From Apple’s press release:

Apple today announced that HBO GO and WatchESPN are now available directly on Apple TV joining the great lineup of programming offered to customers. iTunes users have downloaded more than one billion TV episodes and 380 million movies from iTunes to date, and they are purchasing over 800,000 TV episodes and over 350,000 movies per day.

I spent some time with the HBO GO and WatchESPN apps and they are great. I just wish that I could pay a monthly fee to get access to these without having to have a cable subscription.

Wouldn’t it be neat if Apple offered a monthly iTunes subscription that would give you access to most (or all) of the Apple TV-compatible services? Hulu, Netflix, and HBO GO for one price and the ability to add the sports services at a discount for those that are paying for the others. I’d pay for that.

Glenn Wolsey writing in his newly designed and relaunched weblog:

What I can’t promise in volume, I will make up for in quality. I’m dedicating myself to publish highly informative, well thought out pieces whenever inspiration strikes and time allows.

I really enjoyed reading Glenn’s site in it’s previous iteration and I’m excited to see what he has in store with the relaunch.

Apple has always placed a priority on protecting our customers’ personal data, and we don’t collect or maintain a mountain of personal details about our customers in the first place. There are certain categories of information which we do not provide to law enforcement or any other group because we choose not to retain it.

For example, conversations which take place over iMessage and FaceTime are protected by end-to-end encryption so no one but the sender and receiver can see or read them. Apple cannot decrypt that data. Similarly, we do not store data related to customers’ location, Map searches or Siri requests in any identifiable form.

Exactly what I’d expect from Apple. I just wish our government was requesting so much data — or any data at all.

Alaric Cole writing about his experience trying to get his weather app, Horizon, approved for the App Store:

According to Apple, no one wanted a flashy weather app. They were so certain of this, they built one themselves.

It’s sad when situations like this happen. But luckily, they are happening with far less frequency than they used to.

(Via TidBITS.)

Craig Hockenberry on the new iOS 7 user interface:

Some designers are saying that the new look is “over the top.” The same thing was said about Aqua over a decade ago. And in succeeding years, that original UI has continuously been refined to what we see today.

I too think that iOS 7 may be a little more out there than I was expecting. But, as Craig explains that’s typically what Apple does with user interface changes — “it’s much easier to take away elements from a design than it is to add them.”

However, as we begin to get some distance between us and the keynote I’m warming up to the changes they’ve made. Even the icons are less annoying then they were the day of the keynote.

I don’t think I’m going to have Pandora installed on my iPhone for too much longer.

Tim Cook on stage after playing this video to begin the keynote:

I’m really glad you liked that. Those words mean a great deal to us and you’ll see that reflected throughout the show today.

It feels like a Pixar short but says something very powerful about Apple’s philosophy of design and development.

An extremely powerful machine that will likely cost you a pretty penny when it comes out later this year.

I just wish it looked a little bit less like a trash can.

iBooks, Maps, iCloud Keychain, and more. Looks like it’s going to be a great release. I can’t wait to get my hands on it this fall.

The icons are a little cartoony for my liking, but it’s hard to describe the new user interface without using the word “beautiful.”

I’ve heard a lot of people coming to the same conclusions about what Apple is likely doing with iOS 7, but I like how John Gruber discussed it in his usual pre-keynote piece. I especially love this bit:

The primary problem Apple faced with the iPhone in 2007 was building familiarity with a new way of using computers. That problem has now been solved. It is time to solve new problems.

A new notes application by Brent Simmons, Dave Wiskus, and John Gruber. It’s a beautiful application that’s very snappy but doesn’t quite have the most important feature for me — syncing. If I was able to access Vesper notes from my Mac I’d immediately switch. But for now, I’ll patiently await a future update that adds some sort of syncing support.

Vesper – $4.99

I’ve fallen in love with Apple’s latest ad campaign. The first of which was entitled Photos Every Day and first aired last month. People won’t likely remember these as well as the Mac vs. PC ads but I think that they’re actually better at what they’re trying to accomplish than the John Hodgeman and Justin Long ads were.

I know that a lot of Netflix customers will be spending the day with the Bluth family (or at least half of the people I follow on Twitter). I’ve already started watching the new season and it’s very good.

From the betaworks weblog:

Dots has been downloaded 1 million times, has become the #1 app in 8 countries, and is a top 5 app in 15 other countries.

My girlfriend and I have been playing this game with every minute of downtime that we have. It’s very fun and very addicting. I would love to see more gameplay modes (like longer rounds) or new power ups but it’s easy to see why the game has become so popular.

(Via TechCrunch.)

Kara Swisher writing for All Things Digital:

According to numerous sources, Mayer determined quickly in her research that the fast-growing content site, turbocharged by mountains of user-generated content, was just the kind of property that Yahoo needed to make it both “cool” and relevant to new audiences.

These are the kind of acquisitions that Yahoo needs to make if that’s the path they choose to go down in their quest to become relevant again.

Deadline is reporting that the CW has struck a deal with Apple that will bring their streaming offerings to the Apple TV. I honestly wouldn’t have been able to name a single CW show before today but having more options on the Apple TV is always a good thing.

(Via MacRumors)

I’ve been using Logitech remotes for years and I can’t imagine operating my home theater without one — it makes everything so much easier. If I was looking for a new universal remote, I’d start by looking at these.

Derek Kessler got his hands on a webOS prototype that was codenamed “WindsorNot.” It was scheduled to be released after the Pre3 in late 2011 but, unfortunately, never saw the light of day.

John Gruber shares some tidbits about iOS 7. I’d also suggest visiting the thread on Branch that Gruber references. It’s chock-full of interesting rumors from some trustworthy people.

Michael Mulvey’s wife when he described Facebook Home to her:

I don’t like the sound of it. Most of my friends’ lives aren’t all that exciting to me.

I don’t have Facebook myself but I’ve seen friend’s and family’s Facebook feeds when they would show me a picture or status message from it. And, I can’t imagine myself wanting any of that on my phone’s home screen.

But, what resonates with me more is Michael Mulvey’s feeling that he doesn’t expect his life to be all that exciting to his friends. I’ve had the same feeling for a while. My two main hobbies (tech and board gaming) aren’t shared interests with any of the people I’d be friends with on Facebook.

CNBC:

JC Penney CEO Ron Johnson is out and Mike Ullman will rejoin the company as CEO, receiving an annual base salary of $1 million.

I was excited about everything that Ron Johnson did while he was at JC Penney and I was expecting the company to be in a much better position five years down the road. It would have been rough until then, but just walking through one of their partially renovated store was enough to convince me that they were heading in the right direction.

I don’t doubt that he was forced to step down and I think it was the most boneheaded decision the company could have made. Turning around an ailing company isn’t easy and Johnson had what it took to get the job done.

Patrick Rhone writing on his weblog:

Because, well, it is already pretty difficult to sift the meaning from the noise from the constant connection. It is even more so when you have to question almost everything you see on it for a day. Life is short. There are better things to do. Ignore it today. It’ll still be here (and, hopefully, back to normal) tomorrow.

This is the best thing I’ve read all day. I’ve always hated the internet on April Fool’s Day and tend to avoid it at all costs.

Josh Constine writing for TechCrunch:

Facebook just invited press to an event at its headquarters on April 4th to “Come See Our New Home On Android”. Sources tell us it will be a modified version of the Android operating system with deep native Facebook functionality on the homescreen that may live on an HTC handset. The evidence aligns to say this is the Facebook Phone announcement people have been speculating about for years.

Remember the Helio Ocean?

Neat little gadget that let’s you add Bluetooth to any old speaker you might have lying around the house. I haven’t decided to do so yet but I think I might back this project. I’m going to need a new speaker for my iPhone soon because my Altec Lansing Octiv Duo is becoming unreliable and I’ll need something that plays nice with Lightning connectors sometime in the future.

But honestly, they couldn’t come up with a better name? “The Vamp” sounds terrible.

(Via Tools and Toys.)

Neat new car gadget for $69.95 that’s set to ship in July. The device uses Bluetooth to communicate information from your cars’ computer to your smartphone.

Clever Kickstarter project by the makers of Outside and 101 Airborne. A small keychain thermometer that plugs into your iPhone’s headphone jack to measure the temperature of the room your in. They’ve blown past their $35,000 goal and have received nearly $235,000 from backers and still have two and a half weeks to go.

Daniel Pasco writing on the Black Pixel Weblog:

First, we intend to bring sync to future versions of NetNewsWire. It’s too soon to go into details about this, but you should know that we recognize how extremely important it is and that it is a top priority for us.

Second, even though we’ve been quiet about it, we have been working on new versions of NetNewsWire for Mac, iPhone, and iPad. We have some great new features and a modern design that we can’t wait to show you.

I doubt that this will be the case, but I’d love for NetNewsWire to support syncing with Fever. But if not, I’m still interested to see what newer versions of NetNewsWire will bring to the table. RSS clients have been stagnant for the past few years and, if anything, Google shutting down Reader has given other developers a kick in the pants to start innovating with their clients.

David from minimal wallet asked me to write a bit for his My Minimal Wallet series. I wrote about the Holstee Upcycled Wallet that I’ve been using for the past two years. It’s a great wallet and fits right in with the others featured on the site.

Eric Slivka has posted a transcript of Tim Cook at the Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference. It’s well worth reading.

Taylor Wimberly writing for ReadWrite:

Having failed to carve out a place for itself in the post-PC era, Hewlett-Packard is now taking drastic measures — by adopting Google’s Android operating system to run a series of upcoming mobile devices.

Remember when HP bought Palm? They had a brand new mobile operating system that most technology journalists believed would help them rival Apple in the “post-PC era.” They had everything given to them on a silver platter and still managed to screw it all up.

Imagine if they spent the past two-and-a-half years developing WebOS and building a dedicated user base. Where would they be now? They likely wouldn’t be considering splitting up into smaller companies.

Bloomberg:

Cable and satellite subscribers who pay for HBO will be able to watch 1,700 films and television shows on Apple TV, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the talks are private.

If only HBO would allow users to subscribe to HBO Go without having to order cable television service.

Regarding the Snooze/Later feature:

I can swipe and be asked when the next time I’d like to be reminded about the email. Options include Later Today, This Evening, Tomorrow, This Weekend, Next Week, In a Month, and Someday (which can be any measure of time). Selecting any of these options will take the email out of my inbox and visually get me to inbox zero. It’s a really clever concept.

I’m patiently waiting to get into Mailbox (currently 712,058th in line) and this is emblematic of the reason why — the folks at Orchestra have taken the time to think about better ways to deal with email. It’s unfortunate that the app is only launching with Gmail support, and therefore can’t be my primary email client, but once IMAP support is added I’ll be moving from Sparrow the first chance I get.

I don’t know what I’ve been doing without a stylus all these years.

Aaron Mahnke on what he calls “Digital Lung”:

I used to think I could spend my entire day following tech news, trying to stay caught up on twitter and App.net and following digital rabbit trails. Sometimes I came close, in the moments when I allowed it. But I’m busier now, and as demand for my design work continues to grow, I’ve abandoned my RSS reader in favor of silence and peace. Sometimes I feel like I need to go all the way and disconnect from it all. I feel numb most of the time and I’ve been trying to figure out why.

I’ve had many of the same feelings lately, work at my day job is getting more demanding and, as a result, I’ve been spending less of my free time reading tech news and writing. I’m hoping that my lack of motivation is still just the residual effects of the holidays taking their toll on me and that I’ll be back on the saddle writing more frequently.

If you unlock a phone or tablet that’s purchased anytime today forward — unless you have you’re carriers permission — you’re breaking the law.

CNET’s disclosure in their news article regarding Aereo’s new Roku app:

CBS, the parent corporation of CNET, is currently in active litigation with Aereo as to the legality of its service. As a result of that conflict of interest, CNET cannot review that service going forward.

This is a serious problem. How can anyone trust CNET’s reviews going forward when they allow CBS to dictate what they can and can’t review. And, how long until CBS starts to influence the positivity of reviews? If a reviewer, even on a subconscious level, isn’t as harsh on a particular product or service because they know CBS would be happier if they did, then readers will start to disappear. Readers want honest reviews from writers not watered down editorials that toe the company line.

Peter Kafka runs down the list of cities in Aereo’s expansion plan:

Here’s the Aereo expansion list, which includes Chicago and 21 other cities. Assuming, of course, that the courts don’t shut the company down before they get a chance to get going: Boston, Miami, Austin, Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Washington, D.C., Baltimore, Detroit, Denver, Minneapolis, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Tampa, Cleveland, Kansas City, Raleigh-Durham, Salt Lake City, Birmingham, Providence, and Madison, Wis.

Looks like they’re hitting most of the bigger markets. I have family in Pittsburgh, I wonder if they’d offer me access to their account (assuming they sign up) so that I can give it a try.

It has to be awful good to compete with all of the other options. I don’t expect I’ll be terribly interested unless they’re able to offer integration on the level of AirPlay. And, I doubt they will.

Raymond Wong writing for the Boy Genius Report:

The issue appears to be related to the NAND becoming corrupted and killing off the Galaxy S III’s mainboard, which causes the phone to essentially “brick” itself. Users have reported the issues have affected some devices after 150-200 days after purchase.

Sounds like a pretty sweet feature.

John Gruber:

I don’t use maps frequently. I go weeks at a time without venturing more than a few blocks from home, and when I do travel, it’s generally to places I’m already familiar with. So while I really have personally found iOS 6 Maps to be a nice update over the old Google Maps-backed iOS Maps, I don’t feel it’s a point I should hammer upon because, as someone who seldom uses Maps, I have no sense of whether I’m right that Apple’s Maps is actually pretty good and getting an unfair bad shake in the public’s perception, or, if I simply don’t use it enough to see just how bad it really is.

I feel the same way that Gruber does about mapping applications. I just don’t use them often enough to justify writing about them. I have had an instance in which Google’s Maps gave me inaccurate results and, although I haven’t found results from Apple’s Maps to be inaccurate, I feel I haven’t used the app enough to put any weight behind my experience with it.

A new email client coming next year from Orchestra. I’ve been looking for a replacement for Sparrow now that it’s no longer being developed and Mailbox looks intriguing.

Richard Lawler reporting for Engadget regarding the Wall Street Journal’s recent Apple Television rumor:

Read [CBS executive Leslie Moonves] comments, and you’ll probably feel as we do — until the various regulatory and/or commercial gatekeepers to premium content in the living room change their minds about how the TV business works, it remains just as unlikely that we’ll ever experience the products of Apple’s tests for ourselves.

Companies like Apple test new products all the time. That doesn’t mean that those products will ever come to market. Don’t expect an Apple branded television until some more substantial rumors start to surface (hint: there hasn’t been anything substantial yet).

MG Siegler:

After using it for over a week now, it’s hard to come up with a lot of nice things to say about the Surface. Don’t get me wrong, there are some solid things here. But by and large, it’s a strange, buggy, and clunky product that I simply can’t imagine many people buying after the initial hype wears off.

Hype? Not in the circles I frequent.

The news business just doesn’t work the same way as it did 40 years ago. These companies need to be smaller and more streamlined if they want to be profitable. The Daily had a failed business model from the get-go and never would have succeeded.

John Gruber nailed it with the following from his piece on why The Daily failed:

They set up an operation with $25 million a year in expenses. But there’s no reason why a daily iPad newspaper needs that sort of budget. A daily iPad newspaper of the scope of The Daily might (but I doubt it), but that simply means the scope of The Daily was ill-conceived. News Corporation went no further than taking the newspaper as we know it — the newspaper as defined by the pre-Internet 20th century — and cramming it into an iPad wrapper. You can’t tell me a good daily iPad newspaper couldn’t be run profitably for $5 million a year.

A smaller company with a different mindset would have been able to produce a fantastic publication for $5 million a year.

Tom Warren reporting for The Verge:

Microsoft is building an Xbox set-top box. Multiple sources familiar with Redmond’s plans have confirmed to The Verge that the company plans to introduce a low-cost alternative to its Xbox console, designed to provide access to core entertainment services.

In other words, Microsoft is building an Apple TV competitor. I have to wonder, though, how well will it sell if Apple decides to ship an App Store for the Apple TV days after Microsoft announces their competitor?

John Packowski calming the flames on the latest Apple television rumor:

In other words, there are still a lot of missing pieces here, and while a major cable provider running what-if scenarios on a rumored Apple product is certainly interesting, it’s not necessarily a trumpet fanfare announcing its imminent arrival.

It’s likely going to be released at some point but saying the launch is “imminent” is a little misleading. I want a TV set made by Apple as much as the next guy, but I’m not holding my breath any time soon.

Marco Arment on the iPad mini’s lack of Retina display:

Imagine the fallout if a Retina Mini shipped with only three hours of battery life, or was inelegantly thick and heavy. Or, very importantly to the iPad’s market, imagine if its GPUs were slower and it ran existing iPad games extremely poorly. And then add the component-price differences: imagine a Retina iPad Mini that was bulkier, shorter-running, or much slower (or all three) and that started at $399 instead of $329.

That’s why we don’t have a Retina iPad Mini yet. It’s not only about price: it’s because the resulting product would suck in at least two other important ways.

I also believe the lack of Retina display has a lot to do with manufacturing yields. Packing that many pixels into a display that size isn’t easy, and being able to manufacture them at a large enough scale to meet demand is likely something Apple was worried about. But the bottom line is,  if Apple could have released the iPad mini with a Retina display, they would have.

CNET has published Sinofsky’s memo to his his fellow Microsoft employees regarding his departure from the company.

From the memo:

Some might notice a bit of chatter speculating about this decision or timing. I can assure you that none could be true as this was a personal and private choice that in no way reflects any speculation or theories one might read–about me, opportunity, the company or its leadership.

Rebecca Harper:

we’ve decided to showcase this content (at 43 shows and counting!) in a new section called Hulu Kids. Now it’s easy for kids to access their favorite shows on Hulu Plus: Just point your browser to www.hulu.com/kids or click on “Kids” within our Browse menu. All of the videos and recommended content within Hulu Kids are restricted to commercial-free children’s programming.

After watching my niece interact with Netflix on her parents’ iPad a couple of weekends ago, it’s become even more clear that this is the future of television.