As for Dots and OpenAI Dev Day, I will say at the top: my feelings after consuming the content from the OpenAI event are close to the exact opposite of my feelings after watching Meta Connect last week. So I'm curious for your thoughts. We'll start with an email from Stephen. He says, "Ben and Andrew, I can't wait for Ben's rant on how OpenAI has 90% of consumer mind share when it comes to AI, but somehow completely fumbled the Dots launch to feature SF-coded techno parents launching their startups and side hustle companies as the primary use case rather than going hard into family scheduling, kids' activities, catching up with friends, taking care of parents, groceries, etc. It even came with dystopian fake house aesthetics that feel like a Black Mirror episode, presumably to ensure we really get the point that the real world and real people's lives are an afterthought, and all that matters is the techno grind lifestyle." What do you think of those sentiments from Stephen?
It's interesting because I think Stephen made me realize something that's sort of just been in the back of my head, which is I've given up on OpenAI in the consumer market ages ago. Like, it just — I just — I think at some point, I think it was when Gemini looked like they were, you know, Gemini 3 looked amazing, and I'm just like, they don't have an advertising model. Even if they launch it now, they're going to — like, they're swimming upstream. Yeah, it's going to be tough. And I think I just sort of gave up at that point. It is what it is. They missed — they had the chance, they missed it. Now, it sounds like their advertising product is doing okay by all accounts. I think this relationship with Amazon is very interesting. There's a bit where it's very much in Amazon's interest that OpenAI wins because OpenAI is a surface for Amazon ads. That is a way for Amazon to deliver on sort of the external agentic — yes, you can have a great experience looking at OpenAI, access to our products, no problem. They also show our ads.
Doesn't kill our ads business.
That's right. And so maybe — so maybe there's — maybe I might jump — I've jumped to conclusions too quickly. And so this didn't really — this didn't really bother me because it's what I expect. And I think like the big change, if anything, is the extent to which Meta and Muse have walked into the opportunity and Google hasn't. It's kind of...
I feel like Meta has highlighted a consumer opportunity that other — and including on this podcast, we haven't really talked about the consumer space for like nine months on the short stack.
Was the sort of the ChatGPT app reboot, which made it unbelievably more complicated in, I think, an attempt to introduce people to what is possible and capable.
But along those lines, it was still kind of jarring for them to introduce Dots by basically mocking the use cases. Oh, of course you could use it to check your school email, but you could also do this.
And it's funny because I actually think there is a lot to mock about the use cases being put forward for consumer agents. To be clear, everyone is terrible at this. But my prescription is not that you highlight how you can embrace the grind lifestyle.
My prescription is actually you have to go in the exact opposite direction and market these as the modern-day Tylenol, the modern-day Advil. It's pain relief. There's all this stuff in your life that is painful that agents can make easier and better.
And it helps that I actually think that is true. Like the — [laughter] — the thing I didn't really put in the Monday article, I mentioned it in sort of a follow-up on Tuesday, I think, is the reason I'm optimistic about agents is not because I'm a nerd who thinks agents are fun and cool. That part is all true, to be clear. The reason I'm optimistic is because I think tax sucks. It sucks for normal people. It's so hard to use. Apps on an iPhone were way better than what came before. But there is a mindset that sort of looks at the world as apps were so much better than before, therefore apps are the best experience.
They're not. And actually, if anything, apps have gotten way harder to use. Thanks to very...
At a — there was probably a point in time where they were a much better experience. At this point, I think you mentioned you have like 700 apps on your phone. That's true for everybody. They have so many apps, they don't even know where they are, and you just search and find one, and they're all kind of a pain in the ass to use these days.
Well, especially if you think like security, like just keeping track of logins and then two-factor authentication, and stuff doesn't stay logged in, and you have to do it all over again. Like migrating to a — like the one of the reasons I bailed on the Macs, I didn't even — like I was like, I should try it for at least a week to see if I can get used to the size.
And I got halfway through migrating, and it's like, this is so painful that if I go through with this and I don't like it, I'm going to have to do the same thing all over again in the opposite direction. And I know I'm done. I don't...
Grind through it. Yeah, fair enough.
