Seven years after the Apple TV launch, Google has announced Android TV software that will work with hardware from companies like Sony and Logitech. But how does the current Apple TV stack up to the new Android TV platform?
Today’s video shows off key features of Google’s latest attempt at ruling the living room, including some advances that might spur Apple to innovate once again when it comes to television.
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“Die, fish. Die! Die, shark!”
That’s what one goggled attendee shouts near the end of Sony’s new video (below) showing people’s reaction to its not-yet-released virtual reality headset, codenamed Project Morpheus, at the Electronic Entertainment Expo a couple weeks back in Los Angeles.
He and many other gamers got the chance to try out Sony’s answer to the Oculus Rift at the expo, and boy is it weird to watch them from the outside.
It’s hard to show what VR is really all about without, you know, actually having you wear the headsets. VR rigs like Oculus Rift and Project Morpheus have an uphill battle to convince the rank and file that VR is going to be compelling enough to shell out even more money for their gaming systems.
Sony opted to show us people from the outside, and I’m not sure it’s any more compelling than a 2D video of the VR games on offer right now.
LOS ANGELES — Microsoft has faced a perception problem ever since last year’s Electronic Entertainment Expo. At this year’s E3 media briefing, however, everything the company said, did or showed was aimed squarely at fixing things.
“We listened to you, the gamers,” said Xbox director Phil Spencer to the crowd gathered here Monday. “This year, we’re only focusing on games.”
The next 90 minutes brought a fast-paced, booming litany of games, games, games. The wristbands given to every attendee at the Galen Auditorium flashed with colored lights to complement the onscreen demos and video game trailers. The speakers filled the room with so much sound that the hairs on the sides of my head moved when the explosions happened. And there were a lot of explosions.
When my kids and I walked into a coffee shop one sunny day last month, we were greeted by a row of tables holding laptops with gaming demos.
My son gravitated toward the biggest display, a huge TV screen with a giant, face-obscuring set of goggles set in front of it. This was the Oculus Rift, the latest fad gaming device that places two stereoscopic images in front of your eyes to simulate virtual reality.
He slid the massive black eyewear onto his face, picked up the connected Xbox controller, and started moving his head around. The rest of us could see the game on the TV — an abstract shooting gallery in three dimensions, with my boy at the center, first-person style.
After about five minutes of waving his head around and pressing buttons on the controller, my son pushed the goggles up and off his head and said, “Dad, I think I’m going to be sick.”
Sony’s new RX-100 III takes the best pocket camera in the world and makes it even better. Now the 20MP shooter packs a pop-up OLED viewfinder, a faster ƒ1.8-2.8 maximum aperture across the 28-100 zoom range, a new 180-degree flip-up selfie-ready screen and “full-sensor readout 1080p.” There’s even Wi-Fi so you can post the results to Instagram. $800
First the camera news: Sony is coming on strong with the amazing R100 III camera, while Nikon’s most exciting new gadget is an underwater flash. On the outdoorsy front, San Francisco is gearing up for summer with new bags from my favorite bag makers Rickshaw and Waterfield, and if you’re out in the warm/cold spring on your bike, you might like to do it wearing the beautiful Vulpine merino wool cycling jersey. If you’re not the outdoors type, we have you covered too — you can stay home and organize your desk with a handsome wooden pen and phone holder.
Have fun!
If video killed the radio star, then the iPod helped kill the cassette tape.
Although perhaps not permanently enough.
According to new reports, Sony has developed a new magnetic tape capable of holding 148GB of data per square inch — meaning that if spooled into a cartridge, each tape would boast an astonishing 185TB worth of storage. To put that into context, it’s the equivalent of 3,700 dual-layer 50GB Blu-rays.
Now that David Fincher isn’t in the running to direct Sony’s Steve Jobs biopic, Christian Bale probably won’t star. As Sony searches for someone else to helm the project, another director and star actor combo have been added to the mix.
Oscar-winnng director Danny Boyle is reportedly in early talks to direct the movie, according to The Hollywood Reporter. And he has approached Leonardo DiCaprio to play Jobs.
David Fincher, who was previously rumored to direct Sony’s movie about Steve Jobs, is now out of the picture. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Fincher and Sony have parted ways due to disagreements over “compensation and control.”
And if Fincher is out, that means his top pick to play Jobs, Christian Bale, will probably not be involved with the project either.
The new Sony A7S is a mirrorless full-frame camera which shoots 4K video and has a top ISO of 102,400, expandable to 409,600.
Remember back in 2006 when Palm CEO Ed Colligan said this, about Apple and the iPhone:
PC guys are not going to just figure this out. They’re not going to just walk in.
If you switched Apple for Sony (those gadget guys) or Fujifilm ("film guys), and Palm for Nikon and Canon, then the same thing is happening today.
Sony’s Digital Paper is so odd that if it were released tomorrow on April 1st, I’d wonder whether or not it was just a cruel prank. But apart from the absurd price, digital paper is a pretty great-looking product.
Remember back in the 1980s and some of the 1990s, when Sony made the coolest stuff around? Tiny Walkmans, awesome Hi8 video cameras and even some decent slimline (PC) laptop computers. Then it all went wrong, when Apple reinvented the Walkman as the iPad.
I’m not trying to say that the new Ultra Premium Hi-Res Bluetooth Speaker is about to turn the company around, but it is a reminder of what we used to love about Sony.
SAN FRANCISCO — The Game Developers Conference is an odd beast, less a trade show and more a topical conference that caters to the folks actually making the games you while away the hours with on your iPhone, iPad, and Mac, plus that console under your TV.
Cult of Mac will be on the scene when a gaming tribe of 23,000 comes to town — that’s about the population of Poughkeepsie, N.Y. — and here’s what you can expect.
Apple was responsible for 15% of the world’s smartphone shipments in 2013, and as much as 56% of all the profit. Sony, on the other hand, accounted for only 3.8% of the world’s smartphone shipments in 2013, and is barely ekeing out a profit company-wide.
Despite all of this, Sony mobile chief and European president Pierre Perron told The Inquirer that Apple is “missing out” by only releasing yearly iPhone freshes, instead of flooding the market with incremental updates every few months.
It’s time to return to the bizarre and unpredictable planet of Pandora with Borderlands 2…and Cult of Mac Deals will you help you do so without putting a dent in your wallet.
A true role playing first person shooter, you can embark on campaigns solo, or invite three friends to join you in the mayhem that is sure to ensue. This game is just pure, unadulterated, shoot-em-up fun that’s wrapped in an absurd, colorful, and interactive package. Add to that four-player online and co-op goodness, and you have an addictive game everyone can love. And all for just $9.99!
There was a time when the most luxurious laptops around weren’t MacBooks. They were Sony Vaios, and up[on his return to Apple in 1997, Steve Jobs so admired the design and engineering of the Vaio line-up that he wanted to make an exception and license OS X to Sony for use on their laptops. And it almost happened.
Arguably, the iPad needs an external camera add-on more than the iPhone, stuck as it is with a previous-gen camera and features. And Sony seems to agree. Now it will sell you an adapter that puts one of its neat QX lens cameras onto any table (or phablet, I guess).
One of the potentially coolest gadgets unveiled at CES 2014 so far is Sony’s virtual reality headset.
Named the HMZ-T3Q (a follow-up to last year’s HMZ-T3W), Sony’s new Oculus Rift competitor is designed primarily for movie fans and gamers, and offers a virtual screen reaching up to 750 inches.
While Spotify can be used without a paid subscription on your desktop, you need to sign up to Spotify Premium at $9.99 a month to enjoy it on mobile. But that could be about to change, with The Wall Street Journal reporting that Spotify is planning a new ad-supported version of its music streaming service for mobile devices.
Browsing the App Store can be a bit overwhelming. Which apps are new? Which ones are good? Are the paid ones worth paying for, or do they have a free, lite version that will work well enough?
Well, if you stop interrogating me for a second, hypothetical App Store shopper, I can tell you about this thing we do here.
Every week, we highlight some of the most interesting new apps and collect them here for your consideration. This time, our picks include a map of the moon, a big green button, and a diary for your dog.
Here you go:
Dog Diary — Lifestyle — Free
Dog Diary is an app that helps you keep track of all the people and events in your canine friend’s life. You can store important, pet-related contacts, expenses and photos. You can also create entries for multiple animals to keep everything organized. It’s an address book, a photo album and a bookkeeping program all in one. You can also track measurements like body temperature, provided you’re not shy about pulling out your phone as soon as the vet pulls out the thermometer.
I’m still waiting for an app that will walk the little guy for me once it gets snowy out, but we might need a robot for that.
Mobile Support by Sony — Utilities — Free
Owners of Sony products might want to check out its new mobile support app, which will hopefully save you from having to click around a website looking for the right troubleshooting or contact page.
It contains links to forums, troubleshooting, documentation, and support areas, and it will take you directly to the page you need in Safari and it covers information for TVs, computers, cameras, software and a bunch of other things. You can also get Sony news updates and press releases, if that’s your thing, but the app’s main value is preventing users from falling into bottomless Net-holes.
Moon Chart — Reference — $2.99
If you’re looking for a quick, easy-to-use reference guide for that giant rock in the sky, Moon Chart is a pretty good one. It’ll show you the phase and point out what scientists have named all those holes and fiddly bits and it’s all indexed. So if you have a bet with your buddy as to where Flammarion is in relation to Sinus Medii, this app will help you settle that weird, random thing I just made up.
TimeStamp — Productivity — Free
I’m a fan of apps that are basically just a giant button that does one thing easily, so TimeStamp really appeals to me. It’s a productivity tracker that independent contractors can use for invoicing purposes. It may also be of interest to people trying to figure out where their time goes. It’s just a big green button that you touch to stop and start, and when you’re done timing whatever it is, you can just drop your results into the appropriate category on the second tab.
My browse-to-watch Netflix ratio is something like 5 to 1. That’s unsettling.
Mobile Support by Sony — Utilities — Free
Owners of Sony products might want to check out its new mobile support app, which will hopefully save you from having to click around a website looking for the right troubleshooting or contact page. It contains links to forums, troubleshooting, documentation, and support areas, and it will take you directly to the page you need in Safari. It contains information for TVs, computers, cameras, software, and a bunch of other things. You can also get Sony news updates and press releases, if that’s your thing, but the app’s main value is preventing users from falling into bottomless Net-holes.
Sony’s new PlayStation companion app is now available on Android and iOS ahead of the PlayStation 4’s worldwide launch this month. The app allows you to access the PlayStation Network on the go to view your notifications, invitations, game alerts, and (finally!) messages; as well as your friends list, trophies, and profile.
If you switched from an iPhone to an Android-powered smartphone because you felt a 4-inch display was just too small, then Apple may give you a reason to switch back next year. Several industry experts are predicting that the Cupertino company will step up its pursuit of high-end Android smartphones by finally introducing a larger 5-inch display with the iPhone 6.
A Google smartwatch powered by Android with built-in Google Now is in the late stages of development, according to people familiar with the matter, who have been speaking to The Wall Street Journal. Google is now in talks with Asian suppliers, which could begin mass producing the device “within months.”
The end of the crop-frame camera is nigh, for anything except special markets at least. Sony’s new A7 and A7r are camera with full-frame sensors. That’s right: full-frame SLRs, only without the “R”. (But with an extra, different “R” in the A7R… Perhaps the R stands for “recycle”?).
Foxconn, the Taiwanese company that assembles almost all of Apple’s most popular devices, has admitted that it has forced student interns to work illegal shift patterns.
Thousands of students from the Xi’an Institute of Technology were made to work overtime and night shifts at the plant in violation of company policies. And if they refused to do so, they were in danger of losing their degree certificate.
