A Mac A Day 📧
Seemingly any moment now we'll get the first of successive product drops from Apple. Unclear what today will bring: Mac mini, iMac, or MacBook Pro, but my guess is that rough order. I'm still on the road, but managed a few quick thoughts on the (ridiculous) Washington Post endorsement fiasco, The Browser Company trying to find its next product after Arc, and the potential for the iMac G4 'Desk Lamp' design to be reborn as some sort of newfangled living room HomePod with a screen.
Update: And here’s the new M4 iMac (available November 8). “New” colors, which look a lot like the old colors. And yes, the machines all start with 16GB of RAM, undoubtedly for Apple Intelligence. In hindsight, it should have been obvious that the iMac would be released first as it has the M4 chip whereas the Mac mini and MacBook Pro will have M4 and ‘M4 Pro’ options…
And yes, there’s a video “keynote” — seemingly a 30-minute video for the three different Macs, but only the first 10 minutes is available for the iMac today. We’ll see which one tomorrow brings…
Also here: all of the Apple OS updates with the first builds of Apple Intelligence. And the USB-C keyboard/mouse/trackpad accessories. Yes, the port is still on the bottom of the Magic Mouse, for shame.
I Think…
📰 Inside The Washington Post’s Decision to Stop Presidential Endorsements – Benjamin Mullin and Katie Robertson were able to dig up a bit more color about the decision by Jeff Bezos to stop The Washington Post from endorsing a presidential candidate this cycle. Notably, there was a meeting in late September where the topic was discussed and Bezos seemed to be leaning away from doing an endorsement but Will Lewis and David Shipley (the opinion editor) still believed that he might come around. That obviously didn't happen as they next cut to a moment more recently where Lewis and Shipley apparently "made a case not to abandon the tradition so close to an election". That was sort of my guess as to what may have happened because it's the most ridiculous element of this entire fiasco. Endorsement aside, changing tact this close to the election is a far more massive political statement – even if not an intended one – than any endorsement would have been. It's ridiculous that Bezos didn't realize that or worse if he didn't care. And it looks bad for Lewis that he couldn't make that clear case. What a shitshow. [NYT]
🪖 Microsoft Bets on ‘Call of Duty’ to Power Up Video Games Strategy – At last, Microsoft gets to try to recoup some of the $75B they paid for Activision Blizzard. But how many Game Pass sign-ups will this really drive? 2 to 3 million seems to be the estimate right now. That would add around $500M a year in revenue for Microsoft. So after 150 years, they should be set. I kid, I kid. But also maybe not. Mainly, I'm confused why all the console makers continue to wait so long to update their hardware now. In our era of yearly refreshes for modern devices, it's a weird situation. I get that both studios and the console makers need to recoup production costs, but with consoles sales already falling, they should probably have the next iterations ready to go at least every few years? Sony is sort of doing that with the 'PS5 Pro'. Microsoft? They have an "all-digital" version? But I guess that's part of Microsoft's push here beyond it simply being about Xbox, the console and more about Xbox, the service... [FT 🔒]
☢️ A Million People Play This Video Wargame. So Does the Pentagon. – In other war gaming news... the software the military uses to game out various scenarios, Command: Professional Edition, was created by a tiny British publisher, Slitherine Software (different spelling than the Harry Potter house) , which literally couldn't believe it when such clients came calling: "Are you taking the piss?" The company was actually born, in part, when they acquired the rights to an earlier wargame called Harpoon, which is what Tom Clancy – yes, that Tom Clancy – used to help him play out his novel The Hunt for Red October. So in a way, current military engagement can actually thank Jack Ryan. Btw, the jury is still out in terms of how AI will upend this market. [WSJ 🔒]
🤖 Google Preps AI That Takes Over Computers – While Anthropic was the first to push their computer-using AI agent out the door, they won't be the last. It sounds like Google will follow close behind in December (perhaps alongside their own new model) with "Jarvis" (yes, named after the Iron Man AI in the MCU). The focus on more consumer-oriented use cases makes sense and it apparently will operate inside of Chrome (versus doing anything on your computer). The trust element will remain one of the biggest issue here since part of the system also has access to your credit cards to handle transactions, it seems. This will obviously pressure OpenAI to get their answer in this space out faster as well, as this is clearly the next race in AI and the first wave of general use-case agents. It will also put pressure on Amazon to offer such functionality as a part of "Remarkable" Alexa, one imagines. And Microsoft. And Apple – perhaps in 2026 ;) [Information 🔒]
🎬 California Governor Proposes $750M in Annual Film Tax Credits – As the article makes clear, such incentives (which are more than double what California previously offered) don't make much sense from a pure bottom-line perspective, as they usually end up costing more than they bring in. So this is not going to help the state's budget. But there's no way that the state couldn't remain competitive in this particular industry – Hollywood! – and the pressure was clearly mounting, with productions moving away, not only to Georgia, but also overseas as everyone seems to have different reasons for wanting to bring such productions into their backyards. It sort of feels like a mini version of what you see with the Olympics, which also are famously a cash crater. Also a fun aside about the tax credit sub-industry, where such credits are bought and sold: "The production company behind 'The Trial of the Chicago 7' received a $5.2 million tax credit from New Jersey that it sold to Apple Inc. for $4.8 million." [NYT]
I Wrote…
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
I Link...
- "Punycorn" is a fun way to frame the sort of undersized "unicorn" companies that go public in the Japanese market simply because of a lack of later stage private funding options. [FT 🔒]
- LinkedIn now has 55M verified users, far more than the other social networks, undoubtedly because they eat the cost of doing it. They all should probably be eating these costs given how much it can help with spam, etc. (Good luck convincing Xitter of that.) And our AI era is going to take that to a whole new level. [CNBC]
- After finding success during the Olympics with various different concurrent camera feeds, Peacock is going to offer a “Kornacki Cam” on their election night coverage. Brilliant. [THR]
- Also going live on election night: The Daily Show Presents a Live Election Night Special With Jon Stewart: Indecision 2024: Nothing We Can Do About It Now. Yes, that's the real title. [THR]
- The man who made the puppy death happen in John Wick? Keanu Reeves. Everyone else was shying away from the key plot point... [Deadline]
- Forget all the new AI stuff in the iOS 18.2 beta, Apple News+ is gaining sudoku! [9to5 Mac]
- While the worldwide box office saved the third Venom movie, as expected, it didn't do well in the US, relatively speaking. $51M isn't just below the $65M expectation, it's way below the $80M the first film opened to, and almost half of what the second opened with at $90M. And given that those films opened in 2018 and 2021 respectively, it was more like $95M and $100M in 2024 dollars, respectively. So yeah, not a great US showing... [THR]
- While the US aims to restrict China’s access to AI chips, China is moving one level up the stack by tightening the export of rare elements and materials key to making such chips. A key one: dysprosium — currently used by NVIDIA with 99.9% of the world’s supply coming out of China. [NYT]
- I am quite excited for the second half of the sixth season of Cobra Kai. But it's also bittersweet, as it's the final season they're doing of what has been such a great nostalgic show. Sort of strange that it started on YouTube? [YouTube]
- Apple scored a win in a patent lawsuit against Masimo (the company whose own patent is currently blocking the Apple Watch blood oxygen feature). The reward? $250. Not $250M. Not $250k. $250. That's the minimum Apple could ask for as this wasn't about the money, it was a ploy to do an end-around the Masimo patent block, and that part of the suit didn't work. [Bloomberg Law]
- In other likely future Apple Watch health news: the company has been internally testing software to try to gauge some pre-diabetic aspects of users lives, including what they're eating. This is clearly work being done ahead of adding blood-sugar monitoring/testing to the Apple Watch, eventually. [Bloomberg 🔒]
- A bigger blow for Apple? Not being able to sell any iPhone 16 models in Indonesia because the country says not enough of the device is sourced locally (either components or workers). Older iPhones are still fine as this is only about new models going forward. It's not a massive market for Apple, but a growing one so this seems pretty bad! [Bloomberg 🔒]
- I enjoyed Hans Zimmer's seemingly level-headed take on what AI may do to his business of movie scoring. He has an interesting vantage point as a guy who came up as the "synth guy" – fun fact: he's in the Buggles' music video for 'Video Killed the Radio Star' – wielding then-new tech that everyone assumed would destroy the industry. [The Journal]
I Quote...
“Never say never, but I would say that right now we are in the live events business. There’s something very interesting and very exciting about when the world comes together to watch the same thing at the same time. They don’t do it very often. That’s what makes it so special.”
-- Ted Sarandos, when asked if Netflix will dive deeper into sports. They're still framing their NFL games this coming Christmas as a one-off special. But unlike their other live specials, there won't be a lot of replayability here – which has historically been the issue Netflix has had with sports content: it has no real catalog value. Still, it's interesting to hear that he sees value in the summoning power of certain live events – of which sports, and the NFL in particular, remains key. Never say never, as he says.
Also note his answer about if he could be in line to be the next CEO of Disney... "It’s not even on my mind." Never say never, as he says.