2025-01-30 06:51:49
After a couple of seasons as an Apple exclusive, Major League Soccer and Apple are broadening the reach of MLS Season Pass for this season. The company is making MLS League Pass available to Xfinity subscribers, who can add it to their package and stream it on Apple devices or on the Xfinity X1 box, and to DirecTV subscribers, who can just tune it in on channels 480 through 495 just like any other subscription sports TV package.
These are interesting moves, and suggest that Apple and MLS are not satisfied with the reach of MLS Season Pass solely within the TV app. Both parties are trying to balance Apple’s desire to use MLS as a gateway into Apple’s ecosystem and the need to improve total subscriber numbers. Letting people who’d rather just buy an MLS package through their cable or satellite provider seems like it’ll broaden the audience, but at the expense of that Apple ecosystem play. (Xfinity subscribers will get access to the whip-around MLS 360 channel even if they don’t subscribe to MLS Season Pass.)
There’s also a new franchise, Sunday Night Soccer, which features a single match in a unique time slot. Previously, Apple and MLS had jammed all MLS play into limited windows on Wednesdays and Saturdays. Now they’re creating a premier Sunday showcase for a handpicked game—think ESPN’s Sunday Night Baseball or NBC’s Sunday Night Football—and making it available within the TV app for all Apple TV+ subscribers, not just MLS Season Pass subscribers.
The MLS season begins February 22. MLS Season Pass still costs $99, or $79 for Apple TV+ subscribers. Apple’s also rolling out a new MLS documentary series, “Onside,” on February 21.
2025-01-30 06:17:06
So Apple is apparently taking the smart home seriously. Apparently the company is working on a new home controller that looks like a small iPad, and is exploring security cameras and smart doorbells. All of that makes some sort of sense, since most of it can be assembled out of software and hardware features Apple has already integrated with some other product.
I’d like to suggest another one. I’ve actually mentioned it before on a few podcasts, but I guess it’s never appeared here, so let’s do it. I was prompted to write about this by Six Colors reader Jono, who wrote:
I’m really wanting a “Continuity Camera” device for Apple TV, because Zoom is going away from the discontinued Facebook Portal TV device and I don’t want to have to have my parents attach their phone to a mount every time we want to have a call.
Yes, Jono! I love Continuity Camera, the feature that lets you use an iPhone as a remote camera for other Apple devices, including the Apple TV. Since 2020, my wife’s parents and siblings have gotten together every other week via Zoom for a family video chat. For the last few months we’ve been do it on Apple TV, using the Zoom app for tvOS connected to my iPhone via Continuity Camera. (It’s better than it used to be.)
In fact, the experience is pretty awesome. Center Stage makes sure the right people are in frame, the quality of the iPhone camera beats every other webcam out there, and watching everyone on our big-screen TV makes it feel like something out of a sci-fi movie about how people will communicate in the far-off future year of 2025.
To get it to work, I have to clip my iPhone into a iPhone-compatible tripod that I can set on my coffee table (I previously used a magnetic mount on top of the TV), but once it’s set up, it works okay. Still, it’s clunky. Which leads to the hardware request: How about just making a continuity camera, Apple? It would be nice to permanently stick one on the top of my TV so that I could use it whenever I wanted to do a FaceTime or Zoom from my living room.
I’d suggest that Apple TV could be made to support USB webcams, but whoops—Apple took away the USB-C port! So it’ll have to be a wireless connection, though the camera itself will need to be plugged into power. It could even double as a standalone high-quality webcam for Mac users who are stuck with worse cameras.
Apple’s already got all the pieces to this puzzle. I could argue that the worst thing about Continuity Camera is that it requires (and monopolizes) your iPhone. I’m not going to buy a second iPhone to use as a camera, but I’d buy and install a Continuity Camera in a heartbeat.
2025-01-30 05:56:26
About four years ago I wrote about how I caught up with all my email newsletters by routing them into an RSS reader:
I love newsletters, but checking email is a drag—and reading long emails an even bigger one… My newsletter consumption has shot up as a result, and those mornings reading in bed while drinking my tea have become that much more pleasant.
I’m happy to report that I still do this—all of my newsletters either get sent directly to Feedbin or are forwarded to Feedbin via an email rule—and reading RSS and newsletters together is still as much of my morning routine as that tea is.
A couple of things have changed: First, I’ve been using ReadKit as my RSS reading app of choice for a few years now, and I love it. I keep it parked in Today view —just links from the last day—99% of the time.
And last year Feedbin introduced custom newsletter addresses, so now I can create unique email addresses for different newsletters. I am slowly upgrading all of my newsletters to use unique email addresses, which Feedbin lets me turn on and off at will.
If you’re frustrated by your newsletters ending up in all sorts of different places, I highly recommend this approach—especially if you also have some favorite sites that offer RSS feeds.
2025-01-30 04:58:13
The how often we use our non-default smartphone cameras, the tech or techniques we use to stay focused at work, where we buy and read ebooks and whether supporting indie bookstores appeals to us, and our least favorite thing to troubleshoot.
2025-01-29 22:45:48
The best time for Apple to truly embrace smart-home tech was five or ten years ago. The second best time, of course, is now. The good news is that, according to reports from reliable sources such as Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, Apple seems to have finally embraced the home as an area of growth, and a bunch of new Apple-designed home products are on the way.
It’s a sensible decision, and if Apple does it right, its years-long intransigence in this category might not matter. Let’s take a look at where Apple may be going.
