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Alexa: Amazon’s Operating System→

Astute take by Ben Thompson on how Amazon is building an operating system for the home with Alexa:

Amazon seized the opportunity: first, Alexa was remarkably proficient from day one, particularly in terms of speed and accuracy (two factors that are far more important in encouraging regular use than the ability to answer trivia questions). Then, the company moved quickly to build out its ecosystem in two directions:

  • First, the company created a simple “Skills” framework that allowed smart devices to connect to Alexa and be controlled through a relatively strict verbal framework; in a vacuum it was less elegant than, say, Siri’s attempt to interpret natural language, but it was far simpler to implement. The payoff was already obvious at last year’s CES: Alexa support was everywhere.
  • Secondly, “Alexa” and “Echo” are different names because they are different products: Alexa is the voice assistant, and much like AWS and Amazon.com, Echo is Alexa’s first customer, but hardly its only one. This year CES announcements are dominated by products that run Alexa, including direct Echo competitors, lamps, set-top boxes, TVs, and more.

“Works with Alexa” sure feels like this year’s CES motto (I try not to pay too much attention to CES announcements, but the underlying trends are interesting).

I use both HomeKit/Siri and Alexa. There are advantages and problems to both ecosystems: Apple’s approach is slower, perhaps more careful, and Siri works internationally; Alexa and the Echo are only available in a few countries, but the experience is leaner, generally faster, and there are dozens of compatible devices and skills launching every week. It’s a complicated comparison: Alexa works with web services while Siri integrates with native apps and hardware (like Touch ID); Alexa is expanding to a variety of accessories and third-party services, but Siri and HomeKit are more directly tied into your iOS devices.

I expect Apple to continue opening up SiriKit to developers to match Amazon’s rich ecosystem of skills, but even with more domains and apps, I think the idea of a dedicated assistant for the home is a winning one. On the other hand, I wonder how quickly Amazon can launch Alexa/Echo in other countries and build richer conversational experiences that go beyond simple commands. This will be fun to watch.

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Weather Line Update Adds Today Widget and 3D Touch Quick Actions

Weather Line, one of my favorite iPhone weather apps, received its first update in some time today. Version 1.8 adds a Today widget, 3D Touch quick actions, plus bug fixes and design refinements.

Weather Line displays hourly, daily, and monthly high and low temperatures and predicted conditions as a graph at the top of the screen. Additional weather data supplied by darksky.net and a panel that can be pulled up to show any short-term predicted precipitation are available on the bottom of each screen. You can choose among the weather for your current location and any cities saved in the app by swiping left and right among them.

Weather Line has come in handy time and again, living in a city like Chicago where the temperature can change dramatically from hour to hour. That’s why I was happy to see the app add a Today widget. The widget displays a graph of the current and projected temperatures and conditions for your current location for the next ten hours. As with all widgets, Weather Line’s has a compact and expanded mode. I prefer the expanded mode, which gives the graphs more vertical space to visually communicate temperature changes, although collapsing the widget is a good way to save space for other widgets.

Weather Line has also added 3D Touch quick actions to its Home screen icon. If you have an iPhone that supports quick actions, pressing on the app’s icon displays the same widget, as well as shortcuts to the hourly and daily conditions for your current location and the weather for the two cities at the top of your saved locations list.

Weather Line quick actions and the widget expanded and collapsed.

Weather Line quick actions and the widget expanded and collapsed.

The update to Weather Line includes several other small tweaks. For instance, the app now uses the San Francisco typeface, which makes text pop a little more on each screen. Also, navigating between cities can now be accomplished by swiping anywhere on the screen, except in the hourly view where swiping left and right on the graph scrolls it horizontally. Previously, you couldn’t swipe on any of the graphs to switch locations. Location search has also been improved.

I’ve always relied on multiple weather apps for different circumstances. The clean, simple design of Weather Line has a timelessness that has kept it fresh and among my favorites despite infrequent updates. Nonetheless, it’s good to see Weather Line expand into widgets and 3D Touch, which make it easier than ever to access its graphs. I would love to see the app’s reach extended even further to the Apple Watch and iPad in coming updates.

Weather Line 1.8 is a free update to existing customers and is available to new customers on the App Store for $2.99.

Apple Watch Nike+ Ads Starring Kevin Hart Debut

The Apple Watch Nike+, with its special band, watch faces, and fitness features was released on October 28, 2016. Today, Nike released a series of ads titled The Man Who Kept Running starring actor-comedian Kevin Hart to show off the new watch.

The ads follow Hart as he leaves to try his new Apple Watch Nike+. The premise is that Hart disappears, but is found months later by a film crew as he runs through the desert 700 miles from home.

Each of the seven ads plays off of the question posed by the scheduling feature of the Nike+ Run Club watch app: ‘Are we running today?’ For Hart, the answer is always ‘yes.’ Each spot also highlights a unique feature of the Nike+ version of the Apple Watch that sets it apart from the regular Series 2 version.

Here is the ad that sets up the storyline for the series. The other videos can be viewed after the break.

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Gboard Incorporated into Google’s iOS Search App→

Google released an update to its iOS search app today that includes Gboard integration. Gboard is Google’s alternative to the iOS system keyboard and one of the better third-party keyboards available on iOS. The keyboard supports web, image, and GIF searches, instant-answer search results, multiple languages, 3D Touch cursor movement, contacts, and other features.

Gboard must still be installed by navigating to the Keyboard settings in Apple’s Settings app, but after you do that, Gboard’s settings can be adjusted in the Google app instead of the separate Gboard app. The downside of the new approach is that if you already have Gboard installed, it is now possible to have two Gboard keyboards installed at once – one from the standalone Gboard app, which is still available on the App Store, and the other from the Google app. If you’re a Google app user and already have Gboard installed as I did, I suggest deleting the Gboard app because there is no reason to have two instances of the Gboard keyboard installed.

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AirPods, Siri, and Voice-Only Interfaces→

Ben Bajarin makes a strong point on using Siri with the AirPods:

There is, however, an important distinction to be made where I believe the Amazon Echo shows us a bit more of the voice-only interface and where I’d like to see Apple take Siri when it is embedded in devices without a screen, like the AirPods. You very quickly realize, the more you use Siri with the AirPods, how much the experience today assumes you have a screen in front of you. For example, if I use the AirPods to activate Siri and say, “What’s the latest news?” Siri will fetch the news then say, “Here is some news — take a look.” The experience assumes I want to use my screen (or it at least assumes I have a screen near me to look at) to read the news. Whereas, the Amazon Echo and Google Home just start reading the latest news headlines and tidbits. Similarly, when I activate Siri on the AirPods and say, “Play Christmas music”, the query processes and then plays. Where with the Echo, the same request yields Alexa to say, “OK, playing Christmas music from top 50 Christmas songs.” When you aren’t looking at a screen, the feedback is important. If I was to ask that same request while I was looking at my iPhone, you realize, as Siri processes the request, it says, “OK” on the screen but not in my ear. In voice-only interfaces, we need and want feedback that the request is happening or has been acknowledged.

Siri already adapts to the way it’s activated – it talks more when invoked via “Hey Siri” as it assumes you’re not looking at the screen, and it uses UI elements when triggered from the Home button.

Currently, activating Siri from AirPods yields the same feedback of the “Hey Siri” method. I wonder if future Siri will talk even more when it detects AirPods in your ear as it means only you will be able to hear its responses.

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Developers Report Serious PDF Bugs in macOS Sierra→

After macOS Sierra was released, reports of problems with PDFs created with Fujitsu’s ScanSnap scanner surfaced. Apple resolved those problems with the release of macOS 10.12.1, but it turns out the problems with PDFs on Sierra run deeper.

Adam Engst of TidBITS has a rundown of several issues that plague Preview, Apple’s PDF app, and many third-party PDF apps. The source of the problems seems to be PDFKit, a developer framework for handling PDFs in macOS. According to developers who spoke to Engst, Apple rewrote parts of PDFKit to unify the macOS and iOS PDF code bases. In the process, developers say that Apple introduced a series of significant bugs and deprecated PDFKit features that broke third-party apps that use PDFKit.

Most recently, the macOS 10.12.2 release seems to have introduced a Preview bug that deletes any OCR layer embedded in a PDF that is edited in Preview. Meanwhile, third-party developers have run into new bugs that affect the handling of PDF annotations.

Engst, the co-author of Take Control of Preview, concludes that:

… I have to recommend that Sierra users avoid using Preview to edit PDF documents until Apple fixes these bugs. If editing a PDF in Preview in unavoidable, be sure to work only on a copy of the file and retain the original in case editing introduces corruption of any sort. Smile’s PDFpen [which doesn’t use PDFKit] is the obvious alternative for PDF manipulation of all sorts (and for documentation, we have “Take Control of PDFpen 8” too), although Adobe’s Acrobat DC is also an option, albeit an expensive one.

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Manton Reece Launches Campaign for Microblogging Service and Book→

Today, Manton Reece launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise money for Micro.blog, a platform for independent microblogging and a related book on the subject. Micro.blog has a lot in common with social networks like Twitter, such as replies and favorites, but with an important difference. Instead of locking users into a proprietary system owned by someone else, the content created by individuals is owned and controlled by them. As part of the Micro.blog service, Reece is also building publishing tools with Markdown support, including a native iPhone app, to help people get started with microblogging.

At the core of Micro.blog is an critical design decision – the separation of publishing from social networks. That choice ensures that the microblog content you create remains yours to publish at [your-name].micro.blog or anywhere else you can host a website. At the same time, Micro.blog doesn’t ignore existing social networks. Microblog posts can be cross-posted to other services, which has the potential to give users the best of both worlds – control over their content and access to the broad audiences of services like Twitter.

In addition to Micro.blog, Reece is writing a book on independent microblogging that makes the case for the format and provides practical advice on how to start a microblog. Backers of Reece’s campaign can choose from a variety of rewards that include Reece’s book, early access to the Micro.blog service, free months of the Micro.blog service, and stickers.

New social networks have come and gone over the years, but Reece’s focus on decentralizing microblog publishing from social networks is unique. I had a chance to speak with Manton about Micro.blog at WWDC and know how much time and thought has gone into this project. The campaign is off to a great start and I’m excited to try it soon.

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