Amazon - page 20

At its I/O conference in California this week, Google gave us a preview of the new Google Assistant that’s coming later this year. It’s like Siri, only it’s vastly more intelligent. It does everything you want a digital assistant to do and more.

And just like a lot of Google services, Assistant will be available on iOS — not only in the official Google app, but also inside the new Allo messenger. It will be competing with Apple’s AI in its own backyard, and the Cupertino company should be worried about that.

But can Siri catch up, or have Apple’s rivals now too far ahead in artificial intelligence? Join us in this week’s Friday Night Fight as we battle it out over digital assistants.

The fourth generation Apple TV experienced the largest increase in unit sales last year among streaming media players but it hasn’t been good enough to supplant Roku as the top streamer in the U.S. 

Apple TV’s biggest weakness appears to be its price point. New research shows that smaller stick streamers made up half of last year’s sales and Apple’s competition reaped the rewards.

Amazon is already battling Netflix and Spotify and plenty of other content providers, but it wants an even bigger challenge. The retail giant today unveiled Amazon Video Direct, a sharing platform that’s taking the fight to YouTube.

Hollywood’s top filmmakers held secret meetings with Apple at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, according to a new report that claims Apple is planning to make a big play to take on Netflix and Amazon Prime Video by creating its own original TV shows and movies.

Apple hosted a secret ‘iTunes Lounge’ at Sundance for a number of invitation-only events for film makers, producers, actors, and other A-list talent to hear the company’s pitch on how it plans to create a ton of original content that will be exclusively available on Apple TV.

Looking for a new tablet but don’t need all the whiz-bang features that come with Apple’s pricey new iPad Pro?

Amazon may have just what you need when it reveals the 8th-generation Kindle next week. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos teased the new tablet on Twitter today, giving readers a heads-up on something wonderful coming their way.

Apple’s nearly three year legal battle over charges that it conspired with publishers to raise the price of e-books is finally coming to end.

This morning the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear Apple’s appeal, which leaves the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling in place. Apple will finally have to pay $450 million as part of the settlement.

As it turns out, Apple is not ready for some football.

The iPhone-maker was expected to be among a number of tech giants bidding for the streaming rights to 18 regular season football games this year, but it appears the company has decided to pass on the option to bid, figuring it wouldn’t be a big enough draw for the Apple TV platform. 

The Amazon Echo has quickly become one of our favorite gadgets thanks to its accompanying digital assistant Alexa that makes it easy to do everything from ordering new laundry detergent to checking the news. Today the service is getting even better with two new gadgets that essentially split the Echo into two parts: Tap and Dot.

Amazon divvied up what the original Echo did by creating the Echo Dot ($89) that can hear your commands from anywhere in the room, it just doesn’t have great speakers like the original, while the Amazon Tap boasts great speakers for only $129, but you have to push a button on the top of the device to give it commands.

If you’re hoping to get your hands on an Echo Dot you’ll need to own an Alexa device (the original Echo, or a Kindle Fire tablet). However, anyone can pre-order the Amazon Tap right now.

Here’s a teaser:

Keeping up with the latest information on the current presidential election just got easier if you’re an Amazon Echo owner.

NBC News has created a new “skill” for Alexa, the Echo’s virtual assistant: Now Alexa can read you top election headlines, candidate bios, election calendar events, and even the latest delegate counts.

Let’s see Siri do that, eh?

The FBI’s demand that Apple build a backdoor into a terrorist’s iPhone has done the seemingly impossible by getting Microsoft, Google and Apple all on the same team.

Many of the country’s top tech firms have revealed that they will file friend-of-the court briefs in defense of Apple’s position that no company should be compelled by the government to break its own security and thus put the public safety of millions of users at risk.

The latest update to the Amazon Echo adds a host of new news sources to the smart speaker’s Flash Briefing feature — and also gives it some mad rhyming skills.

An accidentally deep discount on Apple Watch bands has the seller reaching out for positive reviews on Amazon.

Baoxing Trading mistakenly marked down some of the accessories in its store to too-good-to-be-true levels, and while they were, in fact, that, the company decided to honor the prices and ship the items at a loss. And that’s pretty nice and honorable of them, but it doesn’t mean they aren’t asking for a small favor in return via a note included in the packages buyers are receiving.

Check out the letter below:

Amazon made Prime an even greater deal this week by adding 20% off the latest games, but if that couldn’t persuade you to finally sign up, perhaps a discounted membership will.

This weekend only, a year of Prime will cost you just $73 — down from $99.

When it comes to innovation, American-based corporations are pushing the envelope more than any other nation and Apple is leading the charge.

According to the latest rankings from Boston Consulting, Apple was the world’s top innovator for the tenth year in a row, followed closely by Google.

Amazon’s Instant Video service has one of the best libraries in the world, but if you’re an Apple user, it has a crucial weakness: the only way to get it on Apple TV is to AirPlay it from an iOS or OS X device.

AirPlaying can be unreliable at times and you can’t use certain apps without cutting off your Amazon stream. That could change in just a few weeks though, according to an Amazon employee who let it slip that the company is working on an app for the new Apple TV.

When it comes to innovation, Apple is proving that it’s not all about the money.

While competitors like Google, Facebook and Qualcomm dump huge percentages of their revenue back into R&D on projects like autonomous cars and Internet drones, a recent Bloomberg report highlights how Apple has gotten the biggest bang for its buck in R&D, despite spending less than any other major tech company.

Let’s face it: Online shopping is amazing. Given the choice of shopping from home while relaxing in their PJs or fighting crowds and dodging overbearing salespeople, we bet most people will choose to shop online.

But shopping online has some drawbacks as well. Mainly, those drawbacks come in the form of having to sift through multiple colors and sizes of clothes and shoes to find the perfect piece at the perfect price. When prices vary depending on the size and color combination that you select, it can be difficult to assess an item at a glance.

If you’re an Apple ID owner, you know that two-step verification is the best way to make sure that only you have access to your personal credit card details along with your app, music, and video purchases.

Until a couple of weeks ago, Amazon–another company that probably has private financial information from you–didn’t have a way to do the same thing. That way, even if someone figures out your password, they’ll only have half the info needed to make changes to or access your account.

Now that the Seattle-based books-and-everything-else company allows for it, it’s time to zip up your personal details. Here’s how.

Apple’s just gotten to the end of its long and convoluted eBooks antitrust case, and now Germany’s Federal Cartel Office is reportedly investigating the company’s agreement with Amazon for purchasing audiobooks.

Apple and Amazon are said to have a long-term agreement in place for purchasing audio books from Amazon’s Audible company to distribute via the iTunes store. The terms of the deal haven’t been made clear.

Amazon will start taking more advantage of the millions of credit cards it has on file with new “Pay with Amazon” buttons. The expansion to Amazon Payments will allow third-party developers to include these buttons in their mobile apps and have users quickly sign in to process payments. Since all their payment information is already with Amazon, checkout processes should be much speedier without having to reenter everything. It looks like Apple Pay and PayPal need to watch out.

The new Apple TV is here, and there’s no doubt it’s the best set-top box we’ve seen from Cupertino, with powerful new hardware and the tvOS operating system, Siri integration — and most importantly, support for third-party apps and games.

If you’re into movies and TV shows, or playing the greatest iOS games on your big screen, the new Apple TV is probably at the top of your wish-list if you haven’t already bought one. But how does it compare to the other products Apple has launched this year? Is it better than the rest?

Join us in this week’s Friday Night Fight between Cult of Android and Cult of Mac as we battle it out over that very question!

Best List: Amazon Kindle Paperwhite

My wife is a voracious reader. And a bit of a hoarder.

So I tried to convince her to start reading ebooks on her iPad mini, instead of constantly bringing home new books from the book store. But it was not an easy transition. Partly because she loves to support our local bookstores and partly because she didn’t love the reading experience on the iPad.

Into the house comes a Paperwhite and all that changed.

The most popular online retailer in the world, Amazon, is using its e-commerce powers to put the hurt on Apple and Google’s streaming devices in order to prop-up the Amazon Fire TV and Fire TV stick.

In an email sent to marketplace sellers, Amazon told employees it will stop selling Apple TV and Google Chromecast. No new listings for the devices are allowed, and all other existing inventory is scheduled to be removed by October 29th.

If you still haven’t succumb to Amazon Prime, then now is the time, because Amazon’s offering a generous discount that’ll save you a bunch of dimes (to celebrate the Emmys).

Disappointed the new Apple TV doesn’t support 4K? Then get Amazon’s new Fire TV instead.

Two new versions of the device — Fire TV and Fire TV Gaming Edition — are here with updated internals that make them 75 percent faster than their predecessor, plus Alexa, Amazon’s own virtual assistant that is the brains behind the Echo speaker.

There’s also a new Fire TV Stick that promises the best Wi-Fi performance in a media-streaming dongle.