Apple TV+ will focus on creating quality content over quantity, says Eddy Cue

Apple will be adopting a quality-over-quantity model for AppleTV+, the company’s upcoming streaming service. Senior Vice President of services and programming, Eddy Cue said in an interview with The Sunday Times that Apple won’t be flooding people’s screens with too many choices like Netflix does. Instead, it will focus on ‘creating the best’. However, when asked what he thought of Netflix’s model, he said there’s nothing wrong their model, but it’s not something Apple will follow.

The response was a jab at Netflix’s streaming model. The US-based streaming giant releases as much original content as it can to attract viewers, which sometimes can be overwhelming for the subscribers. Apple will instead release one new show every month, starting with the new Workplace drama called The Morning Show starring Reese Witherspoon and Jennifer Aniston.

While Netflix, Hulu and Amazon have been present in the industry for much longer, Apple is very much a latecomer to the show. Add to that the upcoming services from Disney and Warner Bros, Apple will have to deal with a lot more incumbents than its major rivals, when they started off.

Cue was quick to remind that Apple has been the latecomer, when it comes to hardware. Cue pointed out that Apple wasn’t the first to make computers, tablets or smartphones. He explained that Apple “doesn’t know much about television other than we are big consumers of it”, but what it does know is to “find the best people for it”. In fact, Apple had on stage Hollywood stars like Steven Spielberg, J.J Abrams and more, when it announced the service.

Apple certainly has an impressive lineup of creators working on new shows. Here’s the list of shows that we know are coming to Apple TV+ —

1. The Morning Show, Drama.

Starring Reese Witherspoon, Jennifer Aniston and Steve Carell.

2. See, Sci-Fi

Starring Jason Momoa and Alfre Woodard

3. Little America, Drama

Starring Kumail Nanjiani, Emily V. Gordon and Lee Eisenberg.

4. Helpsters

“Sesame Street” spinoff.

5. Little Voice, Comedy Drama

Executive produced by J.J. Abrams.

6. “For All Mankind”, Sci-Fi Drama

Starring Joel Kinnaman, Michael Dorman, Sarah Jones, Shantel VanSanten, Wrenn Schmidt, and Jodi Balfour.

7. Truth Be Told, True Crime

Starring Octavia Spencer, Lizzy Caplan, and Aaron Paul

8. “Amazing Stories”, Anthology

Directed by Steven Spielberg.

9. “Servant”, Psychological Thriller

Executive Produced by M. Night Shyamalan and Tony Basgallop.

10. “Home Before Dark”, Mystery Drama

Created by Dana Fox and Dara Resnik.

11. “Dickinson”, Comedy

Created by Alena-Smith starring Haile Stenfeld as Emily Dickinson.

12. Unnamed Oprah and Prince Harry Mental Health documentary series.

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Asus 6Z with 128GB, 256GB storage goes up for sale today: Price, specs and all you need to know

Asus recently launched its Asus 6Z smartphone in India and the handset’s 6 GB RAM + 128 GB storage and 8GB RAM + 256 GB storage go up for sale today. The new handset by Asus takes on the OnePlus 7 series of phones as it comes equipped with the Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 SoC. The smartphone also features a near bezel-less 6.4-inch display, thanks to a rotating camera on the back, which acts as the rear and front camera. In addition, it comes equipped with a large 5000mAh battery as well. 

Asus 6Z specifications

The Asus 6Z comes equipped with a 6.4-inch IPS LCD display and is said to deliver a screen-to-body ratio of 92 percent. The handset features flagship-grade specs like the Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 SoC, which is coupled with upto 8GB RAM and 256GB of UFS 2.1 storage. The internal storage can also be expanded using a microSD card. The Asus 6Z is also backed by a large 5000mAh battery, which supports Quick Charge 4.0 with a bundled 18W charger.  In comparison, the OnePlus 7 Pro features a 4000mAh battery, while the standard OnePlus 7 ships with 3700mAh battery.

Coming to the optics, the Asus 6z sports a flipping mechanism for the rear cameras. This means that the rear camera swivels around to the top, when taking a selfie to face the user. Thsi camera module houses a 48MP Sony IMX 586 sensor, along with a 13MP wide-angle camera with a 117-degree field of view. The primary sensor has an aperture of f/1.79 and supports PDAF while the wide-angle sensor employs a real-time distortion correction algorithm. The Asus 6Z is also equipped with dual speakers and dual amplifiers. The handset features ZenUI 6 interface built on top of Android 9 Pie

Asus 6Z price, launch offers and availability

The 6GB + 128GB version of the Asus 6z is priced at Rs 34,999, while the 8GB RAM + 256GB storage version costs Rs 39,999. The handset comes in Twilight Silver and Midnight Black colour options. There’s also a 6GB RAM + 64GB storage version of the handset, which is already available for Rs 31,999. The Asus 6Z will go up for sale at 12pm today via Flipkart.

For launch offer, Flipkart’s Complete Mobile Protection plan will be available for Rs 99, down from Rs 3,999. In addition, Axis Bank Buzz credit card users will get to avail an additional five percent discount with the device. 

 

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Apple discovers faulty logic board in some 2018 MacBook Air models, offers free repair

Apple has discovered that a “very small number” of MacBook Air laptops sold last year feature a faulty logic board and that they would need replacing. According to 9to5Mac, which received access to some internal documents, confirmed in its recent report that Apple Stores and authorised Apple service centres have been instructed to replace the faulty logic boards at no extra cost to customers.

According to 9to5Mac’s report, Apple sent out a memo to its staff about the “issue” it found in the main logic board of the 2018 MacBook Air. It claims that the issue is found in only certain serial numbers. Users with an affected unit should receive an email from Apple about the issue and the company's offer to have the issue rectified for free. Apple has yet to list the free repair service on its Exchange and Repair Extension Programs website.

Apple reportedly lists the symptoms discovered in the logic board as something to do with “power” but does not go into the details of the problem. Some customers of the 2018 MacBook Air had reportedly complained of booting issues right after purchase. If you believe your MacBook Air from last year is one of the units affected, you could have it checked out by a service personnel from the nearest authorised Apple service centre. If it is indeed an affected unit, you will be entitled to a free replacement of the logic board inside.

The MacBook Air, which received a much-needed upgrade last year, features a 13.3-inch LED-backlit IPS LCD Retina display with a resolution of 2560 x 1600 pixels. It is powered by an Intel 8th Gen Core series CPU with RAM ranging from 8GB to 16GB. Storage is taken care of by a PCIe-based solid-state drive whose capacity goes from 128GB to 256GB. It is offered in three colours: Gold, Silver, and Space Gray.

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Tata Sky reduces prices of its set-top boxes again

Tata sky has reduced the prices of its set-top boxes again. As per the second revision in the prices of the boxes, the Tata Sky HD set-top box will now be available at Rs 1,499, and the SD set-top box will cost Rs 1,399. The DTH provider’s move is seen as its aim to further expand its presence in the country. The latest price cuts also likely to encourage the sale of the HD variant owing to just Rs 100 difference between the prices of the two boxes.

It should be noteworthy that this reduction in prices is up to Rs 300 from the previous price cut. After the previous price cut which was announced last month, Tata Sky HD set-top box was available for Rs 1,800, while the SD variant was priced at Rs 1,600. In comparison, Dish TVs HD set-top box is priced at Rs 1,590 and the SD variant is available at Rs 1,490.

The move comes two weeks after the company discontinued multi-TV connection plans from June 15, which means that users with a multi-TV connection would have to pay for each and every connection separately that they have at their homes. After facing backlash from its users, the company announced a new ‘Room TV service' that is aimed at making it more ‘feasible’ for consumers to select TV packs on their multi-TV connections.

Users with secondary connections can now have different channels and services on all connections. “Subscribers can seamlessly choose the content of their choice on the secondary connections and only pay for the selected content. Their secondary connections can now have different channels and services from the base pack selected for the first connection in the house under the same subscriber ID,” Tata Sky had said. The new option can be accessed via the company’s website or the Tata Sky mobile app.

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US companies can sell their equipment to Huawei: Trump

Offering an olive branch to Huawei Technologies, US President Donald Trump has said that the administration will now allow the Silicon Valley companies to resume business with the companies. This likely means that the Chinese telecom equipment maker and 70 of its affiliates will be removed from an “entity list” which forbids US companies from doing business with it. The move comes as the Washington agreed to restart trade talks in order to reduce tensions with Beijing.

“We’re right back on track,” Trump said at an 80-minute meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping at the Group of 20 (G20) summit of major economies in Osaka, Japan. “US companies can sell their equipment to Huawei. We’re talking about equipment where there’s no great national security problem with it,” he added.

“These are American companies producing the products. This is complex ... highly scientific. We are the only one with the technology. I have agreed to allow them to continue selling the products … I like our companies selling things to others ... very complex things. These are not things easy to make ... our companies were very upset, but we are allowing them. So if it is not a national security issue, we are allowing them to sell,” the US President noted.

According to a report, US-based chipmakers, like Qualcomm and Intel, lobbied, and quietly pressed the US government to ease restrictions on the sale of equipment and services to the Chinese tech giant. It was reported that executives from Intel and Xilinx Inc attended a meeting in late May with the US Commerce Department to discuss a response to Huawei’s placement on the entity list. “This isn’t about helping Huawei. It’s about preventing harm to American companies,” one of the people was quoted as saying.

Reportedly, out of $70 billion that Huawei spent buying components in 2018, some $11 billion went to US firms including Qualcomm, Intel and Micron Technology Inc. The Chinese tech giant also works with companies like Google and Microsoft, and uses their software in phones and computers. Further, telecom giants like Vodafone and EE also shrug their shoulders and followed other companies in cutting ties with the company in the European market.

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WhatsApp has a positive impact on psychological health of users, finds study

Online communications apps and the amount of time people spend using them has been a topic of debate for a long time now. At a time when social media apps are introducing digital well-being tools to their platforms, a new study published in the Journal of Human-Computer Studies has found that using apps like WhatsApp has a positive impact on mental health. 

The study was conducted on 200 WhatsApp users who completed an online questionnaire measuring their usage of WhatsApp and motivations, online bonding, quality of relationships, group identity, and psychosocial outcomes. The study found that online bonding through WhatsApp, which also facilitates group chats and calling, makes people feel less lonely and has a positive impact on their self esteem. 

The study titled 'Psychosocial Outcomes Associated with Engagement with Online Chat Systems' has 158 female and 42 male participants. It found that "minutes per day using WhatsApp was positively related to quality of relationships".

"The more time people spent on WhatsApp, the more this related to them feeling close to their friends and family and they perceived these relationships to be good quality," said Dr Linda Kaye, Senior Lecturer in Psychology, England-based Edge Hill University.

"It gives rise to the notion that social technology such as WhatsApp may stimulate existing relationships and opportunities for communication, thereby enhancing aspects of the users' positive well-being," she added.

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15-year-old stabs brother to death for not letting him play PUBG Mobile

A 15-year-old boy from Thane, Mumbai allegedly killed his elder brother who was scolding him for playing PUBG Mobile, the police have said. 19-year-old victim Mohammad Shaikh has asked his younger brother to stop playing PUBG Mobile on his phone and this allegedly resulted in the boy flying into a fit of rage.

PTI reports, quoting senior police inspector Mamata D’Souza, that the minor allegedly banged Shaikh’s head against the wall and then repeatedly stabbed him with a pair of scissors after being repremanded for playing PUBG Mobile.

Shaikh was taken to a government hospital after the incident occurred but he had succumbed to his injuries and was declared dead on arrival. 

A case has been registered by the police under section 302 (Murder) of the Indian Penal Code.

PUBG Mobile has been associated with several violent incidents in the past, resulting in murders and even suicides. The battle royale game is hugely popular in India and has been considered to have a negative impact on children. However, it is important to consider that just like any other game, this one too should be played in moderation.

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