Apple's iPhone 6 and Watch reveal: Behave different
Here's what I learned at today's only event in town: Apple invented size, time and money. I half expected Ben Bernanke and Stephen Hawking to appear on stage and confirm it.At the heart of the larger iPhones and the Apple Watch, though, was one central thought: Forget everything you might have heard before. Now we want you behave different.Yes, you loved your iPhones because they were small and fitted nicely into your purses and trousers. Now you'll have to have bigger pockets (go on, buy some ugly Dockers) and dump the tiddly Birkin.Forget whipping out your black or platinum to show that you're an individual of style, importance and solvency. Now just wave a golden gadget at a terminal.Forget, too, staring at your phone all through dinner, as your lover and the server toss daggers at your eyes. Instead, revert to the gesture you used to employ to show you're bored: stare at your watch.Full coverage of the Apple eventCNET's complete coverage of the iPhone 6 and Apple Watch announcementsApple iPhone 6Apple iPhone 6 PlusApple WatchApple PayThere was something almost comical buried within the beautiful slickness of Apple's presentation. Tim Cook said he wanted to "redefine what people expect from a watch." Most people don't expect anything from a watch. They don't wear a watch. What Apple was redefining was its ability to attract you to new behaviors through its excellent design and your wondrous tendency toward boredom and amnesia.You've always wanted to "communicate from your wrist," haven't you? You just didn't know that you wanted to. Or you couldn't communicate it very well.Many people were probably too busy already composing their personalized Apple Watch faces to allow their ears to hear: You still need your iPhone to get your Apple Watch to work. It's not some independent device. It's another $400 that Apple wants you to spend on being one of the coolerati.If you allowed a hint of Grinchiness to enter your brain, you might have pondered that with Apple Pay, the same company that's recently had problems keeping your naked selfies safe wants you to now photograph your credit cards and send them the picture.What an interesting turn of thought it is to hear that wallets are easy to lose and be compromised. Left hanging in the air was the notion that phones are compromise-free and no one has ever mislaid, say, an iPhone prototype.Watching the Apple live feed online, I was moved, too, when Phil Schiller talked about Image Stabilization. The feed froze. For perhaps the 10th time. Technology does have glitches. Many.Yet the core of Apple's brand faithful will likely lap this up. They need not only to see something different but to be something different. Technology has stagnated recently. There hasn't been a new behavior to embrace. Now you can twist away on your old watch wind-up wheel and feel like you're in a new age of enlightenment.Who could not be entranced when Jony Ive spoke of "horological experts"? Mine has often told me I shouldn't date a Scorpio after 9pm. Ive's, however, merely briefed him on the whole history of watches and why we now suddenly, desperately need them. More Technically IncorrectDiGiorno's horrific laugh on domestic violence Twitter hashtagStephen Hawking: God particle could wipe out the universeAdam Levine wants 'iPhone burning,' tweets from iPhoneAnd did you hear that part about the Milanese Loop? You've probably only ever enjoyed a Bolognese Loop. And it surely wasn't infinite.I was so in the Loop that I missed the part about the Watch's battery life. Was there a part about battery life? So, now that Apple has asked you nicely to behave different, will you? Will you accept that the new way of looking is the new way of behaving? The world, you know, might not have changed quite as much as Apple would like to make out. Yes, the company is now giving away albums to all its iTunes customers.But the band at the end was still U2, right?The Apple iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus have...See full gallery1 - 4 / 22NextPrev
Netgear's Apple TV competitor plays DRM-encoded songs purchased from the iTunes Store
Netgear's Apple TV competitor plays DRM-encoded songs purchased from the iTunes Store
Kudos to Laptop magazine for getting the scoop, with the one of the first hands-on reviews we've seen of the Netgear EVA8000 Digital Entertainer HD.There's just one problem:they got one big detail of the product dead wrong.The Netgear product does play songs purchased from the iTunes Store, as confirmed by hands-on tests in the CNET Labs. We purchased and played two songs from the store, and were surprised to see that the Netgear was able to stream them to the TV/stereo system in the next room just as easily as it could with DRM-free MP3s and PlaysForSure-encoded WMA files. The catch is that that purchased songs take a good 15 seconds to play--so don't expect anything close to gapless playback on purchased iTunes songs. The feature works only with purchased music, not video, and only when streaming from Windows PCs (not Macs) with iTunes installed, though the program doesn't need to be running. The delay is due to the electronic voodoo that Netgear's software (installed on the PC) is using to access the music files encrypted with Apple's FairPlay DRM.We're not exactly sure how Netgear is pulling it off, but--except for the delay--it seems to work just fine.We've seen a handful of previous products (such as the Logitech Wireless DJ and Linksys WMB54G) offer this sort of iTunes hack, but the Netgear is the first full-on network media device (aside from Apple's own Apple TV) that lets you browse the files on a TV screen with album art, just as if they were home-ripped MP3s. To be sure, this discovery is a bit less dramatic in light of yesterday's EMI announcement, but it's nevertheless important for anyone who's looking for an alternative to the Apple TV.Interestingly, Netgear's original press release highlighted the iTunes compatibility, but the company then seemed to backpedal--it's not listed on the current product spec sheet, for instance.And while we're shooting down rumors, the Netgear Digital Entertainer HD offers 802.11g Wi-Fi, not the faster 802.11n offering found on the Apple TV. (It was widely--and falsely, apparently--reported as sporting 11n when it was first announced at CES.)The lower-bandwidth wireless connection makes streaming true high-def video content on the Netgear a potentially dicey proposition. The CNET review should be posting by Thursday. We're spending some extra time doing some additional hands-on testing, with special attention to some of the more advanced Windows Media Center integration features. But with the exception of the iTunes gaffe (which may well be fixed by the time your read this), the Laptop mag review is largely in line with what we've found: anyone who's frustrated by the Apple TV's limited file compatibility and feature set will certainly find the Netgear to be an intriguing alternative. (If you've got any questions about the product, ask in this TalkBack thread, and we'll see if we can find the answers.)UPDATE: I've edited this post to remove the snarky reference to Jeremy Toeman's review of the Netgear EVA8000 at his site, livedigitally.com. (The review even offers three in-depth hands-on YouTube videos of the product in action.)Yes, Jeremy is working on a consulting project with Netgear, but he clearly states that fact on the review itself. Moreover, if you look over his resume, you'll see that he worked at Sling Media and Mediabolic--so he knows a thing or two about digital media.
Kudos to Laptop magazine for getting the scoop, with the one of the first hands-on reviews we've seen of the Netgear EVA8000 Digital Entertainer HD.There's just one problem:they got one big detail of the product dead wrong.The Netgear product does play songs purchased from the iTunes Store, as confirmed by hands-on tests in the CNET Labs. We purchased and played two songs from the store, and were surprised to see that the Netgear was able to stream them to the TV/stereo system in the next room just as easily as it could with DRM-free MP3s and PlaysForSure-encoded WMA files. The catch is that that purchased songs take a good 15 seconds to play--so don't expect anything close to gapless playback on purchased iTunes songs. The feature works only with purchased music, not video, and only when streaming from Windows PCs (not Macs) with iTunes installed, though the program doesn't need to be running. The delay is due to the electronic voodoo that Netgear's software (installed on the PC) is using to access the music files encrypted with Apple's FairPlay DRM.We're not exactly sure how Netgear is pulling it off, but--except for the delay--it seems to work just fine.We've seen a handful of previous products (such as the Logitech Wireless DJ and Linksys WMB54G) offer this sort of iTunes hack, but the Netgear is the first full-on network media device (aside from Apple's own Apple TV) that lets you browse the files on a TV screen with album art, just as if they were home-ripped MP3s. To be sure, this discovery is a bit less dramatic in light of yesterday's EMI announcement, but it's nevertheless important for anyone who's looking for an alternative to the Apple TV.Interestingly, Netgear's original press release highlighted the iTunes compatibility, but the company then seemed to backpedal--it's not listed on the current product spec sheet, for instance.And while we're shooting down rumors, the Netgear Digital Entertainer HD offers 802.11g Wi-Fi, not the faster 802.11n offering found on the Apple TV. (It was widely--and falsely, apparently--reported as sporting 11n when it was first announced at CES.)The lower-bandwidth wireless connection makes streaming true high-def video content on the Netgear a potentially dicey proposition. The CNET review should be posting by Thursday. We're spending some extra time doing some additional hands-on testing, with special attention to some of the more advanced Windows Media Center integration features. But with the exception of the iTunes gaffe (which may well be fixed by the time your read this), the Laptop mag review is largely in line with what we've found: anyone who's frustrated by the Apple TV's limited file compatibility and feature set will certainly find the Netgear to be an intriguing alternative. (If you've got any questions about the product, ask in this TalkBack thread, and we'll see if we can find the answers.)UPDATE: I've edited this post to remove the snarky reference to Jeremy Toeman's review of the Netgear EVA8000 at his site, livedigitally.com. (The review even offers three in-depth hands-on YouTube videos of the product in action.)Yes, Jeremy is working on a consulting project with Netgear, but he clearly states that fact on the review itself. Moreover, if you look over his resume, you'll see that he worked at Sling Media and Mediabolic--so he knows a thing or two about digital media.
Beyonce drops new album on iTunes- Fans, marketers gasp
Beyonce drops new album on iTunes: Fans, marketers gasp
There's a way of doing these things, and this isn't it.If you're a star, you're supposed to be supported by a hype machine that wipes the floor with organic palm fronds before you take a single step.Then Thursday night, along comes Beyonce Knowles and shows the know-alls that you can direct your music at fans in a direct manner.Without any marketing campaign or even a vague sniff of a planted rumor, Beyonce slipped a new album -- 14 songs and 17 videos -- onto iTunes.Had she been sipping excessively at the Ciroc fountain? Had she been taking advice from extraterrestrials? Had someone from Apple slipped her a few hundred million for this exclusive privilege?The artist herself merely issued a little statement, part of which read: "I didn't want to release my music the way I've done it. I am bored with that. I feel like I am able to speak directly to my fans."Yes, but it's one thing telling your fans directly that you had a bran muffin for breakfast and quite another to slip this veritable feast of entertainment down their unsuspecting social chimneys.And it's all very well favoring iTunes in such a grandiose way, but what about those social networks, where tongues are permanently exposed waiting to catch a droplet of news from (the assistants of) their chosen icon?Beyonce, ever conscious of the way we live today, posted a video on Instagram and another on Facebook.One of her motivations, though, is interesting. As NBC's "Today" show reported, she has become a little tired of people cherry-picking one song and ignoring the idea that an album is an entity.She said that she grew up in the era of Michael Jackson, where you listened to the whole album. Those who can remember doing something so odd will know that it was sometimes the bad songs that gave context to the good ones.Moreover, if you listened to the whole thing, your feelings for individual songs would change over time.I am waiting, though, for supposed experts and analysts to deem this method of releasing music a disaster, a miscalculation or, indeed, a threat to modern civilization.The Daily Mail reports that many people -- professionals and amateurs alike -- have already remarked with wonder and awe at the sheer audacity of giving your fans a rather bountiful holiday gift. It even suggested that iTunes had suffered a brief nighttime meltdown. There is surely something far more remarkable than this supposed feat of derring-do: It's the fact that in a business in which everyone talks and talks and snorts, somehow there was silence until the event actually happened.Now that is marketing perfection.Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
There's a way of doing these things, and this isn't it.If you're a star, you're supposed to be supported by a hype machine that wipes the floor with organic palm fronds before you take a single step.Then Thursday night, along comes Beyonce Knowles and shows the know-alls that you can direct your music at fans in a direct manner.Without any marketing campaign or even a vague sniff of a planted rumor, Beyonce slipped a new album -- 14 songs and 17 videos -- onto iTunes.Had she been sipping excessively at the Ciroc fountain? Had she been taking advice from extraterrestrials? Had someone from Apple slipped her a few hundred million for this exclusive privilege?The artist herself merely issued a little statement, part of which read: "I didn't want to release my music the way I've done it. I am bored with that. I feel like I am able to speak directly to my fans."Yes, but it's one thing telling your fans directly that you had a bran muffin for breakfast and quite another to slip this veritable feast of entertainment down their unsuspecting social chimneys.And it's all very well favoring iTunes in such a grandiose way, but what about those social networks, where tongues are permanently exposed waiting to catch a droplet of news from (the assistants of) their chosen icon?Beyonce, ever conscious of the way we live today, posted a video on Instagram and another on Facebook.One of her motivations, though, is interesting. As NBC's "Today" show reported, she has become a little tired of people cherry-picking one song and ignoring the idea that an album is an entity.She said that she grew up in the era of Michael Jackson, where you listened to the whole album. Those who can remember doing something so odd will know that it was sometimes the bad songs that gave context to the good ones.Moreover, if you listened to the whole thing, your feelings for individual songs would change over time.I am waiting, though, for supposed experts and analysts to deem this method of releasing music a disaster, a miscalculation or, indeed, a threat to modern civilization.The Daily Mail reports that many people -- professionals and amateurs alike -- have already remarked with wonder and awe at the sheer audacity of giving your fans a rather bountiful holiday gift. It even suggested that iTunes had suffered a brief nighttime meltdown. There is surely something far more remarkable than this supposed feat of derring-do: It's the fact that in a business in which everyone talks and talks and snorts, somehow there was silence until the event actually happened.Now that is marketing perfection.Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
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