In 2022, writer and activist Cory Doctorow coined the term "enshittification" to describe the gradual deterioration of a service or product. The term's prevalence has increased to the point that it was the National Dictionary of Australia's word of the year last year. The editors at Ars Technica, having "covered a lot of things that have been enshittified," decided to highlight some of the worst examples the've come across. Here's a summary of each thing mentioned in their report: Smart TVs: Evolved into data-collecting billboards, prioritizing advertising and user tracking over user experience and privacy. Features like convenient input buttons are sacrificed for pushing ads and webOS apps. "This is all likely to get worse as TV companies target software, tracking, and ad sales as ways to monetize customers after their TV purchases -- even at the cost of customer convenience and privacy," writes Scharon Harding. "When budget brands like Roku are selling TV sets at a loss, you know something's up."

Google's Voice Assistant (e.g., Nest Hubs): Functionality has degraded over time, with previously working features becoming unreliable. Users report frequent misunderstandings and unresponsiveness. "I'm fine just saying it now: Google Assistant is worse now than it was soon after it started," writes Kevin Purdy. "Even if Google is turning its entire supertanker toward AI now, it's not clear why 'Start my morning routine,' 'Turn on the garage lights,' and 'Set an alarm for 8 pm' had to suffer."

Portable Document Format (PDF): While initially useful for cross-platform document sharing and preserving formatting, PDFs have become bloated and problematic. Copying text, especially from academic journals, is often garbled or impossible. "Apple, which had given the PDF a reprieve, has now killed its main selling point," writes John Timmer. "Because Apple has added OCR to the MacOS image display system, I can get more reliable results by screenshotting the PDF and then copying the text out of that. This is the true mark of its enshittification: I now wish the journals would just give me a giant PNG."

Televised Sports (specifically cycling and Formula 1): Streaming services have consolidated, leading to significantly increased costs for viewers. Previously affordable and comprehensive options have been replaced by expensive bundles across multiple platforms. "Formula 1 racing has largely gone behind paywalls, and viewership is down significantly over the last 15 years," writes Eric Berger. "Major US sports such as professional and college football had largely been exempt, but even that is now changing, with NFL games being shown on Peacock, Amazon Prime, and Netflix. None of this helps viewers. It enshittifies the experience for us in the name of corporate greed."

Google Search: AI overviews often bury relevant search results under lengthy, sometimes inaccurate AI-generated content. This makes finding specific information, especially primary source documents, more difficult. "Google, like many big tech companies, expects AI to revolutionize search and is seemingly intent on ignoring any criticism of that idea," writes Ashley Belanger.

Email AI Tools (e.g., Gemini in Gmail): Intrusive and difficult to disable, these tools offer questionable value due to their potential for factual inaccuracies. Users report being unable to fully opt-out. "Gmail won't take no for an answer," writes Dan Goodin. "It keeps asking me if I want to use Google's Gemini AI tool to summarize emails or draft responses. As the disclaimer at the bottom of the Gemini tool indicates, I can't count on the output being factual, so no, I definitely don't want it."

Windows: While many complaints about Windows 11 originated with Windows 10, the newer version continues the trend of unwanted features, forced updates, and telemetry data collection. Bugs and performance issues also plague the operating system. "... it sure is easy to resent Windows 11 these days, between the well-documented annoyances, the constant drumbeat of AI stuff (some of it gated to pricey new PCs), and a batch of weird bugs that mostly seem to be related to the under-the-hood overhauls in October's Windows 11 24H2 update," writes Andrew Cunningham. "That list includes broken updates for some users, inoperable scanners, and a few unplayable games. With every release, the list of things you need to do to get rid of and turn off the most annoying stuff gets a little longer."

Web Discourse: The rapid spread of memes, trends, and corporate jargon on social media has led to a homogenization of online communication, making it difficult to distinguish original content and creating a sense of constant noise. "[T]he enshittifcation of social media, particularly due to its speed and virality, has led to millions vying for their moment in the sun, and all I see is a constant glare that makes everything look indistinguishable," writes Jacob May. "No wonder some companies think AI is the future."

The UK is considering making households who only use streaming services such as Netflix and Disney pay the BBC license fee, as part of plans to modernize the way it funds the public-service broadcaster. Bloomberg: Extending the fee to streaming applications is on a menu of options being discussed by Prime Minister Keir Starmer's office, the Treasury and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, according to people familiar with the matter who asked not to be named discussing internal government deliberations. Alternatives under discussion include allowing the British Broadcasting Corp. to use advertising, imposing a specific tax on streaming services, and asking those who listen to BBC radio to pay a fee.

The government is the early stages of examining how to overhaul the funding of Britain's public broadcaster when its current 11-year charter ends on Dec. 31, 2027. Ministers are looking to either retain and alter the current television license fee model or scrap it and instead fund the BBC through alternative models such as taxation or subscription. That's because viewing habits have changed as users gravitate toward on-demand services. [...] The license fee dates back to 1946, when consumers watched programs at the time of broadcast. It currently costs households who watch live TV or use BBC iPlayer $210.6 a year, an amount that usually rises annually with inflation. Even if they don't watch BBC programs, households are required to hold a TV license to view or stream programs live on sites including YouTube and Amazon Prime Video. However it's not needed by those who only watch on-demand, non-BBC content.

Netflix plans to expand its cloud gaming offerings to include couch co-op and party games, according to co-CEO Greg Peters. The company will also continue developing narrative games based on its IP, despite recent leadership changes and the closure of its AAA game studio. The Verge reports: In the blog post, Netflix notes that it's a "limited" beta test, so it seems like this won't be available to too many people to start. (Netflix used that same "limited" language with the initial launch in Canada and the UK.) Like with the original test, the only two games available to stream are Oxenfree from Netflix's own Night School Studio and another game titled Molehew's Mining Adventure.

If you have access to the service, you'll need to download Netflix's special controller app for your iPhone or Android device to play the game on your TV. (Netflix says the streamed games work on "select devices," including Amazon Fire TV devices, Chromecast with Google TV, Roku devices and TVs, and more.) On the web, you'll be able to play games with a mouse and keyboard.

Netflix will raise prices on most U.S. and Canadian subscription tiers after adding a record 19 million subscribers in the fourth quarter of 2024, bringing its global total to 302 million users.

The standard plan without ads will increase to $17.99 from $15.49, while its premium tier rises $2 to $24.99. The ad-supported tier will cost $7.99, up $1. The streaming service's quarterly revenue topped $10 billion for the first time, jumping 16%, while operating income rose 52% to $2.3 billion. The company credited recent successes including the Mike Tyson-Jake Paul boxing match and "Squid Game" season two for the subscriber surge.

The ratio of vacant U.S. jobs to jobless workers "has fallen from a record of 2 in 2022 to 1.1 in November," reports the Wall Street Journal — which adds that "the balance of power between employers and employees has shifted as the labor market has gone from white-hot to merely solid."

JP Morgan's five-days-a-week return-to-office mandate was only the beginning, with big companies like Amazon and Dell "tightening remote-work policies, shrinking travel budgets and cutting back on benefits... Companies are slashing perks such as college-tuition assistance and time off for a sick pet... " 76% of [U.S.] job growth in the past year has been in healthcare and education, leisure and hospitality, and government. In fields such as finance, information, and professional and business services, job growth has been far weaker. While a shift in leverage to employers might have shown up in layoffs or wage cuts in the past, now it is more subtle, often in changes to working conditions. For example, knowing that some workers will quit rather than return to the office, some companies are ending remote work as a way of trimming payroll. "Quiet quitting" — workers who slacked off rather than quit — has been replaced by "quiet cutting" — employers who cut jobs without actually announcing job cuts...

Michael Gibbs, a professor of economics at the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business, said the new mandates might simply be a message to workers that times have changed. "Firms are trying to reset expectations," he said... [After refusing her employers return-to-office four-days-a-week mandate, Mayrian] Sanz, who now works as an independent business and leadership coach, said she applied for 25 to 30 jobs listed as remote but initially got no responses. When some hiring managers finally replied, they had a surprise: Jobs listed as remote would now be in-office. "They just say everything is shifting to going back to the office," she said.

Among tech workers, the share receiving perks such as paid volunteer hours, college-tuition reimbursement, free financial advice and mental-health programs all declined by about 4 percentage points in 2024 from 2023, according to Dice, a technology job board. Average bonuses fell by more than $800, from $15,011 to $14,194. Meanwhile, Netflix has quietly backed off from its unlimited parental leave in a child's first year, The Wall Street Journal reported last month. A company spokesman said at that time that employees have the freedom and flexibility to determine what is best for them.
The article notes that "The actual impact of return-to-office directives remains to be seen," with economists "skeptical" the directives make companies more productive and faster-growing: Many workers now being called in were already spending some time in their cubicles. Nicholas Bloom, a professor of economics at Stanford University, said most of the benefits of collaboration can be achieved with just a few days in the office, while some tasks that require concentration are better done at home.
Elsewhere the Wall Street Journal that looking for a job "is set to get less miserable this year," since roughly two-thirds of U.S. employers plan to add permanent roles within the next six months, "according to a new survey by staffing and consulting firm Robert Half."

And Computerworld notes that the IT unemployment rate is now just 2% in the U.S. (according to official figures from the US Bureau of Labor statistics).

Today 34-year-old chess champion Magnus Carlsen married 26-year-old Ella Victoria Malone, "in a ceremony packed with guests on a sunny winter day in Oslo," reports Chess.com. According to Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet, a film crew from Netflix was also present. The streaming giant is shooting a chess-related TV show rumored to air in 2025... Ella Victoria is now expected to have a more central role in her husband's career. According to VG, she played a crucial role in securing Magnus a deal with fashion brand G-Star Raw...

Their wedding was surely a fairy tale, but the Carlsens aren't heading for their honeymoon just yet. Magnus is set to make his debut for St. Pauli in the German Bundesliga on January 10, when he'll face Dusseldorf led by none other than GM Gukesh Dommaraju.
The article adds that "For Carlsen, this caps off a whirlwind week that began in New York, highlighted by his eighth World Blitz Championship title," a victory that they say was "controversially" shared with Russian grandmaster Ian Nepomniachtchi. CNN reports: [Carlsen] had taken a 2-0 lead in the four-game contest before Nepomniachtchi launched a stunning comeback to level the scores, sending the match to a sudden death tie-break. The pair then drew the next three games, and it was later determined that they would share the title after the proposal was accepted by Arkady Dvorkovich, the president of chess governing body FIDE. "I thought, at that point, we had already played for a very long time and I was, first of all, very happy to end it, and I thought, at that point, it would have been very, very cruel on both of us if one gets first and the other gets second," Carlsen later told reporters....

[T]he decision to share the Blitz title with long-time rival Nepomniachtchi has sparked outcry from some of the world's top players — the first time in history that a world championship title has been shared. "This is a situation where I cannot stand with what Magnus has done," prominent player Hikaru Nakamura said on his YouTube channel. "I do not think that there is any precedent for this, when you put out rules about the game itself and then suddenly you decide, 'It's okay, we're going to go home' ... It's unconscionable to me...."

"FIDE goes from forfeiting Carlsen (over the jeans debacle) to creating an entirely new rule," Hans Niemann, whom Carlsen had defeated in the quarterfinals, wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter. "Seems like the the regulatory body of chess has no intention of being unbiased. They seem to only care about what one player thinks...." Former world champion Garry Kasparov made a pointed reference to the jeans controversy, writing on X: "I thought the first FIDE tiebreak was pants."
Magnus apparently tells his opponent "If they like refuse, we can just play short draws until they give up," according to a behind-the-scenes video clip posted to X.com. The CEO of FIDE, Emil Sutovsky, re-posted it on X.com, complaining that FIDE president Dvorkovich's decision to accept the players' proposed draw was made "under the spur of a moment, and of course, the video appeared much later. I do think it is VERY BAD though..."

FIDE later told CNN that "This situation has already prompted valuable discussions within FIDE management to improve our regulations." (And their article adds that some — including grandmaster Ivan Sokolov — suggested ties be settled with a new chess format known as Armageddon.) "In Armageddon, White has more time but a draw on the board counts as a win for Black," explains the Guardian — adding that back in 1983, "Fide determined the winner of a Candidates match by a roulette wheel."

The Guardian adds that Russian-born FIDE president Arkady Dvorkovich "probably felt he had little choice but to rubber stamp the agreement by the players." He would have been pilloried in Moscow as preventing a Russian world champion had he ruled otherwise, and a negative could also have provoked a series of the notorious Berlin draws, the standard method for a quick mutually agreed half point. However, that course of action would have brought the players into disrepute, and it is more likely that an inspired game or a blunder would have settled the final. The audience on Wall Street applauded the decision, but the considerable online reaction from professional players and fans has been mostly critical.

It was the first ever shared over-the-board individual world title in chess history.

Samsung and Google are introducing Eclipsa Audio, an open-source 3D audio standard set to debut on select YouTube videos and Samsung's 2025 TVs and soundbars. The new format "could eventually serve as a free alternative to Dolby Atmos, the dominant 3D audio format that hardware makers like Samsung pay to license for TVs and other equipment," reports The Verge. "Samsung says that similar to Atmos, this audio format supports adjusting 'audio data such as the location and intensity of sounds, along with spatial reflections' to create a 3D experience." From the report: The two companies first announced a partnership to develop spatial audio technology in 2023, initially calling it Immersive Audio Model and Formats (IAMF). At the time, Samsung spatial audio head WooHyun Nam said the format would provide "a complete open-source framework for 3D audio, from creation to delivery and playback."

The IAMF spec has also been adopted by the Alliance for Open Media, a group that has been pushing for royalty-free codec support since 2015 and counts companies like Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, and Netflix -- along with Samsung and Google -- among its members. If they also add support for this audio format, it could help it catch on, although it's already taken years for their AV1 video codec to see more use. Samsung and Google are also creating a certification program with the Telecommunications Technology Association "to ensure consistent audio quality" across devices using the format, which also sounds similar to the way companies like Dolby and THX manage the labeling for their specs.

jjslash shares a report from TechSpot: A Valve employee recently provided PC Gamer with a rough calculation of the company's per-employee income, revealing that Valve generates more money per person than several of the world's largest companies. While the data is a few years old and doesn't account for some significant recent trends in the tech sector, Valve's ranking in this metric likely hasn't shifted much over that time. Exact figures for Valve's per-hour and per-employee net income remain redacted. However, a chart from 2018 confirms that Valve's per-employee income exceeded that of companies like Facebook, Apple, Netflix, Alphabet/Google, Microsoft, Intel, and Amazon. Facebook ranks second with a high revenue per employee of $780,400 annually, or $89 per hour, surpassing competitors like Apple and Microsoft due to its relatively smaller workforce of under 70,000. Amazon, by contrast, with over 1.5 million employees, earns significantly less per employee at $15,892 annually, or $1.81 per hour.

Further reading: Valve Runs Its Massive PC Gaming Ecosystem With Only About 350 Employees

Netflix has sued Broadcom in California federal court, accusing the chipmaker's cloud computing subsidiary VMware of violating its patent rights in virtual machines. From a report: The lawsuit said VMware's cloud software infringes five Netflix patents covering aspects of operating virtual machines. Broadcom and Netflix have been embroiled in a separate patent dispute since 2018 over Netflix's alleged infringement of Broadcom patents related to video streaming technology, with cases in California, Germany and the Netherlands.

Witcher 4's first trailer debuted at the 2024 Game Awards — a six-minute cinema-quality thriller. It's a teaser for a game that "aims to be the most immersive and ambitious open-world Witcher game to date," according to an announcement from CD Projekt Red. The trailer is pre-rendered in a custom build of Unreal Engine 5 on an unannounced NVIDIA GeForce RTX GPU. Powered by the same tech that The Witcher IV is built on, using assets and models from the game itself, it aims to provide players with a cinematic look at the kind of experience the game is aspiring to provide.
The trailer shows "a remote village that has been terrorized for generations by a fearsome monster demanding human sacrifices..." their announcement notes. ("At the heart of the trailer is Ciri's perspective as an outsider to the village.") "Geralt will appear in the game, but we don't want to spoil his role precisely," CD Projekt Red told IGN.

Kotaku reminds fans there's also Netflix's animated movie The Witcher: Sirens of the Deep in February 2025 — plus the first new Witcher novel in over a decade (with an English translation) expected sometime next year as well...

Thanks to Slashdot reader jjslash for sharing the news.

Major tech companies are scaling back workplace perks amid industry-wide layoffs and increased focus on AI development. Google, Meta, and Salesforce have reduced or eliminated benefits ranging from massage services to retreat centers, marking a shift from the lavish "perks culture" that defined Silicon Valley for two decades.

Netflix has informally shortened its parental leave, while Meta fired employees for misusing meal vouchers. The industry saw over 264,000 layoffs in 2023, suggesting the end of an era where companies competed for talent with luxury amenities

Tuesday the Wikimedia Foundation released its annual list of the most-visited Wikipedia pages. (Scroll down to where it says "The full top 25"...)

But while the top subjects seem to be politics and pop culture, CNN reports that in the end "a list of deaths in 2024 was the most visited page, garnering over 44 million views." A page about deaths in a given year has ranked at the top of the list five times since 2015, when the Wikimedia Foundation began releasing the data. The topic has never fallen below third place on the list.

People also searched for U.S. political figures... [The #2, #3, #5, #7, and #9 most-visited pages were, respectively, for Kamala Harris, the 2024 United States presidential election, Donald Trump, J.D. Vance, and Project 2025.] While U.S. politics was a notable search subject, popular culture had the largest share of the top 25. The fourth most-visited page was about Lyle and Erik Menendez, the brothers who were sentenced to life in prison for the 1989 murder of their parents and are now facing a resentencing trial. The case received renewed public attention after a Netflix documentary was published this year. The Wikipedia page about the brothers received over 26 million views in 2024.

The "Deadpool & Wolverine" and "Dune: Part Two" movies were eighth and 23rd, respectively... [Other high-ranking pop-culture pages included Taylor Swift (#11)and the 2024 Summer Olympics (#14).]

"Wikipedia readers in India continue to make a big impact on the list, a trend we saw in 2023 as well," Wikimedia Foundation's Alikhan said. The Indian Premier League, a cricket league in India, garnered over 24.5 million views this year as the site's sixth most visited page... [The 2024 Indian general election came in at #10]
Wikipedia's entry on ChatGPT came in at #12, while Elon Musk came in at #17.

"When people want to learn about our world — the good, bad, weird, and wild alike — they turn to Wikipedia," explains the blog post from the Wikimedia Foundation, calling Wikipedia "the largest knowledge resource ever assembled in the history of the world" and "a reflection of all the people who live on our planet. its story is your story, your interests, your questions, and your curiosity."

Other statistics about Wikipedia in 2024:

• Nearly 3.5 billion bytes of information were added this year via over 31 million edits.

• People spent an estimated 2.4 billion hours — nearly 275,000 years! — reading English Wikipedia in 2024, according to data from the Wikimedia Foundation.

A piracy ring that gave 22 million subscribers in Europe cheap access to content stolen from international streaming services has been shut down by Italian authorities after a two-year investigation. From a report: The criminal enterprise used a complex international IT system to "capture and resell" live programming and other on-demand content from companies including sports broadcaster DAZN, Netflix, Amazon Prime, Paramount, Sky and Disney+, prosecutors said in a statement on Wednesday.

Authorities estimate the operation generated revenues of roughly $264.3 million a month [non-paywalled link], or $3.2 billion a year, and caused combined damages of more than $10.6 billion to the affected broadcast companies. "The rate of profit you get from these illegal activities with lower risk is equivalent to that of cocaine trafficking," Francesco Curcio, the criminal prosecutor who led the investigation, told reporters.

On November 24th, 1971 — 53 years ago today — a mysterious man jumped out of an airplane clutching $200,000 in ransom money. (He'd extorted it from the airline by claiming he had a bomb, and it's still "the only unsolved case of air piracy in the history of commercial aviation," according to Wikipedia.) Will modern technology finally let us solve the case — or just turn it into a miniseries on Netflix? And have online researchers finally discovered the definitive clue?

The FBI vetted more than 800 suspects, according to the Wyoming news site Cowboy State Daily, but in 2016 announced they were suspending their active investigation.

So it's newsworthy that the FBI now appears to be investigating new evidence, according to an amateur D.B. Cooper researcher on YouTube: the discovery of what's believed to be D.B. Cooper's uniquely-modified parachute: Retired pilot, skydiver and YouTuber, Dan Gryder told Cowboy State Daily that he may have found the missing link after uncovering the modified military surplus bailout rig he believes was used by D.B. Cooper in the heist. It belonged to Richard Floyd McCoy II, and was carefully stored in his deceased mother's storage stash until very recently... McCoy's children, Chanté and Richard III, or "Rick," agree with Gryder that they believe their father was D.B. Cooper, a secret that shrouded the family but wasn't overtly discussed. For years, they said, the family stayed mum out of fear of implicating their mother, Karen, whom they believe was complicit in both hijackings. Upon her death in 2020, they broke their silence to Gryder after being contacted by him off and on for years.

Gryder, who has been researching the case for more than 20 years, documented his investigation in a lengthy two-part series on his YouTube channel, "Probable Cause," in 2021 and 2022, where he connects the dots and shows actual footage of him finding the parachute in an outbuilding on the McCoy family property in North Carolina in July 2022. On Monday, Gryder released a third video, "D.B. Cooper: Deep FBI Update," where he announced the FBI's new and very recent efforts in his discoveries. After watching his first two videos, Gryder said FBI agents contacted Rick and Gryder to see the parachute. It was the first investigative move by the agency since issuing the 2016 public statement, declaring the case closed pending new evidence. Gryder and Rick McCoy traveled to Richmond, Virginia, in September 2023, where they met with FBI agents, who took the harness and parachute into evidence along with a skydiving logbook found by Chanté that aligned with the timeline for both hijackings, providing another vital piece in the puzzle, Gryder said....

During the meeting, Gryder said the agents called it a first step. If the evidence proved fruitless, they would have promptly returned the skydiving rig, he said, but that didn't happen. Instead, an FBI agent called Rick a month later to ask to search the family property in Cove City, North Carolina, which McCoy's mother owned and where Gryder had found the parachute and canopy... [Gryder says he watched] at least seven vehicles descend on the property with more than a dozen agents who scoured the property for about four hours... Rick said he has provided a DNA sample and was told by the FBI agents that the next step might be exhuming his father's body, but no formal terms and conditions for that process have been established thus far, he said.
A retired commercial airline pilot who was present in the Virginia FBI meeting said "It was clear they were taking it seriously" — noting it was the FBI who'd requested that meeting. The article cites two FBI agents who'd earlier already believed D.B. Cooper was McCoy. And the article points out that the FBI "has never ruled McCoy out, stating in a 2006 statement that he was 'still a favorite suspect among many.'"

A second article notes that Gryder supports the FBI's recent request to exhume McCoy's body. As he sees it, "The existing DNA marker comparisons studied so far only validate the need for this final extreme step and should close the mystery once and for all."

And the article adds that McCoy's children are "eager for closure and hope that the FBI finds the evidence agents need to close the D.B. Cooper case once and for all."

Netflix is looking toward Discord for help in figuring out who, exactly, is leaking unreleased footage from some of its popular shows. From a report: The Northern District of California court issued a subpoena on Thursday to compel Discord to share information that can help identify a Discord user who's reportedly involved in leaking episodes and images from Netflix shows like Arcane and Squid Game.

Documents filed alongside the subpoena specifically call out an unreleased and copyrighted image from the second season of Squid Game, posted by a Discord user @jacejohns4n. In an interview linked on the user's now deleted X account, published on Telegram, the leaker claimed responsibility for the self-described "worst leak in streaming history," where episodes of Arcane, Heartstopper, Dandadan, Terminator Zero, and other shows were published online. Netflix confirmed in August that a post production studio was hacked.

According to a new report from Bloomberg, Apple plans to license some of its Apple TV+ content to competing services in an effort to save money and spread its reach. From the report: Apple has hired an executive to license its original productions to other companies, a strategy designed to increase sales from its film business and improve the visibility of its content. [...] Apple is focused on licensing its movies to other companies, such as foreign TV networks and stores, where viewers can rent or buy them, according to a person familiar with the plans. The company isn't planning to license its original TV shows to third parties. (At least not yet.)"

Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook and services boss Eddy Cue have pushed the team overseeing Apple TV+ to lower costs, improve the financial performance of the service and deliver more hits. The company has spent billions of dollars on original films and TV shows and has received strong reviews and praise from critics. Yet few of its titles have attracted a large audience and its streaming service doesn't make money. Apple has already started selling TV+ via Amazon in a bid to increase the audience for the service. Licensing to third parties will generate additional revenue and introduce Apple movies to people who don't yet pay for TV+. Since Apple TV+ launched in 2019, Apple has spent over $20 billion to build a library of original content. Yet, the streaming service only garnered 0.3 percent of U.S. screen viewing time in June 2024, according to Nielsen. "Apple TV+ generates less viewing in one month than Netflix does in one day," wrote Bloomberg's Lucas Shaw in July.

Ars Technica notes that Apple is estimated to have 25 million subscribers, making it "one of the smallest mainstream streaming services."

"Here's how Apple's next major product will work," writes Bloomberg's Mark Gurman: The company has been developing a smart home command center that will rival products like the Amazon Echo Hub and Google Nest Hub... The product will run many of Apple's core apps, like Safari, Notes and Calendar, but the interface will be centered on a customizable home screen with iOS-like widgets and smart home controls... The device looks like a low-end iPad and will include a built-in battery, speakers and a FaceTime camera oriented for a horizontal landscape view. The square device, which includes a roughly 6-inch screen, has sensors that let it change the interface depending on how far a user is from the screen. It will also have attachments for walls, plus a base with additional speakers so it can be placed on a table, nightstand or desk.

Apple envisions customers using the device as an intercom, with people FaceTiming each other from different rooms. They'll also be able to pull up home security footage, control their lights, and videoconference with family while cooking in the kitchen. And it will control music throughout the home on HomePod speakers. The device will work with hundreds of HomeKit-compatible items, a lineup that includes third-party switches, lights, fans and other accessories. But the company doesn't plan to roll out a dedicated app store for the product. Given the lack of success with app marketplaces for the Vision Pro, Apple Watch and Apple TV, that's not too surprising.
Looking ahead, the article concludes "The success of this device is still far from assured. Apple's recent track record pushing into new categories has been spotty, and its previous home products haven't been major hits."

But Gurman shares the most interesting part on X.com: If the product does catch on, it will help set the stage for more home devices. Apple is working on a high-end AI companion with a [$1,000] robotic arm and large display that could serve as a follow-up. The company could also put more resources into developing mobile robots, privacy-focused home cameras and speakers. It may even revisit the idea of making an Apple-branded TV set, something it's evaluating. But if the first device fails, Apple may have to rethink its smart home ambitions once again.
Gurman also writes that Apple is also working on a new AirTag with more range and improved privacy features (including "making it more difficult for someone to remove the speaker.")

Customers have formed new habits of regularly pausing subscriptions and returning to them within a year. From a report: As subscription prices rise and streaming-centric home entertainment becomes the norm, families are establishing their own hierarchies of always-on services versus those that come and go with seasons of hit shows or sports. New data from subscription analytics provider Antenna offer a deeper look at the subscription pausing habits customers are developing as services like Netflix, Disney+ and Apple TV+ become the go-to way of watching TV in many households, instead of cable.

The monthly median percentage of premium streaming video subscribers who rejoined the same service they had canceled within the prior year was 34.2% in the first nine months of 2024, up from 29.8% in 2022. The habit of pausing and resuming service means that the industrywide rate of customer defections, which has risen over the past year, is less pronounced than it appears. The average rate of U.S. customer cancellations among premium streaming video services reached 5.2% in August, but after factoring in re-subscribers, the rate of defections was lower at 3.5%.

The increasingly ingrained habit underscores the importance of streamers regularly delivering hit shows and films as well as live fare such as sporting events. Streaming services are trying to use a mix of bundles, promotions, well-timed marketing emails and lower-cost ad-supported plans to lure customers back faster or help them feel they are getting enough value to stick around longer.

An anonymous reader shares a report: When Parasite became the first non-English language film in Oscars history to win best picture in 2019, it marked a breakthrough moment for Korean cinema. But the surge of interest that followed the director Bong Joon-ho's international success has not translated into a thriving local film industry, according to another of its leading lights.

The director Jang Joon-hwan said K-cinema was struggling after the arrival of Netflix and other streaming platforms, with movies often rushed on to streaming platforms, and box office ticket sales suffering as a consequence. Jang, whose 2004 cult sci-fi comedy Save the Green Planet is being remade by the Poor Things director, Yorgos Lanthimos, said Korean cinema was going through a "very precarious period" because Korean viewers would increasingly prefer to wait for films to come out on streaming platforms than pay more to go to the cinema.

"I hope that such a day comes that Korean films are being introduced to wider audiences and we can all enjoy them together, however as a Korean film director in Korea, [it's] a very difficult and challenging time with the advent of Netflix and the [streaming] platforms. In this post-pandemic period cinemagoers have dropped dramatically, so investment has dropped. There are less Korean films being made," he said. But he acknowledged that platforms such as Netflix had "introduced a lot of new international fans to Korean content," through hit shows such as Squid Game.

According to The Verge, Netflix plans to delist almost all of its interactive shows and films as of December 1st. Only four of the 24 interactive titles will remain: Black Mirror: Bandersnatch, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt: Kimmy vs. the Reverend, Ranveer vs. Wild with Bear Grylls, and You vs. Wild. From the report: The removal of the titles marks a disappointing conclusion to Netflix's earliest efforts into interactive content. The company first launched the interactive titles in 2017 with Puss in Book: Trapped in an Epic Tale, and I remember being wowed (and horrified) by paths in Black Mirror: Bandersnatch. In addition to specials based on franchises like Carmen Sandiego and Boss Baby, Netflix also tried ideas like a daily trivia series and a trivia game you could play with a friend. But the relatively few titles available suggests the format wasn't much of a hit -- Puss in Book has apparently been gone for a while. "The technology served its purpose, but is now limiting as we focus on technological efforts in other areas," spokesperson Chrissy Kelleher says.