In addition to the return of the iTunes Festival channel for Apple TV today ahead of September's concert series in London, Apple has also added a new Showtime Anytime channel to its set-top box.
The Apple TV channel is a companion to the Showtime premium cable network and offers limited free content to all users. Most content, which includes live and on-demand shows and events, is limited to customers who subscribe to the network through a participating cable provider.
Update 8:52 AM: As noted by Mac1 [Google Translate], Norwegian public television network NRK has also launched on Apple TV in that country.
Update 9:50 AM: Swedish public broadcaster SVT has also announced [Google Translate] the launch of its SVT Play channel for Apple TV.
Wednesday February 26, 2025 6:32 am PST by Joe Rossignol
In an all-caps post on Truth Social today, U.S. President Donald Trump said Apple should fully end its diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies.
Tim Cook meeting with President Trump in 2017
"APPLE SHOULD GET RID OF DEI RULES, NOT JUST MAKE ADJUSTMENTS TO THEM," he wrote.
Trump's post comes one day after Apple held its annual shareholders meeting, during which a majority of...
Wednesday February 26, 2025 7:15 am PST by Joe Rossignol
In a recent press release, Apple confirmed that iOS 18.4 will be released in April.
From the Apple News+ Food announcement:Coming with iOS 18.4 and iPadOS 18.4 in April, Apple News+ subscribers will have access to Apple News+ Food, a new section that will feature tens of thousands of recipes — as well as stories about restaurants, healthy eating, kitchen essentials, and more — from the...
The Apple Watch Ultra 3 is expected to launch later this year, arriving two years after the previous model with a series of improvements.
While no noticeable design changes are expected for the third generation since the company tends to stick with the same Apple Watch design through three generations before changing it, there are a series of internal upgrades on the way.
By the time the ...
Tuesday February 25, 2025 2:58 am PST by Tim Hardwick
Apple is making significant headway on its long-rumored foldable iPhone, with a new report suggesting the company has achieved a major breakthrough by effectively eliminating the screen crease that plagues current foldable devices.
According to Korean publication ETNews, Apple is finalizing its component suppliers for the foldable iPhone, with the selection process expected to be completed...
Tuesday February 25, 2025 1:18 pm PST by Juli Clover
Multiple iPhone owners today noticed a pronunciation processing issue that causes the word "Trump" to momentarily show up when using dictation to send a message with the word "racist."
In some cases, when speaking the word racist through the iPhone's built-in dictation feature, the iPhone briefly interprets the spoken word as "Trump" and "Trump" text shows up in the Messages app before being ...
Monday February 24, 2025 9:14 am PST by Joe Rossignol
According to a post on X today from a leaker known as Kosutami, Apple plans to launch AirPods Pro 3 in May or June this year.
The leaker also claimed that an AirTag 2 will launch around the same time.
Kosutami is best known as a collector of prototype Apple hardware, but they have occasionally shared accurate information about Apple's future product plans. For example, they accurately...
Monday February 24, 2025 6:11 am PST by Joe Rossignol
Apple plans to launch a second-generation AirTag in May or June this year, according to a post today from a leaker known as Kosutami.
Bloomberg's Mark Gurman previously reported that a new AirTag would be released in mid-2025. May or June would align with that timeframe.
Below, we recap three new features rumored for the AirTag 2:
With a second-generation Ultra Wideband chip, the...
Sunday February 23, 2025 2:23 pm PST by Joe Rossignol
The first beta of iOS 18.4 is now available, and it includes a small but useful change for CarPlay.
As we noted in our list of iOS 18.4 features, CarPlay now shows a third row of icons, up from two rows previously. However, this change is only visible in vehicles with a larger center display. For example, a MacRumors Forums member noticed the change in a Toyota Tundra, which can be equipped...
We traditional broadcasters only care about verifiable eyeballs. Something we can take to the local car dealer/grocer/ad agency/whoever and say "See! Advertise with us for X dollars and you'll be seen by Y many people!"
The cable companies invested (many times heavily) into the infrastructure (physical copper and fiber in the ground, the head-ends, etc.) and sold their subscribers' eyeballs to the networks. "See! Sign this agreement and we'll deliver X potential eyeballs and even Y amount of dollars to your revenue stream. Provided of course that you play by these rules which state you can't offer your services a la carte and cut us out of the deal."
One of the problems now is that the networks have grown accustomed to this revenue and ratings stream and are very nervous about possibly upsetting the hand that has fed them and provided for their growth for so many years.
Another problem is that cable is still an Oligopoly and, at least for the last-mile, its a monopoly based on who owns the physical cabling in the ground. Very little incentive for one company to change the business model when they're all enjoying the hayride.
Finally, the biggest reason Apple can't "just do what they did with iTunes, the iPod, and the recording industry", is that the cable TV industry has much tighter control than the recording industry did. You could copy tapes and CDs easily. You could import a CD, upload it to Napster, and share it easily. There really weren't many anti-copy safeguards because at some point, the audio signal had to become analog in order for an amplifier to push it through your speakers and into your ears. The record industry was losing their a$$e$ and couldn't see a solution until Steve came riding in on a white horse and saved them (while taking a nice % of each transaction, of course.) The result was a win-win situation, but more so for consumers. The record industry's sales were saved, but they weren't seeing the same rate of return as before. Meanwhile consumers could now choose their music a la carte, many times at a cost-savings. No more did you have to pay $15.99 for a twelve track album that included three songs you actually liked, just to have the one song you really loved.
I've been watching the cable industry very closely, especially the last few years. They are increasingly tightening their grip on the content, aided by the fact that the signal is now almost completely digital (and therefore much easier to secure) from start to finish. It started when satellite companies injected an FM frequency into certain channels that a tuner box basically filtered out (for a monthly fee of course). Now, with the system being completely digital, your cable box acts like a node. It has its own MAC address and can be seen and managed remotely by the cable company. Now some systems are going completely digital, with no analog service to the home. You're forced to rent a smaller node for each additional television in your home. This allows them the ultimate in secure control.
There is no earth shaking market disruption like Napster to interrupt the cable industry's way of doing business. (Yes, I know there are a few tech-savy folks who VPN or port their IP addresses and stream content from home, but it still requires a cable subscription.) But really, unlike the recording industry, the cable companies have no reason to negotiate or change their business model. They saw what that did to the bottom lines of both the record industry and Apple, and they don't want to share their $$. Why would they?
