MacRumors

Amazon and Pandora are closing in on licensing agreements with the world's largest record labels to launch their own streaming music services later this year, reports Financial Times.

Both subscription-based services are expected to cost $9.99 per month, a price that has become the industry standard, and compete with heavyweights like Apple Music and Spotify.

Amazon's offering could launch as early as September, according to the report, while Pandora is said to be making progress towards debuting its service later this year.

Reuters first reported Amazon's plans to launch a standalone streaming music service in June, followed by a Recode report last week claiming the online retailer is also working on a $5-a-month subscription music service that will be exclusive to owners of the company's internet-connected Echo speaker.

Amazon currently sells individual songs or albums through Amazon Music, while Amazon Prime subscribers can stream Amazon music, playlists, and radio stations for free, but the selection is limited compared to Apple Music and Spotify.

Pandora's ambitions to launch its own subscription music service, likely based on its acquisition of "key assets" from Rdio in 2015, were first reported by The Wall Street Journal earlier this month. The company plans to offer two price tiers by also slightly tweaking its existing $5 per month ad-free option with select new perks like skipping songs and offline listening, the report said.

Pandora currently offers customers in the U.S., Australia, and New Zealand the ability to listen to free, ad-supported radio stations centered around particular artists or songs, rather than offering on-demand listening like Apple Music. By offering only randomized, radio-like stations that prevent users from playing specific songs, it has been able to bypass licensing agreements with major record labels.

After placing the winning $815,000 bid on the rare "Celebration" Apple-1 computer last week, Glenn Dellimore spoke with Business Insider about his reasons for purchasing the computer. Dellimore made the decision with his wife, Shannnon, and the two were not only prepared to pay up to $2 million for the piece of Apple history, but both see it only increasing in value over the years.

The Dellimores -- who founded the Hollywood skin care brand Glamglow, now owned by Estée Lauder -- think that in around 10 to 15 years, the Apple-1 sold by CharityBuzz "could be worth as much as a Monet or Picasso." The rarity of this particular Apple-1 is doubled by the fact that it started as a "blank original-run board," that was never meant to be sold to the public and was not from a production run, potentially making it one of the first Apple-1 computers ever made.

"When the auction was taking place, I realized we’d actually be in the air when it ended. Just as our wheels touched down, there were 30 seconds left in the auction and I was actually outbidded with 37 seconds left," Dellimore said. "I think the bid was $270,000 when I looked, and then it went up again, and I kept going bidding with someone else until it was $515,000. I said, 'you know what, I’m just going to put in a large number.'"

He said he might have bidded up to $2 million if he had been outbid again.

"Typically with things that are so valuable and so rare, there will be buyers in the world that are willing to pay whatever it takes," he said.

The current plan for the Apple-1 is for it to be displayed in a museum, and Glenn Dellimore hopes that the computer, which he refers to both as a "piece of history" and the "holy grail of computers," will be used to help educate younger people. Ultimately, Dellimore said that "the possibility of it being the number one, the very first prototype that Steve worked on, and with the way over time Apple has changed the world, this computer is the holy grail of computers, it is the most important computer on the planet, I think."

Philips today announced the newest addition to its Hue line of lights and accessories, debuting the new Philips Hue Motion Sensor. The Hue Motion Sensor is designed to allow Philips Hue users to control their lights automatically as they move through their homes.

The Motion Sensor connects to a Hue Bridge and because it's wireless and powered via battery, it can be placed anywhere in the home - a bookshelf, a side table, a wall, a ceiling, etc. Once in position, the motion detection feature can be adjusted to the ideal position and it will perform set actions like turning the lights on or off whenever activated.

"The Philips Hue motion sensor not only provides hands-free control but also helps deliver peace of mind. You can be guided safely throughout your home at night with lighting," said Sridhar Kumaraswamy, Business Leader, Home Systems, Philips Lighting. "Plus, you no longer have to remind the kids to turn off the lights when leaving a room. The reliable detection the motion sensor provides when you exit supports this and also helps you be more energy efficient."

The Hue Motion sensor is highly customizable and supports personalized settings ranging from a soft, subdued light at night to set scenes during the day. It also has a built-in daylight sensor so it can turn lights on and off based on the time of day, and it has an instantaneous reaction time, adjusting lights within .5 seconds of being activated. Up to 12 Motion Sensors can be connected to a single bridge for a fully automated home lighting experience.

Along with the Motion Sensor, Philips is introducing updated Hue White and Color Ambiance A19 bulbs that feature richer greens and blues, a feature Hue owners have long desired. The new bulbs offer bolder, brighter colors than existing bulbs. Two new Philips Hue White Ambiance bulb extensions are also available, including BR-30 and GU-10 variants.

Philips' new Motion Sensor is priced at $39.95 and will be available from the Philips Hue website, Amazon.com, and Best Buy starting in October of 2016. The new Hue White and Color Ambiance A19 bulbs and the new BR-30 and GU-10 bulb variants will also be available in October.

Apple today provided developers with the seventh beta of tvOS 10, the next-generation operating system designed to run on the fourth-generation Apple TV. tvOS 10 beta 7 comes almost two weeks after the release of tvOS beta 6 and more than two months after the operating system was first shown off at Apple's 2016 Worldwide Developers Conference

tvOS betas are harder to install than beta updates for iOS and OS X. Installing the tvOS beta requires the Apple TV to be connected to a computer with a USB-C to USB-A cable, with the software downloaded and installed via iTunes or Apple Configurator. Once a beta profile has been installed on the device through iTunes, new beta updates will be available over the air.

tvOS 10 builds on features initially introduced with tvOS last October, bringing expanded Siri capabilities like topic-based search, Live Tune-In for automatically accessing live channels, and options for managing HomeKit accessories.

Single-Sign On allows users to sign in and authenticate cable credentials just once instead of requiring authentication in all cable-supported apps, games are now able to require controllers, and there are new features for Photos and Music.

Over the beta testing period, Apple has been making slight tweaks and updates to the tvOS 10 operating system, but many of the changes are under-the-hood and not readily apparent to testers. Any outward-facing changes discovered in the seventh beta, which is likely to be the last beta before the golden master, will be noted below.

For a full overview of all of the new features in tvOS 10, make sure to check out our tvOS 10 roundup.

Following a recent string of high-profile stories centered around cruel tweets, Twitter is said be gearing up to launch a new tweet moderation feature that will let users filter content they see by using keywords (via Bloomberg). Any subsequent tweet with the specifically designated harmful words would be blocked from the user's timeline and invisible to them, but still posted for anyone else to see.

The anti-harassment tool is said to have been in production "for about a year" at the company, and is still not quite ready for a wide rollout yet. The news comes from a group of people close to the project, and is most likely gaining traction after a particularly public year of unfortunate incidents surrounding the social network, where both reporters and celebrities were attacked on the service.

Twitter needs to attract and retain users as the growth in their numbers slows. The company has spent the past few months consulting with an outside council of anti-harassment groups about its strategy for addressing the issue, which has become one of Chief Executive Officer Jack Dorsey’s top priorities.

Twitter took some small steps this year, such as making it easier for people to report abuse by letting them identify multiple offending tweets while filing their complaints. But the keyword tool, if implemented, would be the first to give users more control over what they see instead of blocking individual users after they attack.

Twitter and CEO Jack Dorsey have attempted to make inroads towards creating a less harmful atmosphere on the social network, but as yet haven't created an in-depth feature that could help prevent bullying on a wider scale. The potential keyword blocking solution sounds similar to one that Instagram is also reportedly planning to launch soon, which will let users filter out the comment section on their photos because "different words or phrases are offensive to different people."

The news comes after Twitter reported its slowest revenue growth since 2013, thanks to the growing popularity of rival companies Snapchat and Instagram. To turn things around, Twitter plans to focus on five key areas within its network, one of which will focus on keeping users safe from online abuse: core services, live-streaming video, the site's "creators and influencers," safety, and developers.

Eventually, the new anti-harassment tool could become a universal filtering feature for content not just potentially harmful, "for example, users could block a hashtag about an event they don’t care to read about." If true, the Twitter desktop and mobile apps would be playing catch-up to features currently implemented in popular third-party clients, like Tweetbot on iOS and OS X. That app has a feature-rich "Mute Filters" section that allows users to silence any user, keyword, hashtag, and client, all packed with settings to add contingencies like mute locations and duration.

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.

Apple Music may have lost a major exclusivity deal with artist Lady Gaga and her label Interscope, with rumors suggesting the company's streaming music service was in place to exclusively launch not only the upcoming single "Perfect Illusion," but the singer's entire fifth studio album. Lady Gaga began voicing support of Apple Music before the service even launched last year.

Interscope Records, which was co-founded by current Apple Music executive Jimmy Iovine in 1989, is one of the many labels owned by Universal Media Group. Apple's rumored exclusivity loss of Lady Gaga's new album appears to be the first ripple generated by UMG's CEO Lucian Grainge decreeing earlier in the week that the company would no longer support exclusive music streaming on any service.

UMG's frustration with the trend appears to be a result of the launch of Frank Ocean's much-anticipated album "Blonde" last weekend. In order to fulfill his record deal with Def Jam (another UMG label), the singer released the visual album "Endless" under Def Jam Recordings. He then launched the actual, full-length album Blonde independently under his own Boys Don't Cry label, along with an Apple Music exclusivity deal of two weeks. The move is making UMG consider suing Ocean for his tactics.

It's not clear what the exclusive nature of Apple Music and Lady Gaga's deal might have been, but it's interesting to see how quickly UMG's reaction to the trend has taken effect, if the rumors turn out to be true. Although still unconfirmed, Lady Gaga's new album is predicted to debut sometime this fall, while Perfect Illusion is set for a single debut in September.

(Thanks, Thomas!)

FOX Sports GO has officially launched on the fourth-generation Apple TV. The app, previewed by Apple at WWDC 2016, has a split-screen interface that enables sports fans to watch up to four games at once, be it four MLB games or a combination of baseball, basketball, football, and hockey.

The app provides live streams of Fox Sports 1, Fox Sports 2, Fox Soccer Plus, Fox Deportes, and Fox College Sports, and selected events airing on Fox and its regional sports networks, based on your location and which channels you are subscribed to through your cable or satellite TV package. Coverage includes MLB, NBA, NFL, NHL, NASCAR, UEFA Champions League, FIFA World Cup, UFC, and more. Subject to local availability, subscribers will also have access to full seasons of hometown MLB, NBA, and NHL telecasts.

FOX Sports GO requires authenticating with an existing cable or satellite TV subscription, with partnered networks including AT&T U-Verse, Bright House Networks, Cable One, Cablevision, Charter Spectrum, Cox Communications, DirecTV, Google Fiber, Midcontinent Communications, PlayStation Vue, Sling TV, Suddenlink Communications, Time Warner Cable, Verizon FiOS, WOW!, and Xfinity TV.

FOX Sports GO is available now as a free download on the tvOS App Store.