Let’s hope this is the start of a real inquiry into the regional monopolies that the cable companies have enjoyed for far too long.
Nathan Ingraham on the new Paramount app for Xbox:
As with most of the other Xbox 360 media-playing apps, you’ll need an Xbox Live Gold membership, and you’ll also need to get Paramount and UltraViolet accounts set up (if you’re planning to purchase). Of course, the movies are still quite pricey (most films are $19.99 for the HD version, though rental prices are a bit more in-line with the rest of the market), and the app won’t play any UltraViolet movies you may have purchased from other studios. You also can’t buy or rent anything directly from the app itself — you’ll have to do all of that on your computer.
Sounds wonderful. I’m confused — do studios think that people care which studio the films they watch came from? Why would anyone use this app over Xbox’s built-in movie store? Why would anyone use this, period?
And man oh man is UltraViolet a turd.
Anyone else find it very odd that Apple is commenting on these future, unreleased products at all? Given the backlash, I could see them *maybe* hinting about something with the Mac Pro, but the iMac? They’re effectively torpedoing sales of that product until next year. Very odd.
Update: Apple has clarified that while they (Tim Cook, no less) are on record as saying the Mac Pro will be updated next year, they actually have nothing to say about the iMac. This could mean the iMac will see an update sooner — or that they want don’t want to set expectations of the device (which is much more popular than the Mac Pro), potentially hurting sales.
The new status bar in iOS 6 is actually not blue, which you might think from looking at Apple’s keynote, but adaptive to whichever color the app uses. It uses the tintColor set on the navigation bar. Nice find by iOS developer Simon Ljungberg.
Great discovery.
