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Apple Developing Self-Driving Car

Posted on June 13, 2017 by admin Posted in Hardware, Software Leave a comment

What it is: Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO, verified that Apple is working on a self-driving car.

In a recent interview with Bloomberg, Tim Cook confirmed that Apple is working on autonomous driving technology, otherwise known as self-driving cars. “We sort of see it as the mother of all AI projects,” Cook said. “It’s probably one of the most difficult AI projects actually to work on.”

Previous rumors suggested Apple was either backing away from self-driving cars and pursuing just the entertainment portion of a car system through CarPlay. However Tim cook’s recent comments indicate Apple is researching self-driving cars although they don’t have a definite time frame for when (if ever) this technology will reach the public.

While Apple may seem late to the self-driving car market, Apple was also late to the MP3 digital player market before they introduced the iPod, they were late to the smartphone market before they introduced the iPhone, and they were late to the tablet market before they introduced the iPad. Being first is only an advantage if you can maintain your lead. Just ask Blackberry, Nokia, and Microsoft what happens if you get complacent.

Initially, self-driving cars will likely appear in limited situations such as shuttles at airport terminals or as vehicles carrying objects in a warehouse. Putting self-driving cars on the road filled with human drivers will take time, especially as self-driving cars will need to react to snow, ice, accidents, police directing traffic, and other varying situations that aren’t as simple as driving along an empty road.

Yet the automotive industry is undergoing change in three areas:

Self-driving technology
Ride-sharing services
Non-gasoline powered cars (electric or hydrogen fuel cells)

Just one of these technologies threatens the current automotive industry. Having three of them rapidly reaching acceptance at the same time means tremendous upheaval for the automotive industry. Right now, the Big Three auto makers make the bulk of their profits selling gas guzzlers, pickups and SUVs. Once ride-sharing services and self-driving cars start reducing car ownership, the business model of today’s Big Three auto makers goes down.

How can the Big Three auto makers transition from gasoline engines to electric or hydrogen fuel cells rapidly? That means they’ll likely run into the same dilemma that Kodak faced. Kodak initially made the bulk of their income from film processing and developing. When digital photography arrived, Kodak resisted it because there wasn’t as much profit in digital photography as there was in film.

When Kodak realized digital photography was the future, they changed too slowly. The profits from digital photography couldn’t offset the expense of running a film processing and developing business. The old business model expenses kept Kodak from profiting from digital photography. On the other hand, companies with no investment in film could easily transition to digital photography with no burden to the past whatsoever.

That means the Big Three auto makers will have to make a similar transition from car ownership and gas cars to ride-sharing services, self-driving cars, and non-gas powered vehicles. Think they can do that while still maintaining the expenses of their current business model? Maybe, but it’s not likely. That means today’s big car companies are likely going to go the way of Kodak, Blockbuster Video, and Radio Shack. They’re obsolete.

That means the future depends less on today’s entrenched car companies and more on tomorrow’s car companies like Tesla, Google, and Apple. Forget about Ford and General Motors. The future is not them any more than the future of retailing was Montgomery Wards and Sears.

The fact that Tim Cook verified that Apple is working on self-driving technology means this technology will eventually arrive someday. The big question is which company will be the big winner in the future? It’s clear that any company not working on self-driving cars can’t possibly succeed (where is Microsoft in the self-driving technology market?), but it’s also clear that today’s car leaders likely won’t transition fast enough to embrace the future.

That means Tesla, Google, Apple, or some other company has the best chance of embracing the future. It’s going to be big. The only question is who will profit from this major change in transportation?

To learn more about Apple’s self-driving plans, click here.

The Return of Blackberry

Posted on December 19, 2016 by admin Posted in Business, Hardware, Software Leave a comment

What it is: Blackberry used to be known for smartphones. Now they could be a leader in the self-driving market.

Blackberry used to dominate the smartphone market to the point where executives flashed Blackberry smartphones as a status symbol. If you were anyone in the corporate world, you had to have a Blackberry.

That all changed when Apple introduced the iPhone and Google released Android. Blackberry struggled to keep up and failed with their own touch screen phones. Then they failed to keep Blackberry smartphones relevant in the world of iOS and Android. They failed again when they switched to Android and tried to make Blackberry a leader in the smartphone industry using Android.

But don’t count Blackberry out just yet. Their smartphone business may be dead but they have something everyone wants and needs and that’s the QNX operating system. QNX is an extremely fast and reliable operating system used in embedded systems such as medical devices, control systems, appliances, and most importantly, cars.

Apple’s own CarPlay relies on QNX and nearly every self-driving car technology relies on QNX as its foundation. That means no matter how wins the self-driving car market, QNX will benefit. As long as QNX benefits, Blackberry will benefit as well.

So if you thought Blackberry was gone, they may be lost forever in the smartphone market, but they could come roaring back soon in the embedded operating system industry, specializing in the car dashboard and self-driving technology. QNX could well become as necessary as MS-DOS and Windows were back in the early days of personal computers. If you want to beet on the future of cars, you could take a chance on Tesla or Google, or you could really play it safe and bet on Blackberry’s QNX operating system. It may not be as flashy as Tesla cars, but if QNX is everywhere, that means a huge revenue stream for Blackberry and QNX that you’d be foolish to ignore.

QNX just might save Blackberry as a company. Just don’t expect to use a smartphone or tablet from Blackberry ever again.

The Future of Siri

Posted on June 24, 2016 by admin Posted in Software Leave a comment

What it is: Siri is Apple’s natural language interface.

In the old days, people gave commands to a computer by typing. Such interfaces were known as command-line interfaces where the most popular example of that was MS-DOS. The problem with command-line interfaces was that if you misspelled a command, the computer wouldn’t recognize it. That made using command-line interfaces frustrating and slow.

To solve these problems, the next step up was graphical user interfaces. This displayed commands and icons on the screen so you just needed to point and click on what you wanted to do. You needed a mouse to do this, but graphical user interfaces were generally faster and easier to use than command-line interfaces. The most popular graphical user interface appeared on the Macintosh and later on PCs as Microsoft Windows.

Like command-line interfaces, graphical user interfaces have limitations as well, namely requiring the use of a pointing device such as a mouse, trackball, or trackpad. This means you manipulate an item away from the screen (such as a mouse on a desk) so you can manipulate objects on the screen.

This effectively separates your physical movements from the actual items on the screen. While unnatural at first, it’s easy to get used to this to the point where moving your hand away from the screen seems normal. This is why so many people wrongly insist that the iPad can’t be useful unless you can use it with a mouse. That’s like saying graphical user interfaces can’t be useful unless people are forced to type in commands.

Apple helped usher in the next generation of user interfaces known as touch screens. Instead of moving an object on a desk to move an object on the screen, touch screen interfaces let you manipulate items directly on the screen. Sometimes this can be handy but sometimes this can be clumsy. Yet touch screens are best used when it’s not possible to lug around an additional pointing device, such as smartphones and tablets.

One problem with graphical user interfaces and touch screens is that you need to see the screen to use it. While it’s perfectly possible for blind people to use an iPhone or iPad, most people prefer using their eyes to see a screen. However, this limitation also means that you cannot use a smartphone or tablet easily unless you stare at it, which means you can’t use your eyes to do anything else such as driving.

That’s the beauty of natural language interfaces. Instead of looking at the screen, you can just talk to it. Talking is far faster and easier than typing commands or clicking on icons, plus it has the added advantage of letting you keep your eyes focused on anything but the computer.

So Apple’s next macOS version will include Siri on a Macintosh, which might seem a bit contradictory. After all, why talk to your computer when you can easily type or use a mouse to control it instead?

Most likely, Apple’s goal isn’t to put Siri on the Macintosh and stop there. It’s likely Apple wants data on how people interact with computers so they can improve the natural language interface. Already the next generation of Siri will understand context of previous queries so you can speak more naturally to Siri. This will prove immensely useful for CarPlay, Apple’s in-dash entertainment system that will appear inside car dashboards.

When driving, you cannot take your eyes off the road for even a second without putting yourself (and others) in potential danger. Driving requirers keeping your eyes on the road, but touch screen interfaces require you to look at them. So the eventual goal of Siri is to let people control devices completely through voice commands.

This will let you give simple commands to CarPlay such as turning on the radio or adjusting the heat. However, you can also get driving directions or ask Siri to help you find specific types of restaurants. When you think about how people use computers, they tend to use them in one of two ways:

To create and modify information
To access information

Creating text information is easy with a keyboard and creating graphical information is easy with a mouse or touch screen. Accessing information is much clumsier with a keyboard, mouse, or touch screen because you have to tell the computer what you want to find and then you have to repetitively shift through the retrieved data until you find what you want.

Siri’s ultimate goal is to make accessing information much faster. Just talk and Siri gives you the answer. If it’s not what you want, keep talking until Siri gives you the information you want.

Siri likely won’t be perfect at first but will get successively better over time. Eventually, Siri could be used to help people create text information as well by letting you dictate to the computer and have it type your words.

For people who dislike typing, such a natural language interface would be far superior than using a keyboard. Even for people comfortable with typing, dictating can be an option when you can’t use a keyboard such as dictating ideas while jogging.

One drawback with Siri is that you need to speak out loud, which limits its use to private areas. You might ask Siri questions in public, but you won’t ask Siri any questions in the middle of a movie or opera where your spoken voice will disturb others.

Siri won’t replace keyboard, mouse, or touch screen completely, but will compliment them. In some cases, Siri can replace traditional user input devices altogether such as in CarPlay.

Siri is just another way to interact with a computer in a faster manner. Siri and its competitors will just keep getting better over time until people will wonder how anyone ever used a computer without talking to it like a person.

Hints of the Apple Car

Posted on June 9, 2016 by admin Posted in Business, Hardware Leave a comment

What it is: It’s no secret that Apple is working on an Apple Car dubbed Project Titan. What is a secret is what the Apple Car will be.

Apple has hired hundreds of automotive engineers, set up car research facilities, and even talked with government agencies about vehicle regulations. There’s no doubt in anyone’s mind that Apple is developing a car of some kind. The big question is what will it be?

It makes no sense for Apple to compete directly with existing auto makers and sell similar types of cars that you can buy from Toyota, Ford, or Nissan. What’s more likely is that an Apple Car won’t run on gasoline but an alternative fuel source such as electricity or hydrogen cells. This would make an Apple Car emission-free and help reduce pollution worldwide.

Of course, other car makers are also developing electric cars and researching hydrogen cells. At the moment, hydrogen cells look impractical but electric cars are already here. Tesla is currently building electric cars successfully, but it’s unlikely that Tesla will ever grab much market share from existing auto makers. It’s not easy making electric cars in mass quantities so it’s likely that Apple won’t follow in Tesla’s footsteps and copy that same business model of trying to sell cars to consumers.

Google has been testing self-driving cars for years and it’s likely that the Apple Car will at least offer assisted-driving technology that could translate into self-driving capabilities in the future. Self-driving cars will arrive within a decade, but current auto makers are also working on self-driving cars too.

So the only two clear indications of the future for the Apple Car are that it won’t use a gas-powered engine and it will offer advanced driving technology that will assist or replace a driver altogether.

An electric, self-driving car is exactly what Ford, Honda, and other car companies are making, so it’s likely the Apple Car will include additional features to make it stand out. Existing car makers make the bulk of their money selling cars. That’s why ride-sharing services like Uber are such a threat because when it becomes cheaper to use ride-sharing (or car sharing) services instead of buying, storing, and maintaining a car yourself, suddenly there’s much less of a need to own a car.

That’s the way the Apple Car can compete in the auto industry. Instead of being focused on selling cars, the Apple Car could be selling a transportation service.

Thin of how Android device manufacturers make money today. They only make money when they sell an Android smartphone or tablet. That’s why they rarely offer operating system updates because that costs hem money and delays a customer’s incentive to buy a new device. That’s exactly the situation where the car makers are in today.

Car makers only make money selling cars. Once they sell you a car, they can make additional money servicing the car, but selling cars is the main profit driver. Apple doesn’t need to sell cars to make money. If they sell the Apple Car as a service, they can potentially make even more money.

Imagine Apple partnering with ride-sharing services like Uber or Didi Chuxing (China’s version of Uber). Instead of selling Apple Cars to ride-sharing services, what if they took a cut of the profits for each ride as well for the life of the Apple Car? That would cost ride-sharing services nothing to get an Apple Car and they would instantly make money from it. Meanwhile, Apple would make money from each transaction. As more people use ride-sharing services using the Apple Car, the amount of money to be made through renting the Apple Car instead of selling it is far greater.

By renting the Apple Car instead of selling it, Apple avoids the hassle of selling it and simply makes money using the Apple Car as a service. This is similar to how Apple makes money off the iPhone. Apple makes a profit when they sell an iPhone, but they also make money selling apps, music, and e-books as well. One key to the Apple Car’s future is not to make money just selling it, but to make money from it as a service.

Now imagine an electric-powered Apple Car that has solar panels on the roof to recharge itself. Now you never have to worry about plugging into a recharging station. The Apple Car can refuel itself just by driving around.

Go one step further and add in Apple’s augmented reality technology that they acquired from Metaio last year. Instead of just looking through glass windows, an Apple Car could show you augmented reality. An Apple Car could be offered for tourists. Hop into an Apple Car in a strange city and not only will the Apple Car take you to your hotel, but it will give you a tour of the surrounding area, overlaying text with accompanying audio and visual graphics to show you interesting sights as well.

Drive through a neighborhood and augmented reality can show you which houses are for sale and what their asking price might be. Drive through a strange part of town and augmented reality can show you the location of interesting restaurants, bars, and tourist attractions.

Right now if you want to check a map for nearby pizza parlors or taco stands, you have to look at your iPhone screen, but if an Apple Car is self-driving, you could simply use the windows as a touch screen, view a map on the window, and control the car by using the window as a giant touch screen interface.

While this might sound like science fiction, so did the touch screen interface on the iPhone when it first appeared. There’s no point for Apple to create a vehicle that simply duplicates today’s existing cars. The Apple Car has to offer so much more to the point where people will want to ride in an Apple Car instead of buying their own car.

The Apple Car is coming sooner than you might think (2020 by Apple’s estimates). Until then, watch for Apple to release technology to support the Apple Car. Just as Apple has dribbled out frameworks like HealthKit, ResearchKit, and CareKit to lay the foundation for real-time health monitoring on wearable devices like the Apple Watch, expect Apple to introduce technology today (such as CarPlay) that’s really designed to appear in the Apple Car in the future.

The Apple Car isn’t going to duplicate existing technology, but upend the car industry completely. That means doom for today’s car companies, but a cleaner, safer, and less expensive world of transportation for everyone else tomorrow.

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.

Apple Acquires Speech Technology Startup

Posted on October 4, 2015 by admin Posted in User Interface Leave a comment

What it is: Vocal IQ specializes in self-learning, natural language processing.

In the past, natural language voice recognition was extremely primitive. You had to first train the the system with your voice by repeating phrases and if you caught a cold, your voice would change and the computer would fail to recognize your voice, let alone any commands you might be uttering.

When Apple introduced Siri with the iPhone 4s, natural language voice recognition suddenly took a huge leap forward. Siri let you speak commands out loud and most of the time Siri would actually understand. Suddenly user interfaces went from menus and buttons to natural language spoken commands.

While critics dismissed Siri as a gimmick, Microsoft introduced Cortana and Google introduced Google Now. All work the same by recognizing commands in several languages, allowing you to control devices with voice commands alone. This has particular use when driving, since you never want to take your eyes off the road. That’s why Apple’s CarPlay heavily relies on Siri to allow drivers to control their in-dash entertainment system using voice commands alone.

The first step of natural language voice recognition meant being able to understand vocal commands by different people and respond intelligently. The second step is to learn and that’s why Apple recently acquired Vocal IQ, a UK startup. The company has developed a self-learning dialogue API built on 10 years of natural language research, belief tracking, decision making, and message generation. The difference in capability is that Vocal IQ’s technologies allows learning. Vocal IQ’s website states:

“The reason for this state of affairs is that while Apple, Google and the some others have mastered how the use machine learning for speech-recognition, they are still stuck with medieval approach when it comes of conversational voice dialog. They are still using pre-programmed flow-chart based response that don’t learn.

“The consumer demand for a self-learning multi-domain conversational voice system where consumers can freely talk about movies, restaurants, music, hotel bookings and the meaning of life, is huge and undeniable. The first one to meet that demand will rule the smartphone and wearables market for the next decade.”

Undoubtedly Apple will integrate Vocal IQ’s technology into Siri, making Siri more responsive, intelligent, and conversational. This can allow people to converse with Siri in much the same way that people talked to their operating system in the movie “Her“. If Vocal IQ’s technology is as advanced as they claim it is, that should give Siri a huge leap forward over competitors like Cortana and Google Now.

Voice commands are the future for interacting with computers because it eliminates the need to read thick user manuals or attend boring training classes. Instead, you can just start talking with your computer and it can answer right back. The easier it is for people to interact with computers, the more they’ll be able to take advantage of the computer’s processing power to perform all kinds of different tasks.

Speech recognition and understanding is the next step in user interface design. That’s perfect for wearables, mobile devices (smartphones and tablets), and in-dash car systems like CarPlay along with controlling the user interface of home devices like Apple TV. When working with computers can be as easy as talking, that’s when everyone can use the power of computers in their everyday lives.