2025 Hot Takes

For me and many of my friends, 2024 has been an absolute doozy. Just an absolute disaster of a year. Without belaboring it, I'll just say that 2025 cannot come fast enough. As the clock ticks down on this mudpit of a year, let's take an opportunity to envision what next year might have in store for us. Here are my 2025 tech hot takes, covering four verticals (AI, Entertainment, Social Media, and Hardware) and three flavor profiles (mild, medium, hot). Some are validated with evidence, and some are just vibes! First, let's do mild.

AI - Apple Intelligence will be the predominant consumer AI product

I guess I should define what I mean by "consumer AI product." These are the various chatbots, photo editors, and text generators that you see asking you for $20 a month. ChatGPT, Claude, Google's Gemini, these are sort of what I mean. My mild take is that a critical mass of peoples' first and most consistent interactions with generative AI will happen inside iOS, iPadOS, and macOS, and the idea of AI as most forwardly a chatbot will begin to fade away.

I'm of the belief that LLMs are like tap water. Many companies are trying to sell it in a bottle, but at the end of the day it has more use coming from the faucets.

Entertainment - The Fantastic Four flops and fails

Disney/Marvel is betting big on next year's Fantastic Four reboot.

Marvel Will Release No More Than Three Movies and Two Shows Per Year, Bob Iger Says

Disney CEO Bob Iger says the company is shrinking the MCU with a new mission to drop the number of Marvel TV series to two a year and the film output to no more than three.

VarietyJennifer Maas

In the post "Endgame" era, MCU movies have had a serious drop off in their appeal. Critics hate them, audiences shrug them off, and the experiments (looking at you Multiverse of Madness) are just not working out. Fantastic Four will take place in a "retro-futurist world" and will star some serious talent. It's already been announced that the Four will appear in whatever Dr. Doom movies RDJ is gunna be in. This feels like their shot to start something new and let the OG MCU fade away as a sort of separate super timeline.

I just don't know if this is going to work. My suspicion says no.

Social Media - I'm so sorry, but I think NFTs are going to have another moment

I don't know why. I just feel like with Trump becoming president and Elon getting louder than ever, there's bound to be some skullduggery. NFTs are peak skullduggery.

Hardware - The iPhone breaks its cycle

For ten years, new iPhones debuted each fall, usually in September and October. But there are two narratives I'm following that might suggest Apple will push back the iPhone 17.

Apple reportedly postponing a ‘larger-than-usual’ number of upcoming iOS 19 features - 9to5Mac

According to Mark Gurman from Bloomberg, Apple has reportedly postponed a high number of iOS 19 features for a later…

9to5MacMichael Burkhardt

Apple iPhone 17 ‘Air’ Thinnest-Ever Design Emerges In New Leak

Apple will have an all-new iPhone with radically different design, it’s thought. And a new element of what it will look like has been leaked.

ForbesDavid Phelan

I just have a hunch. This is complete speculation. But I have a feeling they drop this rumored iPhone "Air" in the typical fall slot and then wait until 2026 (when more of their software is ready) to release a new lineup of true successors. This year, Apple did something unusual and released their new iPhone before their new software was ready. Obviously they can do that again, but I have a feeling the "big differences" between the 16 and 17 will only be most obvious with the software.

AI - Somebody, somewhere does something very bad with an open source LLM

I think 2025 is the year AI fantasy comes down to reality. Not to alarm you, but Meta and other companies have released AI models that can be run locally without oversight. Generally, I think open source software is a net positive, but I am making a prediction that these extremely powerful tools do not have effective enough guardrails to prevent against individual and organized bad actors.

What could this mean? I worry about cyber attacks to infrastructure and novel biochemical weapons, primarily. 2025 feels like the year we have to contend with some of the bad these models can bring.

Entertainment - Somebody, somewhere finally lets us make streaming playlists and custom channels

This is such an unbelievable layup to me I am suprised that it has not happened yet. Maybe this is more of a wish than a prediction, but I just want to be able to make playlists and channels of shows and episodes how people do in Apple Music and Spotify. I think there is too much choice involved in watching television now, and creating a way for users to curate hours of watch time instead of little chunks or accidental binges feels like something these companies should do.

For what it's worth, there may be legal and advertising reasons the streamers don't want to do this. There may be fine print on their contracts with the unions for what is allowed with streaming, and advertisers might not love not having as much control over where their ads display. But who gives a shit, this would be a killer feature.

Social Media - TikTok gets sold to Amazon, Walmart, or Target

TikTok failed to save itself with the First Amendment

National security overrides the First Amendment in court.

The Verge

TikTok is having a rough week. After failing to stave off government efforts to force a sale of the company or cease operations, they are left with few options. I have written before about how silly, hypocritical, and ineffective this whole TikTok fracas has been, but now that we are here, what's going to happen?

I believe it's possible TikTok sells and one of the retail giants is the buyer. TikTok is increasingly a platform for advertising and selling goods, a sort of vertically oriented QVC. I personally think that TikTok should pivot more in the direction of YouTube, where creators have been making livings off of their work for over a decade now. But hey if they want to algorithmically deprioritize the creators that made the app what it is in the first place be my guest.

Hardware - Mergers and acquisitions in the health/fitness space

The pandemic was huge for fitness startups, especially the ones that made it easier to work out at home. But since people have returned to a half normal life, lots of companies are sitting on inventory and dwindling capital. Peloton, for example, has scaled back hardware development in favor of software and digital experiences.

There is a wide landscape of companies in this space, and they are all tailing Samsung - who recently got involved with their own smart ring health tracker - and Apple. With subscription fatigue and limited hardware lock-in for companies like Oura, Whoop, and Garmin, I see companies getting together to pool resources and offer more comprehensive services to people.

AI - An AI federal agency is founded

In March of 2023, Sam Altman spoke in front of Congress on a sort of PR march to engender favor with the old guys in Washington. One thing he advocated for was the formation of an AI federal agency that would oversee the AI industry and offer a licensing schema akin to the one used by the FCC.

At the time, I perceived this as a little disingenuous, at least in part because of the bashful way Altman responded to questioning about whether he'd want to lead such an agency. When it comes to government regulation, I prefer, y'know, democracy stuff. Like when enough people are mad about something and they ask the government to address it. I don't love the highest valued companies in the world saying "Hey, regulate us!" because it sounds more like "Hey, we want to exert disproportionate influence upon the actions of the federal government in the form of an agency that appears noble on the surface!"

I believe that Trump is insanely amenable to sycophancy and big-scissors-cutting-the-ribbon ass politics. If the big AI companies want a regulatory body that isn't actually regulatory, I'm sure they could get it.

Entertainment - Alex Schneidman finally starts that digital media and live performance company he's dreamed of

Social Media - Bluesky reaches 100 million users

Right now, Bluesky has a little under 25 million total users. To get to 100 million in a year would be an astonishing feat and is very unlikely, but here's how I think they do it.

1. Elon Musk does another insane thing over at Twitter that causes a flood over to Bluesky comparable to the post election one.
2. Bluesky builds on its audience in Brazil. X is back up in Brazil, but for the brief time that it was shut down, users immediately went to Bluesky. A lot more people would have to do this but there are a lot of people.
3. Outlets and entertainment companies focus more energy reaching audiences on Bluesky.

Hardware - The "metaverse" shuts down

When Facebook changed its name to Meta, it signaled a company wide shift toward VR hardware and experiences. But who could have guessed that once the pandemic slowed down people would not be as interested in strapping on a headset to basically hang out in the Mii Channel. While they have continued to release new VR headsets (well reviewed ones!), their most successful hardware product by far are the Meta Ray-Bans. If you haven't heard of them, they are basically camera-equipped glasses with an AI voice assistant and Bluetooth.

I think this year Meta goes all out on mixed and augmented reality. There are already rumors about a next generation pair of glasses with a heads up display. This is not to say that I think Meta stops making its VR headsets, in fact I think they receive new investment for gaming. But I do think that all of Meta's "immersive" experiences, including Horizons and their enterprise software, go extinct.

That's all for this week. Would love to hear any hot takes you might have going into next year, tech and not tech related!