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Welcome to the Tech Brew. Write Home for Friday, May 1, 2026 I'm Brian McCullough. Today, Apple beat Q2 estimates and forecast strong Q3 growth as the MacBook Neo and Mac Mini sell out. The Senate unanimously banned prediction market trading for senators. Intel closed its best month ever at greater than 114% up, Elon admitted XAI partly distilled OpenAI models and of course the weekend long read suggestions. Here's what you missed today in the world of TEC Apple earnings. They did good. Yada yada yada. Apple's CFO said that the iPhone 17 family is now the most popular lineup in our history and we believe we gained market share during the quarter. And Tim Cook said iPhone sales, which slightly missed Q2 estimates, were held back by supply chain constraints for advanced chips as quote, demand was off the charts. But Apple is up 5% as I typed this this morning because Apple forecast Q3 revenue above estimates with sales expected to rise between 14 and 17%. They did also say though, that memory expenses will climb significantly higher in Q3, quoting Bloomberg. The outlook bodes well for incoming Chief Executive Officer John Ternus, who takes the reins from Tim Cook on September 1st. Ternus appeared briefly on the conference call saying he would maintain Cook's quote, thoughtfulness, deliberateness and discipline as CEO. We have an incredible roadmap ahead, turner said. This is the most exciting time in my 25 year career at Apple to be building products and services. Cook, who has run the Cupertino, California based company for 15 years, will remain as Executive chairman. Apple has benefited from a series of new products launched in March, including the MacBook Neo, iPhone 17e, updated iPad Air models and a fresh MacBook Pro. The $599 Neo, Apple's first major push into low cost laptops, has been particularly popular and remains sold out at retailers. Total sales gained 17% to $111.2 billion during the fiscal second quarter, which ended March 28. Analysts had anticipated $109.7 billion on average. Apple itself had projected sales growth of 13 to 16%. Apple signaled that it's mostly coping with shortages and memory costs, but things will worsen over time. A memory crunch has rippled through the tech industry, forcing companies to boost prices and reduce output. On the call, Cook said memory expenses would climb significantly higher this quarter compared with more subdued increases in the March period. In the fourth quarter and beyond, he said there would be an increasing impact on the business. He declined to disclose if Apple would raise prices. Apple's main supply constraints involve processors rather than memory chips. The impact has primarily hit the Mac Mini and Mac Studio, two desktop Macs that have become popular for running artificial intelligence models. Cook said the company under called demand on those Macs. It also underestimated the Appetite for the MacBook Neo, which also remains hard to find. Apple's online store quotes several week waits for all three products and sellouts for some configurations. We're not at the point where we're saying this is going to end anytime soon, cook said, adding that the constraints will likely last several months. He characterized the iPhone shortages as being less significant than the ones affecting the Mac. As part of its second quarter earnings report, Apple said it would buy back as much as $100 billion in shares and boosted its dividend. The company also said it would be winding down its net CA strategy as it begins to look at cash and debt independently. Earnings rose $2.01 a share, beating the projection of $1.96. The China market, where Apple has struggled in recent years, was a highlight. Last quarter, revenue there soared 28% to $20.5 billion. Wall street had projected only 18.9 billion. Amazon has debuted Join the Chat, an AI powered feature that lets users ask questions about products and get conversational audio responses generated in real time. Quoting TechCrunch, Amazon launched a new AI powered feature on Tuesday that allows users to ask questions about products and receive conversational audio responses. The responses are delivered by what the company calls AI powered shopping experts, which present information in a natural discussion style format. The new Join the Chat feature aims to save customers time by providing key product details without requiring them to scroll through lengthy descriptions or reviews. The AI pulls together insights about product features, customer feedback and other relevant information. For example, shoppers can ask questions like whether a coffee maker is suited for beginners or whether a sweater feels itchy based on customer reviews. Rather than giving generic answers, Amazon says the AI builds on previous responses to provide more relevant and helpful information, while also making sure not to repeat anything. This is meant to be a similar experience to speaking with a knowledgeable employee at a IRL Store customers can ask questions and actually steer where the conversation goes. Every question they ask influences what comes next, making the experience a conversation customers can join and customize. The company writes on a blog post. Join the chat as part of a broader experience called Hear the Highlights, which offers short audio summaries on millions of product pages within the Amazon Shopping app. That feature began testing last May and is currently available in the U.S. however, only select products have audio summaries. To use the feature, customers open a product page in the app and tap the Hear the Highlights button located below the product image. From there, they can listen to a brief overview or tap the Join the Chat icon to ask specific questions via text or voice. The audio can continue playing even as users browse. The new capability builds on Amazon's growing lineup of AI driven shopping tools. These include Rufus, its generative AI assistant that helps customers research products and compare options Interests, which continuously tracks and services new items aligned with a shopper's preferences and Help Me Decide, which suggests products based on a person's searches, browsing and shopping history. End quote. The United States Senate has unanimously passed a rule barring senators from trading on prediction markets like CalSHI and Polymarket amid rising concerns over insider trading. Quoting CNBC, the move came amid rising concern about insider trading on prediction market platforms like Kalshi and polymarket, and about event contracts that can involve death or violence. On April 22, Kalshee said it had suspended and fined one U.S. senate candidate and two candidates for the House of Representatives for political insider trading on their own campaigns. On April 23, a U.S. army Special Forces soldier, Master Sergeant Gannon Ken Van Dyke, was arrested on an indictment accusing him of classified information to make bets on polymarket related to the American military mission that captured Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro. Van Dyke, who was involved in that mission, won nearly $410,000 on those wagers, according to the Department of Justice. Earlier on Thursday, a group of Democratic members of Congress called on the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to issue a rule that prevents insider trading and corruption in the market and prohibits event contracts on the outcome of elections, war and military actions in the US or abroad, sports and government actions without a valid economic hedging interest. Kalshi and polymarket both praise the Senate's action. I applaud the Senate for passing this resolution to ban senators and their offices from trading on prediction markets, kalshi CEO Trek Mansour wrote in a post on X. Kalshi already proactively blocks members of Congress and enforces against insider trading. This is a great step to increase trust in our markets by making it an industry standard, mansoor said. Now let's pass this in the house. Polymarket in its own post on X said, we're in full support of this. Our rulebook and terms of service already prohibit such conduct, but codifying this into law as a step forward for the industry. Happy to help move this forward, however, we can End quote. One little Musk v. Altman nugget from the trial for you today. Quoting Wired While testifying on Thursday in federal court, Elon Musk seemed to indicate that his AI lab may have used OpenAI's models to train Xai's own. He touched upon the topic while sitting on the witness stand answering cross examination questions from an OpenAI attorney amid his ongoing legal battle against the ChatGPT maker. This is the exchange best as Wired could Capture it. QUOTE OpenAI Lawyer William Sabbat do you know what distillation is? Musk it means to use one AI model to train another AI model. Sabbat Has XAI done that with OpenAI? Musk generally all the AI companies do that. Sabbat so that's a yes. Musk Partly Distillation is a technique where a smaller AI model is trained to mimic the behavior of a larger, more capable model, making it cheaper and faster to run while preserv its performance. OpenAI's lawyer William Savitt then asked whether OpenAI's technology had been used in any way to develop XAI. Savit Has OpenAI technology been used in any way to develop Xai? Musk it is standard practice to use other AIs to validate your AI. OpenAI and Xai did not immediately respond to Wire's request for comment. OpenAI has been trying to prevent its competitors from distilling its AI models, in particular the Chinese AI lab Deep seq. In a February 2026 memo to a House committee, OpenAI wrote that it has taken steps to protect harden our models against distillation. In that memo, OpenAI said it was focused on ensuring a playing field in which China can't advance autocratic AI by appropriating and repackaging American innovation. End quote.