Business

Apple Watch Series 3 now tracks skiing and snowboarding activity

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Apple:

Starting today, skiers and snowboarders can use Apple Watch Series 3 to track their activities via new updates to apps available in the App Store. Watch users can now record runs, see vertical descent and other stats, and contribute active calorie measurements directly to the Apple Watch Activity app.

I love this. Looking forward to the day when machine learning advances to the point where it is no longer necessary to tap and swipe to tell my Apple Watch what kind of activity I’m doing.

I’ve always felt that if a human can watch me and easily figure out what I’m doing, it’s within the realm of future possibility for an AI to do the same.

Wreck-It Ralph and the Mac

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[VIDEO] First things first, I think Wreck-It Ralph is an under-appreciated gem of a movie. Perfectly cast, beautifully animated. And lots and lots of eye candy and Easter eggs.

Yesterday, Disney released the trailer for Wreck-It Ralph 2, AKA Ralph Breaks the Internet. The trailer is embedded in the main Loop post. That little girl doing the screaming sure resembles toddler Moana. But I digress.

In the trailer, can’t miss it, about 21 seconds in, there’s a shot of a computer interface. In many movies, when they show a computer screen, they’ve mocked up some generic OS. Not sure why, but that happens all the time. Not so here. This is a beauty shot of Mac OS 9, AKA System 9, or at least I think it’s System 9.

There’s a color Apple icon. That launcher bar (that what that was?) at the bottom left, and the application menu on the upper right. That enough to pin this down as System 9?

No matter, I am incredibly excited about this movie. Enjoy the trailer.

Why can’t Siri answer flight status questions?

Written by

Dan Moren, SixColors:

Here’s a little experiment for you. Bring up the search field on your iPhone and type in a flight number—for example, WW126. Near the top of the results will be an option to bring up flight status. Tap that and you’ll get a nice little map of the flight as well some other info, like destination, duration, and so on.

Now, try asking Siri for the status of the same flight. I’ll wait.

Right. You’ll notice that Siri doesn’t seem to know anything about flight status, and instead goes straight to a web search.

There are two sides to this coin. On the one side, it’s infuriating when something that should clearly work a certain way refuses to work that way. You can see that your iPhone “knows” about flight status, and it seems obvious that Siri should, at the very least, be able to pass through a request to the underlying interface.

On the other side, I’m betting that the reason Siri is unable to do something that seems, on the surface, such a simple task, is missing wiring. Siri remains a constantly evolving work-in-progress. And, it seems, at least on the surface, that the team that enabled the Springboard search feature is not in the same planning groove as the Siri team.

iOS is a complex beast. Siri is a complex beast. The question to me: Is there a designer at the top building a model that feeds both of these teams? Or is it more likely that the flight status search feature was born inside the Springboard search team, never rising high enough in the planning process in a way that fed the Siri team.

I don’t think Siri not being nimble with flight status is a big deal. But I do think it might be a sign of a larger issue.

Selling HomePod

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Jean-Louis Gassée, MondayNote, on trying to find a way to sell the Mac in the dark days of 1985, with Steve Jobs recently gone:

Position the Mac as a Graphics Based Business System (GBBS). The Business System part was adman puffery meant to project gravitas, but the reference to graphics made unarguable sense: The Mac’s Graphical User Interface (GUI) was clearly a distinguishing factor at the time.

Everyone in the room loved the idea. Rather than take on the whole market, Apple would define and dominate a niche. As the Valley marketing sage put it (quoting Julius Caesar), better to be the chief of a small village in the Alps than second-in-command in Rome.

And:

Thanks to Jobs’ vision and powers of seduction, a couple of “serious developers”, Adobe and Aldus, helped transform the GBBS air guitar into a reality. Adobe contributed the PostScript software engine for the LaserWriter’s breakthrough typography and graphics. Aldus came up with the PageMaker program that made exemplary use of the Mac + LaserWriter combo. Aldus Chairman Paul Brainerd coined the term Desktop Publishing (DTP), a phrase that replaced the GBBS straw man and remains to this day. The Mac became #1 in the DTP village.

In the rest of this smart, well-written piece, Jean-Louis asks, and attempts to answer the question, “Is there an Alpine hamlet that the HomePod can claim as its own?”

One major difference between the original Mac and HomePod (besides the obvious ones) is that the original Mac had no ecosystem, no huge, dependable, cash-abundant audience on which to draw. With an iPhone/Apple Music-backed ecosystem, Apple has the luxury of a steady stream of HomePod early adopters to keep the cash flowing and feedback coming while the product evolves.

WatchKit is a sweet solution that will only ever give us baby apps

Written by

Marco Arment:

Developers weren’t given access to make native apps until the iPhone’s second year. Before the native development kit was ready, Apple tried to pass off web apps as a “sweet solution” for third-party apps, but nobody was fooled.

Apple wasn’t using web apps for their own built-in iPhone apps — they were using native code and frameworks to make real apps. Developers like me did our best with web apps, but they sucked. We simply couldn’t make great apps without access to the real frameworks.

And:

Developing Apple Watch apps is extremely frustrating and limited for one big reason: unlike on iOS, Apple doesn’t give app developers access to the same watchOS frameworks that they use on Apple Watch.

Instead, we’re only allowed to use WatchKit, a baby UI framework that would’ve seemed rudimentary to developers even in the 1990s. But unlike the iPhone’s web apps, WatchKit doesn’t appear to be a stopgap — it seems to be Apple’s long-term solution to third-party app development on the Apple Watch.

And this from Gruber:

I’ve long given up on using any third-party apps on my Apple Watch, and I am so much happier for it. A year or two ago I would have been “Hell yeah”-ing this piece by Arment, but at this point I half feel like Apple should just get rid of third-party WatchOS apps and be done with it.

The one type app I think most people want is the one type of app Apple is never going to allow: custom watch faces. After that, the only thing good with Apple Watch is receiving (and responding to) notifications and fitness tracking.

All of this rings true to me. If you took all third party apps away and left me with notifications, fitness tracking, and complications that let me peer into that data, I might not even notice.

But if you opened the SDK to allow developers to build custom watch faces? I think we’d see some innovation or, at the very least, I’d have something closer to my dream watch.

My current setup is the most complication-rich of the watch faces, one that shows me:

  • day/date
  • current time
  • the next upcoming calendar event
  • outside temperature
  • battery level
  • music

Ideally, I’d love to add the Activities complication to that watch face. But I’d have to get rid of something first. But if someone could build a sliding complication that allowed me to swipe to the side to access additional complications, well I’d be all set.

And that’s just one tiny idea. If Apple opened up WatchKit, gave developers more to work with, I suspect we’d see some really great usable stuff emerge.

M. Night Shyamalan to produce straight-to-series thriller for Apple

Written by

Variety:

M. Night Shyamalan is heading to Apple.

The streaming service has given a straight-to-series order to a psychological thriller series from writer Tony Basgallop that Shyamalan will executive produce. Plot details for the series are being kept under wraps. The half-hour series has received a 10-episode order, with Shyamalan also set to direct the first episode.

To me, M. Night Shyamalan is exasperating. I am a huge fan of The Sixth Sense, and the connected series, Unbreakable, Split, and the upcoming Glass. But interspersed throughout those movies is a series of projects that just left me cold. And there were a lot of them.

Shyamalan’s most recent TV effort was Wayward Pines, well received, but it ultimately ended after two seasons.

Fingers crossed on this one.

Timers, reminders, alarms—oh, my!

Written by

Dr. Drang, Leancrew:

I decided to dig into the many ways you can set timed alerts on your Apple devices and how the alert systems vary from device to device. It is, you will not be surprised to learn, a mess.

This is a fascinating read, everything you’d ever want to know about timers, reminders, and alarms, and the way they are shared amongst the varied OSes in the Apple ecosystem.

But to me, this is emblematic of many other ecosystem elements. As you read through this, think about photos, music, your documents, even Siri access.

At the same time, to be fair, realize that we are at HomePodOS version 1.0. Surely the HomePod sharing model will evolve significantly over time.

Elon Musk wants to use satellites to bring broadband to the masses

Written by

Bloomberg:

When Elon Musk’s SpaceX heaved two communications satellites aloft last week, he joined a space race that’s foiled plenty of other dreamers.

Billions of dollars have vanished in the quest to provide internet service from low-earth orbit. Globalstar Inc. and Iridium Communications Inc. crashed into bankruptcy but are still at it, while another effort folded despite backing from Bill Gates, Boeing Co. and others.

But the failure of others has never stopped Musk. Especially where space is concerned.

Musk’s Space Exploration Technologies Corp., Greg Wyler’s OneWeb, Boeing, and Canada’s Telesat are among the companies that have asked the Federal Communications Commission for permission to offer broadband service using satellites.

This is a race. And I believe someone in this pack might ultimately succeed.

And if that does happen, will it lower the cost of internet access? Will it provide broadband everywhere, an alternative to cell carriers? Will cord-cutting become more practical?

How does the FCC feel about all this?

SpaceX’s plan calls for 4,425 satellites but it has also applied for another 7,518. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai has given his backing to the proposal, making it likely to win the agency’s clearance to provide broadband via low-earth orbit.

Interesting.

Ring went on Shark Tank, asked for $7 million. No deal. Amazon just bought them for more than $1 billion.

Written by

LA Times:

Ring doorbells are already being used by 2 million customers. Its improbable success comes five years after its founder, serial entrepreneur Jamie Siminoff, was rejected on the TV show “Shark Tank.”

Rejected isn’t quite right. He got offers, just none that made sense to him.

But the company proved there was demand for video-enabled doorbells, which enable users to see outside their homes via smartphone or computer. The technology provides a sense of security and a salve for one of the most nagging problems in the e-commerce era: package thieves.

There’s a certain irony there. Seems to me, the biggest victim of package thieves is Amazon, who ponys up a replacement when its packages don’t make it into customer hands.

Ring is also an excellent complement to Amazon Key, the program that allows package delivery services access to your house to leave a package under your lock and key.

One last thought on this. I’ve long thought one critical piece of the Amazon Echo ecosystem (echosystem?) that was missing was an Alexa phone. Amazon’s Fire Phone was a product ahead of its time. It was a commercial failure.

Alexa runs as a second class citizen on iOS and Android. There, but without that frictionless access to the hardware that makes Siri and Google person so easy to summon. I think Alexa is the demand card that Amazon’s phone was missing the first time around. If an Alexa-phone hit the market now, I think it’d be a very different story.

HomePod tricks and tips

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Nice collection of HomePod things to know. I especially appreciated the lists of Activities, Moods, and Genres. Good stuff.

Forbes: The feds can now (probably) unlock every iPhone model in existence

Written by

Forbes:

Cellebrite, a Petah Tikva, Israel-based vendor that’s become the U.S. government’s company of choice when it comes to unlocking mobile devices, is this month telling customers its engineers currently have the ability to get around the security of devices running iOS 11. That includes the iPhone X, a model that Forbes has learned was successfully raided for data by the Department for Homeland Security back in November 2017, most likely with Cellebrite technology.

As the Forbes article points out, this prose is on the Cellebrite media datasheet:

Devices supported for Advanced Unlocking and Extraction Services include:

Apple iOS devices and operating systems, including iPhone, iPad, iPad mini, iPad Pro and iPod touch, running iOS 5 to iOS 11

Google Android devices, including Samsung Galaxy and Galaxy Note devices; and other popular devices from Alcatel, Google Nexus, HTC, Huawei, LG, Motorola, ZTE, and more.

If true, that Forbes headline seems a fair statement.

Apple is launching medical clinics to deliver the ‘world’s best health care experience’ to its employees

Written by

Christina Farr, CNBC:

Apple is launching a group of health clinics called AC Wellness for its own employees and their families this spring, according to several sources familiar with the company’s plans.

The company quietly published a website, acwellness.com, with more details about its initiative and a careers page listing jobs including primary care doctor, exercise coach, and care navigator, as well as a phlebotomist to administer lab tests on-site.

And:

Sources said that it started notifying third-party vendors about the shift to its own network of health clinics this week.

And:

Sources said the company will leverage its medical clinics as a way to test out its growing range of health services and products, which it is starting to roll out to consumers at large.

Will Apple roll out health clinics to serve consumers, rather than just employees? Not clear, but certainly seems a possibility.

Digging through the AC Wellness site, I found a corporate address, which is located adjacent to an Apple Fitness Center. Via Google Maps, here’s a pic of the sign at the AC Wellness address:

Interesting.

Apple plans giant high-end iPhone, lower-priced model

Written by

Mark Gurman and Debby Wu, Bloomberg:

Apple Inc. is preparing to release a trio of new smartphones later this year: the largest iPhone ever, an upgraded handset the same size as the current iPhone X and a less expensive model with some of the flagship phone’s key features.

And:

With a screen close to 6.5 inches, Apple’s big new handset will be one of the largest mainstream smartphones on the market. While the body of the phone will be about the same size as the iPhone 8 Plus, the screen will be about an inch larger thanks to the edge-to-edge design used in the iPhone X. (Apple is unlikely to refer to the phone as a phablet, a term popularized by Samsung.)

I remember agonizing over the huge size of the iPhone 6 Plus, worrying about it fitting in my pockets, being too large for my hands. I switched and have never looked back. I no longer think of the Plus form factor as large. To me, it has become the new normal.

The thought of the same footprint, but with a nicer display than my 8 Plus, and more pixels, well that’s irresistible. The obvious hitch will be the price-tag.

A 256GB iPhone X is priced at $1,149. I can only imagine that a 256GB iPhone X Plus will be about $100 more (the difference in price between the iPhone 8 and 8 Plus), or $1,249. How far can Apple push that price ceiling?

Samsung Galaxy S9 AR emoji: “a plane crash right into the depths of the Uncanny Valley”

Written by

Sam Byford, The Verge:

One of Samsung’s messages with the new Galaxy S9 is that it’s “Built for the Way We Communicate Today.” And while that’s a laudable goal, one of the key features behind that message — AR Emoji — doesn’t feel like it connects with the way anyone communicates now, or will want to in the future. At least I hope not.

And:

from our brief testing, they’re a plane crash right into the depths of the Uncanny Valley. They’re not abstract enough to be cute, yet not realistic enough to be authentic.

Great turn of phrase (Here’s a link to the uncanny valley Wikipedia page). Seems to me I’ve seen this animated emoji concept somewhere before.

Searching on iOS and Mac: It’s all a bit bewildering

Written by

Adam Engst, writing for TidBITS:

All too often, I give up trying to tap my way through Settings and instead pull down to reveal the Search field, before remembering that searches in Settings often fail.

And:

It’s worse even than the System Preferences app in macOS, which at least shows all preference panes without the need to scroll. In fact, System Preferences points to the simple way Apple could rearrange the Settings app to make it easier to navigate.

This is a growing… […]

Hulu’s fight against Netflix, Amazon and Apple

Written by

John Koblin, New York Times:

[Hulu] lost $920 million in 2017, according to BTIG, which projects that the business will lose $1.67 billion this year. Hulu is also facing more intense competition than ever as its rivals disrupt the entertainment industry by handing out big checks. In recent months, Netflix has signed the producers Shonda Rhimes and Ryan Murphy to nine-figure deals; Amazon has pledged more than $200 million toward a “Lord of the Rings” series; and Apple, a newcomer in the field, is shelling out hundreds of millions to create original programming of its own.

This is a great article, interesting on several fronts. Consider their complex ownership:

The Walt Disney Company (30 percent), 21st Century Fox (30 percent), Comcast (30 percent) and Time Warner (10 percent). If Disney’s pending $52.4 billion acquisition of most of 21st Century Fox wins governmental approval, as is expected, Disney will own 60 percent of Hulu.

And:

The Disney-Fox deal raises the question of what will happen to Hulu, given that Disney is already developing two streaming services. Another potential issue is whether or not two of Hulu’s owners — Disney, which owns ABC, and Comcast, which owns NBC Universal — will be able to play nicely with each other after they become owners with uneven stakes in the platform.

The article also takes you behind the scenes on a series pitch, where Hulu outbid all comers for the rights to produce the upcoming series “The Looming Tower”.

The whole thing is well written and fascinating. Oddly, the article was also posted on CNBC, if you don’t have access to the New York Times.

Apple embraces marriage equality with four “First Dance” ads

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[VIDEO] Apple, this past September:

“We support marriage equality and believe all Australians deserve the freedom to marry the person they love, and to have their relationships recognised with the same dignity and legal protections as their neighbours, friends, and family.”

Over the weekend, Apple Australia released four new iPhone X ads (embedded in the main Loop post), all reemphasizing that support. Each video is backed by Australian singer/songwriter Courtney Barnett, who recorded a cover of the INXS classic Never Tear Us Apart specifically for the ads.

Apple security changes will end iTunes Store access for 1st gen Apple TV, Windows XP/Vista

Written by

Apple:

Starting May 25, Apple will introduce security changes that prevent older Windows PCs from using the iTunes Store. If you have Windows XP or Vista PC, your computer is no longer supported by Microsoft, and you’re not able to use the latest version of iTunes.

And:

Also beginning May 25, security changes will prevent Apple TV (1st generation) from using the iTunes Store. This device is an obsolete Apple product and will not be updated to support these security changes.

Not sure which Apple TV model you have? Here’s a helpful guide. Note that the 1st gen Apple TV is silver.

Rene Ritchie, John Gruber and an all-star cast discuss the death of Twitter for Mac

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[VIDEO] I absolutely love this video (embedded in the main Loop post). First off, there’s the topic. Twitter is pulling their Mac client, forcing people to either go through their browser or adopt a third party Twitter client. I’ve been thinking about this, but I just can’t wrap my head around their motivation. Is this some kind of end run around Apple? An attempt to reduce maintenance costs (one less platform to support)?

No matter, this is a video of Rene Ritchie, John Gruber, Loren Brichter (part of Apple’s original iPhone dev team, creator of Tweetie for iPhone OS, and original creator of Twitter for the Mac), Twitterrific’s Craig Hockenberry, Twitter for Mac developer Ben Sandofsky, and Tapbot’s Paul Haddad, all in a round robin discussion.

The topic is hot, the panelists are all steeped in the Twitter for Mac story, and the video format gives you the chance to see these people whose names you might have heard or whose tweets you might have encountered.

Wonderful format.

Adjusting EQ: iOS yes. Mac yes. HomePod? No.

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The HomePod is self-balancing, algorithmically adjusting its sound for the environment in which it’s placed.

Me? I like the sound. Have not yet felt the need to tweak it. But I do like a challenge. I came across this article from OSXDaily, which walks you through the process of tweaking your EQ for iOS.

I fired up some music, then went to Settings > Music and tapped EQ. There are 23 different canned EQ settings to choose from. The article recommends Late Night to maximize volume on your iPhone. Give that a try if you listen to music out of your iPhone speakers frequently.

Thought I’d try to AirPlay that EQ to HomePod.

With the music still playing, I went to Control Center, tapped the upper-right corner of the music player (bringing up AirPlay), and selected my HomePod. The music played, but when I tapped the various EQ settings, no change.

I went to iTunes on my Mac, launched System Preferences > Sound and tapped my HomePod. Back in iTunes, I tapped the EQ column in the current song (if you don’t see an EQ column, go to View > Show View Options and tap the Equalizer checkbox). No dice. Changing EQ does not impact HomePod.

This is me noodling, not at all a complaint. I love the HomePod sound. The EQ question comes up often enough, I thought I’d dig in, make sure I understood what was going on. Please return to your regularly scheduled programming.

Steve Jobs signed items up for auction

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Some fascinating items. At the very least, take a look at the Steve Jobs job application. This is a nice bit of history, a sense of Steve before Apple.

There’s also a signed Mac OS X manual, a signed newspaper article (I believe it is from 2008, likely for the iPhone 3G – In the pic, you can already see Steve has lost weight), and a photo of the original Apple logo signed by Apple founder Ron Wayne.

[Via 9to5Mac]

PowerPod sleeve: wireless charging for your AirPods

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Yup, it’s a Kickstarter. And Apple is coming out with a wireless AirPods charging case, possibly shipping sometime soon. But this is a cool idea. It’s a thin sleeve that slides over your existing AirPods case, adding Qi wireless charging. And it’s $20, vs a likely price of $69 for Apple’s still to ship case.

Accidental 911 calls traced to Apple’s Elk Grove phone repair facility

Written by

Cathy Locke, Sacramento Bee:

Apple’s iPhone repair and refurbishing center has been identified as the source of apparently inadvertent 911 calls received by Elk Grove police and Sacramento County sheriff’s dispatch centers over the past five months.

Since October, the Elk Grove Police Department’s dispatch center has been receiving about 20 non-subscriber initialized 911 calls per day, said Officer Jason Jimenez, police spokesman. The calls show no service provider for the phone, but the dispatch center has traced them to a cell tower near the Apple campus and determined that they are coming from the phone repair facility, he said.

The calls are coming from inside the house.

And:

Since Jan. 1, Hampton said, the sheriff’s communication center has received 47 uninitialized 911 calls and has been able to document that 30 of those came from the Apple facility.

Testing the iPhone/Apple Watch SOS capability?

Bloomberg: Apple plans AirPods upgrade

Written by

Mark Gurman, Bloomberg:

The model coming as early as this year will let people summon Apple’s Siri digital assistant without physically tapping the headphones by saying “Hey Siri.” The function will work similarly to how a user activates Siri on an iPhone or a HomePod speaker hands-free. The headphones, internally known as B288, will include an upgraded Apple-designed wireless chip for managing Bluetooth connections. The first AirPods include a chip known as the W1, and Apple released the W2 with the Apple Watch last year.

The idea for the water-resistant model is for the headphones to survive splashes of water and rain, the people said. They likely won’t be designed to be submerged in water. The latest iPhones can survive splashes, while the Apple Watch is considered “swim-proof.” Apple’s plans could change or be delayed, the people said. An Apple spokeswoman declined to comment.

Is this enough to make you replace your AirPods with the latest and greatest? What if it came with a wireless charging case that went along with the AirPower wireless charging mat?

These questions aside, what would really drive me to upgrade would be improvements to the audio experience.

iPad refresh in March likely as Apple receives certification for new tablets in Eurasia

Written by

Joe Rossignol, MacRumors:

Apple has registered new tablets with the Eurasian Economic Commission this week, suggesting that an iPad refresh is likely on the horizon. The filings, uncovered by French website Consomac, are legally required for any devices with encryption sold in Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Russia.

I buy it, seems a reasonable tree of logic.

Nobody wants to let Google win the war for maps all over again

Written by

Mark Bergen, Bloomberg:

On any given day, there could be a half dozen autonomous cars mapping the same street corner in Silicon Valley. These cars, each from a different company, are all doing the same thing: building high-definition street maps, which may eventually serve as an on-board navigation guide for driverless vehicles.

And:

Autonomous cars require powerful sensors to see and advanced software to think. They especially need up-to-the-minute maps of every conceivable roadway to move. Whoever owns the most detailed and expansive version of these maps that vehicles read will own an asset that could be worth billions.

The motivation for the next maps war is clear. Billions of dollars at stake. This article is a fascinating look at the players and the technological approaches to capturing the next generation of maps.

Just a taste:

The companies working on maps for autonomous vehicles are taking two different approaches. One aims to create complete high-definition maps that will let the driverless cars of the future navigate all on their own; another creates maps piece-by-piece, using sensors in today’s vehicles that will allow cars to gradually automate more and more parts of driving.

And:

These self-driving maps are far more demanding than older digital ones, prompting huge investments across Detroit, Silicon Valley and China. “An autonomous vehicle wants that to be as precise, accurate and up-to-date as possible,” said Bryan Salesky, who leads Argo AI LLC, a year-old startup backed by a $1 billion investment by Ford. The “off-the-shelf solution doesn’t quite exist.”

And:

It’s an expensive ordeal with a payoff that’s years, if not decades, away. “Even if you could drive your own vehicles around and hit every road in the world, how do you update?” asked Dan Galves, a spokesman for Mobileye. “You’d have to send these vehicles around again.”

Unlike conventional digital maps, self-driving maps require almost-constant updates. The slightest variation on the road—a construction zone that pops up overnight, or a bit of debris—could stop a driverless car in its tracks. “It’s the freak thing that happens that’s going to make autonomous not work,” said McNally, the analyst.

Fascinating read.

Apple Maps vs. Google Maps vs. Waze

Written by

Arturrr:

In early 2017, a conversation with yet another Waze fanboy finally nudged me to start a navigation app experiment. I was skeptical that the Alphabet owned company could meaningfully best its parent’s home grown Google Maps. I was also curious whether Apple Maps had discovered competence since its iOS 6 release.

I thus set out to answer three questions:

  • Which navigation app estimates the shortest travel time?
  • How does each app over/underestimate travel times?
  • Which navigation app actually gets you to your destination most quickly?

Which led to these three conclusions:

  • If you want to get to your destination most quickly, use Google Maps.
  • If you want an accurate prediction from your navigation app to help you arrive at your destination on time, use Apple Maps.
  • If thinking you’ll get to your destination quickly helps to ease your commuter anxiety, use Waze.

Very interesting. Obviously, this is a relatively small sample size. It’d be interesting if there was some way to crowd-source this experiment to come up with a map overlay that showed which solution worked best in a specific area.

Jean-Louis Gassée: The trouble with HomePod reviews

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Jean-Louis Gassée:

As a testament to Apple’s place in the pantheon of electronics, reviews for a new product from Cupertino come fast and — often — furious. HomePod, Apple’s contribution to the “smart speaker” genre, exacerbates the venomenon, pardon, phenomenon.

And these three rules for evaluating speakers:

First, we must keep in mind the influence of the room and our position in it, how reflective material can make music sound brittle, how carpets and curtains will deaden the sound — or provide welcome balance for an overly bright room.

Second, all speaker comparisons must be double-blind, where neither the person running the test nor the evaluators know which device is on at the moment.

Third, and most important, output level differences matter. Contestant speakers must be carefully equalized to within 1db, because in any comparison the louder speaker will always sound better.

And on tuning a speaker for a specific room:

How well the device can do this depends on the number of microphones (you need at least two for spatial location) and speakers (the HomePod has seven). In theory, more speakers are better, because it means the device will have more control as it adjusts the balance of sound energy. In reality, the smaller speakers — the tweeters — are the most important; lower frequencies impart little directional information, although the computer can still decide to reduce low frequency output in general if the room “booms” too much.

And:

Put less elegantly, in consumer advertising lore we call early adopters “dogs”: They eagerly snarf any new food. This tells us nothing; we need to wait and see if they come back to the pail.

That process, the spreading of Word-of-Mouth, will be complicated by software updates supposed to appear in the next few months — and for ever after that.

Terrific read, lots more than these few pull quotes.