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Apple Will 'Watch Everything Burn' When the AI Bubble Bursts

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Re: Apple Will 'Watch Everything Burn' When the AI Bubble Bursts

#291

Post by nilkn »

bigyabai wrote: post #278
nilkn wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me, the economics are the exact opposite. I'd pay $1000 for a good gaming VR headset, but not $4000 -- because gaming is just a hobby that isn't really worth that much to me. Gaming VR headsets have been around for well over a decade, I've "been there, done that", and it's just not something that's worth that much money to me. However, I have no problem paying $3500+ for something that creates a new category of p…

The market spoke. The overwhelming majority of people don't want to pay $4,000 for a tethered AR experience. You're the minority. Conversely; the grandparent comment is still right, Apple could have made this a real VR headset without compromising any part of the AR experience. Apple knew that Hololens was a total failure, they saw the pushback on Google Glass, they should have known that people would feel like an id…

The overwhelming majority of people don't want any VR device available today at all.

I'm perfectly fine being the minority for now. You say that as if you think I'd have a problem with that. That does absolutely nothing to sway my thinking, which is based on my own principles, not a popularity contest at a single moment in time. You are dramatically underestimating my personal comfort maintaining an unpopular perspective for an extended period of time (years) based on fundamentals.

> Anyone with a $300 headset can stream games to it

No thanks. This is, of course, technically possible, but the quality is so astoundingly low compared to the Vision Pro that, for me, it would be a waste of time. You're welcome to do this if you so please with your time.

Re: Apple Will 'Watch Everything Burn' When the AI Bubble Bursts

#292

Post by simonw »

PaulRobinson wrote: post #239
simonw wrote: post #14

One big difference I have with Ed Zitron is I look at companies suddenly getting worried that they're spending millions of dollars on tokens and think "wow those AI vendors are going to make SO MUCH MONEY". The best price for a product is what I call the "suck air through your teeth" price. You want your customers to suck air through their teeth... and then pay the full amount anyway. Uber set their per-developer tok…

Sure, but what you're not taking into account is that $1500/month is subsidised by VC money. If Uber were asked to pay full price, they'd either get the same value for significantly more outlay, or keep their outlay capped but get significantly fewer tokens. This would, I'm sure you'd agree, change the ROI outcome. Zitron is arguing that if we all pay the true cost once the subsidies go, we'll either stop paying for…

I think the prices Uber et al are paying - the list prices for the API - pay out a healthy margin to the AI labs.

They're not profitable against the R&D spend, but they could be profitable if the AI companies attract more paying customers while keeping their model training costs static.

The growth in Anthropic's revenue over the past 12 months has been astonishing. There's real market demand for what they are selling.

Re: Apple Will 'Watch Everything Burn' When the AI Bubble Bursts

#293

Post by bigyabai »

nilkn wrote: post #291
bigyabai wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The market spoke. The overwhelming majority of people don't want to pay $4,000 for a tethered AR experience. You're the minority. Conversely; the grandparent comment is still right, Apple could have made this a real VR headset without compromising any part of the AR experience. Apple knew that Hololens was a total failure, they saw the pushback on Google Glass, they should have known that people would feel like an id…

The overwhelming majority of people don't want any VR device available today at all. I'm perfectly fine being the minority for now. You say that as if you think I'd have a problem with that. That does absolutely nothing to sway my thinking, which is based on my own principles, not a popularity contest at a single moment in time. You are dramatically underestimating my personal comfort maintaining an unpopular perspec…

I'd imagine that you do have a problem with it. You're reliant on AR experiences, which are reliant on install bases, which the Apple Vision Pro has none of. There is currently no incentive to produce software for this dead platform like there is for iOS or iPad, so much so that you're bragging about streaming games that the hardware could run natively - if Apple respected their users.

It's no skin off my back when you pay $3,500 for that type of mistreatment. Whatever "principles" that led you down that path aren't going to make the Vision Pro a more enjoyable experience. You're virtue signalling a platform that everyone predicted would be a failure.

Re: Apple Will 'Watch Everything Burn' When the AI Bubble Bursts

#294

Post by pinkyboy »

maxdo wrote: post #225
pinkyboy wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's fascinating that you simultaneously argue that margins will expand... while posting about personal behavior all of which points toward commoditization and intense price competition.

What’s wrong here ? You push the router , you keep same subscription price , customers are as happy or even more happy because router will make process faster, the costs will go down . The market size will increase several times . If you have properties of the market where your costs will go down , the size of the market will increase and you are top contender. How is that a bubble or a bad market ? Sure you have ris…

The key is your comment about rotating between 4-5 different vendors to control costs.

That will naturally rotate you _away_ from vendors who expand margin, and _toward_ those who use the same capability to undercut the margin expanders.

Re: Apple Will 'Watch Everything Burn' When the AI Bubble Bursts

#295

Post by nilkn »

bigyabai wrote: post #293
nilkn wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The overwhelming majority of people don't want any VR device available today at all. I'm perfectly fine being the minority for now. You say that as if you think I'd have a problem with that. That does absolutely nothing to sway my thinking, which is based on my own principles, not a popularity contest at a single moment in time. You are dramatically underestimating my personal comfort maintaining an unpopular perspec…

I'd imagine that you do have a problem with it. You're reliant on AR experiences, which are reliant on install bases, which the Apple Vision Pro has none of. There is currently no incentive to produce software for this dead platform like there is for iOS or iPad, so much so that you're bragging about streaming games that the hardware could run natively - if Apple respected their users. It's no skin off my back when y…

Couldn't care less. I'm not reliant on anything you just imagined I'm reliant on that supposedly doesn't exist, yet somehow I'm reliant on it. I use the Vision Pro for Mac Virtual Display, movies / entertainment / reading / browsing, and occasional game streaming from the PS5. Those use cases alone justify the product for me.

Re: Apple Will 'Watch Everything Burn' When the AI Bubble Bursts

#296

Post by duhhhhh1212 »

simonw wrote: post #289
duhhhhh1212 wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's hard to read this take seriously, when you promoted a company spending $1k per engineer per day on LLM usage.

You mean Strong DM? I stand by what I said about them at the time: they're an interesting case-study in extreme AI-assisted software development, and they have a bunch of ideas that are worth learning from even if you're not going to spend that (absurd) kind of money. One of the hot topics since then has been how to validate software without reviewing every line of code by hand, which is exactly the kind of thing the…

Yes, Strong DM. How is that different from tokenmaxxing? Because of the article you wrote, a few companies went to them and starting adopting their methods and guess what happened in a few weeks into that process? Upper management started tracking engineers who weren't using AI enough (~1k a day). A few engineers got fired because they were slow to adopt StrongDM's process.

Re: Apple Will 'Watch Everything Burn' When the AI Bubble Bursts

#297

Post by rbanffy »

bpavuk wrote: post #262
rbanffy wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe a year from now we'll all be using MI300As and EPYC 9600s to read e-mails. Or Nvidia Veras, maybe AWS will sell some of their Graviton stuff in an effort to offset their capex. Unfortunately, I don't think IBM Cloud will suffer enough for me to play Tux Racer on my very own Z17.

actually I'm looking forward to that :3 but that requires Claude et al. going bust and HN is gonna kill me if I wish that publicly

I would also be very sad to lose one of my best coworkers. Everybody in the office treats Claude as their own assistant. Just today Claude reminded me I forgot to add a database zone migration to my fault-injection experiment. Not only he reminded me, he also implemented it with perfect consistency with project guidelines.

Re: Apple Will 'Watch Everything Burn' When the AI Bubble Bursts

#298

Post by LogicFailsMe »

sodapopcan wrote: post #288
LogicFailsMe wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So saying you like his vibes and feels is cool, thanks, genuinely. FWIW I avoid AI shills and doomers myself and focus on developing my skills working with the technology. The comp for that doesn't suck either.

That, and he has numbers to back up the possible downfall. My issue with AI is how it's used in art and content generation. I resisted it for code for a while, but eventually came around. > FWIW I avoid AI shills and doomers myself and focus on developing my skills working with the technology. I did a bit of that but I'm no longer employed and have been taking a break from programming for a few months.

>he has numbers to back up the possible downfall.

Those sorts of numbers apply to the common folk like you and me IMO.

They do not apply to the billionaire class. They just don't. The CapEx play either pays out when the buildout is justified or it soft lands for them with a bailout like we just saw NVDA do today with OpenAI. No matter what, in the end, we'll be holding any bar tab in our retirement accounts if they're being "managed." How many times must this game play out for the unchanging outcome to settle in?

What I do think is that datacenters will now end up in other less-regulated countries just like California's plastic "recycling" ends up getting burned as garbage in the third world. So there's that I guess.

https://www.thenewlede.org/2025/07/postcard-from-california-...

Re: Apple Will 'Watch Everything Burn' When the AI Bubble Bursts

#299

Post by simonw »

duhhhhh1212 wrote: post #296
simonw wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean Strong DM? I stand by what I said about them at the time: they're an interesting case-study in extreme AI-assisted software development, and they have a bunch of ideas that are worth learning from even if you're not going to spend that (absurd) kind of money. One of the hot topics since then has been how to validate software without reviewing every line of code by hand, which is exactly the kind of thing the…

Yes, Strong DM. How is that different from tokenmaxxing? Because of the article you wrote, a few companies went to them and starting adopting their methods and guess what happened in a few weeks into that process? Upper management started tracking engineers who weren't using AI enough (~1k a day). A few engineers got fired because they were slow to adopt StrongDM's process.

Have you really seen engineers fired for failing to spend $1,000 on tokens a day because their bosses read my piece about Strong DM? https://simonwillison.net/2026/Feb/7/software-factory/

I would hope that my commentary on those patterns would be less likely to lead to bad decisions than if people just read Strong DM's own description of their software factory approach: https://factory.strongdm.ai/

Re: Apple Will 'Watch Everything Burn' When the AI Bubble Bursts

#300

Post by tptacek »

dragontamer wrote: post #259
tptacek wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that's all Zitron wrote, I don't think he'd be as polarizing (or as dunked on). But he goes way, way past that.

It all comes down to the fact that Zitron thinks these AI companies are over levered and have significant chances of collapsing industry wide. Yeah he uses more words to say it and bad arguments as part of it. But so did Galileo's "The tides prove that the Earth is moving around the sun" argument. Some arguments are bad, even if the overall point was correct. I think given the new Nikkei report from last week, we are…

He doesn't like or believe in the economics of the frontier labs and then works backwards from that, which takes him to some very strange places.
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