Mac

Teaching Siri how to pronounce unusual names

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J. D. Biersdorfer, writing for the New York Times, talks through the complexities of teaching Siri how to properly pronounce an unusual name.

A key step in teaching Siri:

If your Contacts list contains names with unusual spellings and pronunciations that Siri cannot accurately match up when you ask for them, you can try adding a phonetic version of the name to the person’s contact card. To do that, call up the contact, tap Edit in the upper-right corner and scroll down to Add Field.

Tap the Add Field option and on the next screen, select Phonetic First Name or Phonetic Last Name. Once the chosen field appears, type in the syllables of the name the way that they sound rather than how the name is spelled.

This works well in iOS, but Siri is also available on the Mac. In the Contacts application on the Mac, you’ll want to open a contact card, click Edit (lower right of the card) then, from the Contact menu bar, select Card > Add Field > Phonetic First/Last Name or Phonetic Company.

Hands on with macOS Sierra’s Console

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If you’ve never used the Mac’s Console application (Applications > Utilities), this article is a solid place to start. Not only does Kirk McElhearn show off some of the basic Console features, he also focuses on what’s new in the much improved macOS Sierra version.

Console is an important resource. Pretty much everything you do on the Mac ends up sending a message which is accumulated in a log somewhere. Console lets you read through those logs and, as Kirk shows you, this new version of Console makes it much easier to find what you are looking for.

iCloud Tabs not working in your macOS Sierra beta? Here’s a fix.

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While my macOS Sierra beta has been pretty rock solid, there is one feature that has stopped working for me. If I click the iCloud Tabs button (the icon of two overlaid squares in the upper-right corner of the Safari window), Safari should open a view that shows all the Safari tabs in my current window, as well as the Safari tabs in my other nearby iOS devices.

For me, the macOS tabs show up just fine, but the iCloud tabs do not appear. I depend on this feature, so I dug around the net to find a workaround while I waited for the Sierra beta that fixed this problem. […]

Mossberg: I just deleted half my iPhone apps — you should too

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Walt Mossberg, writing for The Verge:

Over the past few days, I’ve methodically deleted 165 apps from my iPhone, about 54 percent of the 305 apps I had on the phone when I started culling the herd. When I was done, I had significantly decreased the phone’s clutter: I’d gone from 15 home screens to eight, and reclaimed nearly 8GB of free space, about a 24 percent gain in my case.

And:

But this isn’t one of those columns about digital housecleaning or how to free up more space on your iPhone, valuable as those are. It’s easier to save space by offloading most photos, video, and music to the cloud anyway. No, this column is really about the fact that I think the novelty of the app itself has worn off. We’ve reached peak app.

And:

Before going on, I want to make it clear that I am not against apps as a software type. Just the opposite: I believe them crucial to mobile devices. I personally find that, for many targeted tasks, a well-designed app is much better to use on even a large phone than is a mobile web browser, even if both the app and a web page are tapping the same online services.

For instance, I’d use Facebook and Twitter much less on my phone if I had to use them through the browser, partly because they make it easy to open and close referenced web pages right inside their apps, with just a click.

And it’s still possible to create a sensation with a great app that introduces genuinely new experiences — like Pokémon Go with its augmented reality interface. But one reason that Pokémon is so newsworthy is that such blockbuster apps are rarer and rarer.

It’s easier to make a wave in a pond than an ocean, and that’s where we are now. The same is true in the businesses of movie/TV/journalism production. It is harder and harder to make content that stands out in that ocean of content that you’re competing against. That is the nature of any maturing business.

On falling Mac sales and the lack of refreshes

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Why the lack of new Macs? Is the Mac space too small, revenue-wise, for Apple to go to the trouble of a new product launch? Is something else causing this lack of new models?

More in the main post.

AnandTech: A first look at Apple’s macOS Sierra

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Brandon Chester, writing for AnandTech, digs into the macOS Sierra beta. Before you dig in, remember that this is a beta, and an early one. Keep that fact in mind as you read. Also realize up front that Brandon did not update his Apple Watch to the latest beta. As he says in his conclusion:

By this point I’ve covered many of the tentpole features of macOS Sierra. Right now it’s a bit difficult to test some of the other features announced at WWDC that relate to continuity between macOS, iOS, and watchOS due to the fact that all these platforms are in beta and, in the case of watchOS, a beta that you can’t return from. Unfortunately, I feel that those features end up being the most interesting ones, because they’re only made possible by Apple controlling the software and hardware stack across all their devices.

That said, I found this an interesting read, as AnandTech reviews inevitably are.

Apple’s Mac sales fall, economies shudder

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Computerworld:

The latest PC marketshare figures from Gartner and IDC suggest Mac users are anxious for new MacBooks, as Mac sales fall and economic weakness impacts PC sales everywhere.

“Apple continues to face an increasingly competitive market as it awaits a refresh of its PC lineup. As a result, shipments experienced a decline from last year,” said IDC.

IDC says Q2 2016 worldwide PC shipments fell 4.5%, totaling 62.4 million units, with Apple and Lenove particularly impacted. Apple fell from a 7.4 percent share in Q2 2015 to a 7.1 percent share in Q2 2016, with an 8.3 percent drop in year-on-year shipments, they said.

Gartner says Q2 2016 worldwide PC shipments fell 5.2%, totaling 64.3 million units. The analyst say Apple’s market share held, year-on-year, at 7.1 percent, though its year-on-year shipments fell 4.9 percent.

Demand continues to build. I do wonder what drives Apple’s thinking here. Is the issue simply that the new MacBook Pro is not ready for prime time? Are there related supply chain or other product issues that are driving the timing?

I do feel certain of two things: Apple knows what they are doing here, and when they do release a new MacBook Pro, they will sell a lot of them, enough to significantly change the above numbers.

New Mac malware in the wild

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In a nutshell, the malicious code is embedded in a Mac utility called EasyDoc Converter.app. Given that the app itself does not do what it says it will do (convert files from one format to another), this was a pretty obvious find.

But think of this example as a proof of concept. This malware could just as easily be embedded in a useful tool. If you are going to go outside the Mac App Store, be sure you are downloading a known, vetted product from a known, vetted source.

The beta cascade: Why Apple’s latest OS’s require each other

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Dan Moren, writing for Macworld:

My Apple Watch, much as I like it, is hardly an indispensable part of my everyday life. And ready I was to go ahead and install the watchOS 3 beta when I ran up against a bit of a brick wall—because in order to install the watchOS 3 beta, I also needed to install the iOS 10 beta on my iPhone.

How to use Tabs in macOS Sierra

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A solid article that shows off the use of tabs in macOS Sierra, tabs that you’ve long used in Safari and, likely less often, in the Finder.

One of the best things about Sierra tabs is that developers get them for free, so you’ll be able to use tabs in all your favorite apps.

Safari 10 brings fast, native App Extensions

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Daniel Dilger, writing for Apple Insider:

On both macOS Sierra 10.12 and today’s El Capitan 10.11.5 (when Safari 10 is installed), Safari will support App Extensions built from a combination of JavaScript, CSS and native code written in Objective-C or Swift.

And:

More importantly, the new App Extensions architecture enables developers to distribute Safari Extensions as part of their app through the App Store.

John Dvorak: Apple should spin off the Macintosh

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No.

The Mac is an incredibly valuable part of Apple’s ecosystem. If people were, en masse, leaving the Mac for iOS, that might make some (albeit small) amount of sense. But the Mac is an integral part of Apple’s big picture strategy.

Spin off the Mac? I don’t think so.

Links to macOS Sierra reviews

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Here are some posts worth reading, each with an individual take after spending some quality time with the macOS Sierra beta.

New Photos app detects 4,432 kinds of objects and 7 facial expressions

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MacRumors:

Over the weekend, a Reddit user discovered a few lines of code within the framework of Apple’s beta of the macOS Sierra Photos app, possibly detailing both the specific facial expressions that the app recognizes and every single searchable object users can find in both Sierra and iOS 10.

macOS Sierra’s new system requirements

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Stephen Hackett presents the list of Macs that can run macOS Sierra out of the box, with an unofficial option if your machine just falls off the list.

With Sierra, Apple lets the Mac be the Mac

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Dan Moren, writing for Macworld:

To me, the big message to take away from Monday’s presentation is that Apple is all too happy for the Mac to share features and technologies where it makes sense, but to still let it stand on its own two legs and be the best version of itself.

And:

Given the rapid success of iOS in the last almost decade, more than a few folks were worried that Apple might decide to shift the Mac towards a stronger resemblance to its mobile sibling. The company’s fall 2010 event was even described as “Back to the Mac,” the main thrust of which was bringing features from iOS to OS X, most notably a new Mac App Store and the changing of the scroll direction. That spurred fears of forced convergence among Mac fans, who didn’t want the peanut butter of iOS infesting the chocolate of their Mac experience.

This is a good thing. And a terrific read.

USB-C accessory landscape is a mess

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Jordan Kahn, writing for 9to5Mac:

It would be fine if all of those USB-C accessories you purchased for your 2015 MacBook were firmware upgradeable and received updates like Apple’s own products, but many of them are not.

This seems like a mess, and one that is not necessarily merging towards stability.

Driving a 5K Apple display

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WWDC brings with it the prospect of a MacBook Pro refresh (likely) as well as a 5K external display refresh (less likely, but possible). Rene Ritchie explores the tree of possibilities for driving a 5K display.