{"id":901,"date":"2026-02-24T15:36:48","date_gmt":"2026-02-24T15:36:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/payne.org\/blog\/?p=901"},"modified":"2026-02-24T15:36:48","modified_gmt":"2026-02-24T15:36:48","slug":"ai-app-printer-model-ink","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/payne.org\/blog\/ai-app-printer-model-ink\/","title":{"rendered":"AI APP : PRINTER :: MODEL : INK"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Here in February 2026, I&#8217;m collecting AI model subscriptions faster than my mom collected Longaberger baskets.  It&#8217;s a great time to be a consumer as models leapfrog each other, but at any given moment, the underlying models are not <em>that<\/em> different.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It&#8217;s clear that &#8220;AI compute&#8221; is a new utility, and it&#8217;s going to be a big one.  (It might even crowd out &#8220;Internet access&#8221; as a distinct thing that people pay for (or pay much for), just as happened to &#8220;long distance&#8221; phone charges.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Those AI providers want:  (a) to sell as many computes as possible, and (b) to lock in users.  Having the best model (for the month!) is not sufficient, as the back-end models are relatively fungible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The real battleground is in end-user apps:  humans are notoriously &#8220;sticky&#8221;.  <span style=\"box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;\">When we&#8217;ve figured out how to use an app, are invested in it, and it meets our needs, the alternative has to be\u00a0<em><strong>dramatically<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0better to switch.<\/span>   (Try teaching a non-technical user how to use a video conferencing tool other than Zoom.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>AI providers want an app ecosystem that&#8217;s cheap\/free &#8211; anything that drives compute usage.  They will offer affiliate revenue share models to app developers that drive underlying AI subscriptions, upgrades, and usage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The AI providers will cherry-pick top apps from that ecosystem and build free versions, which only work with their models.  Give away a printer that <strong><em>only<\/em><\/strong> works with your ink, and sell the ink.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This is why the current state of the market is so fascinating:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>OpenAI thought it was a model arms race, but is realizing that even if their model is 5% better, that&#8217;s not sufficient.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Anthropic is iterating rapidly on their coding agent and similar apps (e.g. Claude for Excel).  They don&#8217;t have to have the absolute best model.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/cursor.com\/\">Cursor<\/a> is incredibly exposed (selling a printer that still requires expensive ink) until it gets acquired by an AI company or cuts a meaningful affiliate deal.  After all, Microsoft literally owns VS Code and GitHub. <\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Google is saying, &#8220;Hold my beer, do you remember what Microsoft did with Internet Explorer?&#8221;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Who&#8217;s going to be the &#8220;Netscape&#8221; of <em>this<\/em> tech wave?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Here in February 2026, I&#8217;m collecting AI model subscriptions faster than my mom collected Longaberger baskets. It&#8217;s a great time to be a consumer as models leapfrog each other, but at any given moment, the underlying models are not that &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/payne.org\/blog\/ai-app-printer-model-ink\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-901","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/payne.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/901","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/payne.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/payne.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/payne.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/payne.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=901"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/payne.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/901\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":902,"href":"https:\/\/payne.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/901\/revisions\/902"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/payne.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=901"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/payne.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=901"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/payne.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=901"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}