What to see at Hot Docs 2017: From Bill Nye to Internet hackers and bloggers

You're Soaking In It directed by Scott Harper

By Sonya Davidson

Hot Docs, North America's largest documentary film festival presents it's 24th annual edition from April 27 to May 7, 2017 in Toronto. There will be 230 documentary films from 58 countries at this year's festival. Hot Docs is known to feature thought-provoking, insightful and often infuriating titles to the city. Here are some titles that have caught my attention... Hot Docs 2017 box office is now open www.hotdocs.ca 

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Microsoft has an app that helps Mac users switch to Surface

photo from TechnoBuffalo

Microsoft is dead serious about getting Mac users to switch to Surface devices. Not only has the Redmond giant offered trade-ins and discounts for trading older Macs towards Surface Pros and Surface Books, the company has even created an app that helps Mac users migrate more seamlessly to a new Surface device.

The very specific Mac to Surface Assistant is a macOS app which Microsoft has reportedly been working on. Switcher apps are nothing new, we have them on smartphones and they make the process of transferring to a different platform less painful. Microsoft has this app in beta and has pulled it but it is likely going to be made available officially soon. Not only is Microsoft competing with Mac in terms of devices, specs and in-store experience, they now have specific apps to capture that market better.

Source: Thurrott.com

Drake smashes Apple Music’s single-day streaming record, too

Canadian rapper Drake didn’t just break records on Spotify. It seems his done the same thing on Apple Music, too. His 22-song “playlist” called More Life was streamed 89.9 million times on Apple Music for the first 24 hours it was available. It broke the record on Apple’s streaming service, which was believed to have been held by Drake as well for his last album Views. Aside from that, it even set records on Beats 1 with the weekend’s episode of “OVO Sound Radio,” where Drake premiered this playlist, became the biggest Beats 1 show to date. It isn’t known how many listeners tuned in, though.

As 9to5Mac points out, this streaming record on Apple Music might prove important for Apple and the viability of its streaming service as it has been streamed some 28.6 million times more there than on Spotify for its first 24 hours of availability. It’s a big deal especially with the difference in number of subscribers the services have. Apple is supposedly “well past” 20 million subscribers while Spotify reached 50 million paying listeners recently.

Apple now makes it easier to stream rented movies across different devices

Apple is employing a “rent once, watch anywhere” approach to movie rentals in the iTunes Store. The latest iTunes 12.6 update for the desktop will no longer restrict you to watch a movie you rented on the iPhone, iPad, Apple TV, or PC you rented it on. This feature will be available to work on devices with iOS 10.3 or tvOS 10.2. These haven’t been officially released to the public yet but with this update, we won’t be surprised if the rollout is soon.

Source: The Verge