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Apple Watch Ultra (Hands-On Fitness)

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My hands-on experience with the Apple Watch Ultra & Series 8. How does it look and feel next to the Series 7, WHOOP Strap, and …

Google updates YouTube app for Apple TV to online backlash

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Yesterday Google unveiled a major update to their YouTube App for the Apple TV. It’s a major change in that it abandons the long used design philosophy that their Apple TV app used in favor of their more standardized Android based design.

The overwhelming public reaction to this abrupt design change has been mostly negative and quite loud in the online community. The app has abandoned what was a design UI that was uniquely suited for the apple TV and its remote, and replaced it with what seems to be a port of the Android TV app.

In doing so a lot of functionality has been lost to the point of making the app almost unusable on the Apple TV. Some examples:

– The subscription list is sorted in alphabetical order and can only be swiped through horizontally. So if you have 200 subscribed channels and you want to get to the last one you will literally have to left swipe through all 200 of them.

– Categories and suggested content have been pushed right up front in an apparent effort to force users into contnet they are not choosing for themselves. Never heard of Logan Paul? Well you will be forced to be acquainted with him and others like him soon.

– Silly auto preview. Do I really need to have a preview of a video that may only have a short run time? this works on Netflix where the preview is a trailer of a much longer feature, but this is just sill the way it is implemented here.

– No 4K after all. All this ridiculousness and there is still no accommodation for 4K content on Apple TV. Google is adamant about the VP9 codec rather than the h.264 that pretty much everyone else uses.

So there is lots of talk at public forums such as Reddit and Mac Rumours on this and most Apple TV users are aghast. What do you think of these changes?

How much do the top YouTubers make? Marques Brownlee (MKBHD) may have accidentally leaked his earnings.

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How much do the top YouTubers make? Certainly many are curious about this and being that we are constantly watching his channel and others like it we certainly have wondered from time to time how these creators are doing with ad revenue.

Yesterday in his “What’s on my phone: 2018!” video Marques Brownlee aka MKBHD may have leaked out a clue. At about 3:40 in his video he opens the YT Studio app on his phone and you can briefly make out his channel stats and his income for January 2018 (EDIT – it like the screen has been completely obscured now in the video.

A few keen eyed types have taken the screen shot and cleaned it up to find it says $30729 in ad revenue. Is that what anyone had expected? I have to admit that I would have thought it would be more, and that his ad revenue alone would be close to $1 million a year.

We are big fans or Marques and feel that he is quite possibly not doing this by accident and indeed may be sending some sort of message about YouTube after the Adpocalypse and the bloodbath that it has been for smaller creators.

Do you need a replacement for your earbuds? Look at the Urbanears Sumpan

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So you have lost the EarPods that came with your iPhone and you don’t want to buy them again, or maybe you are looking for something new with a different sound signature. Our friends over at Stoodo took a look at these and shot them out against some other more expensive options such as the Apple AirPods and the Beats X. For even less than the price of replacement set of EarPods you can get a pair of these.

Sumpan at Amazon: Urbanears Sumpan Earbuds

Got the winter blues? Check out the Apple spicy orange iPhone case!

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A lot of the colors that Apple has chosen for their Silicone case line in the past have been pretty unusual and often unappealing. The sort of colors that look like they have been selected by a committee to be completely unoffensive and to not suggest any sort of emotion at all. The only color that is an exception to this and has really any sort of impact has always been the Product Red. However this year Apple has updated with a really great dusky orange color that adds some brightness and emotion to their case line and really helps deal with the winter blues. They’ve done a great job with selecting a color that is bright and fun but dusky and smoky enough to not end up looking like safety orange.

Music playback quality on the IPhone 6 and 6 Plus

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One of our biggest concerns in choosing a new phone is music playback quality. And by music playback quality I mean not only measurements, but also how easy it is to manage music and playback. It can certainly take away from the total enjoyment of listening if you are doing so on a device that is crippled by being difficult to adjust the volume or track. or to load music or playlists onto in the first place.

I suppose everyone in the world knows about the new iPhones, and we are particularly interested in the 6 Plus as a personal music player. Recently we were able to spend some time with it and use it as a PMP for a while and before disclosing our opinions we thought we might link up a couple of reviews that covered sound quality:

Archimago’s Unloaded iPhone Measurements: http://archimago.blogspot.com.es/2014/10/measurements-apple-iphone-4-iphone-6.html

Anandtechs Review Using a Audio Precision Analyzer: http://www.anandtech.com/show/8554/the-iphone-6-review/11

GSMArena Sound Quality Analysis: http://www.gsmarena.com/apple_iphone_6-review-1141p8.php

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