“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