Apple might open stores in India thanks to relaxed rules
Apple might not have to bend over backwards to open stores in India: the country has loosened its rules on locally-sourced products in a way that gives foreign companies a shot. First-party retailers (that is, those that mostly sell their own products) will have a 3-year grace period where they don’t have to sell at least 30 percent products that are locally made. They can extend that window for another 5 years if they show that they’re making advanced tech that benefits from the relaxed rules — in other words, Apple. In theory, this gives outsiders a chance to get their local manufacturing in gear at the same time as they build up their brand.
The tech giant will have to apply for retail access again, and there’s no guarantee that it’ll pass muster. However, the terms appear to be tailor-made for Apple, whose CEO went on an extensive tour of India in May. The Indian government may have decided that allowing an official retail footprint for Apple and its kind would help the economy more than insisting on local manufacturing from the get-go.
Via: AppleInsider
Source: Bloomberg
Microsoft Groove builds smart music playlists around your tastes
Smart music discovery playlists are all the rage right now (just ask Spotify), and Microsoft knows it. It recently introduced a Your Groove feature to Groove Music that automatically creates playlists suited to your taste. It’ll generate track listings for your existing OneDrive music collection based on your listening habits, moods and artist activity, so you can revisit a favorite band when it’s on tour. However, the real party starts when you have a Music Pass — Groove will throw new songs into the playlists to expand your horizons.
Microsoft is quick to warn that it’s still early days for Your Groove. There are already interface tweaks in the works, and it wants your feedback to fine-tune the experience. Even so, it’s an important update if you’re all-in on Groove and want to either rediscover your library or venture beyond familiar territory.
Via: The Digital Lifestyle
Source: Microsoft Community
Add-on brings Game Boy cartridges to your Android phone
Hyperkin toyed with gamers last year when it teased a peripheral that would play real Game Boy cartridges on your phone, but it wasn’t just kidding around — it’s making good on its word. The company is now taking pre-orders for a Smart Boy Development Kit that lets your Android smartphone play Game Boy and Game Boy Color cartridges. The $60 peripheral isn’t meant for everyday use — Hyperkin is hoping you’ll improve the open source code yourself. Nonetheless, it’s likely the closest you’ll get to reviving your childhood short of dragging the original hardware out of storage. Just be ready to wait until December 1st to get yours… and while Hyperkin originally talked about an iPhone version, Apple handset users are out of luck so far.
Via: SlashGear, Neowin, Gizmodo
Source: Hyperkin
Mini review video: Our verdict on the OnePlus 3 in a minute
While you were refreshing Engadget to see all the new stuff Apple, Microsoft and Sony announced this week, you may have missed the fact that OnePlus came out with a new phone. The OnePlus 3 — yes, that would be its third-generation flagship — comes in at a reasonable $399 and as usual, boasts some impressive specs for the price. In addition to offering top-notch internals, it brings a more premium-feeling aluminum design as well as dual SIM support.
That said, we wish it came with more storage options (just one 64GB version) and the supposedly fast-charging charger isn’t always that fast. If money is no object, we still prefer the Samsung Galaxy S7 and HTC 10 — at least in absolute terms. But if you want a flagship-caliber phone but don’t have flagship money to spend, this is your best bet.
Waze will help you avoid difficult intersections
You know those intersections with no traffic lights and everyone’s trying to cross at the same time? Waze calls them “difficult intersections,” and the navigation app will help you avoid them altogether, so long as you’re in Los Angeles. The app now calculates the best possible route and ETA with as few of them as possible. It could bypass them entirely if there’s route that allows you to do that. But if avoiding them will make your commute unbearably long, then Waze could still send you through a few. As the app’s announcement post said “The goal of the feature is to reduce the amount of these intersections, not completely eliminate them.”
While the feature is only available in Los Angeles for now, it will soon roll out in New Orleans and will eventually be available around the world. Take note that if you’re in LA, Waze automatically switched on for you. In case it’s not working out, you can always switch it off under Settings.
Source: Waze
Apple won’t assist the Republican convention due to Trump
Apple has made a number of firm political stands ever since Tim Cook took the helm, and it’s not about to back down any time soon. Politico sources (backed by in-the-know journalist John Paczkowski) say that Apple won’t provide funding or other support for the Republican Party’s July presidential convention due to Donald Trump’s policies. Reportedly, his attitudes toward immigrants, minorities and women are beyond the pale — although Apple has been willing to court Republicans in the past (Cook met with House GOP bigwigs in 2015), Trump is just too extreme for the company’s tastes. Apple has declined to comment to Politico so far.
Facebook, Google and Microsoft have so far said that they’ll support the convention, although that hasn’t precluded their leaders from vocally opposing Trump’s views. Mark Zuckerberg, for instance, is vehemently opposed to Trump’s approach to immigration. HP is one of the few tech giants to have refused support before now.
As you might have guessed: yes, Apple has a vested interest in making Trump’s life difficult. His anti-immigration policy might hurt the company’s recruiting efforts. And remember, this is the presidential hopeful who swore he’d make Apple build products in the US (albeit without explaining how). Why back someone who’d go out of his way to hurt your bottom line?
With that said, Apple is ideologically opposed to Trump beyond pure economics. Trump rejects climate change science at the same time as Apple is making a big pro-environment push, and has opposed gay marriage when Apple both has a gay CEO and embraces the LGBT community. Whatever your views, it’s apparent that the two sides have very little in common — it would be more shocking if Apple did offer some help.
Source: Politico, John Paczkowski (Twitter)
Facebook Live death highlights the risks of livestreaming
Facebook Live is great for capturing events as they happen. However, like any other live internet broadcast, it’s becoming clear that there’s also a dark side. Police have confirmed to the New York Times that Chicago man Antonio Perkins was shot to death on June 15th while he was using Facebook Live to share an otherwise normal evening. The incident isn’t strictly unique (there have sadly been other incidents of livestreamed violence before), but it underscores the lack of filters for livestreaming. Unlike similar scenes on live TV, there’s no one to cut away when horror occurs on-camera.
Notably, Facebook isn’t taking the Perkins video down. While it will remove clips that sensationalize violence, it’s leaving this and other footage that it believes will boost awareness of violence and its consequences. There’s a “graphic video” warning before you start watching, but there’s otherwise nothing stopping you.
As it stands, it’s doubtful that Facebook is about to have second thoughts about livestreaming. Any live video service has the potential to show something terrible — and when Facebook has over 1.6 billion active users every month, that potential is stronger than usual. If the company wants to offer livestreaming at all, it’ll have to accept that some videos are likely to be tragic.
Source: New York Times
iPhone 7 may keep the headphone jack and support dual SIMs
One of the most intriguing rumors about the upcoming iPhone 7 is that it’ll ditch the 3.5mm headphone jack, meaning users will have to get audio output via Lightning or Bluetooth. But according to a leakster, this may no longer be the case. Rock Fix, a smartphone repair shop based in China’s Ganzhou, has recently been posting photos of alleged iPhone 7 components. One of these is apparently the 4.7-inch model’s Lightning cable assembly which, contrary to what we’ve been hearing before, still has a headphone jack attached to it. And more recently, the shop shared photos of what it claims to be the next iPhone’s dual-SIM trays, which will be a first for Apple if true.
Other parts shown off by Rock Fix include some screen panels in the usual two sizes, some SanDisk memory chips of up to a whopping 256GB, plus a dual-lens camera for the larger model (hello, Huawei!). The shop owner also told us that there will be some changes to the antenna design, though he clarified that this won’t get rid of those antenna bands on the back of the phone; maybe it’s more to do with the rumored switch to Intel’s modem for the GSM models.
Despite such recent leaks, there’s still some uncertainty regarding the iPhone 7’s features. For one, just three days ago, an industry insider claimed he heard from a Foxconn source saying Apple had canned the dual-lens camera because the technology wasn’t ready, but the following day another insider shot this rumor down, as he had heard from multiple suppliers saying the tooling was already made and that it’d be too late to change it (a self-proclaimed Foxconn employee commented below this Weibo post to say mass production started last month). He added that Samsung, Oppo, Vivo and Xiaomi are also exploring dual-lens cameras for their upcoming smartphones, so it’ll be interesting to see what the mobile industry will offer in the coming months.
Source: Rock Fix (1), (2)
ICYMI: NASA is studying how fire acts in space
Today on In Case You Missed It: NASA is studying how fire acts in space to guard against a potential outbreak in an environment as fragile as the International Space Station. A baby monitor for people with money to burn might interest you, as it syncs with an app that will ping you when movement in the crib is detected.
We also round up the week’s biggest stories in TL;DR. The first mammal going extinct from climate change is a doozy, as is the increase in sexual assault accusations against Tor developer Jacob Appelbaum. As always, please share any interesting tech or science videos you find by using the #ICYMI hashtag on Twitter for @mskerryd.
Public is an app that opens your group chats to an audience
A couple of months ago, former Twitter exec Michael Sippey unveiled Talk Show, an app that let you broadcast your text conversations in public. Now there’s yet another app in town that does something very similar. It’s called Public, and the creator is Avner Ronen, who is probably better known as the founder of Boxee, a streaming set top box that was also a web TV platform (Boxee eventually sold to Samsung a few years ago). Like its name suggests, all of the conversations on Public are, well, public. Think of it as a group discussion with an audience.
There are a few differences between Public and Talk Show though. For one thing, Public puts conversations front and center as soon as you launch the app; you’ll see the latest back-and-forth chats of the groups you’re following right on the home page. Talk Show, on the other hand, simply lists the conversation topic along with its participants, requiring you to tap through to read the discussion. This does make the Public home page a lot more cluttered, but it’s also a lot easier to follow multiple conversations at once. Like Talk Show, Public has a list of curated Featured chats too.
Another interesting thing about Public is that audience members can chime in via comments on the side bar. This is definitely more moderated than Twitter, where strangers can butt in whenever they like, but is also more flexible than Talk Show, where audience members are limited to canned responses. Of course, anyone can request to be part of the group too. What I also like about Public is that you can participate and follow chats on the web as well as the mobile app. I just find that I type a lot more coherently on my laptop than I do on my phone.
After a few days trying out Public, I’ll admit I enjoy the ability to chat with friends and acquaintances about a couple of focused topics (one on the San Francisco Giants and another on Korean skincare). The interface is pretty clean and I like that I can enter in emoji, photos as well as GIFs. Still, I’d probably have had as much fun if the conversation were private instead of public; I don’t know if the audience at large gets as much of a kick reading the conversation as I do participating in it.
That question is key to whether public group chat apps like these will gain traction. While Talk Show debuted at the top of the charts on the App Store, it’s fallen quite a bit since then. Do people really want to have public-facing conversations? More importantly, do people want to use such a specific app to follow these discussions? The fact that these conversations are publicly viewable on the web means that you don’t necessarily need the app to follow them. Which is great for avoiding a walled garden, but not so great for promoting the app.
Still, I can see the app catching on if it’s used by celebrities or pundits, or maybe if it’s a liveblog of an event. That way fans can feel as if they’re eavesdropping on an interesting live conversation. Indeed, one of Public’s launch partners is Fullscreen’s “SummerBreak,” an online reality show of a group of high school students on summer vacation.
If you’d like to try Public out for yourself, it’s available right now on the Apple App Store as well as the web.
Source: Public
AIVAnet 