đ If you think leaving your couch is overrated, youâre in good company. The cheapest ticket to this yearâs Super Bowl fell below $4k, a 30% decline over the last week and 50%+ cheaper than last year. We get it â just imagine what that $4k can get you on Uber Eats.
đ§ On the pod:How French retailer Decathlon quietly built a $16B sporting goods empire.
NEWS FLASH
đď¸ Itâs wrong to root for others to fail, but⌠it can be weirdly comforting to remember Amazon is mortal. The ecommerce juggernaut is closing another one of its brick-and-mortar Amazon Go convenience stores, now down to 16 locations, about half of its 2023 count. Paired with the past demise of its branded bookstores and fashion outlets, Amazonâs online dominance has been hard to replicate IRL, but that doesnât mean itâs giving up: The little $2.5T engine that could still has more Amazon Fresh grocery stores on the way.
đ Donât have the body composition to play in the NFL? There might be another way to win at the Super Bowl. Pat Riley, former NBA coach and president of the Miami Heat, could cash in on a Kansas City Chiefs win on Sunday without strapping on a helmet: the basketball legend trademarked the term âthree-peatâ back in 1989. The NFL reached an agreement with Riley, who holds trademarks on at least six variations of the phrase, to use âthree-peatâ on merch if the Chiefs win their third consecutive Super Bowl â a deal that could score him $1m+.
đą Screen time is now in session: Teens spend a quarter of their school days on their smartphones, according to a study led by Seattle Children’s Research Institute. The 117 teens, ages 13-18, spent an average of 1.5 hours on their phones during a 6.5-hour school day over two periods in 2023, with one in four teens spending more than two hours on their phone. What were the teens doing on their phones? Not learning algebra, thatâs for sure. The top five most-used app categories were messaging, Instagram, video streaming, audio, and email.
MORE NEWS TO KNOW
Talk about mixed messaging: Anthropic, the AI company behind chatbot Claude, is asking job applicants to promise that they wonât use an AI assistant when writing their application. Hm.
Waffles, hold the eggs? Waffle House is adding a temporary 50-cent-per-egg surcharge at its ~2.1k US locations due to the ongoing egg shortage. The chain serves 272m eggs annually â its most-ordered menu item.
Your pizza delivery mightâve been compromised: Grubhub was hit with a data breach, with hackers accessing the personal details of an undisclosed number of customers, merchants, and drivers.
GO HIGH PROFILE
LinkedIn = Launchpad for growth
How exactly did Mindstream bloom like a magical beanstalk and go from zero to 150k+ readers within a year?
You guessed it: by leveraging the tools and community on LinkedIn. Hereâs our full guide with co-founder Adam Biddlecombe, along with two other clean-cut essentials (the LinkedIn Profile Playbook + a 12-in-1 cheat sheet).
You donât even need to say âthank youâ â we can feel the gratitude from here.
Itâs been just over one year since Apple released the Vision Pro, the device that allowed users to experience the expensive thrill of wearing a Mac on their face.
Its first year was a mixed bag: Apple sold an estimated ~500k units in 2024, which certainly isnât nothing, but the vibes were still a little off.
It’s too early to call Vision Pro a flop, if only because Apple, as the company with the world’s largest market cap, gets benefit of the doubt.
But let’s just say, if this were any other company’s product, its mixed reviews, price complaints, plentiful returns, and narrow adoption would be readily viewed as hallmarks of a dud.
How can Vision Pro shake off its uneven freshman year and avoid a deeper sophomore slump?
More Vision, less pro
Ask MacRumorsor Apple Scoop, and theyâll suggest Apple is developing an âincremental updateâ to the Vision Pro.
Rather than a full revision, this could be a cheaper, less advanced model.
Think Vision as opposed to Vision Pro, like the distinction between regular iPhones and fancy iPhones.
Consumers have been slow to adopt the Vision Pro â itâs arguably just a weirder way to do the stuff a computer can do, after all â but that doesnât mean thereâs no market.
The Vision Pro is useful in operating rooms, perPopular Science.
It can replace physical monitors, freeing up space and reducing the need for surgeons to turn their heads.
Surgeons can also use the AR tech to practice on digital bodies.
What about glasses?
There is an obvious solution to the price and bulk of the Vision Pro: cheaper, sleeker AR smart glasses.
Metaâs Ray-Ban collab is still going strong, despite their potential for creepiness.
Meta reportedly has plans for a new version with a tiny screen in the lens.
But Apple has reportedly canceled plans for a competing product, as it apparently couldnât deliver the right processing power and battery life at the right price point.
Apple has shown no desire to add the Vision Pro to the list â Tim Cook hailed it in an earnings call just last week â though Bloombergreports that morale is iffy in its headset technology division.
(BTW, the same report says Apple is working on âAirPods with cameras,â whatever that means.)
It appears Vision Pro will hang around, perhaps waiting until its tech becomes more affordable and gives it a chance to really take off. Hopefully thatâs also long enough for Apple to convince everyone itâs actually cool.
Those golden arches never fade: Hereâs how McDonaldâs marketers keep Gen Zers coming back for more.
Have a pile of research that needs doing? OpenAIâs Deep Research could be a powerful solution.
NEWSWORTHY NUMBER
Copies sold of âThe Simsâ and its various sequels and expansions since it debuted 25 years ago. Over 500m people have played the life simulation game, with the latest iteration racking up 1.2B+ logged hours in 2024.
Creator Will Wrightâs game has allowed players to design lives for digital characters, defining everything from their home and clothes to their relationships and major life events, but Wright saw the game as a reflection on playersâ real lives, too, perNPR.
âEvery day, everything you do, youâre basically playing a strategy game, you know? Down to âwhat door am I going to walk throughâ or âam I going to go have lunch now or later?ââ
Fair point, and one that really makes you think about the myriad choices you have before you right now. Unless, of course, weâre all just Sims in someone elseâs gameâŚ
AROUND THE WEB
đ˝ď¸ On this day: In 1919, Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, and D.W. Griffith formed legendary film studio United Artists.
