Fitbit Inc., the fitness band maker, has acquired software assets from struggling smartwatch startup Pebble Technology Corp., a move that will help it better compete with Apple Inc.
The purchase excludes Pebble’s hardware, Fitbit said in a statement Wednesday. The deal is mainly about hiring the startup’s software engineers and testers, and getting intellectual property such as the Pebble watch’s operating system, watch apps, and cloud services, people familiar with the matter said earlier.
The Pebble fire sale is the result of financial struggles in a smartwatch market that failed to grow as quickly or as large as initially hoped and hyped. Industry shipments slumped 52 percent in the third quarter, according to research firm IDC, and Pebble cut a quarter of its staff earlier this year.
This has been predicted for a long time so it comes as no real surprise. The market is dominated by Fitbit and Apple and, while it was a darling of the Kickstarter and early adopter tech crowd, the Pebble never really had much mainstream success.
Just over a year after acquiring the scraps of Rdio, Pandora has revealed Premium, its take on an on-demand music streaming service, designed to compete against the likes of Spotify and Apple Music. Just like every other $10-a-month music streaming service, Pandora Premium will offer users an extensive library featuring millions of songs available on-demand, ad-free streaming, and the ability to save your music offline.
Where Premium separates itself from the Spotifys of the world is personalization. Pandora’s smart playlists will allow users to automatically add similar songs to a playlist at the tap of a button. Premium also features personalized search, which will give different users different results based on their listening history. The browse section is tailored to your tastes, including the new release section.
I’ve been a customer of Pandora for quite some time and love it—they have the best algorithmic radio stations in the industry. With Premium, they are combing that with on-demand music just like the other music services offer. This is going to be an interesting battle to watch in 2017.
If you have not yet read it, take a few minutes to read Jim Dalrymple’s heartfelt critique of Apple Music, iTunes Match, and Apple’s embrace of Hip-Hop.
I do agree with a lot of Jim’s thesis, especially his points about iTunes Match and Apple exclusives. Rock and metal seem to have become second class citizens there.
That said, I have become more and more a fan of the overall Apple Music experience, warts and all. I love being able to share music with my kids via our family plan. There’s hardly a song I can think of that I can’t find on Apple Music. My kids share what they love, which keeps me up on newer music, and I get to share the roots music that informed and influenced the music they love.
I think Apple Music’s DNA is broadening, not narrowing. Though I do agree that Apple exclusives tend to be star-centric, with focus on trying to sign deals with the biggest names, that makes business sense.
But Apple Music is not abandoning other flavors of music. As I write this, I have Metallica’s newest (Hardwired to Self-Destruct) blasting direct from Apple Music to my MacBook Pro’s speakers.
As I make my way through the new releases on Apple Music, I see Disturbed: Live at Red Rocks, Sixx:A.M.’s Prayers for the Blessed, both mixed in with plenty of pop, jazz, country and, yes, plenty of hip-hop. That said, Jim’s point is certainly well taken. There’s way more hip-hop/rap than rock. The trend is clear.
I see this as a bit of a pendulum. The most highly represented music is driven by the personal tastes of the people running the show. That makes sense. Before Beats entered the equation, the pendulum swung the other way.
And with all that said, I hope that the folks at the top will read Jim’s editorial and take it to heart. The choices made with iTunes Match and Apple Music exclusives do matter. Don’t let your own personal tastes limit the Apple Music experience for those folks who skew different.
Center Stage is a new and dynamic way to browse tweets that contain only media in your Twitterrific timeline. Users have been requesting a media-focused timeline in Twitterrific for quite a while and we’re pleased to announce it’s finally arrived.
I don’t use Twitter in such a way to make this Center Stage feature attractive to me but if you are looking for a different way to view your tweets, Twitterific is a great, free (with in-app purchases) Twitter client.
It was inevitable that, in an industry where improving sleep has become its own sub-economy, alarm clock sounds would get disrupted, too. Sure, morning alerts have taken many sonic forms over the course of human civilization, including rooster crows, ringing bells, and Sonny and Cher’s “I Got You, Babe.” But as more Americans become loyal smartphone users — especially the kind that sleep next to their gadget each night — tangible alarm clocks have been replaced with apps that get creative with their morning racket. In this new medium, the strategies for waking up have multiplied, sometimes adopting gimmicky or cruel approaches in the search to answer the same questions: What’s the perfect sound, light, or smell to wake up to?
I use an app called “Rise Alarm Clock“. It has a lovely alarm sound called “Camping Trip” I use to gently wake up to. What alarm clock sounds do you use?
I love a good fourth wall break, when someone in a show or film turns and speaks directly to the audience, or into the camera. When done well, it creates a more intimate relationship between the actors and the audience.
As it does every year, Apple today has put together its end-of-the-year “Best of” sections on the iTunes Store, App Store, and iBooks Store. The sections are meant to highlight the best content of the year across various categories. For instance, Apple has named photo editing app “Prisma” as the iPhone App of the Year.
Moving down the list, Apple has named “Clash Royale” iPhone Game of the Year, while “Severed” has been named iPad Game of the Year. “Sketchbook Motion,” meanwhile, has been named iPad App of the Year.
There are lists for Apps of the Year, Games of the Year, and things Drake has done…er…Song and Album of the Year.
If you type an emoji, followed by @Google, you’ll eventually get a response from Google, using the #KnowNearby hash tag, with a localized search based on the emoji.
For example:
?@Google
will return a search for local pizza.
This is interesting, but the response takes too long to be truly useful. I do like the experiment, though.
It feels like cracks are forming at Apple’s edges. The company is straining to push out hardware updates. Supply issues are getting worse. Apple is reportedly moving away from selling beloved products like stand-alone displays and wireless routers. Meanwhile, Microsoft, Amazon, and Snap are gaining buzz with new niche hardware while Apple appears to be hanging back and resting on its laurels.
Something feels off with Apple, and the blame is increasingly pointed at Tim Cook. I suspect these feelings are a result of Cook betting now is the time to milk the iPhone. Apple is doubling down on the iPhone to build one of the world’s most formidable tech ecosystems, and few are taking notice.
Not sure I agree with the title here. The term “milking” gives a sense that Apple is spinning its wheels, doing nothing but sucking every bit of juice it can get out of the iPhone line. But if you read the rest of the article, it’s clear that this is all about expanding and fortifying the iPhone ecosystem, something Tim Cook has done spectacularly well.
As we launch more than 1,000 hours of original content next year, we know we have less than 90 seconds to capture someone’s attention and get them excited about a title — that’s why we’re introducing video previews into the TV browsing experience.
What’s a video preview? For starters, video previews aren’t teasers or traditional trailers. They are specially designed video synopses that help members make faster and more confident decisions by quickly highlighting the story, characters and tone of a title. In developing this experience, our testing showed that people watched more of a story, demonstrating these previews helped them browse less and watch more.
I like the experience, I do see value in seeing curated video clips instead of a box shot or still frame.
That said, I think more data would be even more helpful. For example, I’d love a Rotten Tomatoes/Metacritic/IMDb score for each movie (in addition to the Netflix score, which I rarely agree with).
As I’m making my way through Netflix’s lists, I inevitably make my way over to IMDb, etc. to get a sense of how the movie is received by others. A low score won’t necessarily stop me from exploring a movie, but an extremely high score will keep me in the game, keep me from missing a little known but highly praised niche project.
In an interview with Billboard today, Apple’s Eddy Cue revealed that Apple Music has surpassed 20 million paid subscribers. There are a few other tidbits of info in the article as well.
And despite a mandate from Universal Music Group chairman Lucian Grainge, exclusives will continue in the near future “where appropriate,” adds Cue. “They work really well for everybody concerned — they’re great for the label, they work for the artist and for us.”
Exclusives drive numbers and a subscription service is all about churning people, hopefully adding more in the top than those falling out the bottom. Apple is perfecting it.
“We’ve always thought that hip-hop was underrepresented both in iTunes and in the streaming chart. And more people listen to hip-hop now than ever before so we’ve done a lot of work in that area.”
I’ve said this since the launch of Apple Music, but it seems very clear now. “Music” is no longer in Apple’s DNA—hip-hop is what’s important to Apple. Again, it’s a numbers game. More people are listening to that genre than ever before, so Apple can leave the Rock/Blues/Metal acts to another service and still add subscribers using hip-hop exclusives. It’s actually refreshing to see Apple finally admit it.
People like me with an existing music library that rely on the often non-working iTunes Match are no longer Apple’s market. I even opened up a second Apple Music account to see if iTunes Match would work—it didn’t.
In a lot of ways it makes perfect sense that Apple is building a music service that doesn’t require a music library—there’s less hassle and they don’t have to rely on services like iTunes Match to please those customers. Apple is catering to those customers very well. However, it’s a shame they don’t care about the rest of us any more.
What Apple will recognize is that the people they attract with exclusives will go to the next music service that has an exclusive without blinking an eye or without any loyalty to Apple. By that time, the base of users that they’ve relied on for years will also be gone.
And the churn continues.
Update:
I feel compelled to write an update because there seems to be some confusion over what I wrote last night.
I’m not saying that Hip-Hop is not music or isn’t an important genre of music—it is. In fact, it’s probably the largest music genre in the business today. What I’m saying is that Apple is focusing its entire service on that one genre.
If I go to the “Browse” section of Apple Music on any given day, the majority of what I see is only Hip-Hop. That’s not Apple having music in its DNA, that’s focusing on the churn of music subscribers—that’s a totally different thing than loving all types of music.
More importantly, pieces of Apple Music still don’t work like Apple said they would. One of the great promises of Apple Music was being able to bring your existing music library to the service and it would know what songs you have. When I look at an album on Apple Music that I already own, it often says that I don’t have it—how can that happen if iTunes Match is working the way it should?
How is it that I can play a radio station, rate a song that’s it’s playing from my library and the rating disappears immediately?
How can I tap play on an Apple Music song and it plays a completely different version of the song?
Why doesn’t my iCloud Music Library on my Mac update every day with the songs I played in the last 24 hours when it’s supposed to?
When the iCloud Music Library does update, why doesn’t it include songs from radio stations that I played, even though those songs are in my library?
How can I dislike songs and albums and they continue to show up in my For You section?
My issue is not that Apple is focused on Hip-Hop, it’s that they are only focused on Hip-Hop to the detriment of the other issues. They need to fix the service and focus on their love of all music, not how many subscribers they have.
Apple was always about building the best product and people would come. Apple Music doesn’t seem like that to me.
Makers of the Snuggie blanket and other products sold mainly on TV have sued Amazon.com Inc, accusing the internet retailer of trademark infringement for letting an “astronomical” number of counterfeit products to be sold through its website.
I’m glad to see that someone finally stepped up and is holding Amazon’s feet to the fire. The amount of counterfeit products being sold on Amazon is outrageous and they are doing nothing about it. If this lawsuit is successful, Amazon better watch out because the floodgates will open.
The California Environmental Protection Agency on Tuesday said Apple Inc agreed to pay $450,000 to settle state claims that it had mishandled hazardous electronic waste at facilities in Silicon Valley.
I’ll be honest, everything about this story seems so unlike Apple. It’s like the opposite of Apple.
The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday sided with Samsung in its big-money smartphone patent fight with Apple, throwing out an appeals court ruling that the South Korean company had to pay a $399 million penalty to its American rival for copying key iPhone designs.
The 8-0 ruling, written by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, held that a patent violator does not always have to fork over its entire profits from the sales of products using stolen designs, if the designs covered only certain components and not the whole thing.
Samsung is still guilty of infringement. The only dispute now is how much they’ll have to fork over to Apple.
In a short time, Portrait mode has become a favorite feature for iPhone 7 Plus users, with people capturing a range of subjects with the stunning depth-of-field effect, bringing them closer to the subjects they love. iPhone is the most popular camera in the world. And its popularity increased among photographers in 2016, according to Flickr. Below are a few photos and tips from photographers who are finding creative ways to use Portrait mode everyday.
The best part of these and other tips is that they aren’t iPhone 7 Plus specific. You can work the tips into your photography no matter what kind of camera you use.
In September 2005, Steve Jobs gave his advertising agency, TBWA\Chiat\Day, an assignment: Come up with a campaign that clearly demonstrates the Mac’s superiority to the PC. There was no deadline.
Seven months, dozens of tense meetings and countless discarded ideas later, the agency produced “Get a Mac.” It would go on to become one of the most succesful and admired ad campaigns in Apple’s history, no small feat when “1984,” “Think Different” and “Silhouette” are the competition. Among those legendary ads, “Get a Mac” stands out as the most overtly comedic and one of the most expansive: The team shot 323 spots over three years just to get the 66 that made it on air.
To mark the 10-year anniversary, Campaign US asked members of the creative team, the crew and the actors to share the untold stories of how the campaign came to life. What follows is their recollections—inconsistencies, errors, biases and all—lightly edited and condensed for clarity.
This campaign was one of the most interesting and divisive Apple has ever produced. I loved the overall feel and message of them.
Apple has been offering a path to custom greeting cards for a long time. Memory serves, Apple’s original iCard service disappeared back in 2013, finding a new home in iPhoto and then Photos.
In the linked article, Lesa Snider, writing for Macworld, walks you through the process. Pass this along.
If you’re using or considering buying one of the new MacBook Pro models with the Touch Bar (see “New MacBook Pros Add Context-sensitive Touch Bar,” 27 October 2016), be aware that some people are seeing their machines shut down repeatedly and unexpectedly. The problem might be with external hard drives connected via Thunderbolt 3’s USB-C ports, which is, of course, the only way to connect them.
I began researching this after I was unable to copy a large number of files from one external USB drive to another using my new MacBook Pro. The copy was going to take a long time regardless, but when I came back to check on its status, my laptop was powered off and I had to start it up again manually. Restarting the copy additional times resulted in similar shutdowns.
In my case, I was presented with an error message telling me about the shutdown, with the messages “CPU Machine Check Architecture Error Dump” and “CATERR detected! No MCA data found” in the highly technical error report that automatically gets sent to Apple.
Hopefully, this issue, as well as the graphics glitching issue reported yesterday, is a sign of early days with a new architecture, and will be resolved either with a software update (best possible solution) or a design fix (with some repair path for early adopters).
Netflix’s decision to introduce an in-app subscription option in its iOS app over a year ago has helped the streaming service steadily gain more subscribers, and surge up the Top Grossing charts in the Apple App Store. Back in November of last year, the app hit the Top Grossing chart for the first time, reaching the No. 9 position. Today, Netflix has reached another milestone, as the app has earned the No. 1 Top Grossing spot on the U.S. iPhone App Store.
Interesting that after all this time, and after two different pivots (from mailing discs to streaming and original content), no other company has been able to duplicate their formula for success. Netflix has the mojo.
Sales of the Apple Watch to consumers set a record during the first week of holiday shopping, and the current quarter is on track to be the best ever for the product, Apple Inc Chief Executive Tim Cook told Reuters.
Responding to an email from Reuters, Cook said the gadget’s sell-through – a measure of how many units are sold to consumers, rather than simply stocked on retailers’ shelves – reached a new high.
“Our data shows that Apple Watch is doing great and looks to be one of the most popular holiday gifts this year,” Cook wrote.
While Apple may be straying into Amazon territory here (Amazon famously reports “amazing” sales of the Kindle without actually saying how many they’ve sold), it’s still good news that Apple is very happy with the sales figures of the Apple Watch,
