Apple Is About To Lay Down Its TV Cards

Some of us have been waiting for Apple to drop its proverbial hammer on television for what seems like forever. A company with a strong sense of design, the ability to craft purposeful hardware and software and a penchant for cutting through the crap to deliver something you actually want to use (mostly) — who wouldn’t want to see what it could do with the junkfest that is modern TV?

So far, all we’ve gotten is noodling. A self-professed hobby in the size of a small hockey puck that has glacially increased in usefulness and utility.

A new Apple TV is on the way, though, and it could move the needle in more than one industry. According to information I’ve been able to compile from multiple sources, Apple is about to lay down its cards.

Some of the nuts and bolts are already out there, but no one is really talking about how they fit together. Let’s talk.

A Platform

We’ve confirmed many details of the new device with multiple sources. First, that the new Apple TV, as has been reported previously by Buzzfeed, will feature an updated design and Apple’s A8 chip in a dual-core configuration. The more powerful chip will support an updated interface with much better effects and navigational improvements that make browsing through big content libraries — one of my biggest wants — much easier.

It stands to reason that Apple will be able to push the A8 much, much further than it ever has before given that the Apple TV is plugged into the wall, and not dependent on battery.

This will enable developers of games and other resource-intensive applications to produce higher quality and more demanding apps. Among the demos I’d expect to see on stage next month are content apps, games, and broadcast companies. These apps fit the venue (fixed, but large and participatory) and purpose of your television — and the apps that people will build for the Apple TV would do well to take those factors into account as well.

A native SDK that takes advantage of the hardware fully will, for the first time ever, turn the Apple TV into a platform, a self-sustaining life form that Apple likely hopes will dominate competitors who have done only slightly better about adding third-party support.

Control

To control the new Apple TV? A new remote. One major feature of which was pretty much nailed by Brian Chen in an article earlier this year. It’s slightly bigger and thicker, with physical buttons on the bottom half, a Touchpad area at the top and a Siri microphone. Info about this remote was included in a report by Mark Gurman earlier this month, along with some other information we’ve confirmed about the new Apple TV.

One thing that hasn’t been talked about yet is the fact that the new remote will be motion sensitive, likely including several axis’ worth of sensors that put its control on par with a Nintendo Wii remote. The possibilities, of course, are immediately evident.

A game controller with a microphone, physical buttons, a touchpad and motion sensitive controls would be extremely capable. While Apple is likely going to target the broad casual gaming market, I would not be shocked to see innovative gameplay blossom from that type of input possibility. Think, for instance, of multi-player gaming with several people using voice input, or many popular genres of party games that would do far better on the TV than on an iPad or iPhone.

Why A Spoon, Cousin?

Why this strategy? Why games? Why a platform? Why a spoon?

There are a couple of reasons. You might think that one of them is that the ‘home hub’ business is a ripe market, but I’m not so sure. Does anyone actually use the cable pass-through on the Xbox One any more? That’s a rhetorical question.

I love my Xbox, it’s fantastic, but I don’t even begin to think of it as a source for TV, and while I’m sure there are those who do, I would bet that it is far from a majority. At any rate, it’s not enough to upset any status quo because the interface and functionality are handicapped by the providers that Microsoft had to please. The console as a ‘home hub’ just never materialized — despite the fact that Bill Gates had exactly predicted this moment in his incredibly prescient CES keynote in 2000.

If Apple is able to launch an easy-to-use controller attached to a powerful enough engine to support the burgeoning casual games market, we could see the same kind of absorption that is happening as smartphones eat the portable console gaming market. As the Xbox and PS4 veer sharply into the hardcore gaming market, Nintendo, with its gunshy approach to thinking laterally about its gaming properties and other platforms, is set up to be disintegrated by a new king of ‘good enough’ gaming. 

And attached to that is a platform that is ripe for movies, content apps and new classes of home automation and control apps that we haven’t even begun to see yet.

The cable providers and content creators are fine with gaining another endpointfor their wares — but not so much with being disintermediated by a platform that has the capabilities of treating their content agnostically, like so many atoms to be re-organized according to a user’s whim, regardless of point of origin.

Judging by the (reported) trouble that Apple has had getting its TV streaming service locked down and ready to ship, that unhappiness is presenting itself in the form of money. If Apple is going to provide a holistic TV experience where multiple programs across multiple networks can be searched and played non-linearly with a single tap, the gatekeepers are going to want a blood price to do it.

Some very smart people I’ve been talking to suggest that, by building a platform, Apple is generating leverage that it can use to great effect in these negotiations. A mid-market breakout box offering is one thing, but a huge, rumbling platform with an upward trajectory of living-room dominating apps and third-party content is another beast. If, obviously if, Apple is successful with the Apple TV, it could be in a position to dominate content in a way that no other ‘smart’ TV platform has before it.

If Apple did indeed ‘delay’ the Apple TV from being released at WWDC, then it probably had a reason. And, if my sources are correct, that reason could well be polish, polish, polish. The experience of using it is said to blow away the types of junky smart TV interfaces we’ve had to deal with so far. This is the first real Apple TV product.

If that polish translates into leverage, then negotiating with Apple could be much, much more uncomfortable for the content providers. Why a spoon? Because it hurts more.

Image Credit: Bryce Durbin

Via: Tech Crunch

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DNC To Vote On Resolution Supporting Black Lives Matter

The Democratic National Committee is expected on Friday to adopt a resolution expressing its support for the Black Lives Matter movement, a DNC official said.

The resolution, the language of which was made available to BuzzFeed News, will be voted on by the full body during the general session on Friday at the DNC’s summer meetings in Minneapolis.

The draft of the resolution mentions by name Patrisse Cullors, Opal Tometi, and Alicia Garza, the founders of the Black Lives Matter organization. They are from “a generation of young African-Americans who feel totally dismissed and unheard as they are crushed between unlawful street violence and unjust police violence,” the draft reads.

The DNC said it resolves “that the DNC joins with Americans across the country in affirming ‘Black lives matter’ and the ‘say her name’ efforts to make visible the pain of our fellow and sister Americans as they condemn extrajudicial killings of unarmed African-American men, women, and children.”

WHEREAS, the Democratic Party believes in the American Dream and the promise of liberty and justice for all, and we know that this dream is a nightmare for too many young people stripped of their dignity under the vestiges of slavery, Jim Crow and White Supremacy; and

WHEREAS, we, the Democratic National Committee, have repeatedly called for race and justice – demilitarization of police, ending racial profiling, criminal justice reform, and investments in young people, families, and communities — after Trayvon Martin, after Michael Brown, after Tamir Rice, after Freddie Gray, after Sandra Bland, after Christian Taylor, after too many others lost in the unacceptable epidemic of extrajudicial killings of unarmed black men, women, and children at the hands of police; and

WHEREAS, we hear the “Black lives matter” cry from the inspiration of creators Patrisse Cullors, Opal Tometi, and Alicia Garza, and from the heart of a generation of young African Americans who feel totally dismissed and unheard as they are crushed between unlawful street violence and unjust police violence; we salute the courageous young people who participate in the #March2Justice, and we repeat the chant “say her name” to acknowledge the Black women whose stories are often untold and whose cases are unresolved; and

WHEREAS, without systemic reform this state of unrest jeopardizes the well-being of our democracy and our nation;

THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that the DNC joins with Americans across the country in affirming “Black lives matter” and the “say her name” efforts to make visible the pain of our fellow and sister Americans as they condemn extrajudicial killings of unarmed African American men, women and children; and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the DNC renews our previous calls to action and urges Congress to adopt systemic reforms at state, local, and federal levels to prohibit law enforcement from profiling based on race, nationality, ethnicity, or religion, to minimize the transfer of excess equipment (like the military-grade vehicles and weapons that were used to police peaceful civilians in the streets of Ferguson, Missouri) to federal and state law enforcement; and to support prevention programs that give young people alternatives to incarceration.

Via: BuzzFeed

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What Actually Comes Next

Less than forty-eight hours after King Anthony sovereignly provided new theology for our secular, civil religion, the left is now publicly calling for the abolition of tax-exempt status for religious non-profits and churches.

It will come. It has to come. If gay marriage is a fundamental right under the equal protection clause, it is going to trump a lot of the first amendment. As Chief Justice Roberts noted, King Anthony’s theology precludes “free exercise” of religion.

But all of this is down the road a few years. Let me tell you what is going to happen first.

Silence.

A newspaper in Pennsylvania has declared it will no longer allow letters to the editor opposed to gay marriage because it is a fundamental right.

BuzzFeed declared that, in its editorial position, there is no position other than support for gay marriage.

Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple, banned all apps from its store that display the Confederate flag. That had to be walked back a bit, but there you have it.

The Los Angeles Times refuses to run letters pointing out that global warming is a scam.

And now, Apple and Facebook are set to develop news platforms that will have a human curator, instead of a computer algorithm. Twitter, likewise, is engaging humans on trending news topics, etc. It is only a matter of time because Google works its algorithm magic to drive down links to those who oppose the new cultural agenda.

So we will see orthodox Christian voices disappear from most news channels. The left are master propagandists. One of the chief tricks of the propagandist is to convince you that you are all alone. Everyone else thinks otherwise. So an Apple that celebrates gay rights and bans what it thinks is hate is only one step from prohibiting a Russell Moore piece through its news service.

Facebook can devalue conservatives and shut them down.

Twitter can declare support for traditional marriage to be hate and turn off accounts, mine included.

Newspapers, radio stations, and television networks who long ago embraced the idea that people are born gay despite ample evidence to the contrary in most (but not all) cases, will reach further. If you are a talk radio show host who supports traditional marriage, get ready for your parent company to tell you that is no longer allowed. After all, it is a fundamental right.

A CNN that was celebratory on its twitter feed after the gay marriage ruling can hardly be expected to allow on any pundit who dissents without treating that person as a contemptible bigot. MSNBC will run news stories on the rise in hate groups that, no doubt, the Southern Poverty Law Center will list. That list will include all orthodox Christian churches.

The left has worked very hard to control information. They will now work extra hard to push conservatives forcibly into a ghetto of thought. The overarching goal will be to convince you that no one agrees with you and there are no voices echoing you.

Just remember, you are not alone.

Via: Red State

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GOP Sen. Inhofe: A Lot of My Gay Friends Think SCOTUS Decision Was Bad

In reaction to the Supreme Court decision legalizing same-sex marriages across all 50 states, Sen.James Inhofe (R-OK) pulled the “some of my friends are gay” card, but not in the way you’d normally expect.

“I’ve been disappointed, and I was not surprised. I thought they would rule the way they did,” Inhofe told Tulsa’s CBS-affiliated KOTV. “I know a lot of people, actually a lot of people who are friends of mine in the gay community, who also think it was a bad decision,” he added in the clip first spotted by BuzzFeed News reporter Andrew Kaczynski

Via: Mediaite

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Pelosi weighs in on Redskins name

Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has a suggestion for how to put an end to the controversy surrounding the Washington Redskins’ team name: holding a contest.

“I think we should have a contest for naming,” the House Minority Leader told BuzzFeed’s John Stanton at the website’s “BuzzFeed Brews” event in Washington.

Pelosi, a Baltimore native whose dad was a Maryland congressman said, “I don’t know if there’s any will to change the name, but maybe a good enough name, you never know.”

Several individuals, groups and lawmakers have called on the District’s football team to change the name, citing racial insensitivity.

“The first song that I ever learned to sing outside of church was, ‘Hail to the Redskins,’ ” Pelosi told the crowd.

Pelosi initially declined to weigh in on what she thought the name should be changed to, before pointing to a sign behind her set up for the BuzzFeed Brews event and offered, “How about the Red Brews?”

Via: The Hill

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Inhofe: I Would Have Died Under Obamacare During Surgery

Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., says he likely wouldn't be alive today if Obamacare had been in effect when he received recent quadruple bypass surgery.

The 79-year-old Inhofe was having a routine colonoscopy when doctors found his arteries were so clogged he needed emergency heart surgery, Buzzfeed reports him saying in a radio interview set to air Sunday night. 

In "socialized medicine like Obama is trying to impose upon America," he could never have had his surgery because the wait time would have been too long, Inhofe told Aaron Klein's WABC radio show. 

"A person can find out, here in the U.S., that he has this emergency situation where he has got to have immediate heart surgery," Inhofe said. "And if you are in a country other than the U.S., a lot of them, you can’t get it done. In my case, with my age, that would have been about a six-month wait. Because I hadn’t had a heart attack."

Inhofe urged listeners to "hold onto what we've got here. You are talking to someone right now who probably wouldn’t be here if we had socialized medicine in America."

Via: Newsmax

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Design Firm Removes All Reference To Its Work On Obamacare From Its Website

Teal Media was founded by a former member of Obama’s campaign design team.The firm says it took down all reference to its work on HealthCare.gov “in consultation” with the administration.

WASHINGTON — Visit the website of Michigan-based design firm Teal Media today and you’d never know designers there helped create HealthCare.gov, the troubled online portal for Obamacare.

Just a few days ago, the site looked very different. Teal Media’s homepage featured its work on Obamacare prominently, placing a link to the firm’s work on one of the most well-known websites in America front and center. Now that link, as well as the page devoted to Teal’s work on HealthCare.gov, have been removed.

Here’s a cached version of what the homepage used to look like. And here’s a cached version of Teal’s page devoted just to its work on HealthCare.gov. That page has been deleted.

Teal Media doesn’t seem interested in talking about its work on HealthCare.gov. A woman who answered the phone at the company’s headquarters immediately referred BuzzFeed to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) at the Department of Health And Human Services (HHS) before a single question was asked. CMS is listed as Teal’s client on the firm’s now-erased HealthCare.gov page.

When asked about the changed content on the Teal Media site, the woman said that was done ‘in consultation with HHS,” and again referred a reporter to CMS.

A CMS spokesperson declined to comment on the record.

Via: Buzzfeed

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Sununu on DNC venue switcheroo: “You can’t believe a thing this administration says”

After this morning’s news that the Democrats are now planning to move Obama’s convention speech from the outdoor, 70,000-capacity Bank of America football stadium to the indoor, 20,000-capacity Time Warner basketball arena because of ostensible weather concerns (meaning, the 30 percent chance of thunderstorms on the forecast practically every night in the summer for the mid-eastern seaboard), there’s been no shortage of mockery from the Right for the Democrats’ retreat from much-heralded enthusiasm to defensive sheepishness. The campaigns have been trading barbs, and the Romney camp’s resident ‘honey badger’ John Sununu pointed out that this is yet another Obama promise gone awry:

“You can’t believe a thing this administration says,” Sununu told reporters at the NASCAR Hall of Fame. “This campaign promised you, rain or shine, the president would be speaking there. Then when they couldn’t get a crowd they brought it inside. I think those facts speak for themselves.” …

“You would think they’d be smart enough to lie about things that weren’t easy to check,” he said. “Almost all the speakers last night accused Romney of wanted to raise taxes on the middle class. There is a very simple declarative sentence that is Gov. Romney’s position on the middle class: ‘We are going to cut their taxes by 20 percent.’ That is not a complicated sentence. It might be for Barack Obama, but that is not a complicated sentence.”

The Obama campaign has tried to fire back. It’s pretty precious:

The Obama campaign is facing a barrage of criticism and mockery from Republicans for scrapping plans to hold the final night of their convention at downtown Charlotte’s more than 73,000-seat Bank of America Stadium. But they’ve got a message for their detractors.

“I’ve got two words for you,” a senior Obama campaign official told ABC News, “Ford Field.”

The official was referring to Mitt Romney’s February 2012 speech before a crowd of 1,200 at Detroit’s Ford Field — a stadium that seats up to 80,000. Democrats on Wednesday circulated a now-famous photo of Romney speaking in  the almost-empty venue with the tongue-in-cheek headline: “Mitt Romney’s idea of a successful stadium event….”

Feeble, Team O. Nobody’s made a bigger deal out of Barack Obama’s ostensible abilities to fill a stadium then you guys, and let’s be serious: The lack of enthusiasm that previously committed Obama-voters are feeling right now is a huge problem for their side. If there had been a real opportunity for the Democrats to showcase a football stadium chock-full of wildly supportive Obama fanatics, I doubt even a dang monsoon would’ve stopped them from doing so.

Update: Oh, this just keeps on getting more and more humiliating. I almost feel a little badly for piling on. …Almost. Via BuzzFeed:

Via: The Daily Caller

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DRUDGE: BIDEN PREPPING STUNT FOR GOP CONVENTION

AP File

Secret Service prepping for Biden to appear at GOP convention, says Drudge

By Alex Pappas, The Daily Caller

 

Vice President Joe Biden is reportedly planning to crash the party next week when Republicans gather in Tampa, Fla., for the GOP convention.

 

The Drudge Report cited sources Tuesday saying that Secret Service agents have been spotted in Tampa telling people that they are doing advance work for Biden’s trip. He’s expected to be in Tampa on Monday or Tuesday, the news website reported.

 

A spokeswoman who answered the phone in the vice president’s office directed questions to the campaign when reached by The Daily Caller. The Obama campaign didn’t immediately return a request for comment.

 

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WaPo: The vice president will be rallying supporters in Tampa on Monday, Aug. 27 — during the Republican National Convention — according to a Democratic source.

Read more here

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Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus said the GOP will respond tenfold to any Democratic efforts to upstage the party's national convention, amid reports that Vice President Joe Biden will visit Tampa next week.

"I think it's pretty common among parties to play with each other's conventions, and we'll have a pretty big presence in Charlotte as well," Priebus said. "The nice thing about going first is that whatever they do to us, we can do ten times over to them."

Does that mean that Romney may counter-program the Democratic convention in Charlotte next month? Priebus replied "You never know where we are going to be."

"I'm a big believer in: if they punch us, we put on the brass knuckles and punch back," he added.

Read more at Buzzfeed

Via: Fox News