More or Less 📧
Since launching Spyglass seven months ago, there are two bits of feedback that I get most often, and they're interesting because they're almost the opposite of one another. First, that it's hard to keep up with my pace of publishing. Second, that it's hard to know when I publish. It's sort of an interesting combination of wanting less and more. I've been thinking about this quite a bit, mixed with my own desire for a more regular cadence and so I'm going to try something.
Starting today, Spyglass will hit your inbox in newsletter form on a daily basis. My aim will be for it to ship right around 5pm UK time, which is 9am PT/12pm ET, on weekdays. And while it will borrow some formatting from the 'From Afar' newsletter I've been sending every Friday, the goal is for it to be far more digestible. Read: shorter. In fact, if all goes to plan, this will be the longest one ever sent. There are a lot of newsletters out there. I subscribe to something north of 50. Of those, I probably really read a handful. There's just too much. Time is everyone's most valuable resource. As such, recently, I've found myself gravitating more towards the ones that are shorter and easier to quickly parse.
At the same time, I've been thinking about my goals for Spyglass. The truth is that I write it for myself just as much as anyone. Writing helps me clarify and even form my own thoughts on various topics. Without question, I feel smarter having written Spyglass over these past many months, so I obviously hope you feel smarter having read it. Or, at the very least, more informed about a topic or a perspective. I like the notion of this being a real-time notebook of sorts. I'm writing down my notes, but in public, which anyone is welcome to follow.
That leads to the format below, where I'll share some quick thoughts on things I've been reading and that I think are worth commenting on or pointing you towards. Anything where I have longer thoughts on the matter – and there have been something like 400 of those in these past many months – I'll still publish separately, but will include links to those below for you to read (or not) at your leisure. Lastly, the columns I've been writing will also continue, some free, some exclusive to members of The Inner Ring. I'll include those when available to link to here as well (as well as continuing to send those out to paid members, of course).
In short, not much is really changing from a content-perspective, it's just sort of being reoriented around this shorter and streamlined newsletter to hopefully give people both more and less 😉.
One more thing: yes, I'll still have the option to get everything sent to your inbox, which I know many of you are actually using and reading. Thank you!
One less thing: with this, I shall retire, for now, the aforementioned 'From Afar' newsletter and keep it simple with just the one, unified Spyglass newsletter.
Thoughts
🐺 Apple Rethinks Its Movie Strategy After a String of Misses – Not too much new in the reporting here about the theatrical pullback of Wolfs, though I hadn't seen the $35M each for George Clooney and Brad Pitt (and $15M for director Jon Watts) number before. That's nearly $100M spent before filming began. Still, early indications are that the movie is pretty good, so this remains a pretty strange maneuver by Apple – such as telling Watts only right before they announced the pull back from theaters. It just seems not "event-sized" enough (which F1, also starring Pitt, clearly will be). But still, it's Clooney and Pitt! Costs aside, how do you pull this?! They really just must be scared that it's not "big" enough and would flop in theaters. So instead they'll pay up for a sequel to hopefully bolster Apple TV+ while maintaining key relationships. [NYT]
📺 Warner Gave Up on New TNT Dramas. Now It’s Trying to Revive Them. – They're in a tough spot assuming they can't convince a judge to give them an NBA deal. How tough? In an era when everyone else is cutting back on programming, they now have to ramp up some new shows to try to save their carriage fees. But it sounds like a pretty lame plan: mining old Warner IP to make shows/TV movies on the cheap. Though I do appreciate the report noting they'll focus on "high-adrenaline dramas" for men followed immediately by noting that a show about librarians is coming back. [WSJ 🔒]
🏝️ Oasis is Back – Definitely, Maybe – I recall what a big deal it was when The Eagles got back together in 1994, though I was too young to fully appreciate it. It was the same year that Oasis released their debut album and it was, at least in my teenage mind, the best year for music ever. Oasis now seemingly getting back together is like hell freezing over but with two British brothers who are as acidic as they are talented. Definitely, Maybe and (What's the Story) Morning Glory remain two of the best rock albums of the 90s and the rest aren't bad either. We'll see if it actually happens. If so, amazingly, they would have been broken up a year longer than The Eagles. Time compressed differently back then. [The Times 🔒]
📲 September 9 is a 'Glow' for the aiPhone Event – Very strange for Apple to hold an event on Monday. Even stranger for Mark Gurman to be off in an Apple-related scoop. And while it's amusing to think that they moved it just to fuck with the person who spoils all of their surprises these days, it's probably more likely they want to be removed from the first Harris/Trump debate (if that actually happens as planned). The "Glowtime" pun is clearly a reference to the new Siri animation in iOS 18 – but that's kind of weird, since the new Siri is currently restricted to the iOS 18.1 beta, which will undoubtedly ship after the likely September 20 ship date of the new iPhones. Still, it undoubtedly highlights that we can expect to hear a lot more AI, AI, AI, AI talk at the event, even if such features are a bit muted and vapor-y. Per Gurman, Apple has filmed the event ahead of time, but I wish they would go back to doing it live, as Google just did with the Pixel event, to give the whole thing more energy. For now, that will perhaps have to come from a Zune Brown colored iPhone. [MacRumors]
🤖 Inside Apple's Robot Dreams – Speaking of Gurman, the takeaway from his latest newsletter on Apple's robotic arm thing is that the company is both still searching for the Next Big Thing™ and perhaps going down this path as a result of the shutting down of the Apple Car project and looking for new uses for the tech and talent. And sprinkle some AI promises on top because of course you must in 2024. That doesn't mean it's a horrible idea, it's just a weird way to do product development. Is there anything actually to this robotic arm 'FacePod'? Are we building something people actually want? And importantly, will use? [Bloomberg 🔒]
Analysis
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
Asides
🧙 Like most, I didn't love the first season of The Rings of Power, but there were some glimmers of hope – namely in the villains. And now we're about to get Ciarán Hinds as a dark wizard named... Dark Wizard. That plus Tom Bombadil has me actually excited here? [Deadline]
💍 In a similar vein, the first trailer for The War of the Rohirrim – the animated spin-off film from The Lord of the Rings (Peter Jackson exec producing) – looks fantastic. Interesting how closely they're tying it into the live-action trilogy in the trailer (and title). It makes sense – in particular since they're putting this in theaters – but is also a bit odd. [The Verge]
💰 While secondary shares are trading closer to a $200B valuation, if Tik-Tok parent ByteDance was given Meta's multiple as a public company (they're now close in terms of annual revenue), it would be worth just over $1T. Of course, there are other issues afoot! [The Information 🔒]
🎨 I've been using Midjourney's website for a few months and it's great. So much more intuitive than trying to use Discord for generating AI art/images. And now it's open to all. [ZDNet]
🛒 Lidl apparently has a large cloud computing business – yes, the discount food retailer. No, it's not exactly like Amazon, it's more because of their ability to play to the strict data and privacy laws in their native Germany. [Financial Times 🔒]