Speaking of Eddy Cue, he was the guest on Matthew Belloni’s excellent podcast, The Town, this week. (Overcast link.) Just a great interview in general. Cue doesn’t do many interviews but he’s my favorite Apple executive to hear speak, because he’s the least rehearsed and most straightforward. If he doesn’t want to answer a question (Belloni tried, mightily, to press him on subscriber and viewership numbers), Cue just says he’s not going to answer that question, rather than dance around it with a non-answer answer.

My two big takeaways:

• Everyone in Hollywood is spooked about what Apple’s intentions “really are” regarding original movies and series. They’re worried it’s some sort of play to polish Apple’s brand, and that Apple is going to get bored or tired of losing money, and pick up stakes and leave the game. Cue emphasized that the answer is simple: Apple thinks it’s a great business to be in (and he also made the point that Apple’s brand needed no polishing) and they’re in this business for that reason, and for the long haul.

• Apple is serious about sports rights, but they don’t want to dabble. They want to own the rights to entire sports. Friday Night Baseball was, effectively, a learning experiment. Apple TV’s MLS deal — and the F1 US deal announced today — are the sort of deals Apple wants. (That’s going to make it hard for Apple to get involved with the NFL, because the NFL strategically wants to spread its games across all the major TV networks and streaming services.) Cue is a huge sports fan (as is Tim Cook), and Apple wants to deliver sports on Apple TV that cater to fans.

Blockbuster sports streaming news from Apple Newsroom:

Apple and Formula 1 today announced a five-year partnership that will bring all F1 races exclusively to Apple TV in the United States beginning next year. [...]

Apple TV will deliver comprehensive coverage of Formula 1, with all practice, qualifying, Sprint sessions, and Grands Prix available to Apple TV subscribers. Select races and all practice sessions will also be available for free in the Apple TV app throughout the course of the season. In addition to broadcasting Formula 1 on Apple TV, Apple will amplify the sport across Apple News, Apple Maps, Apple Music, and Apple Fitness+. Apple Sports — the free app for iPhone — will feature live updates for every qualifying, Sprint, and race for each Grand Prix across the season, with real-time leaderboards, season driver and constructor standings, Live Activities to follow on the Lock Screen, and a designated widget for the iPhone Home Screen.

F1 TV Premium, F1’s own premier content offering, will continue to be available in the U.S. via an Apple TV subscription only and will be free for those who subscribe.

If I’m reading this right, all you need to get access to everything F1-related is an Apple TV subscription (the service formerly known as TV+) and to be in the US. This even includes F1 TV Premium — normally $130/year — which Jason Snell wrote about in a piece I linked to earlier this week.

Basically, this sounds like the sort of sports broadcasting deal that Eddy Cue has been talking about as Apple’s goal for years — the rights to the entire sport, free of charge if you’re an Apple TV subscriber.

Joe Rossignol, MacRumors:

The new 14-inch MacBook Pro with an M5 chip does not include a charger in the box in European countries, including the U.K., Ireland, Germany, Italy, France, Spain, the Netherlands, Norway, and others, according to Apple’s online store. In the U.S. and all other countries outside of Europe, the new MacBook Pro comes with Apple’s 70W USB-C Power Adapter, but European customers miss out.

Apple has gradually stopped including chargers with many products over the years — a decision it has attributed to its environmental goals.

In this case, an Apple spokesperson told French website Numerama’s Nicolas Lellouche that the decision to not include a charger with this particular MacBook Pro was made in anticipation of a European regulation that will require Apple to provide customers with the option to purchase certain devices without a charger in the box, starting in April.

I’m not sure why there’s no power adapter in the box in the UK (I double-checked). The cited regulation is for the EU, and the UK, rather famously, left the EU in 2020.

But, still, amazing stuff continues to happen in Europe.

Good and thoughtful graphic essay by Matthew Inman, expressing why he dislikes AI-generated art. It’s been widely linked to, largely approvingly. I fundamentally disagree with the premise. Near the start, Inman writes:

When I consume AI art, it also evokes a feeling. Good, bad, neutral — whatever.

Until I find out that it’s AI art.

Then I feel deflated, grossed out, and maybe a little bit bored. This feeling isn’t a choice.

I think it very much is a choice. If your opinion about a work of art changes after you find out which tools were used to make it, or who the artist is or what they’ve done, you’re no longer judging the art. You’re making a choice not to form your opinion based on the work itself, but rather on something else. If you refuse to watch Woody Allen movies because of his personal life, that’s a choice, but you’re choosing not to watch some of the best movies that have ever been made.

Stanley Kubrick said, “The test of a work of art is, in the end, our affection for it, not our ability to explain why it is good.” If an image, a song, a poem, or video evokes affection in your heart, and then that affection dissipates when you learn what tools were used to create it, that’s not a test of the work of art itself. To me it’s no different than losing affection for a movie only upon learning that special effects were created digitally, not practically. Or whether a movie — or a photograph — was shot using a digital camera or on film. Or whether a novel was written using a computer or with pen and paper.

I think most “AI art” today completely sucks. But not because it was made using AI generation tools. It just sucks period. Good art is being made with AI tools, though, and more — much more — is coming.

Thoughts and observations on the new M5 MacBook Pro, iPad Pros, and Vision Pro.