Notsofast

22july2013 said:

colinng said:

@Racerhomie3, you can just turn it off on your device (if you're in an abusive household). 

Maybe in America, but in many countries in the world where women are legally treated as property the wife(s) would not be allowed to turn this off without the penalty of divorce. In those countries it probably stands for "Find My Females." 

If someone is unfortunately in such a situation, there are already many apps, etc., where someone can track a phone or other device.

Respected analyst Neil Cybart persuasively calls IDC numbers "embarrassingly" wrong,  and here's more from an article that discusses Cybart's refutation as well as an overall alleged pattern of intentionally misleading estimates from IDC.

IDC data is much more suspect than "historically underestimating iPhone sales."  Remember, no other phone manufacturer reports their actual sales figures so, ALL of its data is suspect and unverifiable.  

IDC's subset of publicly reported data isn't designed to give away valuable free information as a public service. Market research groups sell their reports to companies for $10,000 or more, so when they issue free bits of public data, journalists should review these reports with some healthy skepticism and consider why they're getting free data that tells such compelling stories. 

This is particularly the case because those stories are often wrong to the point of clearly not being just a mistake. There's a history of market data firms releasing bad data coached to make winners look like losers and losers look like winners. 

In fact, that's a primary goal of these groups, as history shows beyond a shadow of a doubt. These companies even admit that they work, not to enlighten the public with free data, but to help their paying clients with "influencing consumer behavior and buying preferences." 

We've caught IDC and other market research groups reporting estimated numbers that didn't align with Apple's actual data before, including massive underestimations of Mac sales as part of an overall misleading history of reporting in PC sales and of course in tablet sales."


https://roughlydraftedbeta.com/home/2019/5/2/idc-latest-estimate-of-q1-2019-iphone-sales-highly-inaccurate-to-the-point-of-embarrassing

simbalion said:

Both the commenters above probably aren’t aware at how dependent modern day apps and websites are on third party analytics and behavioral analytics software. Think simple ones like google analytics, mixpanel. More advanced ones like fullstory.

for the most part these are not insidious money grubbing moves by pbs and actually are used by product teams to understand things like what features aren’t being used etc. 

im hoping Apple isn’t just taking this blanket ban as a PR move and unreasonably taking this weird stance against these innocuous tools. 

LOL. Google Analytics is a tracker that is placed on almost all web sites that captures your personal data about your web searches, clicks, etc.,cross site tracks you, and then sends that data back to Google for inclusion into your virtual dossier.

Please help educate Americans who are confused about these tax credits. Because of so much inaccurate reporting, many Americans believe Wisconsin has given billions to Foxconn. That's not true, and it's not ever going to be true. What Wisconsin did is to say if you build your factory here and create thousands of jobs, we will give you a break regarding the taxes you would have to pay. Whether you agree with giving companies tax credits like this, it's very different than taking existing tax dollars and giving them to a company. Ditto with how it was falsely and ignorantly reported that NY was giving huge amounts of to Amazon that could be used for other purposes. LOL. Those dollars were credits against the tax dollars that Amazon would owe. And now that Amazon isn't coming there, they don't exist!

Many good points.  Think you're off base in your description of voice assistants and the importance of Siri in Apple's near and longer term future.  First, you're correct about Google, Amazon, etc., in not "selling" products, and yes, surveys show only a tiny number of people actually buy things through them, but that's not their real goal.  They can't admit it, but Google Assistant and Echo are data collection devices, and in that regard they are enormously successful.  Amazing that people are oblivious or don't care that everything they say in front of GA is sent to Google's servers and retained forever and linked to what they call a "universal identifier" which is their virtual dossier they build on every person they can.

As far as Siri, I think you're wrong about the massive amounts of money Apple is pouring into Siri.  Tim Cook periodically touts that Siri is the most used, by far, digital assistant in the world, and is really the most powerful in terms of what she can do, how many languages she speaks, etc.  They are also incorporating Siri into every device because they realize how important voice will be to wearables, etc., e.g., AirPods, Beats, Apple Watch, etc..  Augmented Reality is going to be heavily integrated with Voice/Siri and Siri will be integral in any successful effort.   

Siri is a sleeper because the Internet meme is that "Siri sucks," but nothing could be further from the truth.  Indeed, Siri has a long way to go, but as I wrote above, Siri is by far the most used in the world, and as multiple studies show, as is second in terms of accuracy to Google, ahead of Echo, and closing fast.  Siri does very well on the things that people actually want to currently do with their assistants, e.g., play music, podcasts, make phone calls, check on traffic, read and send messages, check sports and weather, set timers, alarms, control Homekit devices, etc.  I concur that once you buy a Homepod and start using Siri in these regards, you'll never go back and wonder why you waited so long. Ditto for Siri and Apple TV, makes it so much more convenient to tell Siri to pause, play a show, go back, etc.  "What did they say?" feature is an ingenious simple delight.

Siri doesn't have thousands of "skills" like Amazon, but it turns out that surveys show most people haven't used a single one of those separate skills for echo. More importantly, with the new Siri shortcuts, you can make any skill you want, so if you want to duplicate the Amazon "skill" of making a fart sound, you can make a Siri shortcut do it as well,  all without sacrificing your privacy and having contract workers in the Ukraine listening to fart sounds in your home!

Finally, making Siri more conversational is the Holy Grail.  That's why Apple bought and is buying companies like VocalIQ (read up on this), as the ability to have sequential conversations, etc., will lead to massive and adoption across the board and is essential part of Apple's future.