Posts

Steve Jobs and the greatest run of products in tech history

Image
"I'm pleased to report to you that Apple's back on track." It was May of 1998, and Steve Jobs was about 10 months into his second stint leading the company he'd cofounded more than two decades earlier. (It was also a bit more than a decade after that company forced him out.) Jobs took the stage at the annual Macworld conference in a white shirt and dark jacket, and told the audience the Apple team had been working harder than ever to finish up a new computer, one designed with the internet in mind. It was called iMac. "We think iMac's going to be a really big deal," he told the audience. He was right. When Jobs came back to Apple in 1997, h … Read the full story at The Verge. from The Verge https://ift.tt/jpAf1cu

All the latest in AI ‘music’

Image
People don’t like that they can’t identify AI music. | Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge AI has touched every part of the music industry, from sample sourcing and demo recording , to serving up digital liner notes and building playlists . There are technical and legal challenges, fierce ethical debates, and fears that the slop will simply crush working musicians through sheer volume. Is it art or just an output? What exactly is “ really active “? Whether it’s a new model or a new lawsuit, we’re covering it all to make sure you don’t miss any major developments. So follow along as we dig into the latest in AI “music.” Suno leans into customization with v5.5 The music industry has embraced a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy about AI. North Carolina man pleads guilty to AI music streaming fraud. Apple Music adds optional labels for AI songs and visuals Qobuz is automatically detecting and labeling AI music now, too. This Chainsmokers-approved AI music producer is joining Googl...

Bluesky’s new app is an AI for customizing your feed

Image
The latest app from the team behind Bluesky is Attie, an AI assistant that lets you build your own algorithm . At the Atmosphere conference, Bluesky's former CEO, Jay Graber, and CTO Paul Frazee, unveiled Attie, which is powered by Anthropic's Claude and built on top of Bluesky's underlying AT Protocol (atproto). Attie allows users to create custom feeds using natural language. For example, you could ask for "posts about folklore, mythology, and traditional music, especially Celtic traditions." To start these custom feeds will be confined to a standalone Attie app. But the plan is to make them available in Bluesky and other atproto apps. … Read the full story at The Verge. from The Verge https://ift.tt/HECnIc1

Red Rooms makes online poker as thrilling as its serial killer

Image
Juliette Gariépy’s Kelly-Anne is an uncomfortable mystery. | Image: Nemesis Films Productions It's rare for a movie to get technology right. And it's even rarer for that movie to be a thriller or horror, where realism takes a backseat to scares and tension. But Red Rooms mostly gets it. Nothing takes me out of a film quicker than a tech MacGuffin that might as well be literal magic. Yes, the phrase " dark web " will always sound a bit silly, but at no point during its 118 minutes does the tech become a distraction. It's not the tech that makes Red Rooms great, though. It's just something that could have easily tanked an otherwise excellent movie. What carries the film is the expert tension building by director Pascal Plante. The perf … Read the full story at The Verge. from The Verge https://ift.tt/IG0HBgX

The Macintosh changed computers forever

Image
Apple's most legendary computer has two legacies: there's the computer itself, and there's the commercial. That commercial. Only a couple of days before Steve Jobs debuted the computer that would both help cement his legacy and contribute to his unceremonious exile from Apple, the company dropped a Super Bowl ad that is still one of the most iconic commercials of all time. It raised both the hype and the stakes for the Macintosh in a big way. The Macintosh wasn't a great computer, at least at first. It didn't have enough memory; there wasn't enough software that supported it; it wasn't customizable in the ways PC users needed at the time. I … Read the full story at The Verge. from The Verge https://ift.tt/ntwmFVM

Apple’s long, bitter App Store antitrust war

Image
This is The Stepback , a weekly newsletter breaking down one essential story from the tech world. For more on the legal travails of Big Tech, follow Adi Robertson . The Stepback arrives in our subscribers' inboxes at 8AM ET. Opt in for The Stepback here . How it started The year was 1998, and reigning personal computer giant Microsoft was on trial for violating antitrust laws, including by targeting its smaller competitor Apple. Apple occupied only a fraction of the PC market, while Microsoft held north of 80 percent. But its cross-platform QuickTime multimedia player threatened Microsoft's own offerings, and a court determined that Microsoft … Read the full story at The Verge. from The Verge https://ift.tt/aNie6BQ

Suno leans into customization with v5.5

Image
Slop yourself. | Image: Suno Suno just released one of its biggest updates yet with v5.5 of its AI music model. Where previous updates focused mostly on improving fidelity and creating more natural vocals , v5.5 is about giving users more control. It includes three new features: Voices, My Taste, and Custom Models. In the release notes, Suno says that Voices is its most requested feature. It lets users train the vocal model on their own voice. They can upload clean accapellas, finished tracks with backing music, or just sing directly into the mic on their phone or laptop. The cleaner and higher quality the recording, the less data is required. And to prevent someone fro … Read the full story at The Verge. from The Verge https://ift.tt/Ke4XmfN