iPhone Duo may be Apple's hottest product ever. It currently has the longest lead time of any iPhone in history. By far. Every Duo variant is currently showing a delivery date of 1/25/27, or 94 days after release––nearly 3x longer than the previous record held by the iPhone X. Q4 continues to look better by the day. $AAPL Methodology: All data comes from me scouring the internet for historical lead times. I tried to mirror today's conditions as closely as possible by targeting reports from the first day of preorders, a few hours after they opened. I took the shortest lead time for any variant of the model available on Apple's US online store. Sometimes there would be one color that had longer times than others; for instance, the Jet Black iPhone 7 Plus had 6-8 weeks of lead time, but other colors were much more accessible, so those are the lead times reflected. The idea is to show the fastest way to get some version of the model in your hands to best appreciate raw demand for the device itself.

In 2025, less than 0.7% of Mediastorm employees chose iPhone Air over 17 Pro/Pro Max. In 2026, over 70% chose iPhone Duo over 18 Pro/Max, despite the multi-month wait and the 18s being available immediately. I don’t think people are ready for how popular this thing will be.

Hilariously ironic to make an “analytics” argument, using Shanahan’s 2 Super Bowl appearance in 9 seasons *against* him. If you want to trust the numbers, maybe listen to the guy who has a 22% Super Bowl appearance rate.

The negative reactions to Shanahan’s perspective on “analytics” are great examples of how worshipping at the altar of empirics can rot your brain. Decisionmaking in football is an infinitely complex and intricate web of interconnected components. Historical trends are informative, but in a game scenario where you know he knows you know—and you have unique matchups/reads on situation-specific tendencies, so subtle that any kind of aggregate statistic would completely erode them away—stubbornly conforming to the guidance of a posteriori generic historical tendencies is just stupid. Especially when the supposed edge is only 1% over random chance. That’s not to say purely model-derived decisions are bad, but you have to understand the limitations of the model you’re working with and what value its conclusions actually have in real-world scenarios. Especially in complex games, not every variable can be modeled; in that sense, unequivocal deference to model-derived recommendations based solely on the fact that they came out of a mechanical system is simply naïve. That kind of Blind Number Worship is no different to any other breed of credentialism; people make up their minds that information from a specific source is gospel and turn off their brains—mindlessly accepting anything from The Source and vehemently rejecting anything that contradicts it. You see just how potent that effect is with these people concluding with unquestioned confidence that Kyle Shanahan—a highly successful coach with a decade of head coaching experience at the highest level and 2 Super Bowl appearances—is somehow “clearly wrong” in an extremely marginal situation while internet randoms with no accolades or even relationship to the game at all are “clearly right.” Shanahan doesn’t technically characterize it the correct way—talking about limited trials as the motivating factor vs limitations in the prescience of modeled outcomes vs his own intuition—but I have to imagine he actually means his instincts allow him to err towards higher success probability within the margin of error for that one decision. Especially given the example he’s using, with 51% vs 98% model-derived guidance.

Pretty genius marketing stunt. You’re not only acquiring customers for $30 a head, but deeply integrating them into your product via a live walkthrough use case that organically requires “soft KYC.” And you get a ton of brand awareness on top. Very cool idea.

The fact that this post is so controversial proves my point btw

Within hours of opening preorders, shipping dates for iPhone Duo are indicating delivery in late January. Seems like there might have been a little more interest than the Twitter reactions would have had you believe… 🤔 $AAPL

This is such an interesting take to me. Do you not consider the proliferation of electric cars good? You don’t think cars driving themselves and dramatically reducing accident probability is good? You don’t think it’s good for people in tyrannical societies to have internet access via Starlink when they would otherwise be shut out from the world? You don’t think it’s good that Neuralink gives disabled people the opportunity to interact with the world again? How do you even arrive at this position?

Another great example of the phenomenon I am talking about. This is a complete fairy tale. The $4B figure refers to estimated savings from caps on NIH administrative overhead expenses, not cuts to cancer research. And the whole thing was never actually implemented anyways because it was blocked in court. You can just look at the numbers directly. NIH spent $7.9B on cancer research in 2024. You want to guess how much they spent in 2025? Drumroll please….$7.9B. No change whatsoever. Don’t you think if $4B in cuts were made, some of that might have shown up in the ~8 months of the year where that policy was supposedly active? This is exactly what I’m talking about. People hate Elon so much that they invent these insane, totally implausible and verifiably false stories to tell themselves just to confirm their biases. And they just believe them without a second thought because of how blinded they are by emotion.

One of my favorite passive aggressive techniques on Twitter is making lists with mean names and adding people you don’t like to them lol I will say it is intellectually lazy though. When I disagree with someone, I cant help but articulate my specific disagreement. I can’t imagine seeing something I disagree with and being lazy enough to eat my actual argument and reduce it to some simplistic ad hominem one-liner. Would be like holding in a sneeze.

It’s called hyperbole, a rhetorical device which takes a phenomenon to the extreme to illustrate its dynamics. I could just as easily have used Tesla bringing about the electric vehicle wave, FSD revolutionizing transportation and dramatically improving safety, Starlink providing high speed internet access to millions of people across the world who would otherwise be in the dark or shut out by tyrannical governments, Neuralink restoring the ability for disabled people to interact with the world around them… I could go on for a while. The point is Elon innovates, and haters hate. As you’ve once again proven.

If Elon created a cancer vaccine, people would complain about the size of the needle.

“Lol, what a stupid idea to use Tesla Roadster-style rocket thrusters as a safety feature. What if you land in someone’s flower bed? Who will pay for Gloria’s new pansies?” Yes, you’re right. Clearly, just accepting death in a scenario like this is superior. Obviously, there would be technology included to detect the surrounding environment. It wouldn’t be just randomly shooting the car into the air with no calculation. It’s incredible how blinding hate can be. People who hate Elon and Tesla will find a negative hateful slant on literally anything they do. If he created a cancer vaccine they would complain about the needle.

I’m loving all the armchair genius snide comments. “Lol you idiot, what if it hits someone’s flower bed? Are you gonna pay for Gloria’s new pansies? And the drivers would need crazy restraints. This is stupid.” Obviously, just accepting death in a scenario like this is superior.