Spyglass Dispatch: Apple's Smart Glasses • OpenAI Hardware Hire • RIP JanSport Founder • Ballmer's $100M Bet on Facts • Netflix Movie Theater Pressure • Apple ChatGPT Upsell

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Well, that day is upon us. Appropriately, I'll be out at the pub doing trivia when the election results start rolling in here in the UK. But if four years ago is any indication, we'll still be watching those results come in long after the Guy Fawkes fireworks have faded, waking up to watch commentators tap and pinch-to-zoom on giant touchscreens to show us granular counties in Pennsylvania. 🇺🇸

I Think...

😎 Apple's 'Atlas' Smart Glasses – No surprise that the company is exploring this path given the success of the Ray-Ban Meta glasses. The question is if a project is already well underway or if this internal survey is an initial market analysis. The latter would be mildly concerning as it would mean a product is years away. The years away product should be actual AR glasses – i.e. Meta's 'Orion' glasses – not these "smart" glasses. I think if Apple doesn't launch these next year or 2026 at the latest they'll have likely mistimed the market. And maybe it is an interim market that isn't big enough to matter to Apple, but the AI/AR insight to be gleaned from such devices could be more important than the actual bottom line element. But that's never been an equation Apple is very good with... Something else, oddly, Apple hasn't been great with of late: fun. These smart glasses should be fun. Also: who might they team up with, with EssilorLuxottica out? Safilo? Marcolin? Might be worth picking up the Jony Ive Batphone here... [Bloomberg 🔒]

🦾 Meta’s Former Hardware Lead for 'Orion' is Joining OpenAI – Seems like a big hire for OpenAI given not only her work on Meta's AR glasses (and her long tenure working on Oculus/Quest hardware before that) but her work at Apple building a range of Mac hardware. Given that plus her stated mandate of focusing on "OpenAI's robotics work and partnerships to help bring AI into the physical world" Maxwell Zeff connects the obvious dots to wonder if she might be an important conduit for whatever Jony Ive and some of his LoveFrom team may be cooking up with regard to hardware for OpenAI... [TechCrunch]

🎒 Murray McCory, 80, Dies; JanSport Founder Created the School Backpack – I had no idea that the school backpack was such a recent invention – late 1960s/early 1970s – born out of a couple's love of the outdoors and the need for better hiking gear. The JanSport name came from McCory's then-girlfriend, later-wife, and co-founder, Jan Lewis. Lightweight aluminum was the key and by the 1980s, the 'University Bookstore Rucksack' was everywhere. He also invented the domed tent, based on Mongolian yurts. Hard to imagine my childhood – and now my childrens' childhoods – without thinking of a backpack. [NYT]

📊 How Steve Ballmer Has Spent $100 Million In A New Twist On Political Giving – As someone who has poked quite a bit of fun at Ballmer over the years for the iPhone laugh (which wasn't 100% wrong when put in context, by the way – it was too expensive unsubsidized, which Apple quickly fixed with a price cut and later figured out a subsidy model that worked for them) to the Clippers (the Cruise Ships?), let me just say that I truly appreciate what he's been trying to do with USAFacts. The videos are solid – no bullshit, just straight numbers. I even love that Ballmer himself does them. There's something so soothing about actual facts in our current political climate. And the fact that Ballmer has spent over $100M of his own money (including a reported $40M this election year) is awesome. Maybe one day they'll even overtake "developers, developers, developers, developers..." in the YouTube SEO rankings. Maybe. [Forbes 🔒]

I Wrote...

Can Barbie Break Netflix?

More pressure is applied to Netflix’s anti-movie-theater stance…

Spyglass •M.G. Siegler

OpenAI’s Potentially Massive iOS ChatGPT Upsell

As the integration nears, we see how the (business) model will work…

Spyglass •M.G. Siegler

I Link...

• Amazon starts using AI to do recaps of their Prime Video shows. It's potentially useful for jumping to a certain point of a show/movie, though hopefully it works better than their AI upgrades to the Fire TV earlier this year. Apparently, this is using custom AI models, not any third-party ones – again, maybe that's good or bad... [Variety]
• NVIDIA replacing Intel in the Dow Jones Industrial Average this coming Friday seems both overdue and a fitting encapsulation of our current chip era. This sentence is weird though, "Intel’s market capitalization has fallen below $1 trillion." Intel has never been a $1T company. Their peak market cap during the Dot Com Bubble was around $500B. Today? It's just over $100B. [NYT]
• A weather widget coming to the macOS menu bar? Finally. [9to5Mac]
• Meta confirms that they're working with the government on Llama models for the US military, to combat the story that the Chinese government was also using Llama for their own AI military purposes – which was true, but an older Llama model, Meta noted. One downside of "open source", I guess. [TechCrunch]
• Amongst the many mistakes Apple made with the Vision Pro, not doing a Solo Knit Band/Top Head Strap hybrid was one of them. Belkin has fixed that – undoubtedly at the nudging of Apple – for $50. [MacRumors]
  • Equally useful? "Wide" and "Ultrawide" modes for the Mac Virtual Display within visionOS. [MacRumors]
• It sounds like OpenAI has started the necessary conversations with California (and Delaware) about converting into a for-profit entity. The value of the IP will be key, as will the equity stakes – notably for the non-profit, which every statement from OpenAI make sure to note will still exist. [Bloomberg 🔒]
• In a huge holiday coup, NBC has snatched the Rankin-Bass specials Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and Frosty the Snowman from CBS. Both had aired on that network since Richard Nixon was in office (though Rudolph originally aired on NBC 60 years ago). Interestingly, neither has ever been available on a streaming service, largely due to music rights. We'll see if this NBC deal can fix that – it would be another huge win for Peacock post-Olympics. [Vulture]
• Leveraged buying of NVIDIA GPUs by startups feels awfully bubbly, no? No way this ends badly, right? RIGHT?! [FT 🔒]
  • The big guys, on the other hand, can literally afford to spend like drunken sailors on AI infrastructure. And while it's perhaps not quite $200B as they still have other costs and areas of interest, it's certainly a ton this year. With more next. At least until Wall Street really starts vomiting. [Bloomberg 🔒]
• What's the over/under on profiles we get about the new ownership of The Daily Beast and the subsequent turmoil? I think we're already at a dozen such stories as the media continues to love nothing more than covering itself. [NYT]
• The trader who bet over $30M on Trump to win the election says the bet is in no way political, just a bet he thinks will pay off. But this interview with him sounds a bit political. I still just can't believe how many people are citing the Polymarket results given this one person in France has swayed the results to the point where he can't possibly exit before doubling his money or losing it all... [WSJ 🔒]
  • Me? I'll be watching to see how he – and the US – fares on my iPhone lock screen. [AppleInsider]

I Quote...

"These new technologies will one day replace smartphones, like streaming services replaced music CDs and electric vehicles will substitute combustion engines."

-- Francesco Milleri, CEO of EssilorLuxottica, talking about the company's partnership with Meta on the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses.

Do I think these devices are going to one day replace smartphones? No. Do I think they're a smart, early way to use AI? Yes. Did they outmaneuver Snap? Yes. Should Apple be doing these too? Yes. (See: above.) Do they position EssilorLuxottica well for the ultimate AR glasses future? Perhaps. Have they pushed EssilorLuxottica to €100B market cap? Yes.