(Preview) The App Store in the Shadow of AI, Offensive and Defensive Cybersecurity, Q&A on Financial Planning, AI Writing, American Sports

**Andrew Sharp** (0:00)
Hello, and welcome to a free preview of Sharp Tech.
Hello, and welcome back to another episode of Sharp Tech. I'm Andrew Sharp, and on the other line, Ben Thompson. Ben, how are you doing?

**Ben Thompson** (0:19)
I'm doing okay. This week, Wisconsin does get fairly muggy. It doesn't really bother me. I know people here at some point, it's so hot and muggy. I'm like, the 20 years in Taiwan have inoculated me. We'll see, it might be knocked out of my memory pretty quickly, though. I did adjust to the cold very well. I think if you adjust to the cold very well, you do not adjust to humidity very well.

**Andrew Sharp** (0:38)
Okay.

**Ben Thompson** (0:38)
But there's that moment where, oh, it's so pleasant out. And it's so pleasant out because the dew point drops, which means the humidity is gone, which is the first hint of winter. So it's like, oh, there's a little twist in the air. And it's like, we had a discussion about where are we going to move the lawn mower, the snowboard, the taking spot.
Starting battening the hatches. Yes. I'm taking my daughter off to college later today. It's like, I've always thought about years in school year term.

**Andrew Sharp** (1:15)
Okay.

**Ben Thompson** (1:15)
It's just like the new season is starting, the new year of Stratechary is starting, the new year of my kid's school is starting.

**Andrew Sharp** (1:23)
And winter is coming. Well, I'm ready at this point. Is that a Game of Thrones reference? Well, it is, but not intentionally so.
I am 100% ready for fall at least, not necessarily winter, but I've had enough humidity here in DC. It was pretty funny walking around Madison and talking to some of your friends out there and hearing them say, oh, it's pretty muggy and gross outside. It felt great to me as I was walking around Madison. It's fine.

**Ben Thompson** (1:52)
I hardly ever feel very hot or muggy here.
It's great. But yes, it is not muggy anymore.

**Andrew Sharp** (1:59)
Indeed. Packer season is coming. Here we go.
We will begin with a topic that we have hit many a time here on the show.

**Ben Thompson** (2:08)
So I can lead on this, a topic we've hit many a time. Also, very good news for me.
I'm just glad I don't have to buy new gear.

**Andrew Sharp** (2:17)
Why is that?

**Ben Thompson** (2:18)
Oh, I thought we were talking about Max Verstappen resigning with Red Bull. Oh, there we go.
I actually completely forgot about that. F1 merchandise is unbelievably expensive.

**Andrew Sharp** (2:29)
Cost you a pretty penny. That's right.

**Ben Thompson** (2:30)
That's right. And now I can stick with what I have. And by the way, Red Bull just has great stuff. So a big win for me in that regard. Not a big win if Max doesn't win. So I need Red Bull to get the car in order.

**Andrew Sharp** (2:42)
Yeah.

**Ben Thompson** (2:43)
But hey, it's always good to save some money.

**Andrew Sharp** (2:45)
There was a good chance that he was just going to walk away, or at least a non-zero possibility. He's not walking away. So that's a win for racing fans everywhere. And your note on the gear is really true. I'm not a Red Bull hater anymore. But when I visited Grand Prix like four or five years ago, I was a Red Bull hater. And I remember walking through the merch tent being infuriated by how cool the Red Bull merch was. So I'm glad that you get to hang on to that in the years to come. Good for you.

**Ben Thompson** (3:13)
Yeah, my $70 hats are going to still be useful. So like $150 raincoat. Actually, that might have been more expensive than that.

**Andrew Sharp** (3:20)
Oh my god. It's unbelievable. All right. Well, The Financial Times earlier this month wrote that Apple has acknowledged for the first time that regulatory changes forcing it to loosen control of its App Store are weighing on its more than $100 billion services business, a rare concession that antitrust action is beginning to dent one of the company's most profitable divisions. And lo and behold, Ben, in the wake of that Financial Times news and the disclosure from Apple, we have a settlement in the EU over the Digital Markets Act. Apple proposed new commissions of 15% for standard apps in the United States, while Germany's competition authority responded to Apple's app tracking transparency changes from several years ago and held that Apple can no longer use different language when it sends a data consent request for Apple's own offerings versus a data consent request predefined by Apple for third party apps.