Hasta La Gadget!

We’re used to Apple’s CEO teasing product strategies at D Conferences, but not staffing changes. And yet, here we are: Tim Cook has revealed at D11 that former Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson is joining Apple to coordinate the firm’s drive toward eco-friendliness. While there are few specifics at this stage, including Jackson’s title, we know that she’ll report directly to Cook. There’s certainly no shortage of tasks for her to handle: along with Apple’s shift toward renewable energy sources, she also has to worry about the environmental impact of the products themselves.

Filed under: Cellphones, Laptops, Tablets, Apple

Comments

This week in an interview with Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher at the D11 conference, Apple CEO Tim Cook had a bit to say about Google’s wearable product: Glass. Having been asked what his take was on wearables by Swisher, Cook responded: “I think wearables [are] incredibly interesting. It could be a profound area.” His reply on Google Glass specifically wasn’t quite so optimistic.

According to Cook, “there are some positives in the product.” Responding to a query on Google Glass, Cook continued,”It’s probably likely to appeal to certain vertical markets, [but] the likelihood that it has broad appeal is hard to see.” Mossberg continued the line of questioning by asking “is wearables a thing? Is part of the post-PC era wearables that go beyond fitness devices?”

“There are lots of gadgets in the space. I would say that the ones that are doing more than one thing, there’s nothing great out there that I’ve seen. Nothing that’s going to convince a kid that’s never worn glasses or a band or a watch or whatever to wear one. At least I haven’t seen it. So there’s lots of things to solve in this space.” – Tim Cook

Cook added that this area was “ripe for exploration,” and “ripe for us to get excited about,” noting that “lots of companies” will be joining in. Pushed by Swisher to say whether or not Apple bill be one of them, Cook made it clear, “I don’t want to answer that one.”

On the subject of wearables, Cook continued by noting how his glasses – non-smart though they were – were not something he’d wear if he didn’t have to. “I think from a mainstream point of view, glasses are risky.” It was clear that Cook’s interest in wearables wasn’t about to be tied directly to Apple products that hadn’t been announced yet, but that the company wouldn’t be left out of the movement.

VIA: The Verge
SOURCE: AllThingsD

Tim Cook suggests Google Glass “broad appeal is hard to see” is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Apple’s head honcho Tim Cook is chatting up Android’s growth explosion, and it turns out he’s not flustered. “Do I look at that? Of course, I don’t have my head stuck in the sand,” said Cook.” But for us, winning has never been about having the most.” Instead, he stands by the old Apple line of quality versus quantity. “Arguably, we make the best PC, but we don’t make the most,” he added. “We made the best music player, and we wound up making the most — but we didn’t initially.”

Rather than focus on install base, Cupertino’s chief turned to usage stats to illustrate their supremacy, noting that their slates are the most popular for browsing the web. “You can look at tablet web market share in North America,” Cook said. “Almost every study I see has the iPad in the 80s (percentage).” Before even broaching the subject of Google’s mobile OS, Cook cited NetApp figures that show 59 percent of worldwide web traffic from smartphones and tablets comes from iOS devices. We’re sure the folks in Mountain View are content with quantity, though we’d hazard a guess they enjoy quality as well.

Update: We’ve slotted in a video clip of Tim Cook responding to the ballooning Android market share after the break.

Follow along with our D11 liveblog right here.

Filed under: Mobile, Apple

Comments

YouTube has slowly added effects and different things users can add to their videos, allowing them to edit them from within YouTube while retaining all the comments, URL, and such that are already applied to the video. Today the video hosting service added a new feature to Enhancements – Slow Motion. Says the announcement, this feature allows users to slow down videos, giving the appearance they were filmed with a slo-mo camera.

Unlike some slow motion effects added by software, this YouTube effect is smooth, and results in a video that appears to have been recorded at about 120fps, with the exception being that it retains the audio (likewise slowing it down), while some consumer-level cameras won’t capture audio in slo-mo mode. Obviously, poorer quality videos won’t handle the effect as well as better quality ones, but nonetheless it is very smooth.

Whether you want to make a pseudo “300″ styled video or you just want to slow down the precious moments when someone takes a ball to the face, the feature is available for content creators to use now. The feature can be accessed in in the Enhancements tool (Video Manager -> Enhancements), as well as the YouTube Editor, whichever you prefer to use. The video to which you want to apply it must already be uploaded.

This follows an announcement on May 16 that YouTube will be expanding its Live Streaming feature to more accounts, which must meet specific requirements. Users who want to Live Stream must have their account in good standing across the board, as well as having 1000 subscribers on the account. Users can find out if their account is eligible under “Live Events” in Account Features.

Also this month, YouTube launched paid subscriptions on May 9, something we’d been hearing about before that. Thus far the launch is being done as a pilot program, giving the feature to 53 channels, including National Geographic TV and Comedy.TV. Such channels offers a two week free trial and a $0.99 monthly subscription rate (or higher, depending on the channel).

SOURCE: YouTube Creators Blog

YouTube adds slow-motion video effect feature is written by Brittany Hillen & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Optoma offers you their latest DLP projector, the W304M. Aimed at business market, this 3D-ready projector provides 1280 x 800 WXGA resolution, 3100 ANSI lumens brightness, 10,000:1 contrast ratio and up to 5,000 hours of lamp life (Eco Mode). It also comes with a built-in 1W mono speaker and a number of connectivity ports including HDMI, D-sub, S-Video, Composite and Stereo Mini Jack. The W304M sells for $849. [Optoma]