Gadgetory

what's up Brian Tong here and welcome to the Apple buy for everything good and bad inside the world of Apple let's get to the show and a report from The Wall Street Journal that Apple is now in early talks with Comcast about the possibility of a collaborative television streaming service now the proposed plan would be for Comcast to provide preferential treatment to an apple set-top box like the Apple TV allowing subscribers to stream live and on-demand programs now apples box would get priority and still continue to stream smoothly as if users were watching live TV even if other Comcast connections are being hit with high traffic and bandwidth issues again these talks are very early Apple proposed a similar plan to Time Warner that broke down the locking down a deal like this is very difficult Plus Apple would still need to acquire the rights to streaming programming from networks and it would also require significant upgrade to comcast current infrastructure I like the idea of this partnership at least it makes sense unlike that a Facebook oculus rift acquisition yikes but I don't expect it to happen anytime soon also billboard reports that Apple is considering launching an on-demand music streaming service similar to Spotify due to declining music sales and this move could also include an iTunes app for Android in January music sales had declined for the first time since the iTunes Store open in 2003 with individual song purchases dropping almost 6 percent while Spotify Pandora and YouTube have generated one point four billion dollars in subscription advertising and licensing revenue in 2013 a 39 percent increase Apple's iTunes radio is station based like Pandora and it's actually made me purchase a few more tracks here and there but they don't have a service that lets you pick and choose your own music to stream whatever you want the idea of expanding iTunes with streaming is still in the early stages but why not just do something like offer an 8 to 10 dollar monthly service this would be easy and I think it's safe to say we could see this happen in 2014 alright everyone has been waiting for a MacBook Air with a Retina display and a new report from digit Times claims that this unicorn of a laptop from Apple will be launched in the second half of 2014 according to of course their supply chain sources away phone composting claimed new MacBook Pros will be released in September of this year alongside a retina err there had been continued rumors of a super slim 12-inch sized MacBook with a Retina display since last year that's believed to be this unicorn retina err but there has been no real evidence to back these claims up all right now when there isn't that much news always turn to emojis if you like emojis raise your hand like I'm asking you right now raise your hand all right Thank You Little Billy now you also might notice emojis aren't the most diverse group of media grams and what is an ideogram you ask ideogram a written symbol that represents an idea or object directly rather than a particular word or speech sound now you know well MTV act sent an email to Tim Cook and address the lack of diversity emojis this is important stuff an apples VP of worldwide corporate communications actually responded saying we agree with you our emoji characters are based on the Unicode standard which is necessary for them to be displayed properly across many platforms there needs to be more diversity in the emoji character set and we have been working closely with the Unicode consortium in an effort to update the standard so I can't wait for them to add the emoji for the Asian person with bleached hair because look it's pretty obvious they need one speaking of additions Apple has added a new section to its iOS app store called sharing selfies and probably the worst use of time ever for an Apple employee this section includes apps like snapchat and the Justin Bieber backed shots notes never make a section for the app store that has a Justin Bieber app and also stop taking self-obsessed selfies unless you're hot now this reeks of you know what a bad apple alright til the quick bytes iTunes radio gets its first new streaming channel with an NPR station that will stream 24 hours a day they see live news with pre-recorded segments from its staple of shows I love this edition and it brings more of a radio feel to the service and flappy bird yes that game is set to return according to creator don't go in during the games developer conference a fan astín win and he confirmed with a yes but not soon which really makes you think that he just messed with us from the start now unfortunately flappy brian was unable to gain any traction the App Store because most to play flappy Brian alright let's announce our winners for the design by humans t-shirt giveaway from last week we asked you to tell us how many bad apples were in the previous episode and the correct answer was two bad apples there were a lot of people who said three but look that last one was a bad apple and an orange you know it's pretty sad that some of you think an apple and orange look exactly the same seriously well congrats go to our smart people our email winners are Robert Williams the third and Damien sonic but not Jason Crawford who said three bad apples seriously and our Twitter winners go to alia cuz yeah is a one in a million that's for you Miguel Rodriguez answer Nesbitt Congrats to all of you and we'll be in touch so you get the shirt of your choice and don't forget we still have an awesome promo with designed by humans for five dollars off any t-shirt using the code Apple byte five off that's good until April the fourth that's going to do it for this week's show you can email us at the Apple bite at cnet.com or tweet me at Brian Tong and I'll get you when I'm not trimming my toenails thanks so much for watching and we'll catch you guys next week for another bite