Apple wants to take over your home. Is Siri finally ready?

Apple knows that its upgrades are getting smaller on an annual basis at this point.

They know there is no real reason to go from a 17 Pro to an 18 Pro.

So what do you do? You call in the influencers.

You call in the Instagrammers.

You call in the TikTokers who are going to come probably being paid for flying to Cupertino, go to these Apple events, In a lot of cases, instead of media members who are going to give an honest opinion, they're making Instagram videos, TikTok videos, and they're talking about how this is the greatest thing since sliced bread.

They're talking about, oh, my God, this is the most beautiful product, the most beautiful thing I've ever seen.

And you're literally looking at the same thing that came out last year.

And I don't think it's good for consumers.

It's good for Apple sales.

It's good for Apple's marketing.

But I don't think it's good for consumers to essentially be given Apple sanctioned dishonest opinions.

Now, I'm not saying these influencers are doing it intentionally to be dishonest, but come on.

And I'm not saying that Apple says, hey, we're only paying for your trip.

We're only giving you this phone if you write positive things.

But I think everyone knows that if you start saying negative things after a trip that Apple paid for or after being given a device for free from Apple that you don't have to give back, I think that you know that they're not going to do it again if you write something negative.

So it's quite an interesting sea change for how Apple is allowing events to be covered.

It's The vast majority, if it's streamers, it's influencers, it's a new type of marketing because they are increasingly needing those people to help sell the devices.

And having someone coming in and asking honest questions, it's the same vein for why they don't want to do live on stage interviews because doing a live on stage interview, you're leaving things to chance.

You have the potential for issues.

When you have an influencer, someone on Instagram or TikTok, asking questions of Apple executives like, oh, what's your favorite color? and then Apple executives responding every time, oh, that would be like asking me to pick who's my favorite child, right? That is a no-risk situation for them.

A risky situation is having a tried-and-true journalist come on stage and asking you about your ties to the Trump administration, asking you about product development cycles, asking you why did the foldable iPhone take so long to develop, How do you feel about Samsung launching a Z Fold 8 a month ago with a very similar aspect ratio? How do you think you're going to compete with foldables? The first foldables came out in 2019 and went nowhere.

Why in this case, even though you have better fit and finish and hardware, why do you think your phone is going to do well when Samsung, even with great you know, global appeal and high market share itself wasn't able to penetrate.

What do you think of the idea of selling $2,000 phones right now? Are people going to want to pay for that? And so there are real questions that could be asked to Apple executives that I think are extremely fair questions, and we're not seeing a whole lot of that.

And to Steve Jobs' credit, Obviously, this was before the Instagram and TikTok age.

Steve Jobs would talk to reporters.