M.G. Siegler Technology writer and investor who publishes Spyglass, a newsletter covering Apple, Google, Microsoft, Meta and the wider AI and consumer tech landscape.

“Does everything need to be an app, right? … It did need to be an app because that was the paradigm that Apple instilled on everyone. If you don't have an app, you might as well just not exist as a service. And it feels like we're in a time where that could be moving the other direction. We could be entering a world where you don't need an app. You launch a service. You basically allow AI to build a UI on the fly.”

Big Technology · Tech Strategy & Big Tech · November 2026

Context

Asked who gets left behind if chatbots build interfaces on the fly, Siegler contrasts Apple's plan to layer Siri over existing apps with a world where AI services generate their own interface.

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Transcript

Big Technology Around 57:38 into the episode

M.G. Siegler

You mean like in terms of who's not using it or you mean who gets taken out? Yeah, exactly. Right.

Alex Kantrowitz

Because like it's like all these experiences and UIs that people's companies spend a lot of time building and researching.

M.G. Siegler

…It's a paradigm people already know. They already have the apps. But there is another world in which the stuff that we're talking about now, where you just don't need apps anymore, because basically OpenAI or whoever it is, whatever AI service it is, basically builds the equivalent of apps. Like there's long been this thing dating to the earlier days of the App Store and whatnot. It's like, does everything need to be an app, right? Like all of this stuff feels like overkill. But in some ways, it did need to be an app because that was the paradigm that Apple instilled on everyone, right? Like, and it's like, if you don't have an app, you might as well just not exist as a service. And so it feels like we're in a time where that could be moving the other direction. And we could be entering a world where, yeah, you don't need…

Alex Kantrowitz

the same thing. It knows. It knows your own. Yeah.

M.G. Siegler

And imagine that for different devices beyond just a smartphone, right? Like obviously glasses, but watches, any type of sort of dynamic UI it could build. And all of a sudden, that takes the onus off of the developer to have to do that and have to build for Android and iOS and Windows and Mac OS…

Alex Kantrowitz

Can I tell you, I just end on this, it's crazy how many like pie in the sky moonshot ideas that we've been hearing about from the tech industry for like forever and never seemed feasible are like all starting to happen. Folding iPhone, a dynamic listening device that gives you, despite my…

Speaker names come from our own diarization. The position is estimated from where the line sits in the episode.

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