widmark

A lot of this seems like a land grab by the EU… BUT… bringing some competition for still abysmally bad Siri on iOS is a good thing. Siri will get much better quickly with competition. Siri is still going nowhere fast compared to competitors because it has no iOS integrated voice assistant competition.  Look at the dramatic improvement in Maps given Waze and Google Maps are easily used on iOS.  I for one will not be using alternatives to Siri because of security issues and tracking in the competitor products.

Developers will no doubt modify their apps to detect presence of the notch and user setting, and menu will auto adjust.  It will take time to get there.  For most people, keeping the notch will be worth will extra screen real estate once the developers adjust apps for the new feature.  Smart by Apple, but if you hate it, overridable.  I didn’t like the touch bar because you couldn’t override it and get your physical function keys back, but this is different.

charlesn said:

I'm normally a 100% Apple guy, but the three smart speakers in my home are all Alexa-based because Siri is useless for too many things. It's that simple. And better HomePod software isn't going to change that. My impression is that Apple's Siri division basically slept through the last decade while Amazon left them in the dust when it comes to Alexa connectivity to the internet of things. Building a better speaker doesn't matter when it comes with a dumber assistant. 

It really is astonishing how useless Siri is most of the time given the amount of time they’ve had to correct course.  It still can’t do what Google Assistant was doing 5 years ago much less come close to it today.  I still don’t use Google products because they track everything they can.  Come on Apple.

Native for M1?

djames4242 said:

Not sure that diminishing App Store submissions directly correlates to diminishing Mac development.

Agree. As the Mac moves from Intel to M1, new app developers presumably want to focus on M1 and want a large enough installed base of M1 Macs to justify their effort. Seems too iOS developers will begin the work of making their iOS apps available on Mac App Store when that M1 base is worth it. Maybe the calm before… maybe not a storm.. but a beefy rain at least.