Apple

People are rushing to buy Apple’s iPhone 17, but it’s probably not because of the iPhone 17

More people went to Apple’s website when preorders for the new iPhone began than have since 2022.

Apple’s iPhone 17 went on sale today and it looks like it might be a relative hit. That might not have much to do with the iPhone 17 itself.

More people turned up for Apple’s online iPhone 17 event earlier this month than have since 2022, according to data shared with Sherwood News by digital market intelligence company Similarweb. The same goes for traffic a few days later, when the phone became available for preorder, suggesting more people might be buying a new iPhone during the preorder period than have in three years.

At the event, Apple unveiled a new slimmer iPhone Air as well as a basic iPhone and an iPhone Pro with faster chips, along with better cameras and larger displays. Apple didn’t mention much about AI, but Apple’s rollout of AI has been spotty at best.

However, people don’t really buy new iPhones because of new features or incremental hardware improvements. Instead, the main driver of iPhone upgrades is because someone’s old phone is obsolete or broken or its battery just doesn’t last as long as it used to.

And 2025 happens to be a big year for older iPhones. That’s because during the early years of the pandemic, Apple experienced a “supercycle” of iPhone upgrades as people trapped at home with extra cash shelled out for new tech.

2020 and 2021 also coincided with natural upgrade cycles, as many had been holding on to their previous iPhones like the iPhone 6 for years at that point. Some had been waiting for a 5G phone as well, which Apple rolled out in 2020, so it was as good a time as any for a new phone.

Here we are, four or five years later, and the people who upgraded in 2020 and 2021 are likely dealing with shorter battery life, smashed screens, and all the other annoyances of old phones.

Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives recently estimated that “315 million iPhone users of 1.5 billion users worldwide have not upgraded their phones in over 4 years speaking to an upgrade opportunity on the horizon for Cupertino with China front and center.”

That’s good for Apple, but it doesn’t mean it’s because of anything Apple in particular has done.

Rani Molla

52m

Zuckerberg: AI might be a bubble but “misspending a couple of hundred billion” is worth it to achieve superintelligence

“It’s quite possible” that AI is a bubble, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg told tech journalist Alex Heath, formerly of The Verge, on his new podcast, “Access,” and for his newsletter, Sources. That isn’t stopping Zuckerberg’s social media company from going all in on AI in hopes of achieving superintelligence, aka AI that’s smarter than humans.

“If we end up misspending a couple of hundred billion dollars, I think that that is going to be very unfortunate, obviously,” said Zuckerberg, who’s shelling out $600 billion on US data centers and infrastructure through 2028. “But what I’d say is I actually think the risk is higher on the other side.”

“The risk, at least for a company like Meta, is probably in not being aggressive enough rather than being somewhat too aggressive,” he added.

I saw Meta's new AI lab

“The risk, at least for a company like Meta, is probably in not being aggressive enough rather than being somewhat too aggressive,” he added.

Rani Molla

Grok has 64 million monthly users while ChatGPT has 700 million daily users

Daddy, it seems, is very much not home.

CEO Elon Musk spent the majority of his time at xAI this summer rather than at Tesla, where he recently claimed to have shifted his focus, The New York Times reports. The piece is full of other great details on his AI startup — read it all — but here are some notable tidbits from the story and from one of its reporters, Kate Conger, who shared extras on social media:

xAI’s Grok has 64 million monthly users, compared with OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which has about 700 million weekly users. Musk is currently suing OpenAI and Apple over what he says is unfavorable positioning on the iOS App Store.
Musk wanted Grok to be less woke and more popular, a command that led it to post antisemitic remarks and call itself MechaHitler.
Musk plans on building a Microsoft competitor called “Macrohard,” something he said he’s painting on the roof of xAI’s new Memphis data center.
xAI’s execs said after Grok 4, the next model will be called Grok 420.

Elon Musk Has Focused on xAI Since Leaving Washington

xAI’s Grok has 64 million monthly users, compared with OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which has about 700 million weekly users. Musk is currently suing OpenAI and Apple over what he says is unfavorable positioning on the iOS App Store.
Musk wanted Grok to be less woke and more popular, a command that led it to post antisemitic remarks and call itself MechaHitler.
Musk plans on building a Microsoft competitor called “Macrohard,” something he said he’s painting on the roof of xAI’s new Memphis data center.
xAI’s execs said after Grok 4, the next model will be called Grok 420.

Nate Becker

9/18/25

After Nvidia deal, the US government has made a roughly $4.5 billion paper profit on its Intel stake in less than a month

The government has returned roughly 51% on the investment since announcing it August 22.