Apple’s App Store Reign Ending? & Eyeball-Scanning Crypto's US Launch
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Good morning, Brew Daily Show. I'm Neil Freiman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today, Apple is facing some serious challenges. Unfortunately, Siri is too useless to help. Then Sam Altman's Iris scanning crypto startup is setting up shop in the U.S., so prepare your eyeballs. It's Friday, May 2nd. Let's ride.

You've all been in this situation. You get invited to a party, maybe a roof hang, which means you have to stop at the store on your way to pick up a six pack of something. What do you choose? White Claw? High Noon? Well, this year, the beverage industry thinks more people will buy canned vodka lemonade, which has already been dubbed unflavored.

the drink of the summer. Yes, vodka spiked lemonade. The brand Surfside popularized this drink back in 2022, and it's exploded in growth since. Now, everyone from Anheuser-Busch to Boston Beer Company to Dave Portnoy has hopped on the trend, releasing vodka, lemonades, and teas of their own in just the past few weeks. Toby, are you in or out on

lemonade. Every time I think we've invented every possible canned cocktail imaginable, the alcohol industry turns out a new one. But by new, I also mean old because they haven't created anything that a frat party in America hasn't already seen and drank a thousand times over. But yeah, this category is a

kind of an old thing. Surfside really did bring it to the forefront in 2022. In their first year on the shelves, they saw 563% growth and then can sales grew or case sales grew from 1.2 million in 2023 to 4.9 million last year. So maybe we're even a little late to this drink of the summer because it's clearly been growing for a few years now. But yeah, honestly, I'm just happy that we have X of the summer starting to drop because it's been a long winter.

And speaking of drinks, a word from our sponsor, Planet Oat. Neil, let's play a game of finish each other's sentences. Are you ready? Oh, man, I didn't know this was the direction we were going to go in. All right, hit it. You are the Neil to my... Toby. Yes, exactly. All right, let's keep going. You are the Planet Oat extra creamy oat milk to my... Ice coffee. You are the Planet Oat barista lovers oat milk to my... Latte. You are the Planet Oat

French vanilla oat milk creamer to my... French roast hot coffee. Wow, Planet Oat really does pair well with everything. Rich, creamy, and velvety. Plus, it's dairy-free, peanut-free, and gluten-free. The perfect way to start your day, no matter what you're pairing it with, like you being the Toby to my Neil. Let's ride. Get your hands on the oat milk that has it all. Visit planetoat.com for more. Did you hit an Apple store for a new iPhone before tariffs kicked in?

That wasn't very original. Apple reported its highest revenue for a March quarter in over two years as Americans appeared to scoop up more of its products, fearing they'd get a price hike due to higher import costs. Overall, Apple sales rose 5% for the quarter, beating expectations, driven by higher iPhone revenue that analysts attributed not only to incoming tariffs, but the debut of its lower-priced phone, the 16E.

It has been a crazy few months for Apple. Tim Cook can't have been getting much sleep. The face of the trade war, Apple stock tumbled more than 20% in just four days after President Trump announced 145% tariffs on China, where 80% of its iPhones are made.

But then it had its best one day gain since 1998 after Trump said that smartphones and other Apple products would be exempted from those super steep tariffs. Despite the big sales beat, it's still stormy steez out there for the world's most valuable company. Ominously, China revenue fell 2.3%, a bad sign in its second biggest market where it's competing with fast growing homegrown rivals.

And its fast-growing service division think subscriptions like iCloud and Apple Music didn't grow as fast as expected last quarter. Toby, this Apple doesn't quite have that loud crunch when you bite into it. It's a bit more mealy. Yeah, Tim Cook hadn't really spoken about tariffs since January of this year. And even then he said Apple was just monitoring the situation. But now he said that

Apple could see a $900 million cost related to tariffs in the next quarter. It was interesting, though, what he said about Apple retail stores being flooded by new people trying to beat the tariffs and buy new iPhones. He actually says that those sales wouldn't show up in the March quarter, even though a lot of analysts were like, no, they definitely showed up in the March quarter. You saw this boost in iPhone sales. And he said that it's mostly going to be in the next quarter coming up. So he's unsure of the impact on the current period. So who knows if that was just

CEO speak, or if it really was that, hey, we didn't actually see as much demand pulled forward as maybe analysts are expecting. The other thing that they did touch on too is the company's AI strategy, which has been much maligned because Apple intelligence really hasn't been what a lot of people expected it to be. And analysts

straight up asked Cook, he's like, hey, do you think you're doing well? Like what's going on with Siri? Why did we delay that? And Cook kind of sidestepped the question again, saying that we just want the features to meet Apple's high quality bar. So that's another question mark down the line of if Apple can figure out its AI strategy, because right now it's not really working. And that's really hurting it in China, where consumers do expect AI integrations with their phones. Maybe here in America, we're fine just having a normal smartphone. But over there, they

really do care about having the latest whiz bang technology in their phones. And China is a super critical market for Apple. And that's why shares fell more than 2% after hours was because of this miss, this fall in growth in China. It's lost ground to those local phone brands like Huawei and Xiaomi. It doesn't have, you know, the, the,

It's not matching those companies when it comes to technology. And this is just such a critical market for Apple. Don't even think about the tariffs, but they make phones there, but they also sell phones there. 19% of their revenue comes from China. 43%, 57% of the revenue comes from Apple.

outside the Americas. So it's these foreign markets that are faltering for Apple. It did well in North America, 8% sales growth, but outside of America is where these warning signs are really popping up and it doesn't even have anything to do with tariffs. And then the final aspect of Apple's business that-

did all right is services, which is, you know, app store revenue, Apple TV plus that sort of thing that grew 12%. That was right in line with expectations, but that business is under threat from a few areas. Namely, there was this app store ruling that is poised to hurt the platform's revenue. And let's talk about that ruling because Apple took this major L at the hands of Epic games this week after a judge ruled that the so-called 30% Apple tax was

on app transactions is dead. The backstory here is that the Fortnite maker Epic Games took Apple to court to fight against what it saw as anti-competitive practices like charging developers a 30% fee on in-app purchases. Back in 2021, a US district judge

Gonzalez Rogers sided with Epic and ordered Apple to give developers more leeway on payments. Apple took the fight to the Supreme Court, but whiffed, and then turned around and created a new system that forced apps with external sales to pay a 27% fee. Epic Games saw this and said, whoa, whoa, whoa, you are blatantly violating the court's orders by continuing to oppose those fees.

And Judge Gonzalez-Rogers agreed. She said in an 80-page ruling released this week that Apple was failing to comply with her prior orders and even called out execs by name, saying Cook chose poorly. And Apple's VP of Finance outright lied under oath to gain an anti-competitive advantage. So this has felt like this never-ending battle between these two companies. But against all odds, it looks like Apple has been disqualified.

defeated this, uh, judge ruling. I mean, this was more cringy to watch than the roast of Tom Brady. I mean, she laid into Apple executives saying they lied under oaths. She referred them to be investigated for criminal contempt. So things could get serious. I was looking at Apple stock price after this ruling came out. It didn't budge so much. So investors maybe aren't so worried, uh,

about the hit to the app store, but there could be consequences because Apple gets tens of billions of dollars in revenue from its app store, from that 30% commission that it charges developers. So we'll see whether this is the ruling that finally cracks open that closed garden of the app store that developers like Epic

games have been trying to claw back for so long. And Epic games was obviously maybe the sacrificial lamb here. They took the fight to Apple, but other apps have been in other companies have been very closely monitoring the situation because Spotify just submitted yesterday, an app update that includes an ability to link out to,

the web for the payment, which finally escapes that closed garden that you're speaking about. So other companies were sitting and waiting on this moment because they're like, hey, we don't want to pay the piper 30% every time you buy something within our app. We should be able to handle that payment ourselves. So it wasn't just an Epic versus Apple thing. It was really an Epic versus Apple versus the entire app store sort of thing. Take off your glasses and clear the sleep from your eyes because Sam Altman's Iris scanning crypto project

world is coming to the United States. After spending years dutifully scanning eyeballs outside U.S. borders, the regulatory environment under Trump's crypto-friendly administration made it possible for Altman & Co. to unveil both its physical orbs and its crypto token inside U.S. borders.

The stated goal of World is to make World ID the primary method for verifying humans online. If that sounds like the arsonist putting out the fire, it kind of is. Altman's role in advancing artificial intelligence at OpenAI is part of the reason why Altman feels like there needs to be a system for distinguishing real humans from computers.

World thinks that the way to do this is to gather biometric data on millions of people via scans of their eyeballs, then assign each one a digital ID that lives on the blockchain. To incentivize this more than slightly black mirror-y concept, volunteers receive 16 world coins, the crypto aspect of the project, that Altman thinks can act as a universal basic income for millions.

If that all sounds like something you want to try, you can hit up a WorldSpace location around Atlanta, LA, Miami, Nashville, or San Francisco to get your ID into the system. And if that sounds like something you don't want to try, just close your eyes, Neil. I mean, this company has kind of trotted all around the world for the past couple of years trying to scan people.

People's eyeballs in various countries. They say they've got 12 million people signed up across 100 countries, but pretty much everywhere they've went, they've received pushback. Brazil and Hong Kong have banned world coin Kenya, Portugal and Spain all instituted temporary restrictions.

after world hopped into town. And that's because they are worried about this one particular company collecting reams of biometric data and all of the security and privacy concerns that come with it. So we'll see what happens. Certainly the regulatory environment has changed in the United States from the Biden's more crackdown on crypto to the Trump administration's more laissez-faire policy.

approach to crypto. So they decided now is time to come to the United States and see how many eyeballs they can scan. But truly this, you know, when you take a step back and think about the implications of why this company exists is to verify humans versus bots. And that's because Sam Altman, you know, has been labeled as the person who popularized AI. And there's going to be so much spam and bots out there that eventually we won't be able to distinguish between humans and bots. So we need our irises scanned. I mean, it's all a little crazy to think about.

It's crazy, but it is where we are heading. And Tools for Humanity, which is the parent company of World, is signing real-world partnerships to put this into action. They announced this partnership with Match Group to provide age verification for Tinder users, specifically in Japan. So that is real-world utility right there. A lot of people have pushed back against this, though, and say, hey, this is a problem that needs to be solving, but this probably isn't the way to do it. Some crypto people on Twitter were saying that

It's much better to have a continual verification system because if you just scan in once and you have the ID, then you have this very valuable data set of, quote, real people that you could buy, that you could steal, that you could hack and use for nefarious purposes. So maybe a continuous re-enrollment system is better than a one-time verification system. This company is huge. This is one of the biggest crypto projects anywhere in the world. They've raised $240 million.

million dollars from Andreessen Horowitz. And you know who else thought it was a good idea? Sam Baikman Freed. He was an investor before he went to jail. Well, it's Friday, which means it's Stock of the Week, Dog of the Week time, where we bring you one stock that cooked its pasta perfectly al dente and one stock that left it in too long and made some mush. Despite the market's mini run the past few days, S&P 500 has finished up eight straight days. It still had its fair share of mush.

So we're bringing you two dogs of the week. And since I won the pre-show game of golf, yes, just golf, I'm up first. And my dog of the week is Amazon. Amazon reported earnings yesterday and actually beat expectations, bringing in $155 billion in revenue. But it was the softer than expected guidance that caused its stock to slip as much as 5% after hours.

Its revenue and income forecasts weren't way outside of what analysts were expecting, but it was the mention of some tariff uncertainty and recession fears that spooked investors. Another potential warning sign was that its important Amazon Web Services unit missed expectations for the third straight quarter, but still grew at a 17% clip.

CEO Andy Jassy said Amazon is well-positioned to weather any tariff headwinds because it has such a diverse seller base, they can probably dodge and weave some costs being passed onto consumers and could emerge from all of this stronger, much like it did after the pandemic.

It really is the unpredictable tariffs ahead that make planning more difficult, which is probably why we saw this negative reaction from investors, despite the relatively strong report. And this morning, Amazon is only down about 2% in pre-market trading. So I'm calling this a baby dog of the week, a puppy of the week, if you will, Neil. Yeah, I mean, we talked about Apple being, you know,

exposed to tariffs, but Amazon is probably, if Apple's 1A, Amazon is 1B. It imports roughly a quarter of items it sells from China. Those third-party vendors from China are so critical to populating its marketplace, and it also has a fast-growing app.

business, which is number three after Meta and Google. And that is also exposed to potentially drawbacks in ad spending from Chinese e-commerce companies that are looking at these tariffs and say, I don't want to really spend money advertising to American consumers anymore because it's going to be

so expensive. So maybe, you know, Amazon is facing these particular challenges, but you're right. It has an insane scale and logistics operation and diversification of suppliers that might help it weather the storm. And what you're seeing with these tariffs is the biggest companies like Apple and Amazon are sounding pretty confident saying that they can weather them. Meanwhile, it's the small businesses that don't have the scale that

will have to raise prices that are getting whacked. One final e-commerce headwind that we have to mention is that this major loophole that let you get all those cheap fast fashion items directly from China actually closed one minute past midnight last night. That is the day day minimus exemption, which allows shipments of goods worth under $800.

to come into the US duty free. This is what led to the rise of Timu, what led to the rise of Sheehan. So there was just this huge volume of packages coming into the country, but now that loophole is officially closed. So if you haven't felt the bite and the sting of tariff rises in prices, you might start feeling it now because Sheehan and Timu definitely have to raise prices if that exemption is closed, which it just was as of midnight. Up next, we got Neil's dog of the week.

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My dog of the week is McDonald's, because when you're feeling a bit nauseous, the last thing you want to guzzle down is a double quarter pounder with cheese. McDonald's reported yesterday that economic uncertainty and a more cautious consumer caused same store sales to drop three point six percent in the United States last quarter. That's its steepest fall since the spring of 2020 when no one was leaving their house.

Globally, same-store sales fell for the second straight quarter and shares dropped nearly 2%. On the earnings call, execs said, "...in most of our major markets, we're seeing a similar story in regards to the challenging industry environment and softening consumer sentiment."

Let's deal with those one by one. A challenging industry environment. McDonald's is the face of the fast food industry that's seeing traffic dry up right now. Just this week, Domino's, Starbucks, Pizza Hut and KFC all warned that business was slowing down in the United States. Now softening consumer sentiment. McDonald's CEO blamed this one on geopolitical tensions, a.k.a. the trade war, that added to uncertainty and dampened consumer sentiment more than we expected.

Toby, the drive-thru lane is not exactly a party right now, but McDonald's may have a few cards up its sleeve that it thinks will bring it back to growth. Yeah, in Q1, they had this revamped value menu that was supposed to drive traffic. But actually, what ended up driving a lot of traffic was this meal promotion with McDonald's

a Minecraft movie. It was probably the most successful aspect of getting people back into McDonald's. So one, they're going to lean further into that partnership and partnerships like that in the future. But also the shift in focus is to next week's release of the new chicken strips coming out of McDonald's because they have been, fans have been clamoring for this item to return.

Obviously, chicken is the hottest new thing in fast food. There's the chicken Big Mac that it rolled out. There's the chicken sandwich wars. Everyone loves chicken, so it's really leaning on chicken to try to get it out of its slump. And then also, the beloved snack wrap is rumored to return. We don't know exactly when.

when it will return, but I personally am very excited for that. And then the final thing outside of chicken, because I can't say chicken anymore, is that the chain is testing out these new customizable drinks with some franchisee later this year, and that comes from learning from Cosmix, which is its Dutch Bros-esque drive-thru coffee and drink purveyor that it's been

testing out over the last few years. So it's got a few things that it's cooking up to try to, you know, bring those people back, say we're still the McDonald's, you know, and love. And a lot of them, you know, have to do with chicken. Well, at some point they're just going to have grimace throw out the first pitch at a Mets game and, you know, everyone's going to go crazy and we'll see same store sales rise 10%. So if, if none of this chicken stuff works, they'll just, you know, toss them out at city field. Okay. Let's sprint to the finish with some final headlines.

In a crossover episode of Corporate America Meets Bravo, Kohl's has fired its CEO, Ashley Buchanan, after they found he directed the department store to strike a, quote, highly unusual multimillion dollar business deal involving a woman he was having a romantic relationship with. A board investigation found two instances in which Buchanan violated the company's code of conduct.

though they did not name the individual he had a relationship with. The Wall Street Journal, citing internal sources, said the woman Buchanan was funneling business to was Chandra Holt, the former CEO of Bed Bath & Beyond, who met Buchanan while they were both working at Walmart.

As if Kohl's didn't have enough problems while it tries to turn around a struggling business with a revolving door of CEOs, Buchanan was on the job for just about 100 days, and now they must look for their fifth chief executive in the last three years. And the worst part is, is that

Kohl's shares kind of soared yesterday on this news. They were up as much as 8% at one point, which just shows how much that maybe he wasn't doing that great of a job. So even though that the market said, okay, let's get a new CEO in here because Buchanan wasn't the guy, it does kind of, analysts were saying that this does show that it gives the impression that Kohl's is in this perpetual state of chaos because you have so many people coming through who

who are trying to lead the company. So just raises a lot of questions about the due diligence of the process and why the stock jumped 8% after it just wasn't a good hire in the first place. So tough because you're right, they have been dealing with competition from online e-commerce, high inflation, this pullback in consumer spending, this economic uncertainty, and now uncertainty around the CEO position as well.

Microsoft is once again the biggest company in the world after an earnings beat, and they didn't get there by making things cheaper. Yesterday, the tech giant raised prices across its Xbox lineup from soup to nuts, jacking up the price of consoles, controllers, and some new games. The reason for the price hikes, according to Microsoft, is market conditions and rising development costs.

And while it did not explicitly mention tariffs, it did acknowledge that its reliance on overseas manufacturing has led to some uncertainty. It all adds up to an Xbox X series that now costs $599, while a base controller will set you back nearly 70 bucks

It ain't cheap being a gamer these days, Neil. It's not. And everyone's looking forward to, not looking forward to, maybe bracing for the holiday season because, you know, the Xbox and controllers and gaming hardware is a very popular item to have. We'll see how this competes with the price hikes against the new Switch 2 that is coming out. That is $450. Nintendo opted to not raise the price there.

But, you know, I think this bodes a little ominously for how expensive it's going to be to buy gifts all the way in November. I mean, even earlier this week, President Trump kind of acknowledged that toy shortages and price hikes were going to be possible. He said, well, maybe the children will have two dolls instead of $30, and maybe the two dolls will cost a couple of bucks more. That's a comment that raised a little bit of eyebrows. But you're already seeing price hikes from Xbox, and it's probably not going to be the last

toy or gaming company that's jacking up prices because of quote unquote market conditions, AKA tariffs. MoviePass, yes, that MoviePass is trying to regain its relevance by going after a more degenerate audience than even the most passionate of popcorn and drink throwing movie fans, sports gamblers.

It just launched Mogul, a daily fantasy game where players can run virtual movie studios using real box office data to compete with one another. Just like in fantasy football, players can draft actors, directors, and entire films based on how well you think they'll do at the actual box office role.

on Rotten Tomatoes or during awards season. For now, the rewards aren't big cash prizes, just digital in-game currency. But the idea is to eventually offer real money prizes down the line. You know, MoviePass is a company and brand that just won't seem to die. And now it thinks fantasy gaming is its way back to your attention.

If you told me two years ago that someone would be betting on box office results or Rotten Tomatoes scores, I would probably be like, I really don't think people care about that. They just kind of want to watch movies. But since we've seen these prediction markets come online, you have people betting on everything from, you know, the CPI report to which country the Pope's going to be from. So I see a world in which somebody bets on something.

on Snow White to bomb at the box office or George Clooney's new movie to rake in $80 million or the upcoming F1 movie to go above or below $100 million opening. So I see what MoviePass is doing here, and you're right. It just won't go away. Yeah, and it has 400,000 users on the early access wait list. So I do think there is a demand for this because I do –

when a movie's coming out, I'm like, I think this is going to do bad. Like Thunderbolts, for instance, this new Marvel movie, that's a very polarizing movie. It's a very little-known cast of characters. It could massively overperform because it's something different, or it could massively underperform. And it would be fun to set a daily fantasy lineup and actually have some stake in the outcome of how that movie does.

Well, if you need me on Saturday afternoon, I will be three mint juleps deep watching the Kentucky Derby, the start of horse racing's triple crown season. The run for the roses, as it's always been for the last 151 years, will be held at the storied Churchill Downs racetrack in Kentucky. A horse race.

named Journalism, yes, Journalism, is the favorite, considered the best horse in the field in terms of pedigree, speed, and distance. But its investigative reporting could be squashed by the return of legendary trainer Bob Baffert, who has a horse in the race after being banned by Churchill Downs for three years over a doping scandal. Toby, what are you watching for this year at Churchill Downs? Well, number one, I'm seeing if journalism can break the chalk

Cursed because it enters as a 3-1 favorite. But no favorite has won the Derby since Justify back in 2018. So it's been a little bit. But I'm also looking at the weather forecast because it looks like Louisville, Kentucky is going to get some rain. So it could favor mud rain.

runners um and one mud runner that i want you guys to look at his final gambit 30 to 1 long shot but he won his maiden on a rainy day so he could fare well in those adverse money conditions though he has never won a run on dirt before so that's another question mark so you know don't don't write that daily come for the businesses stay for the horse betting tips i know seriously and i got some more

for you if you want them. I'm curious. There's some post positions that you want to avoid. Citizen Bowl drew the number one post position, which hasn't produced a Derby winner since 1986. So avoid number one. And then Sandman, which is actually one of the favorites, 6-1, got a really unlucky drawing of post 17. That

gate has never won a Derby since its introduction back in 1930. So if you are a superstitious or even a little stitious, avoid post number one and number 17. And then if you want some long shots as well, because there have been long shot winners in the last few years, rich strike was 80 to one in 2022. Mystic Dan was 18 to one in 2024. So again, look out for

Final Gambit. And finally, Publisher at 20 to 1 because I'm going for Publisher because publishers are more important than journalism. And if you ask me to unpack or defend that, I can't, so do not ask. Okay, let's wrap it up there. Toby is excited for the Kentucky Derby. I mean, it always is a great event. But thanks so much for starting your morning with us. Have a wonderful Friday and an even better weekend.

For any questions, comments, or feedback on the show, send an email to morningbrewdaily at morningbrew.com. Let's roll the credits. Emily Milliron is our executive producer. Raymond Liu is our producer. Our associate producers are Olivia Graham and Olivia Lake. Scoops Gardaris is on audio. Hair and Makeup is out getting their eyeballs scanned. Devin Emery is our president, and our show is a production of Morning Brew. Great show today, Neil. I wish you all well.