Pro Parenting, Pro Football, Vision Pro 📧

As you may have noticed, there was no newsletter last week. As it turns out, traveling with kids is hard. As it turns out, traveling with kids when one is an infant, is especially hard. As it turns out, traveling with kids when one is an infant and you have a layover is boss level hard. As it turns out, traveling with kids when one is an infant and you have a international layover is like trying to beat Patrick Mahomes in the Super Bowl.¹ But enough blaming my children for my poor planning (but pro parenting). And hello from Ohio, where it's freezing cold.

As previously discussed, I was able to pick up a Vision Pro here and I have so many thoughts. More thoughts than I thought I would have, honestly. But you've already read too many thoughts on the matter in the past couple of weeks, and I want to let my own notions marinate a bit since I do think this is an important device, both for Apple and potentially for the future of computing (or perhaps not, which is also interesting). I'll put out a series of those over the next week or so.

One idea in my head: I think it's quite possible Apple has reinvented television. But only for very particular situations and living arrangements – such as single people or people who will isolate themselves to watch something in this new, incredible format. The most fascinating aspect of that is that it's basically the opposite of what Apple set out to create here – that is, a non-isolating XR device. What if they inadvertently ended up doing the opposite? More to come...

Briefly...

The NFL Swallowed TV Whole in 2023 – The league held an incredible 93 of the top 100 slots in terms of television viewership. And this was before the just-aired Super Bowl, which set a new record with 123.4 (fun!) million viewers. When you add in three college football games – and really just games in which the Michigan Wolverines played #GoBlue! – and America football had a monopoly on sports making the cut. The only other programs to make the cut: the State of the Union Address, the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, and the Academy Awards. 🏈

The Race to Revive Supersonic Air Travel – The Economist dives into the latest breakthroughs with rotating detonation engine (RDE) technology (not new, but steady progress), which sounds promising. But the kicker: "So passengers hoping to cut the subsonic seven-hour red-eye flight from New York to London to a little over an hour might have to wait a decade or more." ✈️

Startups Worry Over EU’s Big Tech Crackdown – As they should as we're now blocking the purchase of vacuum cleaner companies. I joke, but I don't. Feeling as if they missed some big deals in the past, the regulatory body has clearly over-corrected without realizing the second-order effects of such action. Or realizing it and rationalizing it. But if you effectively kill the M&A environment, a lot of companies are going to suffocate – including, sadly, iRobot. Worse, more are just never going to start starting up in the first place as funding tightens without "quick wins" and previously legitimate big exit paths close. The U.S. is now heading the wrong way too, of course... 💸

My Missives...

The Stopgap Sports Bundle

Now that a couple days have passed since the seeming bombshell sports streaming announcement which would further blow up the cable bundle dropped, a slew of new little details have come along, as you might expect. First and foremost, the timing of that announcement was pretty clearly to get ahead

SpyglassM.G. Siegler

Laptop Ban? In 2024? What About My Facetop?

The year is 2024, and I’ve just been kicked out of a cafe for using a laptop. Well, technically I wasn’t kicked out, but rather was asked to put my laptop away because with the new year, they’ve decided to implement a no-laptop-policy. So I was effectively kicked out. I

SpyglassM.G. Siegler

What a Mess

Earlier tonight, I joked about Bluesky moving up in my social media power rankings. To position number 4 of the 17 sites and services that I now need to update in order to reach the audience that has now completely dispersed since Xitter shit the bed. This is actually not

SpyglassM.G. Siegler

The Crunch

TechCrunch+ Termination Layoffs hit TechCrunch... Lux Capital Danny Crichton With the unfortunate news of layoffs at TechCrunch last week, this post attempts to look at the why – and in particular, what went wrong with “TechCrunch+”, the site’s premium tier. With the large caveat that I was at TechCrunch a decade

SpyglassM.G. Siegler

Period?

Here we go again: “I don’t just think that Quest is the better value, I think Quest is the better product, period.” Look, I actually don’t disagree with Mark Zuckerberg’s overall stance here. Meta’s Quest, as it stands right now on February 13, 2024 is a better overall product

SpyglassM.G. Siegler

Quoteable...

“People don’t want to go to a buffet where half the steam trays are missing."

-- EW Scripps CEO Adam Symson, in noting that the reaction to the Disney/Warner/Fox sports streaming service was overblown.

Some Thoughts On...

🥽 Vision Pro hand gestures

🏈 StatusPro raises money for NFL VR football

🤌 New paradigms needed to unchoke web content

🏀 That new sports bundle

📲 A new promising project for sorting content feeds

📺 Apple TV+ becoming HBO

🕹️ Disney's large investment in Epic

💵 Might we see a return to paid apps with Vision Pro?

🍎 Apple's problem with Jon Stewart

#️⃣ Slack turning 10 years old

🚗 Calling out an old Uber claim as they hit $150B market cap

💳 Are a lot of people returning the Vision Pro?

🎸 Putting Pearl Jam in the Super Bowl halftime show...

Quickly...

• As someone who grew up watching the X-Men animated series, I both can't believe it's coming back or that it picks up exactly where the last one left off, decades ago.
  • It's back next month on Disney+ complete with the theme song!
• Speaking of childhood, I fondly recall the Lego sets of my youth – kids these days get, um, re-creations of Parisian street sets (fine, adults too)...
• How's this for a headline: Squishmallows and Skoosherz Face Off in Court
• Westworld went off the rails the last few seasons, but it's still ridiculous they weren't able to fully wrap it up given how successful the first couple of seasons were – and the cast agrees.
• Christopher Nolan refuses to use email and thus he is my hero.
• Taschen has a new 492-page book coming out which goes behind-the-scenes of the making of Dr. No...
  • The Guardian has some preview shots. Sold.
• I thought I'd given the big Techmeme mention of the week, only to be upstaged by Sundar Pichai...
• Is Cathie Wood the Bizarro Warren Buffett? Some people are saying...
  • Related: biggest ouch ever?
• I didn't know much about Josh wine, but this article forced me to try it this week. It was fine?
• Everything about the Beetlejuice 2 poster is perfect, but especially the title...
• Remember what I said about the American football viewership numbers above? Well, let's not compare them to the other football...
• Back to US football, EA Sports is finally bringing back their College Football game – 11 years after retiring it with a Michigan player on the cover, might we start with the now national champions on the cover again?
  • Related: remember when this guy was on Saved by the Bell?!
• Pearl Jam's new single, "Dark Matter", dropped this week. I dig it. Then again, I would probably never not dig anything by Pearl Jam.
  • 12th album comes in April, and worldwide tour this year!

Give Us An Orange Vision Pro, You Cowards

Once you see that the Vision Pro has the same general aesthetic as the NES Zapper you can't unsee it... Now we just need a Vision Pro in orange...

¹ That also takes a Michigan Man, in this case, Tom Brady.