Business

Siri usage and engagement dropped since last year, as Alexa and Cortana grew

Written by

Sarah Perez, TechCrunch:

Siri remains the most popular virtual assistant with 41.4 million monthly active users in the U.S., according to a new report from measurement firm Verto Analytics out this morning, but it has seen a 15 percent decline since last year – or 7.3 million monthly users. In addition, the study found that engagement with Siri has also dropped by nearly half during this period, from 21 percent to 11 percent.

Meanwhile, Amazon Alexa usage has been skyrocketing – jumping 325 percent in monthly active users – that is, from 0.8 million to 2.6 million monthly users, as its user engagement also increased from 10 percent to 22 percent during the same time frame.

Cortana has seen an increase as well, growing from 0.2 million monthly users in the U.S. to 0.7 million, or a 350 percent increase. Its user engagement tripled, from 19 percent to 60 percent.

Siri is about to undergo a sea change, as iOS 11 shifts from human to digitally generated Siri voicing. At the same time, Apple is hard at work building out SiriKit (first introduced with iOS 10) and Siri’s native intelligence. I suspect this year over year drop will be more than made up for over time as Apple starts shipping more enhanced versions of Siri with each new iOS release.

Add to that the benefit that will come when HomePod ships later this year. These are still the beginning times.

Apple ramps up ambitions in pre-paid smartphone market

Written by

Colin Gibbs, FierceWireless:

Apple began to pursue the prepaid market more aggressively in 2016, as the market research firm gap intelligence noted in September, and that pursuit has only grown more ambitious over the last year. The iPhone’s prepaid retail channel placements more than doubled from the second quarter of 2016 to the second quarter of 2017, growing from 15 SKUs to 46 SKUs, and they increased 35% from the first quarter of this year to the second quarter, according to fresh data from the San Diego-based firm.

And:

Meanwhile, Apple secured a new prepaid distribution deal through Costco in the second quarter, and it increased prepaid retail placements at AT&T (up 200% quarter over quarter) and Best Buy (up 125% quarter over quarter), according to gap intelligence. The iPhone has seen 15 new retail placements across five prepaid carriers recently, gap intelligence said.

Who owns the pre-paid market? Android. This is a natural market for the iPhone SE, 5s, and 6, Apple finding ways to sell more phones, compete in every market.

The man who built a $1 billion firm in his basement

Written by

Will Smale, BBC News:

After a month of working “crazy hours”, Mr. Rodrigues had come up with his first fully formed idea – a software system that allowed the user to control his or her mobile phone from their laptop.

Naming his company Soti, sales of the system started to grow slowly, until 12 months later Mr Rodrigues got a phone call out of the blue from one of the UK’s largest supermarket groups.

And:

“I don’t think they realised that they were talking to just one guy in a basement, so when the person asked to speak to someone in sales I came back on the phone with a slightly different tone.”

The little ruse worked, and the UK firm placed a “huge order” for 20,000 units.

This story is amazing to me, in how he got his start, in the fact that he built this mom and pop operation into a billion dollar enterprise, and in the stealth manner in which he did it. Impressive.

The iPhone killed my inner nerd

Written by

Tom Warren, The Verge, on being a teenage IT manager for his family:

All of our email went through my Exchange server, and I had a custom app that pulled mail from ISP and Hotmail POP3 accounts and filtered it through an assortment of anti-spam tools before it was allowed to hit an Exchange inbox. All of my family’s important documents were stored on a file server, backed up in a RAID array. I even used Zip drives for the really important stuff. I was a true IT administrator, and I was only 15.

All of these PCs were built by hand, with custom cases, cooling configurations, and my own selection of processors or RAM. I laughed at the thought of having to buy a Toshiba or Packard Bell PC, and opted for AMD’s Athlon 64 processors. I’d build powerful gaming rigs and spend hours writing scripts to get a better field of view in games, or a slight advantage by squeezing out every single drop of performance by altering textures per map. I would enter contests and win better processors or RAM, upgrade my PC and push the older components down to my servers.

And:

All of that tinkering and hacking things ended for me shortly after the iPhone arrived, and the closest I’ve come to it recently is playing around with a Raspberry Pi and Kodi.

And:

Apple’s App Store and the iPhone have altered computing massively, beyond my own examples. Nokia, BlackBerry, Microsoft, Motorola, and Palm have all had their businesses disrupted by the iPhone. The iPhone’s impact has also shaped how we use PCs today, and our expectations of computing in general. Apple’s iPhone has been on the market for 10 years now, and it hasn’t experienced a single instance of a mass malware attack like we’ve seen twice in the past month on Windows PCs.

Apple’s locked down and sandboxed environment for apps is a new model that has succeeded with consumers and security. Sure, there have been vulnerabilities, bugs, and near misses, but nobody has been forced to pay $300 to unlock their iPhone after a huge malware attack.

This article resonates for me. I truly miss the days when I could tweak just about every aspect of my devices, from swapping out memory, drives, graphics cards, to building custom cables that enabled third party devices to interface with my rig.

The new reality, of our own making, is a constant state of siege, one that makes the Apple ecosystem a safe port in the constant storm. But I do miss the tweaks and the repairability.

Apple ARKit in action

Written by

Nice collection of ARKit videos, most farmed from @madewithARKit.

My favorite:

https://twitter.com/madewithARKit/status/884512251184590851

I love the T-shirt. Reminds me of the earliest CodeWarrior black shirts. And I love the fact that ARKit is linked to the HTC Vive. Bravo!

Amazon is quietly rolling out its own Alexa Geek Squad

Written by

Jason Del Rey, Recode:

Amazon has quietly been hiring an army of in-house gadget experts to offer free Alexa consultations as well as product installations for a fee inside customer homes, multiple sources told Recode, and job postings confirm.

The new offering, which has already rolled out in seven markets without much fanfare, is aimed at helping customers set up a “smart home” — the industry term used to describe household systems like heating and lighting that can be controlled via apps, and increasingly by voice.

While Amazon has a marketplace for third parties to offer home services like TV mounting and plumbing, these new smart-home-related services seem important enough to Amazon that it is hiring its own in-house experts.

Amazon is focused on expanding Alexa’s position as the number one home assistant, building out their ecosystem as much as possible before Google builds up any traction and before the real threat, Apple and HomePod, start their assault on Alexa’s market share.

Amazon Prime Day starts tonight, 9p ET

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Amazon has started its own take on copying Black Friday to July with its third annual Prime Day sale, which kicks off tonight at 9p ET.

Read more on Amazon’s official Prime Day site.

As is, this model is not compelling for me, but could be I’m really missing out on some great bargains. Just seems like a yard sale, pawing through endless pages looking for buried treasure.

But perhaps I’m missing the value. Anyone out there excited by this? Tweet at me, let me know what I’m missing.

Gruber: Speculation regarding the pricing of and strategy behind this year’s new iPhones

Written by

John Gruber, Daring Fireball:

I created a bit of a stir the other day when I suggested the OLED iPhone “Pro” could start at $1,500.

Let’s take a serious look at this. $1,500 as a starting price is probably way too high. But I think $1,200 is quite likely as the starting price, with the high-end model at $1,300 or $1,400.

And:

You can’t talk about iPhone specs and pricing without considering scale. It’s not enough for Apple to create a phone that can be sold for $649/749/849 with 35 percent profit margins. They have to create a phone that can be sold at those prices, with those margins, and which can be manufactured at scale. And for Apple that scale is massive: anything less than 60–70 million in the first quarter in which it goes on sale is a failure — possibly a catastrophic failure.

In short, new iPhones aren’t defined by what Apple can make for a certain price, but by what Apple can make for a certain price at a certain incredibly high quantity.

What follows is a relatively long logic chain, but one that is well worth making your way through. By the end of John’s post, I was convinced that Apple will indeed be introducing a deluxe iPhone tier this fall, or soon thereafter.

UPDATE: Fascinating response to Gruber’s post from Philip Elmer-DeWitt [H/T Jason Hooper]. At its core:

Is Gruber speaking for Apple for himself when he defines terms and describes bundles?

I put the question to him this morning, but I don’t expect a candid answer. He’s a man who knows how to keep a secret. Besides, a good journalist will protect his or her sources, even when their names are out of the bag.

Gruber responds: “I have no inside information in this regard [2017 iPhone pricing]. Nada, none, zilch. Feel free to quote me on that. I have no comment regarding my tweets on inductive charging and can’t believe you even asked about that.”

Shocked commuters gawp as woman brings iMac and keyboard onto train

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A picture is worth a thousand words:

https://twitter.com/davidhill_co/status/882254867066232832

I do find the whole thing entertaining, but not too hard to see this happening. Could be she needed the larger screen or, perhaps, this might be the only computer to which she had access and a project deadline that forced her hand.

They had me at gawp.

Who would Tim Cook pick as a successor?

Written by

John Martellaro, Mac Observer:

There might come a day when, heaven forbid, Apple CEO Tim Cook cannot perform his duties for some reason. As a result, like every corporation, Apple has a succession plan for its CEO. What might Apple’s look like?

Interesting speculation.

HBO’s The Defiant Ones. Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre, now playing.

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HBO’s The Defiant Ones is a four-part series about the background and intertwined lives that led Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre to Beats and then Apple’s doorstep.

Episode One is in heavy rotation on HBO, with Episode Two airing tonight. Or, you can binge all four episodes on HBO Go.

There’s a lot to enjoy here, especially if you are a fan of the music industry. Pairs nicely with the excellent Straight Outta Compton.

Federico and John and the app used by celebs to study their lines

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Federico Viticci and John Voorhees have a podcast called AppStories which I quite like. This particular episode is an interview with David Lawrence, the mastermind behind Rehearsal, an app that is used by top Broadway and Hollywood actors (like Kevin Bacon, Clark Gregg – Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Avengers, etc.) to learn their lines.

This is a fascinating listen. One takeaway is that the acting community has settled on iOS as an unofficial standard, enough of one that Rehearsal has never been ported to Android.

Side note, David Lawrence played the Puppetmaster for three seasons on the original Heroes series. Here’s a link to the interview . Enjoy.

Is it unethical for me to not tell my employer I’ve automated my job?

Written by

Stack Exchange:

I currently work on a legacy system for a company. The system is really old – and although I was hired as a programmer, my job is pretty much glorified data entry. To summarise, I get a bunch of requirements, which is literally just lots of data for each month on spreadsheets and I have to configure the system to make it work, which is basically just writing a whole bunch of SQL scripts.

And:

So I’ve been doing it for about 18 months and in that time, I’ve basically figured out all the traps to the point where I’ve actually written a program which for the past 6 months has been just doing the whole thing for me. So what used to take the last guy like a month, now takes maybe 10 minutes to clean the spreadsheet and run it through the program.

Where’s the author’s obligation? To their employer, or to themselves? Is the company paying for the problem to be solved, or for the employee’s time?

To me, the “I’m doing something wrong” alarm went off pretty early on in the conversation. But not everyone feels this way. If the company has no obligation to keep the employee employed once the shortcuts are revealed, does the employee have the “self harming” obligation to reveal those shortcuts?

iPhone bugs are too valuable to report to Apple

Written by

Motherboard:

In August 2016, Apple’s head of security Ivan Krstic stole the show at one of the biggest security conferences in the world with an unexpected announcement.

“I wanna share some news with you,” Krstic said at the Black Hat conference, before announcing that Apple was finally launching a bug bounty program to reward friendly hackers who report bugs to the company.

The crowd erupted in enthusiastic applause. But almost a year later, the long-awaited program appears to be struggling to take off, with no public evidence that hackers have claimed any bug bounties.

And at the core of it all:

The iPhone’s security is so tight that it’s hard to find any flaws at all, which leads to sky-high prices for bugs on the grey market.

The question is, are the bugs valuable enough for Apple to raise their bounties to compete with the grey market?

Future Macs may detect your presence and react accordingly

Written by

AppleWorld Today:

Future Macs may “wake up” when they detect your presence and take action based on exactly where you are. Apple has filed for a patent (number 20170193282) for “presence sensing.”

The “presence-based functionality” method may include operating the Mac in a reduced power state and collecting a first set of data from a first sensor. Based on the first set of data, the computer determines if an object is within a threshold distance of the Mac.

Some interesting possibilities here. Your Mac could rise to a low-power awareness mode when you are nearby, then power up more fully as more criteria are met. I’d like to see my Mac wake up, bring Safari to the front, then update the specific set of tabs I invariably read through every morning, with one set on weekdays (my Loop prep) and a different set on weekends (my feet up, coffee on the porch reading).

Part of the focus of this patent is more efficient power management. Which would react one way to me watching a video, another to my creating content (by typing/clicking), and another to my turning on some music, then running silent.

Microsoft plans thousands of layoffs

Written by

CNBC:

Microsoft announced a major reorganization on Wednesday that will include thousands of layoffs, largely in sales.

The job cuts amount to less than 10 percent of the company’s total sales force, and about 75 percent of them will be outside the U.S., the company said.

This is not nearly the same thing as the SoundCloud office-closing report.

Microsoft has more than 120,000 employees, and the layoffs are focused on the sales team. Microsoft knows how to make money. This is more of a refocus.

Struggling for survival, SoundCloud closes San Francisco, London offices

Written by

Cyrus Farivar, Ars Technica:

SoundCloud announced Thursday that it would be closing its San Francisco and London offices—firing 173 employees, or around 40 percent of its staff.

The Berlin-based company has been struggling for years: it reported losses of over €51 million ($58.1 million) in 2015—losses that have steadily grown since 2010.

What to do about this? SoundCloud offers real value to the community, but can’t find a way to make it pay. Somehow GitHub made it work. Is GitHub worth more to developers than SoundCloud is to the audio community?

Steve Jobs and the missing “Intel Inside” sticker

Written by

Ken Segall:

I get that Intel Inside is one of the most successful marketing campaigns in business history. It’s just that after 36 years, that logo starts to feel more like a pollutant than an advertising device.

Thankfully, Macs have remained 100% free of Intel branding since Apple adopted its processors way back in 2006.

We have Steve Jobs’s sensibilities to thank for this. But how it all happened is a fun little story.

No spoilers, a fun read, another great little Steve Jobs anecdote.

UPDATE: Jump to the main Loop post to see video of the “Stickers” quote.

[H/T John Kordyback]

Want a set of black AirPods? Can have!

Written by

Check the pictures. These look pretty well done. You can send in your AirPods, they’ll paint them for $99, or buy them direct from the site for $279/$299 depending on the finish.

Pricey, but interesting.

Samsung’s Bixby rollout delayed as it struggles to learn English

Written by

Korea Herald:

The English version of Samsung Electronics’ voice-assistant service Bixby has been delayed because the firm lacks the accumulation of big data, which is key to deep learning technology, according to the company Tuesday.

And:

Bixby is now available only in Korean, although Samsung’s mobile chief, Koh Dong-jin, said in April, “Bixby’s English version and Chinese version will be unveiled in May and in June, respectively.”

Didn’t happen.

“Many engineers in the US are making full efforts to develop the English version. But, (due to geographical and language barriers) their frequent reports to and communication with the management located in Korea makes the progress much slower than developing the Korean version here,” said a source on the condition of anonymity.

I was wondering what had become of Bixby.

Austin Mann: 10 years of iPhone photography evolution

Written by

Austin Mann, photographer:

Earlier this month, I realized June 29 would mark the 10 year anniversary of the iPhone and began diving into the images I’ve shot with iPhone over the years. As I glanced through the archive, I realized what an amazing journey the last 10 years has been and thought I’d share some of the highlights with you.

Lots of history here. My favorite bit from this dive into the iPhone history rabbit-hole is Austin’s take on the original rollout:

I can still remember the morning of June 29, 2007. I was living in NYC, working at an ad agency, McCann-Erickson. Though I had been following the release of the iPhone and I couldn’t wait to get my hands on one, I knew I couldn’t spend the day in line waiting as I had responsibilities at work.

I arrived at my office, however, and my very cool boss looked at me and said, “Austin, what are you doing here?” I was a little confused as it was a standard work day and I was on time. “What do you mean?” I said. She responded, “It’s iPhone day. You’ve been talking about this for months! Get outta here and go get in line!” I got a big smile on my face, said thanks, and bolted straight to the Fifth Avenue store at about 10AM.

I carried a Leica D-LUX 3 at the time (still love that thing) and shot a few very shaky clips throughout the day and cut them into this quick piece.

Follow the link, watch the video. If you could go back in time, knowing what you know now, that’d be one place to visit (just after you placed your order to buy a ton of Apple stock).

New York Times on Apple Park

Written by

Kathy Chin Leong, New York Times:

City officials and residents say this project is like nothing they’ve seen before. It is even bringing tourists.

Onlookers snap pictures of the spaceship from the streets. TV helicopters circle above. Amateur photographers ask residents if they can stand on driveways to operate their drones, hoping to get a closer look at Apple Park.

And:

The entire project shows off Apple’s obsession with details. The custom windows were made in Germany and are considered the world’s largest panels of curved glass. One pair of glass doors is 92 feet high. The finish on the underground concrete garage, said David Brandt, Cupertino’s city manager, is so shiny it is almost like glass.

“Mind-blowing, mind-blowing, mind-blowing,” the mayor, Savita Vaidhyanathan, said about her visit to the site. “I saw the underground 1,000-seat theater and the carbon-fiber roof. The roof was made in Dubai, and it was transported and assembled here. I love that it’s here and that I can brag about it.”

And:

The price of property in the neighborhood has also become a source of some worry. Sunnyvale and Cupertino, like many other Silicon Valley towns, have had an extended real estate boom, as the tech industry has expanded. Prices in the area really started to rise, real estate agents and residents said, after Apple released its plans.

A three-bedroom, two-bathroom, 1,400-square-foot ranch-style house that cost $750,000 in 2011 has doubled in price. Since Apple said it was moving into the former Hewlett-Packard site, prices have moved up 15 to 20 percent year after year, said Art Maryon, a local real estate agent. Today, bidders usually offer 20 to 25 percent over the asking price.

Fascinating piece.

Another take on the 10.5″ iPad Pro

Written by

M.G. Siegler on being asked which iPad is the one to buy:

When pressed, my answer was that for most people, the 9.7″ iPad was probably the one to get. With the latest iterations of the iPad Pro, I think the answer is now much more clear: the new 10.5″ variety is the one to get.

The screen size gap has been closed a bit. The speed gap has been completely erased. The 10.5″ iPad Pro is absolutely amazing.

And:

When you start to use the 10.5″ and then try to go back, you cannot. The 9.7″ iPad feels short and stubby in a way similar to how the 3.5″ iPhone felt after using the 4″ variety. The smaller one now feels like a clown iPad.

And:

Size aside, the screen with its much touted 120Hz refresh rate is incredible. Again, it’s one of those things you have to either be a hardcore iPad user or use a newer iPad Pro versus an older iPad side-by-side to truly appreciate. Everything is just so much smoother.

At first, it’s a little weird. It almost makes some iOS animations like swiping through your app screens feel like how pan-and-scan used to feel on old non-lettered-boxed VHS movies. But this feeling goes away quickly and now it just seems normal. And old, non-120Hz animations now just feel janky.

The recommendation for the 10.5″ iPad Pro seems almost universal. There may be a review that didn’t love it and appreciate the leap forward in terms of product capability, but I have not run across it.

Hands on with Photos for macOS High Sierra

Written by

Jason Snell, Six Colors:

This week Apple is unleashing the first public betas of the next versions of its two major operating systems, iOS and macOS, on the world. One of the major areas of improvement in macOS High Sierra is to the Photos app, which is only a couple of years old and has plenty of room to grow. I literally wrote the book on Photos, so it’s been interesting to watch Apple’s replacement for iPhoto as it has grown and changed.

Here’s a look at the changes and new features coming to Photos for Mac as a part of macOS High Sierra.

A brand new editing pane, support for third party editors has been enhanced, and much more. If you use Photos on your Mac, take the time to read through this.

Apple’s original iPhone, a fascinating speculative investment

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The selling price of an original iPhone is rising. The hype around the 10th anniversary might mark a high water mark, but it might also be just a roadmark on the way to a much higher price. The original iPhone is ripe for speculation.

If it was me, I’d only invest in an unopened original iPhone with a box/shrinkwrap in perfect condition. And as you make your way through the linked article, keep two things in mind:

  • The quoted prices are what sellers are asking, not necessarily what someone has paid.
  • The price can just as easily go down as up. This sort of investment is speculative.

How the iPhone won over Japan and gave the world emoji

Written by

Sam Byford, The Verge:

Often, using an iPhone in a Japan just straight-up sucked. The missing features hurt, of course, but the bigger problem was that having experienced what life was like in the tightly integrated Japanese mobile ecosystem, moving to the iPhone felt like using a product that simply wasn’t designed for the world I lived in. Because, well, it wasn’t.

How, then, did Apple get to its current position where Japan is one of its strongest and most lucrative markets?

Fascinating inside view of the iPhone’s early days in Japan.

Wrongheaded quotes from the early days of the iPhone

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MacDailyNews pulled together some misguided quotes from the early days of iPhone. A few of my favorites:

“We are not at all worried. We think we’ve got the one mobile platform you’ll use for the rest of your life. [Apple] are not going to catch up.” – Scott Rockfeld, Microsoft Mobile Communications Group Product Manager, April 01, 2008

And:

“Apple should pull the plug on the iPhone… What Apple risks here is its reputation as a hot company that can do no wrong. If it’s smart it will call the iPhone a ‘reference design’ and pass it to some suckers to build with someone else’s marketing budget. Then it can wash its hands of any marketplace failures… Otherwise I’d advise people to cover their eyes. You are not going to like what you’ll see.” – John C. Dvorak, Bloated Gas Bag, March 28, 2007

And:

“[Apple’s iPhone] is the most expensive phone in the world and it doesn’t appeal to business customers because it doesn’t have a keyboard which makes it not a very good email machine… So, I, I kinda look at that and I say, well, I like our strategy. I like it a lot.” – Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO, January 17, 2007

Lots, lots more.

Apple celebrates America’s national parks this July

Written by

Apple:

Apple today introduced new ways customers can enjoy and support America’s national parks next month.

From July 1 through 15, Apple is donating $1 to the National Park Foundation for every purchase made with Apple Pay at any Apple Store, on apple.com or through the Apple Store app in the US. Apple Pay is accepted at select locations in some of the most popular national parks, from Yellowstone and Yosemite to the Grand Canyon and Muir Woods National Monument.

And:

On July 15, Apple Watch users around the world can complete a walk, run or wheelchair workout of 3.5 miles (5.6 km) to earn an award and stickers for Messages inspired by national parks. The distance matches the length of a hike from Old Faithful to Mallard Lake in Yellowstone National Park.

Love this.