Charlotte Henry

LONDON – Apple could be on its way to one of the most prestigious parts of London. The London Evening Standard reported that a new Apple Store will open in the Knightsbridge area, which is best known for Harrods. If it comes to fruition, the new location will be the firm’s 6th retail outlet in the UK’s capital.

Property sources said the iPhones maker has agreed to open a 20,000 square feet Knightsbridge store between high-end department stores Harrods and Harvey Nichols. It is understood to have signed a deal with Chelsfield, the property asset manager overseeing the makeover of The Knightsbridge Estate on behalf of its owner, Saudi Arabia’s Olayan Group. Agents CWM and CBRE are retail letting agents on the building.

In May 2018, I reported for TMO on a popular new quiz app.  HQ Trivia raked in users and soared up the App Store chart. Since then, tragedy has struck. CEO Colin Kroll was found dead, aged just 34. Techcrunch reported that current CEO, Mr. Kroll’s co-founder Rus Yusupov, is battling plummeting ratings and a staff mutiny.

By February 2019, HQ’s staff was fed up. Two sources confirm that 20 of the roughly 35 employees signed a letter asking the board to remove Yusupov and establish a new CEO. With HQ’s download rate continuing to sink, they feared he’d run the startup into the ground. One source suggested Yusupov might rather have seen the whole startup come crashing down with the blame placed on the product than have it come to light that he played a large hand in the fall. The tone of the letter, which was never formally delivered but sources believe the board knew of, wasn’t accusatory but a plea for transparency about the company’s future and the staff’s job security.

macOS 10.15 will have a new feature allowing users to send a window to an external display. That display could be an iPad, as well as a standard external display, reported 9to5Mac. The reported feature, nicknamed ‘Sidecar’, seems to be Apple’s version of Luna Display. The new version of macOS is expected to be unveiled at WWDC in June.

According to people familiar with the development of macOS 10.15 – the next major version of Apple’s desktop OS – the new system will have a feature that allows users to send any window of any app to an external display. The external display can be an actual external display connected to the Mac or even an iPad. The new feature – called “Sidecar” internally – can be accessed via a simple menu. This new menu will be opened by hovering over the green “maximize” button in a Mac app window for a split second.

The EU Parliament voted to approve controversial copyright reforms Monday. The reforms included provisions known as  ‘Article 13. That section makes firms responsible for copyright material on their platform. Article 11, which says aggregators must license content that is more than a “short extract”, was also approved.  AppleInsider reported that the changes will be implemented within 2 years.

Known as Article 13, the most controversial element makes firms put more efforts into policing the content on their services, including properly licensing copyrighted material, or be held liable for illegally shared content. The rules not only apply to firms based in the European Union, as it also will impact practically every company that has an online presence accessible within the EU, including those on other continents. The full rules apply to larger firms, but smaller companies and startups have relatively fewer requirements.

Ian Mcewan does not like science fiction. However, for his latest work, he imagined a dystopian time in which humans live alongside AI-powered robots. He also brought the acclaimed computer scientist Alan Turing back to life and had him solve one of the major unsolved problems in the field. He told Wired why.

In Machines Like Me, he imagines that the mathematician and codebreaker didn’t die by suicide at age 41 but lived on to crack P versus NP, a major computer science problem that in reality remains unsolved. In the world of the novel, this opens a path toward artificial minds that can learn, think – and fall in love.

A biography of Tim Cook will be released Tuesday. Author Leander Kahney spoke to AppleInsider and told them about the Apple CEO’s core values, his transition to being the main man, and the key differences between him and Steve Jobs. We’ll have a review of the book on TMO in the coming days.

Cook is more collaborative. Remember when they fired Forstall? They put out that press release, and it was kind of like, “We’re make some changes here at Apple, we’re making everything more collaborative. Jony Ive’s got more responsibilities.” They mentioned all this stuff and said, “Oh, by the way we fired Scott Forstall.” Looking back on that, I think it was kind of like Tim Cook’s sort of “Think Different” moment.

In a fascinating interview with Bloomberg TV, Disney Chairman and CEO Bob Iger discussed the new Disney+ streaming service. In the course of the conversation, he revealed that the service will be available via Apple TV. He also confirmed he will be staying on Apple’s board. That is despite the fact the two firms are going to be competing directly against each other in streaming.

The new Disney+ app will “in all likelihood be available through traditional app distributors, Apple being one of them,” Disney chief Bob Iger said in an interview with Bloomberg Television’s Emily Chang. While the studio behind “Star Wars” and Marvel movies said during an earlier presentation that consumers will be able to subscribe on Roku and PlayStation, it held back from naming others. Disney didn’t make announcements about other platforms because they “haven’t made deals with all of them yet,” Iger said. He also suggested that he isn’t planning to step down from the Apple board despite the companies going head-to-head in streaming

The image of Dr. Katie Bouman clasping her hands in glee next to her MacBook Pro as data from space downloads is almost as famous as the image she helped create. Dr. Bouman wrote the algorithm that helped produce the first-ever image of a black hole. The Telegraph published a biography of the acclaimed computer scientist and electrical engineer.

Dr Bouman’s CV reveals an impressive academic record in electrical engineering and computer science. She has studied at some of the best institutions in the world, getting an undergraduate degree from the University of Michigan, and a Masters and PhD at MIT, winning prizes and scholarships along the way. In 2017, as a graduate student, she took up her role leading the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) team – which made the black hole picture possible – based out of the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics, in Massachusetts

People in Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin may have initially been happy when they heard Foxconn was coming. The company promised  13,000 jobs would be created. But, according to the Verge, things have all got a little confusing.

Mount Pleasant residents engage in Kremlinology based on overheard conversations at local bars and which contractors are seen coming and going from the site, which is heavily patrolled by private security. Even then, appearances can be misleading. Most of the construction that was visible from the roads in Mount Pleasant this winter wasn’t being done by Foxconn, but by government contractors building roads and utilities. As for the innovation centers announced across the state, Foxconn has bought property, but beyond that, much is unclear, including what an “innovation center” actually is.

Gaming is one of the most exciting, and tangible, applications of VR. Wired spoke Tsubasa Sakaguchi, who leads software development for Nintendo Labo, the company’s DIY VR kit. He revealed that Nintendo focused on the physical sensations associated with VR, not the screen.

Though Labo is designed primarily for entertainment, says Sakaguchi, he notes that this creative element and the company’s focus on involving young children has led to the game being introduced in schools and museums. “It’s a joy for us,” he says, “but we secretly expected it.” Sakaguchi hopes that Labo will provide players with a compelling introduction to VR.

Beth Galetti is not one of the most famous names in tech. But she’s one of the most influential. Fast Company‘s Harry McCraken spoke to Amazon’s HR chief, the only woman in Amazon’s Senior Team, on her role and the firm’s massive recruitment drive.

Like most–okay, all–HR executives, the 46-year-old Galetti isn’t exactly famous. But in her nearly six years at Amazon, three as a division leader, she has quietly become one of its most influential figures. Galetti is the highest-ranking woman at the company, and the only woman on the 18-person “S-Team” (short for “Senior Team”) that reports directly to founder and CEO Jeff Bezos. And she has presided over a hiring spree of historic proportions.