Weekend Wrap-Up: Apple Officially Confirms Beats Acquisition, May Enter Smart Home Market at WWDC

It’s Sunday once more, which means we’re going over the top stories from the past week in another edition of the Weekend Wrap-Up. Thanks for coming!

Here’s how this works: the Wrap-Up is done as both a video and as written summaries. You can look directly below this text to watch the video, or you can scroll down a little bit to get to the written observations. If you’re an Apple fan, the Wrap-Up is 50% stories from the iconic Cupertino company. We think you’ll like the other stories, too. So let’s get to it.

Apple’s Acquisition of Beats Gets an Official Announcement

The deal was rumored for weeks, and even Dr. Dre seemed confident enough in it to go on YouTube and boast. But Apple (and Beats, for that matter) remained silent — that is, until this past week. Apple put out a press release to officially announce the acquisition of Beats, makers of a popular headphone line as well as a streaming music service. An internal Apple memo from Tim Cook was also leaked out, and it appears that Cook truly believes the Beats deal will help the company further its goals. Beats founders Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine will join Apple and will report to Eddy Cue.

Apple-Powered Smart Home May Become a Reality at WWDC

The Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) is right around the corner (June 2, to be exact), and it’s the event Apple typically uses to introduce new versions of iOS and OS X. But Apple may have more up its sleeve for the conference, according to some sources. It’s rumored that Apple may be planning to detail a smart home platform based around iOS, jumping into a field that competitor Google is already in thanks to its earlier acquisition of Nest. Is Apple really going to let you control electronics using your iPhone? We’ll find out tomorrow.

Google Shows Off Its Latest Autonomous Car Prototype

Google has unveiled its latest self-driving car prototype, and, to steal a word from our own Brian Rubin, it is “adorable.” The latest self-driving Google car is compact, curvy, and lacks the steering wheel and pedal set you’d find in a traditional automobile. This is, of course, because a computer drives the car, and the computer has no use for those human controls. The car currently tops out at 25 miles per hour, which is likely due to the fact that the cars are in a test phase, and the likelihood of serious injury to a test passenger is lessened by the lower speed. I, for one, am excited about a future where cars can take us about and where accidents are significantly reduced, and it’s said that this technology could be on the road in six years. Sounds like the future isn’t too far away.

Amazon Streaming Music Service Could Drop This Summer

Is Amazon finally ready to toss its hat into the streaming music ring? According to sources inside the music industry, a Spotify-esque service could be coming as part of the Amazon Prime subscription service, but with a catch. Instead of gaining access to an entire library of music, including new albums on their release date, the music on Amazon’s service will have to be at least six months old. This sounds like a way to keep both music labels happy, and also a way for Amazon to avoid cannibalizing its own digital music sales. The announcement for said service is expected sometime this summer, so we’ll keep our eyes peeled and our ears open and report back if we learn more.