Tag: Heats

Apple-Meta Fitness Race Heats Up

Bella

A sealed copy of Electronic Arts’ 1990 video game “John Madden Football” sold for $35,000 on eBay Tuesday night, hours after Madden’s unexpected death was announced.



As Apple and Meta continue to make significant investments within the wellness and fitness spaces, retaining top talent has become imperative — and competitive.

Apple, which recently unveiled its Series 7 watch and a number of other health and fitness products, is giving out surprise bonuses to employees in an attempt to keep talent from leaving as it faces more direct competition from Meta on wearables, VR, and AR.

Meta reportedly plans to launch its own smartwatch as early as 2022 and has hired around 100 engineers from Apple in the last few months as it pushes more aggressively into hardware.

  • Meta’s watch will act as a phone, camera, and fitness tracker.
  • While Meta has publicly embraced VR and AR, particularly through its Oculus Quest headset, Apple reportedly has hundreds of employees working on a VR/AR headset and integrations with its existing devices. 
  • Over the summer, an Apple developer noticed code in the Oculus system that suggested that Facebook was considering integrating data from its Oculus Move VR fitness program into Apple’s Health app.

Fitness Is The Future

CEO Tim Cook has said he believes Apple’s lasting legacy “will be in the health and wellness area.” Handing out engineer bonuses of up to $180,000 may help that vision come to fruition.

Apple’s stock is up over 38% on the year, as it climbs toward a $3 trillion market cap.

Peloton/Design: Alex Brooks

Peloton is ending the year on an ominous note, if the tale told by Google search volume is to be believed.

U.S. search trends for Peloton show a 30% year-over-year drop in the fourth quarter of this year.

… Read More

Why Heat’s Jimmy Butler offers great value as long-shot MVP bet this season

Bella

Jimmy Butler is not, by nature, an especially aggressive player. When he joined the Miami Heat for the 2019-20 season, he didn’t even lead the team in shot attempts. That honor belonged to undrafted rookie Kendrick Nunn. The 13.1 attempts he did take per game matched the total that his predecessor as the face of the Heat franchise — Dwyane Wade — took as a rookie in the 2003-04 season. The Heat have been tremendously successful with Butler by running Erik Spoelstra’s equal-opportunity offense. Entering this season, there was no reason to believe that was going to change. 

The Heat did, after all, give Kyle Lowry a hefty three-year, $85 million deal. They re-signed Duncan Robinson for five years as well. Tyler Herro is well on his way to a bounce-back year after disappointing as a sophomore last season, and much to the delight of the organization after steadily pushing him to be more assertive, Bam Adebayo is averaging a career-high 20.6 points per game. That’s a lot of mouths to feed, but through six games, Butler is eating more than ever. 

In those six games, Butler is averaging career highs in both points (25.3) and field goal attempts (17). He’s shooting a career-best 52.9 percent from the field and 89.1 percent from the line. As the entire basketball world around him struggles to draw fouls with the league’s updated rules on offensive players initiating contact, Butler’s 7.7 free throw attempts per game are fourth in all of basketball and first among non-big men. He’s getting to the basket more at the age of 32 than he ever has. Not only are his 7.3 shots per game in the restricted area a new career high, but it currently places him in a tie for sixth place in all of basketball

… Read More