NEWS
Apple's new product event probably March 15th
I generally try not to report on rumours like this in The Sizzle - there's no harm in waiting until it's a fact. But this rumour is so strong, I can't ignore it. March 15th will see Apple announce a new iPad Air, a 4" iPhone and some new Apple Watch bands. I'd be tempted to go the 4" iPhone if the camera is up to scratch. Maybe. It'll probably cost $1000 and Apple will call it their "mid-range" phone. My iPad Air 1st gen is still working fine, so unless the Air 3 is balls out amazing, might wait for the 3 to hit the refurb store.
Fine Bros decide not to enforce their trademark on reaction vids
File this in the "we are totally oblivious to our own actions" category. The Fine Bros, who I mentioned only earlier this week decided to get a trademark on reaction videos, a genre of videos they feel they invented. After a few days of whiny YouTube "stars" yelling at the Fine Bros, they realised maybe what they're doing is infact, bad, not good and have rescinded their trademarks on reaction vids.
Apple sold more iPad Pros than Microsoft sold Surfaces
I honestly did not expect this - according to IDC Apple sold 2 million iPad Pros last quarter and Microsoft sold 1.6 million Surfaces. I would have thought that the Surface Pro would be king of the big screen tablets thanks to it being much more flexible. But I guess people really like the iOS ecosystem (which is better - Windows as anything other than a desktop OS is pretty lame).
Optus decides to sell the BlackBerry Priv
There's probably one or two of you sick fucks out there who want to see what sort of monstrosity BlackBerry's Priv has devolved into. This last ditch effort from BlackBerry goes on sale with Optus (who really must be getting a sweet deal to bother having it take up valuable shelf space) tomorrow.
SwiftKey is now a Microsoft product
The popular SwiftKey mobile keyboard app has been snapped up by Microsoft for US$250m. Microsoft has a tendency to snap up these cool mobile apps, like Wunderlist, Sunrise and Acompli and actually not fuck them up, sometimes even making them better. I like this Microsoft.
COOL SHIT
15 years of VLC
VLC is one of those apps that I've used day in, day out, for so long now, that I take it for granted. The damn thing plays back virtually any video type, works on every platform I can think of and costs nothing. What an amazing project and surely is a poster child for open source projects done right. 15 years ago it was launched in the form we know it as now and since then it's had over 2 billion downloads. Incredible success.
Dude made a Raspberry Pi tweet whenever his Internet is slow
I hate slow Internet and I wish I thought of this back when I was having trouble with Optus. This Comcast customer in the USA has a Raspberry Pi running a simple script that performs the CLI version of Speed Test and if the result is significantly under the 150/50 he's paying for, the script tweets at Comcast complaining it is slow.
Apple's confusing and scary 20th Anniversary Mac intro video
If you remember the good old days of Mac OS X, where Apple would play an intro video with some cool music on the first boot after installing the new OS (example), you'll probably watch this video from the 20th Anniversary Mac intro vid and wonder what the hell was going on down in Cupertino the day this was burned to a disc. People were so big on CD-ROMs, haha - they weren't that exciting, were they?
Here endeth the sizzle (until tomorrow!)
--Anthony
The Sizzle is curated by Anthony "@decryption" Agius and emailed every weekday afternoon. Like The Sizzle? Tell your friends!