Apple’s AI Makes Its Debut & Thanksgiving Meal Wars Heat Up
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Good morning, Brew Daily Show. I'm Neil Freiman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today, Apple released its AI features into the wild, but are they thinking different or thinking more of the same? Then your Thanksgiving turkey may be dry this year, but it won't be more expensive thanks to easing inflation. It's Tuesday, October 29th. Let's ride. ♪

With the election only days away, pollsters are crunching numbers to try and figure out who has an edge come November 5th. But a more reliable indicator may have already forecasted the winner this past Sunday, and that is the performance of the Washington Commanders football team. There is a link that D.C. sports fans are well aware of between their NFL team's final home game before the election and the candidate who ends up winning. If the team wins, the incumbent candidate wins. If the team loses, the incumbent loses.

loses.

According to Axios, 17 of the past 21 presidential campaigns since the team moved to D.C. have shaken out that way. Neil, was this election just decided because the Bears stink at defending the Hail Mary? It could possibly be, but there are random election indicators anywhere you look that tell all different stories. Buskin Bakery is in Cincinnati, Ohio, and it has predicted almost every presidential election correctly since 1984 through cookie sales.

It sells cookies with each candidate's face, and then the cookie that sells the most goes on to win the election. This has proved accurate in 9 out of 10 elections since it began in 1984, with 2020 being the only exception. So the tea leaves are out there. You can read them any way you want to. There's definitely a conversation here between correlation and causation, but you know what? We're just going to equate the two. And now a word from our sponsor, Bonobos. Neil, what are you doing later this evening? Other than prepping for tomorrow's show, not a whole lot.

Are you forgetting something? Oh, trivia night. Yes, trivia night is tonight. MBD is partnering with Bonobos to host our very first in-person trivia night this evening. If you registered, you should have gotten some email reminders over the past few days. So do your brain exercises and come ready to dominate.

Bonobos is also outfitting us so we can host in style, but it can also outfit you. There will be some in-person try-on rooms at the event, but if you can't make it, fear not. You can always head to your nearest Bonobo store to find your fit. Or go to bonobos.com and enter code BREW20 for 20% off. See you all at Trivia Tonight.

Apple, the fruit season may be winding down, but for Apple, the company, the season is reaching its peak. Apple began one of its most consequential weeks of the year with major releases of new hardware and software, including the highly anticipated release of its AI features known as Apple Intelligence.

iOS 18.1 was made available to iPhone users in the U.S. yesterday, bringing the first taste of Apple's flavor of AI to the computer in your pocket. Because Apple intelligence only works on the iPhone 15 and later models, it's hoping that people will trade in their old phones to access the new features, driving a surge in new iPhone sales that account for roughly half of its total revenue. The stakes are immensely high.

And then don't forget the new computers either. Apple unveiled a refreshed iMac yesterday with a new in-house chip called the M4, which will boost speeds and allow it to run Apple intelligence. Bloomberg's Mark Gurman called it a seismic shift on the same level as when Apple ditched the Intel processors four years ago to run its own silicon chip.

Apple will continue dropping upgraded computers throughout the week, which you should definitely show to your boss if your work laptop's getting a little long in the tooth. Neil, let's start with Apple intelligence, though. What are the new features our listeners should look out for? Okay, here are the basics about what just happened.

The most prominent feature included in this Apple Intelligence suite is the ability to summarize notifications. You know, maybe your phone is in your pocket for an hour and you go look at it and there's a zillion notifications because you are so popular. Well, Apple Intelligence will summarize all of those notifications for you into one notification to tell you what you missed. There are also writing tools that allow you to proofread, rewrite, summarize notifications.

Some writing that you've made. Siri is getting a glow up. Literally, when you use Siri, the screen's edges will light up and a more human voice, human sounding voice responds. And then finally, there's a photo cleanup feature. Maybe someone's photobombing your lovely family picture in front of Mount Rushmore where you can just edit them away. So those are just the features

features that have been released with iOS 18.1. There are a bunch more coming throughout the fall and next year. Yeah, I will say, though, just anecdotally, I'm in a couple of group chats with people who have iPhones, and they said that the Apple intelligence has been a little bit of a letdown so far. Most people upgraded in the last few days. I got a text in a college group chat yesterday that read, Apple made a big deal about this new Apple intelligence thing.

But what has changed? All my Siri does now is glow and make me think she can do more. So clearly in consumers' hands, it's a little bit underwhelming right now. That said, a lot of people have been circling December as the date where the full suite rolls out. Coming in December, you're going to get features like Genmoji, which is their AI-generated app.

emoji creator. Also, visual intelligence will allow you to use your device to interact with the real world, the surrounding environment, and it can identify and recognize things. And then finally, the long-awaited Siri integration with OpenAI's ChatGPT is coming in December. So Apple has been fighting a little bit of this expectation management, if you will, because they...

technically debuted Apple Intelligence at their Glow event, but they said features will roll out come October. It is October now, and still they're saying actually wait until December. So I do think that they've had to manage expectations a little bit here because their full suite isn't out in people's hands yet. And here's another reality check. I mean, everything that is coming to your iPhone through Apple Intelligence is online.

already available on Android-powered devices with Samsung and Google. So Apple is not doing really anything new here, but you're right, there are insane expectations. Apple's stock price has jumped 18% since it previewed its AI strategy at a conference in

in June and now it is the most valuable company in the world and is on track to be the first US company to reach a $4 trillion market cap. It is now over $3.5 trillion in value. But the question here is, is it enough for people to trade in their old iPhones for a newer one? And that's why they've been

only running it on iPhone 15s and later because they need people. That's the biggest problem for Apple right now. They have people sitting on really old iPhones, 12s and 13s. They wanted to get them to the 15s and the 16s to upgrade. And they're hoping that dangling these Apple intelligence AI features will cause consumers to make that upgrade. But it's not clear from what they just rolled out that people will do that, especially ahead of the key

holiday shopping season. T-holiday shopping season, and we're also getting its earnings come Thursday of this week. So you said it is a big week for Apple. We will get some more clarity on what that demand is looking like because you're right, iPhone 16 demand has been a little bit slower than expected. We'll see if these new features do anything to change that.

On a list of things that maybe feel illegal, Elon Musk's political action committee awarding $1 million to voters in swing states comes in pretty near the top. And the Philadelphia DA's office seems to agree. Yesterday, they filed a lawsuit to stop the giveaway, accusing the America PAC of, quote,

running an illegal lottery. Elon Musk announced his million-dollar ploy at a rally back on October 19th, saying that any registered voter who submitted their address, phone number, and email address and signed a petition pledging to support the Constitution would have a chance to randomly be selected to win a $1 million prize.

The DOJ immediately took note and warned the America PAC that its seven-digit giveaway might violate federal election law. The Philadelphia DA suit, though, takes a different tact. This is a lottery, the suit says, and it is indisputably an unlawful lottery, the

It says, under Pennsylvania law, all lotteries must be regulated by the state. You know, when Elon first announced this, there was a lot of head scratching around the legality of it. Guess we will find out soon enough. There's a hearing that will take place in Philly on Friday if that is the case. Yes. Soon as Elon Musk announced it, the question that was swirling was, was this illegal? Does this violate federal election law, which...

bans anyone who pays or offers to pay either for registration to vote or for voting. The idea of this law is that I can't pay you to register to vote and I can't bribe you to vote. That was the big question that legal experts were

We're wondering, this Philadelphia lawsuit takes a different tack and goes after them just on the basis of lottery law in the state, whether it is operating under this particular regulator that regulates lottery operations. And the Philly DA is saying, no, it is not. And so they filed an injunction to stop it immediately. The lawsuit also, the Philly lawsuit, that is, raises questions around the selection process that has gone into this because...

Yeah.

Half of the $9 million that's been given out has been given to people from Pennsylvania. So that's another part that they're saying is like you are saying that this is technically a fair lottery, but it does seem like you are choosing people that fit your maybe political agenda in the most –

important state coming up come November 5th. And the big picture here is that Elon Musk, the owner of six different companies, has played such an outsized role, has become one of the biggest donors in this political cycle. He's given $75 million to a political action committee that he's created, America PAC, and has taken on a major role in former President Trump's political presidential campaign. And he said he wants to run an

office that is called DOGE, which is the Department of Government Efficiency, if former President Trump were elected and he wants to cut $2 trillion from U.S. spending if that happens. With Thanksgiving less than a month away, supermarket chains are waging an all-out war to sell your family a complete Turkey Day dinner on the cheap.

Target is the latest retailer to join in on the San Diego newscaster level brawl. Yesterday, the chain said it was selling a, quote, traditional Thanksgiving feast that can feed for and costs, get this, $20. Knowing that American consumers have been crushed by inflation over the past several years, Target highlighted that this year's Thanksgiving meal deal will cost $5 less than last year and still include all your favorite fixings from turkey to cranberry sauce.

But it's got plenty of competition. Earlier this month, Walmart, Aldi, and Sam's Club also rolled out cheap Thanksgiving meals. In Walmart's case, it'll cost less than $7 per person and run you less than last year's offering. Toby, if 2022 and 2023 were defined by surging prices, 2024 may be remembered as the year of the discount. In addition to this meal, Target is in the process of slashing prices online.

It is pretty remarkable that we are seeing prices deflate now. They are cheaper than last year's Thanksgiving meals. The idea here is to get shoppers through the door because you have these great discounts, these great Thanksgiving meal offerings, and hopefully they pick up a few items or two along the way. But I tell you what, these are not bad things.

meals either. I mean, we were going through weighing the pros and cons of each one. The winner in my book is Aldi's meal. I think it dominates everyone. You get a butterball turkey, gravy rolls, macaroni and cheese stuffing. Plus they give you the ingredients to make things like cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, sweet potato casserole, green bean casserole, pumpkin pie. That is crazy. All for $47 feeds 10 people, $4.70 per person. So I was thinking, how can they possibly offer prices like this? And I do think it goes back to

A lot of these companies have invested in their own private label brands. I mean, 90% of the goods that Aldi sells in their stores are from their own private label brand. We have seen Target roll out their own. Sam's Club has their own. I mean, obviously Costco,

Walmart. They all have their own private label brands. And so that is mostly what you're going to get in these meal kits, but still pretty remarkable prices for what they are offering you. Yeah. And I think this is actually a big reason why they're doing this is to showcase to consumers these private label brands and get those brands in people's houses as a means of marketing because Target's private label business generates $30 billion in sales each year. It's an absolute behemoth. That

One of them is called Good and Gather, and that is the brand of the turkey. That is the brand of the mac and cheese as well. So it's hoping that you'll get this meal deal and say, hey, Good and Gather. I will buy more of that stuff. I will gather more of it. Another thing that Target's doing that is interesting is it's offering a free frozen pizza along with this meal deal to its Target Circle 360 paid membership rewards program to hopefully spur more people to subscribe to that. And why that's interesting is

is that the day before Thanksgiving, that Wednesday, is one of the biggest days of the year for pizza sales, which I guess makes sense because people definitely don't want to cook that day. They want whatever the opposite of a Thanksgiving dinner is, and pizza might be the solution there. I was thinking, I have no idea what I eat the day before Thanksgiving because for me, big turkey trot family, so maybe we're carbo-loading a little bit. So it's rarely been pizza, but now that I'm thinking about it, pizza makes a lot of sense.

Up next, the only thing better than watching sports on a big screen is watching sports on an even bigger screen.

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The Las Vegas Sphere has gotten all the attention recently for its giant screens and mind-blowing visuals, but another company also offering up immersive broadcasts has sneakily begun to ink deals with major sports leagues. And it's that company, Cosm, that I want to talk about on today's edition of Toby's Trends.

This trend, Neil, I am dubbing big screen good because wow, does Cosm have a big screen. Cosm, like the Sphere, utilizes an 87-foot, 360-degree dome made up of 12K LED screens to offer an experience they called shared reality that does an incredible job of mimicking being at a sports game itself.

These domes can seat up to 1,500 people and will run you anywhere from $22 to $130 for a game. Cosm just announced a partnership with the NFL yesterday, so you can see the Chicago Bears lose in excruciating fashion or the Jets be the Jets on the greatest TV screen mankind has to offer. Neil, so far Cosm has two venues located in LA and Dallas with plans to open more going forward. What do you think of this partnership?

Big screen, good trend. I mean, it seems pretty clear that there's insane demand for this. They opened up tickets for the World Series. Game one sold out in seven minutes. Game two sold out in one minute. So there's clear demand that people want to go and be more immersed in a sporting event. And they're willing to pay up to $100 to make that happen. They're just not content with the $50 to $60.

you know, inch screens that we have in our homes and they want to feel in it. Cosm has done a really good job of putting their own cameras out on the field or on the court to make you feel like you're really there. All of the firsthand accounts that I've read have been very glowing and saying like, this is actually feels like you're there. And we, I would love to go visit in Dallas or LA and or the new one they're opening up in Atlanta. One thing is interesting is that you mentioned that

it's better than your 60 inch, uh, flat screen TV at home. But I actually think that's not who cause them is competing with. It's competing with buying a courtside ticket to an NBA game. Cause that's what the experience mimics is being courtside. And those are obviously a lot more expensive. I just saw, uh,

parking at the Intuit Dome of the Clippers' new arena costs $80 alone. So if you want to go see a game, maybe Cosm is an easier venue to doing that. I was also thinking too that so many of these companies are investing in this immersive virtual reality with these headsets with Apple and Meta doing so. This is almost that same experience, that same 360 degree larger than life experience that you're getting with a headset, but you're getting it in real life with a shared experience. So it is

to see the different approaches to maybe this immersion. One, you can build just a giant 86-foot tall dome or you can create this big headset, but I think they're after the same sort of experience. And the backstory of this company is actually very interesting. It has nothing to do with

sports or TV or media or anything like that. It was formed four years ago through the acquisition of two companies that pioneered planetarium projections. So it developed this technology to sell to planetariums all over the world. And then they were saying, well, we developed very high resolution projection technology. Let's maybe apply that to something different. Hey, sports are there. Let's do that. So Cosm is amazing.

essentially originally a planetarium company that turned its attention to something else and it's doing very well obviously in the early stages but it raised 250 million dollars at a billion dollar valuation and just in general it looks like it feels like this immersive experience economy is only growing I mean

IMAX hit 6% market share of the domestic box office in Q1, which was its highest ever. We know the sphere has been making a lot of money in Las Vegas. It's now expanding for its second sphere in Abu Dhabi. So people clearly want to feel this larger-than-life experience, and they're willing to pay up for it. Neil, call it the trend.

Big screen good. That is the Toby's trend right there. It's not me. It's Toby's trend. I don't want to step on your toes. Big screen good. Okay, let's sprint to the finish with some headlines you may have missed. Up first, it turns out that neutrality is far more controversial than you might think. The Washington Post lost over 200,000 digital subscribers, about 8% of the outlet's paid circulation, in the days since the paper's billionaire owner Jeff Bezos declared

decided to block the editorial team from issuing an endorsement ahead of this year's election. To put that number into perspective, the Post has only added, and this is not a typo, 4,000 net new subs so far this year, according to NPR. No, this is an absolute shocking number. 8% of its total paid circulation gone in just a few days because of Bezos' decision. Bezos did write an

a note from the owner explaining it. And he said that trust in the media is so low, so we can't. So his argument was that, you know, issuing a presidential endorsement would lead to either further mistrust, would lead to further mistrust of the media. And he wanted to do that. He did say it was inadequate planning and he wished he hadn't done it 11 days out before

Thank you.

Pew and Bezos thinks that this decision will regain trust in the legacy media, but it comes at a major cost. And The Washington Post is not doing well, as is in 2020. This website had 101 million unique visitors per month. That was cut in half by the end of 2023 to 50 million. And last year, it lost a reported 77 million visitors.

So losing 8% of your total sales in this second is really not good for your business. We'll see how they make up for it. Boeing just did the corporate equivalent of Leonardo DiCaprio sleeping in a horse carcass to survive the winter. The plane manufacturer raised $21 billion in a share sale, one of the largest moves of its kind in corporate history. The cash influx will help it keep the lights on as it waits out a strike that has frozen most of its production and

and this is key, also allow it to avoid having its credit rating cut to junk, which would be a financial disaster. Desperate times call for desperate measures. I took this entrepreneurship class in college and a founder came in and said, the only trick to running a business is dream.

Don't run out of money, Droom. Boeing is not some startup at this point, but they are having cash and liquidity issues. They aren't making any money right now because they can't make any 737 MAX planes. So this is the next best option. And then also that credit rating is all important as well. So huge, huge share raise, huge billion dollar multi or $21 billion raise here. Don't run out of money, Boeing. Maybe you should have attended my entrepreneurship class.

Volkswagen announced it was closing at least three of its plants in Germany yesterday, marking the first time in its 87-year history that it is shutting down facilities on home soil. The automaker is facing intense pressure to cut costs amid declining sales and fierce competition, especially from Chinese EV makers.

The company is already facing very strong opposition from union leaders, so expect some serious pushback from workers as VW also navigates the layoffs that come along with this big restructuring plan. Yeah, there had been rumors that VW would be closing plants in Germany for months, and that sparked a huge outcry because it would be such a major hit to Germany, which is Europe's largest economy. VW is so tied up with the economy, but

Germany's economy contracted in 2023, and it is on pace to fall again for the second straight year this year. So these are definitely alarm bells going off inside the halls of the German government because of VW's decision. But wherever you look, German automakers are really not doing well at all. They are getting hammered in China because of these low-cost EVs. They're getting hammered in their home court because China EVs are coming in there. And

Sales are way down. Mercedes is not doing well. BMW has had an expensive recall. And Stellantis has also been crushed in the U.S. market. So really just grim times for German automakers. Netflix is making it a lot easier to share your favorite love is blind couple. The streamer rolled out a new mobile feature called Moments that lets you save and share some of your favorite scenes from your favorite shows.

In the past, doing something like screen recording or screenshotting was very much poo-pooed by Netflix to protect their IP, but it also drastically stunted what should have been a viral growth tool for them. Now they've unclogged that sharing artery. Sharing is everything these days from Wordle to clips to sports clips on social media. So it does seem like this could be a feature that a lot of people use. I don't know what shows you would use it for. I can't imagine the fact that Netflix hasn't done this prior. Yeah.

Usually, whenever you would screenshot, it would just completely block it. You weren't allowed to do that, but you are so right. This is something that should have been rolled out by this point. Yeah, I don't know. Love is Blind is the show that came to mind right now. I was actually just watching someone on the plane to watch it, so I know people are watching Love is Blind right now, but yes, this is a crucial sharing milestone for Netflix.

And then finally, keep your eyes peeled for any fancy British cheese being sold on the cheap because it's probably been stolen in what celebrity chef Jamie Oliver called the Great Cheese Robbery, spelled G-R-A-T-E. But it's not really a punny matter to the tight-knit artisanal cheese community.

In September, fraudsters posing as legitimate wholesalers tricked a British company into sending them nearly $400,000 worth of cheddar, which they made off with without a trace. And this is not the kind of cheddar you'd find on a cheese plate at a networking event. The three types of stolen cheeses were award-winning and ranked among the best in the world. Police were alerted of the heist last week and are now hoping to solve the biggest question of all,

Where did this cheese go? Okay, so I know this is wrong. You shouldn't steal. But I am such a sucker for stories of stealing very valuable but not your typical goods. So, like, yes, you can rob a bank. You can steal diamonds or gold. But posing as a legitimate wholesaler, getting thousands of pounds of some of the most valuable cheese imaginable delivered before you ride off into sunset. Again,

morally wrong, but I applaud the outside-the-box thinking, and I really hope we get a movie about this. Well, the problem is when you steal something like this, you can't launder it. You can't sell it because it is so unique. And that's the question here is this cheese is going to show up somewhere. Jamie Oliver, sort of the celebrity chef, brought this heist to light on Saturday in an Instagram post. And he was saying, look, keep your eyes out. He was telling the British public,

keep your eyes out for this really fancy cheese being sold on the cheap because it absolutely stands out. Some investigators think it has been moved to Russia or the Middle East where it can be sold more surreptitiously, but it's not easy to grab $400 worth

$400,000 worth of the best cheddar cheese on the planet and then sale it somewhere without creating some noise. So that is where investigators think they might be able to nab the thieves here. Let's wrap it up there. Thanks so much for starting your morning with us and have a wonderful Tuesday. For any questions, comments, or feedback on the show, send an email to morningbrewdaily at morningbrew.com.

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So make sure to share it with your smartest friends and fear not if you can't make it, we will be sharing some videos on our social media to give you a little FOMO to make sure you sign up for the next review. - Absolutely. Let's roll the credits. Emily Milliron is our executive producer. Raymond Liu is our producer. Olivia Graham is our associate producer.

Uchenna Wa'ugu is our technical director. Billy Menino is on audio. Hera Makeup is studying for MBD trivia tonight. Devin Emery is our chief content officer. Our show is a production of Morning Brew. Great show today, Neil. Let's run it back tomorrow.