Jumat, 01 November 2019
AirPods Pro review: the perfect earbuds for the iPhone - The Verge
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-n4U3-j9dw
2019-11-01 13:00:06Z
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Death Stranding: The Kotaku Review - Kotaku
There is no elevator pitch for Death Stranding.
Every inch of Death Stranding teems with meaning or implication. Even the stupidest and most pretentious developments build to create a multi-layered game, one with numerous potential points of attack to analyze. It is a story about fatherhood. It is a broad dig at the gig economy. It is deeply concerned with upcoming environmental disaster and American politics, old and new.
Death Stranding is also about throwing grenades made from your own piss and shit at ghosts. It is about hiking alone in the wilderness for hours. It is a tireless grind. It is a commentary on social media and the internet, delivered through the asynchronous interactions players can have with one another as they play. It is breathtaking in scope, consistently intelligent in design, and beautiful to behold. It is a heaping pile of pretentious nonsense. It is a game in which characters drop overwrought interpretations of Kōbō Abe quotes. Its most recurring visual motif is a not-so-subtle gesture towards Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow. It progresses not with the quiet stroke of a pen but with the pounding crash of a hammer. “I brought you a metaphor,” one of the characters says late in the game. It is stupid, and obvious, and perfect.
Death Stranding is also Hideo Kojima’s first major project following his departure from Konami in 2015. The context is charged: here is a widely acclaimed “auteur,” supposedly shackled by corporate overlords let loose at last, ready to blow your mind open with a masterpiece. The game follows on the heels of the tragic cancelation of Silent Hills, which was to be a video game collaboration with film director Guillermo del Toro, starring Norman Reedus. (Reedus now stars in Death Stranding, along with del Toro and tons of other celebrities.)
Then there’s the supposed weirdness of Death Stranding itself. During development, its plot and gameplay were tightly guarded secrets, with exorbitant and celebrity-laden trailers providing the only hint of what was to come. The game has been mythologized through its marketing, and Kojima—already considered a legend—has been further mythologized along with it.
But that narrative is replete with mischaracterizations. Kojima is a man with a highly skilled team at his disposal, decades of experience, celebrity friends, and millions of dollars in Sony backing. He’s no scrappier than any other rich and famous person. Because of this, there are two Death Strandings. There is the one in public consciousness, and there is the one that I have played. The first is a dream, an impossible (and frankly unnecessary) vindication of games as art created by a glorified mastermind. The actual game is a fantastic mess.
But is it good, Heather? Yes, friends. I love it.
Death Stranding is set in an alternate future where a cataclysmic event called the Death Stranding has devastated most of the world. The incident, described as a great explosion, has blurred the lines between the land of the living and the afterlife. In the world of Death Stranding, there is in fact something after death, and it is observable and measurable. Furthermore, every person has been discovered to contain their own “Beach,” which is a limbo-like space that they arrive at before finally moving into the great beyond. The thinning boundaries between our world and the afterlife released spirits called “beached things,” or BTs. BTs ravage communities, wreaking havoc on the living. They are so dangerous that if a human makes contact with a larger BT, it can trigger an event called a “voidout,” a sort of miniature nuclear explosion that can destroy cities in the blink of an eye. The world has been fractured into a few remaining cities and pioneer outposts. Connecting them are delivery services, staffed by porters who brave the expansive waste and sneak through BT territory to bring essential supplies to the disjointed smattering of humanity that remains.
Players control Sam Porter Bridges, a lone wolf courier who is more content in the wasteland than around other people. After the last living president of the United States passes away, Sam is asked to carry out her final directive: connect the remaining settlements to the “chiral network,” a futuristic internet that allows for instant communication and fast 3D printing of infrastructure and supplies. The goal, he is told, is to “make America whole again.”
Carrying out this directive becomes ever more complicated as terrorist factions conspire to kickstart mankind’s extinction, politicians cover up horrible crimes, and a literal ghost bent on revenge wages a personal war against those who wronged him. It’s operatic, excessive, and ultimately leads to a finale so spectacular and absurd that it moves beyond anime overindulgence into a glorious pimple popping of plot.
So, there are grand political machinations that extend far beyond Sam’s reach. But throughout it all, he’s still just a postman who needs to make his deliveries while living in the worst possible world. To help him navigate that world, Sam is given a “bridge baby.” This baby in a pod grants Sam the ability to perceive BTs and progress on his journey across the continent. Throughout the journey, he will deliver countless packages and supplies from outpost to outpost, hiking untold miles in solitude while slowly bringing settlements into the network. Each new excursion is dogged by tough terrain, lurking BTs, raiders, and a corrosive rain called “timefall” that rapidly accelerates everything it touches.
Most of the time, Sam navigates these dangers while wearing a backpack crammed with packages and gear. The contents of the backpack must be balanced. If Sam’s too heavy on either side, he’ll fall. And if Sam falls, his cargo will be damaged. It is painful to traverse terrain and all too easy to fall, especially in the early game. But over time, Sam gets stronger, and the player gains more resources.
At first, Sam’s gear is little more than a good pair of shoes and maybe a rope for climbing. As players progress, they’ll gain access to a variety of robotic rigs to increase how much Sam can carry or how fast he can move in extreme terrain. Eventually, that means portable 3D printers than can build bridges or even safe houses to rest at provided you have enough raw materials.
It costs a lot of materials to build a bridge or a shelter. These structures also take damage over time and must be repaired. But you aren’t the only one in this world who is building bridges over coursing rivers, or hanging ziplines in rocky mountaintops. Death Stranding will put you on a server with other players, each of them building their own structures that you can share and use. You can even deliver packages that they’ve dropped, or leave behind packages you can’t deliver yourself. Every time Sam connects another town in the world to the fictional chiral network, Death Stranding will connect you to the real-life network of other players and their structures.
Sharing is rewarded. These structures exist in a pseudo-social network where players can “like” those that they find useful. The more “likes” you get, the better. It contributes to a progression system that uses a variety of criteria—mission completion time, the size of a cargo haul, completion of special conditions—to increase a player rank that eventually gives rewards, like the ability to carry more items or run down slopes without slipping as much.
But it’s not just delivering packages, building bridges, and connecting people to one another. Eventually, Sam gets weapons: rifles, shotguns, and grenades, all made using Sam’s blood and other bodily fluids. Because Sam is special, you see. He’s a “repatriate,” which means that instead of dying in mortal situations, he is able to guide his soul back to his body and rise again to complete the job. This makes him a perfect candidate for tough deliveries. His bodily fluids can be weaponized against the BTs as well, especially his blood. A “hematic” grenade can dispose of a BT in an instant, while blood-soaked bullets can slowly perforate them into mist. The best option is to avoid BTs altogether, relying on Sam’s bridge baby to perceive the ghosts’ locations and sneaking past them.
Death Stranding pulls from a variety of sources. The resurrections and multiplayer aspects of Dark Souls, the wandering of Proteus and No Man’s Sky, the clumsy body movements of QWOP, the skeletal remains of Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain and more surprisingly Metal Gear Survive. These pieces come together into a unique package with a simple loop: you start here, now please go there. Pick a mission, grab your gear, figure out how to get there, climb over whatever mountain is in your way without losing all your cargo. Fall, get up, keep going. Rinse and repeat, with added layers of intrigue and combat challenges as the story progresses.
The larger narrative of Death Stranding is spellbinding, but like The Phantom Pain before it, Death Stranding speaks more clearly through its systems, and is more interesting to play than its raw narrative is to experience. Using the game’s system of shared building and messaging, it’s possible to warn fellow players of BT hunting grounds, leave garages stocked with vehicles to freely use, drop shoes and excess gear into shared storage lockers, and create complicated pathways through a treacherous game world. The word strand, we are told early in the game, refers both to a tie that connects something and the act of being stranded, isolated from others. Just as Metal Gear Solid V’s war micromanaging expressed the endless cost of mercenary violence and revenge, Death Stranding’s systems speak to these two interpretations. Initially, players are indeed stranded. They are alone in a game world with few signs of human interaction, then slowly but surely, the topography changes. Footsteps on a path, the start of a road. These span out to form a complex spider’s web of player structures. Every piece feeds into the other. It turns out having ladders, better shoes, and increased mobility matters a lot when you might stumble over the perfectly placed rock at any moment.
Eventually, I reached a particularly treacherous part of the game where most of my deliveries involved hiking through thick snowfall. A few players had braved this area before me, but I found many of their structures to be incomplete. A makeshift series of magnetic ziplines covered some peaks, but there were no connecting ziplines on the most obvious paths. The foundation of a more complex system was there; all it needed was some work to become the thing it could be. Instead of progressing forward with the story, I gathered the materials I needed and ventured through BT territory to place the required ziplines, ones that could allow travel over the most dangerous areas, the areas that Death Stranding clearly expected players to pass through.
It was not easy. Time and time again, I was dragged to the ground by shadowy ghosts and pulled into a stream of tar that rushed me away from my destination. I fired bullets coated in my own blood and threw grenades containing my sweat at massive beasts until I somehow managed to get where I wanted to go. Over the course of several hours, digital blood and sweat literally spent, multiple hikes through the worst conditions accomplished, I connected my ziplines with the broader network. Anyone who came after me would be able to use them, crossing over the mountains easily and flying over the BT’s feasting ground. I’m proud of those ziplines, of the work that went into making them. I’m thankful to the strangers whose devices I literally connected with to make something that would benefit not only us, but everyone who stumbled through the treacherous paths after us. There was no real point to doing this, other that it could be done and I thought it should be done. I needed to do it. I needed to build something.
During my time reviewing Death Stranding, I had a relationship fall into disrepair. That my most valued personal connection frayed while playing a game that is ultimately about the bonds we make was not lost to me. Time and time again in Death Stranding, I wandered through harsh red deserts and snow-capped peaks with the mission of bringing people together. I crossed bridges left by strangers, trusting that the paths they had laid would bring me where I needed to go. Outside of the game, I was lost. What does it mean for a connection to unravel, like an old rope bridge across a ravine? What does it take to rebuild one?
I don’t have answers to this. Death Stranding didn’t provide them. Instead, it insisted on a simple idea: that we are made strong by the grace and, more beautifully, the chance of others. That we travel on the roads of those who went before us, leaving our own marks that ultimately affect the path those behind us take. We walk alone more often than we walk together, losing ineffable things along the way like so much fumbled luggage. And yet, we sometimes see signs of care. In life, they’re small. A random text message from an old friend, a free drink at the neighborhood bar, an enthusiastic conversation with a co-worker about nothing important, the sound of your roommate playing his guitar. In Death Stranding, these things are literal. A generator powering our car in the middle of nowhere, a glowing thumbs up emblem at the city gates, a ladder crossing a flowing stream, a structure protecting us from the acid rain.
“I brought you a metaphor.”
Death Stranding’s multiplayer aspects function as both criticism of online parasocial relationships and a strong metaphor for themes of togetherness and worker solidarity. Crossing the lonely wasteland encourages players to build narratives in their minds. Stumbling upon new bridges and seeing the names of familiar players, it’s easy to believe you know something about them. I noted how one player seemed to place their structures in areas with heavy foot traffic, maximizing “likes.” Another always seemed a step ahead, building exactly what was needed with care and consideration. You build affection for some players, annoyance for others. The opportunists, the caregivers. You crave “likes” and engagement because it feels good to have something, anything in the wasteland. One time, I built the start of a highway outside of a distribution center and woke up to find the road had been expanded by someone else. My initial structure has thousands of likes. Later on, returning to it, someone else’s name was presented as the owner and they had even more praise than I’d received. Who was this asshole, swooping in to take implicit responsibility for something I had built? I bet he’s the kind of person who steals people’s jokes on Twitter. These thoughts are, of course, nonsense. There’s no more sense to our interaction than whatever meaning I brought to it. Yet I cannot help but believe I know who they are, and accept that they’ve undoubtedly formed their own thoughts about me.
In practice, building structures and expanding pathways creates more camaraderie than contention. There’s no denying the strange narrative context underpinning it all—we were, after all, extending from coast to coast in an effort to make America whole again—but the effect of these mechanics is more romantic than unfortunate. Countless workers, united in the solidarity of their task, creating public and functional means to allow essential services to continue. The work mattered enough that players had each other’s backs and tended to the essential parts without prompting. Death Stranding waxes poetic about intertwining souls and bonds that last from one world to the next. If love, sadness or duty could move from the land of the living to the dead, then perhaps these feelings of pride and solidarity can shift from the digital to the actual. We made something; we helped each other. Video game or not, there’s a comfort in that. It turns out that being an Amazon worker in the apocalypse isn’t so bad when solidarity prevails.
The larger world of Death Stranding is far from idyllic. Scattered throughout the broken continent are pockets of hoarders know as MULEs, as well as other terrorists, all of whom are eager to steal Sam’s cargo. These human adversaries provide a different challenge from BTs. If you want to pilfer MULE supplies or rob caches from terrorists, you still can engage in some stealth action, as you would with BTs. High grass and natural obstacles provide plenty of means for ingress, and gear like a bola gun and rope to tie up enemies let you incapacitate foes. The other option is loud and hectic, and just as worthwhile. With the right arsenal, it’s possible to descend upon an enemy camp like a marauding archangel, firing away with non-lethal rounds—killing a human would produce a BT, after all—and causing frantic firefights that reward prize resources and gear.
This is the most obvious vestige of Metal Gear Solid’s DNA. While Death Stranding is not an action game, it does handle action well when needed. This extends to boss fights, which I cannot spoil here except to say that they range from stealth guerilla affairs to biblical clashes that would feel right at home in Yoko Taro’s Drakengard. Violence is a last resort, and Death Stranding is best experienced in a careful and stealthy fashion, but when the time comes for the silence to break and explosions to ring out, it’s powerful. Not everything can be solved with a bridge. Combat is a hard truth, and one that always feels dirty and messy.
All of this is work. Death Stranding is a long and grueling game, but that grind and sweat is fundamentally important to its identity. After the initial plot is set up, the next 40 to 50 hours are devoted to quiet hikes and desperate forays with only a few plot punctuations. In Death Stranding, labor is key, and offering any convenience to the player outside of a few weapons and gadgets would rub against the game’s themes. If players are meant to value connections, they need to be alone for hours.
I did have a constant companion in these journeys: my friend and colleague Tim Rogers. We have talked for hours in his darkened office, chatted relentlessly over Slack messages. Plenty of it was goofing for goofs’ sake but when the time came for us to think about the world design, Tim spoke clearly.
“Games build excitement out of parts a filmmaker would edit,” he told me.
I can think of the moment that was most clear to me. Multiple hours spent in snowy mountains assembling underappreciated ziplines and shelters had taken its toll. I was playing a portion of Death Stranding that was miserable, which gave me the harshest environment and robbed me of essential tools. Cold lapped at my face, steel girders popped out of the snow like massive crucifixes. For two nights, all I knew was snow and acid rot. All I knew was white. Then I came over a ridge and saw green again. Glorious, growing grass. I wish I had the words to describe what it meant to see the color green again. It wouldn’t have mattered nearly as much if I didn’t put in all that goddamn work beforehand. I don’t think you can do that with a montage or smash cut.
For all of Kojima’s pretensions as a would-be filmmaker, for all of the celebrity casting and cameos from his famous friends, not to mention the corniness of the Monster Energy Drink brand deal (drinking the stuff in-game will fill your stamina gauge), the glue that holds everything together is how well Death Stranding works as a game. While a majority of the time is spent wandering, it’s never pointless, and even the emptier interactions—what does it even mean to “like” a stranger, anyway?—contribute to a whole that is always asking you to consider something. That can be the uncomfortable implications of American expansionism, the current era of Trumpism, the disastrous effects of climate change, the vapid but reassuring nature of social media, the raw physicality of bodies, or broader notions of labor. It’s all there, and it’s wrapped into a game that is both hard work and rewarding to play.
The strongest story in Death Stranding is the one told by its systems, but the cut-scenes and other narrative elements are still captivating, a slow burn that starts with quiet character moments and ends with a mountain-high pile-up of plots and motivations. Death Stranding takes a long time to define its world, and still leaves plenty to implication when the credits roll. There’s a lore database for learning some terms, but Death Stranding comfortably luxuriates in ambiguity before exploding outward into excessive action. Buried under all of the sci-fi terminology is a simple story; once everyone’s motivations have been laid bare, it’s not nearly as complicated one might imagine based on the game’s bizarre trailers. Death Stranding is ultimately more impressive in the raw sensory overload than in the moment to moment plot, but it’s hard to deny how much of an improvement its storytelling technique is when compared to Metal Gear Solid V’s lumbering monologues and swooping camera movements. Death Stranding, for all its convolution and visual excess, is evocative and often moving.
Much of this is owed to how much the actors commit to their roles, even if they’re often tasked with spouting overwrought metaphors or clumsy exposition dumps. There’s a sense that everyone knows this is a little bullshit, and that winking edge comes hand in hand with a larger commitment to the story as a whole. It’s more like watching opera or musical theater than a film. At times, its tone comes off more like a sentai show or B-movie, schlocky and sometimes sleazy. There are grand gestures, deep outpourings of emotion, deliberate choreography.
It’s hard not to like Sam Bridges, who faces all of Death Stranding’s bizarreness with a welcome everyman’s weariness, encapsulated in in Norman Reedus’ characteristic growl. Troy Baker hams it up as the villainous Higgs, and Léa Seydoux nails the mixture of toughness and raw emotionality as Sam’s close ally ‘Fragile.” Then there’s Mads Mikkelsen, who commands attention every time he’s on screen. Yeah, it’s funny as hell to hear him whisper “I want my BB,” but when the time comes, he puts in the damn work.
Death Stranding sometimes falls into reductive gender tropes, in much the same way that other Kojima games do. This is a story of fatherhood, very often to the expense of the women in the cast. Sam’s ongoing bond with his bridge baby intersects with the story of Mads Mikkelsen’s mysterious villain Cliff, underpinning the main plot’s world-shaking politics with more human and relatable sentiments. But Death Stranding stumbles when the time comes to handle the women and their stories. There are gestures at motherhood themes to go along with the fatherhood themes, such as a storyline that uses ghosts as metaphor for postpartum depression, but this is ultimately a story about men, and one where even the bravest sacrifices of the female characters come hand in hand with the same characteristic leering camerawork of Kojima’s previous games. It’s never so gross as Metal Gear Solid V’s Quiet, but it’s still a noticeable issue that undercuts the narrative’s larger examination of parental pain and sacrifice.
That said, Death Stranding is also just as infatuated with the male body. Whether that’s the sensual framing of Mikkelsen smoking a cigarette or the way the camera moves to ensure you’ve seen just enough of Reedus’ naked body during shower scenes, Death Stranding’s bisexual camera is more interested in men than even the torture-laden, blood licking Metal Gear franchise. The difference is ultimately in how lovingly men are framed compared to women, both by the literal camera and also their place in the larger narrative. Fragile’s body can be marred by timefall, rain lapping at her skin, but it’s still ultimately Léa Seydoux running in the rain as the camera focuses on her ass. Reedus stands naked on a beach, and Mikkelsen rises out of a tar pit, and yeah, it’s sexy, but they’re also allowed far more nobility.
Death Stranding deals with many universal themes—children and their guardians, death, labor—but it is also speaking to more specific current topics as well. At the forefront is a deeply environmentalist sentiment about deteriorating habitats, extreme weather, and societal collapse. As reports flood in about our mounting climate crisis and the resulting cost of inaction, Death Stranding imagines a world where the most extreme conditions fracture the ties that bind the world together. This is evident in the world design, which ranges from rocky shoals and more reasonable terrain to extremely alien topography. There are portions of the map that look more like Mars than Earth, nearly blood red in the color of the sands. Raging snowstorms warp space-time, and sunken cities lurk beneath rising tides of tars.
Death Stranding’s conflict rises to biblical proportions. Many characters believe that humanity is doomed no matter what, that any action forestalling imminent extinction is a band-aid on a mortal wound. After all, with enough time, there’s no doubt that humanity will be little more than dust. Death Stranding has an undercurrent of fatalism that feels very much of the moment. Even as other characters maintain a hope that a better, sustainable future is possible, there is also a quiet acceptance that, you know, maybe we really are struggling in the face of something too big. That the little victories we find might be dwarfed by the larger problems we face. This is never offered as an excuse for idleness; it is clear there is work to do, despite it all. Death Stranding pulls between these two extremes. One that says there is no point. Another that says although the future is unknowable, there’s a duty to fight for something better, even as the sun grows hot, the bodies pile, and world cracks.
This message comes paired with gestures towards modern American politics. “Make America whole again” is the common refrain. In Death Stranding, America is a nation broken, scattered to disparate pockets of people just trying to get by, beset by monsters and marauders. The solution to this issue is suitably quixotic: what if we just fix communication lines between everyone? It’s an idea that doesn’t grapple with some of the more pressing questions of modern American politics—for instance, civil resistance—and one that can seem naive. The fracturing of real-life America is a symptom of a larger systemic problem of bigotry that’s seen a rise in violence and isolationist rhetoric around the world. In the face of this moment, Death Stranding decides that this is fixable. That the politics of division can give way into something more holistic and inclusive. Death Stranding, to its detriment, never quite reckons with its use of American iconography—it is a nation founded on slavery and colonial slaughter—but it still opts to point a finger. Things as they are cannot stand or they will lead to ruin.
The silver lining, of course, is other people. Death Stranding is not a subtle game. The mechanics are the message. Build connections, use those to literally span divides. Even as the story swells to a convoluted chaos that would make Metal Gear Solid 4’s monstrous canon-welding blush, Death Stranding’s most fundamental point is not hard to understand. Yes, this is hell. Yes, we are falling apart. Yes, this might be the end. But there is redemption in other people.
https://kotaku.com/death-stranding-the-kotaku-review-1839474313
2019-11-01 07:01:00Z
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Death Stranding Review - IGN
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujcC1_Ur9RY
2019-11-01 07:00:07Z
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Kamis, 31 Oktober 2019
Apple Said to Receive 16-Inch MacBook Pro Shipments This Quarter, Launch Timing Remains Unclear - MacRumors
While it is unclear if the widely rumored 16-inch MacBook Pro will launch in 2019 or 2020, the latest report from DigiTimes claims that Apple will begin receiving volume shipments of the notebook in the fourth quarter of this year. Taiwan-based manufacturer Quanta Computer is said to be the key supplier.
16-inch MacBook Pro concept by MacRumors
Apple receiving volume shipments of the 16-inch MacBook Pro in the fourth quarter does not necessarily mean the notebook will launch in the fourth quarter. Apple may simply be planning to stockpile the 16-inch MacBook Pro ahead of the U.S. government's proposed 15 percent import tariff on an additional round of Chinese goods, including notebooks, slated to take effect December 15.
DigiTimes previously said the 16-inch MacBook Pro would launch by the end of October, and today is the final day of the month. The site does not have the best track record when it comes to the timing of new Apple products, but its connections within Apple's supply chain are occasionally accurate.
https://www.macrumors.com/2019/10/31/16-inch-macbook-pro-volume-shipments-4q19/
2019-10-31 13:34:00Z
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The report reiterates that the 16-inch MacBook Pro will have an ultra-thin-bezel design, suggesting the overall size of the notebook might be similar to the existing 15-inch MacBook Pro despite having a larger display.
Apple receiving volume shipments of the 16-inch MacBook Pro in the fourth quarter does not necessarily mean the notebook will launch in the fourth quarter. Apple may simply be planning to stockpile the 16-inch MacBook Pro ahead of the U.S. government's proposed 15 percent import tariff on an additional round of Chinese goods, including notebooks, slated to take effect December 15.
Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo originally said the 16-inch MacBook Pro would launch in the fourth quarter of 2019 with an all-new design, including a scissor switch keyboard. As of late, however, Kuo has more vaguely stated that a "new MacBook model" with a scissor keyboard will launch in mid 2020. It's unclear if the "new MacBook model" that Kuo has referred to more recently is the 16-inch MacBook Pro.
Multiple images corresponding to a 16-inch MacBook Pro have been found in macOS Catalina in recent weeks, including one that reveals that Touch ID will likely be separated from the Touch Bar on the notebook.
The leaked Touch Bar design lends credence to the Esc key also being a separate, physical key again, as can be seen when zooming in to the previously leaked 16-inch MacBook Pro icon.
MacRumors has confirmed the location of the Touch Bar image in macOS Catalina. The filename includes "Device16."
Leaked 16-inch MacBook Pro vs current 15-inch MacBook Pro image. Touch Bar and size differences pic.twitter.com/b1qJvuo2hM
— MacRumors.com (@MacRumors) October 31, 2019
DigiTimes previously said the 16-inch MacBook Pro would launch by the end of October, and today is the final day of the month. The site does not have the best track record when it comes to the timing of new Apple products, but its connections within Apple's supply chain are occasionally accurate.
https://www.macrumors.com/2019/10/31/16-inch-macbook-pro-volume-shipments-4q19/
2019-10-31 13:34:00Z
52780422703317
Apple Plays the Underdog in Streaming Wars - The Wall Street Journal
Apple Inc. became a colossus by redefining gadgets including the smartphone, the tablet and the smartwatch. As it takes aim at Hollywood, it is working from a very different script.
On Friday, the company plans to launch the Apple TV+ video service, its contender in the battle between media and tech giants for people’s streaming dollars. Apple TV+ is slated to start with nine programs, including a buzzy drama about television news called “The Morning Show” featuring Jennifer Aniston, Reese Witherspoon and Steve Carell. Other offerings include “See,” set in a future when humans lack sight, and “Snoopy in Space,” for children.
Apple’s enormous size, $100-billion cash hoard and fat profit margins mean it can afford the costs of developing and distributing new content. And the more than 900 million iPhones and 500 million other Apple gadgets in use world-wide give it an enormous, built-in base of potential TV+ customers.
But entertainment takes Apple well outside its wheelhouse, and much about its approach to the streaming wars departs from its usual strategy.
Apple is used to charging far more for its iPhones, iPads and Macs than rivals do for their products. It controls its own ecosystem of hardware and software products and carefully rolls out new versions of its gadgets once a year at most.
With TV+, Apple is charging less than competitors and pushing its service aggressively on other platforms. A company accustomed to hits is entering a world where TV shows and movies fail with regularity. And the secretive Silicon Valley titan is contending with critical scrutiny in Hollywood that far exceeds the business’s importance to Apple’s bottom line.
Critical reviews of the offerings on Apple TV+ have been mixed. Time said “The Morning Show” lacks the depth and spirit of top TV shows, while New York Media’s Vulture called it a “glossy, largely compelling new series.” Hollywood-focused Variety’s critics found fault with other Apple shows, saying none was “stellar enough to justify someone buying in to a whole new streaming service.”
An Apple spokesman declined to comment.
“Honestly the world should give Apple a little leeway,” said “See” executive producer Francis Lawrence. “Nobody can be perfect 100% of the time.”
Hollywood is central to Chief Executive Tim Cook’s effort to refashion Apple as a services company as sales have slowed for its original products. Sales of its bread-and-butter iPhone fell 14% for the fiscal year ended in September, dragging the company’s total revenue down 2% to $260.17 billion.
A Stream of Choices
Several new video services are launching to challenge Netflix. How they compare:
Source: the companies
The hardware heavyweight, though, has a threadbare entertainment library. So its service will cost $4.99 monthly for subscribers and will be free for a year with the purchase of a new iPhone, iPad or Mac.
Netflix Inc., which charges $12.99 a month for its most popular service, pioneered the category and offers more than 1,500 shows and 4,000 movies. Walt Disney Co. will charge $6.99 for Disney+, which launches 11 days after Apple’s offering, with popular franchises such as “Star Wars.”
And WarnerMedia, a unit of AT&T Inc., said Tuesday it will charge $14.99 a month for HBO Max, set to launch next year with classics such as “Friends” and original fare.
Apple struck deals to make its Apple TV app available on Roku and on smart TVs from Samsung Electronics Co.
Mr. Cook called the offering a bold move during a Wednesday call with analysts. He said the price is aggressive because Apple wants as many people as possible to view the shows. “This allows us to focus on maximizing subscribers,” he said.
Apple is also rolling out its programming in a way that straddles Netflix’s all-at-once strategy with the one-episode-a-week style of HBO and others. Initially, it will offer three episodes of some shows, such as “For All Mankind,” about the U.S. space program in a world where Russia landed first on the moon, and add a new episode each subsequent week. Others such as “Dickinson,” about a young Emily Dickinson, will be available in their totality.
Apple is famously fastidious about its brand. So far, its slate of shows features themes of resilience and aspiration. The focus—combined with an aversion to over-the-top gratuitous sex, violence and language—has led some Hollywood creators to question if Apple TV+ will be as risqué as Netflix, FX or HBO, whose programs often embrace the underbelly of culture and society.
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Should apple move into creating content or stick to making devices? Join the conversation below.
To be sure, in entertainment the definition of a brand is often fluid, especially if the shows designed to fit that brand fail to catch on and a show that doesn’t becomes a success.
“You’re not allowed to go into this without pretending you have a brand, but then your brand becomes whatever your hit show is,” said producer Mike Royce, whose credits include “Everybody Loves Raymond” and the reboot of “One Day at a Time.”
If Apple can amass 50 million subscribers for TV+, about as many as it has for its music-streaming service, it would add $3 billion in annual sales, estimates Toni Sacconaghi, an analyst with Bernstein Research. That steady subscription revenue would help reduce iPhone dependency—though it is tiny compared with Apple’s $250 billion in total annual sales.
Apple also wants to draw viewers to its TV app and encourage them to subscribe to other services, such as Starz and Showtime, that can be accessed through the app, according to people familiar with the strategy. It gets a 30% cut of other subscriptions initially.
The business strategy is being fashioned by Peter Stern, who joined Apple in 2016 after overseeing strategy at Time Warner Cable Inc. Last year, the Yale Law School graduate was promoted to oversee Apple’s video, news, books, iCloud and ad-services businesses. He has looked for ways to bundle services and directly market subscriptions, people familiar with the strategy said.
The company unveiled one offer Wednesday, with actor Hailee Steinfeld, who stars in “Dickinson,” announcing on Instagram that TV+ will be free to college students who subscribe to Apple Music.
Apple’s decision to bundle TV+ with sales of its gadgets will hurt its hardware business for financial reporting purposes but help services, because it reduces a $699 iPhone sale by $60—the annual cost to subscribe to TV+—which will be recognized as services revenue, analysts say.
In the future, though, TV+ can serve as a marketing tool that deepens the appeal of new iPhones with incremental features, Mr. Sacconaghi said. “They now have something they can use to help maybe iPhone or other product demand,” he said.
Write to Tripp Mickle at Tripp.Mickle@wsj.com and Joe Flint at joe.flint@wsj.com
Copyright ©2019 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
https://www.wsj.com/articles/apple-plays-the-underdog-in-streaming-wars-11572514201
2019-10-31 10:46:00Z
52780423062765
Apple Plays the Underdog in Streaming Wars - The Wall Street Journal
Apple Inc. AAPL -0.01% became a colossus by redefining gadgets including the smartphone, the tablet and the smartwatch. As it takes aim at Hollywood, it is working from a very different script.
On Friday, the company plans to launch the Apple TV+ video service, its contender in the battle between media and tech giants for people’s streaming dollars. Apple TV+ is slated to start with nine programs, including a buzzy drama about television news called “The Morning Show” featuring Jennifer Aniston, Reese Witherspoon and Steve Carell. Other offerings include “See,” set in a future when humans lack sight, and “Snoopy in Space,” for children.
Apple’s enormous size, $100-billion cash hoard and fat profit margins mean it can afford the costs of developing and distributing new content. And the more than 900 million iPhones and 500 million other Apple gadgets in use world-wide give it an enormous, built-in base of potential TV+ customers.
But entertainment takes Apple well outside its wheelhouse, and much about its approach to the streaming wars departs from its usual strategy.
Apple is used to charging far more for its iPhones, iPads and Macs than rivals do for their products. It controls its own ecosystem of hardware and software products and carefully rolls out new versions of its gadgets once a year at most.
With TV+, Apple is charging less than competitors and pushing its service aggressively on other platforms. A company accustomed to hits is entering a world where TV shows and movies fail with regularity. And the secretive Silicon Valley titan is contending with critical scrutiny in Hollywood that far exceeds the business’s importance to Apple’s bottom line.
Critical reviews of the offerings on Apple TV+ have been mixed. Time said “The Morning Show” lacks the depth and spirit of top TV shows, while New York Media’s Vulture called it a “glossy, largely compelling new series.” Hollywood-focused Variety’s critics found fault with other Apple shows, saying none was “stellar enough to justify someone buying in to a whole new streaming service.”
An Apple spokesman declined to comment.
“Honestly the world should give Apple a little leeway,” said “See” executive producer Francis Lawrence. “Nobody can be perfect 100% of the time.”
Hollywood is central to Chief Executive Tim Cook’s effort to refashion Apple as a services company as sales have slowed for its original products. Sales of its bread-and-butter iPhone fell 14% for the fiscal year ended in September, dragging the company’s total revenue down 2% to $260.17 billion.
A Stream of Choices
Several new video services are launching to challenge Netflix. How they compare:
Source: the companies
The hardware heavyweight, though, has a threadbare entertainment library. So its service will cost $4.99 monthly for subscribers and will be free for a year with the purchase of a new iPhone, iPad or Mac.
Netflix Inc., which charges $12.99 a month for its most popular service, pioneered the category and offers more than 1,500 shows and 4,000 movies. Walt Disney Co. will charge $6.99 for Disney+, which launches 11 days after Apple’s offering, with popular franchises such as “Star Wars.”
And WarnerMedia, a unit of AT&T Inc., said Tuesday it will charge $14.99 a month for HBO Max, set to launch next year with classics such as “Friends” and original fare.
Apple struck deals to make its Apple TV app available on Roku and on smart TVs from Samsung Electronics Co.
Mr. Cook called the offering a bold move during a Wednesday call with analysts. He said the price is aggressive because Apple wants as many people as possible to view the shows. “This allows us to focus on maximizing subscribers,” he said.
Apple is also rolling out its programming in a way that straddles Netflix’s all-at-once strategy with the one-episode-a-week style of HBO and others. Initially, it will offer three episodes of some shows, such as “For All Mankind,” about the U.S. space program in a world where Russia landed first on the moon, and add a new episode each subsequent week. Others such as “Dickinson,” about a young Emily Dickinson, will be available in their totality.
Apple is famously fastidious about its brand. So far, its slate of shows features themes of resilience and aspiration. The focus—combined with an aversion to over-the-top gratuitous sex, violence and language—has led some Hollywood creators to question if Apple TV+ will be as risqué as Netflix, FX or HBO, whose programs often embrace the underbelly of culture and society.
SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS
Are you considering an AppleTV subscription? Why or why not? Join the conversation below.
To be sure, in entertainment the definition of a brand is often fluid, especially if the shows designed to fit that brand fail to catch on and a show that doesn’t becomes a success.
“You’re not allowed to go into this without pretending you have a brand, but then your brand becomes whatever your hit show is,” said producer Mike Royce, whose credits include “Everybody Loves Raymond” and the reboot of “One Day at a Time.”
If Apple can amass 50 million subscribers for TV+, about as many as it has for its music-streaming service, it would add $3 billion in annual sales, estimates Toni Sacconaghi, an analyst with Bernstein Research. That steady subscription revenue would help reduce iPhone dependency—though it is tiny compared with Apple’s $250 billion in total annual sales.
Apple also wants to draw viewers to its TV app and encourage them to subscribe to other services, such as Starz and Showtime, that can be accessed through the app, according to people familiar with the strategy. It gets a 30% cut of other subscriptions initially.
The business strategy is being fashioned by Peter Stern, who joined Apple in 2016 after overseeing strategy at Time Warner Cable Inc. Last year, the Yale Law School graduate was promoted to oversee Apple’s video, news, books, iCloud and ad-services businesses. He has looked for ways to bundle services and directly market subscriptions, people familiar with the strategy said.
The company unveiled one offer Wednesday, with actor Hailee Steinfeld, who stars in “Dickinson,” announcing on Instagram that TV+ will be free to college students who subscribe to Apple Music.
Apple’s decision to bundle TV+ with sales of its gadgets will hurt its hardware business for financial reporting purposes but help services, because it reduces a $699 iPhone sale by $60—the annual cost to subscribe to TV+—which will be recognized as services revenue, analysts say.
In the future, though, TV+ can serve as a marketing tool that deepens the appeal of new iPhones with incremental features, Mr. Sacconaghi said. “They now have something they can use to help maybe iPhone or other product demand,” he said.
Write to Tripp Mickle at Tripp.Mickle@wsj.com and Joe Flint at joe.flint@wsj.com
Copyright ©2019 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
https://www.wsj.com/articles/apple-plays-the-underdog-in-streaming-wars-11572514201
2019-10-31 10:30:00Z
52780423062765
AirPods Pro teardown confirms that they’re just as disposable as ever - Circuit Breaker
iFixit has completed its traditional teardown of Apple’s latest AirPods and, just as Apple promised, it’s bad news for repairs. The organization awarded the noise-canceling buds a big fat zero repairability score, noting that their “non-modular, glued-together design and lack of replacement parts makes repair both impractical and uneconomical.” That’s the same score as both versions of the original AirPods.
This means that once the battery in your $249 AirPods Pro degrades and eventually dies, there’s no chance of repairing them yourself. Instead, you’ll have to send them back to Apple for recycling, or take part in the “battery service” program at a cost of $49-per-earbud out of warranty.
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The teardown does reveal a couple of interesting details about the design of the earbuds. First is the fact that they’re a whole third heavier than the original AirPods, thanks to new features like active noise-cancellation, and an inward-facing microphone. The teardown also notes that the one user-replaceable part of the earbuds, the silicone ear-tip, uses a custom design that makes them incompatible with third-party models. That said, the popularity of the AirPods all but guarantees other companies will be making third-party tips soon.
Most intriguing is the discovery of a watch-style battery inside each earbud. iFixit notes that it’s a similar battery to what it found in Samsung’s Galaxy Buds which could be replaced. However, the same is not true of the AirPods Pro, whose battery is tethered by a soldered cable.
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It’s no surprise that the AirPods Pro are a disposable product, designed to be as small and lightweight as possible. And compared to the amount of waste generated by the consumer electronics industry, the environmental impact of each AirPod Pro is likely to be low. But as Apple boasts about the amount of renewable energy its buildings use, and the amount of recycled materials it uses in its products, it’s a shame to see one of its biggest product successes in recent years remain so disposable.
Update October 31st, 6:45AM ET: Updated with details of Apple’s “battery service” program.
https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2019/10/31/20941467/airpods-pro-ifixit-teardown-repair-disposable-battery-replacement
2019-10-31 09:48:23Z
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