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The Few-Use-Cases Edition Saturday, June 3, 2017

Apple Set To Expand Siri, Taking Different Route From Amazon's Alexa, by Stephen Nellis, Reuters

But the Cupertino, California company is likely to stick to its tested method of focusing on a small amount of features and trying to perfect them, rather than casting as wide a net as possible, according to engineers and artificial intelligence industry insiders.

[...]

"In typical Apple fashion, they've allowed for only a few use cases, but they do them very well," said Charles Jolley, chief executive of Ozlo, maker of an intelligent assistant app.

Apple Piles On The Apps, And Users Say, ‘Enough!’, by Vindu Goel, New York Times

“You get your new iPhone and you don’t know that 3-D Touch and apps in Messages even exist,” Mr. Nelson said. Although stickers account for 97 of the top 100 Messages apps, he said, some users are so confused that they post app reviews like, “I downloaded these Disney stickers. How do I use them?”

That is not exactly in line with the simple “it just works” philosophy that Apple built its business on.

Your Period-Tracker App Might Be Messing With Your Head, by Katie Heaney, The Cut

Being told to expect certain side effects to a medication, for instance, makes it more likely that we will experience them. It’s easy to see how Clue’s depiction of users’ predicted PMS windows as a series of stormy gray clouds could create an expectation of gloom and turmoil. But it doesn’t have to, necessarily. The important thing to remember is that you control your period app; your period app does not control you.

Stuff

Rheo, A Personalized Video App From ex-Apple Product Vets, Launches On iOS And The Web, by Sarah Perez, TechCrunch

Instead of browsing by genre, publisher or chart position, viewers can browse by mood. That is, you can seek out videos to make you laugh, those that inform you, those that instruct or teach, those for times you want to chill, and more.

Review: Satechi Type-C Pro Hub, The Hub Apple Should Have Made, by Greg Barbosa, 9to5Mac

The Satechi Pro Hub really has become as much of a staple in my bag as my power adapter. I take it with me everywhere my Mac goes; not because I’ll need to use all the ports it has, but because it has all the ports I could need.

Notes

Apple CEO Tim Cook Never Joined Trump Administration's Presidential Advisory Council, by Mike Wuerthele, AppleInsider

Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook never joined President Trump's "Office of American Innovation," despite an invitation to do so in March, according to an email response recieved by an AppleInsider reader.

What Really Happened With Vista, by Terry Crowley, Hackernoon

Microsoft badly misjudged the underlying trends in computer hardware, in particular the right turn that occurred in 2003 to the trend of rapid improvements in single-threaded processor speed and matching improvements in other core elements of the PC. Vista was planned for and built for hardware that did not exist. This was bad for desktops, worse for laptops and disastrous for mobile.

Bottom of the Page

Just finished reading: Idaho, by Emily Ruskovich.

I hestiated quite a bit before purchasing this book. I generally avoided stories where children are victims of murder or other crimes. Probably because I'm a parent. Or maybe I just can't stomach those kind of stories.

I'm glad I did read this book. Beautiful writing, and wonderful storytelling.

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Just finished watching: The Martian, by Ridley Scott.

Okay, I do prefer the book's version than the film's version of the story, but both versions are good.

~

Thanks for reading.