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stratechery.com
Do You Trust Apple?

The fact of the matter is that with AI you can decompile almost all existing software — there is a revolution happening in gaming over the past few weeks, as game after game is decompiled to source and ported to any platform you wish — and you can write your own. That means my software that interacts with my agent in the way I want it to for everything; that's way more exciting than praying Apple delivers the right API and that 3rd-party developers don't suck.

— Ben Thompson
2w ago
stratechery.com
2026.40: Dots and Question Marks

something like Muse could aggregate Aggregators, which is to say it could be the most valuable product in the world.

4w ago
stratechery.com
2026.39: Begun, the Aggregator Wars Have

Amazon predictably blocked Muse, but there is room for a deal based on the reality that Amazon's physical world investments are an AI moat.

1mo ago
honest-broker.com
The Collapse at Netflix Signals the End of Audience Capture

Netflix got into this mess by pursuing a simple strategy: (1) Spend less on programming, and (2) Raise subscription prices. That is the 'audience capture' strategy mentioned above. The idea is that the audience got captured years ago with cheap subscription prices, and now the platform can squeeze them mercilessly—offering less and charging more.

3mo ago
stratechery.com
2026.28: XBOX On the Rocks

the Game Pass initiative that was the last great hope for XBOX has been a failure. I'm not a gamer, but Ben's rendering of the XBOX story — and the Game Pass story — is a great case study of both internet economics and management mistakes (and analyst ones!).

3mo ago
stratechery.com
A Script for Mark Zuckerberg

Building a platform is antithetical to building an ad business. A platform's goal is to feature third-parties; an advertiser's goal is to capture attention for itself. Investing in an entirely new technology, including developing hardware, fundamentally limits our addressable market; an advertiser's goal is to maximize its market size.

4mo ago
stratechery.com
2026.11: Winners, Losers, and the Unknown

However, the most recent evidence — particularly Copilot Cowork — is that the companies who are best able to harness (pun intended) model capabilities are the model makers themselves.

7mo ago

Underscored — save the words that stop you in your tracks.

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