Review: Amazon’s Fire Phone offers new gimmicks, old platform growing pains

Amazon's first phone isn't without its charms, but is it good enough to replace the iOS or Android stuff you already have?

Andrew Cunningham

It took other companies a long time to respond to the iPad. Early efforts like the first Samsung Galaxy Tabs, the Motorola Xoom, and Barnes & Noble's Nook Color had their fans, but compared to Apple's tablets, they all had major flaws. Amazon's first Kindle Fire had its problems too, but Amazon's name recognition and the tablet's $199 price made it one of the iPad's first semi-credible competitors. It opened the door for even better tablets at the same price point, and Android's tablet market share is largely built on the cheap tablet foundation that Amazon helped establish.

Amazon's first smartphone is taking the opposite path. It's jumping into the high-end smartphone market surprisingly late in the game. The market started showing signs of saturation, and its competitors are entrenched. At $649 unlocked for a 32GB phone ($199 with a two-year contract), it doesn't have a price advantage. It's also not being subsidized by Amazon's media storefronts or by "Special Offers"-style advertisements.

Because it's 2014, because the phone costs what it does, and because there are dozens of great phones to be had at (and well below) this price bracket, it's going to be much more difficult for users to overlook flaws or shortcomings when compared to those first Kindle Fire tablets. Amazon's phone brings unique features like its Dynamic Perspective head tracking cameras and its Firefly scanning software, but can the phone get by on a couple of cool features if it has other problems?

Read 60 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Are the people who refuse to accept climate change ill-informed?

Flickr user: TWM Labs

Polls relating to publicly controversial scientific issues often trigger a great wailing and gnashing of teeth from science advocates. When large proportions of a population seem poorly informed about evolution, climate change, or genetically-modified foods, the usual response is to bemoan the state of science literacy. It can seem obvious that many people don't understand the science of evolution, for example—or the scientific method, generally—and that opinions would change if only we could educate them.

Research has shown, unfortunately, it's not that simple. Ars has previously covered Yale Professor Dan Kahan's research into what he calls "cultural cognition," and the idea goes like this: public opinion on these topics is fundamentally tied to cultural identities rather than assessment of scientific evidence. In other words, rather than evaluate the science, people form opinions based on what they think people with a similar background believe.

That shouldn't come as a shock, especially given the well-known political or religious divides apparent for climate change and evolution.

Read 15 remaining paragraphs | Comments

YouTube star hit with copyright lawsuit, label seeks $150,000 per song

Michelle Phan, a very popular YouTube user, demonstrates the stretchiness of hair ties.

Michelle Phan

Popular YouTube user Michelle Phan is being sued for alleged copyright infringement on songs she has used in her videos, according to reports from the BBC. Ultra Records claims that Phan has used 50 of its songs in her YouTube posts and on her website illegally despite one of the label's own artists objecting to the legal action.

Phan's YouTube channel centers around using and buying makeup, and her videos are often backed by upbeat music with the artist credited in the video's description. Artists whom Phan has used in her videos include Kaskade, deadmau5, and Calvin Harris.

Kaskade spoke out on Twitter about the lawsuit, condemning Ultra for pursuing Phan for copyright infringement. "Copyright law is a dinosaur, ill-suited for the landscape of today's media," he wrote. "We can't love (& won't buy) music we haven't heard." If it's exposure artists are looking for, Phan's audience isn't a bad target. She boasts over six million subscribers and videos that consistently crack a million views each.

Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Porn studio sues immigrant who has “no idea how BitTorrent works,” wins big

A defendant accused of illegally downloading porn on BitTorrent argued it was like having a pirated CD slipped in his bag on the way out of the store. The judge didn't buy it.

zen Sutherland

Porn studio Malibu Media files more copyright lawsuits than anyone else in the US since the fall of Prenda Law; hundreds of suits against "John Doe" defendants have been filed in just the last few months. Nearly all of those cases settle before the case is decided on the merits.

However, in a rare development yesterday, a Malibu lawsuit proceeded to a judgment—and it was a slam dunk for the porn studio. In a terse five-page order (PDF), US District Judge Robert Jonker tore apart defendant Don Bui's arguments that using BitTorrent and the site Kickass Torrents to get porn files didn't violate Malibu's copyright.

In the case, the defendant admitted he had 57 unauthorized copies of Malibu Media movies on his hard drive and had used BitTorrent technology to get them. Bui tried to shift the blame to the Kickass Torrents website, but it didn't work. He also tried to distinguish the technology he used from earlier technologies found to violate copyright laws, like Grokster. That didn't sway Jonker, who wrote:

Read 10 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Liveblog: Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella talks Q4 earnings, big layoffs

Satya Nadella and former Nokia CEO Stephen Elop in a photo-op.

View Liveblog

2014-07-22T16:30:00-05:00

Last week, Microsoft announced that it would be making the largest set of staff cuts in the company's history, axing as many as 18,000 jobs over the next fiscal year. This week, CEO Satya Nadella will be delivering Microsoft's fourth-quarter earnings results, and according to his corporate-speak-filled layoff e-mail, Nadella will take the opportunity to "share further specifics on where we [Microsoft] are focusing our innovation investments."

This likely means elaboration on both the specific nature of the cuts (which Microsoft EVP and former Nokia CEO Stephen Elop discussed at length in his own e-mail last week) and some details on where and how Microsoft plans to expend effort to improve itself. There will also likely be a barrage of questions from analysts wanting to know about how the cuts will affect Microsoft's business strategy, since Nadella's e-mail contained language indicating that he wanted to (among other things) flatten the organization's notoriously thick management layer cake.

Shares of MSFT actually jumped a few points when trading commenced after the layoff announcements on the morning of July 17; revenues are expected to be up from last fiscal year's fourth quarter, and analyst expectations are that Microsoft's Q414 performance will come in at about $0.60 per share, down from $0.66 last year.

Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments

iPhones and Macs rise, iPads and iPods drop in Apple’s Q3 2014 [Updated]

Apple has set another quarterly record for iPhone sales, despite the fact that the iPhone 5S is due for replacement relatively soon.

Jacqui Cheng

It's been another quiet, by-the-books quarter for Apple, which has yet to release any major updates to any of its products so far in this calendar year. For the third quarter of 2014, the company projected it would maintain profit margins between 37 and 38 percent on revenues between $36 and $38 billion, and it met the revenue estimates with profits of $7.7 billion on revenue of $37.4 billion. Revenue is about six percent higher and profit is 11.6 percent higher than Q3 of 2013, in which the company earned $6.9 billion of profit on $35.3 billion of revenue.

The company's gross margin was considerably higher than the estimate, at 39.4 percent compared to 36.9 percent a year ago, an increase of 6.8 percent.

iPhone and Mac sales were both up over the year-ago quarter—Apple sold 35.2 million iPhones (compared to 31.24 million) and 4.41 million Macs (compared to 3.75 million) this quarter, despite the fact that most of its products are either mid-cycle or nearing the end of their refresh cycles. The delay of Intel's next-generation Broadwell CPUs has kept Apple from making more than minor tweaks to its Mac lineup this year.

Read 7 remaining paragraphs | Comments

EA delays Battlefield: Hardline to 2015, Dragon Age to Nov. 18

EA

The busy holiday gaming season, set to get its start in earnest during a packed October this year, is looking a little less packed today. That's because EA has announced that two of its biggest titles have slipped from planned October release dates to give the developers more time to finish up their work.

The bigger of the two delays is the spin-off shooter franchise Battlefield: Hardline, which has been pushed from October 21 to an unspecified date in "early 2015." According to a blog post announcing the move, that delay comes after a post-E3 beta for the game seemingly failed to live up to player expectations.

"We've been pouring over the data and feedback [from the beta], and have already been putting a lot of it right into the game and sharing it directly with you," DICE VP and Group GM Karl Magnus Troedsson wrote in the blog post. "This feedback also spurred us to start thinking about other possibilities and ways we could push Hardline innovation further and make the game even better. The more we thought about these ideas, the more we knew we had to get them into the game you will all be playing. However, there was only one problem. We would need more time. Time that we didn't have if we decided to move forward with launching in just a couple of months."

Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Apple’s Q3 2014 earnings call liveblog

Apple's newly split stock price has been on the rise lately. Let's see if this quarter's earnings make it move one way or the other.

Andrew Cunningham

View Liveblog

2014-07-22T16:00:00-05:00

Apple will be announcing its Q3 2014 financial results on Tuesday, July 22 at 5pm Eastern time (2pm Pacific), and the standard earnings call with press and analysts will follow shortly afterward. As we usually do, we'll be following along with the call to liveblog and provide charts and other contextual information—Apple rarely makes major announcements on these calls, but it does give more information on how particular Apple products are doing both in the US and other markets.

Apple's third fiscal quarter runs from the beginning of April to the end of June, and while WWDC was full of new software announcements, those updates (and the new hardware that will accompany them) won't actually be available until the fall, late in Q4 2014 or early in Q1 2015. Beyond a new, slightly cheaper iMac and a security lock for the Mac Pro, we just haven't gotten many new gadgets lately, and the majority of Apple's money is made by selling hardware. That said, Apple's products tend to sell well even when they're in the middle of a refresh cycle. One stat in particular to keep an eye on: will iPad sales continue to be down as they were last quarter, or will they bounce back up? Analysts believe that tablet sales are beginning to level off, and the iPad's sales numbers will be a major data point in that discussion.

Apple's guidance for the quarter predicted revenue between $36 billion and $38 billion with profit margins between 37 and 38 percent. Other predictions for this quarter can be found in the Q2 2014 announcement.

Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Ask LH: How Can I Make Sure Packages Actually Get Delivered?

Hey Lifehacker, How can I stop couriers and Australia Post from falsely marking packages as "Attempted Delivery" and leaving a card to collect from the Post Office, even though someone was available to receive the delivery? It seems like the delivery drivers aren't even bothering to ring a doorbell because it takes longer than just leaving the card, but their actions then waste my time and the post-office staff time too. How can I prevent this selfish behaviour? More »