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Voice Control is Coming to the Alexa App Soon→

Amazon is adding voice control support to its Alexa app on Android and iOS. According to TechCrunch:

The addition of voice commands means users can speak directly to their handset the way they would an Echo — to play music, trigger Alexa skills and the like. The update is being rolled out over the course of the coming days through Google Play and Amazon’s own Appstore. A similar update is also on the way for the iOS App Store, but its timing is still up in the air, likely due to Apple’s stricter vetting process.

Unlike Google and Apple, Amazon doesn’t have a smartphone platform for its smart assistant. That puts Amazon at a disadvantage because it precludes users from activating Alexa with a trigger word on Android phones and iOS devices. Still, the move feels like a natural extension of the services surrounding Alexa and Amazon’s Echo products.

There’s precedent for this sort of app on iOS too. Astra is a simple iOS utility that acts like an Echo device. It’s registered in the Alexa app alongside any Echo products you own. Pressing the microphone button lets you issue the same commands you can to an Echo. It remains to be seen what Amazon’s update to the Alexa app will mean for Astra, but in any event, it will be interesting to see where Amazon’s push into mobile leads.

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Mac and iOS App Store Web Preview Pages Get a Makeover

Apple has introduced new web preview pages for the App Store and Mac App Store. The new design more closely tracks the App Store changes debuted as part of iOS 11. Interestingly, the web previews for Mac apps share the same refreshed design despite the fact that the Mac App Store has barely changed since its introduction in 2011.

The new design features bigger images and more white space. Reviews are laid out horizontally as cards near the bottom of the page. Longer reviews open in a pop-over card that hovers above the page when the ‘more’ link is clicked. Mac apps include a ‘View in Mac App Store’ button near the top of the page too.

The new web previews are only accessible from search results loaded in the desktop version of Safari or another desktop browser. The mobile version of the browser offers to take you to the App Store when a link is tapped, even if you long press the refresh button and pick ‘Request Desktop Site.’ In my tests, the desktop search results that load in mobile Safari look more like their desktop counterparts, but DuckDuckGo and Bing still offer to open the App Store, whereas Google’s links are simply unresponsive.

I like the look of the new preview pages. The old ones were too closely tied to the design of the iTunes App Store, which was eliminated last fall.

The inclusion of Mac app previews is intriguing. It makes sense for both Stores to share a common design language, but the Mac App Store is in desperate need of love and attention for many reasons that extend beyond its design. Whether this is a sign that the Mac App Store will get that attention soon, Mac apps will be thrown in with iOS apps on the App Store, or something else will be interesting to watch.

It’s Time for Apple to Build a Less Addictive iPhone→

Farhad Manjoo, writing for The New York Times on the topic of tech addiction, interviewed Tristan Harris, who runs the Time Well Spent organization:

Mr. Harris suggested several ideas for Apple to make a less-addictive smartphone. For starters, Apple could give people a lot more feedback about how they’re using their devices.

Imagine if, once a week, your phone gave you a report on how you spent your time, similar to how your activity tracker tells you how sedentary you were last week. It could also needle you: “Farhad, you spent half your week scrolling through Twitter. Do you really feel proud of that?” It could offer to help: “If I notice you spending too much time on Snapchat next week, would you like me to remind you?”

Another idea is to let you impose more fine-grained controls over notifications. Today, when you let an app send you mobile alerts, it’s usually an all-or-nothing proposition — you say yes to letting it buzz you, and suddenly it’s buzzing you all the time.

Mr. Harris suggested that Apple could require apps to assign a kind of priority level to their notifications. “Let’s say you had three notification levels — heavy users, regular users and lite, or Zen,” Mr. Harris said.

The first idea sounded terrible until I remembered that, for a while, I also used Moment on the iPhone to understand my app habits and curb my Facebook addiction (it worked). I wouldn’t want a tracking feature that shames users and makes them feel guilty (“Are you proud of that?” is precisely what should not happen), but something akin to RescueTime, discreetly integrated with iOS and built by Apple would be a welcome feature.

Deeper control over notifications is something iOS desperately needs at this point. I would be disappointed if a major overhaul of the notification framework and UI isn’t in the cards for iOS 12. Android has offered notification channels for a while now; Apple should borrow the feature and a) allow developers to set different tiers for their apps’ notifications and b) let users override them if a developer tries to be too clever about them. Notification levels on iOS would also be perfect for the Apple Watch: imagine if, without having to fiddle with Do Not Disturb, you could set some types of notifications to be displayed on the iPhone and only the most important ones on the Watch, with fine-grained controls in a unified, intuitive interface. I hope we see something similar this year.

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Tim Cook Says iOS Beta Due Next Month Will Include Setting to Disable Battery Performance Throttling→

In an interview with ABC News’ Rebecca Jarvis about Apple’s investments in the U.S. economy, CEO Tim Cook confirmed that an upcoming iOS developer beta, due to be released in February, will include, in addition to a previously announced battery health screen, a setting to disable iPhone performance throttling. Cook explained that, while Apple will recommend to keep throttling enabled to prevent unexpected shutdowns in emergency situations, iOS will also include an option to turn it off for users who don’t want their iPhone’s performance reduced by software.

As noted by Benjamin Mayo at 9to5Mac:

You can listen to Cook talk about this in the interview embedded below. Skip to around 4:30 to hear him talk about the iPhone slowdown debacle. His wording is not ambiguous, he states plainly that Apple will release the developer beta (presumably iOS 11.3) next month and that it will include the ability for users to disable performance throttling if they want to.

Given Cook’s comments, it sounds likely that iOS 11.2.5 (currently in beta) will be released by the end of the month, with iOS 11.3 beta following in February and a possible launch in March, as with other .3 releases in previous years.

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Apple Announces New Campus in the Works, Pledges Significant Investments in US Economy

Today in a press release Apple shared an update on its contributions to the US economy. One significant piece of news shared as part of that broader story was the surprise announcement of a new Apple campus in the works.

The company plans to establish an Apple campus in a new location, which will initially house technical support for customers. The location of this new facility will be announced later in the year.

Despite many employees’ transition into the newest campus, Apple Park, not yet being complete, it makes sense for a company of Apple’s scale and growth to continue expanding its corporate footprint. No further details on the new campus were shared, other than that it will open within the next five years.

Apple expects to invest over $30 billion in capital expenditures in the US over the next five years and create over 20,000 new jobs through hiring at existing campuses and opening a new one.

The announcement of a new campus was only a small portion of the overall press release, which presented several financial details regarding Apple’s five year plan for economic contribution.

  • $350 billion will be contributed to the US economy over those five years.
  • $5 billion is committed to Apple’s Advanced Manufacturing Fund, up from the previously announced $1 billion.
  • $55 billion is estimated to be spent in 2018 alone with domestic suppliers and manufacturers.
  • $38 billion is the expected tax payment when Apple repatriates overseas profits under new tax law.

These are huge numbers, clearly reflecting Apple’s current financial success. With numbers like these, and an anticipated 20,000 new hires over five years, it’s no surprise the company will need another campus.

iPad Diaries: Transmit Replacements and FTP Clients

iPad Diaries is a regular series about using the iPad as a primary computer. You can find more installments here and subscribe to the dedicated RSS feed.

You can download my wallpaper here.

Even though I never depended on Transmit for my daily iPad file management needs, I was sad to read that Panic couldn’t find a market for it on the App Store. Thousands of iPad owners use Panic’s app to manage their FTP servers and Amazon S3 buckets; integration with the latter is particularly important as it’s hard to find apps that combine FTP access with S3 support and aren’t hindered by questionable interface choices or a lack of updates.

Transmit for iOS was (and, until it is removed from the App Store, still is) one of a kind. Its excellent Mac foundation was adapted to iOS with taste and elegance, leveraging a split-pane UI long before iPad users were comfortable with Apple’s native Split View; thanks to Panic’s penchant for beautiful and intuitive design married to power-user functionalities, the Mac-like approach worked surprisingly well on iPad too.

It’s difficult to pin down what, exactly, made Transmit for iOS unprofitable. The iOS counterpart always lagged behind the cloud integrations from the Mac app (Backblaze B2 and Rackspace Cloud Files, for instance, never made it to iOS); Panic didn’t update Transmit to take advantage of major additions to iOS 11 such as Files and drag and drop; perhaps more importantly, Transmit for iOS is a product of the pre-iOS 11 era, back when the concepts of desktop-like file management and drag and drop were alien to the platform. Ultimately, I think Transmit for iOS lived and (slowly) died because we had it too soon.

But this isn’t a post-mortem for Transmit on iOS, which, according to Panic, may even relaunch as a new app on the Store someday. Instead, I’d like to take a quick tour of some of the alternatives for Transmit available on iPad today. In case Panic decides to pull Transmit from the App Store, or if the app stops working in a future release of iOS, these FTP clients and file managers should compensate for the features of Panic’s app. Most of them don’t offer the same sophisticated and polished UI design, but some of them may even turn out to be more flexible and better integrated with iOS than Transmit.

Read more

Connected, Episode 176: A Kernel Panic at the Disco→

What does the death of Transmit mean for pro apps on the iPad? Should Apple make a laptop that runs iOS? Does Myke understand how hypothetical questions work?

I liked our discussion about pro apps on iPad and the idea of a laptop that runs iOS on this week’s episode of Connected. You can listen here.

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Evolving the Apple Watch in watchOS 5→

Matt Birchler has published his list of requests for watchOS 5, and I wholeheartedly agree with all of his major feature ideas. His top request is identical to my own: letting third-party apps populate the Siri Watch face introduced last year.

Essentially, Apple should be making the Siri watch face the smartest, most useful watch face someone can choose. It already is the smartest, but to be useful to everyone, they need to make the apps people are actually using work with it.

I’ve been using the Siri face nearly non-stop since installing the watchOS 4 beta. Because I use a lot of first-party apps, it still offers me enough value to be the best Watch face for me. Once third-party apps can tap in though, it could end up becoming the best face for everyone.

Pair Siri face improvements with Birchler’s other major requests – always-on Watch faces, an Apple Podcasts app, and further updates to Activity and Workout – and watchOS 5 would stack up to address all my outstanding issues with the platform.

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