Craig Federighi on Security

In an op/ed piece for the Washington Post, Apple’s king of all software, Craig Federighi, explains:

data-animation-override>
“Great software has seemingly limitless potential to solve human problems — and it can spread around the world in the blink of an eye. Malicious code moves just as quickly, and when software is created for the wrong reason, it has a huge and growing capacity to harm millions of people.”

I remember the first time I saw Craig Federighi on stage for Apple and he was shaking like a leaf.  I’m sure he has always been a top notch engineer but in the last few years he has also developed into an eloquent spokesperson for Apple. The guy just stinks of credibility and I hope Apple continues to put him in the limelight.

∞
 

The Amazon Echo


For about a month now I’ve been using an Amazon Echo in my home. The Echo is the most interesting thing to come out of Amazon’s tech labs since the first Kindle. The Echo is a cylindrical speaker and microphone array about the size of two soup cans stacked on top of one another. The microphones are always listening and the device is connected to the Internet so anytime you say the word “Alexa” followed by a question or command, the Echo kicks in and does its best to obey. For instance I can say, “Alexa, what’s the weather today?” and the device is smart enough to figure out where I’m at and tell me the weather or “Alexa, turn off the kitchen lights” and my kitchen Hue lights will go dark. It’s a lot like Siri but instead of a device on your wrist or in your pocket, it’s a small Bluetooth speaker in your house.

In fact the device is so much like Siri that once I unpacked mine, my initial reaction was to put it back in the box and send it back. Nevertheless, I kept it for a few days to see why so many Apple fans also love their Amazon Echos.

After using it a few days, I began to see the light. There are a few important distinctions between the Echo and Siri. The most important of those is reliability. In the month I’ve been using it, the Echo has not misunderstood me yet. Sometimes it still can’t answer me because I’ve asked it something that it can’t do (like when I asked it to add 13 days to February 7) but if I’m asking a question or giving a command that the Echo is programmed to handle, it always does. As an example, while writing this article I asked “Alexa, what day of the week was February 7, 2016” and it replied, nearly instantly, “Sunday”. I then asked the same question of Siri and it transcribed my question as “What Dave of the week was February 7, 2016” and Siri explained it couldn’t answer my question. The second time I asked, Siri got it right but Alexa got it the first time and that makes all the difference

The Echo is also fast. There are probably only seconds between the Echo and Siri response times but it is noticeable. Between the speed and reliability, I feel more comfortable asking Alexa questions because I’m not worried about whether or not the Echo will stop and think for long seconds before screwing up. That trust means I use it more often. Siri needs to get to that point. Part of me feels that if the Apple Watch were more responsive, I’d be less impressed with the Amazon Echo but the fact is there is a lag in the watch activating and using Siri.

Another nice benefit of the Amazon Echo is that it can learn new tricks. The Alexa app has additional “skills” that can be added to the Echo. I’ve added skills that let me find out when the International Space Station will fly over my house and another one that will answer any questions with a Magic 8-ball answer. I even have enabled the ability to check on my car’s gas, location, and trip distance through my Automatic adapter. The integration with Hue lights is also better and more reliable than Apple’s HomeKit. The Echo also connects to the IFTTT service and that really opens up possibilities.

There is something to this always present assistant. Unfortunately, it doesn’t really play all that nice with Apple gear. Since I keep my calendar in iCloud and it only supports Google calendar, I can’t use any of its scheduling features. Likewise you can add items to the Alexa app’s reminders and shopping lists but not directly to the Reminders app. I was able to get around that with some IFTTT rules, shown below.

Moving Alexa To Dos to Apple Reminders via IFTTT

Moving Alexa To Dos to Apple Reminders via IFTTT

Moving Alexa Shopping List Items to Reminders Grocery List via IFTTT

Moving Alexa Shopping List Items to Reminders Grocery List via IFTTT


Moving Alexa To Dos to Apple Reminders via IFTTT
Moving Alexa Shopping List Items to Reminders Grocery List via IFTTT

The speaker in the Echo is fine but it really doesn’t hold a candle to my Sonos speakers and it doesn’t support Apple Music. It does support Prime Music, Spotify, Pandora, iHeartRadio, and TuneIn. The speaker in my Echo is only used for Alexa’s voice.

This is the first voice-only interface device I’ve used and while still quite rudimentary in a lot of ways, it is pretty remarkable that I can use it every day without ever typing in text or seeing a screen. Not only that, my family is in on the act now too. The commands are easy and just common sense enough for just about anybody to use it. I think it their comfort with the Echo is a result of the device’s reliability and the fact there are no steps to activate or screens to look at. Simply speak your request.

Apple should really make something like the Amazon Echo. (I’m not the first person to think that.) Because the device is plugged in, they don’t have to worry about battery saving and I think that makes the immediacy of the microphones and responses just that much quicker and, as a result, the device that much more useful. I still use Siri every day but I didn’t ship the Amazon Echo back either.

As I was finishing up this post, Amazon announced a second Echo-type product, the Echo Dot, which has the same features but a much less impressive speaker. At $90, the Dot is substantially less than the $180 Echo.

Art Channel for Apple TV




One of the nice things about being a parent is that as your kids grow up you get to learn new things. One of my daughters loves fine art. She can talk about artists and their work the same way I talk about jazz music, Star Wars, and technology. It has been a lot of fun for our family learning from her and visiting museums with her.

Several years ago we bought the Art Authority (Website) (App Store) application for the iPad which has an exhaustive collection of artwork sorted by period. As an interesting bit of trivia, the man behind Art Authority, Alan Oppenheimer was on the original Macintosh team and is responsible for, among other things, AppleTalk. While Art Authority on the iPad is, It doesn’t lend itself to more than one or two people at a time.

That has all changed with the Art Channel (Website) application on our Apple TV. Art Channel, made by the same team that makes Art Authority, is an Apple TV application that displays fine art on your television. It comes with a basic set of paintings but for $1/month you can get a lot more. We are subscribers and loving it. Our television often transforms into fine art. There are videos that display artwork to music but the real benefit is playing slideshows with your own music playing in the background.

It really isn’t much of a stretch to think of an application that displays fine art on your television but Art Channel does it well. The images look great and we sometimes leave the app running for hours as we are going about the day. We also put Art Channel on the television when we have friends visiting. It’s so much nicer than a blank screen and often leads to conversation about a particular piece of art. There are also videos that display artwork to music but the real benefit is playing slideshows with your own music playing in the background.

I have two small issues with the application. The first is that the longest play time on one image is 90 seconds. I would like it to be longer. Also, the order of the slideshows is always the same. I’d prefer an option to randomize the images.

I often work in the same room as our family television and having some Dexter Gordon playing while the Apple TV slowly cycles through impressionist art is pretty great.

Sponsor: Working Copy




This week I’m pleased to welcome as a new sponsor Working Copy (Website)(App Store), a Git client for iOS. A lot of people think Git is something you can only do on a Mac or from the command line. Those people are wrong. Working Copy was made to complement existing workflows rather than replace them. Git is a great system for keeping projects in sync between computers and adding iOS to the mix opens up many possibilities with no extra friction.

With access to your Git data from your iPad and iPhone, the possibilities really open up. Many Working Copy users do small edits on their iPhone or iPad. Others use it to do code review or investigate a codebase during their commute. Having Git repositories and all the files inside them available everywhere, also opens up when Git is a good choice as a storage/sync solution as a alternative to Dropbox.

Working Copy is also an iOS good citizen and supports the document-picker and share extensions which lets other applications edit inside repositories. It support x-callback-url for controlling the application from other apps and it bundles a WebDAV server for applications such as Coda and Transmit.




Working Copy’s text editor has syntax highlighting for 35 languages and can preview HTML files referencing images, scripts and stylesheets from within the repository. This includes a Javascript console for error messages letting you jump directly to the point in a file where errors occur.

Even compared to Mac Git clients, Working Copy’s features are quite powerful. The built-in diff viewer works for both text and images. It supports full branching and merging, multiple remotes on each repository and a commit graph with search capabilities. It supports the REST APIs of several cloud Git hosting providers to make repository cloning and creation easier.

If you spend any time in Git on your Mac or PC, you need Working Copy on your iPad and iPhone.

∞

Going Deeper with Apple Notes

Apple Notes continues to get its hooks in me. When I showed up at WWDC last year, Apple Notes was nothing more than a target for my derision. When they announced during the keynote that they had an “all-new” Apple Notes I chortled and rolled my eyes.

Then I started using Apple Notes and the strangest thing happened. I liked it. Not only is Apple Notes a contender, Apple has continued to refine the product. Just last week we got a new beta of an upcoming Mac OS X release that includes additional Apple Notes features. One of those new features is the ability to import Evernote and plain text files. It seemed to me like a perfect excuse to slurp in the rest of my nvALT database so I could really push the application’s limits. Now I’ve got 787 notes in my Apple Notes database. It’s growing daily.

So first this was all a big experiment to see what was wrong with Apple Notes and then I just started using the application. I didn’t admit to myself, or anyone else, that I become an Apple Notes user but apparently I have.

I’ve already written at some length about Apple Notes and a few useful tips. That post resulted in a lot of questions about how I’m organizing my notes. Below is a list of all of my folders.


 

As you can see I’ve got basically three areas of my life: the geek, the lawyer, and the dude. For years I’ve been collecting bits of text relevant to every phase of life. On the legal side, I keep text files on most matters I work on. I split these between the active and closed matters. These include simple things like the name of a court or opposing counsel’s name in addition to any other bits of information I want to have quick access to. As an example, many of these notes have a communications log where I I have a running text list with the date, time, and content of any significant communications for later reference. I also keep bits of research and any other information I may find handy. On the legal side I also sometimes do a bit of research that I know I’m going to want to use again and I keep that is a text note. Finally, I have 286 separate notes including snippets of text I’ve written in the past but may want to use again.

On the MacSparky side I have notebooks related to field guides and everything else. A while ago I started keeping notes on Mac Power Users ad spots. When I come across something interesting with an advertiser’s product, I record it in the text file so I can remember to talk about it in the future episode.

Finally, the personal folder is the catchall. That one runs the gamut of notes I took when reading a book to useful Latin quotes … Sit vis nobiscum.

My 787 notes seem to be synchronizing just fine. When I add something on the iPad and iPhone, the new text makes its way to my MacBook faster than I can open the lid and go looking for it. I’m not aware of losing any data. One of the nice things about my active matters notes is that I can now add a picture. When I’m sitting down with the client and they start explaining something to me I can visually diagram it right in front of them and then keep it digitally. (This is just one more reason why the iPad Pro is increasingly becoming essential to me.

I also find myself frequently using the bullets, checkmarks, and other text features. I gave this tip my prior post but it’s worth repeating: Learn the Mac and iPad keyboard shortcuts.

That doesn’t mean Apple Notes is without fault. I wrote before, and it still remains true, that the text size on the Mac version is just too small. They keep adding new features with the betas and it keeps amazing me that they don’t address this problem.

The search also needs work. Searching in Apple Notes only searches all of your notes. You cannot search inside an individual notebook. I would think that the more appropriate behavior would be that if you are currently in a notebook, search remains inside that notebook. The library of nearly 800 notes, sometimes I just want to search inside an individual notebook.

Apple Notes also only really makes sense if you are on the Apple platform. It doesn’t synchromize across devices like a plaintext system, Evernote, or solutions will.

All that said, I’m on board now with Apple Notes. I’m going to be continuing to use it for the foreseeable future until either Apple stops giving it love and attention or something else new and shiny comes along. You know I like new and shiny things, right?

MPU 306: Tackling Contacts

There’s probably only one podcast in the world where the hosts can spend an hour and a half talking about contacts and still feel like they ran out of time. I’m talking of course about the Mac Power Users.

This week’s episode goes in detail on how to manage contacts on your Mac, iPhone, and iPad. Contacts are more difficult than they should be and there are a lot of good tips, ideas, and application recommendations in this one.