Here's more analysis on the Apple and Google deal to make a new kind of Siri, after I had a cup of coffee. This is what OpenAI is doing: they're making a variety of new products and going after Apple. Apple didn't want to give OpenAI any more data to help a potential new competitor. The real problem for this OpenAI effort is that we're about to move to glasses. People don't believe me that we're about to move to glasses, but you should, because I just got back from CES and there was a ton of glasses there. For OpenAI to really get somewhere, they need to add a camera to an earphone. While I don't see that in this latest report, I won't be shocked to see a camera show up somewhere eventually. It is cameras that add understanding of the real world, which can lead to many new features that Apple's current AirPods Pro can't match. I believe Apple is developing such a product to go with their glasses, which makes a lot of sense. Also, Google's AI models are better at multimodality; this means they can use cameras in a much better way than even OpenAI's models can. This is why in Silicon Valley robotics companies, a lot of them use Google Gemini: because robots need multimodality. Apple's glasses, which are expected in 2027, have some significant advantages over the others. First, they have eye sensors in them, so it knows where the user is looking. It also can tell what the user is touching, holding, or gesturing towards. This new capability will give Siri a significant parlor trick: it will let Siri answer questions that no other search engine has been able to answer before. But the real reason I'm still bullish on Apple's glasses isn't technology—it's content. Apple has NBA rights and Formula One (among others) and a really great studio system, which has produced one of the biggest hits of the last six months. Pluribus. Apple also, because of its privacy stance, has a significant lead in consumer trust. Because of its retail stores, it also has a significant lead in the ability to: 1. Show people glasses 2. Get them fit properly 3. Get people trained On Saturday, I went to the main Apple store in Cupertino and watched one of the classes that they teach every few hours in an Apple store. The store was packed with people watching the class on a huge screen in the middle of the store. Apple has dramatically changed retail because of its stores, which gives it the most trusted brand in the business and gives it distribution to most of the world's richest people. While OpenAI has almost a billion users, it is unclear whether those users will switch ecosystems from Apple to OpenAI. Even if OpenAI's AI and devices can do a few more things, I'm not so sure anybody's going to care when Apple has very capable headphones that match up with their iPhones and has the world's richest people addicted to the Apple ecosystem (me included). Here is one of the secret Chinese suites at CES, which makes a series of glasses to sell to other brands. This gives you a sense of how fast the glasses world is moving. AI needs to not just tell you what it's seeing, but it needs to show you things to really make the solution complete. Also, Apple usually picks a much better design than anyone else. Because it's such a luxury brand, it can charge more than anybody else and be more profitable. I don't see anyone else being able to put together the whole solution the way Apple can. Therefore, I am still very bullish on Apple making a dramatic announcement about glasses sometime in the next 24 months. At CES, though, it's clear that many manufacturers will try. @XREAL_Global just got $100 million of funding to continue its glasses development, and officials of the company told me it will release its Android XR based glasses later this year. Short version: AI is coming to wearables in a big way, and Apple will do what it always does: come in late to the market and redefine it when it enters. It still has all the pieces to put together the puzzle, even though it doesn't have its own LLM so had to do a deal with Google for that. Yeah, others will be earlier to the market, and will win some buyers because of that, but buyers like me know that and will be happy to put down our other ones to buy Apple because of its advantages. With one big caveat: Apple has to deliver an amazing pair of glasses, and maybe a headphone with a camera, to keep the competition from taking its lunch. Also, behind the scenes there is a big patent battle brewing. Apple has quite a few, but I talked with Ann Greenberg at CES, who started Gracenote. She says she has several patents that will enable a large company to force others to license their technology and that she's already in final stages of selling those patents to a big company. All the big companies have patent portfolios they can use against each other, and particularly smaller, newer, competitors. Microsoft alone has dozens of patents it bought to start off its Hololens efforts, which it gave up on, but Microsoft still has almost 1,000 lawyers who would love to go after other companies for licensing deals. Plus, Google-funded Magic Leap has about 1,000 patents, so it'll be interesting to see if anyone buys the remnants of that company. The question is: can anyone disrupt Apple? Especially OpenAI?