Month: December 2017

Apple Buys Shazam Music Service for an unknown amount

CompuScoop Staff December 11, 2017 0

Early Monday, Apple confirmed that it is acquiring Shazam, the popular app that identifies any song, TV show, movie, or ad by listening to a few seconds of it.

“We are thrilled that Shazam and its talented team will be joining Apple,” Apple spokesperson Tom Neumayr said in a statement to BuzzFeed News. “Since the launch of the App Store, Shazam has consistently ranked as one of the most popular apps for iOS. Today, it’s used by hundreds of millions of people around the world, across multiple platforms.”

“Apple Music and Shazam are a natural fit, sharing a passion for music discovery and delivering great music experiences to our users,” Neumayr continued. “We have exciting plans in store, and we look forward to combining with Shazam upon approval of today’s agreement.”

A spokesperson for Shazam also confirmed the acquisition.

Apple Park estimated to cost $5 Billion to build

CompuScoop Staff December 9, 2017 0

“The ‘spaceship’ of Silicon Valley has landed in Cupertino, but the question remains: How much did it cost to build? Construction data and analytics startup BuildZoom estimated in October that the new Apple campus cost more than $1.1 billion, based on the building permits,” Seung Lee reports for The Mercury News. “But longtime Santa Clara County Assessor Larry Stone estimates that costs for the iPhone maker’s shiny new campus far exceeded BuildZoom’s estimate, and may be closer to $5 billion — or just about the cost of 5 million iPhone X’s.”

“Apple could not be reached for comment on the cost. Stone said the nearly $4 billion discrepancy between his new estimate and BuildZoom’s earlier figure for Apple Park’s construction cost highlights a common misunderstanding of how building permits work and what their purpose is,” Lee reports. “Building permits are just a preliminary road map to how much a construction project may cost before the first shovel is turned. They don’t include the costs for labor, overtime, additional materials and redesign, all of which add significantly to the final tab.”

“Apple Park’s exact construction costs will be factored into the final assessed property value, which has not yet been completed,” Lee reports. “The last time the Assessor’s Office released estimated Apple Park construction costs was September 2016, when it put the figure at $1.6 billion for costs up to January 1 of that year. But Stone now estimates the construction cost will likely be $5 billion. The Assessor’s Office said Apple Park’s final assessed value — the basis for the tax bill for the new campus — may be less than its final construction costs. That’s because certain materials and constructed goods may be valuable only to Apple and can’t factor into the assessed value, which also considers the fair market value of the property.”

Read more in the full article here.

Apple’s Phil Schiller tries to ease fears about Face ID and 3rd party developers

CompuScoop Staff December 9, 2017 0

“Apple’s had a big year. The highlight was the introduction of the iPhone X, the ten year anniversary phone that said goodbye to the iconic Home button and is Apple’s template for smartphones in the next decade,” Erwin van der Zande reports for Bright.nl. “But does the entire industry agree, like it did with the original iPhone 10 years ago, or is it just Apple?”

“I can ask this [of] Phil Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing,” van der Zande reports. “Schiller points out a couple of features… The first one is Face ID, the new security technology that enables users to unlock the iPhone X with their face. ‘Ultimately what we are doing there is making privacy security even easier to do so that we all want to do it,’ says Schiller. According to Apple, Face ID is much safer than it’s predecessor Touch ID, that unlocks iPhones with a fingerprint. Schiller has a quick answer to the commentary that other smartphone makers had a face or iris recognition before Apple did: ‘They all stink.'”

I think we’ve worked really hard to maintain the trust we have with users about how this information technology is and isn’t used. First of all, no Face ID data goes to third parties. So what you enroll with Face ID, what you use to unlock your phone, that’s an algorithm that is created and encrypted by the Secure Enclave. No third party that uses the iPhone camera has your Face ID data. We did create an API so developers can use the cameras to track facial movements, to do things like wrap stickers on your face (like Snapchat, ed.) That’s different than Face ID. They don’t have all the acces that Face ID has for that. — Phil Schiller

Much more in the full article here.

Apple under fire for Siri’s response to Sexual Harassment

CompuScoop Staff December 9, 2017 0

“‘I’d blush if I could’ is not the response you’d expected to hear when you tell Siri she’s a slut — but it is,” Leah Fessler writes for Quartz at Work. “In February, months before the #MeToo movement erupted, I ran an experiment in which I sexually harassed Apple’s Siri, Amazon’s Alexa, Microsoft’s Cortana, and Google’s Google Home to document how these digital personal servants — whose names and voices are already feminized — peddle stereotypes of female subservience, putting their ‘progressive’ parent companies in a moral predicament.”

“Amazon tells Quartz At Work that in spring of this year, it created a ‘disengagement mode’ for Alexa, in response to ‘customer and engagement feedback,'” Fessler writes. “In Alexa’s new engagement model for sexually explicit questions, she either responds ‘I’m not going to respond to that,’ or ‘I’m not sure what outcome you expected.'”

“Apple, Amazon, Google, and Microsoft have a business incentive to give their bots default feminine voices — various scientific studies have shown that the majority of users prefer female voices. But there’s no reason, apart from the notorious sexism of Silicon Valley, that these bots should be programed to literally flirt with abuse,” Fessler writes. “I had to repeat ‘you’re sexy’ eight times in a row before Siri told me to ‘stop.’ (The other bots never directly told me to lay off.)”

Read more in the full article here.