Of course I mean Crush, which is quickly becoming Apple’s second-most iconic add. Much like 1984, Apple’s most iconic add, it will be remembered and reference for a long time to come and for the same reason: it is an accurate, impartial representation of the effects technology has, or will have, on the world.

The only difference, and the reason why 1984 is still better, is timing: it took almost three decades for technology to break “The Man”. So 1984 was prophetic to the extreme, the second-order effects of “The Man” breaking weren’t immediately clear, and the add was well-received. Alas, we now know all to well what they are and how they came about, as described by Martin Gurri in his 2018 book “The Revolt of the Public and the Crisis of Authority in the New Millennium” and as seen on your favorite and less favorite social networks.

But imagine that add airing in 2020, in the midst of the Covid pandemic. Here is Anthony Fauci ordering you to socially distance and mask up. A year later he drones on about vaccines. And here comes our valiant antivaxer, ready, willing and able to break the mainstream media, the deep state, the uniparty, or whichever else term is popular with that particular crowd these days. I haven’t checked, but I am quite sure there is a meme out there with 1984 cut in just such way.

What 1984 was to media, Crush is to the material world. It is not as good as it is quite late to the game: we are already seeing dematerialization in action, at least in the United States, and are closer to its second, third, nth-order effects. These range from beneficial (to the planet and natural resources) to potentially devastating (to our sense of identity, history and culture), so the anxiety is completely justified and Apple was right in deciding not to air it on TV. But it is still good, educational work which I will be showing and talking about with my kids.

Kudos to Apple for making it.

Update: As promised, Pratik wrote more about the creative destruction aspect of the add. For many people, as bridges are collapsing and the world is crumbling, destruction is destruction.

I, for one, appreciate Apple for their honesty. There is no point in sugarcoating it: the things we create with their help will be ephemeral; the things destroyed in the process through ignorance and neglect, well, whatcha gonna do?

“Mute notifications for 8 hours” is a godsend on WhatsApp, and the only thing that would make it better is more granularity (8 hours is the least amount of time, and the next step up is a full week). Apple’s Messages/iMessage, on the other hand, has no time-limited muting and even no way of knowing at a glance whether a pinned group chat is muted. I am no fan of Facebook/Meta, but they are eating Apple’s lunch and drinking their milkshake at the same time, and I fully expect WhatsApp to overtake Messages in the US.

Analogy of the Week Award goes to Eric Levitz of Vox:

In our conversation, Przybylski said he doubted that using social media shortens people’s attention spans. To me, this is a bit like doubting that chewing broken glass causes oral discomfort. And I imagine most of my fellow heavy X users would agree.

Though not as big of an X user as I used to be, I, too, agree.

Jonathan Haidt’s interview with Tyler Cowen was excruciating and my opinion of Tyler deteriorated significantly, but it was the push I needed to order Haidt’s new book. I thought I’d skip it because we were already in perfect agreement but I’ll make sure to turn on my confirmation bias shields.

Google is in trouble and I am not surprised at all that they are looking at a paid subscription model for a new kind of search:

Google began testing an experimental AI-powered search service in May last year, presenting more detailed answers to queries while also continuing to present users with links to further information and advertising. However, it has been slow to add any of the features from what it calls its “Search Generative Experience” experiment to its main search engine.

These kinds of search results, which include an “AI-powered snapshot”, are more costly for Google to serve up than its traditional responses because generative AI consumes a lot more computing resources. It has offered access to SGE to only a select few users, including some subscribers to its Google One bundle that offers benefits such as extra cloud storage for a monthly fee.

Just today ChatGPT 4 answered a basic question — how to do multivariate regression in Excel — with a response miles better than the SEO spam I got from an online search. Having abandoned Google more than a decade ago, I won’t shed any tears.

Both Ben Thompson and Jason Snell had reservations about Apple’s only immersive video to come out since Vision Pro came out. It is a 5-minute highlight reel of the Major League Soccer Cup and after seeing it myself I kind of disagree with both of them. The video is fine!

There are some limitations of the technology: you can’t have the camera panning around the pitch so you have to be in a fixed position, and a soccer pitch is so vast that there is no way to watch a game from the same spot while being close to the action, while at the same time being close to the action is the whole point of immersion. So, to square that circle Apple, or whomever they chose to produce the video, opted to cut to the most interesting bits of action from the most interesting spots.

I don’t know how much soccer Snell, Thompson and other Apple commentators have seen in their lives but I would wager that it’s not a lot. I am far from being a super-fan, but I’ve seen enough games to know where to look and the cuts in the video were fine — for those who know the game. Moving from spot to spot was logical and it was clear which games you were watching.

But what did Apple intend with this? To have an immersive video for the fans? Or was it a tech demo? Or maybe a vehicle to get more Apple whales — and let’s face it if you own an AVP you are an Apple whale no matter what you tell yourself — to get into MLS? They’re three different things with different tradeoffs and it seems like they went for the fans here first, but how many of them are there who also have a Vision Pro?

Now with basketball you actually can be close to the action and have a good overview of the game, and this is where everyone, fan or not, would probably prefer a single court-side position over quick cuts. So I hope Adam Silver is working on that. I don’t know or watch baseball, but I assume it’s somewhere in between basketball and soccer. At the only baseball game I ever watched I could clearly see every part of the field, I just didn’t know what was going on or where I should look.

The optimal version for every sport would of course be to have a choice between several spots around the court, pitch or field and I do hope we’ll get that for some of the upcoming NBA playoff games. I already have a League Pass and would happily pay extra for the experience.

Fantasy Flight is second only to Apple in how much money they got from me over the years, all thanks to the Arkham Horror card game. No regrets.

You can view an essay as you would an organism. There is the skeleton — a through-line going from paragraph to paragraph that forms a coherent message. Then there is the meat — mostly facts, one would hope, and at least one original opinion. And of course the connective tissue — turns of phrase and flourishes of style that bring it all together.

LLMs are good — occasionally brilliant — at this last component and serviceable if a bit pedestrian at the first, but the meat is all on you. (ᔥThis day’s portion)

Hah: U.S. Sues Apple, Accusing It of Maintaining an iPhone Monopoly.

I can only hope this is a case of an unfortunate headline, not the actual substance of the lawsuit. What would be next, suing BMW for maintaining a BMW monopoly?