The Download

Illustration: Morning Brew Inc., Photo: Adobe Stock

TL;DR: After years of delays, Apple’s long-rumored smart home hub is almost move-in ready. The device is an example of the company’s sometimes sluggish entry into new product categories—something newly minted CEO John Ternus is reportedly trying to fix with a leaner, flatter org.

What happened: The smart home hub, codenamed the very catchy “J490,” will be a roughly 6-inch display that can live on your countertop or be mounted on your wall, according to a new Bloomberg report.

The stationary screen can control all your other smart home gear (like thermostats and door locks) and can also make calls and play music, among other things. A major feature is that it recognizes each person in the house by face or voice and pulls up their own calendar, messages, and apps. Basically, it’s Brady Bunch-approved (though Bloomberg says the face recognition is less reliable than the iPhone’s Face ID). There’s also a guest mode that hides your personal info when neighbors come over.

The hub was supposed to arrive in 2024 alongside a revamped Siri, but its launch was pushed back as the voice assistant’s 2.0 update also faced repeated delays. With a better Siri rolling out this month, J490 is expected to be announced on October 13.

The bigger picture: This much-awaited launch is just one example of an issue that Ternus apparently wants to fix: Apple not moving fast enough. (Besides internal delays, Google and Amazon pretty much have the smart home market locked.) And the pressure to speed up is mounting as Apple faces the perception that it’s lagging in AI, while also dealing with higher component costs and slowing revenue growth in services, which includes subscriptions like iCloud+ and Music.

The Terning point: In order to release new products more often, Apple’s new head honcho wants a leaner company that’s more focused on engineering. He also wants it to get more experimental again.

Step one of that redesign, apparently: fewer managers. Ternus is reportedly weighing whether to shrink some middle-management layers, per Bloomberg, and the company has already cut roles in hardware engineering in recent weeks. These dismissals follow a string of layoffs in other departments, including Siri and Vision Pro, and more could come later this year.

Bottom line: If the smart home hub is a smash hit, Ternus gets credit for something Apple cooked up before he got the top job. If it flops, he has an even stronger case for being leaner and moving faster. —WK

      

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• 🚀 The biggest rocket ever built reached orbit for the first time. SpaceX’s megarocket Starship finally made it on Monday (on its 14th test flight) and released 26 next-gen Starlink satellites. But after a few engine failures, the spacecraft made fewer than two orbits around Earth instead of the planned six, then splashed down in flames near Hawaii. Despite the early return, the latest test flight is a promising sign for SpaceX’s plans to expand its Starlink satellite internet network. It’s also a milestone for NASA, which is counting on a version of Starship to land astronauts on the moon.
• 🐷 Pig organs could help shorten the transplant waitlist. A clinical trial with six patients (with a planned expansion to 50) at NYU Langone Health is testing gene-edited pig kidneys in people with end-stage kidney disease. To make the kidneys more human-friendly, the pigs used in the trial were given 10 genetic edits. The need for spare organs is huge: More than 100,000 Americans are waiting for one, but only 49,000 transplants happen each year. The trial could unlock a whole new source for organs, and the researchers are hopeful the FDA could approve the kidneys for wider use within five years. —LC

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The Zeitbyte

A barking mad office in Silicon Valley

Illustration: Morning Brew Inc., Photos: Adobe Stock

Corgi, the unicorn startup that sells AI-powered insurance, is apparently in a ruff spot. If you’ve heard of it, it’s probably thanks to its employees’ viral social media posts and its 24/7 Corgi Cafés—pitched as hangouts for techies working odd hours (though they’ve also caused a fair amount of confusion, given there are no actual corgis to be found).

A new Business Insider report is now painting a less-than-cuddly picture of the company: a chaotic and hyper-competitive workplace with a seven-day workweek. It’s also tangled up in a pile of controversies, including age-discrimination allegations (per one former employee, “everyone there is between 18 and 21”).

Some lowlights from the office, according to BI:

• Drama over staffers letting the office dog use pee pads instead of walking the puppy (the CEO reportedly called buying them a fireable offense, telling employees, “If you can’t raise a dog, you cannot run an office”).
• A “little red book” of company philosophy declared that “boomers are slow and bad.”
• Telegram messages show that staffers were ranked on a social media engagement leaderboard.
• At one point, an employee found one of the office dogs chewing on a Zyn.

And those 24/7 cafés? One was recently shuttered for operating without a permit. —WK

Chaos Brewing Meter: ☕☕☕☕/5

• A nonprofit AI safety group has sued OpenAI over the Hugging Face breach.
• At a White House meeting on Tuesday, President Donald Trump said the heads of major AI companies, including Anthropic, Google, Meta, OpenAI, and Nvidia, signed a voluntary pact to “self-police.” Here’s what we know (and don’t).
• Meanwhile, the seating chart from that DC event has gone viral because of who was seated closest to Trump…and who got put farthest away.
• This domain name allegedly sold for $100 million.
• Regardless of how you feel about the cartoon-like mascots for ChatGPT Dots, here’s what to know about OpenAI’s newly announced, always-on agents.
• Did Pope Leo listen to Jensen Huang’s interview with Ezra Klein? Sure sounds like it, given the pontiff had some choice words for Nvidia’s CEO.
• Talk about using AI for evil. Police and reptile experts scoured a Southern California neighborhood for a deadly snake that turned out to be…an AI-generated hoax.

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