Charlotte Henry

NBCUniversal is set to fully enter the streaming wars next week. Variety took a look at the story behind the Peacock service, which has suffered delays to some of its major launch productions.

Most of the Peacock originals slate has been delayed by COVID-19. The service will come out with just nine originals, which include a slick series adaptation of “Brave New World” and U.K.-set workplace comedy “Intelligence,” starring David Schwimmer. The Summer Olympics were postponed until 2021, depriving the launch of some valuable promotional real estate. And with two weeks before go time, Peacock had deals for Apple, Google, Xbox and Vizio and LG TVs, but still had not clinched distribution pacts with Roku or Amazon Fire TV, the two biggest over-the-top TV device makers (which also have been holdouts on HBO Max). But Strauss remains undeterred, convinced that Peacock’s greatest potential lies in the free-to-watch tier with a light advertising load that promises no more than 5 minutes of commercials per hour. NBCU’s theory is that “Free as a bird” will resonate with millions of Americans who are financially strapped or just too maxed out to pay for yet another streaming package.

We learned at WWDC 2020 what will be the upcoming version of the iPad’s operating system. On Cult of Mac, Ed Hardy look to the future and offered his iPadOS 15 wishlist. Full second display support? Yes, please.

You can mirror the iPad’s display onto a larger screen, which is very convenient for presentations and gaming. The videos from streaming services like Netflix can take full advantage of a big-screen TV. And a few drawing apps have embraced external displays. But there’s little to offer the average person to get day-to-day work done. It’s high time that changed. An iPad can show two applications side by side, or two windows from the same app. The feature should extend to moving app windows to an external display. An Apple A-series processor can easily handle displaying four open applications at once.

It looks like ending free trials didn’t deter users signing up to Disney+. The streaming service got a nice boost over the holiday weekend, thanks to the arrival of Hamilton. The hit musical helped the service get.a 74 percent increase in subscribers from the four previous weekends, according to TechCrunch.

According to new data from app store analytics firm Apptopia, Disney’s streaming service saw a big jump in downloads over the July 4 holiday weekend in the U.S., following the worldwide debut of “Hamilton” on Friday, July 3rd. Between Friday and Sunday, that translated to over half a million new global downloads (752K+) for the Disney+ mobile app, excluding India and Japan. Some 458K+ of those downloads were in the U.S, the firm estimated. These figures represent a 46.6% increase over the average seen during the previous four weekends in June (Friday through Sunday), Apptopia noted.

Gavin Ivester is currently VP of Design at Bang & Olufsen. He started his career at Apple though, working on the PowerBook. He told TechRader how the product took shape.

The ergonomic goal was to get that front edge to be as thin as possible, for comfort, assuming you would use the laptop on a desk.  The breakthrough came from a system integration engineer named Jonathan Krakower, who proposed we push the keyboard back, and then put the battery in one of the now-empty front corners, and the disc drive in the other corner.  That left a space in the middle for some kind of cursor control, and trackballs were the best solution at that moment… My challenge was then to design options to bring that layout idea to life as a product, prototype them, test them with real users, and design better ones until we either had a final design or proved it would never work.   

Imports to India by key Apple supplier Foxconn have been slowed as a result of escalating tensions between the country and China. Reuters reported that Apple is amongst the companies seeking to free its shipments.

Customs officers at Indian ports have held back shipments from China and sought additional clearances after deadly clashes at the disputed Himalayan border last month. The checks have been imposed without any formal order. While several companies such as Apple (AAPL.O) and Dell (DELL.N) have been battling to free stuck shipments, hundreds of employees at Taiwanese contract manufacturer Foxconn’s two plants in the south had no major work to do this week as shipments were delayed, sources said.