Showtime! 📧

Are we sure the "AI Supercycle" for the PC market is going to be a thing? IDC seems to think otherwise, at least for the rest of 2024. And given the early reviews of the first "Copilot+ PCs", I think I have to agree. These are not the "MacBook killers" they were made out to be, but instead simply competent ARM-based PCs. Which, to be clear, is a good thing for the Windows market. But it seems to have basically nothing to do with all the AI features that were trumpeted to no end. Certainly it doesn't help that the star of that show, Recall, was yes, recalled.

Apple, meanwhile, seems stuck in some weird cat-and-mouse game with Epic (and Spotify) in the EU – perhaps being baited into it. While Ferrari is making the car that perhaps Apple should have made. Okay, probably not, but Eddy Cue and Jony Ive can dream... Instead, we'll have to settle for what looks to be a killer Apple car movie. Will F1 be Apple's first big cinematic hit? I mean, I'm in.

We should find out around the time we know if Apple's new Siri implementation is actually any good. I remain skeptical, but at least they're really not rushing it.

Both will be out around the time that Skydance is closing their deal with Paramount – well, unless it gets blown up again in the next few weeks, which is very much entirely possible. I know many are skeptical of such a deal, for all sorts of good and historical reasons, but I do think there's a path to do something interesting here. Namely, launching a beefed-up streaming service which should be called 'Showtime' because of course it should.

Oh, and if they want to buy up movie theaters like Sony is doing, they should talk to Hugh Grant. He's upset about the closing of a local London cinema, but really he should be upset that a chain let it be run into mediocrity. Simply keeping such a place open will not fix the issues that lay beneath. Great facade though.

Pop quiz, hotshot: what numbers are worse, the growth of Xitter or the sales of Vision Pro? I feel like the latter obviously needs to focus more on content. It so obvious that people predicted it in 1987.

You know whose numbers are not bad? NVIDIA. You know how I know? Well, beyond their own reported growth, we currently have every tech company tripping over themselves to secure and sell their chips to other tech companies.

I don't know what to make of that weird dynamic. But I know the EU will try to regulate it out of existence – alongside itself. Speaking of regulation, Microsoft and Apple would like all the various governments around the world to know that there's nothing to see here with OpenAI. And thus, nothing to further look into. Nothing at all!

As you can see below, I'm trying out a slightly tweaked format for the newsletter this week. With much of the internal links now shifted above, below will be more about other outside articles and sites to link to. I'm trying to break it into:

• Remains of the Week: things I wanted to weigh in on but didn't get a chance
• The Quick & the Read: things I think worth calling attention to

Any and all feedback welcome as always!

Remains of the Week

OpenAI Has a New AI Scale – Much as with self-driving cars, OpenAI has implemented a 5-level system to determine where the technology stands. Right now, we're still apparently at Level 1, though perhaps on the verge of Level 2 with some of the advancements soon to come. Interestingly, this isn't framed around AGI, but instead Level 5 will be AI systems that can "do the work of an organization". Hard to tell what to make of this. Is it marketing? Useful? Or yet another thing everyone will disagree upon with regard to the technology? Yes.

'Inside Out 2' is Now Pixar's Biggest Movie Ever – Look, it's impressive. But I'm going to bring this up every single time the numbers are framed in such a way: until we count tickets sold, this is like touting that the price of milk is the highest it has ever been. Speaking of marketing, this is just full-on buying into Hollywood's spin machine. In 50 years, we're going to read about how Bad Boys 18 just passed Gone with the Wind in all-time box office in its opening weekend. Then again, movie theaters aren't going to be around in 50 years without some major changes...

A Bunch of 'Max Originals' Are Moving To HBO – The Penguin and Dune: Prophecy were supposed to be 'Max Originals', now they'll be under the banner of HBO. Which is fine, but further confuses all the various branding Warner Bros. Discovery is trying to do here. This basically says 'HBO' is still the good stuff, that content can "graduate" to – 'Max Originals' is the stuff held back a year. I'm still holding out hope the 'New Paramount' can step in here and salvage this situation...

NBA Finalizes TV deals with ESPN, NBC, Amazon – Speaking of WBD, they're now officially on the clock to match the offers for the NBA's TV rights, and specifically, Amazon's offer. It seems like it will be too expensive for their taste, but they really need those sports rights for a whole host of reasons – and it doesn't seem like they'll be getting the NFL through CBS now... David Zaslav sure seems more excited than ever about consolidation, can't imagine why...

Apple Still Searching for the Vision Pro "Killer App" – As the device launches in many more countries today, the FT looks at the current state of the next big thing™. And finds it left wanting, mainly because developer support just hasn't come as it has with previous Apple devices (aside from perhaps the Apple Watch, which also messed up the launch, IMO). But at least Tim Cook is a DAU. The rest of us? Not so much. (Though I did update mine to visionOS 2 yesterday and it's a nice improvement – to access the menus, if nothing else.)

⭕️ The Inner Ring ⭕️

This week's Spyglass columns sent to members of The Inner Ring. Sign up here for full access and for future emails...

How to Scale Paramount

Can Skydance finally, actually bridge Silicon Valley and Hollywood?

SpyglassM.G. Siegler

Inventing the Future vs. Extrapolating It

We predict obvious and silly things, but look right past the big ones…

SpyglassM.G. Siegler

Love Cinemas, Actually

Saving movie theaters needs to be about more than nostalgia…

SpyglassM.G. Siegler

Nothing Boring About OpenAI’s Board

Apple’s role rescinded, Microsoft’s role renounced…

SpyglassM.G. Siegler

Potent Quotables

"Losing to A.I., in a sense, meant my entire world was collapsing."

-- Lee Saedol, the former Go champion, who lost DeepMind's AlphaGo – checks date – eight years ago. Really interesting profile revealing the current mindset of someone who actually had their job taken by AI.

The Quick & the Read

• Speaking of box office, given how Kevin Costner's first Horizon film (of four!) has fared thus far – not good, ovations aside – the sequel, which is already completed, has been postponed and perhaps won't even make it to theaters, which feels like an actually healthy market dynamic for the cinema business.
• Listen all y'all, The Beastie Boys are suing Chili's – yes, the restaurant chain – for infringing on the copyright of their 1994 hit "Sabotage". Personally, I just love that Mike D and Ad-Rock apparently posed for a picture for the story about the suit. You know they planned it.
• Microsoft orders all employees in China to use iPhones. We're a far cry from the days of Steve Ballmer pretending to smash an iPhone on stage...
• On one hand, I can't believe 'Hallmark+' hasn't existed already (it sort of did with 'Hallmark Movies Now' but I digress....) on the other, yet another goddamn streaming service? This one at least has a very specific niche. The problem is that the niche is good for what, 2-3 months a year? Luckily, this will launch just in time for the holidays.
• It's pretty clear from these profiles that without Jon Landau, we don't have Titanic or Avatar (or a whole host of other epic movies). RIP.
• Grok, X's AI thing that is not xAI, is about to get more integrated into Xitter, it seems. Serious question: is anyone using Grok? If so, for what?
• In other Elon Musk news, Tesla's market share of the US EV market is below 50% for the first time. Unlike in China, it's not one other player that's eating into it – no, not Rivian (yet?) – but seemingly everyone.
• As with all the OG Apple blogs, I have a soft spot for The Unofficial Apple Weblog. And so while I'm not as pissed off as Christina Warren about the site being reborn as an AI spam lair, I'm annoyed by what is going to be the first of many such newfangled spam sites. At the same time, I'm happy someone else made the "Hawk TUAW" joke so I didn't have to...
• Apple isn't willing to go to war with the EU over everything, they settled the NFC payments complaint (which makes sense, an easy thing to "give up").
• Oh look, investors are already getting worried/annoyed about the AI spending by Big Tech (beyond Meta, which got hit early). No surprise there. Coming rate cuts should keep all this buoyed a bit, but 2025 is going to be... interesting.

One Proud Thing

I'm not sure this guy needs to be Prime Minister (after all, the UK just schooled the US in how to execute a calm, orderly, and even classy transition of power), but he absolutely should be the new "Ladies and Gentlemen, the Weeknd" meme.