We’re back to our usual format for this week, with a News Roundup, Question of the Week, and a third topic, plus a Weekly Pick.
Our News Roundup covered three topics: Spotify’s financials, which Jan wrote about earlier in the week; Microsoft’s decision to exit the consumer smartphone market; and Twitter’s planned change to the 140-character limit. Our Question of the Week piggybacks off Aaron’s recent trip to Ghana, which is one of a number of trips he’s made there over the last nine years. The question is “What’s the state of consumer technology in Africa?” and we spent a good amount of timing doing a deep dive into this topic, based not just on Aaron’s personal observations but on additional research (see the show notes for a couple of good sources).
Our third topic this episode was Apple’s efforts in AI, and a narrative that seems to have emerged recently about a perception that Apple is behind in AI, and that this will be problematic for the company. We talk about the pros and cons of this argument, how it relates to Siri specifically, and how Siri might evolve at this year’s WWDC. Lastly, we have our Weekly Pick, which is actually a double recommendation from Jan this time around.
As usual, you’ll find some links to related content as well as other ways to listen to the podcast beneath the embedded Soundcloud player below.
We invite listeners to submit questions for subsequent weeks in the comments below, on Twitter (@jandawson, @aaronmiller), or via email (jan at jackdawresearch dot com). We also have a dedicated Podcast Twitter handle at @BDPcast.
As ever, you can also find the podcast on iTunes, in the Overcast app, or your own favorite podcast app. Here is the RSS feed for the podcast if you want to add it manually to your app of choice.
Show notes:
Here are some useful links relating to this week’s episode:
- Jan’s post on Spotify’s financials
- Episode 45, which was a deep dive on the music industry
- A McKinsey report on Africa
- A Pew report on Africa
- Marco Arment’s piece on Apple and AI
- Walt Mossberg’s piece on Apple and AI
- Brian Roemmele’s piece on Apple’s AI acquisitions
- Jan’s Weekly Picks were the Recode podcasts, and the REDEF newsletters.
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