Apple Reveals $2K Foldable iPhone & NFL Australia Game Decided by Sleep?

0:00Are you sucking wind from trying to keep up with AI and its impact? Take a breather and tune in to the Intelligence Shift. Morning Brew's new podcast with PWC. It bridges the gap between big picture AI concepts and what it actually means in practice. Post-Dan Priest is joined by expert guest to discuss AI's role in sports, music, HR, and more. Listen to the Intelligence Shift wherever you get your podcasts. Good morning Brew Daily Show. I'm Neil Freeman. I'm Toby Howell. Today, how Sleep Good Decide Tonight's NFL Game in Australia. Then Apple just released the first ever foldable iPhone. It's Thursday, September 10th. Let's ride. It has come to my attention that an American legend is celebrating its 125th birthday this year. The peanut butter and jelly sandwich. The lunchbox staple first appeared in the Boston Cooking School magazine in 1901, introduced

1:01by Julia Davis Chandler as a fan-c T-time snack for wealthy people. Since then, as mass market peanut butter and machine slice spread became available, the old PB&J has become ubiquitous, whether in its traditional form or rift on in all the ways you can imagine. Toby, I know the PB&J is near and dear to your heart. I had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich every single day from kindergarten through high school. Nature's own branded honey wheat bread, jiff peanut butter, smuckers, raspberry jelly, literally thousands of them in my life. I consider myself an expert. So if you're looking for ways to judge up your PB&J game, here's some of my advice. Add some salty crunch to it. Very easy to just put some potato chips in there for a little bit of a textural experience. Another idea heated up on the griddle. Sometimes that would be my dessert after my dinner. I also have a hot peanut butter and jelly delicious, a little butter on the bread. Also a fluffernutter, not exactly a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, but I used to eat

2:01them at the camp I went to in Maine. Absolutely delicious. I don't want to know the nutritional value of that. If all else fails, just cut the crust off. Go uncrossable mode. If uncrossable is ever wanted to sponsor this podcast, I would be your biggest proponent. But happy 125th anniversary to the goat, the peanut butter and jelly. Now word from our real sponsor, hotels.com. I just stayed at the same hotel as the competitors in an acapella competition for a work trip. That sounds rough. It was, but business preferences from hotels.com can prevent horrible things like that from happening. It helps travelers find the right hotels faster by remembering their go-to work trip requirements. Travelers set their preferences once, including fully refundable stays, Wi-Fi, breakfast, gym access, and more, then future business trips searches automatically surface matching hotels. That way you can book work trips faster. Just set your preferences once and get results tailored to your business travel needs. Sign up for their free rewards program and start earning on every work stay at hotels.com slash morning brew.

3:02That's hotels.com slash morning brew loyalty members 18 plus. Apple hasn't entered a new product category since the Apple Watch came out in 2014. That changed yesterday with the announcement of the iPhone Duo, Apple's first foldable phone. Bringing a little origami to your doomschooling is Apple's bet that consumers are ready for drastically different and pricier iPhone experience. This thing is built like Marie's Jones Drew, short and stout. Its inside display stretches 7.6 inches, which is wider than a lot of the other Android foldables on the market, designed for watching video and multitasking. This outside display is just 5.4 inches shorter than most iPhones to allow it to fit into your pocket. The other thing that will help it fit into your pocket is the fact that you will have no money in it. The Duo starts at $1,999 with the fully tricked out model reaching over 3,000 thanks to upgraded memory. The W yesterday also marks the first new product released under new CEO John Ternis, who took

4:05over for Tim Cook at the start of the month. This is the former hardware lead at Apple, so his fingerprints are all over the Duo. Investors are hoping that Ternis can bring a little bit more of Steve Jobs' product flair back to Apple after years of steady financial stewardship under Cook. Investors for now don't quite know what to make of the Duo. The stock briefly jumped after the Duo was revealed but closed essentially flat on the day. In typical Apple fashion, this is a very polished product where the software shines just as much as the hardware. What did you think of the first ever foldable iPhone? Apple's back to innovation and they just solved one of the main issues plaguing our society. People pointed out that Apple has solved the boyfriend photography crisis. And you're nodding now because you go through this when you're taking a picture of someone, they don't know what they're seeing and what you're seeing and how it's going to look. But with the foldable iPhone, there's a screen on the back that people who are the subject of pictures can see what they're like when you take them.

5:05So I think this is going to be a big unlock for you and a lot of other boyfriends or husbands. Husbands, thank you very much. It was very interesting to see the use cases that Apple chose to highlight. That was definitely one of them. The other one I saw too is putting a little animation or something for a kid to look at. So instead of saying, here, look at me while I take your photo, they just look at you automatically because, you know, Snoopies on the back display. The other big thing that whenever you talk about foldable phones, you got to think about the crease. Like how is this going to look when it unfolds? And Apple seems to have nailed it with the crease. Marquez Brownlee writes that a big part of the visual minimization of the crease comes from the custom nanotextra matte finish that reduces reflections. Basically, what that means is it's not a very shiny screen. So you don't see the reflection of there is a crease there. Like it's impossible not to have some layer of crease there. But in terms of other phones on the market, it looks pretty dang good. The big thing yesterday as well on social media was Samsung chiming in. They tweeted about the foldable phone saying that, hey, their biggest treat was let us know

6:10when you're done reheating our leftovers. But they tweeted about it like 10 times. And it was really funny in the beginning and then it got not so funny. But all this to show that this is a mature product category. Samsung has been selling this since 2019. So Apple is doing its typical thing where it arrives late to a category, but just brings a more polished version. They think they can pull it off again with this foldable iPhone. It's mature, but like Maria Stone's drew, it's not big, which is why we didn't see huge move in Apple's stock price where this won't become a big line item for their revenue. Because last year, consumer electronics companies shipped about 20 million foldable phones. That's less than 2% of all smartphone shipment. They've been around for seven years, yes, Samsung, but you haven't really sold that many. There's tiny, tiny fraction arounding her in the entire smartphone market this year. In just three months that Apple will be selling this, it's expected to ship about 12 million foldables. That's more than half of the amount of foldables that were shipped last year.

7:10So it's expected to instantly grab 50% of the market. The question is, can Apple with this particular release, with this $2,000 perhaps sometimes $3,000 phone? The flip phone, can they grow the pie for everyone and maybe revolutionize this category that is in some ways mature? This is my big question. Do people want a $2,000 iPhone? And honestly, Apple's internal data shows that yes, people are willing to pay something like this. If you just take a fully tricked out iPhone 17, you can get it up pretty dang close to that $2,000 mark. $3,000 is just a totally different story. But I guess you're treating this as a multi-purpose tool. Maybe you are a creator and you need it. The other use case I saw in addition to boyfriend, husband, photography is you can put a teleprompter on the side and film yourself with a teleprompter looking at you. That's a big use case for creators. But that's my big question, Mark, is one, do people actually want this very bulky kind of awkward device in their pocket?

8:12And two, are they going to pay upwards of $3,000 for it? Yeah, the big example that Apple wanted to point out was that you can have two apps open at once. That wasn't the only thing that they released yesterday, just a quick recap of the other stuff. We had iPhone 18 Pro and the iPhone 18 Pro Max, which comes with better cameras and which come with greater battery life. They said this has incredible battery life up to 36 hours. We also had a new Apple Watch models coming out that include note-taking. We've talked about AI note-taking, those include that as well. But we didn't see a base model iPhone. That is going to come in the spring. The bottom line here is that the John Ternis era has begun. Moving on, Iron Man had Charvus walking, Phoenix had her. And now you too can have your own AI assistant attending to your every need, but user aware. On Tuesday, Meta unveiled its personal AI agent called Muse, joining a slew of startups and tech giants, releasing individualized bot secretaries this year.

9:12Muse was previewed in CEO Mark Zuckerberg's AI manifesto last month. When he predicted, everyone will have an exceptionally capable personal agent that understands you, your goals, and everything you care about. In practice, that means completing tasks like buying movie tickets, scheduling doctor's appointments, browsing for new clothes, or booking dinner reservations, all accomplished easily by integrating with your apps. Personal AI agents represent the next evolution of the chatbot. Similar to chatbots, you can type to them using plain language, but these agents go a step further. And instead of telling you what you need to do, for instance, cancel the subscription you never use, they just go ahead and do it. Sounds great, but people have reservations. Giving an agent access to your personal information, computer emails, and messages raises a number of privacy concerns, particularly with Meta, a company that has struggled to keep user data safe in the past. For Muse, Meta says it spills a fortress around your agent using an extremely secure architecture all while checking in with you, before making any decisions deemed sensitive or important.

10:13Toby, have you entered your agent era? I definitely played around with some of these because it's kind of all over social media at this point. I found it difficult to figure out what to do with them. I realized I didn't need to automate most parts of my personal life. The things that I did do is ask it to go through and audit my subscription, see what I was paying for that I didn't need to pay for. And that literally just combed through my inbox to find that. I also just looked at what other people were doing with them. Look what Zuck was doing with his Muse as he rolled out this new product. He instructed Muse to plan a baking project every weekend for him and his three-year-old daughter. He asked it to also look for climbing permits for his older daughter in an alert him when one becomes available in the gym. He asked it to review footage of himself fighting. So it's a very vast use case. One of those are necessarily something that are intuitive. It's very person by person. The big question here though is how willing are you to give it access to all parts of your

11:14life? Because the more access you give it, the better it is. But the more access you give it, the more sensitive information you are putting in the hands of these tech companies. Yeah. So just like Apple met us a little late to the game when it comes to AI assistance, obviously the game just started. But there's a number of startups, including one that is favored by the tech community called Instinct and that's big in the Bay Area. This is a big business. I mean, they have raised $350 million so far at a $2.5 billion valuation. They started last year. And I don't know, five years ago, we said this company started as one year old and they're already at a $2.5 billion valuation. You probably wouldn't believe me, but this is the AI revolution. I actually asked my group chat. It says anyone using Instinct and they said, no, what is it? And then I explained and they were like, oh, yeah, but I already used ChatGabeeT for this. And it seemed like that. And then one of them said, is it weird to put your credit card information into it? And then another guy was like, I don't have any money so I give it a full access. Well, actually, you actually hit on a very important point of why Instinct might be able

12:18to achieve mass adoption is the fact that it doesn't live in your chatbot. It doesn't live in ChatGabeeT. It lives in your eye message or WhatsApp. So they think that's the killer use case here. Is that being able to talk to an assistant in the place that you natively talk to everyone else, that is going to help it become ubiquitous. Back to Muse for a second, the reason why they think they're going to become ubiquitous is it lives on top of Instagram and Facebook. It lives on top of your social media. So the biggest use case is I was seeing is, hey, Muse, go through all the bookmarks I have of cafes in New York that I never actually revisit. Put them in a list and tell me which ones I should go to this weekend. For us, we're looking at playing a honeymoon. We're trying to go to Japan and we've saved a million videos. Go through all of those saved videos and pull out actual itinerary recommendations. The fact that it is integrated to Instagram might make it the preferred agent for people because so much of their life lives there as well. And Metastock was up over 6% yesterday on the news.

13:18So investors definitely like what they heard. Let's move on. The NFL kicked off last night with the Super Bowl Champion Seattle Seahawks squeezing the life out of the Tepeh-Dat New England Patriots. But the more intriguing matchup, at least from a travel perspective, is happening 4,000 miles away in Australia. The NFL's first foray down under will see the Rams take on the 49ers in a game where sleep is as big a storyline as anything going on on the field. There is a 17-hour time difference between the US's West Coast and Melbourne. A problem both teams chose to navigate in exact opposite ways. The 49ers got there early, leaving 8 days before the game, giving players ample time to try and adjust to the new time zone. The team arrived at that conclusion by consulting sleep experts and even sending staffers ahead on trial runs to see how their bodies reacted. The Rams presumably took the time change just as seriously and yet reached the Polar Opposite conclusion. They rolled in just 24 hours before game time with the hopes of keeping players on normal L.A. time.

14:19The reason it has confidence in the last minute travel plans is because it's worked before the Rams arrived just before their game in the London last season and trounced a playoff caliber opponent 35-7. As for the NFL, it is the league's first game in the Asia Pacific region as it kicks off a season that will feature a record 9 international games. It will no doubt be hoping it can convert some ball-carrying fans from rugby and Australian rules football over to the American way of doing things. But Neil, I'm so curious about this logistical battle. Same game, same sleep science available and yet two very different approaches. Which one do you prefer? Well, personally, if I'm going to Australia, I want to spend as much time as possible there because it is an extremely long flight and the 49ers have been there for seven, eight days now. Some great quotes coming out of the players and the coaches there. Christian McCaffrey, who's the running back said, the coffee here is unbelievable. I don't know why no one talks about that as much as they should have. I think it's kind of generally known that Australia has good coffee,

15:20but I'm sure in Melbourne it's actually amazing. And then Kyle Shanahan, the coach, said, I don't see kangaroos and crocodiles everywhere. I was expecting to see that. It looks like a very normal, cool city. I think this guy needs to get out a little bit more. I know. That's a classic American take on Australia. I'm taking the Rams approach though because the plane that they took over, it's a Qantas Airbus A380. It is the largest and most expensive commercial passenger airline ever built. The reason is they have a live flat seats for every single member of the team. So the Rams were just posted on social media like, oh my god, this plane is so bougie. They think that they are going to be able to get a good night's sleep, never really deviate from their actual schedule. And that is why they think this is a better approach. I do feel bad for one person in particular in this whole Australia saga. And that is 49ers defensive coordinator Rahim Morris. He turned 50 years old on Thursday, September 3rd. But that happened to be the day that the 49ers flew to Australia.

16:20So they left Wednesday night and arrived Friday morning. So quite literally his 50th birthday just dissolved into a time zone ether. So sorry, Rahim Morris. I hope someone gave you a cake. No matter whose sleep hacking wins outdoor is more effective for this particular game, it's another step in the NFL's big push internationally. I mean, they're going, they're going to be playing at Melbourne Cricket Ground. This is this huge stadium. It has more than 100,000 seats. It's the largest stadium in the Southern hemisphere. It's sold out. Actually, the 49ers are the biggest, most popular team in Australia. Because when the globe started paying attention to the NFL in the 80s, the Joe Montana and the Niners were really good. So they love the Niners. They're Roger Godell earlier this year. The commissioner has said, at some point, there will be NFL teams outside the USA. I have no doubt that this will happen one day. And I thought this was interesting. The reason that they picked Australia out of all places in the world, I know they have a lot of cities that they're playing in. But the Olympics are coming to Brisbane in 2032.

17:24And they think that this game in Australia or in Melbourne, which is, I guess, not that far from Brisbane, will cement the status of Flag Football in the Olympics. And the NFL uses Flag Football as a way of reaching its tentacles into the international community to eventually maybe lay the groundwork for potential. For a potential NFL team abroad one day. So they really want to use this as saying, people love Flag Football here in Australia. We need to put it in the Olympics in 2032 for that global visibility. All right, we're going to take a quick break and come back with Niels Numbers right after this. Niel, what's your plan for managing your money? Good one, Toby. Tell me another. Listeners, please don't take after my co-host. North, Western, Mutuals, comprehensive planning approach can give you peace of mind in an uncertain world. Whether you're just getting started or wondering if you're on the right track, they'll match you with a financial professional who will meet you where you are and ask better questions to uncover blind spots and find new opportunities.

18:24Get started at nm.com plus to better understand your finances, tune in to the award-winning podcast, A Better Way to Money. That's nm.com. The Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company, Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Toby, shoot. You want me to leave? No, I want you to talk about shoes from Ultra Running. They're designed to give you room for your toes for comfort, balance, and strength. Ultra has more room for your toes so they can spread out and your feet can stay in a natural position. Ultra does actually make shoes shaped like feet. What a concept. Use promo code MorningBrew10 for 10% off your first pair of Ultra Running Shows at ultra running dot com slash morning brew. That's a L T R A running dot com slash morning brew. Cyber security as we know it is dead. It's a figure of speech, but the truth is the old model was built on protection. Safety nets recovery plan systems designed to withstand the last era and maintain the status quo. The AI era demands confidence that you can secure and accelerate your business operations

19:29so nothing stops your momentum. Rubric can give you that confidence. Their singular platform is designed to secure your data, control your AI, and protect your identity built as one architecture, not stitched together after the fact. To learn more head to rubric.com slash mb that's rubrik.com slash mb. Welcome to Niels Numbers, the segment where I share three stats in the weeks news that will have your AI assistant asking you the questions. From my first number, football season is back and with it another spike in sports betting. New research from the Bank of America Institute shows just how much this already huge and controversial industry has grown over the summer with a warning about what it could do to your finances. First of all, the bank found that the average person loses money wagering on sports. They said that customers of all ages recovered less than 75 cents for every dollar they sent in each month this year. Those who do sports bet also have less money in the piggy bank than those who don't. Bank of America said that this year median deposit

20:30balances for betting households was at just 59 percent of non-betting households. Meanwhile, lower income households account for the largest share of sports bettors at 37 percent compared to 29 percent for the higher income group. Young people are leading the charge. In July when the world's cup was in full swing, Gen Z and millennials accounted for 88 percent of all online betting activity, likely driven by a surge in new gamblers. This summer, the number of first-time bettors was more than triple levels from January. It's a sign that people view sports betting not as a wager, but instead a 401k substitute. One in five Americans and two in five Gen Zers see sports gambling as an investment tool. That is probably the most alarming stat is that 20 percent Americans consider sports betting a type of investment. That's not even to talk about prediction markets that operate in an even merrier part of people's consciousness. Roughly a quarter to a third of most generations classified prediction market event contracts as some form of traditional investing.

21:32The ads too are just so inescapable at this point. Just in the last couple of weeks, LeBron is not leading a polymarket campaign. Sydney, Sweden, just starred in a no-vid campaign for their rollout. You go back Timothy Salome's in Kalshi. It just seems like these ads are muting the waters even further, making it seem like this is a real investment opportunity when it is much more akin to gambling. For my next, it is gambling. For my next number, Hollywood just had a fantastic nearly record breaking summer. Domestic ticket revenue from May 1 through Labor Day, the box offices summer season came in at $4.76 billion, the highest total since 2013 and the second highest of all time. New installments in long running franchises played a big role. Spider-Man brand new day led the way with almost $1 billion in sales in the US and Canada alone, followed by Toy Story 5. However, Hollywood also scored with a slew of original hits. Five movies, the Odyssey, Disclosure Day, Obsession, Backrooms, and Michael, all brought in at least $100 million

22:33in domestic ticket sales over the summer, the best performance for originals in five years. So, Hollywood is back, right? Everyone's going to the movies again? Not so fast because inflation. When you look at the actual number of people who saw movies in theaters, not just dollar grosses, you find a more sobering picture. This year through mid-August, domestic theaters sold nearly $570 million tickets, a 30% decline from the same period in 2019, and equivalent to 248 million lost moviegoers. But since ticket prices have jumped so dramatically, that shortfall is made up by people paying more. Still Toby, I think my takeaway for this summer is movie theaters are enjoying a renaissance. Yeah, industry watchers would definitely agree with you, and it was because this is not rocket science. There was a movie out there for everyone. It wasn't just superhero movies. This, if you go down kind of like the biggest temple projects of the year, if you're a 20-year old, you could go see backrooms because that's squarely in your demographic. If you are a family, you go see Toy Story 5. If you are a couple, you go watch The Devil, Where's Prada 2. If you're just

23:36anyone, you go watch The Odyssey, and then again, if you're just anyone, you go watch Spider-Man as well. So it wasn't just one demographic that was being fought over. It was multiple demographics and multiple generations that all had something at the theaters, which is why we saw such strong box office performance. For my final number, folks in Southern California have increasingly been forced to deal with an influx of new neighbors. They're swiping food, jumping and swimming pools unannounced, and will hurt you if you're not careful. They are, of course, black bears. According to The New York Times, black bear reports in California search to over 2700 last year, compared to just 425 a decade before. For various reasons, these bears had been making like bend folds in rocking the suburbs where they're coming snout to face with humans. One factor is, there's just more of these bears. California has 60,000 black bears, and it's the only bear species out of eight that is growing in number. Now, there are more American black bears than all other bear species combined. Researchers said that the bears may be encroaching on suburban areas after being driven out of

24:38their typical homes by a warming climate and wildfires. It's not a good thing for bears or for humans. It doesn't typically end well when a bear or any other animal becomes dependent on human food sources. As Dr. Arjun Deere of the State's Department of Fish and Wildlife told the Times, we want to keep bears wild. A fed bear is a dead bear. The New York Times's origin story for how black bears made it to Southern California is extremely interesting. You can trace it all the way back to 1933 and just 27 bears that were brought by a car salesman from Yosemite to the San Gabriel San Bernadino Mountains. At the time, Yosemite was dumping garbage into bear pits in order to attract tourists. As car salesmen said, hey, what if we did that in Southern California? He brought a bunch of bears down there. Now, there are roughly 2,000 descendants from those original 27 bears. All because a car salesman thought, hey, I can make a buck off of these animals. I mean, California has a long history with bears, especially in the north. Look at the

25:39California flag. But it's not a black bear. It's a grizzly bear and the Cal Berkeley, their mascot is the golden bears. That is the version of the California grizzly bear. That went extinct actually in early 1920. So maybe California should just change its flag to a black bear because they are everywhere there in the north and the south and the Hulu show. The bear. Maybe Fogo. I never actually even seen it and I know that's a Chicago. It's about cooking. Okay. Let's bring to the finish with some final headlines. Speaking at the GOP's midterm convention, President Trump issued an unusual pledge. He said he'd pay every American adult $5,000 if Republicans keep control of the House and Senate in the November elections, calling it the Trump dividend. The cost would likely exceed $1 trillion, far more than the U.S. brought in from tariffs and nearly as much as the defense budget for 2026. Critics of the proposal called the Trump checks a farce and a bribe. And one thing's for sure, it would need congressional approval. Trump loves this idea of

26:42direct checks. He floated one back in 2025. The dose rebate that all the proceeds that Elon Musk was going to save from the government would go back to Americans' pockets. That didn't happen. There was the 2025, 2026 tariff dividend where everyone was going to get $2,000 coming from all the profits reaped from tariffs. That never happened because of congressional approval. The one thing that did happen was one during his first term, COVID stimulus happened. And then also there's the 1776 warrior dividend that was set to 1.45 million service members back in 2025 December. That actually went through not because it received congressional approval explicitly is because it was part of the already appropriated $2.9 billion that went towards supplemental military housing. So again, the big question mark here is does this ever get congressional sign off? Probably not, given that the U.S. is already running at such a big deficit, this would just contribute to that. Finally, airport dads rejoice. You can hit the terminal even earlier and you

27:44don't even need a ticket. For the first time since the post 9-11 security overhaul, some people without a plane ticket can go through security all the way to the gate. The new program is called Gate Side by TSA Precheck. And let's precheck members get a free day pass to enter the secure side of the airport to send off a family member, meet a friend, or get drunk on $23 airport margaritas without actually having a flight. It's rolling out at 13 airports, including LAX, Dallas-Fort Worth, and Las Vegas with more coming soon. Neil, I better see you waving goodbye at the gate before the next wedding. I inevitably have to go to. You know, I'll be there, Toby. I am that airport dad. I ironically like spending time at the airport. I will go there hours before my flight needs to leave because it's just a vibe. But I thought it was one of the funniest comments, the top ring comment on Morning Brewster Instagram post about this was, oh yes, exactly what LAX needs, people that have no business being their occupying space. I also saw someone said that this is going to be a startup idea. Someone's going to start a co-working startup that you go and work in

28:45airports. And I literally could see you being a customer of like, huh, where do I want to work from today? Let's go to JFK and just take in the sights and sound. That is all the time we have. Thanks so much for starting your morning with us and have a wonderful Thursday to share your thoughts on the episode or anything else. Send an email to morningbrewdailyatmorningbrew.com or DM us on Instagram at MB Daily Show. Let's roll the credits. Emily Milliron is our supervising producer. Raymond Lue is our senior producer. Our producer is Olivia Graham and our associate producer is Olivia Leake, technical direction by Nina Miller. Hera makeup is jet lagged. Devon Emory is our president and our show is a production of Morning Brew. Great show, thank you. Let's run it back tomorrow.