Tag: apple

Apple’s Ad-Targeting Crackdown Shakes Up Ad Market

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From Tom Dotan, The Information:

“Apple users are more valuable [to advertisers] based on demographics, being higher income, et cetera,” said Jason Kint, CEO of industry trade group Digital Content Next. He argues that Safari users have been “wrongly devalued” in the short term and says marketers just need to find better ways to reach them online. As an example, Kint points to ads that relate to the articles someone is reading—contextual advertising—as a format that doesn’t run afoul of privacy issues. He says the format is growing and credits Apple’s clampdown for one reason.

Amen. Targeted advertising, for me, has never really provided any amazing value over your more standard ad placement. As much as I love seeing ads on every page I visit for the thing I already bought on Amazon, I’d prefer to see ads the publishers stand by on some level.

How to correctly use a computer

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This is the first time I’ve been seriously interested in the iPad Pro. I have an entry level iPad from a few years ago and it might be time to donate that one to the kiddos. I’ll definitely hold back until reviews and such roll in, but it definitely checks all of the boxes for me between the new case/keyboard, port placement and cursor support.

Apple’s WWDC 2020 kicks off in June with an all-new online format

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From Apple:

The WWDC 2020 program will provide Apple’s entire global developer community — which now includes more than 23 million registered developers in more than 155 countries and regions — and the next generation of app developers with the insights and tools needed to turn their ideas into a reality. Additional program information will be shared between now and June by email, in the Apple Developer app and on the Apple Developer website.

Apple also announced it will commit $1 million to local San Jose organizations to offset associated revenue loss as a result of WWDC 2020’s new online format.

I feel like one of the interesting side effects of all of these cancellations, re-scheduling and re-thinking of conferences will prove to us the largest value is the social aspect of them. That may make it more difficult to justify the flight, hotel and conference costs in the future for a lot of employers. And that might be fine.

Project Connected Home over IP

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Apple Newsroom:

Amazon, Apple, Google, and the Zigbee Alliance today announced a new working group that plans to develop and promote the adoption of a new, royalty-free connectivity standard to increase compatibility among smart home products, with security as a fundamental design tenet. Zigbee Alliance board member companies such as IKEA, Legrand, NXP Semiconductors, Resideo, Samsung SmartThings, Schneider Electric, Signify (formerly Philips Lighting), Silicon Labs, Somfy, and Wulian are also onboard to join the working group and contribute to the project.

While this is just a press release, it’s still good to see these companies trying to move closer together, not further apart. I’ve been slowly migrating things in our house over to a Homekit / Homebridge setup but still using our Google Homes to trigger a lot of actions with voice. Ideally, keeping things platform-agnostic would allow me to just choose the best tech and then all of the main voice assistant vendors would work with them.

The name Project Connected Home over IP really rolls off the tongue, eh?

Introducing MusicBot: The All-in-One Apple Music Assistant, Powered by Shortcuts

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Federico Viticci, writing for MacStories:

The result is, by far, the most complex shortcut I’ve ever ever created (MusicBot spans 750+ actions in the Shortcuts app), but that’s not the point. MusicBot matters to me because, as I’ve shared before, music plays an essential role in my life, and MusicBot lets me enjoy my music more. This is why I spent so much time working on MusicBot, and why I wanted to share it publicly with everyone for free: I genuinely believe MusicBot offers useful enhancements for the Apple Music experience on iOS and iPadOS, providing tools that can help you rediscover lost gems in your library or find your next music obsession.

Uhhh, this is kind of amazing. I hope that someone sees this and makes a proper app that does roughly the same thing! Marvis Pro does a lot of neat things with the Apple Music API but this is on another level.

“Big Bang” releases vs. incremental value

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I was surprised to see that Music fixes were rolled into the new MacOS 10.15.2 release that came out this week. While I’m pleased to see that they’re iterating on the “new” app and taking customer feedback into consideration, I’m wondering why Apple isn’t shipping releases like these incrementally. Frankly, the same could be said for a lot of their applications.

With the fairly well-documented iOS 13 and Catalina update quality issues still fresh in mind, the company really needs to both focus on the quality of their overall platforms and the way in which they release software. One arrow in their quiver could be shipping updates to the core OS separate from apps unless required by new hardware changes. Does it add additional QA burden to test multiple permutations of software/OS combos? Yeah, it does. But when OS releases are tied to hardware releases at times it can be helpful to approach the rest of their software rollouts incrementally rather than shipping everything at once.

There’s no good reason that Music on MacOS or iOS can’t ship with smaller UX enhancements separate from an OS release. Same goes for Mail, Safari, etc.

My favorite 2019 tech things

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As we head into the holiday season, I thought I’d throw my hat in the “best of the year post” ring with a list of a few of my favorite personal tech items of the year. Some of these are bigger than others, but I wanted to list out some things I’m thankful for this year.

Apple Watch Series 5

I’ve owned the Series 0 (review here and here) and a few Series 3 versions before pulling the trigger on the 5 this year and the always on display is a game changer. I’ve gotten into sleep tracking by using the fantastic Autosleep app alongside the built-in fitness tracking and it’s really been illuminating. I’ve changed my sleep habits as a result and feel like I have more of an understanding of my exercise, eating and sleep habits by simply creating a habit of quantifying all of the things I do.

AirPods

I actually got gen 1 AirPods last year for Father’s Day but my use has really skyrocketed in the past year. I have noise-cancelling QC35s and almost never use them because the AirPods are just so darn convenient. The AirPods Pro seem like game changers, and I’m hoping my gen 1 models last until there’s a second generation of the pros.

Siri Shortcuts

With iOS 13, Siri Shortcuts have gotten super powerful. I’ve been setting more and more of these up over the past few months and it’s helped me automate a lot of little things that Tasker for Android used to allow me to do (and more!) A few examples:

  1. Bus commute: when I leave my work on weekdays between 3-6pm. It checks my departure time in that area against the bus schedule and assumes I’m on the nearest one before the current time. It then sends a text to my wife with my departure time and expected arrival time.
  2. Reading time: I’m asked how long I’d like to read and in which app (Kindle or Apple Books). It then turns on Do Not Disturb for that time period, turns on dark mode, adjusts the volume/brightness and starts up some chill instrumental music. Finally, the app I chose launches.
  3. Create packing list: this shortcut pulls from a Bear note template that I have and creates a new packing list based on the type of trip and prefixes it with a lot of metadata. That way, each trip I go on I update the template with any things I typically forget or need.

Chromecast / Nest Hub music management

Chromecasts can finally “hand off” to other groups/speakers like you can with Airplay 2. So I can be in the Kitchen and say “play this on all speakers” and it’ll keep playing the same music but throughout the entire home. Additionally, the Nest Home Hub now allows you to have more control over speakers from the UI so you can adjust volume for groups and individual speakers. I use this a ton, so I’m super thankful it’s here.

DuckDuckGo is finally good enough

I’ve mostly stopped using Google for search in the past year. DuckDuckGo is a super powerful search engine with privacy at it’s core, and the results are finally good enough for me to put my digital information eggs in multiple baskets. A recent Wired article makes the point better than I ever could. I still use Gmail and Calendar, with an occasional Google Maps search so I’m not burning anything down. Heck, as you can see above, I’m still using Nest stuff so I’m not going anywhere. But I’m also wary of the idea of Surveillance Capitalism being something we’re okay with.

Hey, Siri (and minimum wage contractors) … 

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From: Siri records fights, doctor’s appointments, and sex (and contractors hear it) | Ars Technica

These cases bring up a series of questions. What can Apple and its colleagues do to better protect user privacy as they develop their voice systems? Should users be notified when their recordings are reviewed? What can be done to reduce or eliminate the accidental activations? How should the companies handle the accidental information that its contractors overhear? Who is responsible when dangerous or illegal activity is recorded and discovered, all by accident?

Now it looks like your Siri voice recordings can be heard by contractors roughly 1% of the time.

I think my issue with all of this is that it’s not opt-in other than the “by using this software you agree to …” BS all tech companies shove down our throat. I think one solution to this problem would be to allow users to opt-in to have humans review your recordings as long as they are properly anonymized. There’s still a chance an accidental wake word could trigger some of the scenarios mentioned in the article but at least give folks the ability to make decisions about how much they want to contribute to making these voice assistants better.

I’ve turned off the “raise to talk to Siri” on my watch long ago but we do have Google Home devices in our house and “Hey Siri” is still activated on my phone. I could shut off the wake word functionality on my phone but I’m not even sure you can do that with the Google Homes. I’ll be honest, I’m starting to lean toward yanking most of the voice assistant stuff out of my house in favor of dumb speakers hooked up to Chromecasts or maybe just going full Sonos (although that has it’s own privacy issues).

Update: Looks like Apple is halting the program for now and will be adding a way to disable this in the future. Good for them.

HomePod questions

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Apple has been a little late getting their HomePods out to consumers, but it looks like 2/9 is the big day. In short, it looks like these 7 inch tall speakers are Apple’s take on the smart speaker, but with a heavy focus on the speaker part and less on the assistant side. It has a lot of the basics (Apple Music support and basic Siri smarts along with HomeKit integration) but is way more concerned with being a kick ass speaker system for your home.

I’m pretty solidly entrenched in the Google Home / Chromecast Audio ecosystem so I don’t think I’m their ideal customer at this time. However, I am interested as I’d like to upgrade eventually to Sonos or something similar and both simplify our setup and also add more options for services like Apple Music.

Most early reviews have backed up the initial claims that the HomePod sounds fantastic and runs circles around the competition, but I am concerned only the true Apple faithful will pull the trigger on these day one.

The price doesn’t bother me, really. Based on the reviews I have seen it appears one of these can fill up most any room. If you bought a few of these you’d be able to easily provide coverage for a floor of most homes. The thing that does bother me is most of the technical side of things.

I worry that Apple won’t open this thing up at all, and won’t ever add SiriKit integration for competing services to latch on to. Apple Music is fine and it’s getting better for sure, but I’m a Spotify person and would hate to constrict my options just for better sounding speakers than what Google or Amazon offer.  Also, the  more that I read about AirPlay 2, the less excited I get. I still feel that Google nailed it with their approach to Casting, which effectively is passing a stream URL to the devices and letting them handle it from there. Airplay 2 still requires proximity, it just enables multi room audio and performs better than v1. Still, not a major leap forward that I was expecting. Oh, and it won’t even be in the first software version with shipping units. This won’t matter for single HomePod owners who use Apple Music but could be a deal breaker for others.

There’s lots of other small questions about how Siri will work, future plans for multi user support and what sort of new SiriKit stuff in iOS 12 might allow (Lyft ride hailing, music and podcasts etc). For now though this seems like a great speaker that creates more questions than it answers at this time. I can’t wait to see how this changes the conversation about these smart speakers and asks companies to think more about the quality of sound and not just the smarts under the hood. In the medium term I have my eyes on the HomePod and the Sonos One as solutions to get great sound around the house, so I’m rooting for Apple to get this right.