Apple Music this week began rolling out a new section in Browse curated by Deutsche Grammophon, known as one of the biggest classical musical labels in the world. In this section, classical music fans will find featured playlists of specific composers, highlighted radio stations, and all-new visual albums stocked with the "full-length performance" of select operas (via Engadget).
Specifically, one of the three visual albums is a staging of composer Charles-François Gounod's Roméo et Juliette, which was held at the 2008 Salzburg Music and Drama Festival. The visual album includes 32 tracks, which can be played all at once and runs for 2 hours and 33 minutes.
The other operatic visual albums were also staged during the Salzburg Festival, including a Mozart Gala from 2006 and Giacomo Puccini's La bohème opera from 2012, staged at the Grosses Festspielhaus opera house. Of course, Apple Music has launched non-opera visual albums in the past, including Frank Ocean's Endless, but as Engadget notes this is the first time the service has debuted a full-length opera as a visual album.
From the Apple Music editors:
Deutsche Grammophon has been home to the world's greatest musicians ever since gramophone inventor Emile Berliner founded the label in 1898. For decades, legendary conductor Herbert von Karajan epitomized the style and elegance of The Yellow Label - so called for its striking cartouche emblem.
Claudio Abbado and Leonard Bernstein joined him, and now Andris Nelsons and Yannick Nézet-Séguin continue DG's tradition of working with the finest conductors. Among pianists, Daniil Trifonov follows where Wilhelm Kempff and Maurizio Pollini led, while the current roster also stars violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter and soprano Anna Netrebko. Enjoy the best of these artists and more with playlists, albums, and videos.
According to Deutsche Grammophon, its new Apple Music section will be "regularly updated," so fans of classical music can expect to see more of the label's recordings and potentially more visual albums in the future.
Apple Music has seen a few slight updates over the summer, beginning with a new "Coming Soon" section for all users that highlights albums launching in the near future. Earlier this week, the service also began rolling out a "Friends Mix" weekly playlist, which curates a list of 25 songs that your friends have been listening to recently.
Over the summer, a few new and upcoming Philips Hue light fixtures leaked online, including an Outdoor Light Strip and White Ambience Adore Vanity Mirror. This week, the company has announced prices and confirmed an August 20 launch date for most of these products, as well as revealed a collection of new Hue lights. As usual, all of the new Hue lights are compatible with Apple's HomeKit platform.
To start off, the previously seen Outdoor Lightstrip is designed specifically for all-weather use with a diffused coating that ensures the Lightstrip can be used as both a direct or indirect light source. Users can easily bend and shape the Lightstrip for all yard designs, or apply it to fences and railways using included clips and screws.
The White and Color Ambiance Outdoor Lightstrip will cost $159.99 in a 16 ft. model and $89.99 in a 7 ft. model. Pre-orders will go up on August 20, and then the product will launch in early October.
The White Ambiance Adore Collection consists of the Adore Vanity Mirror and a flushmount ceiling fixture, which are both Damp rated to ensure bathroom moisture won't degrade them over time. Each Adore light includes a ringed outer-edge area that "prevents unwanted shadows" from appearing in a bathroom, with four pre-set light recipes for morning and nighttime routines.
A new kitchen and dining area light has also been announced in the form of the White Ambiance Being Pendant. This fixture is a brushed aluminum light that complements the company's existing Being flush ceiling fixture and aims to give users the "right shade of white light" for dinners and relaxing.
The Being Pendant will run for $249.99 and launches on August 20.
Also aimed at kitchen use is the White and Color Ambiance Enchant Pendant Light, a slim hanging fixture that the company says is designed to place over a kitchen or dining table, island, or bar. The light includes one Philips Hue White and Color Ambiance A19 bulb.
Lastly, the White and Color Ambiance Ascend Collection includes a Pendant Light, Floor Light, Wall Light, and Table Lamp, all designed for everyday lightning needs. Each fixture has a 360-degree open glass design for optimal light output, and the floor, wall, and table lamps have a movable head so you can point the light directly where you need it.
The Ascend Pendant Light (left) and Floor Light (right)
The Floor Lamp and Pendant Lamp come with a White and Color Ambiance A19 bulb, and the Wall Light and Table Lamp include a White and Color Ambiance E12 candle bulb. The prices on the Ascend Collection are as follows: $99.99 (Wall Light), $129.99 (Table Lamp), $149.99 (Pendant Light), and $179.99 (Floor Lamp). Every fixture in the Ascend Collection launches in early October.
The Ascend Wall Light (left) and Table Lamp (right)
On the software side of things, Philips Hue has received a few updates over the past few months for both its iOS and macOS apps. In May, the company debuted a revamped 3.0 update to the iOS app, bringing improved navigation, brightness controls and light visualization for individual lights and not just grouped-together rooms, and new color pickers for a better overview and grouping of lights in a room.
A few days later, the company launched a "Philips Hue Sync" macOS and PC app, allowing users to sync their Hue lights to any film, song, and game that they have on their computer.
For the new lights, it appears that some have yet to propagate on the company's website, but they should all begin appearing within the next few days, ahead of the launch/pre-order date on August 20.
Nearly one year after Qualcomm received a $773 million fine by Taiwan's Fair Trade Commission regarding how the company prices smartphone chips and patents, Qualcomm this week reached a settlement agreement with the Taiwanese regulators that "reverses most" of the $773 million fine.
In the settlement, Qualcomm will invest $700 million over the next five years to "boost research activities in Taiwan." The company will also stop paying fines and retains the right to charge manufacturers royalties on its technology. The Taiwanese regulators will keep around $89 million in fines already paid by Qualcomm and "waive the rest."
“Both parties felt the FTC’s fines were controversial. And we feel, if we continue with the lawsuit, it will take too long should we take Taiwan’s industry progress into consideration,” FTC Commissioner Hong Tsai-Lung told reporters. A lengthy legal process “will have a very negative impact on Taiwan’s development, so that is why our stand has changed following an internal collective decision.”
Despite Taiwan's Fair Trade Commission lifting the pressure off Qualcomm, the company still faces numerous lawsuits and fines, including from Apple. Qualcomm and Apple have been embroiled in an escalating legal battle since the beginning of 2017 after the FTC complained that Qualcomm engaged in anticompetitive licensing practices. Shortly after, Apple sued Qualcomm for $1 billion and accused the company of charging unfair royalties for "technologies they have nothing to do with" and failing to pay for quarterly rebates.
Also in the United States, Qualcomm is facing an FTC lawsuit for using anticompetitive tactics to remain the dominant supplier of baseband processors for smartphones. In Europe, regulators fined Qualcomm $1.2 billion at the beginning of 2018 for paying Apple to use its LTE chips in iOS devices to further ensure Qualcomm's monopoly in the market.
According to Bloomberg, Qualcomm CEO Steve Mollenkopf has said that the company plans to maintain its record of "prevailing in court" for all of the legal challenges it faces. For this year's iPhones, it's expected that Apple will avoid Qualcomm and "solely" use Intel's modems in the smartphones.
Spotify has begun a test for select users in Australia, allowing free tier listeners to skip "any" audio and video ads that they come across "as often as they want," according to a new report by Ad Age. Currently, users who don't pay for a Spotify Premium subscription ($9.99/month) have to listen to ads and can't skip them.
Spotify's head of partner solutions, Danielle Lee, explained that unlimited ad skipping is something the company is interested in because it will allow users to hear or watch only the ads they are interested in. As such, Spotify will know which ads each user lets play to the end, "informing Spotify about their preferences in the process" and tailoring the ads to their liking.
The company calls this "Active Media," and ensures advertisers won't have to pay for any ads that are skipped, suggesting Spotify is confident it will learn and create enough compelling ads that free tier users won't want to skip. According to Lee, Spotify's hope is to debut Active Media on a global scale, but at this time the Australia-based testing is only one month old.
"Our hypothesis is if we can use this to fuel our streaming intelligence, and deliver a more personalized experience and a more engaging audience to our advertisers, it will improve the outcomes that we can deliver for brands," Lee says. "Just as we create these personalized experiences like Discover Weekly, and the magic that brings to our consumers, we want to inject that concept into the advertising experience."
In comparison, Apple Music doesn't offer a free tier for its service, instead gifting new subscribers a three month free trial of the streaming service. In an interview from May 2017, former Apple Music executive Jimmy Iovine stated that if Apple Music did have a free tier it "would have 400 million people on it" and easily eclipse Spotify, but that's not what the company wanted for the service.
Instead, Apple built Apple Music as a "special experience" for "people who are paying," with no ads anywhere on the service. Apple Music and Spotify have been rivals since the former service debuted in 2015, and in a more recent interview Apple CEO Tim Cook said that he "worries about the humanity being drained out of music," alluding to Spotify's more algorithmic approach to suggesting new music to its users.
For Spotify, the company is now trying to boost free tier users in a number of ways, and eventually convince those users to pay for Spotify Premium. The company expanded the free tier with on-demand playlists in the spring, letting those listeners pick and choose which music they want to listen to as long as the tracks appear in one of 15 curated discovery playlists. This is an upgrade from the previous way free tier listeners heard music, which was simply shuffling songs at random.
Secondly, in a major announcement during Samsung's Galaxy Note 9 presentation yesterday, it was revealed that the Spotify app will now come pre-installed on all Samsung smartphones. Because of this, many Android users will now find it easier to jump into Spotify and begin streaming their music on that service, instead of searching for the Android-based Apple Music app.
Apple's former VP of Mac hardware engineering Doug Field has returned to the tech giant's ranks after five years working at Tesla, where he oversaw production of the Model 3.
Daring Fireball writer John Gruber broke the news on Thursday after speaking to an Apple spokesperson who confirmed only that Field had returned to the company that he left in 2013.
However Gruber's contacts within Apple informed him that Field will link up with former colleague Bob Mansfield to work on Apple's self-driving car program, Project Titan.
Field began his career at Ford as a development engineer, before moving on to Segway and then to Apple, and his return is already fueling speculation that Apple's self-driving ambitions have been rejuvenated under the leadership of Mansfield.
Rather than solely developing autonomous systems for existing car manufacturers, Apple's rehiring of Field could indicate that the company still retains an interest in building its own vehicles.
When Apple began working on Project Titan in 2014, upwards of 1,000 employees were said to have been working on developing an electric vehicle at a secret location near its Cupertino headquarters.
However, internal strife and leadership issues reportedly caused Apple to transition its focus to an autonomous driving system and pursue partnerships with existing carmakers instead of building a full car. Hundreds of employees were said to have been laid off as a result.
Little is known about the inner workings of Apple's Project Titan group, but court documents filed in July indicate that as many as 5,000 people are authorized at Apple to access information about the project.
Apple has also been significantly ramping up its fleet of vehicles running self-driving sensor equipment. As of May 2018, the company has 62 vehicles out on the road using its autonomous driving software.
Apple is also working on a self-driving shuttle service called "PAIL" (an acronym for "Palo Alto to Infinite Loop"). The shuttle program will transport employees between Apple's office in Silicon Valley.
Audio accessories from Denon and Marantz are gaining support for AirPlay 2 through firmware updates that are being distributed starting today.
With the AirPlay 2 update, compatible Denon and Marantz devices offer support for multi-room audio and are able to work with other AirPlay 2 devices such as the HomePod, the Apple TV, and Sonos speakers.
Both companies offer multiple AirPlay 2-compatible receiver options that are being updated with AirPlay 2 support.
Apple maintains a list of AirPlay 2-compatible speakers, both released and upcoming, on its HomeKit website, but its listings for Denon and Marantz are not complete. A full list of the AirPlay 2-compatible devices the two companies are said to be offering was shared in May by Poor Audiophile.
Both the Marantz and Denon brands are owned by Sound United, which also owns the Polk brand. Polk is not listed on Apple's HomeKit site, but it is a partner on the main AirPlay website. It's not clear when Polk devices will receive AirPlay 2 updates, but it does not appear that new firmware is rolling out as of yet. The same goes for Definitive Technology, another Sound United brand that is expected to get AirPlay 2 support at some point.
Denon and Marantz join Sonos in offering AirPlay 2-compatible devices, but many other brands are working on AirPlay 2 support as well, including Beoplay, Devialet, Libratone, Naim, Bowers & Wilkins, McIntosh, Bose, and others.
Apple gave a straight to series order for a half-hour scripted comedy show created by Rob McElhenney and Charlie Day, reports Variety. The show is said to be set in a video game development studio.
Rob McElhenney and Charlie Day are best known for popular comedy show "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia," which the duo have starred in since 2005 alongside Glenn Howerton, Kaitlin Olson, and Danny DeVito.
McElhenney and Day will write and executive produce the series, and McElhenney is set to be one of the show's stars.
Apple has inked deals for more than a dozen TV shows, including several other comedy shows. A "You Think It, I'll Say It" TV show based on Curtis Sittenfield's short story collection is in development, as is "Central Park," an animated series developed by Loren Bouchard.
Rumors suggest the first of Apple's TV shows could debut in the spring of 2019, with Apple perhaps planning to distribute them via a new streaming service.
The Unicode Consortium is working on the list of emojis that will be added to Unicode 12 in 2019, and today Emojipedia shared some details on new emoji candidates that have been suggested for inclusion.
New candidates for Unicode 12 include service dog, deaf people, and mixed race couples.
Because the list of emojis has not yet been finalized, these new emoji candidates won't be included for sure, but they could make their way onto various platforms that support emoji if the Unicode Consortium ultimately approves them.
These new emoji candidate suggestions join other emoji suggested for 2019, including diving mask, waffle, Hindu temple, white heart, ice cube, sloth, flamingo, skunk, ballet shoes, falafel, onion, garlic, otter, and more.
Apple will likely add the Unicode 12 emoji to iOS, macOS, and Apple Watch devices sometime in the fall of 2019.
At the current time, we're waiting on the addition of Unicode 11 emojis, which Apple said it will add to iOS later this year.
Apple previewed many of the new emoji that it plans to add, including red hair, gray hair, curly hair, cold face, party face, face with hearts, superheroes, kangaroo, peacock, parrot, lobster, mango, lettuce, cupcake, and more.
A few proposals have been made for emojis coming in 2020 and were announced by the Unicode Consortium today, including ninja, military helmet, mammoth, feather, dodo, magic wand, carpentry saw, and screwdriver.
Note: Due to the political nature of the discussion regarding this topic, the discussion thread is located in our Politics, Religion, Social Issues forum. All forum members and site visitors are welcome to read and follow the thread, but posting is limited to forum members with at least 100 posts.
Samsung today hosted an event in New York where it unveiled its newest product updates, including the Galaxy Note 9, the Galaxy Watch, and the Galaxy Home speaker.
MacRumors attended Samsung's event and was able to get some hands-on time with Samsung's new line of flagship devices, which is worth checking out because Samsung's main product lineup is quite similar to Apple's with the introduction of the new Galaxy Home device.
Samsung's Galaxy Note 9 device comes just a few weeks ahead of when Apple plans to unveil its 2018 iPhones, and it gives us a look at the feature set Samsung is hoping will lure customers away from new Apple devices.
Unlike other Android smartphones, Samsung continues to eschew the notch, and the Galaxy Note 9 looks quite similar to the Galaxy Note 8 with small top and bottom bezels, an aluminum frame, a built-in iris scanner for biometric authentication, and a fingerprint scanner at the rear.
Samsung has tweaked the location of the fingerprint scanner, putting it underneath the rear camera instead of next to it, which often led to people touching the camera element in the previous device. Speaking of the camera, Samsung is using the same dual-camera dual-aperture setup as last year, with the addition of a new Intelligent Camera feature that optimizes camera settings for whatever you're taking a picture of.
The Galaxy Note 9 features a 6.4-inch AMOLED screen, a smidge bigger than the 6.3-inch screen in the previous device, and also smaller than the rumored 6.5-inch display Apple's "iPhone X Plus" device is expected to offer.
Inside, the Galaxy Note 9 uses a Snapdragon 845 processor and what Samsung describes as a watercooling system for superior game performance, and it comes equipped with an updated S Pen, a factor that has always set the Note line apart from the iPhone, as Apple's devices do not support its one and only stylus, the Apple Pencil.
The S Pen has been upgraded with Bluetooth, so it can be used as a remote for things like playing and pausing movies, playing slideshows, and taking selfies. An S Pen SDK is coming later this year that will allow developers to integrate S Pen functionality into their apps. Dock-free DeX support is included in the Galaxy Note 9, allowing it to be connected to an external display.
To compete with the HomePod and the Apple Watch, Samsung unveiled the Galaxy Home and the Galaxy Watch. Access to the Galaxy Home was limited and we couldn't get a good look at it, but it features a spaceship-like design with a U-shaped body that curves inward and three metal feet.
Samsung, like Apple, hyped the audio quality of the Galaxy Home on stage and demonstrated its integration with Bixby, Samsung's digital assistant and Siri competitor.
As for the Galaxy Watch, it features a circular display with a traditional watch-style face that also maintains the rotating bezel for control purposes. Like the Apple Watch Series 3, the Galaxy Watch features LTE so it is not reliant on an accompanying smartphone.
It has a battery that lasts several days, and like the Apple Watch, it offers a breathing guide, heart rate monitoring, support for 39 types of workouts, and automatic workout detection, a feature Apple is bringing to the Apple Watch in watchOS 5. Samsung is pairing the Galaxy Watch with a wireless charger that can charge a smartphone and the watch at the same time, which sounds a lot like Apple's still-missing AirPower device.
At its event, Samsung was also showing off the Galaxy Tab S4, its new iPad Pro competitor that was introduced last week. The 10.5-inch Galaxy Tab S4, which has a 16:10 AMOLED display, features DeX support, a Book Cover Keyboard, and an S Pen, along with a Snapdragon 835 processor, 4GB RAM, and a 7,300 mAh battery for 16 hours of battery life.
With today's announcements, Samsung's full fall 2018 product lineup is now available, and these are the devices that will directly compete with the products that Apple is expected to launch across the remaining months of 2018.
We're expecting three new iPhones, including a 5.8-inch OLED device that's a followup to the iPhone X, a 6.5-inch OLED iPhone that can be thought of as an "iPhone X Plus," and a lower-cost 6.1-inch iPhone with an LCD display. All three devices are expected to ditch the Home button and Touch ID in favor of Face ID enabled through a TrueDepth camera system.
Apple is also planning to launch new Apple Watch Series 4 models, which are said to have bigger displays, better batteries, and improved heart rate monitoring technology, plus there are revamped iPad Pro models in the works with slim bezels, no Home button, and Face ID support.
What do you think of Samsung's new product lineup, and how does it measure up to what Apple is rumored to be to putting out this fall? Let us know in the comments.
An estimated 31 percent of iPhone users have made a purchase with Apple Pay in the past year, up from 25 percent a year ago, according to a new Apple Pay estimates shared today by Loup Ventures analyst Gene Munster.
Apple Pay now has an estimated 252 million users, equating to 31 percent of the active installed iPhone base, according to Munster.
Apple does not provide official details on how many people use Apple Pay, but in a recent earnings call, Apple CEO Tim Cook said that there were upwards of 1 billion Apple Pay transactions in Q3 2018, triple the amount from a year ago.
Based on these figures combined with past Apple reports of yearly Apple Pay growth, Munster expects transaction growth of 200 percent over the course of the next 12 months.
Bank adoption of Apple Pay is also growing steadily, and during the same earnings call, Apple announced that 4,900 banks support the feature. The number of banks supporting Apple Pay has increased by 1,701 since the December quarter, marking a 55 percent growth in North America, 141 percent in Asia, and 370 percent in Europe.
Munster believes that just 20 percent of global smartphone users use their phone as a wallet, a number that he expects to rise to 80 percent in the future.
Apple is well-poised to position the iPhone as the premium digital wallet on the market given that it's the only digital wallet option "with all five payment pillars" defined as mobile, desktop, in-app, peer to peer, and point of sale.
Munster says Apple Pay is much more popular overseas, with 85 percent of users being international compared to 15 percent in the United States. Apple Pay is estimated to have 38 million users in the U.S. and 215 million in the 20+ other countries where Apple Pay is available.
Apple Pay works in retail locations with the Apple Watch and iPhone, and in apps and on the web with iPhone, iPad, and Mac. As of iOS 11.3, Apple also supports Apple Pay Cash payments, a feature that is currently limited to the United States.
Apple Pay is available in the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, Singapore, Switzerland, Hong Kong, France, Russia, China, Japan, New Zealand, Spain, Taiwan, Ireland, Italy, Denmark, Finland, Sweden, UAE, Brazil, Ukraine, Norway, and Poland at the current time, and it is also set to expand to Germany later this year.
Samsung this morning debuted its latest flagship smartphone, the new Galaxy Note 9. The Galaxy Note 9 is equipped with a 6.4-inch 2960 by 1400 Super AMOLED screen, and like previous Note models, it works with the S Pen stylus. Design wise, it looks quite similar to the Note 8.
Inside, the Galaxy Note 9 features Qualcomm's Snapdragon 845 processor, 6 to 8GB RAM, dual AKG speakers, and a 4,000 mAh battery. Samsung is using the same 12-megapixel dual-aperture camera system it used in the Note 8, with the addition of an Intelligent Camera function that's able to detect what you're taking a photo of.
Samsung says that with the Snapdragon 845, it has included "Water Carbon Cooling System" inside the phone for improved performance with processor intensive apps such as Fortnite.
The S Pen that comes with the Galaxy Note 9 introduces new Bluetooth-enabled features that allow it to be used to control the camera of the device for taking selfies and other photos, control video playback, and more. Samsung has created an SDK that will let developers integrate the S Pen into their apps, and that will be available later this year.
The Galaxy Note 9 works with DeX, Samsung's feature that allows a smartphone to be docked to a desktop and used with a mouse and keyboard. The Note 9 DeX implementation does not require a dedicated dock, instead using a USB-C to HDMI adapter.
The smartphone also features a USB-C port, a headphone jack, a front-facing iris scanner, and a fingerprint reader that's centered at the back of the device. Though Google just introduced Android 9 Pie, the Note 9 will come with Android 8.1.
Samsung is pricing its Galaxy Note 9 at $1,000, the same price as the iPhone X, with the entry-level model coming with 128GB of storage and 6GB RAM. A version with 8GB RAM and 512GB of storage will be priced at $1,300. Pre-orders for the Galaxy Note 9 start tomorrow ahead of an August 24 launch.
Alongside the Galaxy Note 9, Samsung introduced the new Galaxy Watch, an LTE-enabled device that's been designed to look like "a real watch" with a circular face and bezel that doubles as a control unit. It offers up Corning's DX+ glass and better battery life than previous Samsung smart watches, with Samsung claiming that it will last several days on one charge.
Much like the Apple Watch, it offers a breathing guide to calm you down, heart rate monitoring, Bixby support, 39 workout types for fitness, and it's able to detect six common exercises automatically. Unlike the Apple Watch, though, the Galaxy Watch tracks sleep quality.
To charge the Galaxy Note 9 and the Galaxy Watch, Samsung has introduced an AirPower-like Wireless Charger Duo that's able to charge the watch and the phone at the same time.
Samsung is also getting into the smart speaker market with the Bixby-enabled Galaxy Home, which is designed to compete with Amazon Echo, Apple HomePod, Google Home, and other smart speaker options on the market. Galaxy Home works with Bixby, and Samsung says that its design is able to send sound in every direction.
For Galaxy Home and across Samsung's other devices, Samsung has teamed up with Spotify for a "true cross-listening experience" that lets Spotify be used seamlessly across Samsung devices. Spotify will be part of the setup process on all Samsung devices, including Samsung smartphones, the Galaxy Home, and Samsung Smart TVs, with Bixby integration coming to Spotify.
Google this week debuted a new app called "Cameos," which lets celebrities record video answers to "the most asked questions on Google," and then post the recordings directly to Google's search results (via TechCrunch). The company says that this will let users "get answers directly" from the source when searching for facts and trivia about certain people in the spotlight.
Although anyone can download the app [Direct Link], Cameos requires access to be granted once it's downloaded. Celebrities who gain access can browse the Internet's "top questions" asked about them, choose which ones they want to answer, and record a video of their response.
Cameos will push celebrities with new questions and searches to ensure that their Google-related content "stays recent and timely." With the app, high-profile users can respond directly to their fans' biggest questions and leave out any potential misinformation provided from other websites sourced from a Google search.
Once a question is answered, Google says that the response videos get posted "right to Google" so that users can see the videos when they search for the celebrity, or similar questions about the person. The videos will also appear on each celebrity's feed in the main Google app.
Today marks the seventh anniversary of Apple passing U.S. oil giant ExxonMobil to become the world's most valuable company for the first time, with a market capitalization of around $341.5 billion at the time.
Apple achieved the milestone on August 9, 2011, just over two weeks before the late Steve Jobs resigned as CEO on August 24, 2011, the same day that he nominated then-COO Tim Cook to succeed him in the position. Jobs passed away on October 5, 2011, following a lengthy battle with cancer.
Apple dropped back below ExxonMobil a few times, and was briefly surpassed by Google parent company Alphabet in market cap at times in 2016, but the iPhone maker has been the world's most valuable company for the better part of the past seven years, and continues to hold that title today.
Apple becoming the world's most valuable company was a remarkable accomplishment given that it flirted with bankruptcy in the mid-to-late 1990s, until Jobs returned and streamlined its product lineup. Under his leadership, Apple introduced several hits, including the iMac, iPod, iPhone, and iPad.
Apple will look to build upon its success by expanding its focus on technologies such as augmented reality, autonomous driving, and artificial intelligence, in addition to services like Apple Music and its upcoming Netflix competitor.
Apple has begun selling the Eve Aqua Smart Water Controller on its United States website today, following a few weeks after the HomeKit accessory previously launched on Eve's own website and on Amazon (via HomeKit News and Reviews). On Apple.com, you can buy the Eve Aqua for $99.95, and the free shipping option currently designates a delivery date on Monday, August 13.
The Eve Aqua is a small controller that you attach to an outdoor water outlet, letting you activate or shut off water flow via the Home iOS app, Siri voice commands, or automatic HomeKit scenes. Eve says this makes the accessory perfect for sprinklers and can prevent gardens from flooding thanks to an auto shut-off feature.
Elgato Systems announced the Eve Aqua this past May, and then in June Elgato revealed that it would shift its focus "entirely" to its line of Eve devices. Elgato is now "Eve Systems," with plans to offer a "constantly expanding ecosystem" of accessories designed exclusively for Apple's HomeKit platform.
Despite the name change, Apple.com still lists the water controller accessory as the "Elgato Eve Aqua."
Following the restructured company, Eve Systems teased users with new product announcements set to come out of IFA Berlin, which begins on August 31 and runs through September 5. For current products, Eve sells many of its devices on Apple.com, including the Elgato Eve Degree Connected Weather Station, Light Switch, Wireless Motion Sensor, Room Sensor, Energy Smart Plug, Button, and more.
In a new entry in its Machine Learning Journal, Apple has detailed how it approached the challenge of improving Siri's ability to recognize names of local points of interest, such as small businesses and restaurants.
In short, Apple says it has built customized language models that incorporate knowledge of the user's geolocation, known as Geo-LMs, improving the accuracy of Siri's automatic speech recognition system. These models enable Siri to better estimate the user's intended sequence of words.
Apple says it built one Geo-LM for each of the 169 Combined Statistical Areas in the United States, as defined by the U.S. Census Bureau, which encompass 80 percent of the country's population. Apple also built a single global Geo-LM to cover all areas not defined by CSAs around the world.
When a user queries Siri, the system is customized with a Geo-LM based on the user's current location. If the user is outside of a CSA, or if Siri doesn't have access to Location Services, the system defaults to the global Geo-LM.
Apple's journal entry is highly technical, and quite exhaustive, but hopefully this means that Siri should be able to better understand the names of local points of interest, and also be able to better distinguish between a Tom's Restaurant in Iowa and Kansas based on a user's geolocation.
In its testing, Apple found that the customized language models reduced Siri's error rate by between 41.9 and 48.4 percent in eight major U.S. metropolitan regions: Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, New York, Philadelphia, Seattle, and San Francisco, excluding mega-chains like Walmart.
Siri still trails Google Assistant in overall accuracy, according to a recent study by research firm Loup Ventures, but hopefully these improvements eliminate some of the frustration of querying Siri about obscurely named places.
Just a few days after Bloomberg revealed Apple's revamped India strategy, including changes that the company hopes will boost its lackluster smartphone market share in the country, a report by Reuters today has pointed out another hurdle for Apple's India plan.
The new report concerns Apple's work with the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) over the development of an anti-spam iPhone app, which dates back nearly two years. Indian users constantly have to deal with spam phone calls, leading to the government's decision to build its own smartphone app that would let users mark and report spam callers.
Reuters previously reported in March that work on the app was deadlocked as Apple continuously raised concerns over the privacy implications of allowing the app broad access to customers' calls and text logs. Following months of Apple pointing out privacy loopholes in the app -- which has been available on Android in India since 2016 -- TRAI last month threatened Apple by stating that its smartphones could be "derecognized" from the country's networks.
This means that while iPhones would still be available for purchase in India, users would not be able to connect to any supported cellular network and would lose many of the features that they likely purchased the iPhone for. TRAI's derecognition threat was specified in a letter sent to Indian telecom firms over the summer, notifying the firms that TRAI would give them six months notice to derecognize devices from their networks if the phones in question do not support the anti-spam app.
With that ticking clock looming for Apple, the company recently asked for the clause about derecognition to be removed:
“We look forward to working with TRAI to address the issue of unsolicited commercial communications, while simultaneously ensuring that we fully honor our commitment to protect the privacy and security of our users,” Apple’s head of public policy in India, Kulin Sanghvi, wrote in the letter which was seen by Reuters.
In response to Apple's own letter, TRAI chairman R.S. Sharma said that derecognition could not be "quashed or challenged" by writing a letter, and suggested the disagreement between the two could end up in court:
“The most appropriate way to challenge this is in court,” he said.
According to people familiar with the company's plans, its new strategy in India includes better and longer-lasting retail deals with higher sales targets, the opening of official Apple retail stores in India, "overhauling" the company's relationship with independent retailers, and improving apps and services "aimed more closely at Indians." The company is said to focus specifically on Apple Maps in the services area with a "revamped" version of the app coming to Indian users by 2020.
Apple Pay is offering a $20 promo code when you spend $100 or more within the iOS Nike app through August 16. This is the latest offer in Apple's long-running Apple Pay promo series, now themed as a back-to-school sale for any students looking for new shoes for the school year.
To get the code, download the Nike iOS app [Direct Link], make a purchase worth $100 or more, and then pay with Apple Pay. The promo code for $20 will then be delivered to you within two weeks of your original purchase date, and must be redeemed within Nike by November 20, 2018.
Apple is encouraging students to gear up at a few other Apple Pay-compatible stores and apps, including Staples, Office Depot, JanSport, Walgreens, Jet, and J. Crew.
It's been a few weeks since the last Apple Pay promo, which offered summertime savings in a range of apps like Fandango, Groupon, Houzz, and Seamless. Previous promotions have also seen Apple team up with StubHub, Adidas, Postmates, Instacart, and many more.
In an attempt to crack down on gambling-related apps in the App Store, Apple has today implemented a new App Review policy for individual developers, but many apps that are being banned as a result appear to have very little to do with gambling at all.
Our newsstand/news/magazine app just got removed from sale from the App Store 24 hours after our 3.0 update was approved. Reason given: gambling/fraudulent activity. We publish a magazine — nothing to do with gambling or fraud at all. 😞😢😲😱 https://t.co/ewu3mE5FG5pic.twitter.com/vaKtLthvkW
— Wojtek Pietrusiewicz (@morid1n) August 9, 2018
Apple has been providing affected developers with the following reason for their app's removal from the App Store:
In order to reduce fraudulent activity on the App Store and comply with government requests to address illegal online gambling activity, we are no longer allowing gambling apps submitted by individual developers. The includes both real money gambling apps as well as apps that simulate a gambling experience.
As a result, this app has been removed from the App Store. While you can no longer distribute gambling apps from this account, you may continue to submit and distribute other types of apps to the App Store.
Apple finishes by saying that "only verified accounts from incorporated business entities may submit gambling apps for distribution on the App Store", and advises developers to visit the Enrollment page to learn more about enrolling an organization in the Apple Developer Program.
The reason that apps unrelated to gambling are being removed appears to be because the ban currently applies to any apps that allow users "unrestricted web access".
When developers submit their app to the App Store, a section called "Rating" asks them to rate their app's content based on a chart and identify how frequently the content appears.
The content marker "Unrestricted web access" in this section applies when a user can access any URL by opening a browser window from within the submitted app.
Ticking it automatically slaps the app with a 17+ age rating if it makes it to the App Store, because it gives users of the app the potential ability to circumvent parental controls.
However, on the face of it, Apple's gambling-related ban today looks to have overreached significantly in this regard. We've asked Apple for comment and will update this post if we hear more.
