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Introduce Your Kid to This Database of Paper Airplanes https://ift.tt/2PQOEgr Making paper airplanes isn’t just a great low-tech boredom killer—it’s highly educational, too. Yep, all that time you spent folding spiral notebook paper into cool gliders in 11th grade economics, you were actually getting a lesson in design engineering. Neat, huh? Now, parents, it’s time to introduce your kids to the classic pastime. An excellent place to start: the Fold ‘N Fly database of paper airplanes. Advertisement The site features 40 different paper airplanes with instructions and videos. Designs are sorted by skill level and and aerodynamic properties (distance, time aloft, acrobatic and decorative). You might start with The Basic and then work your way up to some expert-level planes such as these: The OrigamiThis one was designed by an origami expert. Fast HawkFast Hawk is “best for distance, time aloft and acrobatics,” Fold ‘N Fly writes. Star FlightAn acrobatic marvel. When thrown at just the right angle, Star Flight flips around in the air. Advertisement All of the instructions are free but if you want the downloadable pages with line indicators showing you exactly where to fold, it’s $5. After making the paper airplanes, show your kids the best way to throw a paper airplane. According to the experts featured on the paper airplane-making episode of Going Deep with David Rees, that means seeing that the wings are level, holding the plane where the most paper layers overlap and going with an easy toss. Keep a flight log to see how the planes react to different variables. Maybe one day your little aviation master will reach the world record for paper airplane flight: a whopping 226 feet and 10 inches. H/t Boing Boing Gadget News via Lifehacker https://lifehacker.com October 24, 2018 at 10:14AM
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Accelerated modem chip rollout could make 5G possible in 2019 iPhones https://ift.tt/2Q0bulK Major 5G chipmakers like Qualcomm and MediaTek are reportedly moving up their launches by a quarter, which could theoretically make a 5G iPhone possible in late 2019, if still improbable. Gadget News via AppleInsider - Frontpage News http://appleinsider.com October 24, 2018 at 10:13AM
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How Android got big https://ift.tt/2CBPTfC Earlier this week, we updated our gigantic visual history of Android to include details of every release from the operating system’s 10-year history. I’ve also made the case that Android is now the world’s most dominant operating system and that Google invested in buying and developing Android primarily because it wanted to ensure that Microsoft didn’t take that crown. Both of those histories are valuable, but they leave one question open: how did Android become so dominant? Like any big trend with a multitude of causes, there’s no one answer to that question. But in this week’s Processor, I wanted to examine one of those causes. Verizon. By arguing that Verizon is one of the reasons that Android is now huge, I want to be clear that I don’t believe that its support was a sufficient (or perhaps even necessary) condition for Android’s success. Rather, the carrier ended up acting like a sort of kingmaker. Back in 2009, smartphone competition looked very different than it does today. The iPhone had shaken up the entire industry, but in the US, it was still exclusive to AT&T. Verizon — which had turned down the chance at that exclusivity — was casting about for some kind of consolation-prize phone for its customers. There was a lot of talk about the “iPhone killer” that seems ridiculous now, but it wasn’t quite so ridiculous then. And though this is mainly a story about the US side of the smartphone battle, I think it’s fair to say that the US was ground zero for it in 2009. It’s absolutely fair to say that nobody had more power to tip the scales in that fight in the US than the carriers. In addition to Android and the iPhone, there was competition from Symbian, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, and whatever was still left of Palm OS. Each of those platforms had advantages and disadvantages, but those last four were built on old and increasingly rickety foundations. Verizon learned that the hard way when it bet on the atrocious BlackBerry Storm in 2008, which had the “innovation” of making the entire screen a physical button, so you had to literally click down on the screen to type. By 2009, Verizon needed to try something else. There were two options on the table. One was the Palm Pre Plus, the second iteration of the webOS phone that fixed some of the problems of the original. As we reported back in 2012, Verizon had put in a big order and promised a big marketing blitz for the Pre Plus. I can’t really say how much Verizon actually thought the Pre Plus could be the “iPhone killer,” or if Verizon was simply using it as leverage for its other big bet. That big bet, of course, was Google, Android, and the Motorola Droid. You probably know what happened next. Verizon pushed all its chips behind the Motorola Droid — 100 million of them, to be precise, which was also the dollar amount of the marketing campaign it put behind the Droid. That money came in addition to whatever it cost to license the word “droid” from George Lucas. The ads from that campaign were completely unavoidable in the run-up to and release of the Motorola Droid. It was so huge that it set the Droid up as Verizon’s iPhone alternative. But it did more than that: it positioned Android as the de facto “other” smartphone to the iPhone. It doesn’t hurt that the Droid was a good phone, better in several ways than the Palm Pre Plus. But, again, big trends have multiple causes, and just making the better phone isn’t necessarily a sufficient condition for success. It also doesn’t hurt that it had the support of Google, which participated so much in its development that I’ve heard Googlers refer to it as the unofficial first Nexus phone. Palm was left to release its phone later and with much less marketing support. And to be honest, it never really recovered after that. Anyway, I can’t bring up that ad campaign without pointing out that it was incredibly sexist. Kara Swisher, as usual, put it best in her article from 2009: “Is the New Droid Ad Anti-Women and Anti-Gay or Just Plain Idiotic? Actually, All Three!” Yup. I mean, just look at this: Verizon’s misogynistic ad campaign caused a lot of toxicity in the discourse around smartphones. It not only encouraged people to make what smartphone they chose a part of their personal identity, but it did so in a way that encouraged them to denigrate people who made other choices. Google’s more recent “Be together, not the same” campaign was a nice counter to that trend. But in many ways, the damage to the culture surrounding smartphone communities had already been done. I don’t want to mourn the alternate world that could have come to pass — even though I do think the smartphone market was a lot more vibrant when there were more viable competitors out there. I just want to point out that a thing’s popularity isn’t tied simply to its quality. Especially in the US, phones don’t just succeed or fail based on their own merits. There are always bigger forces with their own motivations putting their fingers on the scales. Verizon and the Droid didn’t make Android what it is today, but it’s also true that Android wouldn’t be what it is today without them. Gadget News via The Verge https://ift.tt/1jLudMg October 24, 2018 at 10:09AM
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Global preferences for who to save in self-driving car crashes revealed https://ift.tt/2Ar6WQa If self-driving cars become widespread, society will have to grapple with a new burden: the ability to program vehicles with preferences about which lives to prioritize in the event of a crash. Human drivers make these choices instinctively, but algorithms will be able to make them in advance. So will car companies and governments choose to save the old or the young? The many or the few? A new paper published today by MIT probes public thought on these questions, collating data from an online quiz launched in 2016 named the Moral Machine. It asked users to make a series of ethical decisions regarding fictional car crashes, similar to the famous trolley problem. Nine separate factors were tested, including individuals’ preferences for crashing into men versus women, sparing more lives or fewer, killing the young or the elderly, pedestrians or jaywalkers, and even choosing between low-status or high-status individuals. Millions of users from 233 countries and territories took the quiz, making 40 million ethical decisions in total. From this data, the study’s authors found certain consistent global preferences: sparing humans over animals, more lives rather than fewer, and children instead of adults. They suggest these factors should therefore be considered as “building blocks” for policymakers when creating laws for self-driving cars. But the authors stressed that the results of the study are by no means a template for algorithmic decision-making. “What we are trying to show here is descriptive ethics: peoples’ preferences in ethical decisions,” Edmond Awad, a co-author of the paper, told The Verge. “But when it comes to normative ethics, which is how things should be done, that should be left to experts.” The data also showed significant variations in ethical preferences in different countries. These correlate with a number of factors, including geography (differences between European and Asian nations, for example) and culture (comparing individualistic versus collectivist societies). It’s important to note that although these decisions will need to be made at some point in the future, self-driving technology still has a way to go. Autonomy is still in its infancy, and self-driving cars (despite public perception) are still prototypes, not products. Experts also say that while it’s not clear how these decisions will be programmed into vehicles in the future, there is a clear need for public consultation and debate. “What happens with autonomous vehicles may set the tone for other AI and robotics, since they’re the first to be integrated into society at scale,” Patrick Lin, director of the Ethics + Emerging Sciences Group at Cal Poly University, told The Verge. “So it’s important that the conversation is as informed as possible, since lives are literally at stake.” How does culture affect ethical preferences?The results from the Moral Machine suggest there are a few shared principles when it comes to these ethical dilemmas. But the paper’s authors also found variations in preferences that followed certain divides. None of these reversed these core principles (like sparing the many over the few), but they did vary by a degree. The researchers found that in countries in Asia and the Middle East, for example, like China, Japan, and Saudi Arabia, the preference to spare younger rather than older characters was “much less pronounced.” People from these countries also cared relatively less about sparing high net-worth individuals compared to people who answered from Europe and North America. The study’s authors suggest this might be because of differences between individualistic and collectivist cultures. In the former, where the distinct value of each individual as an individual is emphasized, there was a “stronger preference for sparing the greater number of characters.” Counter to this, the weaker preference for sparing younger characters might be the result of collectivist cultures, “which emphasize the respect that is due to older members of the community.” These variations suggest that “geographical and cultural proximity may allow groups of territories to converge on shared preferences for machine ethics,” say the study’s authors. However, there were other factors that correlated with variations that weren’t necessarily geographic. Less prosperous countries, for example, with a lower gross domestic product (GDP) per capita and weaker civic institutions were less likely to want to crash into jaywalkers rather than people crossing the road legally, “presumably because of their experience of lower rule compliance and weaker punishment of rule deviation.” The authors stress, though, that the results from the Moral Machine are by no means definitive assessments of different countries’ ethical preferences. For a start, the quiz is self-selecting, only likely to be taken by relatively tech-savvy individuals. It is also structured in a way that removes nuance. Users only have two options with definite outcomes: kill these people or those people. In real life, these decisions are probabilistic, with individuals choosing between outcomes of different severities and degrees. (“If I swerve around this truck, there’s a small chance I’ll hit that pedestrian at a low speed,” and so on.) Nevertheless, experts say that doesn’t mean such quizzes are irrelevant. The contrived nature of these dilemmas is a “feature, not a bug,” says Lin, because they remove “messy variables to focus in on the particular ones we’re interested in.” He adds that even if cars won’t regularly have to choose between crashing into object X or object Y, they still have to weigh related decisions, like how wide a berth to give these items. And that is still “fundamentally an ethics problem,” says Lin, “so this is a conversation we need to have right now.” Turning ethics into legislationBut how close are we to needing legislation on these issues? When are companies going to start programming ethical decisions into self-driving vehicles? The short answer to the second question is they already have. This is true in the slightly pedantic sense that every algorithm makes decisions of some sort, and some of those will have ethical consequences. But in more concrete terms, it’s likely that rough preferences are being coded in, even if the companies involved aren’t keen to talk about them publicly. Back in 2014, for example, Google X founder Sebastian Thrun said the company’s prototype self-driving cars would choose to hit the smaller of two objects in the event of a crash. And in 2016, Google’s Chris Urmson said its cars would “try hardest to avoid hitting unprotected road users: cyclists and pedestrians.” That same year, a Mercedes-Benz manager reportedly said that the company’s self-driving vehicles would prioritize the lives of passengers in a crash, although the company later denied this and said it was a misquotation It’s understandable that firms aren’t willing to be open about these decisions. On the one hand, self-driving systems are not yet sophisticated enough to differentiate between, say, young and old people. State-of-the-art algorithms and sensors can make obvious distinctions, like between squirrels and cyclists, but they can’t be much more subtle than that. Plus, whichever lives companies might say they prioritize — people or animals, passengers or pedestrians — will be a decision that upsets somebody. That’s why these are ethical dilemmas: there’s no easy answer. Private companies are doing the most work on these questions, says Andrea Renda, a senior research fellow at the Centre for European Policy Studies. “The private sector is taking action on this, but governments may not find this to be sufficient,” Renda tells The Verge. He says in Europe, the EU is working on ethical guidelines and will likely enforce them through “command and control legislation, or through certification and co-regulation.” In the US, Congress has published bipartisan principles for potential regulation, but federal oversight will likely be slow coming, and it’s not clear whether lawmakers even want to dive into the quagmire of ethical preferences for car crashes. Renda warns that although the public needs to be involved in these debates, “relying only on bottom-up consultation would be extremely dangerous.” Governments and experts, he says, will need to make choices that reaffirm human rights. But the problems ahead can already be glimpsed in Germany, the only country to date to propose official guidelines for ethical choices made by autonomous vehicles. Lawmakers tried to slice the Gordian knot of the trolley problem by stating that all human life should be valued equally and that any distinction based on personal features like age or gender should be prohibited. But as the MIT researchers note, if this choice is implemented, it would go against the public’s strong preference for sparing the younger over the elderly. If a government introduces this policy, they ask, how will it handle the backlash “that will inevitably occur the day an autonomous vehicle sacrifices children in a dilemma situation.” Awad says this sort of conflict is “inevitable” but must be part of the process. “What’s important is to make these decisions transparent,” he says, “to make it clear what’s being done. If this all happens behind the scenes, and people say ‘just trust us,’ I don’t think it will be acceptable. Everyone needs to be involved in these decisions.” Gadget News via The Verge https://ift.tt/1jLudMg October 24, 2018 at 10:09AM
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Snapchat helped over 400,000 users register to vote https://ift.tt/2Sh7r69 Snap revealed yesterday to The New York Times that it has helped 418,000 users register to vote within a recent two-week period through Snapchat. Notably, many of those users live in potentially contentious states like Florida, Georgia, Ohio, and Texas. Snap’s efforts began at the end of September when it started displaying a link to a voter registration page on the profile of every user over 18 years old. Snap also sent out a video message to users promoting voter participation. By linking users to TurboVote.org, Snapchat hopes to improve the historically low voter turnout of young people. For instance, in the 2014 midterm elections, less than one-fifth of the 18- to 25-year-old demographic cast their votes. About 78 percent of people between ages 18 and 24 as of January this year still use Snapchat, according to We Are Flint. Other tech companies like Twitter, Instagram, Google, and Facebook are also encouraging voters to register ahead of the November midterms by sending out reminders and partnering with TurboVote. It’s not only companies that are trying to enlist young voters. Taylor Swift posted her support to two Democrats in Tennessee on Instagram earlier this month, and over 166,000 people registered to vote soon after. As The New York Times reported, about 40 percent of the newly registered were 18 to 25 years old, so the influx was likely due to Swift’s actions. Beyond registering to vote, it’ll be another campaign to get people to show up on Election Day. Gadget News via The Verge https://ift.tt/1jLudMg October 24, 2018 at 10:09AM
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Xbox One consoles are $100 off when you purchase Red Dead Redemption 2 https://ift.tt/2yZYN3h The Xbox One S and Xbox One X will be heavily discounted starting at 9PM ET on Thursday, October 25th, for those who purchase Red Dead Redemption 2 (both online and in stores) at Walmart, GameStop, Best Buy, or the Microsoft Store. Buying Rockstar’s open-world title for Xbox One will activate $100 of savings on either console at the time of checkout, bringing pre-tax prices as low as $259 for the Xbox One S or $459 for the more powerful Xbox One X. Many of the participating retailers haven’t yet shared which console bundles will be offered once the deal goes live, though you’ll likely have more options if you buy online rather than at a brick-and-mortar store where your selection will be limited to what’s on the shelves. This promotion is set to end on Saturday, November 3rd, so even if you can’t make it out on launch day, you have a week to reap the savings. GameStopGameStop offers the largest amount of choices for Xbox One X bundles. Pretty much every bundle is available, so if you’re looking to pair Red Dead Redemption 2 with PUBG or even pick up the new white Xbox One X with Fallout 76, you can do so at GameStop. Keep in mind that some bundles may sell out, and the base model at the bottom of the list is most likely to remain in stock throughout the sale period.
If you’re looking to spend less on the Xbox One S, GameStop is selling several bundles starting at $259. None are as exciting as the Fallout 76 bundle you can buy with the Xbox One X, but you’re still saving a good amount of money here.
If you’re interested in the ultimate edition of Red Dead Redemption 2, check out GameStop’s landing page for more bundles. Best BuyYou’ll be able to save $100 on Xbox One consoles at Best Buy starting at 9PM ET on Thursday, October 25th, though the retailer hasn’t yet shared which bundles it will be offering. WalmartWalmart has confirmed that it will be participating in the promotion starting at 9PM ET on Thursday, October 25th. We’ll update this piece once the bundles are made available on its site, though you’ll also be able to take advantage of the sale at your local Walmart. Microsoft StoreThe Xbox maker will also take part in the Red Dead Redemption 2 release frenzy by taking $100 off its own bundles. Like Best Buy and Walmart, Microsoft Store hasn’t yet published a landing page where visitors can easily craft a bundle, but we’ll update this post once it’s live. Should you live in a metropolitan area with a Microsoft Store, you’ll be able to take advantage of that deal in store as well. Sony’s PS4 Pro bundle with Red Dead Redemption 2 included for free has been one of the best deals around for the past few weeks, providing a persuasive excuse to pick up the $399 console. It’s still the best option for PlayStation fans, should you be able to find one in stock. But if you have friends on Xbox Live, the Xbox One is the obvious choice, and starting Thursday night, you’ll be treated to one of the best console deals we’ve seen, and are likely to see ahead of Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Gadget News via The Verge https://ift.tt/1jLudMg October 24, 2018 at 10:09AM
Elon Musk Appears to Be Building Some Sort of Batcave Underneath Los Angeles
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According to new plans filed with city officials, the Boring Company is building a car elevator inside the garage of a nondescript house near Los Angeles. The steel shaft is designed to lower a vehicle down to a test tunnel that snakes beneath the city of Hawthorne. And as some jokesters have pointed out, the whole situation sure does make it seem like Elon Musk is building his own Batcave. Obviously, the embattled billionaire isn’t really creating a lair where he can hide high-tech weapons and a tactical suit designed for fighting crime. According to the Los Angeles Times, this new car elevator is just the latest in a series of tests for the Boring Company’s mission to create a network of underground roads that will cure Los Angeles of its historically terrible traffic jams. This is perhaps the most whimsical of Musk’s various companies and pursuits, which is why it seems surprising that he’s actually following through with the experiments. It’s equally remarkable that Musk and the Boring Company are hiding this futuristic new infrastructure in plain sight. Honestly, this house could not be more nondescript. Hawthorne, California is the home of the Boring Company’s headquarters but is otherwise an unremarkable city near LAX airport. The house is on a residential street, W. 119th Place, and is close to the Hawthorne Municipal Airport, where SpaceX is headquartered and Tesla has its design center. But beyond proximity to some of Musk’s other companies, there’s nothing about this particular house that would make it stand out. It actually looks like a bit of a dump. The Boring Company bought it in January for $485,000 through a shell company called Irma’s Place. That price is pretty low compared to what houses around it are worth. But Musk and the Boring Company aren’t interested in the house itself. They’re primarily concerned with the garage and the ground beneath it. According to city records, they plan to carve out the elevator shaft in the garage and connect it to a test track 40 feet underground. There are also plans to build another, bigger garage behind the house that will connect to the test track, and the Boring Company bought a nearby industrial building nearby for $2 million, where the company plans to transport the cutter head used for digging the test track. Apparently, none of this will cause too much of a ruckus. “We’ll be completely contained within the garage,” Brett Horton, the senior director of facilities and construction for the Boring Company and SpaceX, told city officials. “You won’t be able to see or hear it.” The process of building all this has been low-key so far. The company has installed a crapload of security equipment in anticipation for the elevator’s construction and use. Meanwhile, Musk recently announced that a two-mile-long test track underneath Hawthorne called “the Loop” will open to the public on December 11, though he teased the idea of public rides back in May. The Boring Company has released pictures of this tunnel which does indeed look like a tunnel but, at least at the time this photo was taken, does not look like a track that will transport vehicles at a top speed of 155 miles per hour. We’ll see if Musk and the Boring Company really do start giving people tunnel rides in six weeks’ time. While the 47-year-old has earned a reputation for harassing rescue workers and attracting SEC investigations, he has not historically followed through on all of his promises. In the past, Musk has said of the Boring Company, “We have no idea what we’re doing.” Which doesn’t mean he’ll fail! At the very least, the Boring Company has released a some very cool and futuristic-looking concept videos. It’s also sold a lot of flamethrowers, for some reason. If you let your mind wander a bit, though, it doesn’t matter if the Boring Company succeeds at creating a vast network of underground transportation tunnels in cities like Los Angeles. That mission could be abandoned by next year, but Musk would be still be left with at least one sprawling underground lair, concealed from public view by a dilapidated house and accessible by car-sized elevator in its garage. Just imagine the possibilities. Gadget News via Gizmodo October 24, 2018 at 10:01AM Listen as Apple's iPhone XS Max takes on Google's Pixel 3 XL in our smartphone speaker test10/24/2018
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Listen as Apple's iPhone XS Max takes on Google's Pixel 3 XL in our smartphone speaker test https://ift.tt/2yYTUaF Continuing AppleInsider's video series comparing Apple's iPhone XS Max to Google's Pixel 3 XL, this installment takes a closer look -- or listen -- at the two flagships' speaker systems. Gadget News via AppleInsider - Frontpage News http://appleinsider.com October 24, 2018 at 09:59AM
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Samsung is working on a foldable laptop display https://ift.tt/2qa9ht0 Samsung has spent years talking up its upcoming foldable smartphone which, depending on who you ask, is dubbed either the Galaxy F or Galaxy X. But why stop there? Why not bring the bendy magic to other gadgets-with-a-screen? Well, it's doing exactly that, according to a Samsung exec. And next in line to get a foldable makeover is the company's laptops. "Like foldable smartphones, Samsung is collaborating with display makers to develop laptops with foldable displays that will not just simply fold in and out but create new value and user experience," said Lee Min-cheol, VP of marketing for PCs at Samsung. Lee made the comments during a showcase for Samsung's decidedly less exciting new "Flash" laptops in Seoul, Korea, reports The Korea Herald. He added that Samsung is currently working to develop large AMOLED displays for laptops with panel makers. An industry leader in the OLED space, it also recently previewed an "unbreakable" flexible OLED display. This year, the Korean electronics giant has released a Surface challenger in the guise of the Notebook 9 Pen: a 2-in-1 hybrid laptop/tablet that weighs just 2.2 pounds. A folding form factor would help it stand apart from rivals Microsoft and Google. But details on the new device are currently scarce. Let's just hope Samsung doesn't end up teasing this release for several years, like it did its foldable handset (pictured above in a concept video screenshot) -- which is finally set to drop in 2019, barring any delays. A simultaneous bendy laptop release would be a mouth-watering prospect. Gadget News via Engadget http://www.engadget.com October 24, 2018 at 09:57AM
Apple reportedly planning global rollout for its streaming TV service next year
https://ift.tt/2EHweh8 Apple’s streaming television service, which is said to resemble Amazon Prime Video and Netflix, will launch in the first half of next year, according to a report today from The Information. The service, which may exist as a standalone app or within the existing TV app, will launch in the US first and become available in more than 100 countries after a few months of availability, the report says. It will feature a mix of original programming, access to third-party services, and the ability to subscribe directly to channel packages offered by network and cable providers, similar to Amazon’s Channels feature. For years, Apple has been trying to crack streaming like it did digital media and smartphone apps. But due to complex licensing deals and media conglomerates’ tight control on pricing and bundling, the iPhone maker has been less successful than competitors like Amazon and Netflix, both of which have built strong ecosystems mixing licensed content and original programming. And although Apple has sold its own set-top box since 2006, the device has largely remained a conduit for other companies’ media, and it lags behind Amazon and Roku hardware in market share. Apple appears ready to try and change that with the launch of its official streaming TV service, which will be free for iOS device owners and exist as the home interface of its Apple TV line, reports The Information. One snag is that Apple doesn’t appear willing to let the software exist outside its own hardware, which may limit its ability to expand. Both Amazon, through its Prime Video app, and Netflix exist as mobile apps, built-in native smart TV apps, and streaming set-top box apps. In the case of Amazon, which produces the Fire TV line, its software is the entire home interface on its devices. That means consumers have numerous access points to Prime Video and Netflix, while Apple will necessarily limit its own service’s reach. Still, this mirrors Apple’s approach to many of its other hardware and software products, and it could prove to be irrelevant if the company’s free service gets millions of iOS and Apple TV users signing in. (Notably, Prime Video requires you pay Amazon’s $119 annual fee, while Netflix costs $7.99 a month.) The obvious solution there is original programming, which Apple has reportedly set aside $1 billion for in 2018 alone. So far, Apple has put its original shows, like Carpool Karaoke and Planet of the Apps, on Apple Music. But this new service would be home to a dizzying number of in-the-works projects that have been confirmed in the last couple of years. As my colleague Andrew Liptak put it, there’s a lot Apple is working on:
We have no idea if this programming will be any good. Considering it took years for Amazon and Netflix to find their footing in Hollywood and start turning out Emmy- and Oscar-winning projects, it could be a while before Apple attracts the same level of talent and creates a production environment where high-quality television and film can succeed. But Apple clearly has the money to spend and the desire to compete. Fifteen years ago, iTunes dominated the digital media landscape as the place where you went to browse, purchase, and play music, TV, and movies on your computer and MP3 player. Despite the dominant position of the iPhone in the age of the smartphone, Apple missed the boat on streaming video and is still playing catch-up with Spotify on streaming music. With the launch of a successful TV service, however, the company could start making up for lost time. Gadget News via The Verge October 24, 2018 at 09:47AM |
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