Marc Andreessen says this is the key to becoming the next Apple
Some companies are already experimenting with devices that could one day challenge smartphones.
Sam Altman and Jony Ive are developing an AI-powered device, while Meta is focused on smart glasses.
The iPhone catapulted Apple onto the Mount Rushmore of tech, and the device's successor could do the same for someone else.
Smartphones as we know them will eventually feel "primitive," billionaire venture capitalist Marc Andreessen said in a new interview on the "TBPN" technology podcast that aired Friday. At some point, he said, everything becomes obsolete.
The big question: What comes after the smartphone?
"Whoever cracks the code on that will be the next Apple," Andreessen, cofounder of venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, said.
Creating a product that makes the smartphone obsolete will require a level of innovation that the world has yet to see, Andreessen said. It could take three years or two decades.
However, companies are already working to develop gadgets that don't require a screen.
OpenAI cofounder Sam Altman, for one, is developing an AI-powered device that isn't a smartphone or wearable. Altman has teamed up with the former Apple design chief Jony Ive, one of the key figures behind the iPhone, though they've kept much of the details under wraps, including its form factor.
Elsewhere, AI startups like Rabbit and Humane are experimenting with screenless devices that operate as a companion to your smartphone or use projections instead of a screen.
Meanwhile, Meta's smart glasses, fitted with cameras, a voice assistant, and speakers, are showing signs of consumer interest. However, CEO Mark Zuckerberg doesn't expect them to replace phones anytime soon.
"It's not like we're going to throw away our phones," Zuckerberg told The Verge in September, "but I think what's going to happen is that, slowly, we're just going to start doing more things with our glasses and leaving our phones in our pockets more."
Andreessen said the object that kicks off a new era of technology could be eye-based, voice-operated, or have some sort of environmental computing. (His VC firm Andreessen Horowitz did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.)
Apple itself could be the one to lead the next revolution in tech. It likely has time to work on it, Andreessen said.
"I think it's highly likely that we'll have a phone for a very long time," he said.
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Requesting a list of users currently in the TeaOnHer identity verification queue, for example — no more than pressing a button on the API page, nothing fancy here — would return dozens of account records on people who had recently signed up to TeaOnHer. The records returned from TeaOnHer's server contained users' unique identifiers within the app (essentially a string of random letters and numbers), their public profile screen name, and self-reported age and location, along with their private email address. The records also included web address links containing photos of the users' driver's licenses and corresponding selfies. Worse, these photos of driver's licenses, government-issued IDs, and selfies were stored in an Amazon-hosted S3 cloud server set as publicly accessible to anyone with their web addresses. This public setting lets anyone with a link to someone's identity documents open the files from anywhere with no restrictions. With that unique user identifier, we could also use the API page to directly look up individual users' records, which would return their account data and any of their associated identity documents. With uninhibited access to the API, a malicious user could have scraped huge amounts of user data from the app, much like what happened with the Tea app to begin with. From bean to cup, that was about 10 minutes, and we hadn't even logged-in to the app yet. The bugs were so easy to find that it would be sheer luck if nobody malicious found them before we did. We asked, but Lampkin would not say if he has the technical ability, such as logs, to determine if anyone had used (or misused) the API at any time to gain access to users' verification documents, such as by scraping web addresses from the API. In the days since our report to Lampkin, the API landing page has been taken down, along with its documentation page, and it now displays only the state of the server that the TeaOnHer API is running on as 'healthy.' At least on cursory tests, the API now appears to rely on authentication, and the previous calls made using the API no longer work. The web addresses containing users' uploaded identity documents have also been restricted from public view. TeaOnHer developer dismissed efforts to disclose flaws Given that TeaOnHer had no official website at the time of our findings, TechCrunch contacted the email address listed on the privacy policy in an effort to disclose the security lapses. But the email bounced back with an error saying the email address couldn't be found. We also tried contacting Lampkin through the email address on his website, Newville Media, but our email bounced back with the same error message. TechCrunch reached Lampkin via LinkedIn message, asking him to provide an email address where we could send details of the security flaws. Lampkin responded with a general 'support' email address. When TechCrunch discloses a security flaw, we reach out to confirm first that a person or company is the correct recipient. Otherwise, blindly sending details of a security bug to the wrong person could create a risk. Before sharing specific details of the flaws, we asked the recipient of the 'support' email address if this was the correct address to disclose a security exposure involving TeaOnHer user data. 'You must have us confused with 'the Tea app',' Lampkin replied by email. (We hadn't.) 'We don't have a security breach or data leak,' he said. (It did.) 'We have some bots at most but we haven't scaled big enough to be in that conversation yet, sorry you were misinformed.' (We weren't.) Satisfied that we had established contact with the correct person (albeit not with the response we received), TechCrunch shared details of the security flaws, as well as several links to exposed driver's licenses, and a copy of Lampkin's own data to underscore the severity of the security issues. 'Thank you for this information. This is very concerning. We are going to jump on this right now,' said Lampkin. Despite several follow-up emails, we have not heard from Lampkin since we disclosed the security flaws. It doesn't matter if you're a one-person software shop or a billionaire vibe coding through a weekend: Developers still have a responsibility to keep their users' data safe. If you can't keep your users' private data safe, don't build it to begin with. If you have evidence of a popular app or service leaking or exposing information, get in touch. You can securely contact this reporter via encrypted message at zackwhittaker.1337 on Signal.
