(Preview) Three Weeks of Meta Momentum, The Ultimate Muse Upside, A King Kong vs. Godzilla Aggregator War

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 you doing?

Ben Thompson (0:19)

Horrible. Absolutely horrible.

I'm sorry, I'm going to have to rant. It is ruining my life.

The delivery windows and FedEx. They can both, seriously. It's unbelievable. Okay, where do I start?

This is a building problem. So number one last week, iPhone week, right? I know very busy, get it? Like I was home alone, I had to go pick up my stuff from school. Of course, they come in the window and I'm not here. I'd heard they are now just leaving iPhones, I guess not in my neighborhood. It's fine. No, it's fine. It's fine. I get it. It's an iPhone, one of the best resell items ever. I get it. Sure. So on the next day, did I complain about this already? I can't remember. No, you complained about it privately, but I'm glad you're taking it public here. No, no, it's building. No, it's building. So yes, I was not going to complain about this, but it's building. So on Saturday, I wake up early, and I'm like, because the center is going to be there, like throughout, anytime during the day. And then I opened the UPS app and it says, we'll be there between 1230 and 430 So I'm like, oh, the specificity. I appreciate, I'm so beaten down by these companies that I'm happy that it reduced from a 12-hour window to a four-hour window.

Andrew Sharp (1:35)

Give me a four-hour window, I will be available, sure.

Ben Thompson (1:39)

No, I canceled an appointment that I had in the afternoon. I made sure that I was going to be there. And because my wife was flying in from Taiwan that evening, I had to drive down to O'Hare, it's a late flight that arrives, I knew I'd be up late driving. So I'm like, I'm going to need to take a nap because I woke up early. I can't take a nap in the afternoon because I don't want to miss my delivery. So I'm going to take a nap now at 10 a.m. So I lay down and I take a nap, great nap. Actually one of the best naps I've had in a while. Right up until I wake up at 11 and it says, your UPS driver came at 10 30 to try and deliver your package. It did not, you were not there. And if you don't get it the next time they come, it's going back to sender.

Andrew Sharp (2:16)

Oh God, wow.

Ben Thompson (2:18)

I, of course like-

Andrew Sharp (2:19)

It's like Damocles hanging over your head here with this iPhone.

Ben Thompson (2:23)

I get a hold of someone, I'm very mad, very upset. They're like, oh, we'll have the driver circle back around. We'll have someone from the ground. We can't contact the driver directly. Someone there will call you in an hour. No call. I call back three hours later, they're like, oh, it says on here, you're scheduled to get a call on Monday morning. I'm like-

Anyhow, I do get the iPhone on Monday.

We can get to the iPhone. I have an iPhone review, which we can get to later in the show, foreshadowing. So anyhow, this is just dangling. I'm kind of annoyed about this. You might have heard I built a new rack. It's a nice rack. It doesn't have my new server in it, which is obviously the critical part of the rack, to say the least.

Been a little delayed. It's finally on its way. It was supposed to ship like last Monday. They didn't ship like Thursday. Tracking this, whatever. My server is trepsing around the state of Illinois right now. I'm not sure exactly why. It was supposed to be delivered on Wednesday. Then it was delayed to Thursday. Now apparently it's delayed to Friday. You have to sign for it. Someone has to be here. Guess what I am not covered for? Deliveries on Friday.

Andrew Sharp (3:34)

Oh my God.

Ben Thompson (3:35)

And yeah, no one cares. Other than like bring me the AI drones, bring me the AI customer service.

Andrew Sharp (3:42)

Automate all of this for the love of God. Yes.

Ben Thompson (3:45)

There is a, everyone is anti-AI right now, broad general public. There is an aspect though where corporate America has so seeded the ground for AI. Like I saw a tweet about someone bemoaning the end of customer service. There's an angle to Muse, where people are like, well, it's cool Muse is finding you discounts and refunds, but once all this stuff becomes, it's just going to become much more adversarial between companies and their customers. And I'm like, we're already there. These are my two mortal enemies. I despise them with the fire of a thousand suns. I don't care what happens to them.