| The Mac matters, Cook won't ignore the Trump-sized elephant in the room and Facebook foists some shareables on you. All that and more in The Daily Crunch for December 20, 2016. Plus if you're building your very own personal digital assistant, Mark Zuckerberg has some tips for you. 1. Tim Cook says the Mac is still 🔑 Apple CEO Tim Cook told employees that he and the company still care about the Mac. That's in spite of a lack of updates on the desktop side this year. But that note, supposedly meant only for internal consumption, came out just ahead of an in-depth piece by Bloomberg that paints a picture of an Apple that might not have abandoned the Mac, but that definitely doesn't prioritize its further development. Bloomberg's Mark Gurman says forthcoming Mac updates will mostly focus on port switches and internal changes, however, so Mac fans shouldn't expect too much in 2017 even if Apple isn't abandoning the Mac completely. 
2. Tim Cook says he met Trump to make sure he was in the arena Tim Cook is doing a lot of communicating with employees lately – he also addressed employee questions about why he attended Trump's recent tech power summit on internal employee communication site Apple Web. Basically, Cook said that you can't make any progress by sitting things out. 3. Facebook is giving you more pre-made stuff to share Perhaps in an attempt to fill the void left by your super empty boring life with something actually worth sharing on its social network, Facebook has introduced new News Feed-topping messages that you can share around shared public events and moments in time. Another reason to share for some – another reason to stay away for others. 4. Try a Touch Bar with an iPad and any Mac Do you like Touch Bar? Maybe you don't know because you haven't tried it yet. Now you can, without visiting an Apple Store or buying a new MacBook Pro. Duet Display now lets you not only use your iPad as an external display for your Mac, but also use a virtual on-screen Touch Bar on any Mac. It's great. 5. Uber's self-driving tech isn't cyclist-friendly Uber's new self-driving cars are only still just learning, but they aren't super friendly for cyclists, since they don't merge into a bike lane prior to performing a right turn. It's the kind of thing not even human drivers get right with any consistency, but Uber engineers are reportedly working on the problem. 6. SuperFlex is building power clothes of a different kind A power suit that gives you the power to actually improve your mobility is a noble goal to pursue, and that's what SRI spin-out SuperFlex is doing. Other, like Hyundai, are chasing this same carrot, which is probably going to turn into a big market as populations age. Plus eventually, Iron Man. 7. And so we come to Jarvis Organically, as it were, we arrive at Zuckerberg's personal assistant, which was inspired by Iron Man's own very capable AI pal. Mark has done the deed and built his home AI as planned, but it's basically a home-brew Siri or Alexa. It does learn and remember musical tastes, however, which is genuinely cool. 
| 
No comments:
Post a Comment