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Charlotte Henry

Charlotte is a media junkie, covering how Apple is not just a revolutionary tech firm, but a revolutionary media firm for TMO. She is based in London, and writes and broadcasts for various outlets.

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Apple Music Editorial Content To Be Better Integrated With News

Apple Music and Apple News are starting to form a much closer relationship, with editorial content from the former set to appear in the latter. The start of the process was spotted by MacStories, which compared the current progress to how Apple New was integrated with Stocks in the past.

The integration of Apple Music and News, which Apple said nothing about during its event on April 20th, is clearly just getting going, so there’s not a lot to see yet. However, it’s also the sort of integration that has the potential to differentiate Music from competitors like Spotify and give users a much-needed reason to visit News. This is a feature we may learn more about next week when iOS and iPadOS 14.5 are released to the public, and that we’ll be keeping a close eye on and as we learn more about Apple’s plans for the fall during WWDC.

How Privacy Sits At the Heart of Apple's New AirTags

After years of rumors, Apple finally unveiled AirTags at its ‘Spring Loaded’ event on Tuesday. Fast Company looked at how privacy sits at the heart of the new product.

“When it came to designing our own product, we thought carefully about how to get this right in a way that no one else in the industry’s ever done before,” says Kaiann Drance, Apple’s VP of worldwide iPhone product marketing. I spoke to her and Ron Huang, the company’s senior director of sensing and connectivity, about Apple’s newest, tiniest gadget. “You’ll see that we designed for the privacy of AirTag owners and nonowners, as well as making these benefits opened up to third-party products as well.” And from a privacy standpoint, that’s what’s really remarkable about the AirTag: Apple isn’t just thinking about the privacy of AirTag owners themselves, or even solely about users in Apple’s ecosystem. The company designed the AirTag with the privacy of everyone in mind—yes, even Android users and people who have never owned an Apple product.

Spotify, Match, Tile Exec to Appear as Witnesses at Apple, Google Antitrust Hearing

Executives from Spotify, Match, and Tile will appear as witnesses at Wednesday’s Senate antitrust hearing into Apple and Google, Bloomberg News reported. All the firms have clashed with Apple in the past.

Google Senior Director of Government Affairs and Public Policy Wilson White will be the search giant’s representative, joining Apple Chief Compliance Officer Kyle Andeer in the spotlight. The Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Competition Policy, Antitrust and Consumer Rights, which is holding the hearing, also plans to call Horacio Gutierrez, Kirsten Daru, and Jared Sine, top legal executives from Spotify, Tile and Match Group, respectively. Mark Cooper, director of research for the Consumer Federation of America, will also be called. Spotify, Tile and Match have all been embroiled in antitrust fights with Apple recently, with Spotify and Match filing complaints about Apple’s App Store rules and fees. Tile believes Apple’s Find My app will give the company’s rumored AirTags accessory for finding physical objects a leg up over third-party rivals.

'Greyhound' and 'Servant' Win at Motion Picture Sound Editors Award Winners

Greyhound and Servant were both victorious at Friday night’s Motion Picture Sound Editors Awards. As The Hollywood Reporter’s break down highlights, in some cases, they actually beat other Apple TV+ content. No doubt the company will be pleased to be competing in technical, as well as creative, categories.

Greyhound and Soul, along with Mank, News of the World, and Sound of Metal are nominated for the Oscar for sound–a new category combining what was previously two separate categories for sound editing and sound mixing. All five movies are also nominated for Cinema Audio Society Awards for sound mixing, which will be handed out during a virtual ceremony on Saturday.

PlayStation Store to Remain on PS3 and PS Vita

The PlayStation Store will remain available for PS3 and PS Vita users. President & CEO, Sony Interactive Entertainment, announced the change of course on Monday.

Today I’m happy to say that we will be keeping the PlayStation Store operational for PS3 and PS Vita devices. PSP commerce functionality will retire on July 2, 2021 as planned. When we initially came to the decision to end purchasing support for PS3 and PS Vita, it was born out of a number of factors, including commerce support challenges for older devices and the ability for us to focus more of our resources on newer devices where a majority of our gamers are playing on. We see now that many of you are incredibly passionate about being able to continue purchasing classic games on PS3 and PS Vita for the foreseeable future, so I’m glad we were able to find a solution to continue operations.