Spyglass - The Heat Is On

The new iPhone is here! And, well, mine is still transferring – no joke – five hours later, with seemingly another six hours to go. Pure insanity. As if Apple didn't have enough issues trying to get people to buy this year's model with the key touted feature not yet released... I think Apple needs to self-reflect a bit after the latest iPhone event. Maybe look at what Snap is doing – even if their products aren't quite up to Apple standards, at least the presentation was.

On a more positive note for Apple, Margrethe Vestager will be gone soon enough – but until then, the heat remains on. As it does on Intel (from all sides), but at least they finally answered at least some of it. As did Nike, with a CEO change – seemingly for the best.

Could be worse. Could be fraud. Like MoviePass back in the day. Or, you know, new shitcoins. Someone call AI John Wick, pronto.

Some Analysis...

The Article that Explains the Nike Ouster

Ultimately, John Donahoe failed to ‘just do it’…

Spyglass •M.G. Siegler

Some Ranting...

The iPhone Transfer Pain Box

Why is it still *so* hard to transfer to a new iPhone after all these years?

Spyglass •M.G. Siegler

Some Thoughts...

🦾 OpenAI's Miniature Reasoning Model is Mighty – The building theme here is that not only is the 'o1-mini' model good, it may actually be better at many tasks than the larger 'o1-preview' (they really need help with that branding). If true, beyond the reasoning breakthrough, this could fundamentally alter the AI model arms race and thus, the space. [The Information 🔒]

🍪 China’s AI Firms Are Cleverly Innovating Around Chip Bans – Along the lines of the above, with the advanced AI chip bans in place, these Chinese firms have figured out clever ways for how to still compete in the AI race. And it also feels like these "hacks" could lead to their own breakthroughs in the space. [The Economist 🔒]

🪪 iPhone Driver's License Support Expands to California – Given Apple's relationship with the state – see: the name of macOS versions – you'd think the state would have been the first to add this, but as with all things California, it has taken time – two years, in fact. Also worth noting that you still need to carry your physical ID for most things you previously needed it for, this will just help at some airports with the TSA – notably, SFO (new logo and all) is on the list but the San Francisco Bay Area Airport of Oakland or whatever the fuck, isn't. [MacRumors]

⚾️ Breaking Down Shohei Ohtani's Historic 50/50 Season – The stats for the season are just bonkers – remember, this is a player who pitches too (though he's not currently as he recovers from Tommy John surgery). But still, the way in which he crossed the milestone is even more bonkers: a 6-for-6 night including 3 homeruns and 2 stolen bases to go along with 10 RBIs on the night. Starting to think this guy may be worth $700M... [ESPN]

❄️ Disney Animation Boss Steps Down to Focus on ‘Frozen’ Sequels – While my children will appreciate the move to focus more on Frozen – how on Earth is the third film not coming for another 3 years (8 years after the second and 14 years after the original)?! – it's a little strange to me that Disney is shaking up the animation division before Lucasfilm, which seems much more problematic and has for a while under Kathleen Kennedy. Also sort of wild that Jennifer Lee took over Disney Animation from John Lasseter only a few years after she broke in at Disney. But I guess that was a bit of an extenuating circumstance... Jared Bush, best known for Encanto and Moana now takes over (Pete Doctor still runs Pixar post-Lasseter). [NYT]

Some Links...

• A new moon just dropped. Well, hopefully it doesn’t drop – it's an asteroid! Though one that's the size of a bus... [WaPo]
• The documentary that Apple TV+ had commissioned on Oprah Winfrey's life has been put on ice after Oprah herself bought back the rights from Apple after the filming was completed. Read into that what you will... [Page Six]
• In other news my children will like, CoComelon and Peppa Pig dominate Netflix's third-party content viewing. [Variety]
  • Meanwhile, British content dominated Netflix's original TV shows. [Variety]
  • As for Netflix movies? I honestly haven't heard of most of them – and I know I'm not alone – despite their massive viewership. I did watch Under Paris – a shark in the Seine! – which was... well, pretty Netflix. [Variety]
• Speaking of Netflix, Civilization VI and Street Fighter IV add to a growing impressive games lineup for Netflix – are they really going to pull this next leg of the business off? [The Verge]
• Following the Microsoft investment in G42 and their potential investment in OpenAI, NVIDIA is also now partnering with the Abu Dhabi firm to keep pushing forward the "don't work with China" alliance. [Bloomberg 🔒]

Some Quotes...

"Be a hand-raiser, not a finger-pointer."

-- Elliot Hill, the incoming new CEO of Nike, in a video he made for the company answering some questions about his history with Nike (starting as an intern!) and return. It's a nice video, clearly this guy lives and breathes Nike.

“I don’t think there are going to be 20 foundation model companies, certainly not unless costs come down. You either win or you fade into obscurity and become MySpace.”

-- An anonymous investor in OpenAI, talking to The Financial Times about the latest funding round – which sounds like it's just about wrapped up at north of $6B, which probably not coincidentally would put it just ahead of xAI as the largest non-corporate/strategic round ever raised (though, of course, most of the capital is coming from Apple, NVIDIA, and Microsoft, to recycle amongst themselves it seems).

Also perhaps not coincidentally, it sounds like Sequoia and a16z are not participating in this round after they participated in the xAI round (not to mention Ilya Sutskever's new 'OpenAI Original', Safe Superintelligence's $1B "seed" round).

No conflict, no interest, indeed.