Amazon launched a Fire TV Edition smart television and soundbar in the UK in collaboration with JVC and Anker.
IFC Films Unlimited Joins Apple TV Channels
IFC Films is a production company mainly focusing on indie films. Its channel—IFC Films Unlimited—is coming to Apple TV Channels.
Biggest Apple Store in Japan Opening Saturday
The fifth Tokyo Apple Store will open Saturday in the city’s Marunouchi business district. It will be Apple’s biggest store in Japan.
Sonos Move: Portable, Weatherproof, Water Resistant, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, Voice-Assistant Speaker
In a move that simultaneously felt like a very natural evolution of their product line as well as (finally?) answering every unrequited request ever made of the company, Sonos today announced Sonos Move, a portable, battery-powered, water resistant, weatherproof, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi speaker.
Researchers Test Phones to See if They're Secretly Listening
Researchers put an iPhone and a Samsung phone into a room, playing cat and dog food advertising for 30 minutes.
The security specialists kept apps open for Facebook, Instagram, Chrome, SnapChat, YouTube, and Amazon with full permissions granted to each platform…They repeated the experiment at the same time for three days, and noted no relevant pet food adverts on the “audio room” phones and no significant spike in data or battery usage.
The results won’t surprise those in the information security industry who’ve known for years that the truth is that tech giants know so much about us that they don’t actually need to listen to our conversations to serve us targeted adverts.
For some people, maybe the belief that phones secretly spy on us is less terrifying than learning how much data these corporations actually have on us.
Canceling Difficult Content is a Bad Omen for Apple TV+
We learned this week that Apple TV+ show Bastards has been scrapped. The show, which starred Richard Gere, is not the first piece of challenging content pulled by Apple. At Cult of Mac, Luke Dormehl made a compelling case as to why this might not be the right approach.
This isn’t the first time we’ve heard murmurs about Apple’s family-friendly TV and movie ambitions. Last year, The Wall Street Journal reported that Tim Cook made the call to cancel a semi-autobiographical drama about Dr. Dre… Apple TV+ should arrive this fall at roughly the same time as a bunch of other new streaming services. The biggest of the newcomers, Disney+, will presumably sate many people’s appetite for family-friendly fare. Carving out a niche for Apple TV+ in this crowded environment could mean counter-programming against Disney. Where Disney goes light, Apple could have gone dark. Cupertino’s enormous cash reserves give it the capability to take risks that few others can.
Prepare Your iPhone for Hurricane Conditions
USA Today has a list of excellent tips on how to prepare your smartphone for disaster conditions.
If you’re preparing for a hurricane, your survival plan should include your smartphone. But you’ll want to do a few things in advance to make sure it will work, and actually be helpful in an emergency. And it’s a good time to remember: you won’t be able to rely on your mobile device for everything.
The author’s checklist is impeccable.
Password-Less Server Leaked Facebook IDs and Phone Numbers
A server found without a password contained over 419 million database records of Facebook users in the U.S., U.K. and Vietnam.
Google Hit by Record $170 Million Fine Over YouTube Violations
Google received an $170 million fine over YouTube child privacy violations as state attorneys general prepared an antitrust investigation.
Logitech Reinvents the Scrollwheel with MX Master 3 Mouse
The next generation of the company’s MX Revolution/MX Master family of mice reinvents the variable scroll wheel yet again, and this time they’re doing it with electromagnetism.
