Desperate Times, Desperate Measures

Source: Where’s Your Ed At Date: 2025-05-27 URL: https://www.wheresyoured.at/measures/

Summary

Ed argues the OpenAI/Jony Ive device announcement is mathematically and logistically absurd hype. The claimed target of 100 million devices by 2026 would exceed PC quarterly shipments; the company is unprofitable and cannot simultaneously fund operations, new ventures, and massive infrastructure buildout; Ive has accomplished nothing substantive since leaving Apple in 2019 (the butterfly keyboard era being his legacy). Tech media is publishing the marketing claims as news without asking basic feasibility questions.

Implications

Direct signal for the AI financial sustainability thread: the device announcement is a capital-raising narrative dressed as a product announcement. Ed’s core methodology — check the math, check the track record, name the journalist repeating the press release — applied to one of 2025’s biggest AI announcements. The piece also advances the “tech media as promotional vehicle” critique: by 2025, the pattern of uncritical AI launch coverage Ed documented with Helium has become the default register for frontier lab announcements.