Linked List: September 2, 2015

Wednesday, 2 September 2015

Variety: Apple Exploring Original Programming 

Andrew Wallenstein, writing for Variety:

The moment the media and technology industries have been expecting for years may finally be arriving: Apple is exploring getting into the original programming business.

Sources indicate the Cupertino, Calif., colossus has held preliminary conversations in recent weeks with executives in Hollywood to suss out their interest in spearheading efforts to produce entertainment content. The unit putting out the feelers reports into Eddy Cue, who is Apple’s point man on all content-related matters, from its negotiations with programmers for Apple TV to its recent faceoff with Taylor Swift.

On the one hand, everyone else is doing it, so why not Apple? On the other hand, Apple makes devices where Netflix and HBO provide content/apps. If Apple starts competing against Netflix and HBO in content production, do they risk spoiling those partnerships?

Here’s a what-if: What if Apple had bought Pixar instead of Disney?

Alliance for Open Media 

Frederic Lardinois, reporting for TechCrunch:

Amazon, Cisco, Google, Intel, Microsoft, Mozilla and Netflix today announced that they have formed a new open source alliance — the Alliance for Open Media — with the goal of developing the next generation of royalty-free video formats, codecs and other related technologies.

It’s not often we see these rival companies come together to build a new technology together, but the members argue that this kind of alliance is necessary to create a new interoperable video standard that will work across vendors and platforms. While it goes unmentioned in the announcement, it’s also clear that none of the members involved in this alliance want to have to pay royalties to the likes of MPEG LA.

There seems to be a conspicuous absence from the list of companies involved.

Mark Gurman on Apple TV 4 Hardware 

Mark Gurman, writing at 9to5Mac:

The current Apple TV design, first released in late 2010, has 8GB of internal storage for caching media, and the fourth-generation boxes in testing surprisingly range from 8 GB to 16 GB of storage. We are told that Apple has considered two pricing strategies: the simultaneous release of a $149 base model with 8 GB of storage alongside a $199 16 GB model, or the release of the 16 GB Apple TV alone at $149. In either case, Apple will offer a $149 Apple TV.

While the new Apple TV will include an App Store for deep support for gaming, sources say that the limited storage offered by 8 GB and 16 GB flash memory is appropriate for the new model, as all content outside of applications will be streamed directly from the Internet.

It seems silly to have two pricing tiers separated only by 8 GB of storage. Seems a lot simpler to just go with one model with 16 GB of storage and be done with it. Keep it simple.

Curious too what Apple is going to do with the existing Apple TV? If the new model is as much improved as we’re all speculating — with a better controller and an actual App Store — I would think Apple would replace the current Apple TV with the new one. But the current model costs only $69. If they replace it in the lineup, and if Gurman is right about the new model starting at $149, it would mean the price of Apple TV would more than double. Even if you disregard the price drop from back in March, the price would still be going from $99 to $149. I can’t recall that ever happening before. But, it really does sound like the new Apple TV will be an unprecedented upgrade.

And for as much as we think we know about the new Apple TV, Apple has successfully kept a lot of it under wraps. We have a basic description of the remote control, but we don’t know how you’re going to move around the UI, or what the software interface actually looks like. I’m pretty excited about that.

The William T. Sherman of Crazy 

Josh Marshall:

But the speed issue is an entirely separate advantage, one Trump is dominating first because he’s been playing this game for decades but especially because he’s adept at social media and is palpably going by gut and operating on his own without the complex messaging operations that cling on to every other candidate. News organizations and media figures can always move faster than candidates because they have to hold press conferences and prep for them or send out press releases which by definition need to go through the media itself. Twitter has the added advantage of allowing him to flick the news cycle without showing his face or getting questions in response. But the whole picture brings home just how much the modern campaign is built around risk aversion, protecting the candidate from him or herself.

When you see tweets like these you are absolutely certain Donald Trump wrote them himself. It’s definitely him, as clear as a tweet from Chuck Grassley could only possibly be from the senator himself.

The same thought has struck me regarding Trump’s tweets. They’re so in his voice — it couldn’t be more clear that he writes them himself, just winging them from his phone. (It looks like they’re all sent from Twitter for Android.)