Apple’s original shows may launch next March, report says

Apple’s upcoming slate of original TV shows may finally see the light of day as early as next March, according to a report from The New York Times on Sunday. Citing producers and entertainment exec sources, the article says Apple has been taking advantage of its significant cash stores to fund its TV efforts – and is, in fact, spending north of the $1 billion budget it had first committed to original programming.

The report also notes Apple has now outspent both Facebook and YouTube on original content, and has beaten Netflix in a few bidding wars for new series.

So far, Apple has greenlit 12 projects, nine of which are straight-to-series orders – meaning, they’re skipping the pilot phase and heading straight into production.

Many of Apple’s forthcoming series include big names in Hollywood. They also sound far more promising than its first efforts in this space, which had included a pitch-off show about apps (“Planet of the Apps”) and a longer version of “Carpool Karaoke.” 

The upcoming roster of Apple shows spans genres, including a Reese Witherspoon/Jennifer Aniston drama about morning news shows, a Steven Spielberg reboot of “Amazing Stories,”  a thriller starring Octavia Spencer, and a new space drama from “Battlestar Galactica’s” creator, and a Kristen Wiig-led comedy, an M. Night Shyamalan thriller, a Kevin Durant-inspired scripted basketball show, a documentary about extraordinary homes, and a series from “La La Land’s” director, among other things. 

Beyond who’s involved with each of these projects, details about the shows themselves are still vague. But The NYT report claims Apple is not focused on shows that are “gratuitously dark” or heavy on social issues. In other words, don’t expect the next “The Handmaid’s Tale” (Hulu’s Emmy winner) on Apple, it seems.

Unlike Netflix, Apple will limit the number of series it puts out, focusing on quality over quantity.

It’s still unclear how Apple will distribute its series to customers, though it’s expected access will be tied to a subscription of some sort. The shows might be housed in Apple’s existing TV app, which today organizes video programming from Prime Video, Hulu, CBS, Starz, Showtime, HBO, and others that require sign-in from a TV provider.

The TV app is already starting to shape up to become an alternative to television, especially with the recent addition of streaming news channels, CBS News, CNN, Fox News, Cheddar, CNBC and Bloomberg.

The March 2019 launch date is the best-case-scenario for Apple, which has so far ceded a ton of ground to rivals like Amazon, Google (YouTube), Netflix, and Hulu in terms of streaming TV and original programming.

The target launch time frame is actually anywhere from March to summer 2019, the report said.

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Facebook denies it collects call and SMS data from phones without permission

After an Ars Technica report that Facebook surreptitiously scrapes call and text message data from Android phones and has done so for years, the scandal-burdened company has responded that it only collects that information from users who have given permission.

Facebook’s public statement, posted on its press site, comes a couple of days after it took out full page newspaper ads to apologize for the misuse of data by third-party apps as it copes with fallout from the Cambridge Analytica scandal (follow the story as it develops here). In the ad, founder and chief executive officer Mark Zuckerberg wrote “We have a responsibility to protect your information. If we can’t, we don’t deserve it.”

The company’s response to the Ars Technica story, however, struck a different tone, with Facebook titling the post “Fact Check: Your Call and SMS History.” It said “You may have seen some recent reports that Facebook has been logging people’s call and SMS (text) history without their permission. This is not the case,” before going on to explain that call and text history logging is included with an opt-in feature on Messenger or Facebook Lite for Android that “people have to expressly agree to use” and that they can turn off at any time, which would also delete any call and text data shared with that app.

Ars Technica has already amended its original post with a response to Facebook’s statement, saying it contradicts several of its findings, including the experience of users who shared their data with the publication.

“In my case, a review of my Google Play data confirms that Messenger was never installed on the Android devices I used,” wrote Ars Technica IT and national security editor Sean Gallagher in the amendment to his post. “Facebook was  installed on a Nexus tablet I used and on the Blackphone 2 in 2015, and there was never an explicit message requesting access to phone call and SMS data. Yet there is call data from the end of 2015 until late 2016, when I reinstalled the operating system on the Blackphone 2 and wiped all applications.”

In its statement, Facebook said “Contact importers are fairly common among social apps and services as a way to more easily find the people you want to connect with. This was first introduced in Messenger in 2015, and later offered as an option in Facebook Lite, a lightweight version of Facebook for Android.”

When people first sign up for Messenger or Facebook Lite on Android or log into Messenger on an Android device, they see a screen giving them the option to continuously upload contacts as well as call and text history. Facebook added that on Messenger, users are then given three options: to turn the feature on, “learn more” for more information or “not now” to skip it. On Facebook Lite, they get two options: turn it on or skip. If users who opted in change their minds later, Facebook said they could turn it off in the app’s settings, with the option of turning off continuous call and text history logging while keeping contact uploading enabled or deleting all contact information they’ve uploaded from that app.”

An image included with Facebook’s statement.

Facebook emphasized in bold text that it “never sell this data, and this feature does not collect the content of your text messages or calls.”

Even though the opt-in screens do state that granting permission will “continuously upload info” about contacts and call and text history, it is arguable that many users don’t really understand what that means and that instead of saying “this lets friends find each other on Facebook and helps us create a better experience for everyone” (a message sweetened with a saccharine cartoon of a figure texting a little heart), Facebook should really be giving more details about what exactly will be recorded and why.

With the Cambridge Analytica scandal still fresh on everyone’s minds, Facebook’s apparent willingness to place the onus for protecting personal data on users who already feel victimized is unlikely to help them regain any goodwill. But even people who truly understand the implications of the feature and chose to opt-in anyway did so assuming that their data would be guarded as Facebook promised. As the Cambridge Analytica fiasco threw into sharp relief, that hasn’t always been the case.

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Tim Cook addresses Facebook privacy, U.S./China relations at Beijing event

Apple CEO Tim Cook kicked of this year’s China Development Forum in Beijing today with an address that hit on a number of hot button topics, user privacy concerns and a looming U.S./China trade war.

The executive touched on privacy regulations, in the wake of a breech of trust that found Cambridge Analytica harvesting information from 50 million Facebook users.

“I think that this certain situation is so dire and has become so large that probably some well-crafted regulation is necessary,” Cook is quoted as saying, in a report from Bloomberg. “The ability of anyone to know what you’ve been browsing about for years, who your contacts are, who their contacts are, things you like and dislike and every intimate detail of your life — from my own point of view it shouldn’t exist.”

The specter of privacy concerns has, of course, been a hot button topic for Apple over the decades, particularly as devices and apps demand more and more of our personal information. Late last year, for instance, then Senator Al Franken pressed the company over Face ID — a subject to which Apple quickly responded.

Cook’s statement reflects similar comments Steve Jobs made about privacy back in 2010 and an event where Mark Zuckerberg was also speaking.

“Privacy means people know what they’re signing up for, in plain English, and repeatedly,” Jobs said. “I’m an optimist; I believe people are smart, and some people want to share more data than other people do. Ask them. Ask them every time. Make them tell you to stop asking them if they get tired of your asking them. Let them know precisely what you’re going to do with their data.”

In his own address, Cook noted that many of the concerns around what companies might do with all of the personal data “has come true more than once.”

Cook also addressed growing tensions between the U.S. and China, a market that has been increasingly important to Apple’s bottom line — and, of course, a place where much of the company’s manufacturing occurs. 

“My belief is that businesses should be engaged with governments in countries where they are doing business, whether they agree or disagree,” Cook said, according to Reuters.

Tensions between the two countries have only grown more heated in recent days. Just this week, the Trump administration announced plans to place $60 billion in tariffs on Chinese goods, with the burden landing heavily on electronics.

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Apple proposes new emojis to represent people with disabilities

Apple has proposed a number of emojis to the Unicode Consortium, the emoji gatekeeper of sorts, to better represent people with disabilities and depict accessibility-related tools like hearing aids, guide dogs and prosthetic limbs. That’s because Apple is unable to include these emojis in iOS and Mac OS until the Consortium adopts them.

The proposed emojis depict people who experience blindness or low-vision, those who experience deafness or have trouble hearing, those with physical disabilities, as well as those with hidden disabilities like Autism, anxiety and PTSD.

Here are the proposed emojis:

[gallery ids="1611289,1611290,1611291,1611292,1611293,1611294,1611295,1611296,1611297,1611298,1611299,1611300,1611301"]

“At Apple, we believe that technology should be accessible to everyone and should provide an experience that serves individual needs,” the company wrote in a proposal to the Unicode Consortium. “Adding emoji emblematic to users’ life experiences helps foster a diverse culture that is inclusive of disability. Emoji are a universal language and a powerful tool for communication, as well as a form of self-expression, and can be used not only to represent one’s own personal experience, but also to show support for a loved one.”

In order to develop these proposed emojis, Apple worked with the American Council of the Blind, Cerebral Palsy Foundation and National Association for the Deaf. What Apple put forward is not a comprehensive list of all the possible depictions of people with disabilities, the company noted in its proposal, but it could serve as a starting point.

The next step is for the Unicode Technical Committee to meet up and vote on whether to approve these new emojis. That meeting happens next month. If approved, those characters would get shortlisted for Emoji 12.0, which is scheduled for a March 2019 release. If you want to hear more about what goes into emoji approval, be sure to check out this interview with Jeremy Burge, vice-chair of the Unicode Emoji Subcommittee.

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The NEEO universal remote is a modern Logitech Harmony alternative

The advanced universal remote market is not a very crowded market. In fact, for a while now, Logitech’s Harmony line has been pretty much the only game in town. Newcomer NEEO wants to upset that monopoly with its new NEEO Remote and NEEO Brain combo ($369), which is a system that can connect just about any AV system, along with a smorgasbord of connected smart devices including Nest, Philips Hue, Sonos and more.

NEEO’s two-part system includes the Brain, which, true to its name, handles all of the heavy lifting. This is a puck-shaped device with 360-degree IR blasters dotting its outside perimeter, and which has one IR extender out (there’s one in the box) for connecting devices held within a closed AV cabinet, for instance. This central hub also connects to your Wi-Fi network, and setup requires plugging it into your router via Ethernet to get everything squared away, similar to how you initially set up Sonos speakers, if you’re familiar with that process.

Most of the setup work you need to do to get NEEO working happens on your phone, and that’s where it becomes apparent that this smart remote was designed for a modern context. Logitech’s Harmony software has come a long way, and now you can do everything you need to do from the iOS and Android app, but it’s still somewhat apparent that its legacy is as something you initially setup using a desktop and somewhat awkward web-based software. The NEEO feels at home on mobile, and it makes the setup and configuration process much better overall.

The other core component of the NEEO system is the NEEO Remote. This is a fantastic piece of industrial design, first of all. It’s a sleek rectangle crafted from aerospace-grade aluminum that oozes charm, in a way that nothing in the current Logitech Harmony lineup can come close to matching. The minimalist design still doesn’t suffer from the ‘which way is up?’ problem that the Apple Remote faces, because of subtle design cues including bottom weighting and the presence of ample physical buttons.

A NEEO Remote isn’t necessary for the system to work – you can just use the Brain along with the companion app for iPhone or Android, but the remote is a joy to hold and use, thanks to its unique design, and it features a super high density display that’s extremely responsive to touch input and pleasingly responsive to touch. NEEO took a lot of time to get this touchscreen experience right, and it pays off, delivering a clear and simple control interface that shifts to suit the needs of whatever activity you’re running at the time.

The NEEO Remote also has an “SOS” feature so that you can locate it if you happen to misplace it, and it can even be configured to recognize different hands if you want to set profiles for distinct members of the household, or set parental control profiles limiting access to certain content or devices. This kind of thing is where NEEO’s feature set exceeds the competition, and shows a particular attention to modern device use cases.

One NEEO Remote can also control multiple NEEO Brains, which is another limitation of the completion. That means you can set up NEEO Brains in each room where you have devices to control, and carry your remote from place to place instead of having to have multiple. The NEEO Brain is still $200 on its own, however, so it’s definitely still a barrier to entry.

NEEO otherwise does pretty much everything you’d expect a smart remote to do in 2018: You can set recipes on the deice itself, including with triggers like time-based alarms or motion detection (without using IFTTT). You can connect it to Alexa, though that functionality is limited at the moment, with more updates promised in future to make this better.

The bottom line is that NEEO offers a competent, intelligent alternative the big dog on the block, Logitech’s Harmony system. Logitech’s offering is still more robust and mature in terms of delivering Alexa and Google Assistant compatibility, as well as rock solid performance, but NEEO has some clever ideas and unique takes that will serve more patient and tech-forward users better over time.

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The NEEO universal remote is a modern Logitech Harmony alternative

The advanced universal remote market is not a very crowded market. In fact, for a while now, Logitech’s Harmony line has been pretty much the only game in town. Newcomer NEEO wants to upset that monopoly with its new NEEO Remote and NEEO Brain combo ($369), which is a system that can connect just about any AV system, along with a smorgasbord of connected smart devices including Nest, Philips Hue, Sonos and more.

NEEO’s two-part system includes the Brain, which, true to its name, handles all of the heavy lifting. This is a puck-shaped device with 360-degree IR blasters dotting its outside perimeter, and which has one IR extender out (there’s one in the box) for connecting devices held within a closed AV cabinet, for instance. This central hub also connects to your Wi-Fi network, and setup requires plugging it into your router via Ethernet to get everything squared away, similar to how you initially set up Sonos speakers, if you’re familiar with that process.

Most of the setup work you need to do to get NEEO working happens on your phone, and that’s where it becomes apparent that this smart remote was designed for a modern context. Logitech’s Harmony software has come a long way, and now you can do everything you need to do from the iOS and Android app, but it’s still somewhat apparent that its legacy is as something you initially setup using a desktop and somewhat awkward web-based software. The NEEO feels at home on mobile, and it makes the setup and configuration process much better overall.

The other core component of the NEEO system is the NEEO Remote. This is a fantastic piece of industrial design, first of all. It’s a sleek rectangle crafted from aerospace-grade aluminum that oozes charm, in a way that nothing in the current Logitech Harmony lineup can come close to matching. The minimalist design still doesn’t suffer from the ‘which way is up?’ problem that the Apple Remote faces, because of subtle design cues including bottom weighting and the presence of ample physical buttons.

A NEEO Remote isn’t necessary for the system to work – you can just use the Brain along with the companion app for iPhone or Android, but the remote is a joy to hold and use, thanks to its unique design, and it features a super high density display that’s extremely responsive to touch input and pleasingly responsive to touch. NEEO took a lot of time to get this touchscreen experience right, and it pays off, delivering a clear and simple control interface that shifts to suit the needs of whatever activity you’re running at the time.

The NEEO Remote also has an “SOS” feature so that you can locate it if you happen to misplace it, and it can even be configured to recognize different hands if you want to set profiles for distinct members of the household, or set parental control profiles limiting access to certain content or devices. This kind of thing is where NEEO’s feature set exceeds the competition, and shows a particular attention to modern device use cases.

One NEEO Remote can also control multiple NEEO Brains, which is another limitation of the completion. That means you can set up NEEO Brains in each room where you have devices to control, and carry your remote from place to place instead of having to have multiple. The NEEO Brain is still $200 on its own, however, so it’s definitely still a barrier to entry.

NEEO otherwise does pretty much everything you’d expect a smart remote to do in 2018: You can set recipes on the deice itself, including with triggers like time-based alarms or motion detection (without using IFTTT). You can connect it to Alexa, though that functionality is limited at the moment, with more updates promised in future to make this better.

The bottom line is that NEEO offers a competent, intelligent alternative the big dog on the block, Logitech’s Harmony system. Logitech’s offering is still more robust and mature in terms of delivering Alexa and Google Assistant compatibility, as well as rock solid performance, but NEEO has some clever ideas and unique takes that will serve more patient and tech-forward users better over time.

from Apple – TechCrunch http://ift.tt/2GhIrbT

The NEEO universal remote is a modern Logitech Harmony alternative

The advanced universal remote market is not a very crowded market. In fact, for a while now, Logitech’s Harmony line has been pretty much the only game in town. Newcomer NEEO wants to upset that monopoly with its new NEEO Remote and NEEO Brain combo ($369), which is a system that can connect just about any AV system, along with a smorgasbord of connected smart devices including Nest, Philips Hue, Sonos and more.

NEEO’s two-part system includes the Brain, which, true to its name, handles all of the heavy lifting. This is a puck-shaped device with 360-degree IR blasters dotting its outside perimeter, and which has one IR extender out (there’s one in the box) for connecting devices held within a closed AV cabinet, for instance. This central hub also connects to your Wi-Fi network, and setup requires plugging it into your router via Ethernet to get everything squared away, similar to how you initially set up Sonos speakers, if you’re familiar with that process.

Most of the setup work you need to do to get NEEO working happens on your phone, and that’s where it becomes apparent that this smart remote was designed for a modern context. Logitech’s Harmony software has come a long way, and now you can do everything you need to do from the iOS and Android app, but it’s still somewhat apparent that its legacy is as something you initially setup using a desktop and somewhat awkward web-based software. The NEEO feels at home on mobile, and it makes the setup and configuration process much better overall.

The other core component of the NEEO system is the NEEO Remote. This is a fantastic piece of industrial design, first of all. It’s a sleek rectangle crafted from aerospace-grade aluminum that oozes charm, in a way that nothing in the current Logitech Harmony lineup can come close to matching. The minimalist design still doesn’t suffer from the ‘which way is up?’ problem that the Apple Remote faces, because of subtle design cues including bottom weighting and the presence of ample physical buttons.

A NEEO Remote isn’t necessary for the system to work – you can just use the Brain along with the companion app for iPhone or Android, but the remote is a joy to hold and use, thanks to its unique design, and it features a super high density display that’s extremely responsive to touch input and pleasingly responsive to touch. NEEO took a lot of time to get this touchscreen experience right, and it pays off, delivering a clear and simple control interface that shifts to suit the needs of whatever activity you’re running at the time.

The NEEO Remote also has an “SOS” feature so that you can locate it if you happen to misplace it, and it can even be configured to recognize different hands if you want to set profiles for distinct members of the household, or set parental control profiles limiting access to certain content or devices. This kind of thing is where NEEO’s feature set exceeds the competition, and shows a particular attention to modern device use cases.

One NEEO Remote can also control multiple NEEO Brains, which is another limitation of the completion. That means you can set up NEEO Brains in each room where you have devices to control, and carry your remote from place to place instead of having to have multiple. The NEEO Brain is still $200 on its own, however, so it’s definitely still a barrier to entry.

NEEO otherwise does pretty much everything you’d expect a smart remote to do in 2018: You can set recipes on the deice itself, including with triggers like time-based alarms or motion detection (without using IFTTT). You can connect it to Alexa, though that functionality is limited at the moment, with more updates promised in future to make this better.

The bottom line is that NEEO offers a competent, intelligent alternative the big dog on the block, Logitech’s Harmony system. Logitech’s offering is still more robust and mature in terms of delivering Alexa and Google Assistant compatibility, as well as rock solid performance, but NEEO has some clever ideas and unique takes that will serve more patient and tech-forward users better over time.

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