Month: June 2024

AT&T announces up to $20/mo. price increase for older ‘Unlimited’ plans

CompuScoop Staff June 20, 2024 0

AT&T has announced that it’s increasing the monthly charge on most of its retired unlimited wireless plans. AT&T says that this change will allow the carrier “to provide additional benefits to your plan and continue to deliver the great wireless service you expect.” Starting in August 2024, AT&T subscribers will see the relevant price change reflected on your August bill.

• If you have a single line of service on your plan, your monthly plan charge will increase by $10.

• If you have multiple lines on your plan, your monthly plan charge will increase by a total of $20. This is the total monthly increase, not per line increase.

AT&T adds that subscribers will be getting added high-speed data and hotspot data, and they can continue to enjoy your existing benefits, including unlimited talk, text, and data in and between the U.S., Mexico, and Canada, and “AT&T ActiveArmor” mobile security.

Apple TV+ debuts trailer for ‘Lady in the Lake’ series, starring Natalie Portman

Apple Inc June 20, 2024 1

[caption id="" align="alignright" width="660"] Via: Apple TV+[/caption]

Apple TV+ this week unveiled the trailer for “Lady in the Lake,” the upcoming, seven-part limited series starring Academy Award and Golden Globe Award winner Natalie Portman, who also serves as executive producer, and Emmy Award nominee Moses Ingram. The series is created and directed by Alma Har’el. “Lady in the Lake” will make its global debut on Apple TV+ with the first two episodes on Friday, July 19, 2024, followed by new episodes every Friday through August 23, 2024.

When the disappearance of a young girl grips the city of Baltimore on Thanksgiving 1966, the lives of two women converge on a fatal collision course. Maddie Schwartz (Portman) is a Jewish housewife seeking to shed a secret past and reinvent herself as an investigative journalist, and Cleo Johnson (Ingram) is a mother navigating the political underbelly of Black Baltimore while struggling to provide for her family. Their disparate lives seem parallel at first, but when Maddie becomes fixated on Cleo’s mystifying death, a chasm opens that puts everyone around them in danger. From visionary director Alma Har’el, “Lady in the Lake” emerges as a feverish noir thriller and an unexpected tale about the price women pay for their dreams.

Starring alongside Portman and Ingram in the series are Y’lan Noel, Brett Gelman, Byron Bowers, Noah Jupe, Josiah Cross, Mikey Madison and Pruitt Taylor Vince.

Hailing from FIFTH SEASON, “Lady in the Lake” is produced by Crazyrose and Bad Wolf America, and is created, executive produced, written and directed by Har’el alongside producing partner Christopher Leggett. In addition to starring, Portman serves as executive producer alongside producing partner Sophie Mas. Nathan Ross and the late Jean-Marc Vallée serve as executive producers for Crazyrose, and Julie Gardner executive produces for Bad Wolf America. Layne Eskridge, Amy Kaufman, Boaz Yakin and author Lippman also executive produce. The soundtrack is composed by Marcus Norris, the founder and artistic director of the South Side Symphony. The live performances are composed and produced by the critically acclaimed Bekon, a Grammy-nominated producer known for his work on Kendrick Lamar’s albums “DAMN.” and “Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers.”

Apple TV+ offers premium, compelling drama and comedy series, feature films, groundbreaking documentaries, and kids and family entertainment, and is available to watch across all of a user’s favorite screens. After its launch on November 1, 2019, Apple TV+ became the first all-original streaming service to launch around the world, and has premiered more original hits and received more award recognitions faster than any other streaming service in its debut. To date, Apple Original films, documentaries and series have earned 494 wins and 2,165 award nominations and counting, including multi-Emmy Award-winning comedy “Ted Lasso” and historic Oscar Best Picture winner “CODA.”

Apple Intelligence marks a step into a new technological era

CompuScoop Staff June 20, 2024 2

Apple Intelligence is the personal artificial intelligence system for iPhone, iPad, and Mac that combines the power of generative AI models with personal context to deliver intelligence that’s incredibly useful and relevant.

Apple Intelligence is deeply integrated into iOS 18, iPadOS 18, and macOS Sequoia. It harnesses the power of Apple silicon to understand and create language and images, take action across apps, and draw from personal context to simplify and accelerate everyday tasks.

With Private Cloud Compute, Apple sets a new standard for AI privacy, with the ability to flex and scale computational capacity between on-device processing and larger, server-based models that run on dedicated Apple Silicon servers.

A.I. models are measured on their number of “parameters,” or the variables adjusted during the training process; while OpenAI’s GPT-4 has more than one and a half trillion parameters, Apple’s model has three billion. For queries that require more horsepower, users will be offered the option to outsource a task via the cloud to ChatGPT, via a corporate licensing deal that is reportedly not in exchange for a fee but for exposure for OpenAI. In other words, there’s no Apple-made superintelligent thinking machine — at least not yet…

I suppose we should be celebrating the fact that Apple hasn’t entered the A.I. arms race full throttle. Google’s rush to keep pace with Microsoft’s A.I. developments has already resulted in the accelerated decay of Google Search tools. But I had a less sanguine reaction to the W.W.D.C. AppleIntelligence, a small model that could eventually be nestled on more than a billion iPhones around the world, crosses a kind of Rubicon: A.I. is entering our personal lives, and once it’s there it’s not likely to retreat…

Over the past two decades, Apple has succeeded in integrating iPhones into all of the mundane tasks of our daily lives: contacting friends, navigating places, sending work e-mails, making payments. Its introduction of AppleIntelligence marks a step into a new technological era—call it the domestication of generative A.I.… The A.I. technology that Apple is demonstrating may not be the most powerful out there, but it sends a powerful message that A.I. belongs in every corner of our lives…

We will rapidly enter a world in which we don’t know whether a text message was written by the person sending it or by Apple Intelligence, a world in which our phones help shape who we’re in touch with and how we recall our own memories.

Via: The New Yorker

Apple launches new (Mac) website

Dan Uff June 19, 2024 1

Apple has launched a new Mac website that’s designed to help potential customers find their ideal Mac. Apple’s “Help Me Choose” site asks users a few simple questions and then suggests the best Mac for that customer.

Via: MacRumors.com:

Questions include what the Mac will be used for, necessary day-to-day essentials, info on the user’s creative pursuits, the need for portability, which peripherals will be used, and budget.

Apple’s algorithm for suggesting a Mac takes all of these factors into account, and it doesn’t just present buyers with base configurations. It suggests upgrades to memory and storage that would be useful, and it will also present options if your selected budget is a little flexible.