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The iOS 11 Files App

Posted on September 20, 2017 by admin Posted in Software, User Interface Leave a comment

What it is: The Files app in iOS 11 gives users access to file management on iOS devices.

For the longest time, many PC users criticized the iPad as a toy because it wouldn’t allow you to manage individual files. Instead, the iPad limited each app to accessing only its own files. While this made it easy to find files used in specific apps, it made managing files much clumsier. The advantage of not having a file management system made the iPad easier to use, but for power users, the lack of a file management system made the iPad too limiting.

Now with iOS 11, Apple has introduced the Files app, which gives power users the ability to manage files while giving most other users the ability to ignore the Files app completely if they wish and continue using their iPad exactly the same as before. This compromise works for everyone because managing files is often the hardest part of using a computer for many novices. By shielding novices from the complexity of file management, the iPad can satisfy their needs without excess complexity. By giving power users file management capabilities, they can use the iPad as a more powerful mobile computer than ever before.

The introduction of the Files app shows that the iPad is gradually becoming the new laptop computer of tomorrow. Before the iPad appeared, the other alternative for an inexpensive mobile computer was the netbook. Netbooks first appeared running Linux but Microsoft quickly dropped the licensing fees of Windows to make Windows the standard netbook operating system, especially when people got frustrated with learning Linux on netbooks and trying to share files with their Windows PC.

Yet as soon as the iPad appeared, the netbook market disappeared practically overnight. The iPad was simply better than the netbook in every way. Of course, people still preferred the greater versatility of laptops so many people used both. This helped give rise to the 2-in-1 device market defined by the Microsoft Surface that’s a combination laptop and tablet. 2-in-1 devices are typically great ultraportable laptops and mediocre tablets, but for people who need a laptop that’s as small and light as a tablet, 2-in-1 devices are perfect.

Now that the iPad has more capabilities such as its file management capabilities, the iPad will only get more powerful over time. That means the traditional laptop will be in danger of getting overtaken by the iPad just as netbooks were overwhelmed by the original iPad. The days of laptops are numbered.

As further evidence that the iPad can replace a laptop, Apple’s processors are getting more powerful, rivaling even Intel’s low-end processors used in the MacBook Pro laptop. As the processors in the iPad grow in power, expect the iPad to start cannibalizing laptop sales. People will see that a laptop that acts like a mediocre tablet will never be as useful as a tablet that acts like a superior laptop. The iPad Pro isn’t quite able to replace laptops, but that’s the future and it’s clear the iPad is targeting the same market as laptops.

Your next laptop will probably still be a laptop, but the replacement for that new laptop will likely be a tablet. Laptops are the only major growth market in the PC industry and once the iPad starts eating into sales of laptops like they ate into sales of netbooks, expect the laptop market to collapse and wither away. People will still need laptops, but they might not always want or need a Windows laptop any more.

Apple Pay Cash Coming Soon

Posted on September 18, 2017 by admin Posted in Software, User Interface Leave a comment

What it is: Apple Pay Cash will be a way to send money to others through an Apple Pay account.

If you want to see the future, look overseas. That’s because other countries are often far more advanced in certain areas than others. For years, Japanese people used mobile phones to store and pay for items. In Kenya, people don’t have access to banks so they rely on a peer-to-peer payment system called M-Pesa, which lets people send money to the mobile phone users without relying on carrying actual cash.

Kenyans had a choice of carrying large amounts of cash with them (which could be stolen) or using M-Pesa to make secure, simple, and fast transactions using a mobile phone. Third world countries like Kenya adopted mobile phones far faster than so-called advanced countries because Kenya lacked the infrastructure to create landlines. So most of the Third world basically skipped landlines and jumped straight to mobile phones, adopting them at a rate far faster than the Western world that had a landline infrastructure already in place. That’s why Kenya is the world leader in mobile phone money transfers.

So Apple Pay Cash is simply a way for the rest of the world to catch up to Kenya. By using Apple Pay Cash, you can send money directly to others. This avoids carrying cash and lets you send money instantly without mailing a check or wiring funds through a bank. Apple Pay Cash will be coming to iOS 11 and watchOS 4, which means you’ll be able to ask for cash and receive it through an iPhone, iPad, or Apple Watch.

Apple Pay Cash likely won’t change the world but it will help make Apple Pay more popular. Once more people get an Apple Pay account, they’ll be more likely to purchase items using Apple Pay. Then Apple will make money on each purchase. Eventually, Apple Pay will earn Apple a sizable chunk of revenue every quarter and help fund Apple’s other projects.

That’s the difference between Apple and rivals. Most Android device makers can offer Android Pay, but they make nothing off each purchase. That’s why Samsung developed Samsung Pay, but they’ll never dominate the Android market because not every Android device will be made by Samsung. Samsung Pay will never be as widespread as Apple Pay because Apple Pay works on the Macintosh, iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch. Samsung Pay can work on Android smartphones and tablets, but not on PCs. Most likely Samsung will want to get Samsung Pay to work on Android Wear as well, but Android Wear’s share of the wearable computer market is far less than Apple’s share with the Apple Watch. That means Samsung Pay can never hope to equal Apple Pay.

With most rivals shut out from the revenue generated by Android Pay, they won’t have the steady revenue stream to allow them to pursue additional research to make better products. While Apple developed faster, more efficient processors, Android device makers are stuck using third-party components. The only Android device maker that can make their own processors is Samsung, which means rival Android device makers will simply fall further and further behind. Eventually, Samsung will be the dominant Android device maker, but that puts them in an uneasy alliance with Google. That’s why Samsung tried to make their own Tizen operating system to free themselves from Android, but that will likely never work because most developers won’t create Tizen apps and most consumers own’t buy a Tizen smartphone until there are enough apps for it.

Apple Pay Cash is the future that follows M-Pesa in the mobile payment market. Paying by mobile phone will soon be common whether you’re buying something at a store or sending money to each other. Cash is simply disappearing. Cash is great for anonymity but for convenience, mobile payments are far simpler and easier.

Siri, Coming to a Device Near You

Posted on September 8, 2017 by admin Posted in Business, Hardware, Software Leave a comment

What it is: Siri is Apple’s natural language voice assistant.

In 2011, Apple introduced Siri, the world’s first commercial voice assistant program for consumers. In the past, voice recognition meant arduous training by repeating the same word or phrase multiple times until the voice recognition program could finally recognize your voice. Then if someone else wanted to use that voice recognition program, they’d have to train it with their own voice. This limitation meant that few people bothered to use voice recognition systems because they took time to train and even worse, if your voice changed because you got sick with a cold or flu, then the voice recognition program wouldn’t recognize your voice.

That all changed with Siri. Siri began as a third-party product that was originally designed for iOS, Android, and Blackberry OS, but Apple bought the rights to Siri and positioned it solely as an iOS feature. Initially, Siri worked but wasn’t that useful for many people. Still, it was remarkable that Siri worked at all without prior training and with multiple users. Even more amazing was that Siri could recognize voice commands in multiple languages including Cantonese, Hebrew, Norwegian, and Turkish in addition to English. Even today, rivals like Amazon’s Alexa, Microsoft’s Cortana, and Google Now only work with English and a handful of other languages.

For the longest time, Apple didn’t seem to bother improving Siri so rivals caught up and surpassed it. Amazon scored a huge hit with their Echo product and Google offered a similar product as well. Now Apple will be releasing HomePod that puts Siri in a stand-alone device.

What’s important about Siri isn’t just it’s ability to recognize far more languages than its rivals, and even offer rudimentary translation of languages. What’s crucial is that Siri will soon spread everywhere on the Macintosh, iPhone/iPad, Apple Watch, and HomePod. Wherever you have an Apple device, you’ll be able to use Siri.

In comparison, Microsoft’s Cortana works just fine on PCs, but has limited exposure in the mobile and wearable computer market. Microsoft has essentially killed their smartphone operating system and killed Microsoft Band, their wearable computer. Google’s voice assistant works on Android, which dominates the smartphone market, but has little presence on desktop computers and wearable computers. Amazon dominates the home market with their inexpensive Echo devices, and has limited exposure on Amazon Fire tablets. However, Amazon has little presence on smartphones, desktop computers, or wearable computers.

That means only Apple has the potential to bring you a voice assistant on any device you might use. Use a Windows PC and you can use Cortana. Use an Android smartphone and you can use Google Now. Use an Amazon Echo and you can use Amazon Alexa. That might not be a problem since all voice assistants work alike, but all of them are far behind Siri in understanding multiple languages, and all of them are behind Siri when it comes to being available on all devices possible.

If you stick with Apple products, you’ll be able to use Siri everywhere. If you use a combination of products from other companies, you’ll wind up with different voice assistants. As Siri gets smarter (along with its rivals), it’s likely people will get comfortable using their favorite voice assistant. As the iPhone continues to grow its market share and the iPad continues dominating the tablet market while the Macintosh keeps growing in the desktop computer market and the Apple Watch dominates the smart watch market, Siri will be everywhere and rival voice assistants will not.

Even if Siri remains behind its rivals, improvements to Siri can help it catch up. On the other hand, rivals must suddenly learn a dozen other languages and find a way to appear on all types of devices. It’s easy for Apple to improve Siri. It’s hard for Google or Amazon to suddenly teach their voice assistants to understand Thai, French, or Mandarin, and it’s nearly impossible for them to start selling devices that range from desktop computers, smartphones, tablets, and wearable computers.

Whether Apple continues exploiting their lead with Siri or allows Siri to fall behind its rivals is the question. The only way Siri can flop is if Apple stumbles. The voice assistant market is there for Apple to dominate. It’s just a matter of hoping that Apple will make Siri the best voice assistant on the market.

Using Machine Learning

Posted on September 5, 2017 by admin Posted in Software Leave a comment

What it is: Pixelmator announced a new professional graphics editor called Pixelmator Pro that uses machine learning.

For the longest time, Adobe Photoshop ruled the graphics editing world. The problem of Photoshop was that it was expensive, it was cross-platform for Windows and macOS so it wasn’t really optimized for either operating system, and Adobe switched to a subscription model so you had to buy a software subscription to use Photoshop. For many graphics professionals, Photoshop is the only alternative.

However, Pixelmator is a low-cost alternative graphics editor that does much of what most people need. Now the company that brought Pixelmator has introduced a new professional version called Pixelmator Pro. Although the cost hasn’t been revealed yet, one unique feature is that Pixelmator Pro uses Apple’s latest machine learning features. Presumably this machine learning feature will allow Pixelmator Pro to help people edit images faster and more accurately than before, but this could be the first major use of machine learning in a major application so it will be interesting to see how well it works.

The real key to machine learning isn’t just to use trained models but to allow users to train and update the machine learning model through use of the program. While this likely isn’t possible yet, it’s what will make machine learning far more valuable to adapt to the user rather than offer a canned response every time.

Pixelmator Pro offers real competition to Adobe Photoshop, and machine learning just makes this program even more intriguing. Best of all, Pixelmator Pro is optimized solely for macOS so it should run better and faster than Adobe Photoshop. The only question is whether Pixelmator Pro can offer all the features professional graphics users need.

Whatever the case, the graphics editing world is getting full of rivals and alternatives to Photoshop. Beyond Pixelmator Pro, there’s Affinity Photo along with Adobe’s own Photoshop Elements, a simpler version of Photoshop for the average person.

Photoshop may be the dominate graphics editor today and maybe even tomorrow, but now you won’t have to rely on Photoshop any more if you don’t want to. Pixelmator Pro will be coming this fall and this may give you a chance to leave Photoshop once and for all.

To learn more about Pixelmator Pro, click here.

Deutsche Bank Dropping Blackberry

Posted on September 2, 2017 by admin Posted in Business, Software Leave a comment

What it is: Deutsche Bank has finally dropped Blackberry as their standard smartphone.

When Apple introduced the iPhone in 2007, Blackberry dominated the enterprise market. Ten years later, Deutsche Bank was one of the few major companies still relying on Blackberry although they also allowed employees to bring their own devices as well. Now Deutsche Bank has officially dropped Blackberry in favor of Apple’s iOS devices instead.

Blackberry has been dead in the smartphone market for years, but lo0ok how long it still managed to linger with a company as large as Deutsche Bank. That just shows how slow the enterprise market is to switch platforms, despite consumers already voting with their pocketbooks years ago. This also shows how the enterprise is warming up to iOS as the standard mobile operating system device.

In the past, the enterprise market standardized on Windows as the desktop operating system, and in most corporations, Windows is still deeply entrenched with no signs of losing its grip. However, iOS has staked out the mobile market, which is growing faster and will changing more rapidly. The mobile market is where the future lies.

This is why Microsoft tried to position Windows as a desktop and tablet operating system (and now a smartphone operating system as well) so they could keep Windows entrenched in the enterprise market. However, it’s unlikely corporations will stick solely with Windows when Windows currently doesn’t run on smartphones and only works as a suboptimal tablet operating system. Given a choice between using Windows on a tablet or iOS (or even Android) on a tablet, most people prefer anything but Windows.

Microsoft’s Surface devices work best as ultraportable laptops and tablets as a secondary feature. Few people are buying Surface devices solely to use them as tablets. That just indicates that Windows is not the tablet operating system of the future but iOS already is.

With Deutsche Bank finally dropping Blackberry, it’s apparent how slowly and reluctantly the enterprise market adopts software standards. Windows will likely be around for another decade or more but Windows simply can’t make much inroads in the mobile market that iOS has already captured. Given a choice between using an iPad as a tablet or a Microsoft Surface device as a tablet, guess which one more corporations will likely choose?

Just walk through any major corporations and you can still see Windows XP running on many PCs. To expect corporations to shift away from Windows on PCs is nearly impossible, but that’s why every day makes iOS more and more of a corporate standard. One day we’ll see corporations still relying on old iPads alongside Windows XP PCs. When that day finally arrives, we’ll know that iOS has finally dominated the enterprise market.

Apple’s September 12 Event

Posted on August 31, 2017 by admin Posted in Hardware, Software, User Interface Leave a comment

What it is: Apple announced a September 12 event where they will announce new products.

On September 12, Apple will use the new Steve Jobs theater to announce new products, specifically the iPhone 8. While most people will be looking at the hardware improvements such as wireless charging along with changes in the Home button, hardware improvements are trivial. Expect the camera to improve (as usual), but the real change will be in the software.

First, expect facial recognition. Second, look for different ways the iOS 11 user interface allows multitasking. Finally, the real revolutionary feature will be Apple demonstrating its own augmented reality apps.

This is what most companies do. They release new technical features and then expect everyone too be wowed by the technical features without a clear understanding of what those technical features might be good for. Think of Microsoft releasing their motion-sensing Kinect and then promptly ignoring it.

What Apple typically does is that they offer a technical feature and then demonstrate how that technical feature can be useful. Way back when Appel first introduced the Macintosh, they didn’t focus on the graphical user interface. Instead, they focused on how easy the graphical user interface made it to draw (MacDraw and MacPaint) along with displaying fonts in a document (MacWrite). That alone clearly demonstrated the advantages of a graphical user interface that technical specifications could never do.

So Apple released ARKit to allow developers to create augmented reality apps, but you can be certain Apple has created their own augmented reality apps that they will demonstrate on September 12. The obvious use for augmented reality should appear in the Maps app where you can point your camera at a street and see street names and store names superimposed over the image. The Maps app should also use augmented reality for both outdoor and indoor directions such as walking directions in an airport terminal or stadium.

FaceTime should be another app that uses augmented reality. Apple had previously acquired a company called FaceShift that worked on facial recognition along with another company called Emotient that worked on identifying emotions in a person’s face in real-time. This would allow FaceTime to recognize faces and the emotions of the person looking back at you, which might be a good reason not to use FaceTime if you have to deal with an unpleasant conversation.

Apple could also release a new app that scans 3D objects. That’s because Apple acquired a company called Flyby Media that could identify 3d objects, which could be used to scan items for later 3D printing and to identify objects seen through a camera. Flyby Media’s technology will likely be used to identify objects in a camera to overlay augmented reality items over it such as in an indoor Maps direction app.

On September 12, the real star won’t be hardware advances but software advances, specifically in augmented reality. Apple announced ARKit in the summer and September 12 will be their chance to show everyone how augmented reality can be useful just as Apple showed the world how graphical user interfaces could be useful through MacDraw, MacPaint, and MacWrite.

Technology advances alone are meaningless. The best technology advances are those that include useful demonstrations that clearly show why those technical features are needed by ordinary people to solve previously unsolvable problems.

September 12 isn’t just about the iPhone 8 but about augmented reality. Watch for Apple’s augmented reality apps because they’re going to define the future of augmented reality just like the iPhone defined smartphones.