Spyglass Dispatch: Streaming's Content Maze • Disney's Earnings • Elon's Lawsuit • Elon's Valuations • ChatGPT's Agentic App

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I cannot believe it's 2024 – the end of 2024, no less – and we still have to deal with the complete and utter inability to find where content is actually streaming. And if anything, it's getting worse, not better with more services just meaning more fragmentation. Someone needs to solve it. But at the very least, Apple needs to work with Netflix on this...

Netflix’s Nickel on Apple TV’s Dime

Apple needs to tell us where to stream something -- even if it’s on Netflix.

Spyglass •M.G. Siegler

I Think...

🐭 Disney’s Earnings Outlook Rises as Streaming Unit Posts Gains – These numbers highlight why Disney remains unique in media: they can have two businesses which perform poorly, in this case, cable networks and theme parks – which are also their two most profitable businesses – but the stock is buoyed by great results in movies and streaming. With the latter, they're finally making real money after years of burning billions, which is undoubtedly what Wall Street is really cheering here. That, and the notion that parks are forecasted to bounce back with interest rates falling again. Cable? That will not be bouncing back and Disney still has to figure out a partner for ESPN (also, remember Venu?), unless they're now opting to go fully alone, which is going to be very expensive. They have a line-of-sight to own sports streaming, but Amazon is not going to let them just have it. Perhaps Netflix and Apple have something to say too, we'll see. Also interesting: Disney giving guidance – multi-year guidance, no less – for the first time in a long time. Is this all building towards a crescendo in Bob Iger's swan song? [WSJ 🔒]

⚖️ Elon Musk Adds Microsoft to Suit Against OpenAI — One element of the whole Elon Musk/Donald Trump thing that I haven’t seen really discussed: what does it mean for OpenAI? Musk, like Trump, seemingly has many enemies. And now Musk, like Trump, is in a rather terrifying position to do something about it. Above all, as this newly amended lawsuit makes clear, OpenAI remains his non-profit enemy #1. And while he may not be able to directly sway a court with such a lawsuit, there are other potential paths — especially when you suddenly find yourself in charge of or with influence over aspects of the government. And this is something else Microsoft must now be weighing in the relationship as well, clearly. If and when OpenAI converts into a for-profit… watch this space. As for this lawsuit itself, I’m no lawyer, but the focus on the overlapping board directors and/or observers in various dealings is an interesting topic. [NYT]

💸 Valuations at Elon Musk’s SpaceX and xAI Set to Soar in New Deals – When I first saw the news that xAI had indeed raised new funds at $45B, I thought that almost seemed low given the above and the surge Tesla is seeing in the public markets related to the above. Sure enough, keep reading and you'll see that another new round may already be in the works – at $75B. Half an OpenAI is more like it for a project that's... just over a year old. That's obviously some sort of record. We'll see if it ends up a good one. The timing is good and... potentially not so good. SpaceX at $250B though? Still feels like a steal. It's a great company, full stop. But under this administration? With Elon Musk's involvement?! Maybe investors are baking in an inevitable fall-out into the number? [FT 🔒]

🧑‍💻 ChatGPT Can Now Read Some of Your Mac's Desktop Apps – The feature is interesting but the elements behind it are just as interesting. First and foremost, OpenAI is pretty clear that this is a first use-case to get something like this to work more broadly with other tasks on your computer. And while reports about their forthcoming "Operator" agent indicate it's browser-based, this is different. This is leveraging the native Mac app to be able to work with third-party apps, in this case, those for writing code. And it uses the screen reader APIs baked into macOS, but that's for accessibility purposes – I'm guessing Apple is not going to like this "hack" too much as they'll likely deem it a security risk. Maybe their partnership for ChatGPT helps here, maybe not. OpenAI may also argue it's better than the screenshot method that Anthropic is using (similar to what Microsoft has tried – and thus far failed – to launch with 'Recall' for Windows). This also seems tangential to what Apple itself is trying to do with their 'Ferret' AI project. There's a lot going on here one-level deeper! [TechCrunch]

I Wrote...

Related to the new post up top, here are a couple older ones with ideas for how to actually solve the streaming content nightmare...

We Don’t Need Another iPod for Streaming TV, We Need An iTunes

One service to rule them all. And in the darkness, bind them.

Spyglass •M.G. Siegler

ESPN’s Path to Be *the* Streaming Sports Bundle

It’s not exactly “clear”, as Amazon may battle them along the way…

Spyglass •M.G. Siegler

I Link...

• Ilya “Dutch” Lichtenstein gets 5 years for stealing billions worth of crypto stuff. His wife, Heather “Razzlekhan” Morgan, could get 18 months. The 119,754 Bitcoin stolen from Bitfinex alone were worth about $71M at the time of the steal. Today? $10.5B. These sentences just feel a bit like resume padding for eventual Trump cabinet positions. [Bloomberg 🔒]
• Clearly envious of the love Bluesky was getting, Threads head Adam Mosseri announced 15 million signups in November and "going on three months with more than a million signups a day" – clearly a shot to try to put Bluesky's growth in perspective, but really, honestly, not that impressive when you're directly tied networks with 3B+ users and when your main rival is a total shitshow. [Threads]
  • In response (literally) to this completely and totally unprompted disclosure on a random Thursday in November, Threads users bombarded him with replies (which he refused to reply to despite that being touted as the main selling point of the platform) taking Threads to task for various issues which may be helping to fuel the Bluesky surge. [Threads]
  • At least we're getting custom feeds though on Threads, which I'm sure is also a total coincidence. [Verge]
  • Bluesky, for its part, also hit 1M signups yesterday. And guess who made a return as a result? Our old Twitter friend the Fail Whale. [TechCrunch]
• With the clock ticking on the Biden administration, TSMC signed the deal for their portion of the CHIPS Act funds. Naturally, Trump will take credit in a few years for any output from such a deal, which is standard politics except that he very clearly wants to kill this law. [NYT]
• Now this is a use of AI I think we can all get behind: mimicking an elderly chatterbox named "Daisy" to waste phone scammers/spammers time. Clever, O2. [PC Mag]
  • Less fun? "AI Slop" taking over Spotify. [Verge]
• I don't recall seeing a trailer for a play before. But I also don't recall seeing George Clooney in a play before. A stage version of Good Night, and Good Luck (which was quite good as a movie) will be his Broadway debut and feels well-timed.. [THR]
• Disney continues to make Disney+ the full Disney streaming app as they're now adding an ESPN tile (after adding a Hulu tile earlier). We remain about a year away from the "true" ESPN streaming service. [Variety]
• ChatGPT is now fully available for Windows. A mere six months after it launched on the Mac. Man, $13.75 billion doesn't buy you a lot these days, huh? [PC Mag]
• Hairy creature, distorted face, fight cloud, apple core, orca, trombone, landslide, and treasure chest are the emojis we're likely getting in 2026. Of course, Apple's Genmoji AI feature will be out well before that – in a couple weeks, in fact. Of those, the "distorted face" one may be the most interesting and it just reminds me of one thing and it's something Apple would probably wish us to forget... [MacRumors]

I Quote...

"We, in many respects, have already consolidated. We don’t really need more assets right now, either from a distribution or from a content perspective, to thrive in basically a disruptive media world."

-- Bob Iger, during Disney's earnings call when asked about likely media consolidation under the incoming second Trump administration.

That makes sense since Disney truly is big enough when it comes to content and IP at the moment and clearly established and set as one of the streaming "winners" (with a shot to augment that through sports as well per above). But one area that remains a wild card is gaming. They have that large Epic investment and if the fruits of that labor work, maybe that's an M&A play down the road? But that will be long after Iger is gone. Famous last words.

I Spy...

This guy took a new M4-powered Mac mini and figured out how to squeeze it into the iMac G4 frame to make pretty much the perfect computer. Well, it probably needs a monitor upgrade too. But Apple absolutely needs to bring back this general form factor in some capacity. [via 9to5Mac]