Apple Music has 20 million paid subscribers
Apple says it added three million Music users since September, bringing its total subscriber count to 20 million. Furthermore, VP Eddy Cue tells Billboard that 60 percent of those are new customers who haven’t purchased an iTunes song in the last year. By contrast, Spotify announced it had 40 million users in September, after adding 10 million premium subscribers in a six month period.
As before, Apple is using exclusive artist deals to drive users to Music. “Chance the Rapper, who we put on Apple Music exclusively, hit the top 10 on the Billboard charts [from streaming alone] and I can’t recall that being done before,” said Cue. Such deals are controversial with fans and the press, however, and artists like Kanye West (who has done his own exclusive deals on Tidal) have railed about it.
Unlike Apple, Spotify has a free, ad-supported subscription tier that it uses to drive premium subscriber growth. As of June, the company said it had 100 million total users, including non-paid subscribers. Apple has its own built-in advantage, of course, as Apple Music is already installed on every new iPhone sold. Both companies offer $10 individual subscriptions and a $15 family plan for up to six users.
While the growth of both Spotify and Apple Music has been dramatic, Cue points out that there are still only around 100 million paid streaming music subscribers globally. “There’s a lot of growth opportunity,” he says. The jump is good news for the music industry, too, as it pushes total paid streams per artist northwards.
However, the RIAA continues to complain about streaming, despite the fact that YouTube said yesterday that it paid $1 billion to the industry for ad-supported (non-subscription) streaming alone. In total, music industry revenue rose 3.2 percent in 2015 to $15 million, and based on Apple and Spotify’s growth, should push even higher this year.
Via: 9 to 5 Mac
Source: Billboard
Square Cash plugs its virtual card into Apple Pay
The Square Cash service added a “virtual debit card” feature back in September, and tonight during the Code Commerce event, CEO Jack Dorsey announced that it’s integrating with Apple Pay. The virtual Visa debit card lets Square Cash users spend their balance anywhere Visa is accepted (legitimately), and starting today, its iPhone app can enable the card for use on Apple Pay too. If you’re not using an iPhone or Apple Watch, Dorsey said that the company does have plans to support other platforms like Android Pay and Samsung Pay.
Source: Recode, iTunes
Apple’s TV single sign-on feature goes live in the US
Apple just made your TV watching much easier… if you subscribe to the right services, that is. After dropping some hints in November, Apple has activated its promised single sign-on feature for Apple TV and iOS users in the US, but only for a handful of offerings. DirecTV, Dish and cord-cutter service Sling TV are the highlights among providers. Only some channel-specific apps can use SSO as well: A&E, Bravo, NBC, Syfy and USA are among the choices, and the option isn’t always available on both Apple TV and iOS gear.
How well the feature works will rely heavily on app creators. There are some glaring omissions in the selection right now (HBO, anyone?). The situation might improve sooner than you think, however. Single sign-on might see greater adoption now that you don’t need a beta operating system to try it, and there will be a stronger incentive to use it once Apple’s unifying TV app is available. If support is rough around the edges right now, it might be a very different story in the months ahead.
Via: MacRumors
Source: Apple
Apple will publish its AI research
Apple isn’t exactly known for sharing its research with the world, but it’s making a big exception to that rule. Company AI director Russ Salakhutdinov has revealed that Apple will publish its machine learning research. In other words, some of the discoveries it makes behind closed doors will be available to academia. We’ve asked Apple for more details and will let you know if it can elaborate on its plans, such as whether this will apply to many of its findings, or just those it deems safe to disclose. However, the move raises a question: why open the kimono when AI is a fiercely competitive field?
The most likely answer: this is at least partly about attracting talent to Apple. Researchers in AI (and many other fields) like to have their work publicly shared and recognized. They’re more likely to be interested in joining Apple if they know their breakthroughs won’t be treated as trade secrets to be kept under lock and key. Don’t be surprised if Apple has more success building its AI team in the future, particularly when it wants to recruit professors and others who still want to contribute to science.
Apple will start publishing, according to @rsalakhu at #nips2016 pic.twitter.com/I0ndKKc2vB
— hardmaru (@hardmaru) December 6, 2016
Source: Hardmaru (Twitter), Thomas Kipf (Twitter)
Apple’s Single Sign-On Service Now Live
Apple today officially launched Single Sign-on, the service designed to allow cable subscribers to sign in once with their cable credentials to gain access to all cable-restricted content in iOS and tvOS apps.
Single Sign-on is limited to the United States, and according to a support document, is available for the following providers: CenturyLink Prism, DirecTV, Dish, GVTC, GTA, Hawaiian Telecom, Hotwire, MetroCast, and Sling.
While Single Sign-on was introduced and tested in the tvOS 10.1 and iOS 10.2 betas, the feature was remotely released today to all iOS 10 and tvOS 10 devices. Using Single Sign-on does not require one of the betas, and is instead immediately available to all iPhone and Apple TV users running iOS 10 or tvOS 10.
With Single Sign-on, customers with a supported provider will use the Settings options in iOS or tvOS to sign in with their cable credentials. From then on, when accessing a supported app that requires a cable subscription, the app will ask to use the saved sign-on credentials.
To get to Single Sign-on on iOS devices, open the Settings app and scroll down to “TV Providers.” The process is the same on the Apple TV – open the Settings app and choose the TV Providers option to sign in.
Most cable channels and content providers offer individual apps on the Apple TV and iOS devices, but still require cable authentication before users can access content. Prior to Single Sign-on, customers were required to enter their credentials in each individual app, a frustrating and time-consuming process.
Single Sign-on will play a key part in the upcoming “TV” app that’s set to debut in iOS 10.2 and tvOS 10.1. The TV app serves as sort of an Apple-designed television guide that lets customers find new content and keep track of what they were watching across multiple devices.
At the current time, Single Sign-on is available to a limited number of customers, but its availability will expand as Apple signs the necessary deals with cable providers. Single Sign-on also requires apps to implement support for the feature, and many apps have not yet introduced Single Sign-on support.
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Apple’s Support Site Now Lets Customers Schedule Repairs at Apple Authorized Providers
Apple recently made a quiet update to its Apple Support site, introducing a new feature that allows customers to find and schedule repairs for iPhones, Macs, and iPads from Apple Authorized Service Providers.
When troubleshooting a product, choosing “Bring in for Repair” after going through Apple’s support prompts now brings up all repair centers near a customer, including Apple’s own retail stores and retail locations where customers can get repairs from Apple Authorized Service Providers.
In addition to including all nearby Apple Authorized Service Providers, the new repair site also lists availability, so customers can find the fastest repairs and get same-day service in many locations. There’s even an option to book a repair right from the site.
Most of the time, getting a repair appointment at an Apple Store’s Genius Bar requires a wait of several days to a week, while Apple Authorized Service Providers have much more open availability.
In the San Francisco Bay Area, for example, local Apple Stores do not have repair appointments until next week, but third-party repair shops like Best Buy, Clickaway, Mobile Kangaroo, and Computercare have appointments today or tomorrow.
Apple Authorized Service Providers have been officially authorized by Apple to perform repairs on Apple devices. Both AppleCare repairs and out-of-warranty repair services are available, but many customers may not be aware of local options outside of an Apple Store.
Apple’s new focus on third-party service providers may provide some much-needed relief for Apple retail stores that are unable to keep up with repair requests and it will ensure customers are able to get faster service.
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Trump team wants to meet with Silicon Valley execs next week
The Trump transition team has invited a number of tech industry leaders to New York next week for a roundtable discussion. USA Today reports that Reince Priebus, Trump’s chief of staff, Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, and advisor Peter Thiel are engineering the December 14th summit.
This will be an interesting meeting given Trump’s thorny relationship with an industry that snubbed him at every turn during the election. Trump’s relationship with Apple is especially contentious ever since he called for a boycott of the company when it refused to build a backdoor into the iOS security system for the FBI. Trump’s ambivalence to net neutrality and vigorous opposition to immigration, which the industry relies on to recruit top flight talent from around the world, aren’t helping his case either.
Peter Thiel, Trump’s advisor and hype man, is only slightly better off. He sits on Facebook’s board of directors and holds considerable sway within the company. However his backing of the candidate that will be the next president — not to mention a personal vendetta against Gawker Media which shuttered the news outlet earlier this year — has not won him many fans in the progressive bastion of Silicon Valley.
“Most of Silicon Valley is moving from the ‘surprised and in denial’ phase to accepting the change that’s coming,” Semil Shah, of venture capital firm, Haystack Fund, told USA Today. “Some of that change, such as immigration, creates anxiety and uncertainty. Some of that change, such as potential for economic stimulus at a national level, gives some folks business confidence.”
The invited tech executives will likely be looking to extend olive branches and build bridges with the incoming administration. However, if this meeting goes anything like Trump’s previous overtures to television and print media, it will not end well. Remember, Trump doesn’t build bridges, he builds walls. Or at least claims to.
Source: USA Today
Supreme Court sides with Samsung over Apple patent penalty
The Supreme Court ruled that Samsung’s violation of design patents made by Apple can only involve components, not entire products. This could mean a severely reduced penalty that the Korean company will have to pay… and a rare bit of good news for the troubled company.
Samsung was facing a penalty of $548 million for imitating elements of the iPhone’s design — this itself was reduced from an initial charge of nearly $1 billion. However, during the company’s most recent appeal, the justices said that the patent infringement could affect just a component of the phones, like its design or appearance, rather than the sum total of the device. The Justices voted unanimously 8-0 in Samsung’s favor. Chief Justice John Roberts noted Samsung did not infringe on “all the chips and wires” during the case in October.
The case (still) isn’t over. Now it will return to a lower court to determine a recalculated portion of profits that Samsung will have to pay to Apple — something that part of the Supreme Court noted wouldn’t be easy. “The term ‘article of manufacture’ is broad enough to embrace both a product sold to a consumer and a component of that product whether sold separately or not,” Justice Sotomayor wrote.
Source: Reuters, USA Today
Demand for wearable tech is growing (but not for smartwatches)
If you were hoping the smartwatch market would bounce back from its recent slump when a slew of new models hit the market, you’re about to be disappointed. IDC estimates that wearable device shipments grew ever so slightly (3.1 percent) in the third quarter of 2016, but that fitness trackers were almost exclusively responsible for the increase. Fitbit, Garmin and other activity band makers improved their shipments by the double digits, while the smartwatch world actually shrank.
Apple still leads the smartwatch sphere in these estimates, with 1.1 million Apple Watches shipped over the summer. However, that’s a steep drop of roughly 70 percent year-over-year — Apple was moving 3.9 million in the third quarter of 2015. Samsung was a rare star in this field with shipments doubling, although IDC cautions that the numbers are artificially inflated thanks to Galaxy Note 7 buyers who got to keep their free Gear Fit 2 and Gear IconX extras despite having to return the phone. A significant chunk of its shipments came from cellular-equipped Gear S2 watches sold through carriers.
It’s hard to say how much of a decline the smartwatch market is facing, assuming it faces one at all. Apple Watch Series 2 only started shipping two weeks before the quarter ended, and Samsung’s Gear S3 didn’t arrive until mid-November. A recovery was unlikely during the summer — if it happens, it’ll be thanks to holiday shoppers picking up new models. No matter what, it’s clear that smartwatches aren’t as red-hot as companies initially thought they would be.
Via: 9to5Mac
Source: IDC
The 11 best tech gifts for workaholics
We’re not saying you want to enable them (OK, maybe we are), but you definitely know someone who works too much. They chip away at their to-do lists on weekends. They are probably even going to slip away at some point during the holidays to check work email. If that’s the lifestyle they’ve chosen, embrace it by picking gifts that can either live at their desk, or come with them while they’re trying to get work done on the road. Our list includes everything from a comfy desk chair to a wireless charging desk lamp to our favorite laptop and desktop keyboard. You might not be able to persuade them to change their rigid habits, but at least you can make them more comfortable while they toil away.
For our full list of recommendations in all categories, don’t forget to stop by our main Holiday Gift Guide hub.
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