If there are two main points we took away from the fairly entertaining Dish Network press conference this morning at CES 2014 they are: A) Americans watch way too much TV — an average of 35.5 hours per week, according to Dish, and B) Dish Network is working hard to help us watch a whole lot more.
Surrounded by a barrage of kangaroo furries, Dish Network CEO Joe Clayton outlined the road map for the three key parts he says Americans want from their cable or satellite provider: affordability, availability, and ease of use. The new Dish Network products primed for release in 2014 appear to be especially focused on the latter two points.
The apex of the new services Dish Network is rolling out for the coming year focus on its Hopper DVR’s companion piece, the Joey. But instead of just one basic add-on to your Hopper DVR, Dish is making available what it’s calling a Joey Troop. Cute, but also extremely powerful for those that want to watch content anywhere, and everywhere – from a broad range of devices.
The biggest new additions to the family are the Wireless Joey, which allows you to connect TVs to Dish Network services wirelessly via WiFi, and the Virtual Joey, an add-on app to the Hopper that will be appearing in select LG TVs, as well as in the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4 gaming consoles, allowing said content to ride along with all of the other streaming apps in your collection.
Finally, the company is rolling out its new SuperJoey, an add-on DVR that is small, but also has two extra tuners, and a processing chip as powerful as that in the company’s regular Hopper DVR. With the Super Joey, users can record up to eight programs at a time, virtually eliminating DVR battles in almost any household.
Along with its super powered new team of Joeys, the company has upgraded its Dish Anywhere app for use with the Kindle, and added voice recognition for the iPad to allow for advanced searching techniques. Senior VP of Product Management Vivek Khemka showed a demonstration in which he told the tablet to find Angelina Jolie movies, and then simply said without Brad Pitt, and the app complied by finding several movies with the solo sultry actress, across multiple platforms. Finally, and perhaps most convincing to those on the edge of signing up with Dish Network, the company will be offering an iPad mini for free for all new subscribers.
With a self-proclaimed higher brand recognition than DirecTV in the last two quarters, Dish Network has already made substantial gains over the last year. And with over 100 evolutions to its interface, reams of ways to watch, and a user-focused attitude, the company seems primed to take the reins as the top dog in satellite in 2014.
Affinity’s new all-in-one creative app is finally coming to the iPad, nearly a year after Canva launched the redesigned desktop version for Mac and Windows. Creatives have been asking for the iPad release ever since, especially because files created in the new Affinity app cannot be opened in the older V2 iPad apps.
Affinity already has Photo, Designer, and Publisher apps on iPad, but the new release combines those tools into the same unified app that Canva launched on desktop last year.
Touchscreen laptops have been around for years. You can get them in all sizes and shapes. Just not from Apple. For years, the Cupertino giant has treated the idea of a touchscreen MacBook the way I treat a meeting that could have been an email: with open contempt. However, Wednesday looks like the day the company could finally change its mind.
The latest Apple invite puts the “Pro and Tell” showcase in Los Angeles at 10 a.m. PT (1 p.m. ET) on October 28, 2026. Instead of a regular live-streamed keynote, it is an invitation-only, hands-on event for a handful of press and creators (similar to what the company did for the MacBook Neo earlier this year).
Apple has just launched its latest iPad mini with a notable set of upgrades, including an OLED screen, improved speakers, and a more resilient build. It also gets a new chip, and the whole package costs $200 more than its predecessor. But if you look closely at Apple’s online store, you’ll realize that $699 isn’t enough to get you the most powerful version of the A20 Pro chip inside this tablet. In fact, even if you pay $800 for the 256GB model, you still won’t get the beefiest variant. Only when you jump to the 512GB trim, which costs an absurd $999, do you get the most powerful flavor of the A20 Pro.
The $999 model gets more than extra storage