Walt Mossberg on Siri’s Failures and Inconsistencies→

Walt Mossberg, writing for The Verge, shares some frustrations with using Siri across multiple Apple devices:

In recent weeks, on multiple Apple devices, Siri has been unable to tell me the names of the major party candidates for president and vice president of the United States. Or when they were debating. Or when the Emmy awards show was due to be on. Or the date of the World Series. When I asked it “What is the weather on Crete?” it gave me the weather for Crete, Illinois, a small village which — while I’m sure it’s great — isn’t what most people mean when they ask for the weather _on _Crete, the famous Greek island.

Google Now, on the same Apple devices, using the same voice input, answered every one of these questions clearly and correctly. And that isn’t even Google’s latest digital helper, the new Google Assistant.

It’s a little odd that Mossberg didn’t mention Siri’s new third-party abilities at all, but it’s hard to disagree with the overall assessment.

Like Mossberg, I think Siri has gotten pretty good at transcribing my commands (despite my accent) but it still fails often when it comes to doing stuff with transcribed text. Every example mentioned by Mossberg sounds more of less familiar to me (including the egregious presidential debate one).

Five years on, Siri in iOS 10 is much better than its first version, but it still has to improve in key areas such as consistency of results, timeliness of web-based queries (e.g. Grammys, presidential debates, news stories, etc.), and inferred queries (case in point). Despite the improvements and launch of a developer platform, these aspects are so fundamental to a virtual assistant, even the occasional stumble makes Siri, as Mossberg writes, seem dumb.

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Amazon Music Unlimited Launches in the US→

Amazon announced its long-anticipated streaming music service, called Amazon Music Unlimited, with a focus on Echo integration and pricing. According to Dan Seifert of The Verge:

…while Spotify relies on its intelligent music recommendation and discovery as a draw and Apple pushes people towards its service with major album exclusives, Amazon is touting Music Unlimited’s tight integration with its Echo devices and Alexa voice assistant as the real differentiator here. Not only do Echo owners have access to a discounted version of the service (though it’s only available on one Echo device at a time), they can request songs from Music Unlimited in a variety of ways just using their voices.

The service also differentiates itself from Spotify, Apple Music, and others with a feature called Side-by-Side that adds artist commentary to certain albums.

For now, Amazon Music Unlimited is available only in the US, but it is scheduled to be released in the UK and Germany later this year according to 9to5Mac. After a 30-day free trial, Amazon Prime members can subscribe to Music Unlimited for $7.99 per month. Non-Prime customers pay $9.99 per month (the same as an individual Apple Music subscription), unless they have an Amazon Echo, in which case the service costs just $3.99 per month. Amazon plans to offer a family plan that can be used by up to six family members for $14.99 per month, the same as Apple Music’s family plan, but it’s not yet available.

Music Unlimited looks like a great deal for Echo owners, but apart from the cost advantage and Echo integration, it remains to be seen how the service’s music selection, playlists, and other core features stack up against competing services.

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OmniGraffle Standard and Pro for Mac Gets a Big Update

It’s hard to capture exactly what OmniGraffle 7 is. Sure, it’s a vector drawing and diagraming tool, but the power of OmniGraffle lies as much in the flexibility of its tools as anything else. By giving users the ability to tweak virtually any property of a shape, line, or other graphic element on its canvas, OmniGraffle works equally well for prototyping an iPhone app as it does for laying out an addition to your house or creating a corporate organization chart. With Version 7 of OmniGraffle, The Omni Group plays to its strengths, further extending the power, adaptability, and ease of use of those tools in what adds up to an outstanding update.

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CardioBot Provides Effortless Heart Rate, Sleep Tracking

About a month ago, developer Majid Jabrayilov slipped a gem into the App Store: CardioBot for iPhone and Apple Watch. It’s an informative yet minimalistic take on an activity and sleep tracker that gets you the right information within just a couple of taps.

After granting CardioBot access to the Health app on the iPhone, you’ll get a colored calendar view against a dark background. Each day will be assigned a dot with a designated hue for a heart rate range: gray for low, blue for resting, orange for high resting, and red for elevated. Also present on each day is your average beats per minute.

You can dive into each day to see more detailed facts, like a percentage graph of your daily heart rate or the time of your minimum and maximum BPM. Tapping on the summary graph will display every reading your Apple Watch took throughout the day.

CardioBot also includes graphs for sleep tracking, which can be done while wearing the Apple Watch in bed, and workouts. Both break out data into different heart rate ranges, so you can get a better idea of how your body is performing.

On the Apple Watch, you can get a quick glance at your last heart rate measurement and the minimum, average, and maximum measurements from the day. Press the screen to start a sleep measurement before bed – just don’t forget to stop it in the morning like I tend to do.

For the few days that I’ve had CardioBot installed, I’ve enjoyed the amount of information it gives me about my health. Setup is a breeze and it was great to see my data imported into the app without a hitch. Although other apps feel inclined to bombard you with information, CardioBot elects to present you with digestible figures and graphs, making this a tool that anyone can use without struggle.

At $1.99, CardioBot is an easy purchase for the quality you’re getting. You can pick it up on the App Store here.

Update: Through a combination of emails and tweets, I’ve been asked the differences between CardioBot and HeartWatch. When I reviewed HeartWatch back in February, it was in version 2 and looked noticeably similar to how CardioBot looks now. However, now that HeartWatch is in version 3, it has gained many features that have grown it from its 2.0 version. While CardioBot does look similar to HeartWatch’s previous product, I believe the two serve different markets today: HeartWatch for the pro health tracker and CardioBot for the rest. With that being said, I want to point out that they do look similar.

Dropbox Receives a Major iOS Update

Dropbox announced an update to its iOS app that adds five new features with a sixth promised ‘in the coming weeks.’ According to Dropbox, the update will be released today, although we have not seen it in the App Store yet.

The five new features are:

  • The ability to sign PDFs within the Dropbox app, which eliminates the need to send PDFs to another app for signing.
  • A new iMessage app that lets you access recent files from within the Messages app and insert them with a preview of the file into a conversation.
  • A new widget, from which you can scan, upload, or create new documents and access recent Dropbox files.
  • Notifications when someone else edits a document you are viewing and an opportunity to refresh the document to include the edits.
  • Picture-in-Picture support when you watch videos stored in Dropbox.

Finally, Dropbox announced that ‘in the coming weeks’ it will also add Split View support for iPad users. It’s disappointing that Split View, which was introduced with iOS 9, is still not part of Dropbox, but good to know that we should see it added before the end of the year.

The Iconfactory Goes All Out for Halloween→

The Iconfactory announced a series of iMessage sticker packs today to celebrate Halloween:

There are a couple unique features to the Iconfactory’s Halloween sticker packs. First, each comes with a Halloween-themed wallpaper that can be accessed by tapping the name of the sticker pack at the bottom of the Messages drawer. Second, each sticker pack is available for a limited time only. When Halloween is over, the sticker packs will vanish like a ghost in the mist.

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iPhone 7: Computer from the Future

After nearly two years spent using a 5.5-inch iPhone, I’m accustomed to not having a compact phone anymore. The iPhone 6 Plus and 6s Plus have reshaped my iPhone experience for a simple reason: they give me more of the most important device in my life.

Thus, I was a little skeptical – even surprised – when Apple gave me a gold 256 GB iPhone 7 review unit (with a leather case) two weeks ago. I didn’t think I would be able to enjoy a smaller iPhone, but, despite my initial resistance, I set up a fresh install of iOS 10 and used the iPhone 7 exclusively for two weeks.

I’m glad I did. While I’m still pining for a 7 Plus1, using the iPhone 7 showed me that there’s more to this year’s iPhones than the lack of a headphone jack.

In many ways, the iPhone 7 feels like a portable computer from the future – only in a tangible, practical way that is here with us today.

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Game Day: Zip Zap

Zip Zap, by Philipp Stollenmayer, combines physics and timing in a unique and lighthearted puzzle game. The interaction with the game couldn’t be simpler. You tap to contract Erector Set-like pieces at their hinges and release to retract the hinge, which makes pieces creep, hop, jump, and swing across the playing area. That’s it. The game even helpfully reminds you that swiping doesn’t do anything.

https://youtu.be/BD-oLLjC7gc

Each of the over 100 levels requires you to maneuver one of the pieces or a ball into a specific spot. What makes Zip Zap work is the realistic physics and variety of ways tapping affects the interaction of the piece you control with the obstacles in the game environment. Precise timing plays a big role too, complicating each level and requiring close attention and concentration.

The difficulty of the levels ramps up gradually, but before long, the route to the goal is no longer obvious and requires experimentation. There is no score or penalty for retrying a failed level and no timers. You just swipe from the right to reset the pieces to their starting positions if you want to retry a level. As a result, Zip Zap is low-stress. Add to that an upbeat soundtrack, bright colors, and the playfulness of the game mechanics and you’ve got an excellent puzzle game that’s great when you need a break fro whatever you’re doing.

Zip Zap is available on the App Store for $1.99.