Apple is offering visitors to its stores across the world an opportunity to watch March 25th’s Special Event with friends and other Apple fans on the big screen. Stores with Video Walls will host special Today at Apple sessions to livestream the keynote from Steve Jobs Theater.
But Apple’s “broadcast sensibility” — top Apple executives want family-friendly shows that can attract a wide audience — has made it difficult for some producers to pitch the company. “There’s a lot of second-guessing: ‘Is this too edgy for Apple?” said a source that has pitched shows to Apple. (Apple has more recently played down how squeamish it gets with anything remotely resembling edgy.)
Once a show is greenlit by Apple, producers then have to deal with two sets of notes: the “network” notes that come from the Hollywood executives hired by Apple to oversee its original programming; and the “brand” notes, which often come from Apple executives who are more interested with how the Apple brand is portrayed than what makes sense for the actual story, said multiple sources familiar with the matter. For instance, if a show set in the future depicted a futuristic version of an Apple product, Apple executives would ask for that to be removed; they would prefer using an existing Apple product — which wouldn’t make sense for a show that’s set in the future, a source said.
Beyond the creative, Apple’s habit of tightly controlling all aspects of its business has created difficulties for the part of Hollywood that works “below the line.” Vendors ranging from color-correction houses to visual effects companies to music houses now have to deal with Apple’s security protocols, which makes managing and transferring assets much more difficult, sources said.
Instead, Apple’s main focus — at least for now — will be helping helping other people sell streaming video subscriptions, and taking a cut of the transaction. Apple may also sell its own shows, at least as part of a bundle of other services. But for now, Apple’s original shows and movies should be considered very expensive giveaways, not the core product.
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[R]ight now, Apple’s strategy seems to be letting other streamers fight each other while it collects rent from all of them.
“We tend to be quite leery about the idea of almost habituating people to find our journalism somewhere else,” he told Reuters in an interview on Thursday. “We’re also generically worried about our journalism being scrambled in a kind of Magimix (blender) with everyone else’s journalism.”
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Thompson declined to comment on any conversations with Apple. But he used the tale of how Netflix made huge inroads into Hollywood to explain why the Times has avoided striking deals with digital platforms in which it had little control over relationships with customers or its content.
Vox Media doesn’t currently offer subscriptions to its content, but Chief Executive Officer Jim Bankoff said this month at the South by Southwest conference he would add a subscription model later this year with membership tiers.
“We always tell parents that their kids need to be able to do three things to go home: they have to be able to feed by mouth or they have to get a [feeding] tube, which is a surgically placed tube into their stomach, they need to be breathing on their own and they need to be at a stable temperature,” Brooke Vergales, a NICU pediatrician and Jeffrey’s wife, says. “I was frustrated because kids would be close to going home, and all they needed from us was feeding them, writing down how much they ate and weighing them. I was like, parents can do this at home.”
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Jeffrey and Brooke knew that there had to be a better way. Jeffrey reached out to a former coworker now with Locus Health, a digital health company, to design an Apple iPad app that would allow parents to do everything they would at the hospital — monitor their feedings, record their weight — from the comfort of their home. And the app, which is customized for each patient, seamlessly transmits the data to the their medical records, where doctors can get immediate updates on the babies’ health.
Apple Music has announced its latest playlist called Suave, a multi-lingual, global R&B playlist which includes R&B songs in English, Spanish and a sprinkle of Portuguese. The new playlist will launch featuring Melii's new song "Fresh Air."
"We fell in love with Melii’s "Fresh Air" the moment she played it for us and we knew without a doubt that we had to launch Suave with this song,” says Marissa Gastelum, Latin Music Programmer, Apple Music. "This is the definitive home for the best of the best in R&B regardless of language."
Now, in the central Browse tab of Apple Music, you'll find Apple's "Daily Top 100" playlist featured prominently at the top of the section, just below the traditional carousel of new music. These Global Top 100 playlists launched last September and have been available to listen to by navigating to Browse, scrolling down, and finding the Top Charts area. Now, they're much easier to find right at the top of Browse.
If a store has any upcoming performances or an active event series, those sessions will be listed first, followed by cards for Photography, Video, Music, Coding and Apps, Art and Design, Health and Fitness, and Product sessions.
Apple is also making its GiveBack program more accessible within the app. Apple GiveBack allows you to trade in your old devices for new products in an environmentally friendly way.
For all four apps, Apple has added a feature that detects media files that could be incompatible with future versions of macOS after Mojave. In Final Cut Pro and iMovie, these files will be converted to a compatible format, while just highlighted in Motion and Compressor.
For writing here at 9to5Mac, and at my day job, I frequently have to change the case of text. Text Case is the best app I’ve found for iOS to accomplish this task, and it has a big update that is now available.
One strength of an analog notebook is its simplicity. The times in my life when I've used a notebook regularly, I would always keep a pen attached to the notebook so that the process of writing involved just two simple steps: open the cover, and press pen to paper. Many digital notebook apps forfeit this simplicity due to overly complex interfaces and toolsets.
Moleskine's new app, Flow, is a digital notebook that understands what it takes to succeed as a notebook replacement – giving you the tools to customize your experience to your own preferences. It's available on both iPad and iPhone, and offers an elegant balance of convenience and flexibility that make it my favorite digital notebook to date.
Registration for WWDC 2019 officially closed yesterday, and now the first winners are being notified. Winners are notified via email, so be sure to check your inbox if you entered the WWDC 2019 lottery.
Fundamentally explaining mini is pointless. mini is something that is felt more than it is perceived. You can see the attraction of a tiny product only when you come face to face with it. In a picture it’s hard to get it–there is no frame of reference. What draws me to a MacBook or to a mini or a Watch is when it’s touched and held and carried or worn. The experience of the product is not how it works but not how it works with you. You have to be part of it. It’s not asking “Does it look good?”. It’s asking “does it look good on me?” mini means more personal.
The company is carving a business niche with devices deployed in customer-facing settings. On-the-go workers can use Apple products in sectors like retail or restaurants, taking orders or conducting point of sale transactions.
Healthcare has also taken to Apple products as an alternative for clunky mobile workstations, using an iPad to offload work when appropriate. It especially caters to a fast-moving environment like a hospital.
We’ve all heard about how AI is getting progressively better at accomplishing eerily lifelike tasks: driving cars, recognizing faces, translating languages. But when a machine can compose songs as well as a talented musician can, the implications run deep—not only for people’s livelihoods, but for the very notion of what makes human beings unique.
So, we've been reading rumors of the new services Apple is launching next week. But, how about existing services? Will there be new stuff with Apple Music, like maybe new Beats radio stations?
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Will Apple do another three-days-of-product-launches after the event next week? iPods, MacBooks, iPhone SEs? AirPower?
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Thanks for reading.