Plex, the popular media service that offers apps on nearly every platform, has today revealed the latest iteration of its iOS application. With the latest update, the app has gained several new features.
The long-awaited Jobs movie opened this weekend, with Box Office Mojo reporting that it took seventh place in the weekend openings, grossing $6.7M against top-grossing movie The Butler at $25M. Distributor Open Road Films had expected Jobs to gross $8-9M.
Playing at 2,381 locations, Jobs opened in seventh place with an estimated $6.7 million. While it was never expected to match The Social Network, it’s still very disappointing to note that the Steve Jobs biopic earned less than one-third as much as the Facebook story. This is also one of star Ashton Kutcher’s lowest openings ever—among nationwide releases, it’s only ahead of 2003’s My Boss’s Daughter ($4.9 million).
Jobs had plenty of issues, including awful reviews and a comedy star playing dramatic (almost never a good idea). Most important, though, was the movie’s apparent tonal issues: while plenty of people enjoy their Apple products, the deification of Steve Jobs is a bit of a turn off. Jobs received a weak “B-” CinemaScore, and all indications are that it will disappear from theaters quickly …
We didn’t get any updates to Apple TV at WWDC this week like some were hoping for, but yesterday Comcast–one of the cable companies that has been rumored to be in discussions with Apple over a new and improved Apple TV service– unveiled its next-generation cable box arriving this fall. On top of a brand new UI and platform dubbed “X2”, the company also gave us a look at its revamped iOS apps & a new controller with voice control features that will let you search by actor, show type, series, etc.
While showing off a new slick UI with recommendations and brand new, customizable guide views, the company also showed off integration with apps such as Pandora, Rotten Tomatoes, and zeebox for ratings. Within the new apps section (shown at 16:40), we see integration with Facebook, Pandora, Instagram, Xfinity Home apps, and much more.
An interesting aspect of the presentation, Comcast CEO Brian Roberts noted that the company sees the new open platform as being an open architecture that would allow for a “family of boxes” and a family of personalized remotes. We’re not sure if that means the company has plans to integrate third-party hardware with its platform, like an Apple TV for example, but it’s clear Comcast has no plans on completely getting rid of its own cable box anytime soon. It also doesn’t look like Comcast is waiting around for Apple to revamp its TV service with apps and voice control, and we also got a quick look at the new X2 experience running on an iPad and iPhone (pictured right).
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A few of the most noteworthy apps in the iOS ecosystem either landed on the App Store recently or received much-welcomed updates, such as the launch of Little Things Forever—the long-awaited sequel to the “iPad App of the Week” Little Things. Performance enhancements and new feature additions also arrived to Little Things, as well as Diet Coda, Sparrow for iPhone, Netflix, Etsy, Pinterest, Angry Birds Space and Angry Birds Space HD, Flixster with Rotten Tomatoes, Google Shopper, and Djay and Djay Free.
Check out the full slate of notables below.
