Can Apple Drive to Survive Hollywood?
EU App Store Changes • Google's Offerwall • The Social Network 2 • Thinking Machines AI Plan • Anthropic's AI Legal Win • Apple Podcasts at 20
Happy F1 day to those who celebrate. By that I mean the movie. The movie Apple so badly needs to be a box office hit. The reviews are in, and they’re pretty good. The marketing is… overboard. IMAX should help. But Apple needs some staying power here to speed into a black for a movie that may have cost $300M to make and market.
🏎️ Apple’s Pitt Stop
The drive to survive the theatrical box office starts anew...
• Enjoying a Brixton Low Voltage 🍻
• Listening to "Bad As I Used To Be" by Chris Stapleton (on the F1 soundtrack -- definitely better than the Ed Sheeran song) 🎶
• Written on an M4 MacBook Air 💻
• Sent from London, England 🏴 Notebook
🧹 Apple’s Sweeping App Store Changes in the EU
To me, these read as less "sweeping" and more just convoluted. Policies that are so obtuse and opaque that they naturally dissuade anyone from using them. Which would not be the first time Apple has used this tactic. Because it works. Apple makes little tweaks here and there, buying time and resetting clocks. Of course, it’s the same type of obfuscation — or, in that case, contempt — nonsense that got them in trouble with the judge in the US. I wouldn’t expect the EU to lay down the same type of hammer, but perhaps those fines will start to add up. Regardless, Tim Sweeney is happy to be the hammer when almost everything Apple does these days seems to be a nail. They really, really, really need to make some sweeping — worldwide — changes to the App Store policies or they’re going to lose a lot more than the narrative here. [9to5Mac]
🗞️ And After All, You’re My Offerwall
Oasis might say "maybe", but I’m saying "no way" is this going to work, at least not at any sort of scale, for Google. It’s a nice idea in the face of collapsing traffic from Google Search (and as such, monetization for publishers), but these are all ideas — surveys, watching ads, micropayments! — that have been tried and haven’t really worked, again, at scale, before. At the same time, one of the reasons website traffic is collapsing is because AI serves up the information people want in faster manner. So let’s shave a pre-roll ad in your face for you to watch before you can see our content. Great idea. [TechCrunch]
💾 The Social Network Part II
While the first Social Network wasn’t exactly kind to Facebook, nor Mark Zuckerberg, there was some level of nuance. If you’ve listened to any interviews with Aaron Sorkin of late, it feels like this one will aim to be much more of a statement against Meta — and Zuck in particular. And it almost feels as if Sorkin has been honing his directing chops just for this shot. He better lawyer up. Obviously, obviously Jesse Eisenberg needs to come back — and I still want a cross-over with the in-the-works OpenAI movie too. Also, yes, this is Sorkin directing a sequel to a David Fincher movie while Fincher is busy directing a sequel to a Quentin Tarantino movie. (And then hopefully a couple Mindhunter movies…) [Deadline]
🤖 How Thinking Machines Lab Plans to Compete in AI
When you hear that a startup has raised $2B at a $10B valuation with the most founder-friendly terms imaginable when it comes to total control, you’d think this must be an incredible can’t-miss business just about to IPO. Nah. It’s a seed round for a new startup which seems to barely have an idea for what they want to do? Harsh, but read the profile. You have to really squint to see "RL for businesses". Obviously — obviously — this is a talent bet. Beyond Mira Murati herself, she’s been able to pull great people out of OpenAI. And in this particular market, that’s worth… well, a lot. Honestly, perhaps more than $10B given what Mark Zuckerberg just spent on Scale. [Information 🔒]
📚 Anthropic Wins A Major Fair Use Victory for AI
It feels like a good compromise — and common sense — to think that AI should be able to train (aka "learn") off of information, including books, that are legally obtained. While it shouldn’t be able to for books that were not. That’s a simplified version of the ruling and it’s going to piss off basically every creative person in the world. But at the end of the day, it’s the outputs that matter. And even then, it’s what those outputs are used for. Which is, of course, why Meta also won their AI case the other day. All of this quickly delves into the murky world of intent. But really, we need to figure out a compromise between these two worlds, and fast. (Which probably looks like a bunch of deals cut between companies, but that doesn’t scale very well.) [Verge]
Spyglass
💻 Begun, the AI Browser Wars Have
Dia ushers in a new day for the web browser...
🎭 Apple Lives Long Enough to Become the Ad Villain
Apple pushes too far in their need for 'F1' to be a hit...
🔫 Dr. Yes
With Denis Villeneuve, James Bond enters his Auteur Era...
Loose Leaf
Speaking of EU fines, it sounds like Meta is about to be fined daily if the body doesn’t like their proposed chages to the "pay-or-consent" model for their social apps. You’ll note that both Meta and Apple are unified around the messaging that the EU keeps "moving the goalposts" — presumably a talking point they’re giving to Team Trump as well. [Economic Times]
Back in the US, Apple would please like a new judge assigned to their Epic case since U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers keeps being mean to them. (Which seems odd when some of us predicted what would happen if Apple continued down their insubordination path.) [9to5Mac]
Watch Larry Page calmly and succinctly lay out "the ultimate version of Google" using AI — 25 years ago. [Ben Gilbert]
I somehow missed that they’re making another Street Fighter movie. But it’s impossible to miss that 50 Cent is going to play Balrog. Also, Jason Momoa as Blanka?! Jean-Claude Van Damme better at least have a cameo. [THR]
Remember the 'T1' Trump phone? The gold-ish brick that was going to kick ass and take voicemails all while being made in America for $500? Take that, Apple! Well, maybe hold off on the "Made in America" references… [Verge]
Meta is said to be acquiring an AI startup, PlayAI, which is notable because they seem to be actually acquiring it, not "hackquiring" it. Which presumably just means that it’s a fairly small deal. [Bloomberg 🔒]
Meanwhile, a deal for OpenAI to bring on board the team from Crossing Minds seems like an old-fashioned acquire-hire — not a "hackquihire". Is M&A nature healing? (Probably not.) [TechCrunch]
Today in zany WaPo ideas, they want sources/subjects of stories to annotate them after they’re live in the name of giving the other side of a voice or whatnot. But won’t this create a weird incentive for the stories to try to entice such comments? Otherwise, no one will use this? [NYT]
Good to hear that Spielberg has praised the new Jurassic Park movie. Better to hear that he was apparently quite involved. Of course, he also directed Jurassic Park II so… approach the paddock with caution is all I’m saying. [THR]
End of an error-a for the Blue Screen of Death as it will soon be a Black Death for Windows 11 users that will allow Microsoft to better offload the blame for errors post CrowdStrike debacle. [Verge]
Amazon now has 54 satellites in the sky for the "Kupier" internet service. That’s cute. Starlink has 8,000. (Amazon needs to get to around 1,600 in the next year per their agreement with the FCC.) [CNBC]
OpenAI potentially developing a competitor to Office seems like it probably won’t help the relationship with Microsoft… [Information 🔒]
Speaking of, I would joke that Elon Musk’s lawyers claiming he doesn’t use a computer is the new "I don’t do email" (my dream), but Wired outlines about a dozen examples of Musk publicly touting his computer in the past. [Wired]
I Quote
"I go to war every single day with the Chinese government, the Russian government, the Iranians, the North Koreans, probably Americans, the Israelis, all of them who are trying to hack into our customer sites. And you're telling me, I can't stop some nerd with a C-corporation in Palo Alto?"
— Matthew Prince, the CEO of Cloudflare, discussing a new tool the company is building to help sites prevent content scraping for AI purposes.
(This interview made even more headlines because Prince shared numbers suggesting that the AI services — including Google — are now crawling a massive number of sites versus what they send back relative to a decade ago.)
I Spy...
Do you see it? (It’s actually easier to see the smaller the image is. Or if you squint.) And you should, because it’s a pretty incredible visual representation of a '20' that Apple’s designers made to celebrate the 20th anniversary of iTunes gaining support for podcasts, thus kicking off that particular revolution. Technically, the anniversary is tomorrow, as you can see from the original press release announcing the functionality as a part of iTunes 4.9. It even has a Steve Jobs quote:
“Apple is taking Podcasting mainstream by building it right into iTunes,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “Podcasting is the next generation of radio, and users can now subscribe to over 3,000 free Podcasts and have each new episode automatically delivered over the Internet to their computer and iPod.”
3,000 free Podcasts! Capital 'P'!
Offerwalls are huge for mobile banking and gaming advertisers, the revenue should be at least in 100s of millions of dollars, plus you have new pay per engagement solutions such as Adjoe and Mistplay that are doing really well. I think this is where the idea for Offerwall comes from.