🏠 It's Make It Or Break It Time For Apple

Buckle up for Apple's riskiest products yet

Stephen Flanders
June 02, 2023

Gm. Happy June, aka NBA Finals month, aka another month where the Nets don’t win a championship. I promise I’m fine.

🏠 TECH

Christmas For Apple

Every year, Apple hosts the Worldwide Developer’s Conference (WWDC). Much like Google’s I/O conference, WWDC is where Apple gets to flex all the cool new stuff they’ve been cooking up.

And considering that Apple is always at the cutting edge of tech, these new products attract a crap ton of attention.

Which means that we have a pretty good idea of what’s coming on June 5th.

THE Headset

The main event of the evening is the release of Apple’s much-anticipated MR headset, which will have:

Micro OLED displays.
>5000 nits of brightness (translation: the screen will look damn good).
A host of enticing apps.
A $3,000 price tag.

There hasn’t been an Apple product this anticipated since the iPhone, and it’s already got some of the pre-existing VR players scrambling to release new headsets.

Mac Attack

Nope, I’m not talking about my beloved QB Mac Jones, but the release of several new Macs, including:

A 15-inch MacBook Air.
Two new Macs that run the M2 Max processor and M2 Ultra chip
(translation: the computers will be a hell of a lot faster).

In addition to these moves, Apple will also begin accepting trade-ins for the Mac Studio, the 13-inch Air, and the 13-inch Pro, typically a harbinger of new laptops to come.

A New OS

Say goodbye to iOS 16, cause iOS 17 is coming in hot with:

A health journaling app.
A smart-display mode for the locked screen.
A revamp for the Apple Wallet.
Sideloading (translation: the ability to download apps outside the App Store).
A new and improved Control Center.

Lots of good stuff here, and when combined with the flashy headset and new Macs, WWDC 2023 is shaping up to be one of the biggest yet.

Now if they could just fix Siri, it’d be the best conference ever.

The Big Picture: There’s a lot on the line for Apple next Monday, as the new headset is the riskiest product they’ve put out in years. If it lands, Apple will reach new heights. If it fails, you might start seeing people question CEO Tim Cook’s leadership, especially after he forced the headset to the finish line.

🏠 AI

Are You A Robot?

The Turing Test is extremely simple. All an AI has to do is convince a human that they are talking to another human, and they pass the test.

However, despite being around for 73 years now, it’s proven to be an impossible task for our robot friends.

But, GPT-4 isn’t like the other AI. Surely this new model must be able to pass the Turing Test, right?

That’s what A121 Labs sought to find out in the largest Turing Test experiment ever.

1.5 million participants had over 10 million conversations with an AI or a fellow participant seeking to answer a simple question: “Human or not?”.

And the results are….

73% of people correctly guessed they were talking to a Human.
60% of people correctly guessed they were talking to a robot.
And a bunch of other fun takeaways that we don’t have time to cover in this article but you should definitely check out.

So, despite the wizardry of GPT-4, it is still unable to fool the majority of people that it is a Human.

Maybe GPT-5 will finally be the model able to pass this classic test.

The Bottom Line: There’s a bunch of hype over AI’s capabilities, and for good reason, but they aren’t quite at Human-levels yet.

🏃‍♀️ QUICKIES

What else is going on?

Twitter is now only worth a third of what it was pre-Elon. Ouch.
Sam Altman laid out OpenAI’s roadmap. TLDR: finetuning this year, multimodality next year.
The new Black Mirror trailer just dropped, and one of the stars this season is Aaron Paul. Hell yeah bitch.
NASA says there’s no evidence of aliens. Sure….

Stat: $1.1 Trillion: The amount of commerce the App Store did in 2022. That Apple toll is real lucrative.

Rabbit hole: Time To Break Up Hollywood (BIG)

🤑 FUNDING FRIDAY

If you want a boring list of startup raises, look away now. If you want the 2 coolest raises of the week, then you came to the right place.

🪄 Magic

As the entry point into web3, wallets will be key for the mass adoption of crypto. Magic contributes to the cause by offering companies a wallet creation service so that they can easily onboard customers to their web3 products. It sounds basic, but they’ve already generated 20 million unique wallets to date.

Now armed with $52M in fresh cash, we’re excited to see where Magic goes from here.

🩻 MediView XR

MediView combines augmented reality with surgical navigation to provide surgeons and healthcare professionals with revolutionary 3D "X-Ray vision" through the skin for minimally invasive procedures. It sounds freaking dope, and looks even doper:

They’ve just raised $15M, and we honestly can’t wait to see how this technology revolutionizes surgery.

🎁 FINAL JEOPARDY!

This Final Jeopardy! question stumped every contestant. Can you get it right?

Category: Authors

Clue: In 1937 his sister said he had “hats of every description,” which he would use as a “foundation of his next book.”

🛠️ FOUNDERS CORNER

The best resources we came across this weekend that will help you become a better founder, builder, or investor.

📸 Never get stuck on a social media caption again with Caption It.

🤬 MadLad is a discord bot that can do anything a moderator can.

🎧 Krisp is the noise-canceling app you’ve been looking for.

💉 DOPAMINE HIT

Top 5 worst feelings in the world.

@shepherdmakestiktoks
My body takes a screen shot #shepherdsebastian

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FINAL JEOPARDY! ANSWER

Dr. Seuss.