2025.24: Apple and Its Safe Place

The best Stratechery content from the week of June 9, 2025, including Apple's Retreat at WWDC, Apple in China, and the upside down NBA Finals.

Jun 13, 2025 - 11:00

Welcome back to This Week in Stratechery!

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On that note, here were a few of our favorites this week.

Apple Retreats at WWDC. Twelve months after Apple told the world about a variety of state-of-the-art artificial intelligence features that never actually shipped, this year’s WWDC marked a humble retreat from the AI frenzy, with Apple instead focusing on smart strategic partnerships and the incremental hardware and software improvements the company has traditionally done well. Given how rudderless the company has looked, Tuesday’s Stratechery Article called it one of the more encouraging Apple keynotes in a longtime, while Ben and John Gruber recapped the event on a fun Dithering episode that Jon recorded on a bench outside Steve Jobs theater. As we noted on Sharp Tech, however, while it’s encouraging to see Apple return to its strengths in hardware and software, there is still a question as to whether even those strengths have eroded. — Andrew Sharp
And One More Thing… It’s impossible to understand modern Apple without understanding the Apple supply chain. I’ve written about the important and complexity of Apple’s operation in bits and pieces, but there has never been a go to resource for understanding how it is that Apple can consistently create groundbreaking products at scale, year after year. That is why I was so excited to read Patrick McGee’s new book, Apple in China, and wow did McGee deliver: this book is one of the best books about Apple ever written, one of the best books bout China ever written, and is an immediate addition to the tech canon of must-reads. I talked to McGee about the book in this week’s Stratechery Interview, and you can find links to buy the book here. — Ben Thompson
The Upside Down NBA Finals. The Oklahoma City Thunder entered the NBA Finals as a massive favorite having won 80 games across the regular season and playoffs, and facing a Pacers team that had 66/1 title odds before the season. Three games into the series, however, the dynamics have shifted, and the Pacers are now two games from a title. OKC’s still favored, but Indiana put together a marvelous Game 3 performance to take 2-1 series lead, and on Greatest of All Talk, we had a great time answering listener mail and breaking down a series that has already made a lot of experts look stupid (a.k.a. the very best kind of sporting event). Game 4 is Friday night and OKC will probably respond, but for now, let’s all revel in TJ McConnell Madness. — AS

Stratechery Articles and Updates

Vibe Coding, Windsurf and Anthropic, ChatGPT Connectors — AI coding is much broader than vibe coding, the dynamics of AI coding, and why OpenAI wants to own everything.
Apple Retreats — Apple’s WWDC was a retreat from not just last year’s WWDC, but potentially a broader reset for the company. That’s why it was a great presentation.
Meta + Scale AI?, Meta’s Reset, AI as Sustaining Innovation — Meta is reportedly buying 49% of Scale AI and hiring CEO Alexandr Wang; this seems to be deal about fixing Llama, not about Scale AI.
An Interview with “Apple in China” Author Patrick McGee — An Interview with “Apple in China” Author Patrick McGee about Apple’s reluctant shift to outsourcing and how its position relative to its supply chain has shifted over time.