Posts in Linked

Trello Launches Mac App with Custom Keyboard Shortcuts, Native Notifications, and More→

Today Trello introduced a new dedicated Mac app that includes features built for power users, such as customizable keyboard shortcuts, desktop notifications, and more.

Any serious productivity app on the Mac needs to include keyboard shortcuts, and the team at Trello clearly knows that. There are shortcuts for all the expected things like adding a new card, navigating between boards, and more. Where Trello impresses is that you can customize these shortcuts to your liking, making them easier to remember. One unique shortcut allows you to set a specific board to automatically open every time you start the app, saving an extra click.

Since it’s a native app, Trello includes native macOS notifications now, an improvement over the sometimes-janky Safari-powered notifications. It also enables opening boards in separate windows. Lastly, the app supports the Touch Bar for MacBook Pro owners.

Trello is available for download from the Mac App Store.

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AppStories, Episode 22 – Apps With a Human Touch→

On this week’s episode of AppStories, we discuss what’s left now that Federico is finished writing the text of his iOS 11 review, preview some of the upcoming coverage on MacStories and the upcoming second anniversary of Club MacStories, and consider the importance of little human touches that make apps by indie developers a delight to use.

Sponsored by:

  • Omni - Celebrating 25 years of human-centered productivity!
  • Twist - Our mission is to make team communication calmer, more organized, and more productive.
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AT&T and Verizon Announce Apple Watch Wireless Plan Pricing→

The Street reports that AT&T and Verizon will charge $10 per month to add an LTE-enabled Apple Watch to an existing US data plan. Of the two carriers, Verizon’s offer is a little more generous because the first three months of service are free. According to The Street, Sprint and T-Mobile will also carry the Series 3 Watch in the US, but have not disclosed pricing yet.

You can also follow all of our Apple event coverage through our September 12 hub, or subscribe to the dedicated September 12 RSS feed.

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Apple Defends Siri Explaining How Its Voice Assistant Works→

On the heels of a feature story in Wired last week, Apple executives and engineers opened up about how Siri works in interviews with Fast Company. As the publication explained it, a narrative has emerged that Apple’s AI work is behind other companies’ efforts because of its dedication to user privacy.

In an interview with Fast Company, Apple’s Greg Joswiak disagrees:

“I think it is a false narrative. It’s true that we like to keep the data as optimized as possible, that’s certainly something that I think a lot of users have come to expect, and they know that we’re treating their privacy maybe different than some others are.”

Joswiak argues that Siri can be every bit as helpful as other assistants without accumulating a lot of personal user data in the cloud, as companies like Facebook and Google are accustomed to doing. “We’re able to deliver a very personalized experience … without treating you as a product that keeps your information and sells it to the highest bidder. That’s just not the way we operate.”

The article provides concrete examples of how Siri works and the advances that have been made since it was introduced with a level of detail that has not been shared before.

The effectiveness of Siri and Apple’s machine learning research is an area where Apple’s culture of secrecy has hurt it. Apple seems to have recognized this and has made a concerted effort to turn perceptions around with interviews like the ones in Wired and Fast Company. Apple employees have also begun to engage in more public discussion of the company’s machine learning and AI initiatives through outlets like its recently-introduced journal and presentations made by Apple employees. Apple even enlisted The Rock to help it get the word out about Siri’s capabilities. Competition for virtual personal assistant supremacy has heated up, and Apple has signaled it has no intention of being left out or backing down.

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Tim Cook Discusses Apple’s Convictions of Societal Responsibility in New Interview→

Source: Fortune

Source: Fortune

Fortune today published an interview Adam Lashinsky held with Apple CEO Tim Cook earlier this year. Their conversation centers on Apple’s attempts at societal contribution, covering topics like health, education, the environment, and more.

In the area of health, Cook acknowledged that while many of the company’s health initiatives are not directly profitable in any way, he does understand that from a financial standpoint health care is a key area for Apple to invest in. And they are investing. He says:

There’s much more in the health area. There’s a lot of stuff that I can’t tell you about that we’re working on, some of which it’s clear there’s a commercial business there. And some of it it’s clear there’s not. And some of it it‘s not clear. I do think it’s a big area for Apple’s future.

One other interesting piece from the interview surrounds Apple’s lack of interest in setting up a company foundation, breaking from the pattern of many other large corporations. Cook explained his reasoning:

When a company sets up a foundation, there is a risk, in my judgment, of the foundation becoming this other thing that is not connected to the company. It has a separate board of directors. They make reasonably independent decisions sometimes. It becomes a separate thing. I don’t want that for Apple. I want everybody involved…If we had a foundation, my fear was it becomes something that 10 or 12 or 20 or 50 people do. And all of a sudden for the 120,000, it’s just this separate thing out there. People work here to change the world. So I think that should be integral to what the company does. Not peripheral in a foundation.

It’s possible we’ll see announcements related to Apple’s work in the areas of health and the environment at its September 12 keynote event, with the former tied to Apple Watch announcements and the latter to the creation of Apple Park, where the event will be held.

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App Store Sales for 32-bit Apps Less Than 1% of Total Revenue→

Oliver Yeh of Sensor Tower shares a revealing statistic regarding the current state of App Store revenue for 32-bit apps, which will no longer be available for purchase or download in iOS 11:

The potential revenue Apple stands to lose from eliminating 32-bit app support in iOS 11, expected to launch next week, will amount to less than 1 percent of its portion of quarterly App Store revenue, according to Sensor Tower research. Based on an analysis of our Store Intelligence data, we have estimated that these older apps, which will cease to function in the upcoming release, accounted for approximately $37.5 million in worldwide gross revenue last quarter, of which Apple’s cut—about $11.3 million—made up a mere 0.41 percent of its total revenue from in-app purchases and paid apps on iPhone and iPad.

While it should come as no surprise that 32-bit apps make up a small portion of App Store sales, this new data reveals just how inconsequential that portion has now become.

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Remaster, Episode 43: Surprising Games→

News of Shahid’s first VR game, thoughts on upcoming and recent Switch releases, and an interview with Mike Bithell to discuss Subsurface Circular.

On this week’s Remaster, we cover some upcoming Switch games, then Shahid interviews Mike Bithell on his latest release. You can listen here.

Sponsored by:

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  • Crimson Mesa: Announcing Shokem Nimai, The Ancient Game of the River.
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Making Siri More Human→

David Pierce has a feature story on WIRED today that’s all about Siri – especially the new Siri voice coming in iOS 11. It features a variety of interesting details concerning Siri’s history, the way Apple thinks about the digital assistant, and in-depth details on how new Siri languages are added.

One of my favorite bits involves a quote from Apple’s VP of product marketing, Greg Jozwiak, who said Apple focuses on Siri’s ability to get things done:

It drives him crazy that people compare virtual assistants by asking trivia questions, which always makes Siri look bad. “We didn’t engineer this thing to be Trivial Pursuit!” he says.

This explains Siri’s productivity-focused commercial starring The Rock, and also helps make sense of the fact that Siri is often embarrassingly clueless when it comes to current events or other simple queries. Though Apple’s awareness of the problem exacerbates its lack of a suitable response in beefing up Siri’s trivia knowledge.

Other interesting tidbits from the story include the fact that Siri now has a massive 375 million active monthly users, and that Siri’s new, more natural voice was inspired in part by the movie Her.

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How Scotty Allen Managed to Add a Headphone Jack to an iPhone 7→

Scotty Allen wanted an iPhone 7 with a headphone jack, so he set out to build his own. Jason Koebler at Motherboard chronicles Allen’s epic quest:

This sorcery took four months of engineering, Allen told me. Many iPhones were sacrificed, and lots of grey-market parts purveyors were enlisted in the quest.

The process wasn’t cheap either:

“I shifted everything up a little bit and took out protective brackets and shields and shaved things down,” Allen said. “I lost three full phones trying this, a good handful of screens, a stack of components. I broke easily close to $1,000 worth of parts in the last week, which just about broke my will. But it got to a point where I told myself—I am going to keep doing this until I prove to myself it can’t be done.”

Allen also had to design and connect a custom flexible circuit board that allowed switching between the lightning connector and his custom 3.5 mm headphone jack.

Allen’s elaborate iPhone hack isn’t something most people could accomplish and even if they could, it isn’t economical at this scale. Still, the story is an incredible tale of ingenious DIY engineering and a fascinating window into the electronics marketplaces in Shenzhen, China. I highly recommend watching Allen’s detailed account of his efforts on YouTube.

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