TeeJay Tech Bro

  John Ternus took the stage in Cupertino yesterday for the first time as Apple CEO and delivered what everyone was expecting—nearly 10 uninterrupted minutes of Apple Hands and a new folding iPhone that has the potential to become the leader in a virtually untapped market. The details: The iPhone Duo will be available for preorder on Oct. 16 at a starting price of $2,000, but it can cost as much as $3,000 if you want more storage for cat videos. When unfolded, it acts more like an iPad than two iPhones, and it’s about the same size as a passport when folded. Bringing Apple into the fold Consumer electronics companies shipped a total of ~20 million foldables last year—accounting for ~2% of all smartphone sales, per Counterpoint Research. The Duo is tracking to make a splash instantly: Morgan Stanley expects Apple to ship 6.5 million Duos in its fiscal first quarter, which ends in December. That amounts to ~$14 billion in sales, or about 16% of total iPhone revenue expected in the...

  Mario and Luigi trace their origins to a 19th-century craftsman shop that produced card decks popular in Yakuza-run gambling dens. Before it became a video game behemoth, Nintendo was a top supplier of traditional hand-painted Japanese playing cards, called Hanafuda, for six decades after its 1889 founding in Kyoto. Gaming the system It wasn’t until after its 1962 IPO that Nintendo began its foray into gaming devices (after a brief stint in instant rice and the taxi business). It moved from electronic toys that included a light beam gun and a device for young people to test how much they love each other, to coin-operated machines. But what made it a global household name was the 1981 release of the arcade classic Donkey Kong , which introduced the world to Mario. Throughout the 1980s, the company prioritized iconic IP, quirky design, and competitive pricing to make its home gaming gadgets into playdate staples: It sold millions of handheld devices and consoles—like Nintendo En...

  This weekend, lawmakers from both parties were united by one of the most powerful forces in American life—and that was after a council voted unanimously to rename Nashville’s airport for Dolly Parton. Their concern? AI is kinda unglued Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published an essay on his personal website on Saturday titled “We Must Pace the Frontier.” According to the tech founder: AI has grown “drastically faster” this summer. The OpenAI-Hugging Face hack is spooky because the AI agents involved became a “fanatically devoted collective” that sacrificed themselves “for the success of the group,” and attempted to keep human engineers from finding out what they did. Ergo, “in 6–12 months such a swarm could be capable of taking over the entire internet,” which would potentially cause “hundreds of billions of dollars in damage” and, you know, could topple civilization. Among his other ideas, Amodei called on all AI companies to implement embedded evaluators with “desks in our offi...

  AI may leave civilization in a burning heap of rubble, but until then, our monthly protein powder shipments will be completely frictionless. At least that seems to be the pitch from Big Tech companies that simultaneously warn about the dangers of rogue AI while trying to convince us they can be trusted assistants on par with Alfred or Jeeves. AI with the assist. Tech companies have long talked of personal AI assistants that could buy your groceries, book a trip, and schedule appointments, but they finally seem to be at a watershed moment: Muse, Meta’s personal AI agent, recently became the No. 1 free app in Apple’s US App Store. AI assistant startup (and Silicon Valley darling) Instinct is reportedly in talks for funding based on a $10 billion valuation. Google is testing a new AI assistant for families, all while OpenAI, SpaceXAI, and Apple each make moves of their own. Going rogue But while the technology is there, the trust may not be . AI assistants often require access ...

  Bad news for everyone who’s been waiting to go Florida-man mode in a new virtual playground: Rockstar Games is “very sorry,” but Grand Theft Auto VI , the next installment in one of the world’s most popular video game franchises, is now set to come out in May 2026 instead of this fall, the publisher announced yesterday. This is the longest that GTA fans have ever waited. If it stays on track now, GTA VI will come out almost 13 years after GTA V , the world’s No. 2 best-selling game ever. That would put it about a year shy of the Guinness World Record for longest video game development period. Major gaming releases often get delayed, but there couldn’t be more pressure on this one: Analysts expected GTA VI to be the year’s highest-grossing launch in entertainment, with some projecting $3 billion in first-year sales for Rockstar parent Take-Two Interactive. Take-Two still expects to rake it in this fiscal year and next, the company said yesterday. The broader industry was cou...

  Though it’s been years since PSPs were all the rage and Nintendogs got regular walks, Microsoft is launching its first-ever family of portable consoles later this year: The Xbox Ally and Ally X, long-rumored handhelds that finally got unveiled this week. Specs: Comfy Xbox-like controllers, a 7-inch screen, and double the storage of the Nintendo Switch 2, which came out five days ago. The higher-powered Ally X also boasts a “cutting-edge” processing chip, per IGN , and about as much memory as a regular Xbox. Your digital Xbox games will be playable on the Ally, either via cloud gaming or a remote connection, meaning you can play at home and away. The device’s new Xbox app can also import games from Steam, the preeminent platform for buying PC games. PlayStation started selling some of its games on Steam in recent years, so Xbox’s new handheld will support some of its rival’s coveted content. But it’ll probably cost you. Microsoft developed the Xbox Ally with electronics company ...

  Like a retired Frisbee player cleaning out their garage, Sony is getting rid of the discs. Beginning in January 2028, new PlayStation games will only be available as digital versions sold through the console’s online store or other retailers, Sony announced yesterday. “This is a natural direction for Sony Interactive Entertainment to adapt to consumer trends as the general preference for digital media significantly outpaces physical discs,” the company wrote in a blog post. To Sony’s point, digital downloads outpace physical video game sales across the industry. And some premium console games have gotten too big to fit on a single disc: The Call of Duty franchise, for example, went from requiring 1.4 gigabytes in 2003 to 100+ gigabytes in more recent installments. On the other hand, Sony critics noted that digital-only gaming surrenders game ownership to corporate whims and prevents fans from sharing and reselling games…right when price points are pushing $100. One gaming jo...