“Here are some thoughts about the new products I think we might see from Apple over not just the next year but the next couple of years,” Jan Dawson writes for Tech.pinions.
“I love my Apple Watch – I’ve used one version or another all day, every day, since it first came out. It’s made a meaningful difference in my ability to manage incoming notifications, my health, and my general information consumption,” Dawson writes. “One of the biggest limitations of the Apple Watch now that it’s usable in the pool and has GPS functionality, it’s not appropriate to be worn during certain sporting activities. If you play basketball, soccer, football, lacrosse, or any other contact sport, wearing a watch (of any kind) would be either unwise or dangerous for the watch and player safety. If you get a lot of your exercise through these sports, the calories you burn and time spent exercising can’t be captured by the Watch and, therefore, simply go unrecognized by the Activity app. In the past, I’ve used Fitbit devices which I could slip into a pocket while playing and would track such activity for me. So one obvious device for Apple to launch is a companion of sorts to the Watch which would clip onto clothing or slide into a pocket in order to track such activity, syncing with the Apple Watch when you put it back on.”
MacDailyNews Take: We play soccer with our Apple Watch Nike+ units – safely wrapped inside a normal sports wrist band where it’s protected (enough) and can continue capturing data.
“In my experience, the biggest advantage home speakers like Amazon’s Echo or Google’s Home have over Siri on any of the devices where it’s available isn’t functionality of the assistant itself but the size and configuration of the devices on which it operates,” Dawson writes. ” It feels like an Apple home speaker would be more integrated into the ecosystem of devices in the home, becoming one of several outputs for audio, for example, and potentially working together with the Apple TV and/or other devices for whole-home audio.”
Much more in the full article – recommended – here.
MacDailyNews Take: We can’t wait to see (and get) Apple’s Echo echo.
Wi-Fi router capabilities to be built into Apple’s Echo echo? — MacDailyNews, November 21, 2016
Also, as we wrote in March:
Something along the lines of Amazon Echo is what Apple should have done if run by competent, forward-thinking management. When Apple finally does do their version of Amazon Echo (and they will get around to doing such a product eventually) they will rightly be called a follower. The company had all of the ingredients to make their own Echo, before Amazon, except for the vision, it seems.
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And, as we wrote back in June:
There could be a psychological component to this that leads people use Alexa over Siri precisely because they know the Echo is there (it’s a physical object), but forget about Siri being everywhere, even on their wrists (because Siri is embedded inside devices that are “for other things” in the user’s mind (telling time, watching TV, computing, phone calls, etc.) and therefore “hidden” to the user. Hence, Siri gets forgotten and goes unused while people use Alexa…
Again: We believe people use Alexa because Amazon Echo is a physical manifestation of “her,” while forgetting about Siri even though she’s on their wrists at all times and/or in their iPhones and iPads because Siri is hidden inside objects whose primary function is something other than “personal assistant” in people’s minds (watch, TV, phone or tablet, as opposed to “Siri.”) Alexa is present thanks to the Amazon Echo. Siri is absent because she has no such counterpart; no physical manifestation.
Siri is a ghost. Alexa is that cool, fun, glowing tube right there on the counter.
Apple would do well to not discount the psychology behind why people use certain features, even though cold, hard logic tells them it’s a redundant and unnecessary product.
An “Apple Echo” device would sell in the millions of units per quarter and boost Siri usage immensely.
SEE ALSO:
Apple’s Amazon Echo echo: What if AirPort Extreme becomes the Siri speaker? – December 1, 2016
Apple abandons development of wireless routers – November 21, 2016
Now here’s a person who has peeked into Tim Cooks pipeline!
I predict an Apple Ring, when it’s feasible. Probably built on Liquidmetal (uses a small amount, needs to be very thin, very strong, etc), the ring will sense movement, will activate Siri on other devices (AirPods esp.), and will integrate with AR to track hands in the simulated reality world. It will let you point and choose, and will also be useable in activities where a watch is unsafe or not recommended.
Obviously there’s not much room inside a ring for battery or electronics. Thus it’s still a ways away. But people might be surprised. I put it at 80% likely in the next 10 years.
Sure, but since Apple is now chasing the competition, it will be the Apple Nose Ring, which replaces your watch, phone, and airpods. Designed to have the same function as Google Glass or ugly snapchat glasses, but will come in rose gold and be permanently installed.
Battery recharging will be via concentrated microwave beams aimed at your head while you sleep from the Apple Echo Imitation.
I admit LiquidMetal is an impressive material but at the level of thickness that would probably be used by Apple in its products would render a large portion of the user benefits moot. All the demos of the material I’ve come across to date either describe how easily it is shaped for thinness and resilient it is at about 1cm thickness. Fine for manufacturing. The resilience may help in preventing scratches, dents and possibly oxidation at the thinness Apple would probably use it in casings but would hardly be any better than any other material for internal damage especially since it appears to pass more of the impact force through than other materials. Imagine if your skin didn’t bruise after a serious impact, internal tissue damage and possible bone fracturing may have occurred but from the look of the impact site by an observer you are ‘ok’.
Instead of adding lines of new products, let’s get the current lines more productive like the Mac Pro, Mini, and MBP with enough USB ports to support your addons, get rid of the doggle line. Apple has too many open projects with the talented people split over too many of them. Each line should have a dedicated support personal and VP. Stop Jonny Ives from sealing people to support IOS and iPhone. Now that MS is doing windows on ARM, get rid of the Intel chips.
Apple needs to improve existing products before rolling out ill conceived and Illdesigned new products. Tim Cook has not been able to introduce “one more thing” of any renown and, if history is a guide, will continue to fail.
I think the AppleTV should be a media hub for everything. Make it like the echo and still do the TV part and have everything integrated into it. Have home automation tied into it like lights, garage door, locks, etc. Control the whole house simply from the AppleTV and tie with your iPhone and Apple Watch.
Why not?!
But then Apple gets stuck with a legacy name that doesn’t describe the device’s functionality. Similar problem: iTunes.
If you’re going to build the best competitor to Amazon or Google or whoever with regard to integrating everything in the home and all those “Internet of Things” devices and have a smart assistant built in controlling everything is **NOT** killing off the most stable and well respected home network routers and bridges on the market. (You can read online a vast number of people who will say that while the feature set is not as broad as many routers out there, the AirPort systems were by far the most robust and stable.) You update them and add such capabilities as Siri and integrated cloud capabilities.
Unless Apple does something within the next six months or so (12 months at most) that is truly dramatic, I don’t see them competing with Amazon, Google and the rest.
It’s an Apple Chip embedded in your brain, which is why the software is getting so dumbed down. Soon it’ll be done with a Mind-Melt®. Don’t like a song in iTunes, forget putting a star rating next to it & deleting it later, now you just Mind-Melt® it away. Puff…gone… Want to turn your device on. Ping… Mind-Melt®… on. Took a ton of photos on holiday & want them in folder like U.K. Trip, or night in Amsterdam… Mind-Melt®
“Mind-Melt®”
I’m not a Trekkie and even I know its Mind-Meld™.
LOL
It feels like an Apple home speaker would be more integrated into the ecosystem of devices in the home…
Yeah, but Amazon and Google have already begun integrating such IoT capabilities into their devices. Apple will be playing a significant game of catch-up. That the result will leapfrog Echo and Home in this regard, I have no doubt.
IoT is a catastrophic mess of security flaws at this point with NO sign of improvement yet on the horizon. Apple could certainly be the one’s to make it all ‘just work’ without everything getting hacked, botted or disabled.
The key contributing factor to the success if the Echo products are the reliability due to the far field microphone used in them. Hey Siri needs that to be as reliable and responsive, regardless of what device it is included in (including the iPhone)… And yes, Apple is bound to come up with their version of it. They have to. Voice control is where it’s all going.