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YouTube Music Replaces Google Play Music on Android

Charlotte Henry ·

YouTube Music will replace Google Play Music as the default music app on Android devices. It will come pre-installed on smartphones and be part of Android 10, Sky News reported.

The service – which has struggled to seize a significant portion of the music streaming market – will replace the relatively unsuccessful Google Play Music app. The move is more a matter of Google consolidating its estate of products rather than attempting to meet the standards of competitors. YouTube Music will come pre-installed on new Android smartphones and will be included in the next version of its operating system, which will simply be known as Android 10 after Google ditched its dessert-themed naming conventions.

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Brands Turn to Product Placements as we Watch Ad-Free Streaming Services

Charlotte Henry ·

Like many streaming services, Apple TV+ will be ad-free. That is making brands and advertisers rethink how they can reach consumers. AdWeek reported that product placements are becoming more prominent as a result.

Ultimately, though, brands want to be where consumers are. As viewing habits continue to shift to streaming, finding a way to make it onto emerging platforms will only become more essential. “What advertisers and brands are going to need to do is leverage the full ecosystems of those brands to reach people,” said Billy Boulia, group connections director at the agency The Community. “It’s going to become even more important to go in deep with the Apples and the HBOs and the Disneys.”

Podcast

NASA Chair, Lib. of Congress Dr. Susan Schneider - TMO Background Mode Interview

John Martellaro · · Add Comment

Dr. Susan Schneider is an Associate Professor of Philosophy and Cognitive Science at The University of Connecticut. She writes about issues in philosophy, AI, cognitive science and astrobiology. Within philosophy, she works on both the computational nature of the brain and the metaphysical nature of the mind. The topics she has written about most recently include radical brain enhancement, machine intelligence, consciousness, and the nature of persons. Her new book is Artificial You – AI And The Future Of Your Mind.

In our chat we covered many of the major issues of AI: the computational nature of the mind, consciousness, the question of whether consciousness is restricted to humans, extraterrestrial post-biological intelligence, AI implants in humans, and the ethical and cybersecurity issues of AI. Susan talks to AI issues you may have never thought about before. Join me in this awesome 30 minute virtual seminar on AI.

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App Store Prices Will Increase in Kazakhstan, Sweden

Andrew Orr ·

Apple released developer news today saying that due to changes in foreign exchange rates, App Store prices will increase in Kazakhstan and Sweden.

Once this change goes into effect, the Pricing and Availability section of My Apps will be updated. You can change the price of your apps and in-app purchases (including auto-renewable subscriptions) at any time in App Store Connect. For subscriptions, you have the option to preserve prices for existing subscribers.

See this PDF for a list of updated App Store pricing for these regions.

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Facebook Refuses to Fact-Check Politicians

Andrew Orr ·

Facebook moves to hold politicians to lower standards than the rest of us, saying that politicians will be exempt from its fact-checking system.

Facebook uses independent third-party fact-checking organizations to help identity fake news, misleading claims and misinformation. However, it said posts made by politicians would not be fact-checked. It said it did not want to be the “referee” in political debates or prevent politicians’ posts from reaching their intended audience. However, it did not define who it counted as a politician.

Mark Zuckerberg won’t fact-check politicians but he’ll gladly take their political advertising money.

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Apple News+ Now Available in Australia, UK

Andrew Orr ·

News+ is Apple’s new subscription service for news, and today it’s available for customers in Australia and the United Kingdom.

Apple News+ subscribers can access more than 150 publications in Apple News+, with a one month free trial available to test the service before having to pay the £9.99 (UK) or $14.99 (Australia) monthly fee.

Available magazines and publications in the UK include The Times and The Sunday Times, Cosmopolitan UK, more.

Magazines and publications in Australia include The Australian, The Daily Telegraph, Herald Sun, more.

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Apple, Amazon, and the Quest for Device Location

Andrew Orr ·

This article is a great example of false equivalence. By including both Apple and Amazon and writing about each company’s efforts with location technology, the reader is led to believe that we have to worry about both companies. But of course, that isn’t true. Apple has much better privacy practices, while Amazon barely knows the word.

It could be that with the privacy-focused techlash of recent years, both are treading carefully in the launch stages. Just look at how Amazon’s acquisition of mesh networking company eero was received earlier this year or the widespread interest in Huawei’s level of involvement with 5G networks. Location tracking in particular is currently the focus of much more granular controls in iOS 13 and Android 10 than ever before.

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Here's to The Crazy Ones - 22 Years on

Charlotte Henry ·

On September 28, 1997, Apple released the Here’s to the Crazy Ones commercial. 22 years on, Cult of Mac reflected on the iconic spot.

Narrated by actor Richard Dreyfuss, the TV spot starts out with an instantly memorable salute to counterculture ideals. “Here’s to the crazy ones,” Dreyfuss intones. “The misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers — the round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. Black-and-white images of more than a dozen 20th-century visionaries, from Albert Einstein and Buckminster Fuller to John Lennon and Martin Luther King Jr., flow past as masterful marketing copy praises the power of bold ideas. The spot ends with the powerful (and grammatically questionable) advertising slogan, “Think different.”

 

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Spotlight Search Responds Immediately in iPadOS 13

Charlotte Henry ·

Daring Fireball’s John Gruber was frustrated at the delay in Spotlight search when using an external keyboard with an iPad. He confirmed Saturday that this issue had been fixed in iPadOS 13.

A little birdie told me this would be fixed in iOS/iPadOS 13. And I’m happy to confirm that — so far at least — Spotlight search with an external keyboard hasn’t missed a keystroke for me yet. There actually are bug fixes in iOS 13, too.

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Ming-Chi Kuo Says Mini-LED Displays Coming to iPad and MacBooks

Charlotte Henry ·

On Sunday, analyst Ming-Chi Kuo reiterated his view that sometime between late 2020 and mid-2021 high-end iPad and MacBooks with Mini-LED displays will land. MacRumors took a look at the anaylt’s latest note.

LG Display will supply the Mini-LED display panels, while other Mini-LED component suppliers will include Epistar, Zhen Ding, Radiant Opto-Electronics, Nichia, Avary Holding, and TSMT, according to Kuo. Kuo believes the Mini-LED displays will allow for thinner and lighter product designs, while also offering good wide color gamut performance, high contrast and HDR, and local dimming, which dims the backlight behind areas of the screen that are displaying black while keeping the bright parts of the screen bright.