When Apple introduced its HomePod, I was not impressed. I thought Apple had a flop on its hand because I did not think anyone would part with $350 for a smart speaker with great sound when Amazon & Google smart speakers - with "good enough" sound can be had for less than a quarter of that price. I certainly wouldn't.
But I caved. While purchasing some Apple stuff to give as gifts for an upcoming China trip, I began thinking:
"...the speakers on our TV are crap and we could really need a sound bar - and the HomePod could serve as that when watching stuff through our Apple TV streamer!"
and:
"... it sure is a pain to have to find my phone or iPod to invoke some home automation function! The HomePod is supposed to have great microphones that can pick up your commands from anywhere!"
and, finally:
"...in order for you to invoke home automation when away from the house, you need to designate a device a 'hub' and it needs to be always on. The iPad that had been fulfilling that duty had already run out of juice a couple times, keeping me from turning on the lights before I got home! HomePod can be a 'hub'!"
Well, you get the idea. Before I knew it, there was a HomePod in the bag along with the other stuff we actually came to the Apple Store for.
So how do I like it?
Well, I do love it and don't regret my purchase: the sound that comes out of this little (very elegant) cylinder is simply amazing; it's also freaky how quietly you can give a Siri command even while music is blasting away and HomePod still 'hears' you; equally disquieting is that the speakers are so good/sensitive, it often hears/responds-to me while I'm in another room trying to ask my iPhone's Siri a question (and there's also some team work going on here - no matter what, when I do 'Hey Siri' and both my phone and HomePod hear it, only the HomePod answers.) Integration with my limited home automation (a couple lights and a door lock) is fantastic and so is Siri's accuracy in understanding my commands.
There are some niggles: there are still a couple bugs with AirPlay (when using it as a soundbar, my Apple TV needs to send the sound to the HomePod via AirPlay - it works well at first. But if I pause the movie I'm watching, once I begin playing again, the HomePod no longer outputs the sound :-( Also, if I am to enjoy the HomePod as a sound bar, I really need a second one to get stereo sound. While sound coming out of it is much better than the TV speakers, having everything emirate from the right of the TV isn't a great experience. But another HomePod is another $350! And, besides, for this to work requires AirPlay 2, which isn't ready yet. The HomePod updates by itself, so it's just a matter of waiting.
While Siri is very accurate at understanding my requests, its ability to answer them is more limited than it ought to be. This is well documented: Apple, which used to be the clear leader in voice assistants, has fallen behind Alexa and Google Assistant. Don't get me wrong: Siri is getting better with every release of iOS - just not as quickly as the competition. Apple seems to have realized this (rather belatedly if you ask me) and recently gone on a hiring spree for AI talent. Hopefully something will come of it. Siri could be much more useful than she currently is on HomePod.
So I love it. But it's the first Apple device I've owned for which I paid more money than I thought its functionality warranted. Unlike my iPhone, AirPods, Apple Watch, iPad, Apple TV, and laptop, the HomePod is a luxury rather than a necessity. I would not (yet) miss it, if it disappeared tomorrow. But I'm confident this will change as the software evolves - and Siri improves.
I don't think HomePod will be a flop. There simply are too many well-heeled Apple fans out there for whom $350 is an 'impulse purchase' and it is a typical Apple device with its elegant design and quality hardware. Why not? But I also don't think it will be anywhere near as big a deal as the iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch or even AirPods (which I think is the best, most magical Apple product in years - and flying kind of under the radar.)
Showing posts with label Apple. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Apple. Show all posts
Wednesday, April 25, 2018
Wednesday, November 8, 2017
Apple's AR Strategy
Back in 2015 I wrote a post titled Apple's Next Big Thing. In it, I mused about Apple's strategy with wearables and, while doing so, predicted the introduction of AirPods. While they not yet have all the features I forecast - foremost among them the current lack of an 'always on' capability - I think the general ideas expressed in the article are still valid: that Apple is adding and integrating ever more wearables to its product line in order to seamlessly blend the virtual world with the real one. In some not-too-distant future, the iPhone will rarely leave your pocket - yet manage all your computing needs.
Once one realizes this, Apple's "next big thing" becomes quite obvious: AR glasses. Apple already laid the groundwork by its introduction of ARKit. This software - which already has thousands of developers creating new experiences for hundreds of millions of iPhones running iOS 11 - is paving the way for the day the glasses arrive. Thousands of AR apps will be ready to project their content onto the glasses rather than your iPhone's screen.
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to predict AR glasses. After all, Google already developed a pair a couple years ago, Snapchat tried its (limited) hand at it. But as with all other portable electronic gadgets, it will be Apple to do it right. So what is "right"? To answer that, we again look back at Google Glass - what were its shortcomings? Well, there was the now infamous recording feature that caused its wearers to eventually receive the label of 'glassholes'. So Apple's version will avoid recording video - at least until AR glasses have become ubiquitous. Google Glass also had notoriously short battery life. Why? Because Google tried to do too much "on-board". Instead of being a companion device, Google tried to stuff a complete computer - i.e. CPU, memory, video controller, storage, networking, etc. - into the temples of the glass frame. Since glasses have to remain light in order to be worn comfortably, the amount of battery capacity they could stuff into the glasses was too limited. Therefore, I predict that Apple's AR glasses will have just enough electronics to let it receive instructions on what pixels to project onto the glasses and to send onboard sensor/camera data back to an iPhone. It might even use its existing AirPlay tech for the display aspects.
Once one realizes this, Apple's "next big thing" becomes quite obvious: AR glasses. Apple already laid the groundwork by its introduction of ARKit. This software - which already has thousands of developers creating new experiences for hundreds of millions of iPhones running iOS 11 - is paving the way for the day the glasses arrive. Thousands of AR apps will be ready to project their content onto the glasses rather than your iPhone's screen.
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to predict AR glasses. After all, Google already developed a pair a couple years ago, Snapchat tried its (limited) hand at it. But as with all other portable electronic gadgets, it will be Apple to do it right. So what is "right"? To answer that, we again look back at Google Glass - what were its shortcomings? Well, there was the now infamous recording feature that caused its wearers to eventually receive the label of 'glassholes'. So Apple's version will avoid recording video - at least until AR glasses have become ubiquitous. Google Glass also had notoriously short battery life. Why? Because Google tried to do too much "on-board". Instead of being a companion device, Google tried to stuff a complete computer - i.e. CPU, memory, video controller, storage, networking, etc. - into the temples of the glass frame. Since glasses have to remain light in order to be worn comfortably, the amount of battery capacity they could stuff into the glasses was too limited. Therefore, I predict that Apple's AR glasses will have just enough electronics to let it receive instructions on what pixels to project onto the glasses and to send onboard sensor/camera data back to an iPhone. It might even use its existing AirPlay tech for the display aspects.
Friday, October 2, 2015
Apple's Next "Big" Thing?
Apple has recently stepped into the wearables arena with the introduction of the Apple Watch. While the success of the watch is still unclear, its capabilities give us a hint about Apple's thinking in this arena:
The Apple Watch is a "companion" product. Although it can operate independently, it only reaches its full potential when within bluetooth/wifi range of its master, the iPhone. With the watch, Apple is selling convenience and the watch is only the beginning. What could be Apple's next foray into the wearables market?
Bluetooth in-ear headphone(s). It makes perfect sense.
Siri, iPhone's voice assistant has come a long way since it was introduced on the iPhone 4s. Over time, Apple has not only improved its voice recognition dramatically, it has also broadened the ways in which you interact with her. You can hold down the Home button on your iPhone or the crown on the Apple Watch to talk to her; if you plug in your iPhone into a power source - or if you hold your Apple Watch up to your face - you can get her attention by simply saying "Hey Siri", followed by your spoken question or command. Heck, thanks to a new low-power chip in the iPhone 6s, you don't even need to plug in your iPhone to chat with her. But the form of Siri's answers aren't always convenient.
When you ask Siri a question on an Apple Watch, she's a mute. I guess Apple Watch's designers felt that her speaking the answers - as she does on the iPhone - would be too obtrusive in a setting where you chose to interact through the watch rather than the iPhone. So Siri, on the Apple Watch, displays its answer on that tiny watch screen. Which isn't always optimal - e.g. when you're driving.
Using a headset would be the perfect solution. But why should Apple come out with a new pair, when there are loads of wired and bluetooth headsets on the market already? Because none of them have the feature Apple just introduced with the iPhone 6s: the aforementioned "always on" listening for "Hey Siri"!
With an unobtrusive headset that always listened for "hey siri", life would be so convenient! No raising of a watch to your face a la Dick Tracy; no more fishing your phone out of your pocket to look something up! With the headset always in your ear, you simply ask what you want, preceded by a quiet "Hey Siri" and Siri whispers you the answer.
There are so many things that could be facilitated by such a device. I can imagine, for example, a situation in which I need to interact with my Chinese in-laws. I could simply put my iPhone or my arm with Apple Watch on the table and whisper to Siri "Hey Siri, begin translating." When I subsequently say something, the Chinese translation pops out of the iPhone or Apple Watch, for my in-laws to hear. When they respond, the watch or iPhone pick it up and Siri whispers the translation into my ears! This is getting pretty darn close to Star Trek's universal translator, isn't it? The technology is all here!
And there are some promising signs that Apple is, indeed, thinking in that direction. A year ago, Apple bought Beats Audio. Granted, this was likely about acquiring that company's music talent and streaming service, but Apple likely also picked up some serious audio expertise in the transaction. Then there was yesterday's news that apparently a shell company (i.e. a company that doesn't really produce anything and whose ownership is hidden) copyrighted the name "Airpods" in several countries. The law firms handling this company's business just happen to be the same ones Apple has previously used when using shell companies to hide its tracks. Hm....
Hey Apple, if you hear this: will you give me a pair of Airpods, if my predictions prove to be right?
The Apple Watch is a "companion" product. Although it can operate independently, it only reaches its full potential when within bluetooth/wifi range of its master, the iPhone. With the watch, Apple is selling convenience and the watch is only the beginning. What could be Apple's next foray into the wearables market?
Bluetooth in-ear headphone(s). It makes perfect sense.
Siri, iPhone's voice assistant has come a long way since it was introduced on the iPhone 4s. Over time, Apple has not only improved its voice recognition dramatically, it has also broadened the ways in which you interact with her. You can hold down the Home button on your iPhone or the crown on the Apple Watch to talk to her; if you plug in your iPhone into a power source - or if you hold your Apple Watch up to your face - you can get her attention by simply saying "Hey Siri", followed by your spoken question or command. Heck, thanks to a new low-power chip in the iPhone 6s, you don't even need to plug in your iPhone to chat with her. But the form of Siri's answers aren't always convenient.
When you ask Siri a question on an Apple Watch, she's a mute. I guess Apple Watch's designers felt that her speaking the answers - as she does on the iPhone - would be too obtrusive in a setting where you chose to interact through the watch rather than the iPhone. So Siri, on the Apple Watch, displays its answer on that tiny watch screen. Which isn't always optimal - e.g. when you're driving.
Using a headset would be the perfect solution. But why should Apple come out with a new pair, when there are loads of wired and bluetooth headsets on the market already? Because none of them have the feature Apple just introduced with the iPhone 6s: the aforementioned "always on" listening for "Hey Siri"!
With an unobtrusive headset that always listened for "hey siri", life would be so convenient! No raising of a watch to your face a la Dick Tracy; no more fishing your phone out of your pocket to look something up! With the headset always in your ear, you simply ask what you want, preceded by a quiet "Hey Siri" and Siri whispers you the answer.
There are so many things that could be facilitated by such a device. I can imagine, for example, a situation in which I need to interact with my Chinese in-laws. I could simply put my iPhone or my arm with Apple Watch on the table and whisper to Siri "Hey Siri, begin translating." When I subsequently say something, the Chinese translation pops out of the iPhone or Apple Watch, for my in-laws to hear. When they respond, the watch or iPhone pick it up and Siri whispers the translation into my ears! This is getting pretty darn close to Star Trek's universal translator, isn't it? The technology is all here!
And there are some promising signs that Apple is, indeed, thinking in that direction. A year ago, Apple bought Beats Audio. Granted, this was likely about acquiring that company's music talent and streaming service, but Apple likely also picked up some serious audio expertise in the transaction. Then there was yesterday's news that apparently a shell company (i.e. a company that doesn't really produce anything and whose ownership is hidden) copyrighted the name "Airpods" in several countries. The law firms handling this company's business just happen to be the same ones Apple has previously used when using shell companies to hide its tracks. Hm....
Hey Apple, if you hear this: will you give me a pair of Airpods, if my predictions prove to be right?
Sunday, February 17, 2013
iWatch - What is Possible?
Analysts and Apple fans have recently become enamored with the idea of an iWatch. Bruce Tognazzini, a respected ex-Apple employee has an excellent blog post in which he describes all sorts of smart uses/features for such a watch. As anticipation for such a device is building, so are the expectations for its features. Some have come to see it as essentially an iPhone with a small screen. I think those folks will be disappointed. Think about it: we're talking about a device that needs to be thinner than an iPhone and, at most, 4 square inches in size. There is no room for much of a battery! Add to that the fact that, historically, people don't expect to have to recharge their watches every day, and you begin to see how impossible a "mini-iPhone" iWatch is.
So the features of an iWatch must revolve around power: how to minimize consumption and/or how to provide more of it without taking the watch off.
What can be done to keep power consumption to a minimum? The two largest power hogs in a mobile device are its screen and the various radios driving communications (wifi, cellular, bluetooth). Screen power consumption can be minimized by using a technology used in e-Readers (and in the recent "Pebble" smart watch): e-Ink. With e-Ink, power is only needed when the screen needs to change. But the technology, by its nature, has two drawbacks: slow refresh rates (making video impossible) and lack of color. If Apple deems color and video playback indispensable, its option is OLED. Reducing power on the various radios is easy: simply limit communication to one low-power channel. I believe that is Bluetooth 4.0. Of course, if the iWatch doesn't have wifi built in, it will not be a "connected" standalone device. Apple's choice.
So, if the iWatch uses an e-Ink display and Bluetooth 4.0 for communication with an iPhone, what could such a device do? Well, it could tell time! :-) Also, like the Pebble, it could act as a remote display for all the phone's notifications. For notifications requiring action, the watch's microphone could be used to tell Siri (located on the phone) what to do. Similarly, the iWatch could display (or speak) results of any spoken Siri query. The built-in speakers and microphone could also be used to make or answer phone calls (like today's Bluetooth headsets). The bottom of the iWatch and/or the watchband could contain sensors that keep track of basic biometric info (e.g. pulse rate) - perhaps something similar to what Nike's Fuelband does - and send it to the phone occasionally (where an app can let you analyze the data over time). Finally, an e-ink based iWatch could display OCR codes from Passbook. When at a "favorite" store, the iWatch would automatically display the store's pass. No need to fish for the phone or wallet! Some analysts/users propose that the iWatch should have an NFC chip for payments. I think this might be a future addition to the watch - there aren't enough (any?) NFC-based cash registers out there to warrant the additional complexity (and power drain) in the watch. How long between charges? Well, we have a couple examples that give us a clue: the Pebble smart watch lasts 7 days. The Nike Fuelband is said to last 4 days. So Apple, with its engineering prowess and deep R&D pockets, should be able to produce a watch that lasts at least as long as the Pebble.
If Apple wants to endow its watch with a color display and the ability to carry on FaceTime video conversations or watch Youtube videos, e-Ink is out of the question - an OLED display becomes necessary (it uses less power than LCD and can be put on a flexible substrate to allow for a curved display). If the watch has a built-in accelerometer, intelligent power management software could turn off the display whenever its wearers' arm is hanging by his/her side and gets activated only by the touch of a finger or by an incoming notification. Perhaps, this way, the iWatch could still last 5-7 days between charges.
But no matter how hard Apple tries, an iWatch will have to be charged on at least a weekly basis. What can Apple do to make this as painless as possible? Some manufacturers have begun offering wireless charging pads (and Apple owns a patent on doing this over the distance of up to 1 meter) that might be useful here. If one didn't have to plug in yet another device and, instead, simply placed the watch, along with ones iPhone, on such a pad for charging at night, people might not mind! Heck, if they can pull off that feat, maybe an iWatch only really needs to last as long as the partner iPhone!
So the features of an iWatch must revolve around power: how to minimize consumption and/or how to provide more of it without taking the watch off.
What can be done to keep power consumption to a minimum? The two largest power hogs in a mobile device are its screen and the various radios driving communications (wifi, cellular, bluetooth). Screen power consumption can be minimized by using a technology used in e-Readers (and in the recent "Pebble" smart watch): e-Ink. With e-Ink, power is only needed when the screen needs to change. But the technology, by its nature, has two drawbacks: slow refresh rates (making video impossible) and lack of color. If Apple deems color and video playback indispensable, its option is OLED. Reducing power on the various radios is easy: simply limit communication to one low-power channel. I believe that is Bluetooth 4.0. Of course, if the iWatch doesn't have wifi built in, it will not be a "connected" standalone device. Apple's choice.
So, if the iWatch uses an e-Ink display and Bluetooth 4.0 for communication with an iPhone, what could such a device do? Well, it could tell time! :-) Also, like the Pebble, it could act as a remote display for all the phone's notifications. For notifications requiring action, the watch's microphone could be used to tell Siri (located on the phone) what to do. Similarly, the iWatch could display (or speak) results of any spoken Siri query. The built-in speakers and microphone could also be used to make or answer phone calls (like today's Bluetooth headsets). The bottom of the iWatch and/or the watchband could contain sensors that keep track of basic biometric info (e.g. pulse rate) - perhaps something similar to what Nike's Fuelband does - and send it to the phone occasionally (where an app can let you analyze the data over time). Finally, an e-ink based iWatch could display OCR codes from Passbook. When at a "favorite" store, the iWatch would automatically display the store's pass. No need to fish for the phone or wallet! Some analysts/users propose that the iWatch should have an NFC chip for payments. I think this might be a future addition to the watch - there aren't enough (any?) NFC-based cash registers out there to warrant the additional complexity (and power drain) in the watch. How long between charges? Well, we have a couple examples that give us a clue: the Pebble smart watch lasts 7 days. The Nike Fuelband is said to last 4 days. So Apple, with its engineering prowess and deep R&D pockets, should be able to produce a watch that lasts at least as long as the Pebble.
If Apple wants to endow its watch with a color display and the ability to carry on FaceTime video conversations or watch Youtube videos, e-Ink is out of the question - an OLED display becomes necessary (it uses less power than LCD and can be put on a flexible substrate to allow for a curved display). If the watch has a built-in accelerometer, intelligent power management software could turn off the display whenever its wearers' arm is hanging by his/her side and gets activated only by the touch of a finger or by an incoming notification. Perhaps, this way, the iWatch could still last 5-7 days between charges.
But no matter how hard Apple tries, an iWatch will have to be charged on at least a weekly basis. What can Apple do to make this as painless as possible? Some manufacturers have begun offering wireless charging pads (and Apple owns a patent on doing this over the distance of up to 1 meter) that might be useful here. If one didn't have to plug in yet another device and, instead, simply placed the watch, along with ones iPhone, on such a pad for charging at night, people might not mind! Heck, if they can pull off that feat, maybe an iWatch only really needs to last as long as the partner iPhone!
Sunday, June 12, 2011
The Cost Of Your Privacy - Not Even 30 Silver Coins
Most people don't like to think about it - privacy that is. They hope (or pretend) that it still exists in this electronic age. But every day companies and governments learn more about us - often with us willingly supplying the information.
How did it happen that we so freely give up our most private details? Although we've always given up bits and pieces of it whenever we applied for credit or purchased something online, large scale harvesting of private data didn't begin until Google offered Gmail to the public. I bet most people, when they signed up for a gmail account, didn't realize that they made a pact with the devil: in exchange for free use of its service, they gave Google permission to rifle through all received or sent emails - ostensibly only to present "targeted" advertising in the margins of a personalized gmail web page. Subsequently, Google went a step further and developed "Chrome" - a free browser whose use is predicated on its users agreeing to let Google snoop on the user's browsing habits. Again, most people just hear from their friends how fast Chrome is...they don't know that they're agreeing to have Google harvest certain browsing-related information. But who cares, right? After all, Google promises to "do no evil".
Google's successes and the continued commoditization of computer hardware have led other software & hardware companies to join the bandwagon. Foremost among them being Apple. The company that, in 1984, made a big marketing splash by warning us of an Orwellian future where "Big Brother" is watching everything we do - has now morphed into what it warned us against. Its iTunes store has always held our music related preferences and credit card information, but with the advent of the iPhone and iPad, Apple's wealth of information about us has increased exponentially: it now knows what types of applications we like, what books and magazines we read, how much time we spend on the web - heck, it even knows where we are at every moment in time (see the recent revelation that the iPhone and Google's Android kept the phone's latitude/longitude information in a local cache that was occasionally forwarded to their company's respective servers). And now Apple wants you to keep your emails, calendars, contacts, and all other manner of data on its "iCloud" servers. I'm guessing that you won't get an option to encrypt that data either. After all, that would make it difficult for Apple to provide you with the benefits of "targeted advertisement".
The vast majority of the population (including some technically savvy people I count as friends) doesn't know of this data harvesting - those that know either don't care about this loss of privacy or gain from it.
Should we be worried? I think so. When I signed up for my gmail account, I was fully aware of the implications. I optimistically bought into Google's "Do No Evil" mantra. I think maybe I was naive. Google is a corporation - its only obligation is to make money for its shareholders. "Do No Evil" is no assurance that some day the needs/desires of the investors won't be put before the need for privacy of its customers. More disturbingly yet, Apple is now hoping that we keep our entire digital life on their servers. The company will make it easy and cheap. It'll extol the convenience of the service; it'll offer much of the service for free - all in an effort to become *the* hub for our online information...the harvesting of this data can't be far behind.
Big Brother Is Watching
How did it happen that we so freely give up our most private details? Although we've always given up bits and pieces of it whenever we applied for credit or purchased something online, large scale harvesting of private data didn't begin until Google offered Gmail to the public. I bet most people, when they signed up for a gmail account, didn't realize that they made a pact with the devil: in exchange for free use of its service, they gave Google permission to rifle through all received or sent emails - ostensibly only to present "targeted" advertising in the margins of a personalized gmail web page. Subsequently, Google went a step further and developed "Chrome" - a free browser whose use is predicated on its users agreeing to let Google snoop on the user's browsing habits. Again, most people just hear from their friends how fast Chrome is...they don't know that they're agreeing to have Google harvest certain browsing-related information. But who cares, right? After all, Google promises to "do no evil".
Google's successes and the continued commoditization of computer hardware have led other software & hardware companies to join the bandwagon. Foremost among them being Apple. The company that, in 1984, made a big marketing splash by warning us of an Orwellian future where "Big Brother" is watching everything we do - has now morphed into what it warned us against. Its iTunes store has always held our music related preferences and credit card information, but with the advent of the iPhone and iPad, Apple's wealth of information about us has increased exponentially: it now knows what types of applications we like, what books and magazines we read, how much time we spend on the web - heck, it even knows where we are at every moment in time (see the recent revelation that the iPhone and Google's Android kept the phone's latitude/longitude information in a local cache that was occasionally forwarded to their company's respective servers). And now Apple wants you to keep your emails, calendars, contacts, and all other manner of data on its "iCloud" servers. I'm guessing that you won't get an option to encrypt that data either. After all, that would make it difficult for Apple to provide you with the benefits of "targeted advertisement".
The vast majority of the population (including some technically savvy people I count as friends) doesn't know of this data harvesting - those that know either don't care about this loss of privacy or gain from it.
Should we be worried? I think so. When I signed up for my gmail account, I was fully aware of the implications. I optimistically bought into Google's "Do No Evil" mantra. I think maybe I was naive. Google is a corporation - its only obligation is to make money for its shareholders. "Do No Evil" is no assurance that some day the needs/desires of the investors won't be put before the need for privacy of its customers. More disturbingly yet, Apple is now hoping that we keep our entire digital life on their servers. The company will make it easy and cheap. It'll extol the convenience of the service; it'll offer much of the service for free - all in an effort to become *the* hub for our online information...the harvesting of this data can't be far behind.
Big Brother Is Watching
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