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  • Amazon Echo recorded household audio, sent it to random contact [u]

    Update: An Amazon spokesperson contacted AppleInsider to provide the following statement:

    "Echo woke up due to a word in background conversation sounding like 'Alexa.' Then, the subsequent conversation was heard as a 'send message' request. At which point, Alexa said out loud 'To whom?' At which point, the background conversation was interpreted as a name in the customers contact list. Alexa then asked out loud, '[contact name], right?' Alexa then interpreted background conversation as 'right.' As unlikely as this string of events is, we are evaluating options to make this case even less likely."
    And how do they know this sequence in such detail? Because they log every darn thing. *shiver*
    tallest skilwatto_cobra
  • Rumor: Apple working on new device family under codename 'Star' [u]

    mcdave said:
    MacOS’ codebase will die but the brand and UI will live on and users will be none the wiser.

    The thing that’s baking my noodle is; with so much obsolescence, should Apple bother with ARM ISA for macOS at all or just cut to their own ISA with Swift runtime?

    I agree that when they first migrate the Mac to iOS with a desktop shell they would still call it macOS (maybe macOS 11) in order to minimise disruption to consumers, similar to how when they changed from PPC to Intel they tried to make everything exactly the same. But I think in the long run they would rename it to Apple OS, just because that's their branding/naming scheme for everything now, e.g. Apple TV, Apple Watch, Apple Music, Apple Park basically its the replacement for the old i-branding and I think over time they'll gradually rebrand everything.

    Making a silicon version of the Swift runtime, there'd have to be some pretty big performance gains for them to lock themselves down that much... the hardware Java CPUs never took off. And a bunch of the kernel is written in C. I don't think they would do that, maybe a coprocessor at best, interesting thought though.
    radarthekat
  • Rumor: Apple working on new device family under codename 'Star' [u]

    Darn, sounds like its not a laptop. What could "combo station" mean though?
    canukstorm
  • Rumor: Apple working on new device family under codename 'Star' [u]

    Soli said:
    ascii said:
    Soli said:
    ascii said:
    Soli said:
    ascii said:
    Soli said:
    ascii said:
    This is exciting news because if Apple wants to retire the Mac I would rather move to an iOS notebook than to Windows.

    Also, when Apple retired the Airport a few weeks ago, I and others said it might be because they were moving away from WiFi and focussing on 5G cellular (where the puck is going). And now we have a rumor of a notebook with cellular (joining the phone, ipad and watch). 
    I wouldn't bet on Apple getting rid of Mac or getting rid of WiFi.
    I don't think Mac will die, it will just transition to being iOS with a desktop mode. Someone made a Tweet today pointing out that macOS/OS X is now older than classic MacOS was when Steve gave it a mock funeral. Did you regard the Mac as having died when it made that transition? Because if not, the switch from current macOS to iOS desktop actually be a smaller change. It wouldn't even be a kernel change this time. So if the Mac didn't die that time it wouldn't die this time.

    I don't think they will remove the WiFi radios from their devices, they're cheap enough to just leave in, but they will/have stop selling WiFi infrastructure of their own and start including cellular in everything. A future where little cellular radios are ubiquitous in most smart devices seems to be the future. This how small the Apple Watch is and even it has one.
    You can really see an iMac booting up with iOS on it? I see no future where that happens. Zero chance it's just a bunch of giant icons designed for the iPad on a 27" iMac. macOS on ARM, absolutely; but iOS instead of macOS on a Mac that has no touchscreen display, absolutely not. The OSes are defined by their respective UIs and I/O, not their processor architecture. This is why iOS is unique from tvOS while all running similar ARM configurations.
    As a programmer I see an OS as primarily defined by its APIs not its user interface, and adding a new shell to iOS does not seem like that big of a deal to me. 
    Then you know APIs can be the same disparate Uis and architectures. From last year's WWDC…
    Yup they are gradually unifying APIs on macOS and iOS, and Spotlight is one example. But I just see that as them encouraging Mac developers to code more and more to iOS APIs, so that when they eventually replace macOS with iOS Desktop, the programmers will find their apps are 90% ported already.  

    They have been doing the same thing on the hardware side, ever so slowly making Mac hardware more iOS like. Fewer and fewer replaceable parts. More wireless and less ports. Keyboards so flat they're not much different to typing on a touch screen. Tim Cook likes boiling frogs, he is a patient man.
    So you think they'll replace macOS with something that looks and functions the exact same way for the user on the Mac but cal it iOS Desktop, not macOS to refer to the OS that runs on a Mac and only a Mac? As watchOS grows to make it better for developers do you also think that will happen there, so that watchOS will eventually replace iOS and be called iOS Watchface on the iPhone instead of simply referring to it as iOS? I don't see either of these things ever happening.

    What do you see as the benefit to name a unique OS the same as an OS for a completely different device platform with different I/O? Even if Apple could theoretically make it so that a 3rd party developer could develop for the iPhone and it be 100% compatible for the Mac despite the extremely different UIs and I/O. the branding is for its users, not for coders. So how does calling macOS on a 27" iMac Pro iOS Desktop work for the user or Apple's branding?
    I think they'll eventually get rid of the Mac brand, and even (shock, horror) the "i" brand. They'll have the Apple Watch, Apple TV, Apple Phone, Apple Computer, Apple Glasses. Wouldn't that be consistent with their newest products?

    And they will all run the same OS with different shells. I have been calling it iOS but it could just be appleOS. The benefit to the user would be that you could buy one app that runs on everything, just switching its user interface as needed. 

    This is not a new concept, its just a question of whether Apple is doing it or not. They are definitely unifying their operating systems at a low level but it is unknown whether this is just for efficiency/common sense or part of a bigger plan. Maybe it's just unjustified Platonism but I think the later. The project Marzipan someone mentioned earlier is along these lines so we might get more information at WWDC.
    bikertwinradarthekat
  • Rumor: Apple working on new device family under codename 'Star' [u]

    Soli said:
    ascii said:
    Soli said:
    ascii said:
    Soli said:
    ascii said:
    This is exciting news because if Apple wants to retire the Mac I would rather move to an iOS notebook than to Windows.

    Also, when Apple retired the Airport a few weeks ago, I and others said it might be because they were moving away from WiFi and focussing on 5G cellular (where the puck is going). And now we have a rumor of a notebook with cellular (joining the phone, ipad and watch). 
    I wouldn't bet on Apple getting rid of Mac or getting rid of WiFi.
    I don't think Mac will die, it will just transition to being iOS with a desktop mode. Someone made a Tweet today pointing out that macOS/OS X is now older than classic MacOS was when Steve gave it a mock funeral. Did you regard the Mac as having died when it made that transition? Because if not, the switch from current macOS to iOS desktop actually be a smaller change. It wouldn't even be a kernel change this time. So if the Mac didn't die that time it wouldn't die this time.

    I don't think they will remove the WiFi radios from their devices, they're cheap enough to just leave in, but they will/have stop selling WiFi infrastructure of their own and start including cellular in everything. A future where little cellular radios are ubiquitous in most smart devices seems to be the future. This how small the Apple Watch is and even it has one.
    You can really see an iMac booting up with iOS on it? I see no future where that happens. Zero chance it's just a bunch of giant icons designed for the iPad on a 27" iMac. macOS on ARM, absolutely; but iOS instead of macOS on a Mac that has no touchscreen display, absolutely not. The OSes are defined by their respective UIs and I/O, not their processor architecture. This is why iOS is unique from tvOS while all running similar ARM configurations.
    As a programmer I see an OS as primarily defined by its APIs not its user interface, and adding a new shell to iOS does not seem like that big of a deal to me. 
    Then you know APIs can be the same disparate Uis and architectures. From last year's WWDC…
    Yup they are gradually unifying APIs on macOS and iOS, and Spotlight is one example. But I just see that as them encouraging Mac developers to code more and more to iOS APIs, so that when they eventually replace macOS with iOS Desktop, the programmers will find their apps are 90% ported already.  

    They have been doing the same thing on the hardware side, ever so slowly making Mac hardware more iOS like. Fewer and fewer replaceable parts. More wireless and less ports. Keyboards so flat they're not much different to typing on a touch screen. Tim Cook likes boiling frogs, he is a patient man.
    bikertwinradarthekat