by Dan Moren

June 3, 2021 7:31 AM PT

Twitter Blue subscription launches in Australia, Canada

Twitter:

Starting today, we will be rolling out our first iteration of Twitter Blue in Australia and Canada. Our hope with this initial phase is to gain a deeper understanding of what will make your Twitter experience more customized, more expressive, and generally speaking more 🔥.

A handful of assorted premium features, including bookmark folders (meh), undo-able tweets (ooh), a better thread reader (hmmm), and customizable app icons (¯_(ツ)_/¯). It’s launching in Canada and Australia first, for $3.49 CAD/$4.49 AUD per month, with more countries to come.

This has been rumored for a while, with Twitter feature sleuth Jane Manchun Wong first posting about it a few weeks back, including a supposed U.S. price tag of $2.99/month, which is pretty squarely in between those international prices.

Twitter making a play for direct subscription revenue isn’t surprising, given that everybody seems to be getting into the direct payment sphere, and this is essentially free money for the company.

But what is interesting is one thing that you won’t get with Twitter Blue: an ad-free experience. Advertising is still the biggest chunk of Twitter’s revenue, and they’re not going to replace that with direct subscriptions anytime soon.

It’ll be interesting to see what the pickup of this is: undo-able tweets seems like the most attractive part of the package; it’s not quite the long sought-after Edit button, but it’s the closest there is right now, and I imagine some will feel miffed that it’s behind a paywall—though others will be all too happy to shell out for the feature.

Twitter says it’ll add more features to Twitter Blue in months to come. There is currently no date for its launch in the U.S.

by Jason Snell

May 28, 2021 1:36 PM PT

Inline Markdown links

Speaking of John Gruber, he wrote about Markdown links today:

I know inline links [like this](http://example.com/) are overwhelmingly more popular with Markdown users, but I personally much prefer the reference style for exactly the reason Quinn does. The inline style is easier, and I’d never argue against laziness as a virtue, but the reference style is just so much more readable.

I write exclusively in Markdown and with a few exceptions¹, I use the “lazy” style of inline linking. I get the idea that writing Markdown links as if they were footnotes is more readable. It’s nice not to have long URLs in the middle of a sentence.

But when I’m writing, pasting in URLs as I’m typing not only matches the way it’s done in HTML, it also allows me to keep my writing flow as much as possible. I type the text, I paste the link, and I keep writing. Naming a link, moving down, adding a link line, and then returning up to where I was—it breaks the flow.

When I’m editing stories in Markdown, I also prefer to see the URLs inline because it allows me to verify that the right words are hyperlinked, and that they’re connected to the right URL. It’s easy to mess that stuff up. (Occasionally I even see Markdown leaking on Daring Fireball, due to a misnamed link reference.)

I’m glad Markdown does both, but I’m pretty dedicated to the inline link method.

by Jason Snell

May 28, 2021 1:13 PM PT

The smart TV business model

Via Daring Fireball comes this Engadget story about TV-maker Vizio’s finances:

Issuing its first public earnings report earlier today, the company revealed that in the first three months of 2021, profits from its Platform+ business — the part that sells viewer data and advertising space via the SmartCast platform — were $38.4 million…

Its device business (the part that sells TVs, sound bars and the like) had a gross profit of $48.2 million in the same period, up from $32.5 million last year. While the hardware business has significantly more revenue, profits from data and advertising spiked 152 percent from last year, and are quickly catching up.

When I was pondering the role of Apple’s TV hardware earlier this year, one statement I kept hearing (with no evidence) was that the makers of smart TVs and set-top boxes don’t actually make money on their hardware. The story, which is a riff on “if you aren’t paying for it, you’re the product,” generally goes that the hardware is sold at a loss or break-even and then the profits come based on nefarious sales of personal data.

The truth, like life, is more complicated. Vizio has made its money up to now primarily from selling hardware for profit. However, Vizio also now uses ad revenue and revenue from data collection—from a platform that’s turned on by default on all of its TVs—to supplement its income, and that piece is growing rapidly.

Few companies can resist an area of rapid revenue growth—witness Apple’s aggressive focus on services revenue. Given the growth rate of data and advertising sales at Vizio, I’d expect that every single product in this space (with the possible exception of Apple TV) will make every effort to increase tracking, advertising, and overall post-sale monetization of customers. The customer experience will degrade. At least you can opt out of most of this stuff—but that requires a level of trust that will also be eroded by a company’s increased focus on enhancing ad and data revenues.

So no, they’re not giving away this stuff and making it up on data sales and advertising. But it’s probably only a matter of time before those revenue streams eclipse all others. I’d need a lot of convincing—including from experts who have tested what network traffic is transmitted after you opt out—before I’d agree to have a device like that hooked up in my home.

by Jason Snell

May 27, 2021 8:42 AM PT

Inside Apple’s new palazzo in Rome

If you, like me, are generally uninterested in loving photo tours of new Apple retail locations, make an exception for Federico Viticci’s story about Apple’s new store in Rome:

The unique combination of tradition and modernity based on the harmonious contrast between old and new – a recurring theme throughout the whole Via del Corso experience – is tangible and thoughtful. You’re in a palazzo that was built in 1880, looking at paintings from the early 1900s and graffiti from 1950, all while browsing around tables featuring M1 iPad Pros and colorful iMacs. Somehow, it all works together and it’s stunning to see in person.

Not only are the photos (by Silvia Gatta) amazing, but Federico manages to weave in some fun Roman anecdotes. Come for the sword fight, stay for the fast-food pizza.

by Dan Moren

May 26, 2021 6:18 AM PT

Amazon to acquire MGM

Amazon:

Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) and MGM today announced that they have entered into a definitive merger agreement under which Amazon will acquire MGM for a purchase price of $8.45 billion. MGM has nearly a century of filmmaking history and complements the work of Amazon Studios, which has primarily focused on producing TV show programming. Amazon will help preserve MGM’s heritage and catalog of films, and provide customers with greater access to these existing works. Through this acquisition, Amazon would empower MGM to continue to do what they do best: great storytelling.

MGM has been shopping itself around for a while, and there was some speculation that Apple might be interested, but Amazon seems to have ponied up the necessary cash.

It’s interesting that the press release phrases this deal as allowing to Amazon to “preserve” MGM’s catalog and “empower” MGM in storytelling. What that means for the future of franchises like James Bond—which has been fairly conservative in how it approaches storytelling (movies every few years)—as opposed to the current media bonanza of the streaming market, is anybody’s guess.¹

As per any deal of this significance, regulatory agencies will be giving it the eyeball before everything’s said and done.

by Jason Snell

May 25, 2021 9:24 AM PT

Flexibits rolls Cardhop into Fantastical subscription

I love Flexibits’s Fantastical 3, which I use across all my devices. But I have to admit I never really warmed to Cardhop, the company’s contact-management app.

Still, I’m open to giving it another try, and now might be a good time: The company just announced Cardhop 2.0, adding dyamically generated relationship trees, business-card scanning, and widgets. And most importantly, Cardhop is now a part of the company’s subscription plan, which is now called Flexibits Premium. This means that if you are a subscriber to Fantastical, you get Cardhop too.

This makes a lot of sense. To me, Cardhop has always felt more like a sidekick to Fantastical—and it’s now an added benefit of paying for Fantastical. I’d still like to see more integration between the two apps—I’d prefer not to have to configure two separate keyboard shortcuts for two separate drop-down menu bar items on my Mac, for example—but this is a good start.

by Jason Snell

May 25, 2021 9:15 AM PT

Stephen Hackett compares orange iMacs

Stephen Hackett and I had the same idea — namely to celebrate the return of colorful iMacs by comparing the original colorful iMacs to the new models.

This is a delightful video, and it’s great that Stephen got an orange model to compare with his Tangerine iMac G3.

(While I was writing my article, I tried to impress Stephen with the fact that this is the first iMac ever without a USB-A port—but he was way ahead of me. I did manage to surprise him when I mentioned that the base-model 24-inch iMac has the same sticker price as the original Bondi iMac: $1299.)

by Dan Moren

May 24, 2021 2:42 PM PT

The new Apple TV 4K is better, but still an imperfect product

Joe Rosensteel, podcast host, VFX artist, and Apple TV connoisseur, has an excellent and in-depth look at the recently revised Apple TV 4K, including the new Siri Remote:

I can confidently say that, even with very little time using the device, it’s a solid improvement over what came before. It’s missing a few things like “Mea Culpa” etched in the back, but it’s the remote that should have been released in 2015. How the other remote escaped from Apple’s campus, and ended up being manufactured for almost six years should really be the subject of a true crime podcast.

I am still using an Apple TV HD (as it’s now styled, though not when I first bought it), but Joe’s comments are, as usual, on the money. There’s a lot to like in the Apple TV, and yet it’s still too expensive and, in many ways, doesn’t deliver on that premium pricing.

I did buy a new Siri Remote to replace the old one that came with my Apple TV, and while I am pretty positive on it, there are some places that it could use improvement. (I’m disappointed, for one, that the power button can’t be used to turn on and off other devices via IR, such as my receiver.) But overall, it’s clearly an improvement.

by Dan Moren

May 24, 2021 9:57 AM PT

Apple details parts of WWDC schedule

Apple Newsroom:

Today, Apple unveiled the lineup for its annual Worldwide Developers Conference, including keynote and Platforms State of the Union timing, and shared more information on how developers will be able to learn about the future of iOS, iPadOS, macOS, tvOS, and watchOS.

The long and short of it as much as you might expect: the annual keynote kicking things off at 10am Pacific/1pm Eastern on June 7, followed by the Platforms State of the Union a few hours later, at 2pm Pacific/5pm Eastern.

As with last year, there will also be sessions (more than 200), one-on-one labs, and interactions via the Apple Developer Forums, plus undetailed “special events,” including guest speakers.

One new feature this year: Pavilions, available via the Apple Developer app, which Apple describes as an “easy way for developers to explore relevant sessions, labs, and special activities for a given topic.”

Further information about the conference is forthcoming; Apple says more information will be shared before the June 7 kickoff via the Apple Developer app.