Spyglass - Looking Up

While college football seems even more chaotic this year thanks to some major conference realignment, this is probably just a taste of what's to come as the sport looks to professionalize even more – especially now that players are getting paid. And a few former would-be CEOs of Disney are leading the charge...

Everyone understands why Apple is racing to shave costs off of the Vision Pro to bring to market what may be a $2,000 'Vision' device, but is that really where they should be focused? The Submerged Apple Immersive film suggests maybe, but those Meta Ray-Bans are certainly interesting...

The latest SpaceX achievement was literally awesome to behold. I wish the company held the attention more of a certain someone...

Some Thoughts...

🏆 The Oscars’ No-Big-Deal Rebrand – As few people as there are that seemingly want to watch the Oscars, there are amazingly even fewer that want to host the Oscars. That's leading the Academy to try to re-think how the show should go down – yet again, was last year the last "normal" year? – including, perhaps more focus on the promotion of upcoming projects. That's not the worst idea to get people to watch, perhaps. But it also feels pretty vapid. I still prefer my ideas from a few years ago – in brief: 'Best Movie' (alongside 'Best Picture' – but framed differently than the disastrous 'Popular Film' idea a few years back), a 'Hall of Fame' element, and a show that's two hours, max. If the show just becomes a celebration of Disney (with ABC airing), it's over. [Puck 🔒]

😎 Zuckerberg's Metaverse is Showing Signs of Life, But Not VR – It is interesting that post-Orion showcase, you can almost feel the oxygen being further sucked out of the VR space. Yes, there's the Quest 3S, which may sell well during the holidays – certainly better than the Vision Pro at less than 1/10th the cost! – but it almost feels like an afterthought now. It's like the first phase of our XR world is actually the Ray-Ban smart glasses and the next phase will be the Orion glasses, perhaps skipping over VR entirely. Apple will note they're not in VR, but the first stab at "Spatial Computing" is closer to that world than Orion or smart glasses. Apple should probably hustle there rather than focus on a $2,000 headset. Also buried at the end of this report – another version of the Ray-Bans may be imminent with a "small display in one of the lenses"?! Meta may have not just outsmarted Snap (and Apple) here, but Google as well with Glass... [CNBC]

🐴 Slow Horses Got the Chance to Get Comfortable – Sort of surprised that I haven't written about Slow Horses before, except in passing and in pictures. But I love it. Spies aside, Kathryn VanArendonk's review of this past season, the fourth, hits upon the high levels of why. While I've not read the Mick Herron novels, the show does an excellent job with character development in a relatively short amount of time. And they surprise, in ways good and bad, with turns. The whole thing flips from flippant to serious on a dime constantly, thanks in no small part to Gary Oldman's masterful Jackson Lamb – all the more so because, of course, he played George Smiley in the film adaptation of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. Is it the best show on Apple TV+? I think it is. [Vulture]

🎟️ Barry Diller: Hollywood’s Hold Over Entertainment ‘Is No More’ – Fun interview. He talks a bit about why he bid (but didn't push) on Paramount. "Netflix, Amazon and Apple are really the controllers of the worldwide film and television business." And why that's a mistake, when the CEO of the company isn't going to live or die by that content and product. His latest bets on Las Vegas for in-person experiences. Why he thinks Lina Khan needs to go. And a lot of colorful thoughts about Donald Trump, "I never want to see this person again in my life." [FT 🔒]

Some Analysis...

Like a Candle in the Wind

SpaceX continues to do wonders while Tesla turns and Xitter burns…

Spyglass •M.G. Siegler

Rudy, Rudy, Rudy, Rudy

The inevitable shift of college football to a “major” league…

Spyglass •M.G. Siegler

A Still Too-Pro Vision

And a still too nebulous Apple home device…

Spyglass •M.G. Siegler

Some Links...

• Did you miss the Northern Lights, why not just use AI to generate them? Obviously! Still, could have been worse. Could have been Meta suggesting we use VR to take a tour of the Hurricane Milton carnage. High five! [Verge]
• The last full-sized Kmart in the US shuts down (a small one is still going in Miami). It started in Michigan and was once the second-largest retailer in the country, behind only Sears (and it was the top discounter). Twenty years ago, Kmart had over 2,000 stores and nearly 250,000 employees. Sears is also down to just a dozen stores now, btw. Wild how fast things change. [NYT]
• Are AI's recent "reasoning" breakthroughs, such as those with o1 "Strawberry" actually quite fragile and more reliant on pattern recognition than logic? That's what some Apple AI researchers believe and have published a paper about it. Might be a bit awkward when ChatGPT rolls out on Apple Intelligence... [MacRumors]
  • Here's Gary Marcus on the topic as well [Marcus on AI]
• Beyond their Xbox Cloud Gaming subscription service, Microsoft is about to let you stream your own games, apparently. Reminds me of iTunes Match, which still exists, but has largely become irrelevant for 99% of people in the era of music streaming. Xbox is doing it the opposite way, but that makes sense since they don't have the license to stream every game... [Verge]
• Given the fact that we're both living in an era of free, ad-supported TV channels and I have no idea how long DirecTV's actual business is going to be viable (even after the tie-up with Dish), 'MyFree DirecTV' makes sense, I guess. But wow, that name. Talk about bargain-bin... [Variety]
• How much did Tesla's "Cybercab" (over-promising) event cost the company? In the eyes of Wall Street, $67B. Taking the market cap back well below $700B. [FT 🔒]
  • In the least shocking news of the week the Optimus humanoid robots were mainly human-controlled at the Tesla event last week, it seems [Verge]
  • Related: was the 'We, Robot' event a bit too close to the design of the (decidedly mediocre 2004 film) I, Robot? Director Alex Proyas thinks so. No word on Isaac Asimov. [Complex]
• Legendary is apparently buying back majority control of their studio from Wanda with the help of Apollo. The studio behind Dune and several other hits has been doing well with their big movie approach and sees an opportunity to go bigger with the major studios in varying degrees of disarray. While Wanda has been dumping assets, including notably, AMC, to get cash. [Bloomberg 🔒]
• A memoir by Evan Gershkovich about his time in Russian prison just became the most highly anticipated book across the entire political spectrum. 2026. [NYT]

A Golden Oldie...

Behold: The Apple Television

A revolutionary new productivity tool. A truly amazing gaming device. And an insanely great content viewer. These were not three separate products,1 but instead, the promise of one product: the Vision Pro. Unfortunately, at least for now, it sure feels like only the last of those experiences is the

Spyglass •M.G. Siegler

And I Quote...

“Not that long ago, they were all crypto. And now they’re all A.I.”

-- Jim Covello, Goldman Sachs' head of stock research, remarking on the billboards you see while driving around the San Francisco Bay Area.

Covello is more bearing on the entire AI boom mainly because of the spend involved, but also the actual utility provided for said spend. Regardless, he thinks the boom will correct when the big players have to cut spend to bolster profits – something I wrote about six months ago.