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Frank Ocean just dropped a powerful new music video, Nikes

2016-08-20T11:47:57-04:00

We’ve been waiting for four years for some new music from Frank Ocean, and we finally got to take in his “visual album” Endless when it hit Apple Music yesterday. Now, he’s released a powerful new single called “Nikes” that plays tribute to Trayvon Martin, as well as southern hip-hop icon Pimp C and A$AP Yams. Just a warning: the video does include nudity, so maybe be careful watching it in public places.

“Nikes” opens with a kaleidoscope of imagery and sound that alternates between Ocean’s sped up and deeper, slowed down vocals, before his unadulterated voice enters near the end of the track.

It’s unclear if “Nikes”, which is an Apple Music exclusive, is a standalone project or apart of Ocean’s upcoming conventional album, which was called Boys Don’t Cry at one point. But this likely won’t be the last we hear from Ocean this weekend, as the reclusive artist will reportedly release that album sometime in the next two days, according to Rolling Stone.

Why People Love Bass

Safari can open Twitter links again after latest OS X update

2016-03-21T16:54:47-04:00

Apple’s event might have skipped the Mac, but the company didn’t completely forget about OS X today. A new update for El Capitan has been released that fixes a bug in Safari that stopped Twitter’s t.co links from opening in the browser.

It only took 6 months, but Safari can open Twitter links again! pic.twitter.com/1oYzJgXcIz
— Thomas Ricker (@Trixxy) March 21, 2016

The Safari bug occasionally caused links shortened by Twitter to hang after being clicked, and became a major topic on Apple’s forums. As for the rest of El Capitan version 10.11.4, it is said to work better with Live Photos in the Messages and Photos apps, and the gif-like photos can now be AirDropped between the two operating systems.

The Notes app is now able to be protected with specific passwords for individual entries to stop anyone reading your hastily scribbled thoughts. Notes will also let you migrate data from other services like Evernote with a new “Import Notes” option. OS X 10.11.4 has been in beta for a few months, but will be made available to everyone with a Mac running El Capitan today.

Kendrick Lamar’s surprise new release Untitled Unmastered is out now

2016-03-03T23:13:23-05:00

Kendrick Lamar’s new release, Untitled Unmastered, is available now on Apple Music, iTunes, Spotify, Tidal, and Google Play Music. The rapper has called the record a “project” rather than an album, containing a set of recordings originally made in 2013 and 2014, in preparation for his last album, To Pimp A Butterfly. Spotify leaked information on Untitled Unmastered earlier today, including its name and ambiguous eight-song track list, which features the word “untitled” alongside a series of dates and nothing else.

Whether the blunder was Spotify’s mistake or an accidental leak on behalf of Lamar’s management is unclear, but this isn’t the first issue Lamar has had with a release. To Pimp a Butterfly famously dropped eight days ahead of its official release date. Top Dawg Entertainment, the independent hip-hop label Lamar is signed to, blamed the error on Interscope Records, with Top Dawg CEO Anthony Tiffith tweeting, “I would personally like to thank Interscope for fucking up our release.”

untitled unmastered. https://t.co/YlAszcK4e4
— Kendrick Lamar (@kendricklamar) March 4, 2016

This time around, Tiffith hinted in an Instagram post that a surprise release from TDE would hit the web sometime this week, but no one expected it to be another project from Lamar.

In any case, Untitled Unmastered appears to be a set of unreleased tracks from the 2013 and 2014 sessions that birthed To Pimp a Butterfly, and looks designed to be more of a minor release to satiate fans rather than a full-length follow-up to last year’s masterpiece. To Pimp a Butterfly earned Lamar five Grammy awards last month, and his legendary performance of “The Blacker The Berry” and “Alright” that night only further cemented the album as one of the most important works in modern hip-hop.

In an interview with 2 Dope Boyz, Lamar spoke about the “chamber of material” he held back from the influential project due to clearance issues, some of which he’s used for performances on late night talk shows and during his stunning Grammys performance. “I got a chamber of material from the album that I was in love where sample clearances or something as simple as a deadline kept it off the album,” Lamar said. “But I think probably close to ten songs that I’m in love with that I’ll still play and still perform that didn’t make the cut.”

Now we finally get to hear the music.

Update at 12:05AM ET on Friday March 4th: Untitled Unmastered is now available on all major streaming services.

Update at 1:20AM ET on Friday March 4th: Added Kendrick Lamar’s description of the record as “a project.”

Update at 2:01PM ET on Friday March 4th: Added a link to Untitled Unmastered on Google Play Music.

Why people love bass in music

Rihanna, the RIAA, and making a platinum record in 2016

2016-02-05T14:38:48-05:00

The bodies we trust to deliver an accurate, historical commercial record are doing their best to keep up with an industry that’s changing every day, but they can’t really help but fall behind. What does it mean when an artist sells a million albums to a corporation? What does it mean when the biggest song of Drake’s career is kept from the No. 1 spot it deserves by exclusivity agreements? The road to a revised all-in-one metric has been bumpy at best, and this week the RIAA has enacted a huge change in an attempt to keep up with the definition of what a hit record is.

Jamieson Cox: Micah, there’s never been a more confusing time to watch the music charts. Billboard has to fold in radio airplay, traditional sales, digital sales, and streaming data to accurately depict the popularity of new singles and albums; artists are partnering with streaming services and tech companies for promotional campaigns and exclusivity windows; release dates are being thrown into the wind, rendered totally meaningless by the digital era. (And none of this obscures the fact that overall sales are still tanking, Adele or no Adele.) We know more than ever about how music is being distributed and consumed, but the meaning of all that information has never been more difficult to understand.

Would it surprise you if I said it’s complicated?

I can’t think of a better example than the release of Rihanna’s new album ANTI, which was finally made available last week after years of preparation and scattershot promotion. In one respect, it was the least successful release of Rihanna’s career by several orders of magnitude: the album leaked hours before it was supposed to go on sale, and it ended up debuting at No. 27 on Billboard’s weekly album charts. (According to Nielsen, the album sold fewer than 1,000 digital copies, and it won’t be physically released until February 5th.) Look at it another way, and it’s proof Rihanna is more popular and vital than ever: over 1.47 million copies of ANTI were downloaded in under a day, and it topped the charts in 68 countries. What’s the real story?

Micah Singleton: Would it surprise you if I said it’s complicated? Let’s start with that 1.47 million figure, which is flashy but misleading. Rihanna didn’t sell 1.47 million copies in 15 hours: she gave them away as part of a deal with Samsung, which helped promote ANTI and is sponsoring Rihanna’s upcoming world tour. Billboard doesn’t count free promotions in its calculations, so all of the copies were struck from that record. If ANTI were released on a Friday instead of a Wednesday, it probably wouldn’t have mattered — she would’ve sold enough post-giveaway copies during the tracking week to reach No. 1. (When Jay Z struck a similar deal with Samsung and gave away copies of his 2013 album Magna Carta Holy Grail, it still topped the charts.)

That didn’t happen, of course: a few hours after leaking, ANTI was released through Tidal late Wednesday night. It was exclusively accessible through the service for a full 24 hours: users could download their free copy, stream the album in full, or buy a copy once the downloads ran out. By the time it was made available on iTunes late Thursday night, Nielsen’s tracking week had wrapped up. That’s how one of the world’s most popular artists had a smaller debut sales week than nearly all of her contemporaries.

Cox: Can you explain why Rihanna would agree to give away more than a million copies of her album for nothing?

It’s 2016, and this change was inevitable

Singleton: Well, she’s not doing it for nothing. Samsung’s paying her a ton of money to attach its name to her thriving brand, whether it’s sponsoring her tour, or buying piles and piles of albums it’s just going to give away. She might have sold that many copies of ANTI anyway, but the deal with Samsung means guaranteed money up front. She’s also going to earn a ton of honorifics and certifications. “Work” debuted in the top 10, and it’s only going to climb; the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) gave ANTI a platinum certification because it recognizes the impact of sponsorship deals, and the album is going to reach No. 1 in its first full week on sale anyway, even without huge bumps from other streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music.

Rihanna is getting paid more and getting recognized faster for ANTI than during any of her previous album launches. Sure it would’ve been better if the album didn’t leak and she topped the charts in her first week, but that doesn’t change the huge payday she got.

Cox: I’m glad you brought up the RIAA, because it made some news this week too by announcing it’s going to start counting streams when it awards gold and platinum certifications. It’ll use numbers like the one Billboard uses: if a song is streamed 1,500 times, it’ll equal one album sale. When the RIAA applied the calculation retroactively, a bunch of albums went gold and platinum right away. Why is the RIAA doing this now?

Rihanna accepts her platinum album plaque for A Girl Like Me in 2006 (Photo by M. Von Holden/FilmMagic)

Singleton: Essentially to catch up with the times. More and more people have turned to streaming and albums sales are dropping. The RIAA’s two music tracking counterparts, Billboard and Nielsen, have accepted an accumulation of streams as album sales for some time. That meant from time to time milestones like 1 million records sold were recognized by the media and fans, but not with a platinum plaque at the same time.

This week, that changed. The Weeknd’s Beauty Behind The Madness has been certified double platinum, and Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp A Butterfly is now platinum, despite pushback from Lamar’s label TDE. Most people in the industry will be happy about this, and some won’t, but it’s 2016 and this change was inevitable.

Cox: As a fan and critic, I try not to get too precious about this stuff lest I sound like some ancient baseball fan railing against PEDs and modern therapeutic methods. If artists are being properly compensated for their work in one way or another, all of this business chicanery is doing some good. And Rihanna and her contemporaries aren’t popular because a handful of numbers say so: they’re popular because millions of people around the world connect with their music and personalities. All of that is true, and yet a part of me is yearning for the relative simplicity of the analog era: sell a bunch of albums and count the number of times they’re played on the radio. If every major 2016 album release merits a commercial explainer like this one, that means that the industry still needs to build a better yardstick.

Drake vs. Meek Mill: a roundtable on the summer’s best beef

2015-07-29T16:18:21-04:00

The spat between rappers Drake and Meek Mill is entering its second week, and it’s starting to get ugly. Here’s the shortest possible recap, just in case you haven’t been following every twist and turn: Meek Mill accused Drake of using a ghostwriter for “R.I.C.O.,” a track they recorded together for Meek’s new album Dreams Worth More Than Money. Drake stayed silent until Saturday night, when he released three new tracks during his OVO Sound radio show on Beats 1. One of them was “Charged Up,” a diss track aimed at Meek. Meek called the song “baby lotion soft.” He was supposed to premiere a rebuttal on New York’s Hot 97 Monday night, but the evening came and went without a new track. Drake took the opportunity to go on the offensive and released another new track, “Back to Back,” on SoundCloud early Wednesday morning. That’s where we are now.

This may end up being nothing more than a fun summer diversion, but it feels like it’s gobbling up every spare molecule in the world of music right now. And since so many of us at The Verge are passionate and invested in the outcome of Drizzygate, we’ve decided to hash this beef out at the roundtable.

Neilson Barnard/Getty Images

Drake shouldn’t have bothered

Jamieson Cox: Say you’re a famous basketball player. You’re not just famous, you’re fantastic — it wouldn’t be a stretch to call you one of the best players of your generation. You can shoot, pass, and handle the ball; your defense isn’t bad. You get voted into the All-Star Game every year, and you’re beloved by fans. It’s hard to dispute your all-around basketball excellence.

Children dunk on their siblings in his honor

Let’s say you have an acquaintance. Your acquaintance’s stats are much worse. He’s a rotation player, but a few steps below stardom, and you helped him gain his footing in the league when you played on the same team for a while. Your acquaintance has one specific skill that stands out: he might be the best dunker in the league. There isn’t anyone who can match his ferocity or ruthlessness — there’s even a popular series of Vines in which adorable children dunk on their helpless siblings, and it was created in his honor.

You wake up one morning and learn something troubling: your acquaintance has taken to Twitter to talk smack about you. He’s talking about your creativity on the court. He’s telling people you haven’t come up with a single original move, and that you have someone working with you in the gym who invents your every flashy dribble, layup, and dunk. In short, he’s saying you’re a fraud. And to cap everything off, he challenges you to a dunk contest. If you want to prove to everyone that your former friend’s allegations are false, this is the place you’d do it.

The benefits of participating in the contest are obvious. If you win, no one’s going to question your creativity again, and rising to the occasion will be considered a display of cojones on your part. But if you lose — and there’s a decent chance you lose, because you’re going against one of the best dunkers in the world — it’s going to linger for a long time. You could be inducted into the Hall of Fame one day, but a permanent record of your embarrassment will remain on YouTube: that one time you were challenged and ended up with your ass kicked.

But there’s an alternative path. You can size up your acquaintance and his generally mediocre portfolio of skills, and you can tell him that you don’t need to dignify his challenge with a response. Let’s say that someone did help you come with your moves: who cares? You’re still the one who executed them, right? And they’re just one tiny part of your game, right? You’re one of the best players in the game with or without any kind of dunking panache, and agreeing to enter the contest is just validating your acquaintance. You have very little to gain and a lot more to lose, and dunking isn’t an integral part of your play style in the first place.

So what are you going to do? Are you going to enter the contest, or are you going to brush the challenge away like a beetle on your sleeve?

(Drake should’ve ignored this whole thing.)

Drake wins, but Meek matters

Kwame Opam: This shit is chess, it ain’t checkers. Meek started with the profound mistake of getting into his feelings and challenging Drake’s authenticity on Twitter. People went nuts. Drake responded to the whole thing like a PR professional, which is ultimately something he’s far better at. He waited for interest to reach a steady boil, and released “Charged Up” as if on a whim. The crowd cheered! He waited a little more, watched us all tweet up a storm when Meek failed to make a response on Hot 97, and released “Back to Back.” The crowd is beside themselves right now. If there was any doubt that Aubrey knows how to work an audience even in the heat of a beef, it should be squashed. Those were just jabs, though. Drake is dancing. Meek by now has no choice but to come out with fire and brimstone to undo some of the damage he’s taken. So he’ll almost certainly come out with haymakers, aiming squarely at Drake’s softness: the mall performances, the Madonna fiasco, and the fact that Nicki was never on his arm. And those blows will land, since Meek is a ferocious technical lyricist.

Drake Brought Meek’s Career to New Heights

But Drake isn’t stupid. The man’s ubiquitous for a reason. He gets compared to Kendrick for a reason. (I’m not saying those comparisons are valid. I’m just saying those are the kinds of conversations we have in 2015.) He probably knows Meek will tire himself out throwing punches. He also knows punches like that can’t truly harm him since he already owns up to being a singin’ ass rapper. In a market where Kanye long ago changed the landscape and someone like Future can sell records, Philly hardness isn’t enough to win beefs. It also takes savvy and knowing your enemy. So Drake will keep dancing. He’ll have to punch harder, yes, but he’s also better positioned to outlast Meek. And the killer move? All Drake has to say is Meek matters more now because of this beef. Drake brought your career to new heights, man. “Realness” didn’t. Good job!

If you don’t get better, you become irrelevant

But if Meek comes out blazing (and he really has no choice but to), it’s good for everyone. Drake will continue to be one of the biggest hip-hop acts in the world, but Meek Mill will also be a known commodity. We’ll forget this beef, but your friends might know his name when they might not have previously. That’s why people say beef is good for hip-hop. It forces everyone to be better or fall into irrelevance.

Meek was smart to start this

Lizzie Plaugic: I think when the supercontinent Pangea started breaking up, it probably seemed apocalyptic. Land masses were colliding! Coastlines were cracking! An entire planet was trying to subtly readjust its junk. But in the end, we got the Earth as we know it (or something).

On July 22nd, Philly rapper Meek Mill gave the Earth another gift. In the days that followed, the air felt lighter, a little more electric than usual. People started taking sides. We hunted down alleged ghostwriter Quentin Miller’s SoundCloud and mined it for anything that resembled a Drizzy flow. Drake released not one, but two comeback tracks. Elaborate conspiracies surfaced. Rick Ross messed up his mathematical symbols. We remembered past hip-hop beefs with nostalgia and reverence. Perhaps most importantly, we remembered Ja Rule.

Meek activated a dormant hip-hop beef volcano

Would it have been more mature of Drake to ignore the whole thing? Yeah. He’s the biggest name in rap right now, and a lot of people aren’t even sure who Meek Mill is. But I’m glad Drake didn’t ignore it. And I’m glad that Meek sent the tweet out into the world in the first place, because it became the rumble that activated a long-silent volcano of hip-hop beefs. Now, the world feels new. This, my friends, is our Pangea.

So I’m Team Meek. Because Meek’s original diss was the 140-character plate-shift for two pretty good Drake tracks, some decent jokes, and a GoFundMe to help Meek pay for a diss track (which has since been deleted). For the last seven days, we’ve had an entire little world of Drake and Meek, and it’s been beautiful. This is an internet fight that you can watch from the outside; a spectator sport for those of us who don’t like balls. Eventually, most of the world will forget about this fight, in the way that most of the world doesn’t think about plate tectonics on the daily. And if this Pangea analogy holds up, it leads to only one possible conclusion: Meek Mill is God, but Drake is Santa Claus.

Drake’s making Meek an example

Micah Singleton: Let’s be honest: Drake is the easiest target in hip-hop. He sings, he’s emotional, he’s been chasing Rihanna and Nicki for years to no avail — people have been itching to go at him since he left Canada. Drake’s main defense is that he knows his flaws and makes fun of them before anyone else can. He posts the memes and pokes fun at his DeGrassi past on SNL. So when Meek Mill came out with this ghostwriting claim, it became open season on Drake. And the only way to end hunting season is to take out the biggest hunter so viciously that everyone will know this Canadian forest is off-limits.

Drake couldn’t sit this one out. He couldn’t hide out in the YOLO Estate with 40 and Oliver. He had to respond. What I didn’t see coming was this type of response. Drake has eschewed the classic knockout diss track in favor of a Mayweather-esque “I’m going to jab you in the face until I win by decision” fighting style. “Charged Up” was the most relaxed diss record in history, if it was even a diss record. It was like a diss preamble. It was a direct shot at Meek’s rapping style, which is best described as yelling with purpose, while Drake sounded like he recorded the song in a library. It also carried a warning of what was to come: “I stay silent ‘cause we at war and I’m very patient / 6 God is watching, I just hope you’re prepared to face him.”

Drake didn’t even wait for meek to respond

The real flames from Drake came in “Back to Back,” which is just mean. Very, very mean. He didn’t even wait for Meek to respond with his own diss track. Drake just hit him again. Mean. Drake is up 2-0. Meek still hasn’t responded. And given his lackluster history of diss records (a history betraying his technical skill), it doesn’t look good for the Philly kid. At this point, there’s nothing left to say.

Sorry, Nicki.

Who cares? Nicki’s the one that matters

Kaitlyn Tiffany: The game of The Hills was built around Lauren Conrad. Her first mixtape, Laguna Beach, dropped before the turn of the decade, and her charismatic aloofness carried her through and out of the TV circuit and into a successful career as an author, designer, and lifestyle brand mogul. She taught us to love ourselves but only if we had style, she passed down everything she knew about the Fame Game, and we embraced her as the wise but flawed (turning down a Parisian internship for a boy with frosted tips?) LC, Queen of the Hills. She was a new kind of celebrity, and some people thought she was boring, but that was fucking nonsense. For a while, she loved a man named Brody Jenner, and said that they were the same person, which was obviously only about 40 percent true.

After LC was long gone from The Hills and its childish games, a bold newcomer made the ill-advised choice to step to her. The thinner, blonder, fiercer girl on the block was Kristen Cavallari, and there was something weirdly charming about the brazenness with which she sharpened her fangs. She swooped right in to stir shit up and to write a book with a slightly better title than any of LC’s books. She was about that money, and about Brody Jenner. She flirted, and oh, how Brody flirted back. LC said she was over it, but it’s hard to believe that people get over Brody Jenner.

Eventually the implied hostility between any two talented public personalities who do similar things as a career came to a head — Kristen Cavallari implied that LC was a “slutbag.” It was a roughly hewn diss, to say the least, but as Kristen so helpfully pointed out to LC (with the internet as an intermediary): “No one remembers the nice girl.” So LC listened and spun a near-perfect diss track that went something like, “If someone asked me to list three good things about you, I would say you are really good at losing baby weight.” At this point, nobody looked good.

In this metaphor, Brody is the only winner. He has not one, but two happy endings — seeing Kristen’s limo off to the airport, and then coming home to LC, who has been holding a victorious still-the-Queen grin in her pocket all this time. He’s the one who didn’t get down and dirty, the one who faked it all — the one who got away.

As Brody and Nicki Minaj know, sometimes it’s good to be stuck in the middle.

Verge Video: The art and tech of becoming a DJ

Apple announces its streaming music service, Apple Music

2015-06-08T14:47:09-04:00

Apple has finally jumped into the music streaming race, unveiling Apple Music at WWDC this afternoon. The company revolutionized digital music with the iPod and iTunes, but is now playing catch up, trying to align itself with the current era of subscription offerings. “We’ve had a long relationship with music,” said Apple CEO Tim Cook. “And music has had a rich history of change, some of which we’ve played a part in.” The service will bring combine music downloads, streaming radio, and a streaming music service into a single app. Like most digital services, it promises to learn your tastes and recommend great new songs accordingly.

$14.99 a month for six family members

The service will cost $9.99 a month, or $14.99 for a family plan of up to six individuals, with a three-month free trial. In order to use the family plan, you’ll need to have iCloud Family Sharing active. By contrast, Spotify offers a two-person subscription package for $14.99. Apple says its new music service will be available June 30th, with Android coming in the fall. Apple had hoped to shake things up by offering a tier priced between $5 and $8, but unfortunately couldn’t get the music industry on board. The end result is a product that has little to differentiate it from what is already in the market in terms of price and selection. The 30 million tracks on Apple Music are also going to be found on Spotify or Rdio. Apple is hoping features and exclusive content will be enough.

Jimmy Iovine has been leading Apple’s push into streaming

Paid Apple Music users will be able to download albums and playlists to play offline, while free users will only be able to listen to Apple Music radio stations with limited skipping. The company has rebuilt iTunes Radio and reportedly staffed it with big-name artists like Dr. Dre, will.i.am, Pharrell, and Drake acting as DJs. It is also bringing on experienced talent like BBC’s Zane Lowe to help curate stations. Jimmy Iovine, who has been heading up Apple’s renewed push into music, reportedly tried to sign other big names like Kanye West and Beyoncé to exclusive deals, but lost out to Tidal, a rival service recently launched by Jay Z and a consortium of high-profile musicians.

The first station is called BeatsOne and will be available in 100 countries. It’s going to be playing tunes around the clock and will be anchored by three DJs: Zane Lowe, Ebro Darden, and Julie Adenuga. Subscribers can skip as many tracks as they like. Apple’s Eddie Cue says that the music it recommends to you “isn’t just algorithms, it’s recommendations made by our team of experts.” This is pretty much the same pitch that Beats made when it launched. Users who signed up for that service will find their accounts transferred automatically to Apple Music when the latter launches on June 30th.

Apple also showed off a feature called Connect that lets artists upload music, photos, and messages which are shared with their fans. It’s basically a blog fans can subscribe to, then comment and like individual posts. This is similar to the exclusive behind-the-scenes material that Tidal has been sharing from its cadre of artists.

Drake is releasing his next album on Connect

Drake came onstage to show off Connect. He said as a child he wondered if he or anyone from Canada could make it big in the world of rap. Luckily technology was there to help. “The dream of being a new artist like myself five years ago and connecting directly with an audience has never been more close or reachable.” He will be releasing his next album, obviously, on Connect.

There is some cool Siri integration. You can ask it to play a particular artist or track. You can also give it a more general query, like “play the top track from the summer of 1982,” or whatever year you happened to have graduated from high school. But Apple says you don’t need your iPhone present — you’ll be able to sync songs to your Apple Watch without it.

Siri, play me the most retweeted track of 2014

The big question is whether Apple needs to differentiate to succeed. It is entering a market dominated by Spotify, which has racked up over 60 million users, with 15 million paid subscribers. Spotify has had the run of the land since it came to the US from Europe in 2011, but with over 800 million credit cards on file, Apple has a chance to quickly assemble a large user base and give Spotify its first true challenger. If it can get people who purchase a new Apple device to sign up for a free trial, it may end up bringing a large number of new users into the streaming music market that up until this point were not convinced to give a paid service a try.

Source: Mary Meeker

“Apple is arriving late to the music streaming business, due in part to Steve Jobs’ refusal to believe that music subscription services would ever work,” says Forrester analyst James McQuivey. “But the writing is on the wall: digital downloads don’t make sense for consumers that are connected wherever they go.”

The pitch repeated during the event was about simplicity and unity. “Apple Music is really going to move the needle for fans and artists,” said Jimmy Iovine, the record executive and founder of Beats who is now helping to lead Apple’s charge into music. “Online music has become a complicated mess of apps, services, and websites. Apple Music brings the best features together for an experience every music lover will appreciate.”

Check out our Apple WWDC event page for all the news!

Grading the state of 4K TV at CES 2015

2015-01-09T17:24:00-05:00

It arrived on Monday, like a hyper-detailed unicorn emerging from the HDR mist. Samsung, Sony, Dolby, 20th Century Fox, and a host of other companies were teaming up to form the UHD Alliance. Its mission: to standardize terminology and expectations around Ultra High-Definition, sweeping away 4K confusion and accelerating consumer adoption in the process.

Samsung display executive H.S. Kim called it a “game changer.”

Bill Lee, the company’s VP of TV, said it was a “great opportunity for the industry to rally around UHD.”

It’s not going to be that easy.

With no defined ecosystem and products rushing into market, Ultra High Definition has become a mess. Manufacturers are putting out 4K televisions, trying to one-up each other by signing exclusive content deals that might be good for them, but lock out other manufacturers. Meanwhile both streaming services and cable/satellite providers are picking and choosing when they want to get involved and who they’re ready to work with. And then there’s the matter of high dynamic range. With the first wave of televisions failing to catch fire, everyone’s looking for the magic bullet that will make 4K a must-have for consumers. Many think the brilliant, vibrant imagery of HDR is the answer — but there are multiple options out there to choose from as well.

The UHD Alliance is claiming it can fix all of this, so in the wake of the announcement let’s grade the biggest players in the game — and those that should be.

Samsung

ALLIANCE MEMBER: Yes GRADE: CSamsung has been one of the most active manufacturers in the world of 4K, and it’s the company that spearheaded the UHD Alliance. There’s no denying it’s committed to the format. Unfortunately, it’s also one of the worst actors, with Samsung cutting a string of exclusive content deals that limit the proliferation of 4K, and confusing customers with its terrible naming conventions. (Someone explain SUHD. Please.) To really help the 4K ecosystem, Samsung will need to learn to play nice with others.
Sony

ALLIANCE MEMBER: Yes GRADE: ASony has been espousing the benefits of 4K for years, from its movie cameras to its televisions. It’s also one of the biggest providers of 4K content: Sony’s 4K Media Player was the first way to actually watch 4K material, and Sony Pictures movies are available on every 4K service out there. Its entertainment arm isn’t officially part of the alliance — only Sony’s TV division is — but given how committed the company has been overall we can’t slight them for that. The only ding we’d add is the company’s slightly murky branding when it comes to high dynamic range technology, but that’s the kind of branding issue the UHD Alliance was made to handle.
Amazon

ALLIANCE MEMBER: No GRADE: BIf you can’t be Netflix in the 4K streaming race, you’d want to be Amazon. The company supports streaming to TVs from a number of different manufacturers, is producing and releasing shows like Transparent in 4K, and has movies from Sony as well. Better yet, Amazon’s a partner in the high dynamic range Dolby Vision program. We’re tempted to give it a higher grade, but Amazon hasn’t actually announced that it will be releasing Dolby Vision or HDR content anytime soon. And then there’s the matter of the UHD Alliance itself; Amazon isn’t a member, though Vice President of Digital Video Michael Paull says the company is in conversations.
Netflix

ALLIANCE MEMBER: Yes GRADE: A+There has been no better advocate of 4K than Netflix. The streaming giant was an early partner with Dolby Vision, and has consistently pushed the envelope, bringing 4K HDR streaming later this year. Although its current library of 4K content isn’t huge, the company has made it known more content is coming, and all of its original shows will be shot in 4K going forward.
Apple

ALLIANCE MEMBER: No GRADE: IncompleteApple just hasn’t shown up for class. There has been no word about 4K content for iTunes, and no new Apple TV with 4K support. Apple’s invariable move is to make a surprise announcement about its 4K plans, but until it happens, the world’s largest company gets an incomplete.
Google

ALLIANCE MEMBER: No GRADE: CWhile YouTube does support 4K uploads and streaming, Google hasn’t discussed its plans for 4K content on Google Play. The video store may not be the biggest platform out there, but having one of the largest companies sitting quietly on the sidelines isn’t great for the ecosystem.
Comcast

ALLIANCE MEMBER: No GRADE: DComcast has announced plans to offer 4K content through its Xfinity in UHD app, but thanks to one of those pesky exclusivity deals, the app is only available on Samsung TVs. Combine that with the fact that the company still maintains data caps for some of its users, and it sounds more like Comcast is setting a trap than bringing customers into the future.
DirecTV

ALLIANCE MEMBER: Yes GRADE: CDirecTV previously only offered its 4K content on Samsung TVs in an exclusive deal, and via on demand at that. But the company is loosening those restraints, striking a deal with LG, and recent rumblings indicate that Sony might join up soon too. Even with these changes, though, DirecTV doesn’t allow all 4K TVs to get its content, and one- off deals is not where the next generation of TV should be headed.
Dish

ALLIANCE MEMBER: No GRADE: BThis year Dish announced the 4K Joey, the company’s new set-top box that will let any UHD television owner watch 4K on-demand. They’re the first satellite provider to go wide with their availability — for DirecTV, it’s still Samsung or nothing. The Ultra HD Joey won’t be shipping until summer, but that’s still the best satellite has to offer.
20th Century Fox

ALLIANCE MEMBER: Yes GRADE: CThis week Fox announced that it would be bringing 4K content to Samsung televisions in an exclusive deal. It’s a welcome move – the more content the better — but services like Netflix have told us they’d be reluctant to add movies and shows that can only be played on a subset of 4K televisions. Kudos are deserved for jumping in the game, but let’s go wide, Fox — exclusivity deals feel so 2014.
Warner Bros.

ALLIANCE MEMBER: Yes GRADE: BWarner Bros. has largely remained quiet about its plans, but this week it announced it will be bringing movies to streaming services with the HDR Dolby Vision format. It’s a big commitment, and with both Amazon and Netflix lined up as Dolby Vision partners we wouldn’t be surprised to see both services get Warner Bros. movies in 2015. Among the titles Warner Bros. has announced thus far are The Lego Movie and Oblivion — but we caught a glimpse of Godzilla playing in a CES demo as well.
Dolby

ALLIANCE MEMBER: Yes GRADE: B-Dolby brought the importance of high dynamic range imagery to the forefront when it showed off Dolby Vision last year, and it’s the best iteration of the technology we’ve seen yet. The company is also signed up with Netflix and Amazon, putting it in a prime position should all the pieces come together. Getting them to come together, however, is the issue. Big manufacturers like Sony and Samsung have declined to adopt Dolby Vision, rolling their own HDR solutions instead, and while Warner Bros. is a huge get, it won’t be enough on its own. Dolby may have won the moral victory, but it will take more than that to win the war.

Credits

Dell’s new XPS 13 has a stunning edge-to-edge display

2015-01-06T13:00:02-05:00

Dell is back with a brand new XPS 13 this year at the Consumer Electronics Show, and it looks like the best one yet. After gradually improving the screen with a new model last year, 2015’s XPS 13 will ship with an even better and truly beautiful 13.3-inch “infinity” display. It has an incredibly tiny 5.2mm bezel on the top and sides. While previous models of the XPS 13 have always had an impressively small bezel, the latest feels truly edge-to-edge, and it’s dazzling to look at. Dell hasn’t just stopped at thin bezels, though, and the 2015 model now has an optional 3200 x 1800 high-resolution touchscreen display. That’s a massive improvement over the 1366 x 768 resolution we disliked on the original.

Elsewhere, the construction is almost identical to previous versions, with machined aluminum and carbon fiber helping to keep the weight to 2.6 pounds or 2.8 pounds on the touchscreen versions. Dell is also using the latest fifth generation Intel Core i processors, starting at the Core i3 for the base model with options up to a Core i7 version. Memory options include only 4GB or 8GB, so that may disappoint some who are looking to use this as a daily workstation replacement thanks to the mini DisplayPort.

Dell is claiming the new XPS 13 is the “smallest 13-inch laptop on the planet,” thanks primarily to the 13.3-inch borderless display that’s squeezed into an 11-inch size laptop. That doesn’t affect the keyboard though, you’re still getting a full size backlit chiclet keyboard. Alongside that, Dell has vastly improved the trackpad. I usually hate most Windows laptop trackpads, but I was very surprised with the new XPS 13. It’s using a glass button and a precision trackpad, which is something Microsoft has been encouraging OEMs to implement. Precision trackpads allow Windows 8.1 to directly control the pointer, multi-touch, and gesture support in trackpads, making them feel more like a mini touch-screen with smoother scrolling and better zooming and panning support. Gliding around with the Dell XPS 13 felt very smooth, although we’ll need to review it fully to test exactly how good it is. Either way, you’ll want a precision trackpad on your next laptop.

Dell claims you’ll get 15 hours of battery life

The original XPS 13 had disappointing battery life, but that might not be the case with the 2015 edition. Dell is promising a massive 15 hours of battery life if you pick the 1920 x 1080 display option and a Core i5. That’s a huge claim we’ll have to test fully, but some of those gains are likely related to Intel’s Broadwell processor and the use of a power saving Sharp IGZO display. Dell is planning to release the new XPS 13 today in the US starting at $799 for the Core i3 model, all the way up to $1,899 for the Core i7 version with a QHD+ panel, 8GB of RAM, and a 256GB SSD.

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Grading the state of 4K TV at CES 2015

Samsung

Sony

Amazon

Netflix

Apple

Google

Comcast

DirecTV

Dish

20th Century Fox

Warner Bros.

Dolby

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Dell’s new XPS 13 has a stunning edge-to-edge display

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