Amazon

By MacRumors Staff

Amazon Articles

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CES 2024: Amazon Unveils Matter Casting Standard as Interoperable Alternative to AirPlay

Tuesday January 9, 2024 6:10 am PST by
Amazon today announced Matter Casting, an interoperable rival to Apple's AirPlay feature, at CES 2024 (via Bloomberg). Matter Casting will initially only support streaming content from Amazon's Prime Video app to Echo Show devices, but the feature will support Fire TV in the coming months. Later in the year, it will work across a range of other video services, including Plex, Starz, Pluto...
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Amazon Prime Video to Feature Ads From January 29, With $2.99 Fee to Avoid Them

Wednesday December 27, 2023 3:15 am PST by
Amazon Prime Video will introduce limited ads to its content starting on January 29, offering an ad-free option for an additional fee. In an email to subscribers, Amazon confirmed that movies and TV shows on Prime Video will soon feature "limited advertisements" starting on January 29, 2024. The company assured users that Prime Video will have "meaningfully fewer ads than linear TV and other ...
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Amazon Adds Support for Passkeys, Allowing for More Secure Logins

Monday October 23, 2023 7:00 pm PDT by
Amazon today announced that it has added passkey support to its desktop sites and mobile apps, allowing customers to sign in to their accounts without the need for a password. Passkeys are a more secure alternative to passwords because a passkey cannot be shared with another person through a phishing attempt or leaked online through a database hack. Passkeys do not require customers to...
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Amazon Announces Alexa With Generative AI, New Echo Devices, eero Max 7 With Wi-Fi 7 Support and More

Wednesday September 20, 2023 3:26 pm PDT by
Amazon today hosted an event to introduce a range of new devices and services across its brands, from an updated version of the Alexa voice assistant to new Echo, Ring, and Eero products. Amazon previewed a future version of Alexa, which is based on generative AI to compete with OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Microsoft’s Bing, Google’s Bard, and more. Amazon says that its large language model has...
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Apple Warns Amazon About Sexually Explicit Kindle Content Accessible to Children

Tuesday April 18, 2023 3:34 pm PDT by
Both Apple and Alphabet have asked Amazon to improve content moderation for its Kindle app after it was found that children could use the app to access sexually explicit images, reports Reuters. Amazon's Kindle platform sells adult-oriented books that include photographs that are not suitable for children, with the content first discovered by parents who contacted Reuters. The parents had...
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Amazon Bringing Matter to Echo Devices, But No iOS Support Until Early Next Year

Thursday November 3, 2022 7:52 am PDT by
Amazon today announced that it will be updating 17 of its Echo devices to support the new Matter smart home standard over Wi-Fi next month, according to The Verge. The phased rollout will initially only be supported on Android and allow those Echo devices to serve as controllers only for plugs, bulbs, and switches. Amazon's Matter support will expand early next year to include iOS devices and...
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Amazon Gives Prime Subscribers Access to 100 Million Songs

Tuesday November 1, 2022 4:07 pm PDT by
Amazon today announced an expansion of Amazon Music, which is now available almost in full to Amazon Prime subscribers. Amazon is providing Amazon Prime users with access to the full catalog of 100 million Amazon Music songs, up from the original two million songs that were available. Amazon Prime subscribers are not getting unlimited on-demand access to Amazon Music tracks, but the full...
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Amazon to Permanently Disable Cloud Cam, Offers Affected Customers a Free Blink Mini and/or Echo

Friday May 27, 2022 2:05 pm PDT by
Amazon today announced that it is dropping support for its Cloud Cam indoor security camera, which launched in 2017. In an email, Amazon said customers will no longer be able to use the Cloud Cam and all companion apps starting December 2, 2022. Cloud Cam users will be able to download any video recordings until December 2, 2022, at which point all video history will be deleted, according to ...
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Amazon Freevee Service Now Available on Apple TV

Monday May 16, 2022 9:41 am PDT by
Amazon Freevee, aka the ad-supported video service that used to be called IMDb TV, now has an app that's available on the App Store for the Apple TV (via Variety). According to Amazon's website, Freevee is an ad-supported streaming video service that is available in the United States. It is separate from Amazon Prime Video, which requires an Amazon Prime subscription, and it is entirely free ...
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Amazon Hints at Extended-Reality Device as Apple Readies Mixed-Reality Headset

Tuesday April 19, 2022 7:38 am PDT by
Amazon is seemingly working on an extended-reality (XR) device that could rival similar efforts from Apple, Meta, Google, and Samsung, according to several job listings. Concept render of Apple's mixed-reality headset by Ian Zelbo, based on purported leaked information According to a number of job listings spotted by protocol, Amazon has been looking to fill senior roles for computer vision...
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Amazon Set to Increase Prime Membership Fee By 17% for US Customers

Friday February 4, 2022 1:21 am PST by
Amazon is increasing its Prime membership subscription prices in the U.S., the company has revealed in its Q4 2021 earnings results. According to the company, the fee for a Prime subscription is set to increase for the first time in four years, rising to $15 per month (up from $13), or $139 per year (up from $119). The price hike, representing an almost 17% increase, will go into effect...
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Amazon's EC2 Service to Offer M1 Mac Mini Instances for Faster Build Times

Thursday December 2, 2021 8:43 am PST by
Amazon today announced that its Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) service is now offering a "preview" of M1 Mac mini instances in the Amazon Web Services (AWS) regions of U.S. East and U.S. West, with other regions to be available when the instances are fully released. An "instance" is a virtual server available for rent through Amazon's EC2 service for running apps on AWS infrastructure....
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Amazon Launches Prime Video App for Mac

Monday November 15, 2021 8:05 am PST by
Amazon today introduced a native macOS app for its Amazon Prime Video service, with the app now available from the Mac App Store. Prime Video subscribers can stream content using the new app, or download content on Macs for offline viewing. All Amazon Prime content is available through the Mac app. Picture-in-Picture and AirPlay are both supported features that work with Amazon's new app, ...
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Amazon TVs to Support AirPlay 2 and HomeKit

Wednesday October 27, 2021 7:40 am PDT by
Amazon's Omni and 4-Series Fire TVs will support AirPlay 2 and HomeKit in a future update, the company has announced (via The Verge). Amazon's Omni and 4-Series Omni TVs launch today, featuring 4K HDR, voice controls with Amazon Alexa, and close integration with the Fire TV user experience. Upon the launch of the new TVs, Amazon today announced that it plans to add support for ‌AirPlay‌ 2...
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Amazon Announces 'Astro' Home Robot, Echo Show 15, Apple Fitness+ Competitor and More

Tuesday September 28, 2021 10:35 am PDT by
Amazon today held a media event that saw the introduction of a slew of new products, ranging from an in-home Alexa robot to a new fitness service that mimics Apple Fitness+. We've rounded up all of Amazon's most interesting announcements below. Astro Household Robot Astro is an Alexa-integrated home robot that can monitor the home, help users keep in touch with family, and more. Astro can...
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Windows Microsoft Store Adds Support for Alternate App Stores Like Epic Games

Tuesday September 28, 2021 9:38 am PDT by
Microsoft today announced that it is opening up the Microsoft Store for Windows to third-party storefront apps, including the Epic Games Store and the Amazon Appstore. Epic and Amazon's stores will be discoverable on the Microsoft Store for Windows and can be downloaded like any other app. As a reason for the change, Microsoft said that it wants to ensure that its "business terms are fair"...
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'Fakespot' Removed From Apple's App Store After Complaint From Amazon [Updated]

Friday July 16, 2021 2:37 pm PDT by
Fakespot, which is known for analyzing reviews from popular websites to determine their accuracy, today had its iOS app removed from Apple's App Store. According to The Verge, Amazon sent Apple a takedown request, which led to the app being pulled. Fakespot's iOS app just launched in June, and it was designed to allow users to log into Amazon and buy items while using the Fakespot engine to...
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AirPlay 2 and HomeKit Available on 2020 Toshiba and Insignia Fire TVs

Wednesday July 14, 2021 10:22 am PDT by
Apple's AirPlay 2 and HomeKit features have been rolling out to a number of smart TVs, and as of today, the functionality is available on 2020 Toshiba and Insignia 4K UHD Smart Fire TVs. ‌AirPlay‌ 2 is designed to allow iPhone, iPad, and Mac users to stream content to an AirPlay-compatible device, and with built-in support in Toshiba and Insignia TVs, an Apple TV is not required to use ‌AirPl...
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Apple and Amazon Under Investigation in Spain for Possible Anti-Competitive Practices

Friday July 2, 2021 2:27 am PDT by
Apple and Amazon are facing antitrust disciplinary proceedings in Spain for possible restrictive competition practices around the sale of Apple products, it has emerged. In a >press release, the country's National Commission on Markets and Competition (CNMC) said it had initiated the proceedings against both companies for "possible anti-competition practices in the sectors of Internet sales...
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Amazon to Acquire MGM for $8.45 Billion Amid Competition With the Likes of Netflix and Apple TV+

Wednesday May 26, 2021 7:11 am PDT by
Amazon today announced it has reached an agreement with MGM to acquire the entertainment company for $8.45 billion, following a report last year that claimed MGM had reached out to Apple to gauge interest in a potential acquisition. The acquisition of MGM will likely bolster Amazon Prime Video's catalog of movies and TV shows amid increasing competition from the likes of Netflix, Disney+,...