aron cares about Siri
With the launch of iPhone 4S, Apple introduced a new take on the “digital assistant” meme of the last two decades. Siri, as “she” is affectionately called, listens to your natural-language commands and requests then responds by carrying out your desired task or returning the required information.
Officially, Siri is in beta and while performance is beyond expectations, it’s limits are not hard to find. The most obvious such limit is the always-on requirement for an internet connection. Your provider’s coverage and ubiquitous Wi-Fi notwithstanding, the devil is in the details. Put simply, much of the Siri magic relies on an Apple server. Obviously, when your connection goes down, Siri goes down with it. Worse than that, though, is what happens when Apple’s server becomes overloaded due to exceptional usage: Siri responds cryptically (if at all) about some sort of network connection error.
This is not a show-stopper unless it’s Monday morning after the weekend’s launch of the new iPhone and you’re trying to show your co-workers what Siri can do. As often is the case, you will resort to anecdotal evidence about the time you told Siri to wake you up from an afternoon nap or the iMessage conversation you had without touching the keyboard (both of which the new iPhone handled with aplomb).
We can assume that as usage normalizes and Apple adjusts, this limitation will become less of an issue. Still, as long as a remote server is required, you can expect Siri to stumble when there is a drastic increase in usage. My prediction is that the first major update to Siri will cause another bout of sluggishness as users are again attempting to find Siri’s boundaries.
Another limitation of Siri is the “lack” of 3rd party app support. If you cared about this sort of thing in 2007 when the original iPhone was announced, then this probably feels awfully familiar to you. Just like the original iPhone, there is a specific list of apps with which Siri is capable of interacting. Also like the original iPhone, there is 3rd party support it’s just not in the way everyone is expecting.
The original iPhone launched and it’s 3rd party app catalog was essentially limited to Google’s greatest hits — those being Maps and YouTube. Today’s iPhone has capability limited only by the imagination of the platform’s developers thanks to the launch of the App Store in 2008.
The storied success of the App Store has everyone begging for Siri’s integration with their existing collection of apps. |
The storied success of the App Store has everyone begging for Siri’s integration with their existing collection of apps. Siri’s natural-language interpretation is so good, you actually feel like you should be able to say things like “send a tweet” or “check in at my current location.” Siri feels so natural but is confined to certain apps and because apps make the iPhone capable of anything, Siri feels held back in comparison.
This limitation, though, is not necessarily a bad thing. For now. Special care needs to be given to the handling of 3rd party app support for Siri. The App Store is replete with apps that mirror or improve existing functionality of iOS apps that are included by default. Thus, the problem becomes, how does Siri handle such requests as “remind me to call my mom in an hour” when it’s possible to have multiple apps for reminders.
I think that what will happen is that Apple will repeat what it did with the original iPhone. Sometime in the next year, Apple is going to release an SDK for the Siri platform. And, as with all iOS apps, Apple will retain strict control of what apps can and can’t do with Siri.
It seems obvious that Siri will eventually be able to integrate with other services like Facebook or Fandango. What is less obvious is how to deal with overlap. I envision Siri add-ons being categorized and given access to certain classes of commands/requests. However, it seems very un-Apple-y to have to say which app or service you want Siri to work with so the roll-out of 3rd party support is likely to move forward at a slow and careful pace.
You’ll notice that I didn’t say “Siri will eventually add 3rd party app support,” this is because it is already integrated with data sources outside of Apple’s control. For example, Yelp is used to list and rank nearby restaurants. Also, Wolfram Alpha handles a lot of information requests not related to what’s stored on your iPhone (i.e. How tall is Mt. Everest?). Siri already has a carefully selected group of 3rd party apps baked right in just like the original iPhone did.
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Clearly Apple’s goal is to make Siri as much a part of iOS as touching the display is today.
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Clearly Apple’s goal is to make Siri as much a part of iOS as touching the display is today. Because delighting customers in a consistent way is tough business, Apple is not going to want there to be any confusion. For example, it would be unacceptable for Siri to ask the user “which Twitter client should I use to post this update?” Just like with iOS’s touch navigation, the goal will be to simplify. If iOS is about reducing the complexity of a touch interface, then Siri is about reducing the complexity of a voice interface.
If forced to guess I could see some sort of settings panel to specify defaults to handle such overlaps in functionality. But even that is a bit of a stretch and could become overly-complex very quickly. That said, Siri will definitely be able to do more in the near future.
I’ve had a lot of fun and a lot of frustration playing with Siri. I really think that just like iOS and multitouch changed the way people think about interacting with their phones, Siri is poised to do the same.
Steve Jobs, 1955 – 2011
Here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes… the ones who see things differently — they’re not fond of rules… You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can’t do is ignore them because they change things… they push the human race forward, and while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do.
Apple: falling from grace or rising to greatness?
Boy Genius Report has taken an interesting two-sided stance following the announcement of Apple’s iPhone 4S. One side contends that Apple is falling out of favor with both consumers and investors while the other believes that Apple has truly hit another home run.
Generally, I agree with the “rise to greatness” sentiment. In fact, one particular point that sticks out being that Macs do not receive an annual design refresh and there is no reason to expect the iPhone will be any different. I hadn’t really taken this into consideration and being that the iPhone 3GS did not include a design refresh, it makes sense that the fifth generation iPhone would also not include a design refresh.
However, the “fall from grace” opinion is where I start to take issue. For example, Zach Epstein for BGR writes:
Apple was a company that could do no wrong. Phones that dropped every other call…
Any issue with calls dropping has more to do with the carrier that you are forced to use than with the actual phone itself. I’ve heard no complaints of such issues with Verizon users where call quality is far above what AT&T is able to deliver.
Location tracking scandals… Antennagate… A week or even a day later, all was forgiven and Apple would continue on its path.
Both of these scandals were only forgiven once Apple collected all of the facts concerning the issue that was reported after which Apple issued a statement that instilled confidence in consumers and investors. Both of these scandals were, in this writer’s opinion, blown out of proportion and were only so explosive due to Apple’s media attraction. Apple is likely the most scrutinized company in consumer electronics and if there was still a problem, you can be certain that the internet would be ablaze with page view-driving link bait.
The piece has several other points that are just as senseless, read on for my take…
Convert Beejive for iPhone to Beejive for iPad
Beejive IM is a great app, I use it on my iPhone regularly. However, it has long been a point of pain that Beejive is not a universal app for both iPhone and iPad. I would simply buy the iPad version, however when I purchased the app it was $10 and having a dedicated iPad version is not worth an additional $5 expense to me.
Call me cheap if you want, but I don’t think the sum total of functionality is worth $15. I do, however, think it is worth the $10 which is currently being charged. In any case, after tinkering around with the Facebook for iPad hack, I had the thought that this same trick might work for enabling Beejive on my iPad. Using iFile on my jailbroken iPad, I modified the binary, restarted, and BOOM Beejive for iPad loaded without issue.
The process I used is from The Next Web:
- In Cydia, search for the iFile app and install it.
- Open iFile and navigate to var > mobile > applications > directory.
- Open the iFile settings using the cog wheel icon at the bottom of the screen and switch ‘Application Names’ to ‘on’.
- This will allow you to see which folders relate to which apps. Find the Beejive folder and open it. Inside that, open Beejive.app.
- Find the ‘Info.plist’ file and tap on it. Choose ‘Property List Viewer’.
- Find the ‘UIDeviceFamily’ option and select it.
- Change the value here from ’1′ to ’2′ and tap ‘Done’.
- Reboot your iPad and then open the Beejive app.
I was surprised that this worked and I’d be willing to bet there are other apps where this same trick would apply. I’m not necessarily endorsing the refusal of paying developers their fair share, but if you are wanting to check out an app that is seemingly non-universal, this isn’t a bad option.
Automatically create and add AppleTV-compatible movies to iTunes
My Mac mini died and because necessity is the mother of invention, I created an app to convert movies to Apple TV format and then add them to iTunes.
This droplet works thanks to the magic of HandBrake’s command-line utility HandBrakeCLI. Simply drag any movie and drop it on ToATV and HandBrake will convert it to a format compatible with the AppleTV 2 and then add it to iTunes. The output movie is added to iTunes by being dropped in: ~/Music/Automatically Add to iTunes so it will not be moved if iTunes isn’t running — it will get added to the library when iTunes starts again.
The only pre-requisite is that you have HandBrakeCLI installed in: /usr/local/binI am using Snow Leopard 10.6.6 and iTunes 10.1, so let’s pretend like those are the minimum requirements.
Go to the Downloads section to grab a copy of ToATV 0.1.
If you want to further automate things, you can create a Folder Action that will watch for files of a specific type in a given folder. When those files are added to the folder, the Folder Action can be configured to open them with ToATV. If you’re interested in seeing my Folder Action, I’m happy to post it. I’m still trying to tweak a few things so it’s not really ready for “prime time.”
aron cares about Adobe, seriously
Famous Apple blogger C.K. Sample III wrote a piece this weekend on Adobe and their opportunities for iPad development. I think his premise is sound and I wanted to add a couple more growth areas for Adobe.
aron cares about the iPad
I wasn’t crazy about the idea of the iPad however after today I’m a little more envious. From an article at TUAW I wrote about the iPad:
What could iPad offer me that I wasn’t getting from my own array of gadgets? The answer is simple and keenly Apple: panache.
Moving to Ubuntu
It’s nothing against my Mac mini or OS X but the time finally came for me to move my site to another box and operating system. I was having some strange MySQL issues following the upgrade to 10.5.8 on the mini. I also wanted to install 10.6 on the mini and was dreading the act of tracking down the strange nuances that I’m sure would be introduced.
I did a fairly standard install of Ubuntu Server 9.04 on a 2.8Ghz P4 with 1.0GB of RAM. The only optional software I selected was the LAMP option (Apache, MySQL, and PHP) and the SSH option. Getting everything working was pretty simple, the WordPress install itself was a cinch. I also did the standard export/import of all my posts. The last thing I did was drop in my old wp-content folder because I have my theme and some other custom images in there as well as my plugins.
After it was all said and done the only thing I had a little trouble with was getting pretty permalinks working again. As you’ll recall, I’ve covered this topic in the past. The process is essentially the same with a few marked differences that required some research.
First, to enable Apache’s rewrite module, you have to create a symbolic link as below rather than updating httpd.conf. In newer versions of Apache, many of the settings/configurations are pulled out of httpd.conf because the file was getting increasingly large.
cd /etc/apache2/mods-enabled
ln -s ../mods-available/rewrite.load ./rewrite.conf
The other step that is different is enabling the AllowOverride directive. With Ubuntu Server’s implementation of Apache2 you have to navigate to /etc/apache2/sites-available and edit the file default as below (thanks):
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
AllowOverride All
Order allow,deny
allow from all
The 50mm prime lens
Great article over at DPS on the benefits of prime lenses and more specifically, the “nifty fifty.”
But, it is for a fact that the best optical quality is delivered by prime lenses … because they use a smaller number of glass elements inside the lens, which means lesser loss of quality, and hence better pictures.
I personally prefer the 35mm prime for my Nikon’s DX sensor — while more expensive, it is a more true 50mm replacement. Using a 50mm prime on a DX sensor is the equivalent of using a 75mm lens on film. For my taste that limits the lens just a little too much.
A few choice photos taken with my 35mm:
@.
My Google Wave sonnet
Please enjoy this poem (in iambic pentameter) I wrote for the Google Wave team.
****** Google Wave ******
**** By Aron Trimble ****
I would really like to join Google Wave,
I think that I could help make it behave.
I’m a big fan of Google’s new service,
and bugs do not make me at all nervous.
I saw the video of Google Wave,
It’s technology that I really crave.
Please accept my request for an invite,
It would bring me joy and it would excite!
And once you finish reading this sonnet,
You must get off your butt and get on it;
Let me participate in this beta!
I surely will give you lots of data.
Oh please let me join in on Google Wave,
And let me have the tech that I so crave!
If you’d like to sign up for Google Wave invites, go click the link and fill out the form.
