Sunday, 7 April 2019
Friday, 5 April 2019
Apple Music cuts prices in India
This morning, The WSJ reported Apple’s streaming music service overtook Spotify in paid subscribers in the U.S., and now it hopes to do the same in the Indian market by way of a big price cut. The company’s individual plan in India is now 99 rupees per month ($1.43 USD), versus the 120 rupees per month ($1.73 USD) it was previously.
In addition, the price for the Apple Music student plan dropped from 60 rupees per month to 49 rupees; and the Family Plan is now 149 rupees per month versus the 190 rupees per month it was before the price cuts.
The news was first reported by The Indian Express and was shared across social media.
The new, lower prices are available to both existing subscribers and new customers, it appears.
India is a crucial market for streaming services, and one that’s a more recent battleground for major U.S. tech companies in addition to Spotify.
In March, YouTube Music and its paid subscription service, YouTube Premium, launched in India, following Amazon and Google which already operate their music services in the region. This year, Spotify also entered India amid a complicated licensing dispute with Warner Music, which impacted the number of tracks available.
But these companies aren’t just duking it out with one another for domination.
India today has a rich music scene which includes local players like Gaana, JioSaavn (created via the JioMusic and Saavn merger), Wynk, and others.
And recently, JioSaavn and Gaana both slashed their annual subscription prices by 70 percent. Those cuts were focused on locking down customers for a year – keeping them away from YouTube, Spotify and Apple, as a result. The recently discounts saw JioSaavn’s premium tier drop to Rs 299 per year – 70 percent down from Rs 999. Meanwhile,Gaana Plus was discounted to Rs 298 per year instead of Rs 1098, as before.
Apple doesn’t disclose its Apple Music subscriber count in India, but it has 56 million subscribers on a global basis.
The service has been customized for the Indian market with playlists that feature local music, including those popular in regional languages like Malayalam and Tamil, The Indian Express noted. It also has 14 localized radio stations and deals with leading Indian labels like Saregama, T series, Zee Music, YRF, Universal, and Sony.
from Apple – TechCrunch https://tcrn.ch/2FQZ9g6
The Google Assistant on Android gets more visual responses
About half a year ago, Google gave the Assistant on phones a major visual refresh. Today, the company is following up with a couple of small but welcome tweaks that’ll see the Assistant on Android provide more and better visual responses that are more aligned with what users already expect to see from other Google services.
That means when you ask for events now, for example, the response will look exactly like what you’d see if you tried the same query from your mobile browser. Until now, Google showed a somewhat pared-down version in the Assistant.
[gallery ids="1808356,1808354,1808357,1808355"]
Also — and this is going to be a bit of a controversial change — when the Assistant decides that the best answer is simply a list of websites (or when it falls back to those results because it simply doesn’t have any other answer), the Assistant used to show you a couple of boxes in a vertical layout that were not exactly user friendly. Now, the Assistant will simply show the standard Google Search layout.
Seems like a good idea, so why would that be controversial? Together with the search results, Google will also show its usual Search ads. This marks the first time that Google is showing ads in the Assistant experience. To be fair, the Assistant will only show these kinds of results for a very small number of queries, but users will likely worry that Google will bring more ads to the rest of the Assistant.
Google tells me that advertisers can’t target their ads to Assistant users and won’t get any additional information about them.
The Assistant will now also show built-in mortgage calculators, color pickers, a tip calculator and a bubble level when you ask for those. Also, when you ask for a stock quote, you’ll now see a full interactive graph, not just the current price of the quote.
These new features are rolling out to Android phones in the U.S. now. As usual, it may take a bit before you see them pop up on your own phone.
from Android – TechCrunch https://tcrn.ch/2G2WcdJ
via IFTTT
Thursday, 4 April 2019
Amazon reportedly readying its Alexa-powered answer to Airpods
Amazon is ready to challenge Apple with a cheaper, Alexa-powered set of wireless earbuds. If successful it would carve out a space for the popular digital assistant, and its deep connections to the rest of Amazon’s ecosystem, in the mobile world Amazon has hitherto largely failed to penetrate. But that’s a big if.
A report from Bloomberg details the upcoming hardware, which sounds a lot like Airpods (and the handful of other wireless sets that have appeared): a pair of small wireless in-ear buds, a case that doubles as a charger, and built-in controls and a mic so you can control your music, talk to friends, and ask Alexa things on the go.
Of course, the obvious question is how exactly this will work, given that Airpods have special privileges as first-party Apple hardware that let them perform tasks others can’t yet do. If your phone is locked, non-Airpod headphones (for instance Galaxy Buds) can’t connect through their associated app to look stuff up or provide services. You can of course set up a “Hey Siri, OK Google” situation, but that’s a bit sad.
Bloomberg’s report says that the Alexa headphones let you “order goods, access music, weather and other information,” but it isn’t clear under what circumstances. If you have to have the phone unlocked and an app open for it to work, the whole thing is a non-starter. And it seems unlikely that Apple would grant Amazon some kind of clearance to do the kind of things only Airpods can do.
It’s conceivable that the headphones will, when possible, connect instead on detection of a command to a compatible Alexa device nearby with an internet connection — and there’s no shortage of those in many a tech-savvy home. But if you’re walking down the street and need to ask directions, you may have to pull the phone out, which rather negates the already somewhat limited convenience of owning a pair of wireless headphones.
These difficulties, plus those associated with simply making such a sophisticated piece of hardware for relatively cheap, explain why the headphones have reportedly had a bit of trouble getting shipped.
A cheaper price tag and potentially better audio quality may not be enough to make this particular endeavor a winner, but we’ll know more if and when Amazon goes official.
from Apple – TechCrunch https://ift.tt/2YNXZKO
Trying out Beats’ fully wireless Powerbeats Pro
Beats took its time getting untethered. The last addition to the Powerbeats line arrived in late 2016, right around the same time as the original AirPods. The product shared Apple’s W1 chip, further cementing its place as part of the company, with instant iOS syncing. But the products were once again yolked together with a cable.
A few weeks after the release of the second-generation AirPods, Beats finally unveiled the Powerbeats Pro, the company’s first fully wireless earbuds. Comparisons with Apple’s latest are inevitable. After all, Apple and Beats are one big happy family now, sharing technologies and working together in some capacity.
In many ways, however, Beats remains its own brand. Where the AirPods are a living testament to Apple’s minimalist “just works” approach to hardware, the Pros owe much of their design to the fact that Beats has long targeted athletes with its earbud line. I wouldn’t be too surprised to see promotional campaigns with the likes of LeBron James and Serena Williams sporting the Pros in the near future.
That target demo means that the new headphones have maintained the over the ear hooks found in earlier versions of the headphones. That’s either a good or bad thing, depending on what you’re looking for from a pair of buds. If you want something more minimal, Apple’s got a pair it will happily sell you.
In spite of all of the added plastic, however, the Pros are quite comfortable, even with a pair of glasses on. That’s owed, in part, to the inclusion of swappable silicone tips. Those are coupled with an ergonomic design that fit nicely in my ear. I’ve never had an issue getting AirPods to fit, but their rigid plastic design means they just don’t fit certain ears. That’s going to be much less of an issue here.
The major downside of the form factor, however, is awkward size and shape. They’re fine when you’re wearing them, but the Pros require a large charging case for storage. Really, really large. Like, you’re probably not going to want to attempt to carry these around in your pants pocket large. The placement of the buds inside the case is also a bit awkward and takes some getting used to. It’s not like the AirPods, which neatly slip into place.
The good news, however, is that the stated battery life is ridiculously long here, at nine hours on the buds themselves and 24 hours when combined with the charging case. That means you likely won’t need to take the case with you when you go out for a run in the morning.
The Powerbeats Pro also sound quite good for a pair of Bluetooth earbuds. The company has spent the last several years working to shake the (deserved) notion that it overcompensates for sound shortcomings with amped up, distorted bass. That’s really a relic from its earlier days. Beats has made great strides to offer better sound, even in a smaller form factor.
I sampled a fairly wide range of genres on the Pros, and was pretty impressed with what I heard. The instrument isolation is nice, and it sounds clear even with bass-heavy hip-hop and dance tracks.
Price may end up being a dealbreaker. At $250, they’re $50 more expensive than the latest AirPods and more than $100 more than the Galaxy Buds. That could end up being a tough pill to swallow.
The Powerbeats Pro are due out next months.
from Apple – TechCrunch https://ift.tt/2HYCHVO
WhatsApp’s Business app comes to the iPhone
More than a year after WhatsApp officially introduced its app for business customers to its first markets, the previously Android-only WhatsApp Business app is today launching on the iPhone. According to the Facebook-owned company, WhatsApp Business has been adopted by millions of businesses worldwide since its debut, but one of its customers’ most frequent requests was to offer the app on the iPhone.
The iOS version, like its Android counterpart, is designed to help small business owners reach their customers on smartphones.
That means it includes the ability for businesses to create profiles that include their description, email, address and website, as well as messaging tools for customer communication like automated greetings, quick replies and away messages.
Businesses also can use WhatsApp Business from their desktop computer, which in January rolled out tools to organize and filter chats as well as quick replies. At the time, WhatsApp said it had 5 million business customers.
The iOS app was spotted in testing last month on the Mexican iOS App Store, but today marks its official launch.
A WhatsApp Business platform is key to WhatsApp’s growth in emerging markets where first-time internet users have skipped over using computers to reach the web, and instead mainly get online through their mobile devices. Here, WhatsApp serves as a portal to the web — even more so than its parent company Facebook does — for many users.
Through the main WhatsApp app, users can connect with friends and family, join groups focused on their various interests and even get the news (or, unfortunately, fake news and hoaxes — something that WhatsApp is now trying to prevent). Being able to easily communicate with businesses was an obvious next step for the company not only in terms of serving these customers, but also for revenue generation.
The company makes money by charging Business API customers who have large volumes of incoming messages.
The free WhatsApp Business app for iOS is available today from the App Store in Brazil, Germany, Indonesia, India, Mexico, the U.K. and the U.S.
The company says it will roll out to more markets worldwide in the weeks ahead.
from iPhone – TechCrunch https://ift.tt/2WIiy9K
Daily Crunch: Apple cuts HomePod prices
The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 9am Pacific, you can subscribe here.
1. Apple’s HomePod gets a $50 price cut
Announced in mid-2017 and released in early 2018, the Siri-powered product brought a very Apple approach to the category dominated by Amazon and Google, with premium sound and design at a premium price of $349.
The $50 price drop puts the product under $300 — though it’s still pretty steep, so far as the category goes. Apple has confirmed with TechCrunch that this is a permanent price cut.
2. Researchers find 540M Facebook user records on exposed servers
According to the researchers’ write-up, Mexico-based digital media company Cultura Colectiva left more than 540 million records — including comments, likes, reactions, account names and more — stored on the Amazon S3 storage server without a password, allowing anyone to access the data.
3. Yahoo spin-out Altaba is selling its entire Alibaba stake and closing down
Bye-bye, Altaba. The Yahoo spin-out created to house Yahoo’s lucrative stake in Alibaba and Yahoo Japan announced today that it will sell its shares and shut up shop.
Photo: Hero Images/Getty Images
4. Amazon Alexa launches its first HIPAA-compliant medical skills
Following a trial of Amazon’s smart speakers in patients’ rooms at Cedars-Sinai, the company announced an invite-only program allowing select developers to create and launch HIPAA-compliant healthcare skills for Alexa.
5. GrubMarket raises $25M more for its farm-to-table food delivery service
GrubMarket works with smaller farms and other suppliers to sell and deliver their items by way of its online store both to consumers and to businesses — including restaurants, stores and food startups.
6. MIT cuts working relationship with Huawei and ZTE over alleged sanction violations
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology announced it will suspend collaborations, including research projects and funding, with Huawei Technologies and ZTE, two Chinese tech companies fighting with the U.S. government over alleged sanction violations.
7. SiriusXM and Pandora launch Pandora NOW, the first Pandora station that streams on both services
On Pandora, the new experience will appear as an interactive station and playlist, while SiriusXM subscribers will be able to access Pandora NOW on Channel 3. This is the first time a music experience has launched on both platforms.
from Apple – TechCrunch https://ift.tt/2WNFmEX