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DeepSeek Tops the App Store Charts and Sends AI Stocks on a Wild Ride

DeepSeek's newfound popularity has made it impossible to log in as of the publication of this story.

DeepSeek’s newfound popularity has made it impossible to log in as of the publication of this story.

And just like that, ChatGPT has been dethroned from its perch at the top of the App Store’s free app list, replaced by DeepSeek, another AI app. What’s interesting is that DeepSeek, which was developed by a Chinese startup, was reportedly created at a fraction of the cost of ChatGPT and other large language models developed in the US, which has tech stocks in turmoil.

Last week, DeepSeek revealed its latest LLM, which matches or outperforms OpenAI’s o1 model in some tests. That’s nothing new. AI companies have been one-upping each other for months. What’s different is that DeepSeek was reportedly built with a fraction of the hardware and at a fraction of the cost of OpenAI’s o1 and models like Anthropic’s Claude.

DeepSeek is also open source, potentially undermining the financial viability of U.S. and other for-profit companies that have spent hundreds of millions of dollars developing models that require a paid subscription. And, because it’s free, DeepSeek rocketed to the top of the App Store’s free app list, passing OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which has been at or near the top of the list for months.

That has caused a stir in Silicon Valley. As VentureBeat’s Carl Franzen puts it:

The open-source availability of DeepSeek-R1, its high performance, and the fact that it seemingly “came out of nowhere” to challenge the former leader of generative AI, has sent shockwaves throughout Silicon Valley and far beyond, based on my conversations with and readings of various engineers, thinkers and leaders. If not “everyone” is freaking out about it as my hyperbolic headline suggests, it’s certainly the talk of the town in tech and business circles.

Now, as DeepSeek is starting to look like the real deal, the stock market is causing competitors’ stocks to drop, including NVIDIA’s, which, according to the Financial Times, fell 13% at the opening of the New York Stock Exchange.

If there’s one thing that has been a truism of the AI industry over the past couple of years, it’s that it moves very fast. Today’s leaders are tomorrow’s laggards. Will DeepSeek dethrone the U.S. AI companies? It’s far too early to know, but it certainly is beginning to look like there’s a new horse in the race.

Apple Announces the 2025 Black Unity Collection

Source: Apple.

Source: Apple.

To honor Black History Month, which starts in February, Apple has released a new Black Unity Collection. Similar to 2024’s collection, the 2025 edition includes a Sport Loop band, iPhone and iPad wallpapers, and an Apple Watch face.

According to Apple’s press release:

Black creatives and allies at Apple collaborated on the design of the new collection. The collection, Unity Rhythm, weaves together the colors of the Pan-African flag: black, green, and red. The Black Unity Sport Loop is woven in a custom pattern of raised and recessed loops that creates a lenticular effect, revealing green on one side of each loop, and red on the other. When the band is worn, the colors appear dynamic, shifting from green to red as a user moves their wrist, and the color yellow appears in the transition, as if by magic.

The wallpapers spell the word “Unity,” which matches the pattern on the Watch face and colors of the Watch band. The Unity Rhythm watch face also includes a rhythmic chime on the hour and half-hour.

Source: Apple.

Source: Apple.

Apple is also supporting several organizations with grants, including the Ellis Marsalis Center for Music in New Orleans, Battersea Arts Centre in London, Music Forward Foundation in Los Angeles, Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney, and The National Museum of African American Music in Nashville, Tennessee.

The Apple Watch Black Unity Sport Loop is available to order online today and will be in stores this week for $49. The Unity Rhythm watch face and wallpapers will be available in a future software update.

The Latest from Comfort Zone, Magic Rays of Light, and MacStories Unwind

Enjoy the latest episodes from MacStories’ family of podcasts:

Comfort Zone

Matt has an announcement to make (and a cool app to talk about), Chris brought a bag of goodies, and Niléane brought a fun challenge around using our mice in interesting ways.

Magic Rays of Light

Sigmund and Devon highlight the premiere of Apple Original thriller Prime Target, share their perspectives on the conversation surrounding dark scenes in shows and films, and recap the gripping second season of Silo.

MacStories Unwind

This week, a neighborhood explosion, oats, root vegetables, and coffee, plus a classic sitcom, a unique videogame, and an action-packed movie.

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The Vision Pro Lends a Hand to the STRUTT ev¹ Personal Mobility Device→

YouTuber Two F Zero T has a first look at the STRUTT ev¹, a personal mobility device that was shown off at CES and can be controlled with the Vision Pro. The video, which I first saw linked by Apple’s Mike Stern on Mastodon, demonstrates the impressive tech packed into the STRUTT ev¹, including a unique integration with the Vision Pro. Thanks to Apple’s headset, users can navigate their surroundings with the Vision Pro’s eye and head tracking.

One of the things that’s easy to forget is that the Vision Pro builds on Apple’s years of accessibility research and development, which pioneered many of the interactions central to how people use it. With the release of the Vision Pro, developers working on new hardware like the STRUTT ev¹ can build on Apple’s innovation to offer an even richer feature set in their products. It’s a virtuous circle that benefits everyone. Apple’s products work better for more people, and companies like Strutt can build on that technology to offer an enhanced experience to their customers, too.

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The Latest from AppStories and Ruminate

Enjoy the latest episodes from MacStories’ family of podcasts:

AppStories

This week, Federico and John look ahead to WWDC and beyond to consider how Apple Intelligence could be used to change the way we use our iPhones, iPads, and Macs.

On AppStories+, Federico has grievances about the lack of Apple software compatibility on Android.

Ruminate

I brings the snack, Robb tries the BuJo life, and they both discuss web apps.

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The Latest from Comfort Zone, NPC, Magic Rays of Light, and MacStories Unwind

Enjoy the latest episodes from MacStories’ family of podcasts:

Comfort Zone

In this very special episode, the gang makes their “Pro” and “Pro Max” predictions for tech in 2025 and oh my, does it get wild! Who’s best clued into the tech coming this year? Who is just wish-casting their way to third place? We’ll have to wait to find out.

NPC: Next Portable Console

On this special edition of NPC, Federico, John, and Brendon react to Nintendo’s video announcement about the Switch 2, dig through every detail of the video for clues, and consider how things are likely to play out in the coming months.

MacStories Unwind

This week, John judges Southerners’ handling of snow, Federico is a game streaming convert, and John has a new favorite series about the Troubles in Ireland. Plus, we found a great deal on a favorite sitcom.

Magic Rays of Light

Sigmund and Devon share their favorite announcements from this year’s Consumer Electronics Show and recap the second season of Bad Sisters.

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MacStories Unwind Is Now Available as Video on YouTube

MacStories’ video rollout on YouTube continues today with MacStories Unwind, the podcast where Federico and I swap funny stories about the differences between life in the U.S. and Italy and share media picks and deals. The show is released every Friday, just in time to enjoy a good story and unwind with one of our media picks, and now, you can watch as well as listen.

As with our other shows, there will always be an audio version of MacStories Unwind. The video version is there for those who prefer to get their podcasts from YouTube, and judging from our other shows, that’s a lot of you. But if video isn’t your thing, you won’t notice any difference in the audio version.

I should also mention that we offer an early, ad-free version of the show, which we call MacStories Unwind+, for all Club MacStories members. The plus version of the show comes out on Thursday afternoons U.S. time as one of the many Club perks we offer. It’s a great way to get a jump on your weekend plans by getting our media recommendations a day early and enjoying the other perks of the Club.

You can learn more about Club MacStories and the perks we offer, like weekly and monthly newsletters, podcast perks, special columns, a Discord community, and more, by visiting the Club Plans page. More than ever before, Club MacStories is what sustains MacStories. We’d love it if you’d join.

Join Club MacStories:

NPC Special Podcast Episode: Nintendo Switch 2 Reactions and First Theories

Earlier today Nintendo announced the first official details about the Switch 2 console. There are still a lot of unknowns, but there are interesting details that can be gleaned from Nintendo’s video announcement. Join Federico, Brendon, and me for our reactions to the announcement and our theories about what is only hinted at by Nintendo in this special bonus episode of NPC: Next Portable Console, which is available on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, and wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

A Bluesky-Based Photo-Sharing App Is Coming→

Sebastian Vogelsang, the Berlin-based developer of Skeets, an alternative to Bluesky’s official client, is working on a new photo-sharing app called Flashes that is built on the same codebase as Skeets. As reported by Sarah Perez at TechCrunch:

When launched, Flashes could tap into growing consumer demand for alternatives to Big Tech’s social media monopoly. This trend has led to the adoption of open source, decentralized apps like Mastodon and Bluesky, among others, including the recently launched Pixelfed mobile apps, built on Mastodon’s ActivityPub protocol. It’s also, in part, what’s fueling TikTok users’ shift to the Chinese app RedNote ahead of the U.S. TikTok ban — that is, U.S. users are signaling that they would rather use a foreign adversary’s app than return to Meta at this point.

The idea behind Flashes is fundamentally different from Instagram. Whereas Instagram is a standalone product that allows users to cross-post to Threads automatically, Flashes is being built on top of the same social graph as Bluesky. That means Flashes will act as a Bluesky filter focused on photo and video content instead of your entire Bluesky feed. It’s an interesting approach that sidesteps the messiness of cross-posting entirely and allows Vogelsang to focus Flashes’ feature set on photos and video.

I’m looking forward to giving Flashes a try. Instagram is more deeply embedded in many people’s lives than Threads, which makes it harder to replace. However, I’m glad to see Vogelsang and Pixelfed trying. There are enough people like us who are fed up with Meta’s policies that these sorts of alternatives may have a shot at gaining traction with users.

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