AppleZulu

Is there any indication that this might eventually be enabled on existing vehicles? Mine already displays album covers in the middle of the tachometer, and the dials behind the wheel are already digital. Also the heat and air controls have knobs, but I’m pretty sure they’re fly-by-wire and not mechanical. So that makes me wonder if there are cars on the road already that will be compatible with “CarPlay Ultra.”

davidlewis54 said:

There’s going to have to be a major improvement in how all the iDevices interact with each other if this is going to work.  I have an iPhone, two iPads, Apple Watch, Apple TV, original HomePod and a Mini, plus AirPod Max and AirPod Pro 2, plus a new car with AirPlay.  Yes, lucky me.  However, they do not interact well with both HomePods playing different music, though they are in different rooms with rooms in between and even if I speak softly inches away from one HomePod.  My iPhone won’t Airplay to my HomePods without dropping the connection after a couple of minutes, neither HomePod will play as a radio, and using more than one app in the car causes the connection to collapse.  I can have Apple Maps and most of the time Apple Music playing but add a phone call and it all drops out.

My view is Apple needs to sort out how it wants its devices to operate and interact with one another (it should be faultless, particularly in an home with all the devices on the same WiFi network) and sort out the basics.  There is too much updating all the time.  Quite often nothing works with anything else.  I appreciate as I use public betas they are not infallible but it is all too frequent that the basics just don’t work.

Most of that sounds like network problems. In a stable network, I am continually surprised at how well the statement does at determining which HomePod is the nearest in order to respond to voice requests. AirPlay connections don’t drop. 

elijahg said:

AppleZulu said:

elijahg said:

I wonder if it will be smart enough to access the various iCloud-linked data like calendars, reminders and iMessage without the owner's iPhone connected to the network. At the moment, HomePods complain that they can't access the iPhone. There is no reason HomePod and Apple Watch Siri can't forward requests to ChatGPT either, rather than "i found some results on the web" for anything but the most basic queries.

HomeKit needs more power as well - Home Assistant has the power but usability is poor. The automations in HomeKit are too basic; I have lights that are on low at night and when activity is detected they raise to be brighter. But there is no option to return to previous brightness/scene, they can either stay on at max, or turn off. You can sort of do it with shortcuts, but it's a faff.

That's a security measure rather than a 'not smart enough' thing. The HomePod's ability to use voice recognition to identify the user is pretty good, but requiring your iPhone to be connected to the same network makes it far less likely that someone without authorization could use your HomePod to access your personal data and communications while you're out of the house. 

If it's about security, why does it not use my phone's most recent location as long as it was updated at most a few minutes ago? Security may be a desirable (or not) side effect, but it's definitely not the primary reason it doesn't work. In fact, I'd wager that it would work just fine if my phone was connected over a VPN to the home network, giving a false sense of security.

I’m not sure if I understand your question, but a routine that asks ‘does the voice making a request to a HomePod have a matching user’s iPhone on the same network’ seems both more secure and faster than one that asks instead for the iPhone’s location within the last few minutes. Also, I don’t have a home-linked VPN for testing, but I’d be willing to bet that wouldn’t work. 

Here we go again. Remember, macOS runs everything from a MacBook Air to a Mac Pro. A touch interface on a desktop workstation is an ergonomic nightmare. The menu-driven macOS is not conducive to touch interactions. Adding a bloatware alternative touch UI layer to the same OS did nothing for MS Windows. The MS Surface is not a device being held up in Apple boardrooms while Tim Cook screams "we have to make Apple be more like this!" 

A folding iPhone is a costly gimmick with no decipherable use case.

The only one of these things that makes any sense is a folding iPad. The would be utility to a large screen iPad that can be folded in half for easier portability. Such a device would not require an additional outer screen, and could maintain the same aspect ration for the folding screen as is used by every other iPad. This means iPad OS would require very little additional code to support the folding model. This is also true for iPadOS apps. A folding iPad would also be far less vulnerable to wear and damage from the convulsive, repetitive folding and unfolding that would quickly damage a folding iPhone. 

Apple does not make devices to satiate fan-fiction fantasies, and they don't add bells and whistles just because other manufacturers do. The Apple pipeline is not steered by FOMO. 

jwdawso said:

Hey guys - I enjoy your articles! But this article is just barroom talk and actually does a disservice to the AppleInsider brand. It will just drive away part of your followers. 

Except it's not "just barroom talk." It's a level-headed review of the damage already done by the current administration's tariff and trade war. It's real, and it's going to hit a lot of people really hard. A 90-day partial reprieve on tariffs isn't going to fix the damage already done. Some things will be more expensive, and many things will be unavailable because businesses already didn't place orders for imported goods because they couldn't absorb the cost and they knew they couldn't sell anything by passing along the costs to their customers. The partial reprieve is better than no reprieve, but it does nothing to fix the instability and broken trust already created by this administration. Many businesses that didn't place orders under a 145% tariff won't be anxious to try at a temporary 30%, particularly because the administration's whiplash changes already going back an forth mean that an order placed now under the temporary expectation that the tariff will be 30% has a significant risk of being much higher by the time the goods are produced and arrive at the Port of Los Angeles. 

If you're driven away by information sources that don't just tell you what you want to hear, then you should probably reevaluate how you seek out and take in information. If your other sources of news just tell you how great the current administration is, it's not news, it's propaganda.