Peter Thiel said that after Steve Jobs died in 2011, Apple hasn't innovated.
Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
Peter Thiel said Apple hasn't innovated since the iPhone.
Thiel said Tim Cook hasn't taken the company in new directions.
The billionaire venture capitalist said eccentric CEOs like Elon Musk "are way better for society."
Peter Thiel, evidently, isn't a fan of the iPhone Duo.
In fact, the billionaire PayPal cofounder and tech investor said he hasn't been very impressed with much of anything that Apple has done since its eccentric founder, Steve Jobs, died of cancer in 2011.
"In my telling, it did nothing new after Jobs," Thiel said of the iPhone maker in a September interview with author Walter Isaacson for the "Builder's Podcast," which was released on Thursday.
"It turned out, yeah, the mobile phone was this giant invention — there was not that much more to do," he said. "Then it was just scaling and branding and building it out over 15 years or whatever."
Indeed, Apple has faced criticism for failing to innovate beyond the mobile phone and tablet, especially in the age of AI, where its "Siri" product is not as advanced as rivals from ChatGPT or Anthropic.
Jobs unveiled the first iPhone back in 2007 at a conference in San Francisco. Nearly 20 years later, Apple released the 18th iteration this week, with one slight caveat: This one folds.
That said, MacBooks are the de facto laptops for many an AI-nerd and normie alike. iPhones are ubiquitous, and the sleek AirPods design took hold when they were released in 2016.
Though Thiel told Maureen Dowd of The New York Times in 2017 that Apple's era was over, the company's stock price has grown steadily since then.
Thiel didn't pooh-pooh Apple entirely. He called it a "pure, well-run value stock," but lamented what he described as the loss of vision after Jobs' death.
"I would still say somehow Elon or Steve Jobs are way better for society than Tim Cook," he said.
Apple didn't immediately respond to a request for comment sent on Saturday.
Olympic gold medalist takes third place in floor exercise final, adding to string of victories this year, after being barred from competing at last year's Indonesia championships
The Yemeni army (AnsarAllah) Al-Shajuf and Al-Musbal areas south of Taiz;
Fighting between Ansar Allah and the Saudi-backed forces continue in Al-Maliha areas and Al-Thalathin Street west of Taiz;
On October 24, Saudi Arabia said it intercepted Houthi ballistic missiles targeting Taif, Yanbu and Riyadh, as well as a drone over the Eastern Province.
The author and her husband have a 23-year age gap.
Courtesy of Caroline Chirichella
My husband is 23 years older than I am, but our age difference never bothered me before.
Now that he's 61 and we're raising two young kids, I'm noticing our different energy levels.
I love our life together, but I'm struggling with the realities of our age gap.
When my husband and I first met back in 2014, we had what many would consider a whirlwind romance. We met, fell in love almost instantly, moved in together after a year, got engaged six months later, married a month after that, and a little over a year later, welcomed our first child.
It was all very exciting, rushed, and filled with emotion and love.
I'm also a very rational person who doesn't get easily swept up in the moment. So we talked about a lot of the "hard" decisions that couples so often neglect to discuss at the beginning of a relationship. We talked about children, our future, and what we wanted our lives to look like. That's why, now, more than 12 years later, it's surprising to find myself struggling with something I thought I had already made peace with: our age gap.
He is 23 years older than me
My husband and I have a 23-year age difference. Yes, I was always aware of it. And, to be honest, it never really made a difference to me.
The author's husband is now in his 60s and the couple has two young kids.
Courtesy of the author
Especially when it came to the big life decisions, including having children, we had those conversations before we even got engaged. I knew exactly how old he was. I knew there would be things about growing older together that would be different for us.
But I guess there's a big difference between being aware of something that could eventually happen and actually living it.
Our age difference has been showing up in more ways than one lately, and there's a part of me that's angry with myself for being surprised by it.
It's not like my husband was always going to be the 48-year-old I met when I was 25. I knew he would age. I knew things would change as he got older. I knew there would eventually be a point when the difference between us became more noticeable.
I just don't think I ever wanted to admit to myself exactly how much.
He's in his 60s now
I knew he was going to be an older father. I knew all of this. But knowing something and seeing it firsthand are two very different things. Lately, I've seen just how much his 61 years are catching up to him, and it's been putting me in a strange place.
I keep a lot of things together for my family. We have two young children, and I have my own business. There is already a lot that weighs on me. But what I've noticed recently is my husband's physical health beginning to catch up with his age.
Courtesy of the author
Don't get me wrong — my husband is in great shape for a 61-year-old. But at the same time, most 61-year-olds aren't running after toddlers or handling the daily insanity of school drop-off and pick-up.
And that difference is becoming harder for me to ignore. What bothers me most is how naive I feel. I knew this was a possibility. Quite frankly, my husband knew it, too. When we discussed having children, we were always on the same page, but he expressed his concerns about being an "old" dad. I heard him. We talked about it. We made the decision together.
And yet, now that I'm watching the reality unfold in front of me, I'm beginning to feel guilty. As though I've been selfish. As though somehow this isn't fair to my kids.
I see how much fatherhood — and, frankly, being a husband — can weigh on him.
The everyday insanity of being part of a household with a high-maintenance 8-year-old and a very independent 3-year-old is a lot for anyone, myself included. But it's especially a lot for a 61-year-old.
Sometimes he physically can't keep up with our 3-year-old, who runs at a pace that could outrun the best of us. Sometimes he mentally can't keep up with our eight-year-old, who talks at about a million miles a minute.
And those moments make the age difference feel very real.
It's not just the fatherhood aspect
I feel his patience with me beginning to waver, too, and I wonder how much of that is because we're simply in such different phases of life.
I have a thriving public relations firm, and I feel like I'm just getting started. I have energy and ambition and a feeling that there is still so much ahead of me.
He had a contracting firm for many years, but that chapter of his life is well behind him now. At his age, he should be enjoying retirement. Instead, he's a stay-at-home dad and handles a huge amount for our family. But he's far from retired.
He's the only one who drives, so he's the family's chauffeur. He makes appointments and handles logistical things. He oversees the renovations on our house. He does the grocery shopping. He does so, so much.
And the truth is, at this age, maybe he shouldn't have to.
Our relationship itself hasn't really changed. We are still very lucky to have an incredibly open and loving relationship. We talk about these things. We try to give each other space and understand where one another is coming from. We each do what we can mentally and physically for each other, for our children, and, just as importantly, for ourselves.
I think what we're realizing is that neither of us has ever been here before.
We knew there was an age gap when we met. We knew what it meant on paper. We talked about the difficult possibilities before we got married and before we had children.
At 25, I could understand that my husband was 23 years older than me. At 38, I can feel it.
Russian strikes destroyed targets in the Sumy, Kharkiv, Zaporizhzhia, Dnipropetrovsk, Kherson, Kyiv, Lviv, Odesa, Vinnytsia, Chernihiv, Volyn, Rivne, Ternopil, Zhytomyr regions, and the DPR;
According to the Ukrainian Air Force, Russian forces attacked Ukraine with 126 strike UAVs;
Russian forces struck a UAV workshop in Chornomorsk and a dry cargo ship in Odesa;
Russian forces struck energy infrastructure and an industrial facility in Kharkiv;
Ukrainian losses amounted to approximately 1,190 troops over the past 24 hours.
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Russian forces advanced in the Lukyanovskoye area.
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Russian forces advanced southwest of Andreyevka;
Russian forces advanced north of Novoandreyevka and reached Roganskoye along the bank of the Vesko River.
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During the past night, Russian air defenses destroyed 616 Ukrainian drones in the rear regions;
Russian air defenses intercepted UAVs in the Belgorod, Bryansk, Volgograd, Voronezh, Kaluga, Kirov, Kursk, Lipetsk, Oryol, Penza, Rostov, Ryazan, Samara, Saratov, Smolensk, Tambov, Tula, and Ulyanovsk regions, the Moscow region, the Republic of Crimea, the Republic of Tatarstan, Krasnodar Krai, and over the waters of the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea;
Ukrainian strikes caused a blackout in Sevastopol, Alushta, Yalta, Sudak, and Yevpatoria in the Crimean Peninsula;
Ukrainian strikes reportedly targeted the petrochemical plant in the Samara region;
Ukrainian strikes reportedly targeted a substation in the Rostov region;
Ukrainian strikes killed a woman in the Bryansk region.
Apple’s first folding phone is inspiring indie developers to create fun, quirky apps that take advantage of the screen and the hinge. Here are a few to try as you explore the Duo.
Recent midlife upgrades to China’s older surface combatants highlight an ongoing debate over whether preserving naval fleet mass provides an operational edge over purely qualitative technological modernization in naval warfare. This month, the South China Morning Post (SCMP) reported that the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) has carried out an extensive midlife refit of its […]
O líder do PS recusou hoje, em Valongo, ter-se precipitado no anúncio da viabilização do Orçamento de Estado 2027, invocando a crise que os portugueses vivem e as crises em Espanha, França, Alemanha, Estados Unidos e Brasil.
“Os portugueses estão a viver uma crise muito expressiva no custo de vida. O custo com os bens alimentares, os combustíveis, a eletricidade e com o gás. E, por isso, vamos levar propostas à especialidade para responder a essas necessidades vitais”, afirmou José Luís Carneiro que lembrou ainda as “dificuldades na habitação”.
E prosseguiu: “imaginem que eu votava contra o orçamento e que criávamos com isso uma crise política no país. Essa crise política iria agudizar, iria tornar mais aguda a dificuldade que as pessoas já estavam a passar, num momento em que o mundo está perigoso. Temos uma guerra nas portas da Europa, temos uma guerra no Médio Oriente, temos uma crise política em Espanha, uma crise política na França, uma crise política na Alemanha, uma crise política nos Estados Unidos e também no Brasil, com grande instabilidade política e social”.
Em declarações à entrada para o plenário de esclarecimento sobre o Orçamento do Estado para 2027, que decorreu esta noite em Ermesinde, concelho de Valongo, o deputado reiterou que o seu dever “é defender Portugal” apesar de o Governo apresentar “um mau orçamento”, não querendo ficar associado a “uma crise política no país, que teve eleições em 2022, que teve eleições em 2024, que teve eleições em 2025, e há alguns que queriam já uma crise em [20] 26, por isso apresentaram uma moção de censura [Chega]”.
Continuando a tentar separar as águas, José Luís Carneiro, sobre a estratégia socialista, afirmou que “entre um Governo que é insensível e tem mostrado incompetência em responder às necessidades das pessoas e o populismo e a demagogia”, procuram “demonstrar aos portugueses” que estão a colocar “Portugal em primeiro lugar”.
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