Apple Will ‘Watch Everything Burn’ When AI Bubble Bursts
July 31, 2026
Apple Will ‘Watch Everything Burn’ When AI Bubble Bursts
by
Horace Dediu
I would say they will simply collect all the available profits
MacRumors interviewed AI critic Ed Zitron, author of the Where’s Your Ed At newsletter and host of the Better Offline podcast, about what could happen to Apple if the costly AI infrastructure boom collapses. Zitron argued that Apple is relatively well insulated because it has spent far less on data centers than rivals such as Microsoft, Google, and Amazon. He said the company could use the downturn to make selective acquisitions, though it might simply continue operating largely as before. “I think they will sit on the sidelines and watch everything burn,” Zitron said. Here’s an excerpt from the report:
If the bubble deflates the way you expect (write-downs, too much compute supply, possibly OpenAI cratering), can you walk us through what that would actually look like for Apple? Does anything break for iPhone users, or does Apple mostly watch it happen from the sidelines? Could it even benefit Apple?
I think things would look much the same for Apple. I think they will sit on the sidelines and watch everything burn. I could see them doing some choice acquisitions as things begin to collapse, but I could also see them do nothing.
I think Apple is in a very weird place at the moment. The Vision Pro was a dud, but it was also the most interesting and future-forward thing I’ve seen anyone put out in a while. If they were smart, they’d tread water and sink as much money into making that as small as humanely possible — no matter how long it takes — because the entire AI bubble is a result of everybody running out of hypergrowth ideas, mostly because we’re flat out of new interfaces.
Source: Ed Zitron via MacRumors
NB: Those who do not study history are doomed to repeat it. The history of computing is one of the easiest to study since it’s so recent and well documented. We don’t have to conduct archeology or infer from scraps of written works. The people who lived and worked through that period are mostly still alive and we can ask them questions. Still, Zirton misses a few points…
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