Signal: Fine, Woven Revisited 📧
As it turns out, people have a lot of strong opinions about materials – especially when it's materials used in iPhone cases. After now over a million views across Xitter, Threads, Bluesky, etc, and hundreds of responses, I think I can safely confirm that people really, really did not like Apple's 'FineWoven' cases. And as bad as they were to start – and they were bad, it's the only Apple product I can recall returning right after I opened – they were actually far worse with age. 'TechWoven' beyond being a silly name, at least look a lot better to start.
We'll see how it ages...
A Few Takes...
📲 iPhone Air: Will It Bend? – Greg Joswiak casually tossing the iPhone Air to Lance Ulanoff (who perfectly fails to catch it – a nice showcase that it wasn't a staged bit) and telling him and Mark Spoonauer to try to bend it was fun and gets the headlines. But actually, the entire discussion with Joz and John Ternus – including the second part – is well worth the watch. While Joz is fast with the quips – and he's quite good at them here! – Ternus has a clear, quiet command over the products. Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but it almost felt like this was a touring party for Ternus to take on even more of an outward-facing role... And while Joz has been perhaps a bit of a chaperone in some of these, Ternus had a number of spots across a range of places... Anyway, just a note that he comes across in these as sincere and in command of the product details albeit while not quite as polished and at ease as Joz, but that's to be expected as it comes with experience... (And yes, they answer the "plateau" question.) [MacRumors]
🗣️ OpenAI's $350B Problem – Good overview of the needle OpenAI is trying to thread between their rapid growth and rapid rise in costs. Everyone brings up the examples of companies that were burning massive amounts of money to eventually get to profitability, with many always skeptical that will ever happen – with Amazon being the key example of success always cited. But if Uber – another successful example – was that game plan on steroids, this is that steroidal game plan on... all the steroids in the world. And a lot of it is driven by OpenAI's shift away from Microsoft, and eventually, all cloud/compute partners to try to own the whole stack themselves, so as not to get stuck in the "Snap Trap" (constant margin issues due to third-party cloud costs). If they pull it off, they're worth trillions. If they don't... But first, they have to go public to be able to fully access all the capital (via different instruments) they'll need to try to pull this off, and that's still no slam dunk given the structural issues. And if/when they get public, they're going to need the market to hold up when it comes to buying the AI dream... Quite a few needles to thread here... [Information 🔒]
👹 'Demon Slayer' Slays Box Office – Demons, so hot right now. Following KPop Demon Hunters massive one-weekend-only haul, another animated film, Demon Slayer Infinity Castle, just opened at number one. That itself wouldn't be a huge shock in a relatively slow weekend – except that it earned $70M. I repeat, an anime movie earned $70M at the box office in its opening weekend – in the United States (and Canada). Yes, it is and was huge in Japan, but this feels like some sort of breakthrough moment – its opening day nearly topped the entire weekend estimates. I won't pretend to understand this enough to speak to what it will point to other than you can be sure more animated (KPop wasn't technically anime) movies focused on killing demons are going to be on order at every studio – not just Sony, which has another massive win here (alongside their Crunchyroll streaming service – the movie cost just $20M to make). [THR]
Below, members of The Inner Ring will find thoughts on:
• Publishers Suing Google Over AI
• Gemini Tops App Store Charts
• Emmy Winners & Losers
• The Tik Keeps Toking...
• and more...