Links
Voice Assistants' Blind Spot
Smart Audio Report on Smart Speaker Adoption in the U.S. – MacStories:
To me, this suggests that either owners of smart speakers aren't familiar with smartphone assistants (I doubt it) or that there is indeed something useful about stationary speakers that smartphones can't fully replicate.
Federico Viticci nails it here. As
Game
FIFA 18 Sold Better on Switch than PS4 in Japan
FIFA 18 Switch Has Officially Outsold The PS4 Version In Japan | NintendoSoup:
FIFA 18 sales on Nintendo Switch have officially overtaken FIFA 18 sales on PS4. According to Dengeki Online, as of January 7, 2018, the PS4 version has sold 77,892 copies since launch, while the Switch version sold 89,329 copies.
This oh
Links
OnePlus Shuts Down Credit Card Payments on its Online Store
An Update on Credit Card Security - OnePlus Forums:
As a precaution, we are temporarily disabling credit card payments at oneplus.net. PayPal is still available, and we are exploring alternative secure payment options with our service providers.
This comes one day after dozens of OnePlus customers reported fraudulent activity on their cards right after buying
Links
Philips Hue App Getting a Much Needed Update Soon
Philips announced a few new things to do with their Hue line of products at CES this week, and this part stood out to me the most:
In Q2 2018, the company plans to update its iOS and Android apps to version 3.0, bringing about a redesign of the app inspired by comments and
Links
Titanic
The Insane True Story Of How "Titanic" Got Made - BuzzFeed
Mechanic told him, “this film is wildly out of control. Nothing is going to change that. All we can do now is contain it. So here are some scenes we’d like you to cut from the shooting schedule.” Cameron studied the list
Links
Lifesum health tracking app adds new AI image recognition feature for food logging | 9to5Mac
Lifesum health tracking app adds new AI image recognition feature for food logging | 9to5Mac:
Lifesum, a popular calorie counter and nutrition tracking app on iOS, is rolling out a new image recognition feature that allows users to snap a picture of their food to log ingredients and nutrition information
I've used this feature
Links
What Spectre and Meltdown Mean for JavaScript
Will Spectre & Meltdown Break JavaScript? - Developer Drive:
Even if we did magically get perfect fixes for the Meltdown and Spectre problems, this is going to spark a larger conversation about security and JavaScript in particular. I mean, what other bits of hardware could be compromised by a simple web page? This could happen again.
Links
Transmit for iOS Bites the Dust
This is a sad day:
Transmit iOS made about $35k in revenue in the last year, representing a minuscule fraction of our overall 2017 app revenue. That’s not enough to cover even a half-time developer working on the app. And the app needs full-time work — we’d love to be adding all
Links
Paul Thurrott says Intel Mislead (and continues to mislead) the Industry
Paul Thurrott has some choice words for Intel in how they have handled the recent Spectre/Meltdown exploits:
But if I were to point the finger of blame at one company here, and I will, it would have to be Intel. The microprocessor giant has behaved in an irresponsible manner that is just hard to
Links
Unlock Your Mac Easily with Unlox
There are 5 reasons you probably want to get Unlox for iOS and macOS (formerly MacID).
One, if you have a strong password on your Mac and you don’t want to enter that long code every time you open your computer, Unlox lets you authenticate with your iPhone via Touch ID or Face ID.
Android
Essentially a Disaster
Andrew Martonik has some choice words for the Essential Phone over at Android Central:
Aside from the hardware, every other aspect of my Essential Phone experience has been about frustration. Mostly, it boils down to horrendous software stability and performance. Despite dozens of updates and the anecdotes you may have seen that indicate performance issues
Links
Save $5 at Fandango When You Use Apple Pay
MacRumors reporting:
Apple is offering an Apple Pay promotion this week that discounts Fandango movie tickets by $5 when you make a purchase using either the Fandango app or the Fandango.com website.
This is exactly the sort of thing I was hoping Apple would start doing. Android Pay has done this once or twice
Links
Settling into your Smart Assistant Groove
When Alexa Becomes Part of the Family - Slate:
“I thought that I would be continuously testing the new features that came out of it, that it would always be a source of something novel,” Primiano said of her Echo. “But in reality what happened was that I settled down upon certain Alexa features that I
Links
Ulysses’ Early Adopter Promotion Ending Soon
In case you didn’t realize, my favorite writing app of all time switched to a subscription model earlier in the year. As any move to subscriptions results in some bad blood with the community (although rarely from me), the good folks over there have been allowing people who have bought the app previously to
Game
Civilization VI (all of it!) Comes to iPad
Correction: now through January 4, the full game upgrade is on sale for $30.
In yet another surprise iOS game release this month, Civilization VI just hit the App Store. No, not some watered down mobile version of the game, this is the entire PC game from last year.
You can download the game for
Links
When the Tech Press Strikes Out
You’ve probably heard about the fact that Apple has confirmed they throttle iPhone performance down when battery health degrades past a certain threshold. This means that if your iPhone’s battery starts to struggle to hold a charge like it used to, the phone will slow down slightly to make sure your phone stays
Links
AutoSleep is Far and Away the Best Way for Apple Watch Users to Track Their Sleep
AutoSleep is my go to sleep tracking app for the Apple Watch and it got a big update today:
Much faster, simpler and more accurate.
Now with automatic "live" sleep tracking on the Watch face! No buttons to press.
iPhone X Support. Optimised for WatchOS 4.
I love this tracker because it requires