Inside Apple AI 📱, ChatGPT lead shrinks 📉, Claude Code's hidden feature 👨‍💻

Apple's AI efforts have resulted in a Google partnership, management changes, and two new versions of Siri. Apple is planning an announcement ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌  ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ 

Sign Up |Advertise|View Online TLDR Together With TLDR 2026-01-26 Production inference for open-source LLMs (Sponsor) Nebius Token Factory is built for teams running open-source LLMs in real products. We deliver managed inference with explicit control over execution paths: speculative decoding, cache-aware routing, and post-training tuned to real traffic. Predictable tail latency, stable cost, and production-grade systems for AI that actually ships. Build inference that holds at scale → 📱 Big Tech & Startups Inside Apple's AI Shake-Up and Its Plans for Two New Versions of Siri (18 minute read) Apple's AI efforts have resulted in a Google partnership, management changes, and two new versions of Siri. The company had considered partnering with OpenAI or Anthropic, but Anthropic wanted too much money, and OpenAI was actively poaching Apple engineers. Google was willing to agree to a financial structure Apple deemed reasonable, and its technology had improved significantly in recent months. Apple is planning an announcement for the second half of February that will include demonstrations of the new Siri. ChatGPT's lead shrinks as Gemini surges in AI traffic war (9 minute read) ChatGPT's worldwide traffic declined in January as Google's Gemini's traffic increased. The shift marks a significant acceleration of competitive pressure. ChatGPT had a commanding share last year, but its dominance eroded over the course of the year. Gemini's growth reflects Google's systematic integration across its services and devices, which creates a distribution advantage through existing userbases. 🚀 Science & Futuristic Technology Blue Origin makes impressive strides with reuse—next launch will refly booster (2 minute read) The next launch of Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket will carry an AST SpaceMobile large communications satellite into low-Earth orbit. The mission will use a refurbished booster from New Glenn's second mission. It will launch from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station no earlier than late February. Blue Origin's turnaround time for the rocket (less than four months) is impressive, even for a well-capitalized program. Harmful cholesterol levels cut in half with one-time gene editing drug in early trial (6 minute read) A new experimental drug uses CRISPR to manipulate a single gene in the liver that normally boosts cholesterol levels. The approach works after one dose, helping people lower their levels of cholesterol and other fats in the blood permanently. While a Phase 1 clinical trial showed that the treatment is effective, its long-term safety is unknown. There are already safe and effective medications that can control cholesterol and fats, but patients tend to stop using them within a year due to side effects. 💻 Programming, Design & Data Science Is your AI notetaker missing the big picture? (Sponsor) AI meeting notes often miss the point or drown you in details. Granola follows your lead: By enriching your raw meeting notes, it focuses on what you know is relevant. Built for Mac and iPhone, Granola listens in on calls — without an awkward meeting bot — and captures every detail. Try Granola for free in your next meeting  Gas Town's Agent Patterns, Design Bottlenecks, and Vibecoding at Scale (32 minute read) Gas Town is a provocative piece of speculative design, but its design is too poorly thought through to persist. The problems with Gas Town will undoubtedly show up in the next generation of development tools. Thoughtful design, critical thinking, user research, and planning and coordination within teams will become more important as the pace of software development speeds up. The most valuable tools will help people think more clearly, plan more carefully, and keep the quality bar high. Claude Code TeammateTool - Source Code Analysis (12 minute read) TeammateTool is an existing-but-hidden functionality found in the Claude Code v2.1.19 binary. While it is fully implemented, it is gated behind feature flags. The tool could potentially be used to review PRs through multiple perspectives, build complete features with specialized agents for each layer, investigate a production bug from multiple angles, and more. This post documents what has been discovered about the feature. 🎁 Miscellaneous The Warner Bros. Bidding War Is Over (11 minute read) Netflix has agreed to buy Warner Bros. Discovery's studio and streaming business in an all-cash deal for $27.75 a share. The deal has been unanimously approved by Warner Bros.' board, and shareholders will vote on it in the next couple of months. The deal could be blocked by regulators, and Paramount could still increase its offer, but it previously said that the last bid was final. Tesla kills Autopilot, locks lane-keeping behind $99/month fee (4 minute read) Tesla will start to charge $99 per month for its Full Self-Driving (FSD) subscription starting on February 14. The capability can be bought for a one-time fee of $8,000 until then. The $99 per month price will rise as FSD's capabilities improve. Tesla's falling profit margins, declining sales, and loss of emissions credits may be pushing the company to find other sources of regular income. ⚡ Quick Links TLDR is hiring a Senior Software Engineer, Applied AI ($200k-$300k, Fully Remote) As the first engineer on TLDR's new Applied AI team, you'll build AI agents and composable Claude Skills to let non-technical teammates create their own AI workflows. Learn more. Lessons from Building AI Agents for Financial Services (34 minute read) Advice on building agents from someone with two years of experience building AI agents for financial services. The future of software engineering is SRE (6 minute read) Software engineering is about keeping code running over time as systems change. Clarity-1: What Worked, and Where We Go Next (22 minute read) Clarity-1 proved sustainable orbit operations in VLEO, validated its mid-size, high-performance Precision bus, and validated 98% of the technology required to capture 10 cm resolution visible imagery and 2-meter thermal infrared imagery. Vimeo's Slow Fade: An Engineer's Front-Row Seat to the Fall of a Web Icon (42 minute read) Vimeo, which started before YouTube in 2004, was acquired by Bending Spoons in September last year. Google confirms 'high-friction' sideloading flow is coming to Android (2 minute read) Google is introducing extra steps when sideloading to ensure users understand the risks of installing apps from unverified developers. I Was Right About ATProto Key Management (6 minute read) A centralized burn can completely prevent users from interacting with people using Bluesky. Love TLDR? Tell your friends and get rewards! Share your referral link below with friends to get free TLDR swag! https://refer.tldr.tech/7c97ce4b/ Track your referrals here. Want to advertise in TLDR? 📰 If your company is interested in reaching an audience of tech executives, decision-makers and engineers, you may want to advertise with us. Want to work at TLDR? 💼 Apply here, create your own role or send a friend's resume to jobs@tldr.tech and get $1k if we hire them! TLDR is one of Inc.'s Best Bootstrapped businesses of 2025. If you have any comments or feedback, just respond to this email! Thanks for reading, Dan Ni & Stephen Flanders Manage your subscriptions to our other newsletters on tech, startups, and programming. Or if TLDR isn't for you, please unsubscribe.