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Apple Acquires Voice Assistant Startup

Posted on February 17, 2019 by admin Posted in Business, Programming, Software Leave a comment

What it is: Apple acquired Pullstring, a company that lets users create and publish voice-activated apps.

Siri sucks. Despite introducing the world to voice assistants, Siri has constantly lagged behind Amazon’s Alexa. Now Apple is working to fix Siri buy acquiring a company called Pullstring, which lets users create and publish voice-activated apps.

Pullstring’s website claims that their Converse program lets you “Build your conversation visually.” By defining conversation blocks and customizing them, you can define a user’s experience through your voice application.

Instead of dealing with code, Pullstring’s Converse program lets you focus on the overall picture while letting Pullstring’s program take care of the actual voice recognition details. Beyond letting people create voice-activated apps for Siri (and improving Siri’s popularity), Pullstring’s technology will also let developers (hopefully) add voice-activated features to ordinary apps as a supplement.

Right now, Apple offers SiriKit, which lets you add Siri to your apps, but SiriKit is limited to specific domains such as messaging or payments. You can’t customize Siri beyond a limited range of domains that Siri can understand.

Pullstring promises to avoid this and allow developers to creatively add voice recognition to any app simply and easily. This will allow developers to create games that allow voice control in addition to touch control.

For HomePod, Pullstring’s technology allows users to customize Siri on HomePod to allow voice control programming in a simple manner.

Pullstring’s technology likely won’t appear in Apple’s technology any time soon, but expect it to show up in around three years as Apple integrates Pullstring’s technology into their own software framework.

Pullstring’s acquisition is a major one much like Apple’s acquisition of Metaio, which introduced augmented reality. Pullstring will introduce then world to voice-activated programming and app development, and could be as important as Apple’s original HyperCard in letting people create custom programs.

All we have to do is wait a few years to see what happens, but when Apple introduces voice-activated coding, nobody should be surprised.

To learn more about Pullstring, click here.

The Gradual Improvement of Apple Maps

Posted on February 5, 2019 by admin Posted in Business, Software Leave a comment

What it is: Apple Maps had a disastrous debut but has gradually been improving over the years.

When Apple introduced Apple Maps in 2012, it was nowhere as good as Google Maps. Yet Apple had little choice but to offer their own mapping app since Google wanted more money to improve Google Maps on iOS while they went ahead and added improvements to Google Maps on Android. Given a choice between being blackmailed by Google or developing their own mapping solution, Apple had little choice but to create their own mapping app.

Initially, Apple Maps fell far short of Google Maps, which only makes sense since Apple Maps was brand new while Google Maps had years to mature and improve over time. Fortunately, Apple Maps has also improved over time, adding transit directions and even indoor walking directions in malls and airport terminals around the world.

While many people still prefer Google Maps, Apple Maps has finally reached a decent and acceptable level of accuracy and reliability. Given enough time, Apple Maps should only continue to improve. Whether it will ever catch up or surpass Google Maps remains to be seen, but the fact is that Apple Maps is now worth using on a regular basis.

Apple Maps is just one more example of Apple avoiding being restricted by a single company. That’s why Apple shuns off-the-shelf components in favor of custom parts such as their own A-series processors and graphics processor for the iPhone and iPad.

Apple had to wean themselves off from their dependence on Google for their mapping app. Now other companies are becoming dependent on Apple.

Google pays Apple to insure that Google remains the default search engine in Safari. Qualcomm and Intel are fighting to sell chips to Apple for the iPhone and iPad.

The lesson is clear. Any company is better off without being overly dependent on any other company. If you can’t diversify your suppliers, then you better own everything so your suppliers can’t blackmail you.

The End of Microsoft Windows Mobile/Phone

Posted on January 21, 2019 by admin Posted in Business, Hardware, Software, User Interface Leave a comment

What it is: Microsoft officially announced the end of support for their mobile operating system Windows Mobile 10.

Before Apple introduced the iPhone, Google was trying to make a Blackberry clone called Android and Microsoft had morphed their Palm Pilot clone (Windows CE) into a phone operating system. Then Apple introduced the iPhone and redefined the touch screen interface for smart phones.

Google quickly rewrote Android to mimic iOS and Microsoft abandoned Windows CE in favor of creating a new operating system from scratch. That took time and by the time Windows Phone 7 came out, Android and iOs were already dominating the smartphone market.

Even worse, Microsoft decided to rewrite their mobile operating system again and come out with Windows Phone 8, which was incompatible with Windows Phone 7 apps. That meant developers had to rewrite their apps all over again for Windows Phone 8.

Then Microsoft changed Windows Phone 8 to Windows Mobile 10 and forced developers to rewrite their apps once more. Even worse, the official language for Windows Phone development was Silverlight, a Microsoft clone of Adobe Flash.

When Adobe Flash started dying since it couldn’t run on mobile devices, Microsoft Silverlight also died. Now developers had to rewrite their Windows Phone 8 apps to run on Windows Mobile 10.

With all this constant changing, is it no wonder that Windows Phone/Mobile failed? To make matters even worse, Microsoft was so fixated on Windows Phone that they failed to anticipate the iPad, which forced Microsoft to come up with a separate tablet operating system called Windows RT.

Now developers had to write separate apps in different languages for Windows RT and Windows Mobile 10. Instead, developers simply abandoned Windows RT and Windows Mobile 10. With few apps, users started to ignore Windows Phone/Mobile as well.

The lesson is clear. Mere copying of a successful product is rarely the path to success. The real path to success is originality. Come up with a new solution that’s better than existing solutions, not simply a copy of the same solution.

Microsoft Silverlight was a slightly better version of Adobe Flash, but solved nothing new. So people tended to stick with Adobe Flash and when Flash died, so did Silverlight.

Fortunately with Steve Ballmer out of the way, Microsoft no longer seems content to copy other successful products and hope it pays off in the long run like the Xbox. In the meantime, Windows Phone/Mobile wasn’t a bad idea, but it showed that unless you make a dramatic leap like the iPhone did over Blackberry and Nokia, there’s little reason to adopt it.

So rather than blatantly copy, companies should strive to solve problems that aren’t currently met by today’s technology. The iPhone’s touch screen interface solved the problem of tiny screens and physical buttons. Windows Phone/Mobile solved nothing over Android and iOS.

Nobody will miss Windows Phone/Mobile. Even Microsoft’s employees stopped using that operating system years ago. The lesson is copying rarely leads to success so strive for solving the problems of today, not the problems of yesterday that are already being met with today’s products. Just that simple lesson alone could have saved Microsoft billions of dollars and years of wasted development.

Project Marzipan

Posted on January 13, 2019 by admin Posted in Software, User Interface Leave a comment

What it is: Project Marzipan is Apple’s framework to allow iOS apps to run on the Macintosh.

Last year during their Worldwide Developer’s Conference (WWDC), Apple introduced Project Marzipan, which is a framework designed to make it easy to convert iOS apps to run on the Macintosh. Apple used their own framework to port several of their iOS apps to the Macintosh such as the Stocks app.

With iOS and mobile computing becoming far more important than desktop/laptop computing, it only makes sense for developers to focus exclusively on iOS programming because then they’ll be able to write apps for iOS and port them to the Macintosh.

Otherwise you’ll haver to write apps for iOS and macOS. That’s not too much of a problem since iOS and macOS are so similar but it does require you to write slightly different code. With Project Marzipan, the goal is to let you write an iOS app and let Apple’s framework convert it to run on the Macintosh with little work on your part. That way you’ll have two apps capable of running on the Macintosh and iOS.

For ordinary users, this simply means the Macintosh will soon get more apps. This can make the Macintosh more attractive but it will likely give developers an incentive to focus exclusively on iOS and then use Project Marzipan to create Macintosh apps that may not be optimized completely for the Macintosh.

So developers will likely need to tweak their code to make their app better for the keyboard/mouse interface of the Macintosh from the touch screen interface of iOS.

The Macintosh will likely never take over the desktop/laptop market with Windows PCs so entrenched in the corporate world. Then again, it doesn’t really matter since the world is moving towards mobile computing anyway.

The Macintosh has been around since 1984 and it likely won’t get any more innovative. So look at Project Marzipan as a way to keep iOS developers happy by giving them a larger market for their existing apps. Project Marzipan is not likely to attract more people to the Macintosh just for the ability to run iOS apps. Project Marzipan is interesting and will likely appear during 2019’s WWDC, but it’s just a short-term solution to help transition the world towards mobile computing so they can leave the world of desktop/laptops behind.

To learn more about Project Marzipan, click here.

Artificial Intelligence Can Identify Fake Police Reports

Posted on October 29, 2018 by admin Posted in Software Leave a comment

What it is: An artificial intelligence program can detect fake police reports with 80% accuracy.

How do people learn? Through experience, which means exposure to massive amounts of similar data from the same type of source. For example, police learn to detect lying by constantly exposing themselves to criminals and learning common factors that exhibit lying and telling the truth. They’re not always right but a rookie cop will be far less knowledgable than a veteran simply because the veteran has more experience. The same holds true for artificial intelligent.

Artificial intelligence (AI) learns by examining massive amounts of data to look for commonalities. Police are now using an artificial intelligence program called VeriPol that uses automatic text analysis and machine learning to identify false statements. The AI program was developed by researchers from Cardiff University and the Charles III University of Madrid, and can detect false reports with 80% accuracy.

The AI tool is able looks for false statements, such as a focus on the items stolen (usually smartphones and other high-end items) rather than the incident itself; a lack of detail which suggests that the reporter is not truly using their memory; limited details of the attacker, a lack of witnesses, and a failure to contact law enforcement immediately after. The biggest problem with analyzing police reports is that the police don’t have the time or staff to analyze fake reports so an Ain program like VeriPol can quickly identify potentially fake reports to free up personnel.

VeriPol has analyzed reports around Spain and researchers hope to test the program in other parts of the world as well. Any repetitive type of information can be detected by a trained person or an AI program. VeriPol simply demonstrates that AI can be smarter than the common criminal.

To learn more about the AI program that can detect fake police reports, click here.

Apple Intern Turns to Medicine

Posted on October 26, 2018 by admin Posted in Hardware, Medical, Software Leave a comment

What it is: An Apple intern used his Apple Watch to monitor the pulse of an unconscious woman.

While on a flight from Arizona to Washington D.C., Brian Shear, an intern at Apple, helped a physician monitor an unconscious woman on the plane. Using his Apple Watch, Brian Shear captured the woman’s pulse information and then gave that information to doctors so they could use that information to help her. That’s when Brian Shear decided instead of working for a company making lifesaving equipment, he wanted to become a doctor and use technology to help others.

Brain Shear is now studying medicine at Central Michigan University and came up with another idea from his time at Apple. The hospital created a 50-page manual for brain tumor patients. Brain decided to turn this 50-page manual and convert it into an ebook using the free iBooks Author program. By making the manual interactive, Brian believes that patients will use and read the information. Even better, he can easily send this manual to others and duplicate it freely, completely eliminating printing costs with the paper manual.

By using the Apple Watch and iBooks Author, Brian Shear has shown how doctors in the future can use technology to save lives and provide information to patients. To read more about Brian Shear, click here.