A Mexican tribunal has upheld a ban on the import of Roku streaming devices in the country, citing piracy.
Cable TV provider, Cablevision, had successfully managed to have the import and sale of Roku streaming devices banned in the country on the grounds that some owners are using them for illegal television streaming. Roku did manage to have that order suspended for a few days, but has now suffered another setback.
This week, a Mexico City tribunal upheld the initial import ban, keeping it illegal to sell devices from California-based Roku in the country.
"Cablevision cannot allow the content that it licenses from domestic and foreign companies to be illegally used," Cablevision spokeswoman Maria Eugenia Zurita told Reuters.
"We would also like Roku Inc to better supervise the use of its software so that it's not used inappropriately."
Roku devices are set-top media boxes that are intended to be used with Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, Starz and plenty of other legal streaming services on the Internet. In recent years, such devices have fueled a growth in cord-cutting, the practice of dropping cable and satellite television services in favor of online streaming services.
A Finnish startup by the name Ruuvi introduced its Bluetooth beacon project to the internet in a Kickstarter campaign last summer. In mere hours the campaign was funded and in the end it crushed its goal with pre-orders exceeding $170 000.
Now the company has officially released the product, which according to their press release came quicker than expected. Since yesterday's launch RuuviTag has been selling like hotcakes. The founder of Ruuvi, Lauri Jämsä, told us that the demand has been so high that the supply has almost been depleted.
In the upcoming batches the company aims more and more in the B2B markets where orders might exceed a thousand units.
RuuviTag is a small Bluetooth 4.2 beacon that has radio and NFC connectivity as well as a multitude of sensors that can measure temperature, relative air humidity, air pressure, and acceleration. It can be used as a Eddystone or iBeacon, and the RuuviLab community has already created a variety of applications, including the likes of portable weather station and vehicle locator. Of course because it's open source platform anyone can join in.
UEFA Champions League football matches will be streamed on Facebook from the coming football season, according to reports.
The UEFA Champions League is the arguably the most prestige club-level football (soccer in U.S.) competition in the world. In recent years, a competition that has been largely available on freeview has been increasing restricted behind paywalls.
As a result, global viewership of the competition has declined.
In the UK, BT Sport even decided to broadcast the Champions League final, and the Europa League final, for free on YouTube, reportedly attracting more than 3 million viewers in the region.
According to a Reuters tweet, an agreement has been reached between Fox Sports and Facebook to stream UEFA Champions League via Facebook Live during the 2017-18 season.
Music streaming service Pandora is winding down its operations in Australia and New Zealand, it has announced.
Australia and New Zealand were the only territories that Pandora operated in, outside of its U.S. home, and it counts more than 5 million registered users there. It also has partnerships with Rolling Stone, Woolworths and others in the region.
Speaking to Billboard, a spokesman for Pandora confirmed the firm will exit the markets after much analysis.
"While our experience in these markets reinforces the broader global opportunity long-term, in the short-term we must remain laser-focused on the expansion of our core business in the United States," the representative said.
Pandora co-founder Tim Westergren stepped down as CEO earlier this week, while earlier this year the firm witnessed the departure of Jane Huxley, the director of its ANZ operations.
Social network giant Facebook has hit a new milestone of 2 billion users around the world.
The milestone was announced by Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg on his personal Facebook page. According to Facebook, each day more than 800 million people like something on the service.
175 million people share a "Love" reaction, and more than a billion people user Groups on Facebook every month.
"As of this morning, the Facebook community is now officially 2 billion people," Zuckerberg wrote in his announcement post.
"We're making progress connecting the world, and now let's bring the world closer together. It's an honor to be on this journey with you."
The European Commission has handed down a staggering €2.4 billion fine in one of its antitrust probes against Alphabet subsidiary Google.
The fine is the equivalent of around 3 percent of Alphabet's global turnover. It has been imposed on Google by the EU's competition regulators after it found that Google had abused its dominant position in Search in order to push its own shopping ads over rival services, such as price comparison services.
"What Google has done is illegal under EU antitrust rules. It denied other companies the chance to compete on the merits and to innovate. And most importantly, it denied European consumers a genuine choice of services and the full benefits of innovation," European Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager said in a statement.
The U.S. multinational was given 90 days since the ruling to stop favoring its own services in search results related to shopping, or face a further daily penalty of up to 5 percent of Alphabet's daily turnover.
Google has responded with respectful disagreement with the conclusions reached by the European Commission and is assessing its options.
Nintendo of America has confirmed that it will launch the SNES Classic this year with two controllers and 21 built-in games.
The inclusion of two controllers is notable as last year's NES Classic only came with one, and among its list of classic games for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (released in the U.S. in August, 1991) is the unreleased Star Fox 2.
SNES Classic will be available in the United States from Setpember 29, with an $80 price tag. Outside the U.S., the same mini-console will be released but come in the Super Famicon styling.
The 21 included games are Super Mario World, Super Mario Kart, Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars, The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, F-Zero, Super Metroid, Street Fighter II Turbo: Hyper Fighting, Super Punch-Out, Super Castlevania IV, Donkey Kong Country, Mega Man X, Kirby Super Star, Final Fantasy III, Kirby's Dream Course, Star Fox, Yoshi's Island, Contra III: The Alien Wars, Secret of Mana, EarthBound, Super Ghouls 'n Ghosts and Star Fox 2.
Google's Gmail service will stop the controversial practice of scanning through e-mail contents in order to deliver personalized ads, according to the firm.
The decision was revealed by Diane Greene, head of Google's cloud computing efforts, in a blog post related to Google's G Suite business. Privacy activists had criticized the practice of the automated scanning of incoming and outgoing e-mails as part of Google's deliver of personalized ads to end users.
"G Suite's Gmail is already not used as input for ads personalization, and Google has decided to follow suit later this year in our free consumer Gmail service," Greene wrote.
"Consumer Gmail content will not be used or scanned for any ads personalization after this change. This decision brings Gmail ads in line with how we personalize ads for other Google products."
GMail claims more than 1.2 billion users worldwide.
Rockstar Games has moved to reassure developers of PC game mods that publisher Take Two is unlikely to launch legal action against them.
Earlier this month, developers of a popular mod tool, OpenIV, suspended development after receiving a cease and desist letter from Take-Two Interactive. The tool allowed users to create modifications for the PC versions of Grand Theft Auto IV and Grand Theft Auto V single player mode. However, the legal letter sent to the developers claimed the tool could be used to defeat security features and modify the software in violation of Take-Two's rights.
Players then targeted the GTA games on Steam with torrents of bad reviews, and a Change.org petition in defence of OpenIV is approaching 80,000 signatures.
Rockstar Games responded in a post on its support forums that may reassure some developers of mods for their PC games.
After discussions with Take-Two, Take-Two has agreed that it generally will not take legal action against third-party projects involving Rockstar's PC games that are single-player, non-commercial, and respect the intellectual property (IP) rights of third parties. This does not apply to (i) multiplayer or online services; (ii) tools, files, libraries, or functions that could be used to impact multiplayer or online services, or (iii) use or importation of other IP (including other Rockstar IP) in the project.
Rockstar is also in contact with the developers of OpenIV on the issue of preventing people from using it to affect GTA Online, and an updated build of OpenIV has since been released.
Uber founder Travis Kalanick is resigning as chief executive officer under investor pressure, following a slew of controversies that rocked the ride-hailing firm.
The New York Times cites two anonymous sources close to Uber in reporting that Kalanick resigned as CEO on Tuesday from the company that he co-founded in 2009 and helped build into the global operation it is today. Investors had reportedly sent Mr Kalanick a letter demanding that he step aside.
"I love Uber more than anything in the world and at this difficult moment in my personal life I have accepted the investors request to step aside so that Uber can go back to building rather than be distracted with another fight," Mr. Kalanick said in a statement.
Kalanick will remain on Uber's board of directors. He had previously committed to changing Uber's corporate culture from the inside as the company experienced a slew of controversies.
Allegations of sexual harassment at Uber surfaced earlier this year prompting an internal investigation into the firm's culture. On top of that, a federal probe has been launched into 'Greyball', a software tool Uber is alleged to have used to help drivers avoid law enforcement or regulations.
Spotify is introducing Group Playlists for Messenger, allowing for a group to build playlists even if some of the group don't use Spotify.
You could use this new feature to build playlists for planned parties, for example, or just to keep up to date with new music that your friends hear.
Users can now create a Group Playlist, share it with their friends, and add songs to it directly within the Messenger app using the Spotify Chat Extension. Once a friend has created a Group Playlist, others in the conversation can add more songs directly through the Spotify Chat Extension, available by tapping the blue "+" icon next to the composer. They do not need to be on Spotify.
Starting today, Spotify is now available as a downloadable app from the Windows Store in all 60 countries it operates in.
It is available as a downloadable app from the Windows Store for Windows 10 (Anniversary Update or later) and for Windows 10 S. Of course, Spotify has been available as a 32-bit application for Windows for some time now, but the launch of Windows 10 S makes bringing popular apps to the Windows Store more important.
Windows 10 S is a feature-limited version of the operating system designed for low-end devices, with a nod toward the education market. Users can only install apps on Windows 10 S from the Windows Store.
Spotify beat rival iTunes to the Windows Store, with the latter projected to be available frop Microsoft's store later in the year.
Earlier this week, Spotify revealed it had reached 140 million users worldwide.
PayPal is beginning to roll-out instant transfers of funds to bank accounts, if the user is willing to accept a small transaction fee.
Sending money from PayPal to your bank account can easily take a day or more, which can be quite inconvenient for users looking for direct access to funds. Now, PayPal is working on making those transfers much faster to fend off competitors trying to lure away users.
PayPal users in the United States will soon be able to make "instant" transfers to bank accounts via eligible debit cards linked to their account. The funds will be in the bank account within a matter of minutes, and no more than thirty minutes, according to PayPal.
However, these speedier transactions do come at a cost in the form of a 25c transaction fee.
The feature is currently available in beta to select U.S. users of PayPal and will be made available to all U.S. users (with eligible Visa or Mastercard debit cards) in the coming weeks and months.
Unfortunately, PayPal hasn't made any comment on instant transfers to bank accounts for non-U.S. users just yet.
The ProtonMail team reveals a new free VPN service for everybody as it continues to make privacy and security an achievable goal for Internet users.
ProtonMail launched three years ago as the world's first publicly available end-to-end encrypted email service on the 25th anniversary of the web. The encrypted e-mail service was developed and launched through the efforts of scientists from CERN and MIT.
Citing the rollback of Obama-era Internet privacy rules in the United States, and the ongoing censorship experienced by over a billion Internet users worldwide, Proton Technologies has launched ProtonVPN. While there are paid options available, there is a permanent free tier also available.
Using the free service, a user's communications are routed through encrypted tunnels located in three countries, getting around most censorship and data monitoring efforts. The drawback is that the speed will be comparatively slow compared to the paid tiers, and is limited to use with only one device at a time.
A Basic plan for $4 per month ups it to 2 devices and improves speed, while a Plus plan for $8 per month bumps to 5 devices and offers the highest speed. The most expensive plan, the Visionary plan, allows for 10 devices and promises the highest speed.
The Chinese smartphone manufacturer OnePlus has released a new flagship smartphone. Company that has grown hugely over the past couple of years brings the new iteration of OnePlus smartphone to the market.
This time around the phone seems to take a lot of hints from iPhone design as well as hardware but brings its own flavor to this new design. Featuring a double camera sensor in the back, curved antenna lines, and smooth rounded edges makes the phone look a lot similar to the iPhone 7 Plus but there are definitely differences.
The camera is said to be even better with not only more megapixels (20+16) but also with huge investments in terms of software. To showcase this, OnePlus had a super popular model Emily Ratajkowski take six instagram pictures. The OnePlus 5 also features a 16 megapixel selfie shooter.
In terms of other specs there's nothing out of the ordinary. You have Snapdragon 835 which powers the likes of Galaxy S8, the trademark 5.5 inch Full HD Optic AMOLED display, fingerprint sensor in the home button, as well as huge amounts of RAM. Actually there are two versions, one with 6 gigs of RAM (and 64 gigs of storage) and one with massive 8 gigs of LPDDR4X RAM (and 128 gigs of storage).
Staffed by employees formerly of Microsoft, Nokia, Intel, Nvidia and Rovi, Varjo promises a dramatically improved VR experience.
Varjo (Finnish for 'Shadow') emerged from stealth today to detail its upcoming VR headset, codenamed "20|20", and the improvements it will offer on existing (and still pending) products from rivals in the space. It is selling its product as the world's first Human eye-resolution headmounted display.
With a dramatically improved effective resolution, Varjo is making big promises for its products in Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality and Mixed Reality (VR/AR/MR) realism, citing its patented technology that "replicates how the human eye naturally works, creating a super-high-resolution image to the users gaze direction."
While offering the same 100° field of view as Oculus and HTC's Vive, it bumps the effective resolution to 70 MP, from 1.2 MP.
"Varjo's patented display innovation pushes VR technology 10 years ahead of the current stateof-the-art, where people can experience unprecedented resolution of VR and AR content limited only by the perception of the human eye itself," said Urho Konttori, CEO and founder of Varjo Technologies.
"This technology, along with Varjo VST, jump-starts the immersive computing age overnight – VR is no longer a curiosity, but now can be a professional tool for all industries."
A legal threat from Take-Two has taken down the popular Open IV toolkit used to create mods for Grand Theft Auto titles on PC.
Open IV's Russian developers received a cease and desist letter earlier this month, and have decided to comply and take down the official download source for the popular toolkit.
First released in 2011 to modify the PC version of the mega-popular Grand Theft Auto IV, Open IV later added support for Grand Theft Auto V. It aided in the development of mods to the game, allowing enthusiasts to modify objects, models and textures.
The cease and desist letter, received by Good-NTS on June 5, claimed that the toolkit allowed third parties to defeat security features of its software and modify that software in violation Take-Two's rights. The developers said they do not have the time or energy to fight the claims in court.
Take-Two says it was not deliberately targeting single player mods, that instead the latest versions of Open IV enabled malicious mods allowing harassment of players and interfered with the GTA Online experience.
Supercell, the Finnish mobile game developer has been a force to be reckoned with for years on the iOS and Android app charts, has come up with a new game.
Currently leading the top grossing apps chart on iOS with not one but two games, the Supercell's Clash universe has probably never been more popular than after major updates to both Clash of Clans as well as last year's Clash Royale.
However, the company has been developing a new title that is almost ready to hit the global app market. The new game is called Brawl Stars and pits players in a battle arena with brawlers in their controls. These collectible and upgradable brawlers have their own strengths, weaknesses, and specialities, as you might imagine.
There are different modes, four to be exact, of combat but all of them put brawlers against each other. For example Smash & Grab is a 3v3 arena where each player controls one brawler. The winner is the team that collects fastest ten crystals that spawn in the center of the map and keep them for a period of time.
Supercell clearly has designed the game e-sport aspect in mind, and to showcase that the soft launch was done after a YouTube tournament between popular YouTubers, such as Chief Pat.
You remember that amazing video Amazon released when announcing their new product Amazon Go? People just walking in and out of a grocery store without having to stop at the register or even scan the items. Well, it seems that Amazon is getting more serious than just installing a few Go stores.
The company lead by Jeff Bezos has now buying Whole Foods, America's leading natural foods grocery store. The supermarket chain is known for its organic and natural foods, as well as products that avoid artificial preservatives and additives.
As you know organic food is not cheap, and Bezos had to shell out nearly 14 billion dollars for this shopping spree. Whole Foods has a total of 410 stores around the country.
As soon as the regulatory officials approve the deal, Amazon will pay $42 per share in an all-cash acquisition totaling $13.7 billion. The transaction is said to close before the year ends.
In addition to Amazon Go stores the online shopping giant is offering everyday grocery store items via its Prime Pantry.
It wouldn't be a surprise if Amazon tries to incorporate some Whole Foods products and services into its seemingly all-encompassing Prime umbrella. However, at this point the companies didn't reveal what they have in mind.
Atari surprised the gaming crowd at E3 by releasing a teaser trailer for something called Ataribox. What exactly was it supposed to tease about, no one really knew.
However, it certainly is a real product, and the CEO of Atari has come public to confirm that. The video showed close up shots of what seemed like a retro console with wood paneling, quite like the legendary Atari 2600 itself.
Atari CEO Fred Chesnais indeed confirms that the company is developing a new gaming device but details are otherwise scarce. He does say that it is a PC based gaming system, though, albeit not a surprise.
Even though we did see a sneak peek into that beautiful oak paneling – or whatever material it supposedly is – the device itself is not even close to being finished. The final design or features haven't been decided yet so it is no surprise that there aren't many details.
We'll just have to wait and see when Atari is ready to wow us like they did in 1977, right?
Spotify has been killing it for years. After a rough start for a couple of years not being able to gain the trust of the big record companies, especially in the US, it started to gain traction to never look back.
Now in 2017, however, Spotify has been challenged by perhaps the toughest player on the field. Apple came swinging with the new Apple Music streaming service roughly two years ago and has been investing heavily to grab some of Spotify's customers and maybe even overtake it.
After hitting 20 million subscribers last December, and 27 million this June, Apple Music has been indeed gaining customers. However, it is nowhere near Spotify and the gap is only widening.
Spotify has revealed that it is now serving music every month to over 140 million users, including the free tier. Unfortunately it doesn't tell us what part of the 140 million is paid Premium customers but from previous numbers we know that it is growing faster than Apple Music.
Just months after Apple hit 20 Spotify was celebrating the 50 million Premium subscribers. A year ago Spotify revealed it had 100 million total subscribers.
The world's leading video game conference E3, or Electronic Entertainment Expo, is currently going on in Los Angeles but we've already witnessed some of this years most important news. Amongst those was obviously Nintendo's press conference where it announced tons of new stuff especially for the new Switch console.
Let's take a look what they had to offer.
As said Nintendo focused on the new Switch console which can be used as a home console as well as a portable handheld console. Perhaps the most important of the releases was just a teaser. The company announced that it is working on a new Metroid title. Metroid Prime 4 will be available on Switch only but it is currently not known when this will happen.
Actually Nintendo announced two new Metroid games. The other one is called Metroid: Samus Returns which is a remake of an classic for 3DS.
Switch will get a tons of games, some of which are shown in the trailers below, later this year. These include a platformers Yoshi as well as Kirby 2 which lets you play co-op. Nintendo also announced the DLC for The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, a new Pokémon game, Xenoblade Chronicles 2, and Fire Emblem Warriors, all for Switch.
You might have to be born in the 80s to remember the computer brand but nonetheless one of the more legendary computer and video game companies that have existed on the planet might be coming back.
Even if you haven't ever played on a Atari system or a a game made by the company – although surely you've played Pong – you probably have seen a nostalgic gamer wearing a shirt with the logo. The company has quite a cult following within old school community and thus it is welcomed with much hype when a new Ataribox website was launched teasing a new product.
What is Ataribox exactly? Well, that is the one thing we do not know. The teaser only shows what seem to be close ups of what is the Ataribox. According to them it might be a replica of the Atari 2600 which is the source of the cult following. Some of the details look like they are from the epic wood paneling on the Atari 2600.
One possibility is definitely that it'll be a similar project as the recent NES Classic which stuffed Nintendo's classic games in a mini NES replica. In that case expect to play games like Blasteroids, Paperboy, Gauntlet, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Rampart, and Marble Madness.
Not long time ago Firefox was amongst the leading web browsers in the world. The software developed by Mozilla has however fallen quite far in usage and the reason is likely a rather underdeveloped technology.
Now Mozilla has announced a new version of Firefox that should bring the once great browser back with updated technology and improved speed. Newly released Firefox 54 uses a new Electrolysis technology that has been under development for a long while.
Electrolysis mimics a technology that made Google's Chrome browser pretty much an overnight success. It allows the browser tabs or processes to perform separately. One of the advantages of this technology is that when a website crashes your browser or slows it down you can regain control by killing that individual process.
Mozilla already brought the technology to Firefox platform last year but it was a half baked version. Now it should work on the browser as intended and is fully functional. You should expect more responsive UI and smoother performance.
Wow...! It is exactly 18 years now since our site was launched to public for the first time. Yes. Eighteen. In a world where thousands and thousands of new websites get launched each week and thousands of sites fold as well, it seems like an eternity. And how amazing these years have been..
Think about it. When our site launched back in June, 1999, most people were using Altavista for "googling" (yeah, Google had been launched, but it was still just "one of the search engines"), "social media" meant probably watching TV with your friends in your living room and idea of Netflix-style on-demand video service with thousands and thousands of movies and series seemed like a daydream after eating something unsuitable.
But yeah, here we are, still kicking. We've seen world change and our site change as well. Tech trends have appeared and disappeared - and we've tried to cover most of those during all these years.
But we have always had our loayl readership. You guys who visit our site regularly, read our news, share them, participate in comments, in forums and give us feedback. Because of you and your feedback, we have made it through all these years.
Russian security software firm Kaspersky has asked European regulators to investigate Microsoft over its practices related to Windows Defender.
The European Commission has confirmed it received the anti-trust complaint from the Russian company, which alleges that Microsoft pushes its own security products on Windows 10 users.
"These actions by Microsoft lead to a lower level of protection for users, a limitation on their right to choose, and financial losses both for users and security solution manufacturers," Kaspersky said in a statement, according to the BBC News website.
Microsoft says its security products comply with competition laws and that it would answer whatever questions the regulator has.
Kaspersky also filed complaints with regulators in Russia and Germany.
Sony has sold more than one million PlayStation VR headsets, according to an executive.
Atsushi Morita, President of Sony Interactive Entertainment, admitted that the sales figures so far have exceeded the firm's expectations.
PlayStation V4 can rely on a base of 50 million PS4 consoles sold so far, and also a much lower price point than its main competitors in the virtual reality space.
Sony's VR headset sells for $399, compared to Oculus Rift at $599 and HTC's Vive at $799.
"I believe that VR technology is the greatest innovation since the birth of television," said Morita. "VR allows you to travel to World Heritage Sites or to space while staying at home. It's like a time machine or a door to anywhere."
Apple had a big day yesterday in San Jose, CA. The Cupertino Goliath announced a multitude of platform updates, device upgrades, and even some new products. One thing that might have not caught everyone's eye as much, but yet is something most Apple users will be very familiar with, is the revamped App Store.
Apple said the new App Store user interface will modify how people use the store and bring a new fresh look. Major changes to user experience means that there's a new style to the whole app which can be found from some of the company's other apps (including Apple Music) as well as their new website.
The new App Store is divided into three tabs: Today, Games, and Apps. The first category introduces the user to exclusive premieres, recommendations, and new apps. Games are now also separate from other apps, which will bring more focus to the largest and most popular app category. In addition to the three main tabs, the store has Updates and Search tabs.
Apple CEO Tim Cook wasn't kidding when he said in the opening of the Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) yesterday that there's a lot to talk about. Skipping the typical recap of the year in numbers, Apple employees went straight on to updates and new products.
The day was mostly filled with operating system updates but there was surprisingly many product launches as well. Usually Apple only refreshes their Mac line and maybe touches on some niche products, like the Apple TV or Apple Watch, during the WWDC.
This time around the audience consisting largely of developers – it is a developer conference after all – witnessed quite a few new devices. In addition to unveiling the new Mac Pro and even a completely new HomePod, the company unwrapped the new and improved iPad Pro.
The smaller iPad Pro has grown from a 9.7 incher to a bigger and better 10.5 inch display. The size however has now budged as the company has managed to squeeze the bezels to incorporate the bigger display that hosts a new technology called ProMotion.
Even after this Apple managed to release a completely new product. Well, new to them. It is, of course, the anticipated HomePod.
For a while now it has been rumored that Apple was making a competitor to Amazon Echo, and the larger family of Alexa devices, and of course all the other voice assisted smart speakers. Obviously Apple thinks theirs is superior in every way, many of which might be true.
HomePod is a combination of seven speakers surrounding a subwoofer, and is controlled using voice only. Siri is listening with six microphones around the device. Apple claims that HomePod is smart enough to know its surroundings and optimize the music output to your living room, or whatever area it might be.
Apple has today announced the new version of the company's most important operating system. The operating system running on all iPhones and iPads updates to version number 11 within the upcoming months.
The iOS 11 comes with changes to both underlying technologies as well as features seen on the surface of the platform experience.
Apple has updated the Messages with a new iCloud synchronization which allows a better multi-platform and multi-device sync with automatic updates to message threads. First time ever you'll also be able to use Apple Pay within Messages to transfer money to another iPhone user with just a simple P2P transfering "message".
Siri has been enhanced with loads of machine learning which you will both hear and see whether it is the improved Siri voices expressing themselves in more nuanced way or the more contextual information provided. Siri also now can translate to five different languages and the SiriKit allows better voice command integration in third-party apps.
As you might imagine, Photos has been updated as well. One of the more important upgrades to Photos is the support for HEVC codec which means that videos use now half the storage. In addition Apple has replaced the very traditional JPEG format with a new and more efficient HEIF, which should also decrease the size by 50%. This should not affect the picture quality thanks to new algorithms.
Apple has finally, after years of pressure from professionals, answered the call to update their top-of-the-line Mac. The company unveiled a new Mac Pro, which this time around is a all-in-one computer.
The new Mac Pro is obviously the most powerful computer Apple has ever released and has more to offer than anything they've previously had. The base model includes a 5K Retina display, 8-core Xeon processor, Radeon Vega graphics, 32 GB ECC memory, a one terabyte SSD, and first time ever 10 Gb Ethernet connection. This starts at $4999.
You can upgrade the Mac Pro to up to 18 cores and Vega graphics up to 16GB of VRAM and 400GB per second of memory bandwidth. The ECC RAM goes up to 128 gigabytes and SSD can be upgraded to 4 TB. This obviously will cost, a lot.
The Mac Pro is an all-in-one product just like the iMacs but includes more I/O options, including four Thunderbolt 3 ports, and comes in a stealth-like dark silver color.
One piece of bad news for the people that have been waiting for this for years is that you'll have to wait a little bit more. Apple expect the new Mac Pro to ship in December.
Apple has unveiled the next update to the oldest Apple OS currently on the market. The update to macOS is called High Sierra – cue puns, Federighni – and will bring updates to almost all aspects of the OS.
Major updates include Safari update which makes it, according to the company, the fastest browser on the planet. This means that depending on the benchmark you can expect as much as 80% faster performance than Google Chrome.
Another big update is heading to Photos app. The new app includes updated organization and editing tools, a new side bar, and filtering option. The filtering gives you a faster search based on keywords, favorites, and media type. The app also has an automatic face recognition.
High Sierra also brings the first time ever a native VR support. The Industrial Light & Magic team demoed the feature with HTC Vive and Star Wars content. The new macOS uses the new Metal 2 graphics platform to render high quality VR in 90 frames per second.
There are also updates to many apps, including the Mail app, as well as the underlying file system, which has been now updated to a faster and more modern APFS.
High Sierra is available right now to developers willing to try the beta. All beta tester will get the update later this month through the beta tester program and the final version will ship free for all Sierra compatible Macs later on this fall.
Apple's keynote at the WWDC is currently ongoing but already the company has introduces the first major update to one of its many platforms. After a small update to Apple TV, Tim Cook passed the torch to Kevin Lynch to tell about Apple Watch.
Apple Watches get an update which is called watchOS 4. This update brings a variety of new watch faces, a major expansion to Siri capabilities, and updates to apps like Apple Music.
Siri now shows an information stream quite like Google Now on your Apple Watch. The new watch faces include kaleidoscope and Toy Story characters with fun animations.
The activity tracking has updated as well with more functionality and the Workout app has a brand new UI.
You get all this and more right now, that is if you update to Developer build. Or you could wait for the official release some time during fall.
Apple's annual Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) has been opened by Tim Cook. Cook started the keynote by telling how popular the developer community is currently but quickly moved on to updates about products.
The first product update announced by Tim Cook is for Apple TV. Apple has managed to make deals with Amazon and finally gets online shopping giant's video service on its platform.
This means that later this year Amazon Prime Video will be available on Apple TV with its thousands of movies and TV shows. This of course includes all the critically-acclaimed original shows, such as Man in the High Castle.
Apple did not reveal a date for update but as said earlier it will be coming before the end of the year.
A Mexican tribunal has upheld a ban on the import of Roku streaming devices in the country, citing piracy.
A Finnish startup by the name Ruuvi introduced its Bluetooth beacon project to the internet in a 
UEFA Champions League football matches will be streamed on Facebook from the coming football season, according to reports.
