Apple unveiled its latest product lineup yesterday at a live event with enough fanfare to be confused for a royal wedding.

Some highlights:

• Four new iPhones, including the iPhone 14, 14 Plus, and new Pro models that run on an advanced chip and feature fancy cameras
• Next-gen Apple Watches with new temperature sensors (that can, controversially, help track ovulation cycles)
• Souped-up AirPods with better noise cancellation and six hours of listening time per charge

But marginally better gadgets aren’t the growth drivers they used to be for Apple. So, with smartphone sales plateauing globally, the company is now embracing something it largely used to avoid: selling online advertising.

Helping itself

For now, Apple’s got a much smaller piece of the online ad sales pie than rivals Google and Facebook. Recently, though, it’s started carving out a bigger slice: A study released Tuesday by Appsumer found that Apple’s advertiser adoption rate rose four percentage points year over year in Q2, while Facebook’s dropped three percentage points and Google’s slipped two points.

The company plans to start showing you ads in new places, like Apple Maps, to boost ad revenue—but also it may not exactly be a coincidence that Apple’s gains in online advertising happened following its App Tracking Transparency update last year. That change limited the user-tracking data Apple made available to advertisers in the name of privacy and cost companies that depend on ad sales, like Meta and Snap, billions in revenue.

Apple is now working to nearly double the size of its advertising staff, per the Financial Times, leaving it poised to benefit from the new landscape it created.

Apple claims its own ad business is different from the others. So far, it is: Apple doesn’t allow ads that target you for visiting a competitor’s website, and it won’t tailor ads to specific individuals. Still, experts told the NYT that Apple might have to start making compromises if it really wants to grow its ad sales.—AR

Netflix warned over “immoral content.” Seven Arab countries, including Saudi Arabia and Egypt, are threatening legal action against Netflix unless it removes material that “violates Islamic and societal values and principles.” They didn’t highlight specific content, but local media reports suggested the concern was about LGBTQ+ themes and characters. Persian Gulf States have clashed with US media companies over such content before, like when they banned Pixar’s Lightyear from cinemas over a same-sex kiss.

Disney also chafed at Twitter bots. Disney was close to buying Twitter in 2016, but pulled out due to various concerns including finding out that a “substantial portion” of its users were fake, former CEO Bob Iger said at the Code Conference yesterday. To that news, Elon Musk, who’s also attempting to pull out of buying Twitter on account of the bots, replied, “Interesting…” In that case, the Delaware Chancery Court judge refused yesterday to grant Musk’s request to push the trial back four weeks. It’s set for October 17.

📽 Cineworld files for bankruptcy. The slow return to movie theaters wasn’t enough to bolster the finances of the Regal Cinemas owner, so the world’s second largest cinema chain filed a chapter 11 petition in Texas yesterday. Unlike larger rival AMC, London-based Cineworld didn’t get a meme stock boost from retail investors to shore up its finances. “British retail investors just aren’t as cultish as US retail investors are,” one analyst told the WSJ.

Raise a Honey Deuce to Frances Tiafoe. The 24-year-old American tennis star dominated Andrey Rublev yesterday at the US Open to become the first American man to reach the semifinals since 2006. That win came after Tiafoe’s stunning victory on Monday against 22-time Grand Slam champ Rafael Nadal. Everyone, including LeBron James, is firmly in Tiafoe’s corner.

How he got to this stage is pretty remarkable. Born to immigrants from Sierra Leone, Tiafoe spent most of his childhood at the Junior Tennis Champions Center in College Park, Maryland, where his father worked in maintenance. On most nights, Tiafoe and his brother slept in a small, makeshift apartment in an old storage closet that his father set up. Out on the court, the young Tiafoe played against much wealthier kids, but what he lacked in designer sweatbands, he made up for in unrelenting practice and a passion for the game.

“The life I led, even with all the struggles, was a blessing in disguise,” Tiafoe said in an interview.

Big picture: This year’s US Open has had more warm fuzzies than a Chicken Soup for the Soul book. For what was likely the last tennis match Serena Williams will ever play, ESPN averaged 4.8 million viewers, making it the most watched tennis match in the network’s history.—MM, NF

At least…it isn’t a new thing, just a thing we talk about on social media now. “Quiet quitting” became the latest zeitgeisty workplace trend to spawn 1,000 think pieces after media-types started noticing TikTokers posting about it this summer.

ICYMI: “You’re not outright quitting your job, but you’re quitting the idea of going above and beyond,” @zaidleppelin said in his viral TikTok on the topic. Rather than resigning, it means sticking to the job description and maybe binge-watching some Dyson Airwrap tutorials during work hours.

But for all the media hype, the percentage of workers who say they’re “not engaged” at work has stayed above 50% since 2000, per Gallup. Still, the most recent poll suggests that some workers are more checked out lately. The highest proportion of workers in nearly a decade said they were “actively disengaged” this year at 18%, up 6% from 2019.

There might also be some new emphasis as quiet quitting is an offshoot of the “antiwork” movement, and more recently, the “5–9” videos that detail creators’ routines before or after work—establishing clear boundaries around when that is. The trend may also line up with Gen Z’s anti-capitalism “Eat the Rich!” rhetoric and the wider labor market shake-up during Covid.

Bottom line: “Quiet quitting” may just be a buzzword, but the mentality it represents is here to stay. Grindset is out. Setting healthy work–life boundaries is in.—JW

Stat: A single cellphone alert may have helped save Californians from blackouts. During the peak of the heat wave on Tuesday, an alert was sent to about 27 million cellphones in California urging people to cut back on their energy use. In the 45 minutes after the alert was sent, power use dropped by a significant ~2,600 megawatts, helping the grid avoid being overwhelmed. “We were down to the last gallon,” the CEO of California’s primary grid operator said.

Quote: “I’ve never watched Silicon Valley. Too close to home.”

Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai may never have seen the laid-back version of the search giant depicted in the HBO satire, but he is looking to tighten things up at the real Google. Faced with an increasingly uncertain environment for tech companies, Pichai said Tuesday he wants to make the company “20% more productive.”

Read: Did the New York Times purchase kill Wordle? (Slate)

Ranking Stephen King’s books: The author has churned out 75 titles, and they can’t all be The Shining.

More than one way to spice a pumpkin: 14 recipes for pumpkin bread.

The marketing event of the year: Have you ever wondered how HBO crushes its promos, or how Vans has stayed cool after all these years? Find out at The Brief: A Marketing Brew Summit on November 15. Grab discounted tickets here.

Brew Mini: Today’s Mini asks you to spill the beans. Play it here.

Three headlines and a lie

Three of these headlines are real and one is faker than the Harry Styles spit video. Can you guess the odd one out?

1. Poop and pee fueled the huge algae bloom in San Francisco Bay
2. Shein said it will open an elderly dog sanctuary in an effort to “do some good”
3. Netflix is resurrecting the Teletubbies with a new series
4. A urologist used an electric truck to power a vasectomy

If you love Three Headlines and a Lie, play along on The Refresh from Insider and dive deeper into these weird headlines.

What do cellularly cultivated foods, autonomous vehicles, and Mark Cuban all have in common? They’re going to be featured at our first-ever Virtual Emerging Tech Brew Summit.

Get the inside scoop on how tech is addressing the most pressing issues across food, energy, and health from some of the top industry leaders. Secure your free ticket today.

Excel Dictionary just hit 2 million Instagram followers! Join us in celebrating with 20% off the ENTIRE collection. That means mouse pads and Excel Digital Guides + Dictionaries are on sale for the first time ever. Unlock your next best work day and shop now.

Check out more from the Brew:

Money with Katie has released part one of a special two-part series that asks: Is the American dream a myth? Listen or watch here.

💲 What is shrinkflation? It’s probably not what you think it is. Watch here to find out more.