Apple’s Next Launch Event To Take Place On 14 September

For the past week or two, there have been rampant rumours claiming that Apple has planned to have a special launch event this month. True enough, the company has just officially announced the date for its next event.

According to the media invite as well as its US website, the event is scheduled to take place at 10:00 AM PDT on 14 September which is equivalent to 1:00 AM Malaysia time on 15 September. This round of Apple’s special event will once again take place virtually as the threat of COVID-19 is still at large throughout the world.

Greg Joswiak, the company’s Senior Vice President of Worldwide Marketing tweeted a short clip to mark the occasion. The clip is essentially a demonstration of the AR feature that you can activate through your iPhone and iPad by tapping the glowing Apple logo on the event section of Apple US website.

It is really hard to guess what Apple is trying to hint through the images and AR easter egg that accompanied today’s announcement. However, the “California streaming” tagline does remind us of a very famous song from the 1960s, California Dreamin’ which was made famous by The Mamas and The Papas.

At the moment, among new products that are expected to be revealed at the upcoming event includes iPhone 13 (or iPhone 12s, depending on who you ask), Apple Watch Series 7, and next-generation AirPods. Expect to hear more rumours as they make their way into the Internet, now that there is only one week to go before the event takes place.

EA Delists Five Older Need For Speed Titles; Servers Shutting Down In September

Electronic Arts is pulling five older Need for Speed titles from digital storefronts. And it’s doing so very abruptly too. If you love some of these titles but never got around to getting them, it may already be too late.

The quiet announcement came via a Reddit post. In it, an EA community manager says that the publisher will be pulling Need for Speed Carbon, Undercover, Shift, Shift 2: Unleashed and The Run. The online servers of these games will also be closed in three months. And this is done so that the publisher can focus on working on the new games in the series, the upcoming one already being delayed. But doing so means moving resources from maintaining the older ones.

As mentioned, the announcement came very abruptly. At the time of writing, the Reddit post is stated as being up 10 hours ago. But the announcement itself says the delisting of these older Need for Speed games will happen starting 31 May 2021. Even with time zone differences, this would mean that at best there’s a couple of hours left before they are gone.

If you already own these games though, you’ll still be able to play them normally. Online functionality will remain until 1 September, when EA shuts down their servers. Beyond that, offline is the only way you’ll be able to play these Need for Speed games.

The Star To Close Down Dimsum Streaming Service This September

Local on-demand video streaming service, Dimsum will cease its operation later this year. The closure was announced by its parent company, The Star Media Group (SMG) who also counts the daily English newspaper, The Star as one of its subsidiaries.

Set to take place by 30 September, one of the key reasons behind the closure is the fact that SMG’s key management team has identified new opportunities to pursue. It is not clear for now whether this decision is being spearheaded by SMG’s new CEO, Alex Yeow Wai Siaw who has just taken over the role on 1 March.

Meanwhile, the media conglomerate also said that the Dimsum team will be reassigned to other projects within SMG. Originally launched at the end of 2016, Dimsum primarily focused on contents from Asian countries including South Korea, China, Thailand, India, Indonesia, and Singapore as well as from Malaysia itself.

At the moment, the service runs on a freemium model with most of Dimsum’s contents  being made available for free with ads while those considered as premium contents can be accessed with a monthly fee of between RM 8 to RM 13.90. According to SMG’s annual report for 2019, more than 1.1 million users have subscribed for the service but seems like it is still not enough to save Dimsum from its imminent closure.