Apple: Use only our special cloth to clean the $1,000 coating on our $5,000 Pro Display

If you thought the saga of the $7,000 Apple Pro Display XDR couldn’t get any more ridiculous, prepare yourself for the proverbial cherry on top: The company insists that you only use the single special cleaning cloth that comes with the monitor. If you lose it, you’re advised to order another.

Apple, already under fire from longtime users for the ever-increasing price of its products, attracted considerable ire and ridicule when it announced the high-end monitor in June. Of course there are many expensive displays out there — it was more the fact that Apple was selling the display for $5,000, the stand separately for $999, and an optional “nano-texture” coating for an additional grand.

Just wait till you see how much the Mac Pro that goes with it costs.

 

Technically it’s not actually a “coating” but an extremely small-scale etching of the surface that supposedly produces improved image quality without some of the drawbacks of a full-matte coating. “Typical matte displays have a coating added to their surface that scatters light. However, these coatings lower contrast while producing unwanted haze and sparkle,” the product description reads. Not so with nano-texture.

Unfortunately, the unique nature of the glass necessitates special care when cleaning.

“Use only the dry polishing cloth that comes with your display,” reads the support page How to clean your Apple Pro Display XDR. “Never use any other cloths to clean the nano-texture glass. If you lose the included polishing cloth, you can contact Apple to order a replacement polishing cloth.” (No price is listed, so I’ve asked Apple for more information.)

Apple releases the $5,000 Pro Display XDR, a 32-inch, 6K display available this fall

Obviously if you’re cleaning an expensive screen you don’t want to do it with Windex and wadded-up newspaper. But it’s not clear what differentiates Apple’s cloth from an ordinary microfiber wipe.

Do the nano-scale ridges shred ordinary mortal cloth and get fibers caught in their interstices? Can the nano-texture be damaged by anything of insufficient softness?

Apple seems to be presuming a certain amount of courage on the part of consumers, who must pay a great deal for something that not only provides an uncertain benefit (even Apple admits that the display without the coating is “engineered for extremely low reflectivity”) but seems susceptible to damage from even the lightest mishandling.

No doubt the Pro Display XDR is a beautiful display, and naturally only those who feel it is worth the price will buy one. But no one likes to have to baby their gadgets, and Apple’s devices have also gotten more fragile and less readily repairable. The company’s special cloth may be a small, even silly thing, but it’s part of a large and worrying trend.

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Nodle crowdsources IoT connectivity

Nodle, which is competing in the TechCrunch Disrupt Berlin Startup Battlefield this week, is based on a simple premise: What if you could crowdsource the connectivity of smart sensors by offloading it to smartphones? For most sensors, built-in cell connectivity is simply not a realistic option, given how much power it would take. A few years of battery life is quite realistic for a sensor that uses Bluetooth Low Energy.

Overall, that’s a pretty straightforward idea, but the trick is to convince smartphone users to install Nodle’s app. To solve this, the company, which was co-founded by Micha Benoliel (CEO) and Garrett Kinsman, is looking to cryptocurrency. With Nodle Cash, users automatically earn currency whenever their phones transmit a package to the network. That connection, it’s worth noting, is always encrypted, using Nodle’s Rendevouz protocol.

The company has already raised $3.5 million in seed funding, mostly from investors in the blockchain space: Blockchange, Work Play Ventures (Marc Pincus), Blockchain Ventures (Blockchain.com), Olymp Capital, Bootstraplabs and Blockhead.

It’s worth noting that this isn’t Benoliel’s first rodeo in this space. He also co-founded the mesh networking startup Open Garden, which used a somewhat similar approach a few years ago to crowdsource connectivity (and which made a bit of a splash with its FireChat offline chat app back in 2014). Open Garden, too, competed in our Startup Battlefield in 2012 and won our award for most innovative startup. Benoliel left his CEO position there in early 2016, but Nodle definitely feels like an iteration on the original idea of Open Garden.

“We define the category as crowd connectivity,” Benoliel told me. “We leverage crowdsourced connectivity for connecting things to the internet. We believe there are a lot of benefits to doing that.” He argues that there are a number of innovations converging right now that will allow the company to succeed: Chipsets are getting smaller, and an increasing number of sensors now uses Bluetooth Low Energy, all while batteries are getting smaller and more efficient and blockchain technology is maturing.

Given the fact that these sensors depend on somebody with a phone coming by, this is obviously not a solution for companies that need to get real-time data. There’s simply no way for Nodle to guarantee that, after all. But the company argues it is a great solution for smart cities that want to get regular readouts of road usage or companies that want to do asset tracking.

“We do not address real-time connectivity, which is what you can do with more traditional solutions,” Benoliel said. “But we believe IoT is so broad and there is so much utility in being able to collect data from time to time, that with out solution, we can connect almost anything to the internet.”

While some users may want to simply install the Nodle Cash app to, well, make some Nodle cash, the team is also betting on working with app developers who may want to use the platform to make some extra money from their apps by adding it to the Nodle network. For users, that obviously means they’ll burn some extra data, so developers have to clearly state that they are opting their users into this service.

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The team expects a normal user to see an extra 20 to 30 MB of traffic with Nodle installed, which isn’t really all that much (users of the standalone Nodle app also have the option to cache the data and postpone the transfer when they connect to Wi-Fi). Some app developers may use Nodle as an alternative to in-app payments, the team hopes.

The company is also already working with HTC and Cisco Meraki, and has a number of pilot projects in the works.

If you want to give it a try, you can install the Nodle Cash app for Android now.

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Apple’s new parental controls can limit who kids can call, text and FaceTime and when

An update to Apple’s iOS operating system, out today, will give parents a new set of tools to fight back against kids’ iPhone addiction. With the release of iOS 13.3, parents will for the first time be able to set limits over who kids can talk to and text with during certain hours of the day. These limits will apply across phone calls, Messages and FaceTime. Parents also can apply a different set of limitations on calls and messaging during the child’s permitted screen time and their downtime hours.

In a new Communication Limits section of Apple’s Screen Time in Settings, iPhone users can set limits based on their contacts. During allowed screen time, users can be contacted by everyone or only by people in their contacts, to prevent unknown contacts from reaching them. And during downtime, they can opt to either be contacted by everyone or only by designated contacts.

And if this is set up under Screen Time’s Parental Controls, parents get to choose who can contact their children and when and vice versa. During downtime, parents can also designate which particular contacts the child can message and call — like only mom or dad, for example.

In practice, this means parents could stop the child from texting friends late at night or during the school day, by scheduling Downtime to run. (To clarify, Downtime doesn’t necessarily mean “night time” — it’s just any time you only want designated apps to be available, and only calls to get through.)

The feature also allows parents to manage the child’s iCloud contacts remotely, which makes it easier for parents to share important numbers with their child. But it also puts parents in full control of the contact list, so only they can edit it.

These new Communication Limits are part of Apple’s larger Screen Time system, which was introduced with iOS 12 last year. The system allows iPhone owners to schedule time away from their screen, set time limits on apps, view usage and activity reports and more.

Many parents have already leveraged these controls to more strictly limit how their children used their devices, including by setting limits on individual apps they wanted to block, like games, as well as by configuring “downtime” hours.

In addition, parents could set times when the child’s device could not be used at all.

Apple isn’t the only tech company that’s been rethinking how to address consumers’ often dysfunctional relationship with technology. Google also introduced its own set of “digital well-being” controls and tools for Android, and even Facebook and Instagram have rewritten parts their software and algorithms with a focus on new metrics like “time well spent,” for example.

While Apple’s Screen Time may have worked well for younger kids, teens quickly found and shared loopholes and workarounds, much to parents’ chagrin.

Time will tell if teens come up with a hack to get their iMessages sent under the new parental control system, too.

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VSCO acquires video editing startup Rylo

The photo-sharing app behind the 2019 meme craze “VSCO girls” has acquired Rylo, a video editing startup founded by the original developer of Instagram’s Hyperlapse.

A spokesperson for VSCO, an 8-year-old subscription-based business on track to surpass 4 million paying users, declined to disclose the terms of the deal. Rylo had raised roughly $38 million in venture capital funding, reaching a valuation of $120.25 million with a $20 million Series B announced in October 2018, according to data collected by PitchBook.

San Francisco-based Rylo was backed by a number of institutional investors, including Sequoia Capital, Alumni Ventures Group, Icon Ventures and Accel—a Silicon Valley venture capital fund and key stakeholder in Oakland-based VSCO.

Founded in 2015, Rylo is best known for its 360° camera capable of creating cinematic video in 5.8k resolution. The device previously retailed for nearly $500 but now sells for as low as $250 on BestBuy.com. Under VSCO’s ownership, Rylo will focus exclusively on building out its mobile video editing tools for mobile. The company tells us it will not continue to manufacture and sell its signature device but will continue to honor the warranty on previously sold cameras.

Rylo was launched by Alex Karpenko and Chris Cunningham. Karpenko, Rylo’s chief executive officer, previously founded Luma Camera in 2011, a video-capture, stabilization and sharing app acquired by Instagram in 2013. The deal marked Instagram’s first-ever acquisition; the app was subsequently shut down, with Karpenko joining Instagram’s team as a software engineer. Karpenko became key developer of Hyperlapse, Instagram’s time-lapse video app.

Cunningham, for his part, focused on iLife, Aperture and iPhoto for iOS as an engineer at Apple from 2008 to 2013. Cunningham eventually exited Apple for Facebook-owned Instagram, where he worked as an iOS engineer focused on Instagram Direct.

VSCO, led by co-founder and chief executive officer Joel Flory, charges users $19.99 per month for access to a full-suite of mobile photo-editing tools, exclusive photo filters, tutorials and more. In a recent interview with TechCrunch, Flory outlined ambitions to expand beyond photo-sharing and editing to video and illustration. The company’s latest deal, its first since its 2015 acquisitions of Moving Sciences and Artifact Uprising, confirms its intent to grow the business and carve out new revenue streams.

“We’ve seen video editing double on VSCO and DSCO, our GIF creation tool remains one of our most popular features,” Flory writes in a company blog post. “It’s clear that our users want more video tools and new ways to tell their stories through creative self-expression.”

Inside VSCO, a Gen Z-approved photo-sharing app, with CEO Joel Flory

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North ending production of current Focals smart glasses to focus on Focals 2.0

Smart glasses maker North announced today that it will be ending production of its first-generation Focals glasses, which it brought to market for consumers last year. The company says it will instead shift its focus to Focals 2.0, a next-generation version of the product, which it says will ship starting in 2020.

Focals are North’s first product since rebranding the company from Thalmic Labs and pivoting from building smart gesture control hardware to glasses with a built-in heads-up display and smartphone connectivity. CEO and founder Stephen Lake told me in a prior interview that the company realized in developing its Myo gesture control armband that it was actually more pressing to develop the next major shift in computing platform before tackling interface devices for said platforms, hence the switch.

Focals 2.0 will be “at a completely different level” and “the most advanced smart glasses ever made,” Lake said in a press release announcing the new generation device. In terms of how exactly it’ll improve on the original, North isn’t sharing much but it has said that its made the 2.0 version both lighter and “sleeker,” and that it’ll offer a much sharper, “10x improved” built-in display.

North began selling its Focals smart glasses via physical showrooms that it opened first in Brooklyn and Toronto. These, in addition to a number of pop-up showroom locations that toured across North America, provided in-person try-ons and fittings for the smart glasses, which must be tailor-fit for individual users in order to properly display content from their supported applications. More recently, North also added a Showroom app for iOS devices, that included custom sizing powered by more recent iPhone front-facing depth sensing camera hardware.

North’s first-generation Focals smart glasses.

To date, North hasn’t revealed any sales figures for its initial Focals device, but the company did reduce the price of the glasses form $999 to just under $600 (without prescription) relatively soon after launch. Their cost, combined with the requirement for an in-person fitting prior to purchase (until the introduction of the Showroom app) and certain gaps in the product feature set like an inability to support iMessage on iOS natively, all point to initial sales being relatively low volume, however.

To North’s credit, Focals are the first smart glasses hardware that manage to have a relatively inconspicuous look. Despite somewhat thicker than average arms on either side where the battery, projection and computing components are housed, Focals resemble thick acrylic plastic frames of the kind popularized by Warby Parker and other standard glasses makers.

With version 2.0, it sounds like Focals will be making even more progress in developing a design that hews closely to standard glasses. One of the issues also cited by some users with the first-generation product was a relatively fuzzy image produced by the built-in projector, which required specific calibration to remain in focus, and it sounds like they’re addressing that, too.

The Focals successor will still have an uphill battle when it comes to achieving mass appeal, however. It’s unlikely that cost will be significantly reduced, though any progress it can make on that front will definitely help. And it still either requires non-glasses wearers to opt for regularly donning specs, or for standard glasses wearers to be within the acceptable prescription range supported by the hardware, and to be willing to spend a bit more for connected glasses features.

The company says the reason it’s ending Focals 1.0 production is to focus on the 2.0 rollout, but it’s not a great sign that there will be a pause in between the two generations in terms of availability. Through its two iterations as a company, Thalmic Labs and now North have not had the best track record in terms of developing hardware that has been a success with potential customers – Focals 2.0, whenever they do arrive, will have a lot to prove in terms of iterating enough to drive significant demand.

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Apple TV+ picks up first Golden Globe nominations, while Netflix leads across film and TV

Netflix and Apple TV+ have good news to report following this morning’s release of the Golden Globe nominations. Netflix landed on top with 34 nominations across film and TV, while Apple TV+ earned its first nods only weeks after the service’s launch.

Despite lukewarm reviews from critics, Apple TV+ received multiple Golden Globe nominations for its flagship series “The Morning Show,” starring Jennifer Aniston, Reese Whitherspoon, and Steve Carell. The show was nominated for best drama series and its two female stars, Aniston and Whitherspoon, were both nominated for lead actress in a drama series.

Apple TV+ launched on November 1 with only a handful of shows, including fan-favorite “Dickinson,” space race drama “For All Mankind,” and dystopian drama “See,” among others. However, “The Morning Show” which deals with the aftermath of a sexual misconduct scandal in the world of morning TV, is easily the best Apple TV+ series thanks to its star power. Even reviewers who dinged the show for its sometimes overwrought dialogue admitted that Jennifer Aniston’s performance has been fantastic. 

Following the launch of Apple TV+, many viewers found themselves at odds with the critics’ take, as they were actually enjoying many of the service’s shows. “The Morning Show” executive producers, Mimi Leder and Kerry Ehrin, later said they believed all the bad reviews were aimed more at Apple than at the shows themselves.

The nominations are Apple’s first for the Golden Globes, though the company had dabbled in TV before the streaming service’s launch with shows like “Carpool Karaoke” and “Planet of the Apps.” Neither of those seemed to be award show-worthy series but the former did get (undeserved) Emmy attention in the variety special category.

While Apple TV+ was having a breakout moment, Netflix was having an even bigger year.

Netflix this year landed 34 nominations across film and TV, including six for Noah Baumach’s drama “Marriage Story,” five for Martin Scorses’s  “The Irishman,” and four each for its original series “The Crown” and “Unbelievable.” Netflix’s “The Kominsky Method and “The Politician” were also nominated for best TV series, musical or comedy and its film “The Two Popes” was nominated for best motion picture.

“Marriage Story’s” nods included best picture, actor, actress and screenplay, while “The Irishman” snagged nominations for best director, best-supporting actors (Joe Pesci and Al Pacino) and best screenplay.

In total, Netflix led all programmers with 17 Golden Globe TV nominations to HBO’s 15.

HBO’s “Chernobyl,” “Barry,” “Succession” and “Big Little Lies,” also earned nods, as did Amazon’s “Fleabag.”

Netflix and HBO were followed by Hulu (5), Prime Video (5) and Apple TV+ (3). Outside digital, FX scored 4 TV noms, followed by Showtime (3), BBC America (2) and USA Network (1).

On the film side, Netflix landed 17 nominations, more than double the next nearest competitor Sony Pictures Releasing (8). Amazon Studios also scored 3.

 

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The new Mac Pro goes up for order December 10

After more than a year of teasing, Apple finally unveiled the new Mac Pro at WWDC in June. The long wait was finally over — though Apple left out one key detail: when, precisely the high end desktop would arrive, beyond a purposefully vague fall timeframe

Earlier this, however, the company began sending out pre-pre-order notifications to potential consumers (spotted by Marques Brownlee), noting the orders will open December 10. When, precisely, they’ll start shipping is another question entirely, of course, but at the very least, you can get a raincheck for the extremely exepsnive Christmas present.

A closer look at Apple’s reinvented Mac Pro

The system starts at $5,999, plus the $4,999 Pro Display XDR monitor. You should probably also factor in the much ballyhooed stand, which adds another $999 to the price tag. Of course, price has never been Apple’s main selling point — something that goes double for the Mac Pro line. And the company’s clearly not holding anything back with this system, as it recommits itself to creative professionals.

Contrary to earlier rumors, Apple noted back in September that the new Pro will be built in the U.S., like its predecessor.

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