want, this is what kicked off the open web back when the internet first started. This is what made everybody excited for user agents. Now we have user agents once more and we are getting excited about the new agentic web, but temper your expectations. This time, rent-seeking corporations are in it from the start, see the exact same promises that excited you about the open web, and plan to take full advantage right away. This is why everyone is trying to sell their own agent instead of giving access to your own.

They're limiting their growth by somehow missing the initial AI train (even after buying Siri, etc.) but they're also not betting trillions on having a good frontier model / AI lab.

If a new mobile device form-factor proves to be usable, they'll come out with one eventually like they always do- like the iPhone duo being years and years behind?

When the bubble pops they could still snap up an AI lab on the cheap later.

> redesign the phone from the ground up purely around an AI assistant

Literally nobody in the world wants more AI slop in their lives.