The 3D theatrical screenings of the special 50th anniversary episode of sci-fi drama “Doctor Who” earned £1.8 million ($2.91 million) at the U.K. box office, which is a European record for alternative content.
“The Day of the Doctor,” which was screened on Saturday by 440 movie theaters in the U.K. at the same time as the episode aired for free on the BBC, was the third highest-grosser over the weekend, after “The Hunger Games: Catching Fire” and “Gravity.”
Give Moffat a big enough budget and he can produce some pretty incredible stuff. That episode was great so it’s nice to see the cinema performance reflect this.
Apple does get one thing very right in this area: you can now zoom your iWork documents using pinch-to-zoom on your trackpad, the same way you can zoom webpages in Safari. You can even zoom in on objects by double-tapping the trackpad with two fingers. It’s a dream come true, a huge boon when working on a small screen or on any screen if you quickly want to zoom in to align two objects. In the case of Keynote, the ability to pinch to zoom the slide means that you can no longer resize objects by pinching them—a reasonable tradeoff.
Over the last month, a handful of people have asked me whether I like the new iWork or not. I think the best way to respond is to say that iWork represents a tradeoff of a lot of secondary functionality for big gains in very few areas. Liking the product will depend on whether you appreciate the improvements enough to overlook the missing features.
I formed that sentence carefully. I don’t think ‘overlook’ can be substituted for the word ‘outweigh’ here. Big features (like page counts) are absent. If any of these regressions are mission-critical to what you need to do, then — frankly — you are screwed.
When rumours of a re-architected iWork suite surfaced, my primary interest was to see if scrolling had got better. I’m obsessed with responsive scrolling — I crave iOS level performance to be universal on OS X too. At least for me, the culled feature set is not a deal-breaker. Therefore, it’s all worth it. Zooming and panning using the glass trackpad of my MacBook is an absolute joy in the new Pages.
The Instagram app, which will be available only for Windows Phone 8 (sorry, legacy users), will offer Live Tiles that refresh with new data on the Start screen, and will also come with support for fast-resume; sadly, there are quite a few features that won’t be available right away, such as video capture and uploading, photo tagging, viewing geotaxis and – arguably the most important – in-app image capture. Instagram explains that it wanted to get the app out to users as quickly as possible, so a few features had to be left out of the first version, but it assures us that future updates will come with plenty more functionality (as updates are often wont to do).
You can’t take pictures inside the app. That’s ridiculous. If Windows Phone actually had any users, there would be an uproar over this.
Mr. Gascón said that, based on e-mails he had reviewed between a Samsung executive and a software developer, it appeared that the carriers were unwilling to allow Samsung to load the antitheft software. The emails, he said, suggest that the carriers are concerned that the software would eat into the profit they make from the insurance programs many consumers buy to cover lost or stolen phones.
Carriers suck. Also, as usual, Samsung marketing sucks. Their brand name for activation lock is ‘LoJack’.
Apple’s wearable iWatch is expected to come with a 1.7-inch OLED display for men’s watches and a 1.3-inch OLED screen for women, David Hsieh, DisplaySearch’s Vice President of the Greater China Market, said at a conference today in Taiwan, citing Apple sources.
If Apple launches two sizes of smartwatch simultaneously, I don’t think the positioning will centre around gender. That isn’t Apple’s style. Some men will like small watches, some women will like bigger ones. As a society, we don’t know yet what is considered socially acceptable.
When the iPhone launched in 2007, the screen was seen as overly big. In fact, Apple had to use oversized hand models to portray the iPhone as small in the marketing. By 2011, the iPhone’s 3.5 inch screen size was perceived as small.
By starting the iWatch on two sizes, Apple can effectively double its chances of correctly guessing what consumers will consider as fashionable at the beginning of the product roadmap, rather than having to adjust a few generations later.
In something of a surprise move, Apple has begun accepting orders for the Retina iPad mini in the United States and several other countries as of midnight Pacific Time on November 12. Orders for the 16 and 32 GB Wi-Fi versions are currently shipping within 1 to 3 business days while orders for the 64 and 128 GB versions along with cellular models are shipping within 5 to 10 days.
The company did not give any early indication that it would launch the Retina iPad mini today, aside from a mention of the seemingly unlikely November 12 date on its GSX site for service providers just hours ago.
Compared to tradition, this is an unorthodox way for Apple to launch a premier product. Even hours later, Apple didn’t even put a press release out saying it is now available.
My guess is that the Mini is supply constrained enough that Apple felt too many people would be disappointed if they followed the normal ‘queue-outside-stores’ procedure.
A US company that has developed an “electronic backpack” that fits onto a cockroach allowing its movements to be controlled by a mobile phone app has defended itself against cruelty claims.
This idea would be stopped well short of animal cruelty concerns. This equipment is meant to be used to teach children about neuroscience. However, most children (and adults) are repulsed by cockroaches. I don’t think any teacher would want them in classrooms.
Besides emphasizing Office, Elop would be prepared to sell or shut down major businesses to sharpen the company’s focus, the people said. He would consider ending Microsoft’s costly effort to take on Google with its Bing search engine, and would also consider selling healthy businesses such as the Xbox game console if he determined they weren’t critical to the company’s strategy, the people said.
Killing Bing would be a monumental strategic shift, but I wouldn’t characterise it as stupid by any means. I’ve never truly understood the point of its existence aside from spiting Google.
Dropping (what Bloomberg describes as) other “healthy businesses” is also not a stupid idea in itself. It’s just important to be selective in what you kill of. If you are too overzealous, then the result is a crippled company with no associated benefit.
I would like to think Elop is smart enough to make these choices correctly, but Bloomberg specifically calls out the Xbox as a business to kill. Ending the Xbox project is a step too far, in my opinion. The Xbox is the only thing Microsoft does that has universal appeal. Selling off your most successful division (at least in terms of brand reputation) is an example of being too ruthless.
In rewriting these applications, some features from iWork ’09 were not available for the initial release. We plan to reintroduce some of these features in the next few releases and will continue to add brand new features on an ongoing basis.
What I don’t get is why Apple didn’t publish this article at the announcement? They must have known a good proportion of people would be annoyed at the omissions. By only publishing now, they look like they are floundering under pressure.
T-Mobile said the arrival of the iPad on its network allowed the company to sell more tablets last Friday than it sold during the entire prior quarter.
T-Mobile didn’t provide a specific sales number, but its claim jibes with those made by other carriers. AT&T said on Monday that the launch of the iPad Air saw Apple tablet sales triple those from last fall’s iPad launch weekend.
The iPad Air has been a big hit. Everyone is reporting strong sales statistics. What’s currently not known is if the Mini will be equally successful or whether it has been overshadowed by the bigger iPad in this cycle.
It is with a heavy heart we announce that Everpix will be shutting down in the coming weeks.
We started this company two years ago with the goals of solving the photo mess and designing better ways for people to enjoy their memories. We are very proud of the work we’ve done—from the cutting-edge semantic analysis and syncing technology, right down to every pixel on our website and mobile apps.
Everpix was a great product — they are shutting down because they couldn’t finance it. Apple could do worse than hire the talent here, if not buyout the company.
Ahead of Tuesday’s media event, Apple has revised its Built-in Apps page for the iPhone 5s to reveal the full set of new iOS 7-themed icons for the six iLife and iWork apps offered for iOS. The new GarageBand and iPhoto icons had appeared in the Settings app on some users’ devices last week.
Apple messed up by showing the iPhoto and GarageBand icons in iCloud settings prematurely last week. Although not a common occurrence, Apple has leaked stuff through iTunes and iCloud metadata in the past, so it wasn’t entirely without precedent.
What I wasn’t expecting was for them to screw up again and leak the entirety of the new icon set on their own site ahead of tomorrow’s announcement.
The icons themselves look promising. All of the iWork icons actually feel like they were made with iOS in mind. The lucid green Numbers is a little rough, though.
She shares our values and our focus on innovation. She places the same strong emphasis as we do on the customer experience. She cares deeply about people and embraces our view that our most important resource and our soul is our people. She believes in enriching the lives of others and she is wicked smart. Angela has shown herself to be an extraordinary leader throughout her career and has a proven track record. She led Burberry through a period of phenomenal growth with a focus on brand, culture, core values and the power of positive energy.
As a Brit, on the sole basis of each company’s retail outlets, hiring the CEO from Burberry is a much better choice than the CEO of Dixons.
As an Apple supplier, our contact offered insight into the “iWatch” and described this potential new device as much more than an extension of your iPhone but as a multi-purpose gateway in allowing consumers to control their home (i.e., heating/cooling, lights, audio, video, etc.).
White’s analyst notes should never be taken at face value; his track record indicate that he either has the worst sources in the world or he randomly makes stuff up.
I am only referring to him as a point of discussion. Home automation on the iWatch — or other smartwatches — is an area that hasn’t really been touched upon before. I suppose it is a neat addition. Controlling lights and appliances via your phone is all well and good, but there is a physical barrier to that. As intimate as a phone is, it is normally found stuffed in the depths of a pocket. A smartwatch has inherent advantages in doing small, basic things really quickly.
In terms of implementation though, the reality of Apple getting into home automation is a mess. Customers need new light fittings, new appliances, new plugs, new everything to take advantage of this stuff in addition to the iWatch itself. The system would also need to be contextually driven. With constrained screen real estate, the UI would have to prioritise showing the controllable lights and smart devices that are in close proximity (i.e. the same room) to the user. It’d be tricky to do well, but not impossible.
Due to the additional hardware requirements, though, I feel that this will be an area Apple will cede to third-party developers to solve. Right now, the chance that this is a headline 1.0 iWatch feature — in my mind — is very small.
Instead, he tells me about Stories, his team’s latest invention: a rolling compilation of snaps from the last 24 hours that your friends can see. You create your Story as you go about your day by tapping “My Story” above the friends you want to send a snap to. Or, you can tap a new shortcut button in the app’s camera screen to instantly post a snap to your Story. But unlike conventional snaps, Stories don’t disappear in a puff of ephemeral smoke after you’ve watched them. You can watch a friend’s (or your own) Story over and over.
How do you monetise a free app that creates temporary content? You don’t.
Microsoft Corp. is talking to HTC Corp. about adding its Windows operating system to HTC’s Android-based smartphones at little or no cost, people with knowledge of the matter said, evidence of the software maker’s struggle to gain ground in the mobile market.
Terry Myerson, head of Microsoft’s operating systems unit, asked HTC last month to load Windows Phone as a second option on handsets with Google Inc.’s rival software, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the talks are private. Myerson discussed cutting or eliminating the license fee to make the idea more attractive, the people said. The talks are preliminary and no decision has been made, two people said.
This is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard, but I have no doubt that it is true. Microsoft is just stupid. Dual-booting does not solve the underlying problem that Windows Phone isn’t very compelling for consumers.
If you offer somebody choice between Windows Phone and Android on boot, they are going to (perhaps foolishly) pick Android. Dual-booting doesn’t help Microsoft one bit.
Microsoft have already played their trump card, acquiring Nokia. They need to go all in on it, or they are going to lose. They need to reallocate all of the resources tied up in organising manufacturer relationships and focus on building a first-party product.
