A NYTimes blog reports that Jeff Bewkes, Time Warners chief executive, revealed that Warner Brothers will now release "on demand" videos (including iTunes rentals) on the same day as the DVD release. Historically, on-demand releases have tended to lag behind DVD releases by 30-45 days to avoid sales cannibalization.
When Steve Jobs announced the iTunes Rental store at Macworld this year, he acknowledged that the rentals would appear about 30 days after the DVD release. We later noticed, however, that some iTunes movie rentals had started appearing much earlier than the expected 30-day delay. As it turns out, Warner Brothers was experimenting with this approach for the last few months, and found that DVD rentals only fell by 3-5 percent while DVD sales actually increased when on-demand videos were offered earlier.
Mr. Bewkes boasted to investors that the shift from DVDs to digital distribution, on the "day and date" of DVD release, will be better for Warner Brothers because it will eliminate some of the costs of manufacturing and distributing discs.
This shift, of course, is good for customers who are given more flexibility in purchasing video content.
We've seen a lot of teasers about the Beats Studio Buds over the past month since they first showed up in Apple's beta software updates, and today they're finally official. The Beats Studio Buds are available to order today in red, white, and black ahead of a June 24 ship date, and they're priced at $149.99.
The Studio Buds are the first Beats-branded earbuds to truly compete with AirPods...
Thursday February 4, 2021 1:58 am PST by Tim Hardwick
Serif today announced across-the-board updates for its popular suite of Affinity creative apps, including Affinity Photo, Affinity Designer, and the Apple award-winning Affinity Publisher for Mac, all of which were among the first professional creative suites to be optimized for Apple's new M1 chip.
"After another year which saw record numbers of people switching to Affinity, it's exciting to...
As is tradition, Apple executives Craig Federighi and Greg Joswiak joined Daring Fireball's John Gruber in an episode of The Talk Show to discuss several announcements that Apple made over this weeks WWDC, including iPadOS 15, macOS Monterey, and a large focus around privacy.
Federighi kicks off the conversation discussing the common architecture, now thanks to Apple silicon, across all of...
The upcoming 14-inch MacBook Pro is set to be more expensive than the current 13-inch MacBook Pro and both the 14 and 16-inch models will offer the same performance, according to the leaker known as "Dylandkt."
The leaker shared the information on Twitter, explaining that both of the upcoming MacBook Pro models, expected to come in 14 and 16-inch sizes, will feature the same performance due...
Wednesday February 3, 2021 3:09 pm PST by Juli Clover
YouTube is planning to stop supporting its YouTube app on the third-generation Apple TV models, where YouTube has long been available as a channel option.
A 9to5Mac reader received a message about the upcoming app discontinuation, which is set to take place in March.Starting early March, the YouTube app will no longer be available on Apple TV (3rd generation). You can still watch YouTube on...
Google and the three major U.S. carriers, including Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile, will all support a new communications protocol on Android smartphones starting in 2022, a move that puts pressure on Apple to adopt a new cross-platform messaging standard and may present a challenge to iMessage.
Verizon recently announced that it is planning to adopt Messages by Google as its default messaging...
Wednesday August 25, 2021 3:55 am PDT by Tim Hardwick
Google has rolled out picture-in-picture support as an "experimental" feature for YouTube premium subscribers, allowing them to watch video in a small window when the app is closed.
If you're a premium YouTube subscriber looking to try out picture-in-picture, follow these steps: Launch a web browser and sign into your YouTube account at YouTube.com.
Navigate to www.youtube.com/new.
Scroll...
The iPhone 13 will feature low earth orbit (LEO) satellite communication connectivity to allow users to make calls and send messages in areas without 4G or 5G coverage, according to the reliable analyst Ming-Chi Kuo.
In a note to investors, seen by MacRumors, Kuo explained that the iPhone 13 lineup will feature hardware that is able to connect to LEO satellites. If enabled with the relevant...
Wednesday November 16, 2016 4:13 pm PST by Juli Clover
Twitter today introduced Snapchat-style QR codes, which are designed to make it easier to find and follow friends on the social network. Each Twitter QR code is unique to an individual Twitter user, so when scanned, it'll bring up the person's account.
To access your Twitter QR code, you'll need the official Twitter app for iOS. In the app, go to your profile, tap on the gear icon, and select...
Apple today seeded the sixth developer beta of macOS Monterey, the newest version of the macOS operating system. The sixth beta comes three weeks after Apple released the fifth macOS Monterey beta.
Registered developers can download the beta through the Apple Developer Center and once the appropriate profile is installed, betas will be available through the Software Update mechanism in...
Updates for Safari, FaceTime, and many other apps, Universal Control to let a single mouse or trackpad control multiple devices, new Shortcuts app, machine-learning Live Text detection and Visual Lookup, and more.
