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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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Articles by Charlotte Henry

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The Streaming Wars Are Only Going to Intensify in 2021

Charlotte Henry ·

2020 was, you may have noticed, a big year in the streaming wars. However, Input thinks things are going to escalate even further in 2021. Looking at the amount of content on the way, it’s hard to disagree.

Aside from Netflix, which had more than a year’s worth of content on hand before lockdowns began, every major service experienced significant delays, pushing back their original slates of programming. With Hollywood productions back up and running for 2021, this will be the year the streaming wars begin in earnest. Even when just looking at the smaller services, the year ahead should prove exciting. Apple TV+ is gearing up to release Foundation, its next flagship prestige series, along with new seasons of shows the service launched with. CBS All-Access will be rebranding to Paramount+, an effort to reflect the more diverse content offering outside the kind of shows geared to the, er, typical CBS audience. Amazon Prime will drop the first season of its incredibly expensive Lord of the Rings adaptation. Oh, and Funimation bought Crunchyroll, bringing the bulk of anime licenses into one place for the first time.

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'Soul' on Disney+ is a Holiday Hit

Charlotte Henry ·

Soul has arrived on Disney+ and, I don’t know about you, but all my social media timelines are filled with people saying how much they love it. It stars Jamie Foxx and Tina Fey, and tells the story of Joe, a musician who lands a gig at the best Jazz club in town. There is also a load of related extras available within the streaming service. The score is by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross.

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How Apple Thrived After Not Buying Tesla

Charlotte Henry ·

A while back, Tesla CEO Elon Musk revealed that he had “reached out to Tim Cook” about buying his company. Obviously, that never happened. A missed opportunity for Apple? Liam Denning, writing for Bloomberg News, doesn’t think so.

Is Cook kicking himself for not buying Tesla when he had the chance? I suspect that, in some well-appointed office deep inside the Apple Park donut, the soft thud of self-kicking is not to be heard. Musk may well have “reached out.” On the other hand, the gossamer-veiled dig at Cook’s apparent short-sightedness contained in the Tesla CEO’s tweet suggests this may be more about taking the shine off Apple’s rumored vehicle ambitions. Musk has been known to lash out on Twitter. There is also some history here, given Musk once dissed Apple as a “graveyard” for defecting Tesla employees. That was a few years before he apparently reached out to the chief gravedigger.

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Facebook Thinks It's Defending Small Firms Against Apple. Not All Its Employees Agree.

Charlotte Henry ·

Facebook recently ran a high-profile ad campaign against Apple. The social media giant said changes to iOS privacy rules would hurt small businesses. According to Buzzfeed News, its employees don’t necessarily agree.

While the $750 billion company’s public relations effort has presented a united front with small businesses, some Facebook employees complained about what they called a self-serving campaign that bordered on hypocrisy, according to internal comments and audio of a presentation to workers that were obtained by BuzzFeed News. A change in Apple’s iOS 14 mobile operating system — which requires iPhone owners to opt in to allow companies to track them across other apps and websites — hurts Facebook, some employees argued on the company’s private message boards, and their employer was just using small businesses as a shield. “It feels like we are trying to justify doing a bad thing by hiding behind people with a sympathetic message,” one engineer wrote in response to an internal post about the campaign from Dan Levy, Facebook’s vice president for ads.

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VW Boss Welcomes ‘New Competitors’ Following Apple Car Reports

Charlotte Henry ·

VW CEO Herbert Diess has welcomed “new competitors” following the latest Apple Car reports.  He made the comments in a LinkedIn post spotted by iMore.

Herbert Diess responded to talk of an Apple Car in a LinkedIn post, where he was asked about Apple’s project Titan, citing an article regarding reports Apple will release an autonomous car in 2024 with breakthrough battery technology. Diess responded: “We are looking forward to new competitors who will certainly accelerate the transformation of our industry and bring in new skills. The incredible evaluation and thus the virtually unlimited access to resources inspire us a great deal of respect. A real challenge – dimensions greater than those within our industry (e.B. Toyota Motor Corporation ) As I have already said, the most valuable company in the world will once again be a mobility company – it Tesla can, Apple or may be Volkswagen AG called.” (Translated)

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Google Faces Major Antitrust Lawsuit From Texas

Charlotte Henry ·

Google is facing a major antitrust lawsuit from Texas and other states, Politico reported. If successful, the search giant could be hit with trillions of dollars worth of fines.

The lawsuit, which also includes eight other states, accuses Google of rigging online ad auctions to increase its own profits at the expense of website publishers, who have struggled to make the same kind of money from web ads as from television, print and radio. The states have asked the court to force the company to sell off pieces of its business to take away its power to control such auctions. But there are other allegations that could cut Google even more deeply. Texas also alleges that Google violated state laws that forbid unfair or deceptive business practices — laws that mandate steep fines for each violation. The attorneys general plan to argue that every online bid allegedly manipulated by Google violates state laws, which would lead to a massive pileup of fines.

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COVID-19 Stimulus Bill Makes Illegal Streaming For Profit a Felony

Charlotte Henry ·

The COVID-19 Stimulus Bill, passed Monday, makes illegal streaming for profit a felony. The Hollywood Reporter explained.

It’s been less than two weeks since Sen. Thom Tillis released his proposal to increase the penalties for those who would dare stream unlicensed works. In doing so, the North Carolina Republican flirted with danger. About a decade ago, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) made a similar proposal before it ended up dying as people worried about sending Justin Bieber to jail. (No, seriously.) But Tillis’ attempt has been winning better reviews for more narrowly tailoring the provisions toward commercial operators rather than users. That said, it’s had very little time to circulate before evidently becoming part of the spending package. If passed, illegal streaming of works including movies and music tracks could carry a penalty of up to 10 years in jail. That’s not the only change to copyright law, either. The spending bill also appears to adopt a long-discussed plan to create a small-claims adjudication system within the U.S. Copyright Office.

 

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When iPhone Came to The World's Biggest Network

Charlotte Henry ·

December 22nd is a significant date in the story of the iPhone. As Cult of Mac recalls, it was on that day in 2013 that Apple secured a deal with the world’s biggest telecom company – China mobile.

With 760 million potential iPhone customers in the offing, the deal shapes up as Apple’s most important yet for growing its brand in China. In fact, Apple CEO Tim Cooks says the country will soon become the company’s biggest market. “China is an extremely important market for Apple and our partnership with China Mobile presents us the opportunity to bring iPhone to the customers of the world’s largest network,” Cook said in a statement when the news broke. “iPhone customers in China are an enthusiastic and rapidly growing group, and we can’t think of a better way to welcome in the Chinese New Year than getting an iPhone into the hands of every China Mobile customer who wants one.”

 

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In a Year of Minuses, Streaming Services Are All About the Plus

Charlotte Henry ·

Everyone knows that you can’t have a streaming service and not call it Something+. (You even need to use a ‘+’ if you launch a podcast that discusses streaming services.) The LA Times looked into how, and why, this came to be.

Steve Kazanjian, president and chief executive of Promax, the trade association for marketing companies serving the entertainment industries, said the repeated use of the arithmetic symbol has made it an efficient tool to create awareness of the new services. “There is a stake in the ground that’s around ‘plus’ right now,” he said. “It’s in the consumer lexicon. It owns a bit of emotional equity in your brain already, which is really powerful.” Discovery found that was the case when it conducted surveys and focus groups with consumers on possible names for its service. The company considered dozens of original monikers — testing Latin words and new-fangled creations that came from combined words — a route that Jeffrey Katzenberg’s short-lived streaming service took when it melded “quick bites” into Quibi.