Day: October 17, 2025

• Tim Cook, are you reading? If so, I have a message: Apple should bring back the iPod!
• Parents of kids and young teens are yearning for a device that plays music, but isn’t a phone.
• That’s where a new iPod could come in. It’d be much better than the MP3 players out there now

Dear Tim Cook,

I understand why Apple discontinued the iPod in 2022. The way most people listen to music has changed since the iPod reshuffled the music industry in 2001. I get it, I do.

And yet. I need you to consider this request. Please bring back the iPod!

Even if a new iPod might not generate the same sales it did a decade ago, there is still a hardcore demographic out there, absolutely desperate for the iPod: parents. Trust me.

In any parenting Facebook group — or, really, across all social media — the desire for an old-school iPod keeps coming up.

“I want something like an iPod-type thing,” one parent pleaded on Facebook recently. “No internet access, no messaging, nothing … just a way for him to listen to music of his choice while on the bus to school. I’m kinda coming up short with my search.”

Why parents want a phone-free music player

Many parents are worried about the potential harm that can come from using social media — and phones — and are choosing to restrict their kids’ and teens’ access to screens or hold off on giving them a phone.

But how can we give our kids access to music without giving them access to an entire phone’s worth of apps, or a phone at all? (That’s where you come in, Tim.)

Unfortunately, most adults aren’t active CD or record buyers, and we listen to music through streaming services like Spotify (and Apple Music, of course).

This leaves music-loving kids in the lurch: How can they listen to their favorite tunes? We can all agree that it’s character-building and healthy for a middle schooler to start developing their own musical tastes and listen to music of their own choice.

And as much as we parents might wax nostalgic for the days of downloading viruses from Kazaa onto the family computer, or taping songs off the radio onto a cassette tape, we don’t actually want to send our kids back into the Dark Ages. We just want a music player that doesn’t also have Snapchat.

The post-iPod options are crummy

Parents seem to have come up with a variety of solutions that seem to vary in success. Here’s some of what I’ve heard parents are using:

• An actual CD player/boombox and CDs.
• The Yoto player, a device made for young kids that plays audiobooks and music through credit card-sized cards you insert into the speaker device.
• A cheapo MP3 player from Amazon, of which there are a wide variety at various price points and with a variety of features like touchscreens or video.
• The Mighty, a screen-free portable music player designed for kids that can sync Spotify playlists offline.
• A vintage iPod on eBay. Urban Outfitters even sold refurbished ones in 2023 as retro tech.

Although these are all interesting options, there doesn’t seem to be one single solution for everyone. Older kids and teens might find the Yoto too babyish to bring on the bus, for example. Some of the MP3 players out there have poor Amazon reviews for crummy software or low battery life. Like this one:

“I’m trying to find an easy-to-use MP3 player for my 8-year-old. I bought a non-brand one off Amazon, and it’s awful. The music can’t be organized; it’s just one big playlist,” a parent wrote in a Facebook group. Basically, I want an original iPod from 2005, lol.”

There seems to be a gap in the market for a product with an elegant design, top-notch firmware, and baked-in compatibility with a large, familiar music library.

A small, white, clickwheel-sized gap, perhaps. You know … like something Apple might make?

The company didn’t respond to my question about whether it would bring back the iPod or forward my request to Mr. Cook, so I have no choice but to ask him, right here:

Tim, you have the power. Make us happy again. Give us the iPod!

Perhaps we can cyberbully Apple with some highly unscientific market research:

• Tim Draper is a legendary VC who became a billionaire through early bets on Skype, Hotmail, and Baidu.
• In an interview, Draper compared OpenAI to AOL and said we are near the top of the AI hype cycle.
• Draper has launched multiple AI avatars trained on years of his speeches and writing.

Tim Draper, the legendary venture capitalist who became a billionaire through early bets on Skype, Hotmail, Tesla, and Baidu, says it is too early to know if OpenAI will be the ultimate winner of the AI revolution.

“OpenAI is the equivalent of AOL in the first internet wave,” Draper said in a wide-ranging interview this week, where he discussed his views on investing in AI and his enthusiastic embrace of the technology, which includes creating multiple avatars of himself.

“AOL and Netscape were the center of everything, and then came Yahoo and then Google.”

Despite his doubts, Draper calls OpenAI “fantastic” and says he regrets not investing in its early days. He was scared away by its unusual non-profit structure, which capped investment gains.

“It had such a weird structure that I didn’t do it,” Draper said. “I probably should have.”

Many people, even OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, have been sounding alarm bells about an AI bubble. Draper said there will indeed be a bubble bursting.

“We’re at the top of the hype,” he said, “It’ll dip, then explode upward again and be bigger than anybody ever imagined.”

For Draper, that’s the nature of every bubble: Yes, there is hype and lots of losers, but there is also lots of money to be made because the underlying technology is still a game-changer.

“It always feels like a bubble,” he said. “But then it gets real. The same people who were saying, ‘I’m not putting my credit card on that Amazon thing,’ later couldn’t live without it.”

Draper has created AI avatars of himself

Who said you can’t be in two places at once?

Draper is challenging that maxim after launching multiple AI avatars trained on years of his speeches and writing.

“It’s all about having more time,” Draper said. “It’s some combination of my personality and all the interviews I’ve done and the books I’ve written. And every time I speak onstage, we’ve captured all of that.”

At Draper University, his accelerator program for entrepreneurs, students can interact with a virtual Draper. “It was very valuable to have me in a holographic form answering questions,” he said. “People have spent two and a half hours with it because it allows all of them to have better service.”

He has yet another avatar to respond to the founders in his portfolio.

“We have a hotline for our entrepreneurs to answer questions that come up a lot,” Draper said. “They can ask the AI twin first, and then if they don’t have a satisfactory answer, they can always come to one of us.”

There’s also an AI system that reviews startup pitch decks submitted to Draper Associates. Entrepreneurs upload their slides, and Draper’s “digital twin” sends them feedback automatically. “We’ve got our own biases, but generally, the decks aren’t all-encompassing, or they’re too long, or they’re too whatever,” he explained. “Our AI can identify those issues and help the entrepreneur get better at presenting before they come and present to us.”

Draper has found that his avatars’ biggest problem is that they are often addressing both sides of an issue instead of giving direct, definitive answers. He doesn’t seem particularly worried about his AI avatars misrepresenting him.

“If it’s not saying the things I would say, I can go in there and say, ‘Hey, this is not accurate. We need to change it,'” he said. “That’s what I’m working on.”

Draper Associates also uses AI to identify five companies a week that the firm could invest in that might otherwise slip through the cracks, and he is training the model to constantly improve.

“I look at those companies and I give them feedback,” Draper said. “Now the quality of the companies it is presenting to me is very high.”

The firm also records all startup pitches and analyzes tones that can even identify potential deception.

“We have an evaluator that determines emotions and it detects lies,” Draper said.

Will AI replace venture capitalists?

For all his embrace of AI, Draper does not think VCs will be replaced anytime soon.

“There’s an X-factor to every entrepreneur that AI can’t really evaluate,” he said. AI can look at their history and their competition, but it’s going to take a while for AI to take the leap to backing an entrepreneur that’s doing something AI’s never seen before.”

Draper says his curiosity cannot be replicated by AI.

“I ask the second question and the third question and the fourth question to try to dig in and figure out whether this is something really promising,” he said. “I can still outperform any AI in investing.”

Draper has amassed a fortune of $3.4 billion, according to Forbes. Venture is often considered a young person’s game, and at 67 years old, he could easily retire. Asked what keeps him going, he said he sees VC as a moral mission.

“It’s good for the world, it’s good for society,” he said. “If people feel like they can start new businesses and they can change the old establishment, then you are going to make a better world.”

• Quant investors speaking at a London conference this week said AI is more about the end user than the technology.
• The executives came from hedge funds and asset management arms from banks like Morgan Stanley and UBS.
• One quant hedge fund manager said AI has helped marketers sell computer-run funds.

What’s the latest edge in quant finance, which relies on math whizzes to drive computer-driven funds? Humans.

In an ironic twist, the people behind quant funds are using some of the same language human-run stockpickers and investors have used for decades to defend their style against computer-run alternatives.

“Human creativity” is what will get quants ahead, said Amadeo Alentorn, head of systematic equities at Jupiter Asset Management, adding that there might be “too much hype” for what generative AI can do for investment management right now.

While advances from companies like OpenAI have allowed quants to speed up their processes and work on more complex projects, the technology is not yet to the point where firms can turn their systematic funds over completely to the machines.

“By far the most important part of generative AI is the end user,” said Timothee Consigny, CTO of H2O Asset Management, a Paris-based macro manager. Consigny, speaking at a London conference for the industry, called Quant Strats, compared the technology to driving a car; everyone now has access to F1-fast cars thanks to generative AI, but not everyone is able to drive them effectively.

In other words, on its own, AI is not going to help win the “alpha war,” said Matthias Uhl, head of analytics and quant solutions at UBS Asset Management.

None other than Citadel founder Ken Griffin agrees with the assessment, saying at Wednesday’s Robin Hood conference in New York that generative AI “falls short” when it comes to finding market-beating ideas, according to Bloomberg.

A timesaver and marketing tool, but not a revolution

Back-office grunts and marketing teams might be the biggest beneficiaries of the technology so far. Alentorn said the explosion of the technology has “helped selling our funds” because investors are more comfortable with things being run by a computer now. Uhl meanwhile said it’s mostly doing “mundane” tasks.

This aligns with what funds told the Alternative Investment Management Association last year in a survey. While firms were using AI, the primary use cases were for “time savings on administrative tasks” and “content generation” for investor relations teams.

It’s not to say quants dislike the technology. Stephan Kessler, who heads quantitative investment research for Morgan Stanley, said, “it allows us to run more systematic strategies in areas we haven’t done before.” He said the firm has AI combing bond prospectuses for crucial info, a task that used to take a person days is now done in minutes.

“It allows us to code more complex things faster,” Kessler added.

But large language models are, in a way, a blank page and need to learn from funds what is important and what isn’t. The software itself is not that valuable; as David Shelton, global head of FICC electronic trading and FX quantitative strategies group for Bank of America, pointed out, AI companies are “giving away the code.”

Therefore, what you feed the model is more important than what it was trained on, said Haoxue Wang, quant at Izzy Englander’s Millennium.

“A language model can’t read your mind,” Wang said.

In other words, the edge still lies with people — for now.