Apple held their keynote yesterday. As an Apple fan, these keynotes have not been the same since Steve Jobs passed and certainly not since they’re not live, anymore after Covid. The rhetoric, mimic and gestures of the Apple managers are so streamlined, impersonal and lacking originality that in combination with the same bullshit bingo phrases repeated year after year become so boring. Yes, I know that this is the slimmest gadget you ever produced and despite encouraging people to buy a new one every year, this one is bazillion times less impactful to the planet. “Corporate Memphis”, an attempt not to offend anyone, so as not to step on anyone's toes and drown any originality in soulless arbitrariness, is so clearly visible that the whole prerecorded presentation might as well be completely AI-generated.
But that’s not my point. Beyond the rehearsed speeches and shiny gadgets, two announcements stood out to me: Sleep apnoea detection on the Apple Watch, and hearing tests in a software update for the AirPods Pro 2. Both features are healthcare related, and thus, highly regulated. It’s no coincidence that Apple awaits approval from the FDA (USA), and regulatory bodies in Germany and Japan – covering three continents, each with the strictest regulation in place. If you can make it there, you can make it anywhere.
At the same time, they announced some expected, yet impressive features for “Apple Intelligence” which they interestingly refer to as “Machine Learning”, not so much as AI.
Barely any of those features are available in the EU. But you can delete the messages app and install Fortnite. Whether this is the result of intentional malicious compliance with EU regulations or EU regulations being so strict that even Apple cannot handle it, doesn’t even matter at this point.
What’s important, is that the future of tech – like anything else – is not in the hands of engineers but of bureaucrats and corporate lawyers more than ever.
Forgotten are the times when nerds could pursue their passion and change the world with simple tools and a soldering iron or keyboard, unchallenged by unsuspecting functionaries and profiteers. If you’re nostalgic, there are two books that offer a glimpse into that era and remind us of what's at stake:
Fire in the Valley by Michael Swaine
How the Internet Happened by Brian McCullough
I mentioned it last week: A risk in tech is not whether AI replaces software development jobs, but rather whether AI is accessible and affordable for “indie” developers and teams. Rumours are that OpenAI’s next models could cost $2,000 per month.
This trend is concerning. As AI becomes less accessible (due to higher prices or stricter regulation) to indie developers and small teams, we risk seeing a future where the barrier to entry into tech markets is unbearably high. The creativity that once defined the tech landscape could give way to monopolized, corporate-driven progress.
It’s a similar story with the cloud: You’re tricked into thinking you “need” scalability, when you don’t. Once locked in, it’s payday. On Vercel, for example, Pieter Levels would pay $35,000 a month. Or, as DHH puts it: “You don't have much need for auto-scaling when compute is cheap. It's a cloud solution to a cloud problem. When you own your own cores, you just get enough that it doesn't require constant monitoring”.
As the iPhone demonstrates, AI and tech regulation are becoming inseparable, and the days of unfettered innovation by passionate nerds may be slipping away, replaced by the dictates of bureaucrats and lawyers. The question is no longer whether AI will change the world, but whether we’ll still have room to shape it ourselves.
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