Apple Airs New Apple TV Commercial Highlighting Siri, Apple Music Integration

Apple aired a new Apple TV commercial today starring Alison Brie and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau to highlight the Siri capabilities and Apple Music integration of the device.

In the ad, Brie and Coster-Waldau are practicing a kiss scene behind the scenes of a movie set by watching some sample footage on the new Apple TV. Both actors control video playback through the Siri remote, which can be used to scrub through video just by talking to it. After asking Siri to “find Game of Thrones”, the Siri remote is then used to play Jeremih from Apple Music.

The ad follows a string of short Apple TV commercials focused on quick app and game highlights. Earlier this week, Apple released tvOS 9.2 with improved Siri features, the ability to organize apps in folders, and more.

You can watch the ad below.

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Five Years of Sword & Sworcery→

“When I look back after five years, I am most surprised by how such a huge audience was willing to embrace something like Sworcery,” adds Vella. “It’s such a slow, meandering game built to be a music box for Jim’s beautiful soundtrack. You fight shapes, lose health over time, read a book that collects thoughts. You are meant to just stand and look at moody pixel art. All of it seems really damn strange. But millions of people did it. They meandered and fought shapes and stood and looked. They listened to Jim’s music. Thinking about it like that kind of floors me.”

Andrew Webster looks back at five years of one of the seminal indie games for iOS. Sword & Sworcery is still fantastic today – it’s even been updated for iOS 9 – and I can’t wait to see what Superbrothers is working on next.

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Apple Is Working on a TV Series About Apps→

Emily Steel, reporting for The New York Times:

Apple announced on Thursday that it was working with the entertainer Will.i.am and two veteran TV executives, Ben Silverman and Howard T. Owens, on a new show that will spotlight the app economy.

“One of the things with the app store that was always great about it was the great ideas that people had to build things and create things,” Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of Internet software and services, said in an interview.

A docu-series about apps sounds like something I’d binge watch.

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Apple Is Selling Microsoft Office 365 as an Accessory for the iPad Pro→

James Vincent, writing for The Verge:

Apple wants the iPad Pro to replace Windows, and to convince customers it’s bringing in a familiar face or two: Microsoft’s Office Suite. As part of the ordering process for the new iPad Pro, buyers are given the option of adding a subscription for Office 365 — the only non-Apple accessory to appear in the order form. Office 365 bundles in the mobile apps and full Mac versions of a number of old standbys, including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote. (You can also choose between the Home, Personal, and University tiers, each of which offers different features.)

The Microsoft Office apps for iOS are easily some of the best apps available, particularly for the iPad. Whilst they aren’t yet at feature parity with their Windows and Mac counterparts, they are remarkably close in many respects. I’ve been using the Word, OneNote and Excel iPad apps extensively in the recent weeks, and I have been really happy with how they work.

It is worth noting that Microsoft Office is actually free to use on the 9.7” iPad Pro, but requires an Office 365 subscription if you want to edit documents on the 12.9” iPad Pro. This disparity is because of Microsoft’s rather odd policy in which Office is free to use on any device with a display smaller than 10.1” - but for devices with a larger screen, an Office 365 subscription is required.

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The 9.7-inch iPad Pro and the Embedded Apple SIM→

Matthew Panzarino, after explaining how the embedded Apple SIM in the new iPad Pro works:

That might not sound like great news, but there is one very bright spot for anyone who wants to switch carriers later. All iPad Pro 9.7″ devices have a SIM slot right on the exterior and you can put another carrier’s SIM in that slot even if the iPad Pro itself has been locked to AT&T. In other words, the internal SIM may be locked, but you can “switch” carriers by using another physical SIM that you buy.

I was wondering how this worked. Good to know.

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Connected: It Looked Like a Liam→

In the aftermath of Apple’s iPhone SE and iPad Pro event, the boys assemble to talk the news, Stephen’s growing army of iMac G3s and Apple’s naming struggles.

A long episode of Connected this week, discussing the announcements from Apple’s March 21 event and lots more. You can listen here.

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Inside Liam→

Liam completes an iPhone disassembly process every 11 seconds, with dozens running through the system at all times.

About 350 units are turned around each hour, equivalent to 1.2 million iPhones each year. Apple wouldn’t say when Liam started its work, but emphasized the project is still in the research and development stages.

As of right now, the company puts Liam to work Monday through Friday — it gets the weekend off.

Apple granted Mashable’s Samantha Murphy Kelly early access to a warehouse where Liam, the company’s new recycling robot, was operating. Fascinating story (alas, with no actual photos of the full robot).

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Streaming Music Edged Out Digital Downloads in 2015→

Micah Singleton, writing for The Verge:

Streaming is now the biggest revenue stream for the music industry in the US, generating $2.4 billion in 2015. The RIAA has released its report on the state of the US music industry in 2015, and streaming music has edged out digital downloads in revenue for the first time. After declining last year, the music industry as a whole grew once again in 2015, selling $7 billion worth of music, a 0.9 percent increase from the year prior. Despite declines in digital downloads and physical sales, streaming music has managed to keep the industry on an upward trajectory.

“In 2015, digital music subscription services reached new all-time highs, generating more than $1 billion in revenues for the first time, and averaging nearly 11 million paid subscriptions for the year,” RIAA CEO Cary Sherman said in a memo sent out with the report. “Heading into 2016, the number of subscriptions swelled even higher — more than 13 million by the end of December — holding great promise for this year.”

The writing has been on the wall for a while, though streaming has edged out digital downloads only by a small portion (0.3%) in the US in 2015.

Count this as another instance of Apple cannibalizing one of its businesses to keep up with the times – we could argue that Apple Music was launched just in time amid a declining trend, without an ad-supported model that the RIAA clearly doesn’t like.

(I wonder if YouTube will accelerate the international expansion of YouTube Red anytime soon.)

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The 9.7-inch iPad Pro and the Missing USB 3 Speed→

Speaking of technical differences between the 9.7-inch iPad Pro and the 12.9-inch model, here’s Jeff Carlson on USB 3 transfer speeds:

If we were talking about laptops or desktops, this would be a bigger deal, because there are more occasions when you transfer data over USB. Looking at broader iPad usage, really not a lot of data passes through the Lightning connector other than if you sync to a computer using iTunes. Most people don’t need it.

But for photographers who want to transfer photos for review or editing from a camera to the iPad, this is almost crippling.

When I reviewed the 12.9-inch iPad Pro, I made a short comparison video showing import speeds using the old SD card adapter and the new USB 3-capable one. Transferring 1.5 GB of image files took 30 seconds via USB 3 and 2 minutes 20 seconds via USB 2. That’s the actual data transfer; just moving image thumbnails so I could preview the photos before importing took 23 seconds via USB 3 and 1 minute 16 seconds via USB 2.

He also mentions fast charging with the 29W USB-C Adapter. As soon as I took a break from our coverage yesterday, that’s the first thing I bought from the Apple Store.

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