Here’s what happens. Whenever you speak into Apple’s voice activated personal digital assistant, it ships it off to Apple’s data farm for analysis. Apple generates a random numbers to represent the user and it associates the voice files with that number. This number — not your Apple user ID or email address — represents you as far as Siri’s back-end voice analysis system is concerned.
Once the voice recording is six months old, Apple “disassociates” your user number from the clip, deleting the number from the voice file. But it keeps these disassociated files for up to 18 more months for testing and product improvement purposes.
An interesting look at how Apple manages and improves Siri’s voice analysis.
I made an appearance on The Mac Observer’s Apple Context Machine podcast – its 200th episode. I, along with several other guests (each featured separately) prognosticated about the future of Apple along with hosts Bryan Chaffin and Jeff Gamet.
Eighteen months after the death of his mentor, Apple CEO Tim Cook was seen Wednesday pounding the tombstone of company founder Steve Jobs and begging for guidance in his leadership of what was once the largest corporation in the history of the world. “What the hell do I do?!” a hysterical Cook reportedly shrieked, clawing alternately at the grave marker and his own face.
TracFone, the country’s largest prepaid virtual operator, managed to outdo its impressive holiday performance in the usually tepid first quarter. It added 839,000 new subscribers to its total, more than the 753,000 it added in the fourth quarter and 127 percent more than its 369,000 net additions in last year’s Q1. TracFone even beat out mobile giant Verizon Wireless, which grew by 720,000 new subscribers last quarter.
Apple is doomed. The iPhone isn’t cool anymore.
(Related: We resurrected my old iPhone 4 with a Straight Talk SIM this past quarter. My wife uses it now, and she’s quite happy with the service – for $45 per month.)
Apple has and always will be a consumer company. They simply struggled until there was a true consumer market. Now they find success where others have not simply because they have always had a vision of creating products for ordinary folk. Apple simply had to wait more than two decades for their true market to emerge. Now, emerge it has and its billions strong.
That’s why I laugh every time I read analysis suggesting Apple has to articulate an enterprise strategy (like the jackass at the end of this blog post). People like that just don’t get it.
Mayer defended her decision by first acknowledging that “people are more productive when they’re alone,” and then stressed “but they’re more collaborative and innovative when they’re together. Some of the best ideas come from pulling two different ideas together.” The shift in policy affects roughly 200 of Yahoo’s 12,000 employees.
People can collaborate and innovate without working in the same office, as well. It’s all a matter of effective personnel management and effective use of appropriate technology.
British media group Pearson’s Penguin unit has offered to scrap e-book deals with Apple that imposed price restrictions on Amazon and other retailers, EU antitrust regulators said on Friday.
On the heels of the Boy Scouts introducing a merit badge for game design, the Girl Scouts are going one better by developing a badge program to bring girls into the world of video game development. The effort is a collaboration between Girl Scouts of Greater Los Angeles and Women in Games International.
Gamestar Mechanic, the tool the Girl Scouts are emphasizing, is cross-platform compatible with Mac and Windows, since it runs in a web browser, but it requires Flash, so it’s a no-go on iOS and other Flash-resistant platforms.
Regardless, I’m delighted to see the Girl Scouts add such a cool, STEM-friendly effort. Anything that gets girls interested and engaged in game development is worth supporting.
[Editor’s note: Jim, we should put Bonnie on the payroll. She’s finding cool links!]
Well it’s time you welcomed your posh posterior to the 21st century, because Kohler’s just released the second edition of its now $6,000 throne: the aptly named Numi Comfort Height.
Comes with USB and an SD card reader, too. My wife suggests that since there’s no built-in gaming system, we should declare Kohler’s attempt a fail.
I am very pleased with the purchase and how the MacBook Pro has handled desktop duty. It works better than I expected with no shortfalls.
Kendrick got the 13-inch model, and if you haven’t seen it up close, it’s a really delightful and very powerful machine. It’s also lightweight compared to its non-Retina counterpart.
I just got a 15-inch MacBook Pro with Retina Display this week, and it’s a truly awesome machine.
But perhaps most importantly is the fact that some number of Android owners aren’t downloading mobile applications at all. Google tacitly acknowledged this fact earlier this month, when it made a change to the way it measures Android version adoption on its Developers site. The company explained that, going forward, it would only show data reflecting those devices that had visited the Google Play Store.
And that’s the problem in a nutshell. A lot more people are buying Android phones, but they’re using them very differently than iPhone users. They’re less engaged than iPhone users are with the supporting ecosystem – and, in fact, many of them don’t care about downloading apps and thus supporting the very developers Google is trying to attract to the Android platform.
As for its Windows division, it’s a similar story — revenues of $5.7 billion are up 23 percent year-over year, but adjusted revenues to the upgrade offer take into account lower revenues to $4.6 billion (flat year-over-year).
Many PC OEMs are dissatisfied with what Microsoft has done with Windows 8 and the way the company has handled the negative response to the operating system. Privately, one OEM source told me that Microsoft is “destroying” the PC industry, while another claimed that Windows 8 has “handed over millions of customers to Apple.”
Microsoft may recant its Windows 8 design theology, bloggers reported Tuesday, by offering Windows 8 users an option to bypass the “Modern” UI and by restoring the Start button and menu to the beleaguered operating system.
Here’s an idea: When you make significant changes to your operating system, make sure they make sense first.
I’ve had some hands-on time with the most recent addition, the Galaxy Mega 6.3 – the 6.3-inch 720p screen is no match for the Galaxy S4 in terms of resolution or display, but is perfectly adequate for the mid-to-high end of the market that the Galaxy Mega will likely be priced to attract.
Photos and more details after the jump.
If I see you walking down the street talking on one of these things with your ear to your head, I reserve the right to cockpunch you. At least use a Bluetooth earpiece.
During an investor call this morning, Verizon elaborated on its device activations for the quarter. In Q1, the company says that it activated a total of four million iPhones, half of which were the iPhone 5. That translates into just over 55 percent of all smartphone activations for the quarter. A year ago, Verizon reported 3.2 million iPhone activations.
That’s a 25 percent year over year increase in Verizon sales, for those of you keeping track at home.
Whether the stock bounces from the 16-month low it hit Wednesday or sinks even lower may depend less on iPhone or iPad sales than on its guidance for the June quarter (more on that later) and what it reports about a relatively obscure ratio closely watched by analysts: the company’s gross margin, or GM%.
As always, Dewitt is keeping an eye on analyst’s estimates for the quarter to see how close to (or far off) the mark they are.
That’s right: Japan is getting Iron Man 3 in smell-o-vision. It’s not actually called “smell-o-vision” – that’s so last century – but according to The Hollywood Reporter the film will be shown in a theater in Nagoya in 4DX. This “fourth dimension” experience will offer wind, fog, tilting seats, and odor effects. It’s unclear exactly what the smells themselves will be, but if Tony smells like his Diesel-made eau de wiseass, it wouldn’t be the worst thing ever.
Why? Why, for the love of all that is holy? Whyyyyy?
Today’s Pocket update introduces a completely redesigned Share Menu—and we’re excited to introduce Send to Friend, a simple way to share with anyone without leaving Pocket.
Even if that’s true, there’s more than one possible explanation for Cirrus Logic’s excess supply of chips. Apple could have switched providers of those chips, for instance. Apple CEO Tim Cook warned when similar negative supplier reports caused a massive freakout among investors a week before earnings last quarter: “I’d stress that even if a particular data point were factual, it would be impossible to interpret [the meaning] for our overall business. Yields can vary, supplier performance can vary … there’s an inordinately long list of things that would make any single data point not a great proxy for what’s going on.”
Easier just to blame Apple, which is why the stock plummeted today.
While Google Play reached close to 90% of the iOS App Store downloads in Q1 2013, the iOS App Store maintained its strong lead in monetization, earning about 2.6x the app revenue of Google Play.
App Annie notes that the revenue difference was more like 4x in 2012, so it’s closing in, but still way, way off given the near-parity in download traffic.
Bottom line: if you want to actually make money, iOS still seems like the safer bet.
Apple Inc. is once again in the pages of the People’s Daily, this time in an article listing a number of websites and app stores that have been investigated for providing pornographic content in China.
Apple regularly runs into complaints here in the States from people that don’t want to see them censor content in the App Store. But that’s nothing compared to what the Chinese government expects of Apple, apparently.
If this estimate is considered then the operating profits from PC operations imply that Apple generates more profit than all the top 5 PC vendors combined.
Some assumptions here, but Dediu is right that PC manufacturing has been a low-margin market for many years, except for Apple, so it’s not surprising that there would be this much of a disparity.
In its first week of monitoring worldwide usage of Google’s Chrome OS, NetMarketShare reported that the percentage of web traffic from Chromebooks was roughly 2/100 of 1 percent, a figure too small to earn a place on its reports.
“With Apple, I sense a lack of urgency,” said Myerson. “When iOS 5 came out and there was a fifth row of icons and not much else, you say, okay, are they running out of steam, is iOS getting boring?”
iOS 5? Fifth row of icons? Way to stay on top of things, Myerson. You’re keeping a sharp eye on the competition, that’s for damn sure.
Maybe the guy whose products are staring at BlackBerry’s butthole should just keep his head down until he’s got something to be cocky about.
All of these EVs are an uninspiring mishmash of an existing model with a hastily engineered electric drivetrain stuffed inside. You could say the same about the 500e. But you’re wrong. By slapping an electric motor up front and a battery pack from stem to stern, Fiat has managed to make the 500 better than its gas-powered siblings. And here’s the kicker: After spending a day with one, I can say it’s arguably a better value.
I’m still not ready to put up with the compromises of an EV vehicle, but Fiat is making the experience much less painful than before.
Time Warner Cable Inc., the second- largest U.S. cable operator, is adding live out-of-home programming for the first time to its TWC TV application, letting customers watch shows on Apple Inc. mobile devices.
Good news for iPad and iPhone users who also happen to be Time Warner Cable customers.
Bungie.org has a scan of the Macworld review of Pathways from 1994 which lists the price as — are you sitting down? — $69.99. So, I’ll just leave this link to Lex Friedman’s piece in Macworld making the suggestion that $5 apps aren’t expensive riiight heeere.
If you’re tired of old farts like me telling you young kids today you don’t know how good you have it with your cheap software, this is why.
If you missed the news on Pathways Into Darkness being re-released, here it is.
