Top Bananas | Monthly Archives: May 2016

The Next Version of Siri

Posted on May 31, 2016 by admin Posted in Software Leave a comment

What it is: Siri is Apple’s natural language, voice recognition system that’s about to get better with the acquisition of a British company called VocalIQ.

In the old days, natural language, voice recognition systems were clumsy. First, you had to train them to recognize your voice. Second, you had to put up with inaccurate recognition because your voice changes during the day, when you’re sick, tired, or excited.

So when Apple introduced Siri, it was a revolutionary concept. Not only could you give natural language commands to Siri, you didn’t have to waste time training it to recognize your voice. Even better, Siri can recognize multiple languages as well.

However, Siri is still fairly limited and starting to fall behind rivals like Microsoft’s Cortana and Google Now. That’s why Apple recently acquired a British company called VocalIQ. Unlike Siri, VocalIQ does more than just understand the currently spoken command; VocalIQ also understands the context of the spoken command.

If you ask VocalIQ about Mexican restaurants within 10 miles and next ask about steak houses, VocalIQ is smart enough to figure out from the context that you probably also want to find steak houses within 10 miles of your current location.

As impressive as Siri and other natural language assistants might be, they have short-term memory, much like holding a conversation with Dory, the forgetful fish from “Finding Nemo.” VocalIQ simply makes a natural language assistant able to understand more unspoken but implied meaning. That translates into less cumbersome talking and more natural conversation. The ultimate goal of VocalIQ is to allow you to control a device with your voice alone without ever forcing you to look at a screen.

That becomes extremely important for CarPlay, Apple’s car entertainment system. Taking your eyes off the road for even a second while driving can be dangerous, so a virtual assistant like VocalIQ can help you control your car’s entertainment system without making you look at the screen.

Beyond CarPlay, VocalIQ may also be used to turn Siri into an intelligent home assistant much like Amazon’s Echo. This would allow you to give vocal commands to a home device to control temperature, lighting, or appliances.

Since Apple recently acquired VocalIQ, don’t expect the technology to make its way into Apple products right away. Most likely, VocalIQ will make Siri smarter and more conversational by next year. For the immediate future, expect Apple to open up the application programming interface (API) to allow developers to allow Siri to control their apps. This will make Siri more useful and more commonplace. As more people get comfortable using voice commands to control an app, using voice commands will become as common as using a mouse and a keyboard.

Voice commands aren’t going to replace a keyboard or mouse any more than the mouse replaced the keyboard. Voice commands will simply be another option for interacting with a computer just like a touch screen or trackpad.

Voice controlled computers are part of the future. They’re going to get smarter over time until today’s intelligent assistants will look absurdly primitive in comparison. The future of having a conversation with a computer is going to get here soon. It might not come as fast as you might think, but it’s going to come faster than you might expect.

Facing Reality vs. Adapting to Reality in Time

Posted on May 30, 2016 by admin Posted in Business Leave a comment

What it is: Automakers are forming alliances with ride-sharing services like Uber because they know the future involves self-driving, electric cars and ride-sharing services are the future of transportation.

What can you do when you recognize the future but are still rated in the past? In most cases, you can simply fail because a company designed to pursue one business model often can’t shift fast enough to pursue a different business model.

Kodak once dominated the film business in both selling film and processing it. When digital photography arrived, Kodak had a choice. They could embrace digital photography, they could cling to their still lucrative film business, or they could straddle both markets and try to milk as many profits out of their film business while transitioning to digital photography. As Kodak’s current status shows, they failed at switching to digital photography in time and are now only a shell of their former self in the photography market.

The problem was that Kodak had people, buildings, and equipment geared to manufacture and process film. As the profits from their film business slowed to a trickle, their expenses remained the same. This ultimately resulted in shrinking profits that quickly turned into growing losses.

On the other hand, Kodak’s digital photography efforts were too slow to take off. That’s because the company had to divide its attention between growing its digital photography business and managing their declining film business. That’s why other companies took over the digital photography market because they didn’t have to split their attention.

Kodak’s film business actually became a burden. Borders Books went through the same transition when retail book sales fell and their online endeavors couldn’t generate enough profits to help the company make the transition. Blockbuster Video failed to make the transition from retail DVD rentals to streaming video rentals. The leader in any industry often has trouble adapting ago a new market because the profits from the new market often can’t generate enough cash to make up for the expenses of maintaining their current business.

That same fate may happen to the auto industry. Right now, Toyota, Honda, General Motors, and Volkswagen are all making alliances with various car and ride-sharing services. That’s because even the auto makers can see that the future no longer requires owning and driving your own car. Car-sharing serve ices let you rent a car and drive it around for short periods of time while ride-sharing services let you catch a ride without having to drive at all.

Electric cars are coming because they pollute less than gas-powered cars so that’s inevitable. Self-driving cars are coming and they’ll likely start appearing in the form of assisted driving technology until the technology becomes practical to let a computer drive a war around by itself. Ride-sharing and car-sharing see ices are growing in popularity because the expense of owning and maintaining a car is getting too expensive compared to the benefits.

Someone in the country might find it convenient to own a car, but someone in New York or Beijing will likely find the expense of owning a car far outweighs its value. When it costs too much to park a car (think New York or San Francisco), people will have far less incentive to want to buy a car.

Today’s auto makers make the bulk of their revenue through selling or leasing cars. The main idea is that people want to drive themselves around. Car-sharing services partially defeat this by letting people rent a car only when they need one. Ride-sharing services eliminate the need to drive at all because you can let someone else (such as a computer) do the driving for you.

So all the auto makers have a dilemma. Their entire infrastructure is designed to sell or lease cars, but the future points to less car ownership in a trend that can’t help but keep going down as owning and maintaining a car becomes too expensive. As car ownership starts to decline, the auto makers will have to find a way to make up the loss of revenue through selling cars by focusing on car and ride-sharing services.

Unfortunately the initial revenue from car and ride-sharing services likely own’t be enough to offset the losses from fewer car sales. When the trend accelerates and car sales nosedive, the automakers won’t have enough revenue from their car and ride-sharing service alliances to make up for the loss of fewer car sales. That likely spells the beginning of the end for the big car makers.

They won’t disappear, but they’ll never dominate the car market again because the ride-sharing services are going to do that, which makes the auto makers secondary players in the transportation business. they’ll have no choice but to scale back their bureaucracy designed to support car sales and take massive losses as a result. Then the bulk of the profits from car and ride-sharing will go to companies like Uber and Lyft instead of the auto makers. That’s because ride-sharing services just need a car, but not any particular type of car. Whether Uber uses a Ford or Honda car is irrelevant. What maters is that people will use a ride-sharing service so the ride-sharing companies will dominate the transportation industry, not the car companies.

Just as Ford can buy tires from Goodyear or Firestone, so can Uber use cars from Toyota or Tesla. Goodyear or Firestone don’t control the car industry because Ford and General Motors do. In the future, Uber and Lyft (and other car-sharing services) will control the transportation industry, not Toyota, Honda, General Motors, or Chrysler.

The era of the auto makers is over. They may see the future, but they still need to react in time. By dividing their attention between embracing the future and mining profits from their current business model, the car companies are splitting their attention while startups like Uber can focus on dominating the future ride-sharing market.

If the car makers are lucky, they won’t suffer the same fate as Blockbuster Video or Borders Books and go out of business altogether. They may just become shadows of their former selves like Kodak. Will they dominate the new industry? History suggests they won’t, so kiss the auto makers good-bye as their sink from their leadership positions to has-been status like Blackberry and Nokia.

The Pizza Hut Robot Server

Posted on May 29, 2016 by admin Posted in Business Leave a comment

What it is: In Asia, Pizza Hut is testing a robot server because it’s less expensive than hiring people.

In the United States, there’s a push to raise the minimum wage. Considering CEO pay has skyrocketed while wages for everyone else has remained stagnant, this may seem to make sense. Then again, any time anything changes, some people will get hurt no matter what.

Businesses claim that if the minimum age is raised, they won’t be able to hire as many people. Eventually the cost of hiring people ill get so expensive that it would be cheaper to replace them with robots. In the old days, luxury stores hired doormen to open the door for you. Nowadays every supermarket has an automatic door opener that has replaced a human door opener.

The same trend is starting to happen with other trivial jobs. Pizza Hut in Asia is testing a robot server that rolls up to a table and lets you order through a touch screen tablet. Since waiters and waitresses are basically simple jobs that almost anyone could do, robots can do the job just as well as far as the physical aspects of taking orders and delivering it is concerned. The future points to more robots doing trivial jobs, and pushing out unskilled laborers. If you really want a good job, learn to fix or program robots.

A Japanese hotel even has replaced hotel clerks with a robot that looks like a human and speaks several different languages. Hiring a human hotel clerk to remain on the front desk 24 hours a day is expensive, especially one who is multilingual, but a robot works just fine and much cheaper and more reliable. Robots are coming and making life easier for businesses. The problem is what do we do with all the people who used to do those trivial jobs?

If you look in the past, you may wonder where all the blacksmiths and typewriter repairmen went along with radio repairmen and traffic cops who used to stand in intersections and direct traffic until traffic lights appeared. Those jobs disappeared for good and never came back, so that’s what you can expect with the current trend to replace more humans with robots. It’s nothing new. If a machine (like a traffic light) can replace a human and work more reliably, then there’s no reason for humans to do that job any more. Robots are going to eliminate jobs that aren’t worth humans doing.

If you were a traffic cop in the old days, you might have rallied against the introduction of traffic lights. Yet it was a losing cause. Trying to rally against robots replacing humans as waiters or hotel clerks is an equally pointless situation. Robots are coming and they’re taking away jobs while freeing humans to do something more interesting.

How many people would want a job today, standing in a busy intersection to direct traffic when a traffic light can do the job far more reliably? People tend to cling to jobs because they want to get paid and feel useful, but if a machine can replace your job, chances are good your job is making you feel like a machine anyway.

The future is beckoning and it requires thinking and creativity. For too many people who want to skate through life doing as little as possible while making as much as possible, the threat of robots taking their jobs is terrifying. For people looking for more intellectually and emotionally fulfilling jobs, robots taking away jobs will simply force them to find a job where they can truly express themselves and get paid well for doing it.

And that’s one type of job no machine can ever replace.

PayPal Drops Support for Windows Phone, Blackberry, and Amazon Kindle Fire

Posted on May 28, 2016 by admin Posted in Business, Software Leave a comment

What it is: PayPal has announced they will stop development of their PayPal app for Windows Phone, Blackberry, and Amazon Kindle Fire.

Back in the early days of PCs, there were a variety of operating systems people could choose with odd names such as CP/M-80, AppleDOS, GEOS, and Atari TOS. That meant if developers wanted to write a program to run on personal computers, they would have to write the same program from scratch for each different operating system. That meant only the biggest developers could afford to sell programs on multiple platforms. Smaller developers had to focus on one operating system and hope the market for that operating system would continue to grow.

Eventually as MS-DOS and later Windows took over the operating system market, developers gravitated towards MS-DOS and Windows because that offered the largest market. As more developers wrote programs for MS-DOS and Windows, more people stopped using alternate operating systems (such as the Macintosh, Atari ST, and Commodore Amiga) and simply bought PCs that could run MS-DOS and Windows. Pretty soon practically everyone was using MS-DOS and Windows and almost all developers were writing MS-DOS and Windows programs.

That same operating system shakeout is happening in the mobile market. PayPal recently announced that they’re dropping support for Windows Phone, Blackberry, and Amazon Kindle Fire. Dropping support for Windows Phone makes sense because Microsoft essentially has three different versions of their phone operating system: Windows Phone 7, Windows Phone 8, and Windows Mobile 10. Because Microsoft kept rewriting their phone operating system, each version of Windows Phone has a tiny market share. With such a small market share, developers don’t see any profits in spending time and money developing Windows Phone apps. In return, customers see no benefit in getting a Windows Phone smartphone since there are so few apps available for it. That vicious circle insures that Windows Phone will continue dying a slow death.

Blackberry has been dying a slow death ever since the iPhone came out. Blackberry is currently shifting their efforts to selling security-hardened Android phones, so there’s no future in BlackberryOS any more.

Dropping support for Amazon Kindle Fire seems less obvious. Amazon used a forked version of Android to create their Amazon Kindle Fire tablet, which means developers have to write custom apps for Amazon Kindle Fire that are slightly different than the apps created for Android. however, PayPal likely found few people using the PayPal app on Amazon Kindle Fire tablets, so they don’t want to waste time and money developing an app for Amazon Kindle Fire tablets.

If PayPal finds little reason to support other operating systems, you can be certain the companies and developers will also reach the same conclusion: the real money in mobile is on iOS and Android. While iOS has a smaller market share, its users tend to be more active in using apps and have more disposable income. Android has a larger market share but its users tend to spend far less than iOS users.

That means the future of mobile is clearly iOS and Android. Any time a company introduces a new app, chances are good it will run on iOS. If a company has enough money and resources, they’ll also develop the app for Android as well. Between these two dominant mobile operating systems, there’s little reason to support anything else just like you never see any companies supporting older operating systems like OS/2 any more.

PayPal’s announcement should come as no surprise to anyone. PayPal can only afford to support the most popular operating systems and Windows Phone, Blackberry, and Amazon Kindle Fire are not it. The next operating system market will be wearable computers. For the Apple Watch, there’s watchOS. For Android wearable devices, there’s Android Wear. Since both watchOS (modeled after iOS) and Android Wear (modeled after Android) have already staked claims in the wearable computing market, chances are good no rivals can take over this market either.

Anyone think Microsoft can come up with a wearable computer operating system when they they can’t even come up with a smartphone operating system that people want to use? The mobile market is already conquered by iOS and Android and the future wearable computer market is already being staked out by watchOS and Android Wear. Since watchOS and Android Wear are so similar to iOs and Android, developers can easily create apps for both operating systems. A new wearable operating system would have to start from scratch, and few developers will want to do that when a new operating system won’t have market share, and no customers want a device running an operating system that doesn’t have many apps.

iOS and Android are the new operating system leaders. Windows 10 has no chance on smartphones or wearables, and must cling to a stagnant PC market that’s increasingly threatened by OS X, Linux, and ChromeOS. If you want to see the future, just watch what big companies like PayPal do. They know where the short-term future is heading and it involves iOS and Android, not anything else.

The Failed Apple/Time Warner Merger

Posted on May 27, 2016 by admin Posted in Business Leave a comment

What it is: Apple’s Eddie Cue mentioned that Apple considered acquiring Time Warner last year.

Hardware is a commodity. As soon as Apple or any other company creates a product, copycat knock-offs immediately appear. It’s fairly easy to make copies of hardware and that’s what makes relying on hardware sales so risky because copycats will undercut your price, forcing you to compete by cutting profit margins more and more. That strategy is known as the race to the bottom where everyone keeps cutting razor thin profit margins until there’s nothing left for anyone.

That race to the bottom helped kill PC profits and it’s starting to hurt smartphone and tablet sales as well. Android manufacturers are particularly vulnerable because people can buy Android devices from a variety of companies, so the only compelling advantage any company has is to lower their prices.

Apple can somewhat avoid this hardware commodity trap by selling iPhones and iPads. Not only does Apple make money selling hardware, but they make additional money selling services such as music, ebooks, or apps, which is something Android manufacturers can not do.

That’s one problem with Apple TV. Right now it’s just a box that connects a TV screen to the Internet, and any company can sell you a cheaper box that does the exact same thing. For years, Apple has tired to negotiate with various TV studios and networks to get exclusive content for the Apple TV, and that’s why Apple’s Eddie Cue mentioned Apple once considered acquiring Time Warner.

Exclusive content is the reason why Amazon and Netflix can charge subscription prices. In the old days, Netflix simply let you rent DVDs, and anyone can do that. Then Netflix let you stream videos, and anyone can do that. That’s why Netflix created original content so if you want to watch certain TV shows or movies, you have no choice but to subscribe to Netflix.

That’s why Apple needs to create original content of their own. Once they have unique shows that are only available on Apple TV, then they can compete. Until then, Apple TV can have all the fancy hardware features you want and it still won’t matter because copycat clones will immediately appear that offer the exact same features for less cost.

The future of Apple TV is original content combined with links to the Apple TV app store and additional services allowing Apple TV owners to buy music and stream videos. The Apple TV app revolution has yet to take off because Apple TV still doesn’t offer anything more than what other devices offer. Apple TV has a future, but it’s not quite there yet.

Until Apple starts creating original content, rumors will continue about them acquiring a content creator like Netflix or Time Warner. It’s inevitable that Apple needs original content. The only question is who might Apple acquire or how will Apple create original content on their own?

Will a Robot Take Away Your Job?

Posted on May 26, 2016 by admin Posted in Business Leave a comment

What it is: Robots and artificial intelligence are getting more powerful everyday. Here’s why people should and should not be worried about losing their jobs to a machine.

In Zimbabwe, electricity often fails during the day. Because electricity is so unreliable and because it’s so expensive, stores don’t have automatic opening doors like they have in the United States where you step on a pressure-sensitive mat that triggers a motor to open the door for you. Instead in Zimbabwe, they hire people to stand at the door and physically open the door for you. If Zimbabwe’s electrical grid becomes more reliable and electricity becomes cheaper, guess what? It will suddenly be less expensive to replace a human door opener with a mechanical one.

Will someone lose their job to a robot? Yes, but the real question is whether that job is worth keeping in the first place. If your idea of a good job is standing mindlessly at a door, opening and closing it for people, then the problem isn’t robots taking over jobs, but people clinging to jobs that provide no sense of satisfaction, mental challenge, or emotional satisfaction. In other words, if a robot can replace your job, then your job probably isn’t worth having in the first place.

Marine learning and artificial intelligence programs are slowly moving away from replacing trivial tasks like opening doors to replacing more intellectual tasks like investing in the stock market. Once again, if a machine can replace you in your job, your job probably isn’t worth keeping anyway.

In the past, high-priced fund managers would try to pick stocks to maximize returns for a mutual fund. Yet studies have consistently proven that managers have a worse track record of prediction than randomly choosing stocks and that the fees managers skim off a fund’s portfolio rarely is worth the cost of their mistakes. In this case, a well-paid human risks losing their job to a machine but it’s because they’re not doing a very good job in the first place. Fund managers naturally rail against computers taking over their jobs, but if they had only done good job initially, machines would never be able to replace them.

The bottom line is that if a mindless, unthinking machine can replace your job, your job is either not worth keeping or you’re not doing a good job at it anyway.

Many artificial intelligence programs are even creating legal documents to replace lawyers. That’s because most lawyers use boilerplate templates for legal documents and use their staff to do the trivial work for them while they charge outrageous fees. Replace this inefficiency with a machine and you get the exact (or better) service at less cost. Machines aren’t taking jobs away so much as they’re making the world more efficient, and people who get paid to be inefficient are the ones most vocal against robots and computers taking over their jobs.

Foxconn, a company that manufacturs Apple’s iPhone along with products from other companies, recently replaced thousands of workers with robots because robots are more efficient. That means the loss of jobs on an assembly line that treated people like machines anyway. While it’s tragic that people may lose their jobs, it’s equally tragic that people can let their lives waste away doing tedious, mindless work day after day and pretend they’re happy about it. It’s not easy losing a job, but you can look at it as either something to fight against so you can keep getting paid to do a trivial, mindless job and keep collecting a paycheck, or you can see it as an opportunity to get a better, more intellectually challenging and emotionally satisfying job.

The biggest problem is that far too many people don’t want an interesting job because it requires work and thinking, which are two things far too many people avoid at all costs. The best way to avoid being replaced by a machine is to provide a valuable service for others that also intellectually and emotionally satisfies yourself. The ideal job isn’t one where you can work as little as possible and get paid as much as possible (because those types of jobs are ideal candidates for machines to replace). The ideal job is one that you can’t wait to do everyday because it’s fun, and making money is a pleasant side effect.

When you enjoy what you do, you’ll be better at it and you’ll get more customers because people value quality service over indifference. The jobs least likely to be replaced are those that require human relationships to thrive. Sales people can be replaced by a web page like Amazon that sells practically everything, but when you need questions answered and custom service, then no robot can replace a human sales person.

Machines can and will replace some people’s jobs, but for many others, machines will enhance people’s jobs. Today’s personal computers replaced the jobs of rooms full of secretaries who did nothing but type all day long because now we have word processors. Yet few people today would ever want to go back to the days of huge secretarial pools and manual typewriters again because computers and word processors are far more convenient and faster. Word processors give everyone a chance to write a letter correctly without needing to hire a secretary.

Robots and artificial intelligence are job enhancers, not job replacers except for the most trivial cases of inefficiency. If you’re threatened by a machine taking over your job, ask yourself what type of work you’re doing in your job in the first place. Is it a job you enjoy doing? If not, then why are you doing it? If you’re doing it just for the money, then you might as well just call yourself a prostitute. If you’re okay with being a prostitute, then be happy in your job. Otherwise, it’s time to think and work to make a better job (and life) for yourself.

If you’re afraid of robots and machines taking over your job, then let’s keep going back to the good old days when lamp lighters had to physically climb ladders to light street lights every night and photocopying machines didn’t exist because companies hired people to copy documents by hand. If that sounds like the good old days to you, then you can keep going backwards in life as far and fast as possible.

For the rest of us, look forward to the future of machines enhancing our lives and allowing us to pursue more interesting, creative tasks instead of being bogged down by repetitive and trivial tasks. The robots and artificial intelligence are coming, and that’s good news for everyone but the ones who refuse to embrace the inevitable.