Apple Honors Robin Williams With iTunes Store Section Featuring More than 40 Movies, Comedy Routines

Following the tragic news of the death of Oscar-winning actor Robin Williams, Apple has created a “Remembering Robin Williams” dedicated section of the iTunes Store housing many of the actor’s popular movies and stand up comedy routines.

Along with offering movies organized into categories like “Essentials,” “Comedy,” and “Drama,” the Robin Williams iTunes Store section includes a photo of the actor along with a short paragraph on his decades-long career and his involvement in Comic Relief USA, a charity that’s raised upwards of $50 million for homeless assistance.

One of the most beloved and unforgettable performers in the history of show business, Robin Williams brought laughter and inspiration to millions. Throughout a career that spanned five decades, Williams evolved from stand up comedian to international movie star. Among the great masters of improv, he transfixed audiences with a mile-a-minute comic energy. Williams’ Golden Globe-winning turn in Good Morning, Vietnam demonstrated that his versatile acting talents were equally suited to evoking dramatic complexity. Many of Williams’ most iconic performances–in Dead Poets Society, Mrs. Doubtfire, and his Oscar-winning triumph Good Will Hunting–were dazzling high-wire acts that left audiences in tears of laughter one minute and tears of poignancy the next.

In the iTunes Store section dedicated to Williams, Apple lists more than 40 of his movies like Dead Poets Society, Mrs. Doubtfire, Jumanji, The Birdcage, Patch Adams, Good Morning, Vietnam, and more, along with a handful of his comedy performances.

Robin Williams’ performance in Dead Poets Society is of special importance to Apple as his character, John Keating, delivered the famous “What will your verse be?” speech that inspired its “Your Verse” line of iPad advertisements. Williams also provided the voice over for one of the commercials, which began airing back in January.

Yesterday, Apple CEO Tim Cook tweeted about Williams’ death, calling him an “incomparable talent and a great human being.” Phil Schiller also expressed his regrets over the tragedy.

Heartbroken by the news of Robin Williams' passing. He was an incomparable talent and a great human being. Rest in peace.

— Tim Cook (@tim_cook) August 12, 2014

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Apple Releases Employee Diversity Report, 7 out of 10 Workers Are Male, 55% White

Following in the footsteps of several other major tech companies, Apple has released a diversity report on the sex and race of its employees (via Re/code). As is common in the tech industry, the majority of Apple’s workforce is male — only three out of 10 employees around the globe are female. Broken down, males compose 65 percent of non-tech workers, 80 percent of tech workers, and 72 percent of Apple’s leadership.

In the United States, across tech, leadership, and non-tech, Apple’s workers are 55 percent white, 15 percent Asian, 11 percent Hispanic, and 7 percent Black. Nine percent of workers declined to state their ethnicity, one percent selected other, and two percent listed more than one race.

According to CEO Tim Cook, he is unhappy with Apple’s diversity numbers and says Apple is working to improve them.

Apple is committed to transparency, which is why we are publishing statistics about the race and gender makeup of our company. Let me say up front: As CEO, I’m not satisfied with the numbers on this page. They’re not new to us, and we’ve been working hard for quite some time to improve them. We are making progress, and we’re committed to being as innovative in advancing diversity as we are in developing our products.

During his tenure as CEO, Cook has taken steps towards improving Apple’s diversity by boosting Apple’s female leadership. Cook hired Angela Ahrendts as the head of retail and Susan Wagner was recently added to Apple’s board, joining existing female board member Andrea Jung. Cook has also overseen the hire of Lisa Jackson, who oversees the company’s environmental affairs, and the promotion of Denise Young Smith to head of human resources. Apple is a sponsor of the National Center for Women & Information Technology, which aims to get women involved in technology.

In its report, Apple suggests that its company diversity beliefs go beyond race and gender, pointing to its involvement in the Human Rights Campaign. Under Cook, Apple has supported the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, which lobbied to add lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender individuals to the U.S.’s existing nondiscrimination law. Apple also recently participated in San Francisco’s Gay Pride event and the company has long had protections for its LGBT employees.

Note: Due to the political nature of the discussion regarding this topic, the discussion thread is located in our Politics, Religion, Social Issues forum. All forum members and site visitors are welcome to read and follow the thread, but posting is limited to forum members with at least 100 posts.

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Full ‘Skylanders Trap Team’ Game Coming to iPad With Bluetooth Controller, Energy Portal [iOS Blog]

Upcoming Skylanders game Trap Team will see a simultaneous release on both consoles and tablets, according to Activision. The full Skylanders Trap Team game will be available on the iPad when it is released in North America on October 5, marking the first time a complete Skylanders game has been made available on Apple’s tablet.

Trap Team on the iPad will offer the same gameplay experience as the console version, with high-quality graphics and a dedicated Bluetooth controller that will be sold alongside the app in a Skylanders Trap Team Tablet Starter Pack. The Traptanium Portal controller will come with a built-in tablet stand, two Skylanders characters, two Traps, and a display tray that “lets Portal Masters keep track of the Traps they’ve collected and which villains they have trapped.”

While the game has been designed to take advantage of the included controller, players are also able to play Trap Team using on-screen touch controls. Third-party controllers will work with Trap Team as well.

As described by our sister site TouchArcade, the Skylanders line of action-adventure oriented games meld toys with virtual games, asking players to purchase little plastic figurines that sport NFC chips. These chips allow the physical characters to be imported into the video game through a plastic mat called the “Portal of Power.”

Trap Team takes place after Skylanders: Swap Force, with players taking on the role of Portal Master to use Trap Masters and traps to re-capture all of the villains that escaped during the previous game.

The Skylanders Trap Team Tablet Starter Pack will be available beginning on October 5, and will retail for $74.99. It can also be pre-ordered from Amazon.com.

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Siri Co-Founders Building Viv, a Next-Generation Flexible Virtual Assistant

When Apple acquired Siri in 2010, several members of the team behind the technology joined Apple to continue development of the virtual assistant. As iOS evolved and the vision for Siri changed, co-founders Dag Kitt­laus and Adam Cheyer left Apple to pursue other opportunities. This liberation led to their reunion and the formation of Viv Labs, which is now working on new virtual assistant software that may change how we interact with our devices. Writer Steven Levy takes a close look at Viv in a lengthy profile on Wired.

Viv Labs is building a virtual assistant that is capable of more than just pre-programmed answers in response to a question. Viv expands further into the realm of artificial intelligence with a codebase that can interpret the question, make connections across a variety of services and apps and even generate code on the fly if needed to formulate an answer. Team members describe Viv as a “global brain” that can learn about its users and adapt to their preferences.

Take a complicated command like “Give me a flight to Dallas with a seat that Shaq could fit in.” Viv will parse the sentence and then it will perform its best trick: automatically generating a quick, efficient program to link third-party sources of information together—say, Kayak, SeatGuru, and the NBA media guide—so it can identify available flights with lots of legroom. And it can do all of this in a fraction of a second.

Unlike Siri, which was targeted at the iPhone even before its acquisition by Apple, Kitt­laus and his team hope to license the technology and bring Viv to a variety of devices including TVs, cars and other Internet-connected devices.

“I’m extremely proud of Siri and the impact it’s had on the world, but in many ways it could have been more,” Cheyer says. “Now I want to do something bigger than mobile, bigger than consumer, bigger than desktop or enterprise. I want to do something that could fundamentally change the way software is built.”

Viv is an ambitious project that is still in the early stages of development, but the vision is revolutionary. “If this team is successful, we are looking at the future of intelligent agents and a multibillion-dollar industry,” said AI expert Oren Etzioni of the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence to Wired.

It’s unclear whether Apple will be interested in the technology and what kind of relationship the two companies might have given their history with Siri, but what is clear is that Siri’s inventors have much broader ambitions in mind.

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Apple Once Again Offering $25 iTunes Gift Card With Apple TV Purchase in iTunes Festival Promotion

Ahead of its London iTunes Festival in September, Apple is promoting its Apple TV with a bundle deal offering a $25 iTunes gift card with each Apple TV purchase (via 9to5Mac). The gift card can be used to purchase apps, music, and movies available in the iTunes Store, and the promotion is valid through September 30.

Earlier this year, Apple offered a similar $25 gift card promotion that sparked speculation about a possible imminent launch of an updated Apple TV. These rumors turned out to be false, and Apple is still selling the same third-generation model that saw its last substantial update in early 2012. Though this latest promotion offers a $25 gift card, the Apple TV still retails for its original $99 price tag.

The current crop of rumors suggests a 2015 update for Apple’s television-related hardware, with delays to a rumored set-top box interfacing with live and on-demand content reportedly due to ongoing negotiations with cable companies. Rumors have indicated the next-generation Apple TV may include an App Store, support for wireless game controllers, Siri integration and more, although it is unclear whether Apple plans to split the television lineup between the full-featured set-top box and an improved Apple TV or if everything will be bundled into a single Apple TV product.

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Engadget giveaway: win an iPhone 5s and AirPort Express courtesy of Tempo AI!

The smartphone has become a one-stop-shop for organizing our daily lives. We use it to find our way around, stay on schedule and keep in touch with friends, co-workers and clients. But skipping around through all those apps lacks efficiency and wastes time. That’s why Tempo AI developed the Smart Calendar app. It helps combat confusion and increase productivity by centralizing all the necessary info into one place. The Tempo Smart Calendar handles scheduling duties with aplomb, but also offers an array of social insights about your contacts, quick navigational tools and even helps you dial into conference calls without digging for passcodes. In order to help one lucky Engadget reader achieve this level of organizational zen, the company has provided an iPhone 5s and and AirPort Express. Simply head to the Rafflecopter widget below for up to three chances at winning. With all these enterprise-level tools at hand, you’ll be prepared for everything the world can throw at you and you won’t even break a sweat.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

• Entries are handled through the Rafflecopter widget above. Comments are no longer accepted as valid methods of entry. You may enter without any obligation to social media accounts, though we may offer them as opportunities for extra entries. Your email address is required so we can get in touch with you if you win, but it will not be given to third parties.
• Contest is open to all residents of the 50 States, the District of Columbia, and Canada (excluding Quebec), 18 or older! Sorry, we don’t make this rule (we hate excluding anyone), so direct your anger at our lawyers and contest laws if you have to be mad.
• Winners will be chosen randomly. One (1) winner will receive one (1) Apple iPhone 5s (ME323LL/A, 16GB, Space Gray, unlocked GSM) and one (1) Apple Airport Express Base Station (MC414LL/A).
• If you are chosen, you will be notified by email. Winners must respond within three days of being contacted. If you do not respond within that period, another winner will be chosen. Make sure that the account you use to enter the contest includes your real name and a contact email or Facebook login. We do not track any of this information for marketing or third-party purposes.
• This unit is purely for promotional giveaway. Tempo AI, Apple and Engadget / AOL are not held liable to honor warranties, exchanges or customer service.
• The full list of rules, in all its legalese glory, can be found here.
• Entries can be submitted until August 13th at 11:59PM ET. Good luck!

Filed under: Announcements, Apple

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Additional Photos of Purported Silver iPhone 6 Rear Shell Surface

More photos said to be of the iPhone 6′s rear shell have been shared by frequent iOS device part leaker Sonny Dickson. The part shown in the photos also appears identical to the rear shell shared by luxury modified iPhone vendor Feld & Volk, hinting that this may be a legitimate component.

Similar to previous leaks, this newest rear shell shows a number of physical features including a near-all metal design with upper and lower bezels, a cutout for the new round “True Tone” dual-LED flash, and a cutout for the rear camera that may hint at a protruding lens for the device.

Apple is expected to reveal the iPhone 6 at an event on September 9, with a launch likely coming one week after the announcement. It is possible that the company will release the 4.7-inch version of the iPhone 6 first, with the 5.5-inch version seeing a launch later this year or early next year as Apple solves production issues with the larger device. In addition to a bigger screen, both versions of the iPhone 6 will likely incorporate a faster A8 processor, an improved camera with stabilization, and iOS 8.

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