2026.10.07 | Substack | Internet | Stratechery: Apple & LG, Agent Standards
原标题：Apple and LG, The House For Everyone Else, Agent Standards and Amazon (Stratechery Update 10-7-2026)
Apple and LG, The House For Everyone Else, Agent Standards and Amazon
Wednesday, October 7, 2026
Good morning,
Jon at Asianometry has a new video about TSMC and ASML’s push for larger photomasks, starting in the early 2030s.
On to the Update:
Apple and LG
From Bloomberg:
Apple Inc.’s upcoming push into smart home devices will include a doorbell, thermostat and other accessories developed through an unusual partnership with LG Electronics Inc. The products will be part of an ecosystem of devices that work with Apple’s new smart home hub, as well as an upgraded HomePod mini and fresh TV set-top box, according to people with knowledge of the matter. The new Apple devices are set to be introduced on Oct. 13. The products developed with South Korea’s LG will also include a smart deadbolt lock, indoor security camera, outdoor security camera and floodlight camera, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the undertaking is private.
Though the two companies worked together to develop the accessories, the products will carry the LG brand. The South Korean firm is handling manufacturing and product support. Apple has used this strategy before: It has discreetly worked with companies like Foxconn Technology Group’s Belkin and Logitech International SA to develop products that sell under other brands. This arrangement with so-called second-party suppliers gives Apple a way to quickly expand its ecosystem without shouldering the full cost and complexity of producing and supporting a wide range of accessories. Apple can also help shape the products’ design, tailor their features and oversee engineering while keeping the work largely under wraps.
I don’t usually write about rumors — although a Gurman report is about as close to fact as you can get, and this report is backed by FCC filings — but this is a very interesting follow-up to Monday’s Article Apple and a Hacker’s Future. I noted in that Article how unenthused I was about Apple’s upcoming home device:
What struck me about Gurman’s article is just how unenthused I am by an Apple smarthome product. Some of this is fatigue from a decade of Siri disappointment and skepticism about the company’s ability to deliver on a voice-centric product. More than that, however, I bristle at the idea of introducing Apple’s constraints to more parts of my life.
Those constraints aren’t just about things like full disk access. To the extent that Apple delivers on integration with things like thermostats and door locks is the extent to which they work with 3rd-party device makers; the problem is that third party device makers mostly suck, particularly from a software perspective. Even if Siri were perfect, Apple will have the challenge of delivering an experience that isn’t defined by the lowest common denominator.
What I’m much more interested in is controlling the software layer myself. The fact of the matter is that with AI you can decompile almost all existing software — there is a revolution happening in gaming over the past few weeks, as game after game is decompiled to source and ported to any platform you wish — and you can write your own. That means my software that interacts with my agent in the way I want it to for everything; that’s way more exciting than praying Apple delivers the right API and that 3rd-party developers don’t suck.
The first thing that makes Gurman’s news interesting is that it is Apple directly addressing one of the factors that made me unenthusiastic about an Apple home device: an assumed dependency on third-party developers building to an API and crossing their fingers that it worked. Second-party has the promise of being different: not only will Apple presumably sell these LG devices on their website and in Apple retail stores, they will have already ensured that they work well (and probably done a lot more than that).
Two notes on it being LG specifically. First, I know a lot of Mac users weren’t very enthused about LG’s UltraFine monitors, which were Apple’s solution to anyone who didn’t want to use an iMac, but I am actually sitting in front of two LG UltraFine 4K monitors right now and they work great! Second, it’s worth noting that smart home devices are not displays: LG is the market leader in the latter, but a bit of a non-entity in the former. This could work to Apple’s benefit in that they probably have more control than they would with another partner, but LG is going to need to deliver to some pretty high standards with quite a bit of scrutiny.
The House For Everyone Else
I opened that segment I quoted above by emphasizing that I am not representative of a normal user; I suspect that most people will not be interested in decompiling drivers or writing their own software for their own smart home. That doesn’t mean, however, that normal users might not want to benefit from a smart home, if only a company would solve it for them.
I have maintained for years that Apple erred in not doing more in the home; in 2019, when Amazon acquired Eero, I bemoaned the company’s shutdown of its Airport wifi devices:
As an addendum, it is worth again returning to Apple, and, just as is the case with podcasts, it is in the context of the company seeming to squander an early advantage. As I explained above, it seems likely that the AirPort market — which was originally about adding Wi-Fi to homes that didn’t have it — was shrinking thanks to the fact that most consumers got Wi-Fi routers from their ISPs. However, instead of innovating in the space, particularly in the direction of mesh networks, Apple decided to exit.
This strategy made sense in a world where iPhone sales were increasing: focus, and all that. Today, though, it is looking more than a bit shaky. Indeed, it seems reasonable to add AirPort to Apple TV, Podcasts, and even Siri as times where Apple was early to an opportunity, only to allow that advantage to be eclipsed by other companies less enamored with seemingly endless smartphone profits. That, perhaps, is an under-appreciated trade-off of focus, and where it is applied: product focus is a great idea when the product is moving up-and-to-the-right; customer focus, on the other hand, produces multiple products that are ideally moving in that direction. I am sure Apple’s decision to abandon the router market was driven by focus — was it customer focus though?
I actually think that smart homes can be really useful; the concept has a bad reputation because everything sucks and doesn’t work well together. I am very excited about solving that with AI, and customizing my house exactly how I please. The opposite of that approach, however, is not simply doing nothing, but doing all of the work for customers who want the experience without the experimentation.
In other words, I’m not representative of normal customers not because I want to have a smart home, but because I want to do it myself; the possibilities I see are also opportunities for a company to do the work on behalf of customers. Granted, Amazon and Google have been trying to pull this off for a long time, but they have the same ecosystem challenges I was bemoaning on Monday. The best way to deliver on the experience — again, assuming you don’t want to simply vibe code your own solution — is to integrate. Apple’s not going all the way in this direction, but having a second party maker they work closely with is a very smart approach that I think has a lot of potential.
Agent Standards and Amazon
From CNBC:
A month after Meta’s launch of Muse, the personal agent that quickly turned into a viral sensation, a group of companies is coming together to try to simplify the process of bringing the technology into the business world. Meta, Walmart, Stripe and a handful of other companies are publishing what they’re calling a “personal agent protocol.” It’s an open standard meant to dictate how artificial intelligence agents can interact with businesses.
Sierra CEO Bret Taylor, who is heading the effort, wrote on Sierra’s blog:
Personal AI agents are taking the world by storm. People are using them to do everything from scheduling appointments to booking flights and shopping for car insurance. It’s extraordinary how fast AI is changing consumer behavior and how many of us are having those incredible “wait, it just did that” moments with our personal agents. Unsurprisingly companies are asking how they can best respect their consumers’ choices while also protecting their privacy and security.
So today we’re excited to announce Personal Agent Protocol — an open standard Meta and Sierra are developing along with industry partners at Genesys, Instinct, Rocket, Shopify, Stripe, and Walmart that defines how personal agents interact with businesses. We’re designing it to handle authentication, empower consumers and give companies visibility into what personal agents do through their websites, APIs or company agents. It’s open for anyone to implement.
I haven’t written about Instinct yet, but I have used it and it is very impressive (and yes, the company should be an Apple acquisition target). What is notable is that both Muse and Instinct are in on this project. Right now the biggest issue facing agents isn’t competition with each other: it’s making sure the experience works seamlessly. Browser use is a cheat code, but it’s not the ideal approach; that’s why you have clear competitors coming together early on a standard like this.
One notable absence is, of course, Amazon, and I thought Mike Vernal had an excellent post on X about their opposition to agents. The whole thing is worth a read, but some highlights:
I’m not mad at Amazon – I get it. Over the past 20 years, Amazon did the impossible – they wrested a search vertical out of Google’s hands…Amazon built an incredible shopping experience – the Everything Store – and then trained users that it was faster to start their shopping experience on Amazon, not Google. This was not an accident – it was relentless execution…
There is an implied but:
Horizontal consumer assistants are going to work. I have been using Instinct for a while (disclosure, we are the initial investors and on the board). I have also been using Muse since launch and know many of the folks on the team (we were also seed investors in the Dreamer team, which now works on Muse!). They are both great products. They’re both going to work.
Personal agents are just such a better experience. I had to book a hotel in NYC yesterday. With Instinct, I can just say “Can you book me a room at [the hotel] on the 21st?” It has my credit card and flight info. It knows what rooms I’ve booked before. It has my loyalty number. It can just book the room and add it to my calendar in just the way I like it. It’s not going to make a mistake with the dates. It is so much better than a dozen, slow-loading, form-heavy hotel web pages.
The hotel use case is a real one — it’s the first transaction I did on Instinct. I stay at the SFO Grand Hyatt almost every time I go to the Bay Area and it handled a date change with aplomb. I live in messaging, and Instinct really does give the sensation of having an assistant on the other end of a text thread.
Anyhow, Vernal predicts that Amazon is going to lean hard on its own agent for shopping, but he doesn’t think it will work because vertical agents won’t have horizontal context on your life; he thinks the answer is simply to charge more:
Amazon should launch a new subscription tier above Amazon Prime. Call it Prime+. Amazon Prime is $139/year in the US today and I think >65%(!) of US households are subscribers. Set the Prime+ pricing at something like $299/year or $30/month. Make agentic purchasing exclusive to this tier…
There is already some precedent for this. What is YouTube Premium? It is a way for consumers to pay for the convenience of an ad-free YouTube experience. Amazon Prime+ is the same thing – a way for consumers to pay for the convenience of an ad-free, agentic Amazon experience.
It’s a great take, and fits with a point I have been making on Sharp Tech: one of the underestimated costs of increased transparency — which is an inevitability with agents — is going to be higher prices. Companies won’t be able to make money because consumers are lazy, or because they saw some ads. They’re going to have to charge for value, and that might have unexpected knock-on effects.
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