Apple Knives Out
- When a renowned crime novelist dies just after his 85th birthday, inquisitive Detective Benoit Blanc is enlisted to investigate. He sifts through red herrings and self-serving lies to uncover the truth behind the writer's untimely demise.
- The first Knives Out was released in November 2019 and starred Craig, Chris Evans, Ana de Armas, Jamie Lee Curtis, Michael Shannon, Toni Collette, Lakeith Stanfield and Christopher Plummer.
From rising chatter about layoffs to the Apple iPhone’s stringent product placement to the new Xbox specs, this week had something for pretty much everyone. The cost of apple laptop. Let’s jump in!
Layoffs Looming?
In a recent interview, Knives Out director Rian johnson revealed that Apple might be giving away the mystery to your favorite movies and tv shows. Knives Out is a murder mystery less interested in the death than in the survivors, and opening up those smaller boxes is a delight.
Dozens of startups are laying off thousands of workers,according to a new analysis by The NewYork Times. At the same time, startups are struggling to raise money—anotable contrast to a few years ago, when banks and venture-capital firmsseemed only too happy to pour millions of dollars into tiny and unproven firms.
According to the Times calculations, some 30 startups have cut 8,000 jobs over the past four months. Some of these layoffs have been high profile: In November, for example, a beleaguered WeWork began winding down a significant portion of its workforce in the wake of a failed IPO attempt. In January, e-scooter rental firm Lime slammed the brakes on a few years of explosive growth, laying off 14 percent of its workforce and pulling out of 12 markets—and it wasn’t the only scooter company to retreat.
The big question, of course, is whether this burst oflayoffs is restricted to startups that grew too big too fast, or if there’s abroader rot within the tech industry. Certainly there have been layoffs atlarger and mature firms—for example, Google Cloud recently laid off a “small”number of employees, and VMware willreportedly dismiss a selection. But bigger companies semi-routinely“adjust” their workforces, so reports of relatively small-scale employeedepartures aren’t necessarily an indicator that we’re on the verge of a massiveimplosion. Free apple apps for mac.
Throw something like the coronavirus into the mix—with its potentially catastrophic effects on the economy and available funding—and there’s a chance that other tech companies could decide to tighten the belt in coming months. We’ll have to wait and see.
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X Marks the (Xbox)Spot
If you’re interested in video games (either playing them,developing them, or both), you’re no doubt aware that Microsoft has a new Xboxin the works. This next-generation device, the Xbox Series X (go ahead, saythat five times fast), features some big firepower for rendering games,including a custom-designed processor that leverages AMD’s Zen 2 and RDNA 2architectures.
“Deliveringfour times the processing power of an Xbox One and enabling developers toleverage 12 TFLOPS of GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) performance—twice that ofan Xbox One X and more than eight times the original Xbox One” is how the Xboxcorporate team’s recent blog post summed up that processing power.
There are also reported upgrades to everything from SSDstorage to support for 120 fps. For game-players, there’s supposedly a gooddeal of backward compatibility with older Xbox platforms. For developers, itwill be interesting to see how Microsoft approaches the tools and portals forbuilding and distributing Xbox games; with Sony poised to unleash a newPlayStation, and Nintendo’s Switch still going strong, a healthy game anddeveloper ecosystem will be a necessary precondition for any kind of marketvictory.
Apple Has Its Knives Out
Hollywood has a long, proud tradition of allowing product placement in films and television shows—sometimes it’s E.T. eating Reese’s Pieces, and every so often, you get something like 2013’s “The Internship,” which was essentially a two-hour advertisement for Google (and a very serious contender for the un-funniest “comedy” of the decade).
What’s interesting is when companies don’t want their products featured in certain contexts. Accordingto Rian Johnson, director of the mystery film “Knives Out” (as well as “TheLast Jedi,” arguably the best “Star Wars” film), Apple really doesn’t wantcinematic villains using an iPhone. Ever.
“Apple, they let you use iPhones in movies, but—and this isvery pivotal if you’re ever watching a mystery movie—bad guys cannot haveiPhones on camera,” Johnson told VanityFair (hat tip to ArsTechnica for the link). He added: “Every single filmmaker that has abad guy in their movie that’s supposed to be a secret wants to murder me rightnow.”
Apple Knives Out Cast
If Apple gives filmmakers free iPhones as product placement, the company can almost certainly dictate how those phones are used. But if the filmmakers buy the devices on their own, it’s hard to see how Apple could determine their use. In any case, who’s shocked that Apple might potentially be super, ah, prickly detail-oriented about product placement? Not us!
Have a great weekend, everyone!
A scene in Knives Out, where the character played by Jamie Lee Curtis holds an iPhone. Vanity Fair/YouTube
For over a decade, there has been a theory circling among mystery junkies that, in movies and TV shows, the good guys use Macs, while the bad guys use PCs.
Apple Trailers Knives Out
That fan theory just became a lot more credible this week, after Rian Johnson, the director of Knives Out and Star Wars: The Last Jedi, revealed, half-impulsively, in a Vanity Fairinterview that Apple indeed has a policy that prohibits bad guys in movies from using iPhones.
SEE ALSO: Rian Johnson on the Freedom of His ‘Star Wars’ Trilogy & ‘Knives Out’
“Apple…they let you use iPhones in movies but—and this is very pivotal if you’re ever watching a mystery movie—bad guys cannot have iPhones on camera,” Johnson said. Apps for apple computer.
Apple Knives Out Of Business
“So, oh no!” He regretted immediately. “Every single filmmaker that has a bad guy in their movie that’s supposed to be a secret wants to murder me right now.”
Apple Knives Out Torrent
Johnson leaked this industry secret when discussing the importance of props in movies, using a scene in Knives Out where one of the characters was holding an iPhone, as an example.
According to close Apple watchers on MacRumors, Apple has an explicit trademark policy that says its products should only be presented “in the best light, in a manner or context that reflects favorably on the Apple products and on Apple Inc.”
Some MacRumor members found it baffling how Apple would actually implement such a policy. “The problem with this policy is that the criterion used to determine who the good guys and the bad guys are so subjective,” wrote one reader on the news site’s discussion board.
However, MacRumor members were quick to find counter examples. “I see plenty of Apple products on House of Cards though,” one reader wrote on the MacRumor forum.
“From a legal point of view, I don’t understand how that works. In a fictional work, why isn’t the filmmaker free to show any product they want however they want?” questioned another reader.
Apple didn’t respond to an inquiry by Observer to confirm or deny Johnson’s statement by press time.