Good morning from my hotel room in Cupertino! I’m about to get ready for a big day at Apple Park, covering the newest iPhones and other gear. But after the Friday prediction newsletter, I had a fun idea. I present…the first-ever New Things Apple Keynote Drinking Game. More below!
After that, a recap of what has already been a crazy week in tech news: Meta’s new Muse AI agent, OpenAI’s new Image 2.5 model and a fresh batch of tech-movie trailers.
Today’s newsletter is a short one because, well, I have an Apple keynote to get to. But I’ll be back soon with a recap, videos and more.
On Friday, after I posted my Apple predictions newsletter, a reader—who also happens to host CNBC’s “Mad Money”—emailed me about the line I had in there about placing bets.
We started joking that the whole thing should be a drinking game.
So…here we are. The inaugural New Things Apple Keynote Drinking Game!
Now, obviously, here at New Things we do not condone excessive drinking of anything but water or coffee—especially not midday on a Wednesday. So think of this less as a drinking game and more as a fun way to watch the keynote.
Print it out and check off the boxes as they happen. Or download it and put these little game pieces we made over the predictions that come true.
One note on the design: I started messing around with the game board and prototyping ideas in ChatGPT, but I wanted the final thing to feel unmistakably New Things. So on Friday, I called an awesome designer, who took our original branding and illustrations—created by Brainstorm—and translated them into this very specific, very ridiculous Apple keynote game.
He used AI as a starting point for some of the tile illustrations, which were then manually edited, refined and integrated into the final design. I continue to believe that hiring great human designers, artists, editors, writers and other creatives is how we do the best work at New Things. Yes, they use AI, too, but as a tool, not a replacement for amazing taste, judgment and creativity.
OK, this is not an AI column. I have a keynote to get to.
Good luck on the game! Sip! Sip!
Meta Muse. There’s a new agent in town. Meta announced Meta Muse on Tuesday, though I’ve been testing it since last week. And it really is quite different from your average chatbot.
You set up Muse in its own app, then it can work behind the scenes on it’s own virtual machine in the cloud on tasks you assign it. I’ve asked it to track my flight (it did), book me a hair blowout (it tried; I had to finish the job and create an account) and text me throughout the day with updates on specific tech news I’m watching. You can also connect different apps and services to it. I still have more testing to do, but my first impression: I have been underestimating Meta in the consumer AI race.
ChatGPT Images 2.5. On Tuesday, OpenAI announced the release of a new image generation model, ChatGPT Images 2.5. The company says it has better visual fidelity, richer textures and improved speed at generating images. According to OpenAI, three billion images are created with its models each week—at least six of those were mock-ups of our Apple Keynote Drinking Game.
Tech Movies. It’s about to be tech-movie mayhem:
On Oct. 9, we get the “The Social Reckoning,” Aaron Sorkin’s follow-up to his 2010 Zuckerberg biopic.
On Oct. 16, we get “YOU CAN SEE EVERYTHING,” a documentary about Theranos’ Elizabeth Holmes, directed by Nathan Fielder. (More below on the absolutely bonkers trailer that premiered this weekend.)
Also on Oct. 16, Alex Gibney’s “Musk” documentary hits theaters.
Then on Christmas Day, the Luca Guadagnino-directed “Artificial,” whose trailer also dropped this week. Andrew Garfield plays Sam Altman during the OpenAI chief’s chaotic five-day firing from the company in 2023. Apparently Hollywood has decided tech executives are the new superheroes—or villains.
Please just go watch A24’s trailer for the new documentary, “YOU CAN SEE EVERYTHING.” I’ll wait.
OK, now you understand the level of wild we’re talking about.
Nathan Fielder—best known for Nathan for You and The Rehearsal—and co-director Lance Oppenheim spent time with Elizabeth Holmes during the weeks before she reported to prison in 2023 after being convicted of defrauding Theranos investors.
In the teaser, Holmes tells Fielder, “I don’t have anything to deceive you on. Of course I’m not deceiving you.”
People have compared the intense scene to trying to convince your dog there isn’t medicine in the peanut butter or convincing a toddler that he won’t like ice cream because its too spicy.
Fun fact: According to Mark Zuckerberg, the one thing that the 2010 biopic “The Social Network” got completely right was his wardrobe: a gray t-shirt every day.
This newsletter was written and curated by Joanna Stern and Adele Lowitz.
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