Apple executive and Ferrari fanatic Eddy Cue joins board of Italian luxury-car maker

Apple executive and Ferrari fanatic Eddy Cue has joined the luxury-car company's board of directors, leaving some wondering if Apple might be up to something.

Apple’s senior vice president for Internet software and services Eddy Cue has joined the board of premium sports car maker Ferrari, it was announced on Wednesday (via Apple Insider). The Apple executive said he was both “pleased and proud” to have been offered the new position.

“I have personally dreamed of owning a Ferrari since I was eight years old and have been lucky to be an owner for the past five years,” the Apple executive said in a statement on the Ferrari website, adding, “I continue to be awed by the world-class design and engineering that only Ferrari can do.”

Ferrari boss Luca di Montezemolo said he was “delighted” to welcome Cue to the car company. “His huge experience in the dynamic, innovative world of the Internet will be of great assistance to us,” he said, refraining from offering any specific details as to what they might have planned – if anything.

At Apple, Cue is responsible for iTunes, the App Store and the Cupertino company’s iCloud service, though a recent management shake-up at the tech giant saw him also take charge of Siri and Maps.

In its report, Apple Insider pointed out that earlier this year Apple appeared to be on the hunt for automotive engineers in China, possibly indicating it was looking closely at car technology with a view to getting involved in the industry in some way.

But whether Cue’s acceptance of an invitation to join the Ferrari board is a sign that Apple is perhaps looking at moving into the automobile space with a new line of integrated gadgets and/or software, or whether it’s simply one man taking his long-held love of the flashy Italian car to the extreme isn’t entirely clear at this stage, though in the fullness of time all will doubtless be revealed.

Source : digitaltrends[dot]com

Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn’s producers talk about what it took to bring Master Chief to life

We got the chance to talk to the Executive Producers of Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn, Lydia Antonini and Josh Feldman, about the fans' reception to the series, the challenges with the production of this high-budget web series, and the future of Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn.

With three episodes of the widely anticipated Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn web series released and the fourth set to debut this Friday, Digital Trends got a chance to talk to the show’s executive producers, Lydia Antonini and Josh Feldman about the making of it, how fans have been responding so far, and where the future lies for the series. With the help of Machinima, 343 Industries, and others, the first episode has rocketed to over five million views since the October 5 premiere, and leads up to the launch of the Halo 4 game for Xbox on November 6.

Set during the first days of the Covenant’s attack on humanity, the series follows a group of UNSC cadets training at a base on a remote human colony, unaware that they will soon be at war. Principle among the cadets is Thomas Lasky (played by Australian actor Tom Green), who is destined to become a leader in the fight against the Covenant, as well as an important figure aboard the UNSC Infinity, a ship that will play a crucial role in Halo 4. When the Covenant strikes, Lasky, along with several others including cadet Chyler Silva (The Chronicle of Narnia series’ Anna Popplewell) and JJ Chen (Osric Chau), find inspiration in the Spartan, John-117, who will soon be known more famously as Master Chief (played by Twilight‘s Daniel Cudmore). 

What’s the setting for the series and will we recognize some of the multiplayer maps seen in the previous Halo games?

Josh: The timeframe of the series goes back to the introduction of the human-Covenant conflict; we’re talking about an insight into a timeframe that to date hasn’t been explored. So we’re introducing some areas. We’re not revisiting areas that multiplayer gamers have previously seen.

Lydia: If you watched episode one, there’s the opening sequence with Master Chief and Cortana on Forward Unto Dawn, and that is a sequence bridge between [Halo 3] and [Halo 4]. The opening sequence picks up where they are and moves us along to the beginning of [Halo 4], and helps bring together the most sophisticated story line that we’re weaving with Thomas Laskey toward [Halo 4]. Forward Unto Dawn is a ship that preexisted.

What were the production challenges?

Lydia: Forward Unto Dawn couldn’t feel like a separate interpretation of Halo. This needed to be a complete, and parcel with the mythology. This was a collaboration with 343 Industries in the truest sense. So the story was broken with us and our writers, and 343, and they were completely involved in every iteration of the script. The biggest challenge is that there hasn’t been this length of live action. Fans have high expectations when it comes to the visual quality of Halo so we knew we had to have a stellar visual effects team that had to work quickly in order to have this launch before the release of Halo 4. So that challenge was aided by the immense design work that had existed by the virtue of the Halo franchise being around for 10 years. Each of the kinds of challenges is important. We had to respond to them by making sure we hired the best people for the job.

Can you divulge Microsoft’s budget for the production of Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn?

Lydia: We can’t say, but you can tell that Microsoft gave us the resources to make something very special. They were not cheap at all about making sure that we can do everything that the brand deserves. But with that said we took every dollar and still stretched it much further than anybody thought it could go. So for example the long-form of all of the episodes will be available on Xbox Live on November 6, and plays as a movie, but I think you’d be astounded with what we pulled off with the money.

Was there a difference in the way you approached the development of the series, compared to a full movie for example?

Lydia: Because Halo is such an important franchise to many people and it has such an active fan base, we had to be extremely NDA. We had to be very, very secretive. I’ve heard stories about when they’re shooting an Apple commercial; they’ll actually have two different commercials going on. I personally never had to be that secretive of anything in a long time until this.

Josh: Microsoft had ambitious distribution plans. The first being that it’s going to be distributed as five episodes, and then it’s going to be available as part of the limited edition of the game as a long form piece, where it plays essentially in a feature style. And it’s going to be on Blu-ray and DVD.

Does the storyline follow a younger group of characters with a new target demographic in mind?

Josh: Master Chief is definitely in Forward Unto Dawn and he’ll do all of the things that fans expect of Master Chief, and that was an area that we paid a lot of attention to in building the suit with legacy effects and having a great actor who’s also a really skilled stunt performer to be able to do all of the things Master Chief could.

In terms of the series focusing on younger cadets, I think it adds an element that’s very relatable. Yes, our main characters may be of a similar age group to some of the fans of Halo. I think it’s an opportunity to look at characters that are on the verge of adulthood, when their identity is being forced. And to have a character like Thomas Laskey appear in Halo 4, it’s an opportunity to see the seminal moments in his life that would make the audience and players of Halo 4 that much more interested because they know this back story. This just happens to be that time, and that age that the events take place.

How have fans received the series so far?

Lydia: Overwhelmingly positive. It’s exciting as producers to be able to put something out into the world directly to the consumers and to have them comment and write and view and talk back to you in real-time, which is what YouTube allows. I’ve been reading people’s comments and they’re so supportive. They’ve been picking up on the little details that you knit into a story and that make you ask, “Gosh will anyone notice those?” But they noticed them, they loved it, and they appreciated it. They expect the best, and they really pay attention.

Josh: We were hired by 343 and followed their marching orders, and we know where the buck stops, and that’s with the fans. That was constantly in the back of our minds.

After your experience with Forward Unto Dawn and based on your background in traditional film and TV, what’re your feelings on original programming and would you distribute future content as a TV show or as a web series?

Lydia: Personally I’d like to experiment with doing both simultaneously. I still watch television and I watch shows digitally. They’re both great viewing experiences and they both offer a different amount of interaction, so it would be really fun to play at the intersection of the two to give people a really full 360 degree experience of being able to watch and engaged with the show on their own terms with the environment they choose.

Do you think a web series at the caliber of Forward Unto Dawn can replace a consumer’s TV viewing habit?

Josh: I think in some way there are some people who are going to look at this and be motivated to become a cord cutter, or any of the terms used for people who like access content via digital means, but that’s not a bad thing. But I personally think it speaks more to giving consumers choices with how they access the shows that they love, and each of the different formats offer a different viewing experience. When you watch something digitally or something online, you’re immediately thrust into a forum to debate, talk, compare, argue, critique, and praise alongside fellow members of the community. When you watch something in other formats, you trade some of that interactivity for a greater emphasis on the presentation quality. At a point there’s a convergence to all those things. Until we hit that convergence each venue has attributes that make it appealing to different people.

343′s Kiki Wolfkill mentioned in an interview that Forward Unto Dawn is supposed to make Halo accessible to its users. Was he hinting at changes to Halo 4’s game play?

Lydia: A lot of that detail is really under wraps, but one of the goals that we agreed upon when it was just Josh and I working on the project with 343 is that we wanted a show that could excite the core fan base that plays the games and gets excited that could also evolve and be relevant to the casual Halo player, who doesn’t maybe know all the granular details. There’s a third audience of people, those who don’t know Halo at all but who should enjoy the story for what it is.

And is that why you took the character development approach to the series?

Josh: Absolutely. [We had the] opportunity to convey more of the life-changing events of a character, and the people who see this and never played Halo before will have a really cool perspective. We’ve checked out the game and the people at 343 have outdone themselves, and so it’s a real thrill to be a part of something that adds a little insight into one of the characters that’s going to be featured in Halo 4.

How about the Covenant’s appearance? We see a glimpse of them in episode three, but what will they actually look like?

Josh: Whatever you see, we knew the onus was on us to have them exist in the real world and be completely believable.

Is there any validity to the Halo film rumors, and what’s next for the Halo franchise as a web series?

Lydia: We certainly can’t speak for what their plans may be. They haven’t yet indicated to us if we’ll move forward, but my personal feeling is that the fans have been so excited and interested in this particular project… I’d be surprised if there weren’t more things happening in the near future with Halo live action.

Josh: If there’s one thing that history has shown is that 343 is not going to stop innovating and stop finding ways to build out the Halo franchise. So if Lydia and I – we are fans – just get to experience new avenues that Halo goes down as fans that would be great. If we’re lucky enough to be a part of them, we’d be thrilled. This was an amazing year to be very temporary custodians of live action Halo, and there’s just so much there that they’d be crazy enough not to explore.

Are there any games you’d like to translate into a Web series?

Lydia: Red Dead Redemption and Diablo.

Josh: Halo 5.

Lydia: That goes without saying, we’d love to continue working on Halo.

The episodes will be released in full on Xbox Live November 6 as a long-form 90 minute film, and sold on Blu-ray on December 5. Halo 4 will be released as an Xbox 360 exclusive on November 6. You can check out the first episode of the series below:

Source : digitaltrends[dot]com

LG executive tips Nexus 4 for October 29 release

An LG executive has seemingly confirmed that the Nexus 4 will be revealed at Google's October 29 event, and that it will be ready for release almost straight away.

An LG executive has revealed in an interview that the company’s first Google Nexus smartphone will be revealed on October 29, at Google’s already announced event.

It was during an interview with IBNLive.in that Amit Gujral, LG’s head of Mobile Product Planning, let slip that yes, the Nexus 4 is real and it’s coming very soon. He’s quoted as saying “Google will unveil the LG Nexus on October 29,” before adding that the new phone would be available in India before the end of November.

If Gujral’s timing is correct, it’s likely the Nexus 4 will be ready for an international rollout almost immediately after the October 29 event. India is an important mobile market, but Google and LG will probably release the new phone in the US and Europe a little before it appears there.

He also mentions some of the same spec details we’ve already heard, such as the phone having a 4.7-inch display, a 1.5GHz processor and version 4.2 of the Android operating system. He didn’t talk about the resolution or the camera, but previous rumors have put them at 1280 x 768 and 8-megapixels respectively.

The October 29 release date was mooted at the start of the month by the French newspaper Le Figaro too, stating it would begin its worldwide release on that date, and that France would be seeing the phone in December. It’ll be a surprise if France takes the new Nexus after India though.

LG’s Nexus 4 isn’t the only new device expected to appear at Google’s event, as a playground with only one thing to play with would be a slightly sad place. Other possibilities include a 32GB Nexus 7 tablet with cellular connectivity, plus a 10-inch-plus Nexus tablet, possibly built by Samsung, with an iPad-beating resolution.

Google’s event kicks off at 10am in New York on October 29.

Source : digitaltrends[dot]com

Welp, Facebook now has 1 billion active users

We knew this day was coming, and now it's here: Facebook has officially surpassed 1 billion active users.

Facebook officially has 1 billion active users, the company’s chief executive Mark Zuckerberg announced this morning. That number is equal to roughly one-seventh of the entire human population.

From Zuckerberg:

This morning, there are more than one billion people using Facebook actively each month.

If you’re reading this: thank you for giving me and my little team the honor of serving you.

Helping a billion people connect is amazing, humbling and by far the thing I am most proud of in my life.

I am committed to working every day to make Facebook better for you, and hopefully together one day we will be able to connect the rest of the world too.

The 1 billion milestone came at 12:45 p.m. PT, on September 14, according to a fact sheet [DOC] that Facebook released this morning. The company also unveiled some additional stats that help put the social network’s monster growth in perspective: 1.13 trillion Likes, 1040.3 billion friend connections, 219 billion photos uploaded, 17 billion location-tagged posts, 62.6 million songs played 22 billion times.

Facebook says that the median age of users had dropped from 26 in 2008, when the company first hit 100 million users (one tenth the number it has now, four years later), to 22-years-old today.

The United States, Brazil, India, Indonesia, and Mexico have more people on Facebook than any other countries today. Among the 1 billion active users, 600 million access Facebook through a mobile device, according to the company.

Of course, what Facebook does not mention in its press release is that 8.7 percent of all accounts on the social network are either fake or duplicate accounts. (However, that should not significantly impact the 1 billion number, as it’s unlikely that Facebook counts these as “active” users.) The company is currently working to clean up the problem, part of which involves asking users to rat on their friends who use fake names.

While Zuckerberg says that he is thankful for having the “honor” of “serving” us, the truth is that we are the ones who have served Facebook. Despite its woes on Wall Street, Facebook is currently worth about $46.77 billion, as of Wednesday’s market closing. Mark Zuckerberg alone is currently worth just under $11 billion. He is 28-years-old.

To celebrate the 1 billion-users mark, Facebook has launch a full-bore media blitz, with Zuckerberg appearing on NBC’s “Today” show, and providing Bloomberg Businessweek with an interview that serves as the magazine’s cover story. In it, Zuckerberg says that the company is holding a hackathon to mark the occasion. It’s theme? The next billion.

Source : digitaltrends[dot]com

What I want to see from Apple on September 12: Absolutely nothing

Apple doesn't need to debut the iPhone 5 on September 12 -- it needs to debut nothing at all.

Less than a week from today, Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook will take the stage at the obnoxiously named Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco to drop yet another bomb on the U.S. mobile phone industry: The so-called iPhone 5. 

If the rumors are to be believed — and this year, they are — the only major difference between the iPhone 5 and the two previous models is a slightly bigger 4-inch screen. That’s it — a change of just 0.5 inches. Yes, there will be some hardware upgrades, battery-life improvements, and other nuts-and-bolts tweaks. But as far as a “wow” factor goes, it looks like we’re going to have to settle for a screen size that Android devices have had for years. And you know what? People are going to buy the crap out of it. 

As bored as I am by the new iPhone’s purported growth spurt, I’m not particularly interested in any of the other realistic features Apple might add to some “dream phone” either. NFC? Yawn. Quad-core processor? Psh. Wireless charging? Whatevs. All these features would be great, I suppose — but they have been done before, and will be done again and again and again by the time the iPhone 6 makes its way into the world around this time next year.

No — what I really want to see from Apple is something so mind-blowing, so thunderously outrageous, that it would send shockwaves around the globe and immediately earn a place in the history books.

I want to see Apple announce absolutely nothing. 

You heard me — nothing. I want to watch Tim Cook stand before the entire world and say, “Good morning, folks. You’re probably all expecting us to announce an extraordinary new iPhone packed full of life-changing innovations that will add excitement and energy to lives of millions of people around the globe. But we’re not going to do that — because we don’t have to. Our iPhone business alone is — get this — bigger than all of Microsoft. We have $117 billion in cash just sitting around. That’s enough to put an end to world hunger four times. We could find a cure for cancer with that kind of loot. But that’s just not our style. Instead, we’re going to sit back for a year and laugh at the peons as they try their very best to out-design and out-sell us. So that’s it: The iNothing, or whatever you idiots want to call it. Thanks for coming. Exits are to your rear. There’s punch and pie in the lobby.” 

That’s what I want to see from Apple on September 12 — the will to simply not give a damn. 

I say this not because I dislike Apple and wish for it to commit suicide — an entirely possible outcome of such a move. To the contrary — I am an Apple fan, through and through. I am writing this on a brand new MacBook Air, which is connected to a massive Thunderbolt Display, which sits next to my iPhone 4S. If Apple made pants, I’d probably wear them. 

Rather, I say this out of tough love. As I see it, Apple sits on the brink of losing its greatness. Not because Steve Jobs is gone and Tim Cook is screwing things up (though he very well may be), but because people are simply worn thin by this Apple-dominated world we live in. We’re tired of Apple winning year after year, whether it deserves to or not. We’re tired of its lawsuits and its “most-valuable” status. We’re tired of minor refinements sold as innovation. And we’re tired of Siri not knowing how to properly look up directions to the nearest liquor store.

What I’m saying is, Apple needs some time off because we need some time off from Apple. 

Giving up a year of its product life would give us time to miss Apple, to wonder what it’s up to, like a summer vacation fling. And it would make whatever devices the company releases after its hiatus that much more anticipated and appealing. 

Alas, Apple will keep releasing iPhones, and people will keep buying them. It will keep suing companies to maintain its competitive edge. And its stock price will just keep going up and up and up. It shouldn’t — but it will.

One of these days, however — maybe as soon as next week — Apple is going to release a flop just as a rival comes out with something that genuinely deserves our adoration and hard-earned dollars. Crowds at the famous Apple Stores will begin to thin out. Geniuses will stand around twiddling their thumbs. The torrent of rumors will slow to a trickle. The stock price will fall. And there will be poor Tim Cook, slouched on his white Peruvian alpaca leather couch, sipping a glass of neat brandy, slowly caressing the head of his precious Ashera cat. And he’s going to think, “Shucks, if only I’d listened to that bald bastard Andrew Couts, then maybe we’d still be on top.”

Source : digitaltrends[dot]com

Android activations reach 1.3 million per day, total droid count now 480 million

At the Motorola event held today in New York City, Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt confirmed some interesting new numbers for the Android platform adoption.

There are some 480 million total Androids in the world as of today. That’s 80 million more than there were on June 27, when we got the latest update. Currently there are 1.3 million new activations per day, of which 70,000 are Android tablets.

Source : blog[dot]gsmarena[dot]com