Apple’s new Intercom feature lets you use HomePods to send short audio messages to almost anyone with an Apple device. While Apple showcased Intercom when unveiling the upcoming HomePod mini smart speaker, the feature also works with the regular HomePod as well as iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch and more.
If you a HomePod, and you’ve updated it (and your other Apple devices) with the latest software, you can use Intercom to communicate with your family or housemates in new ways.
Apple took the wraps of the HomePod mini Tuesday, showcasing a pint-size smart speaker that promises high-end audio at a lower price than its big brother. But the most interesting parts might have nothing to do with music.
With Apple’s custom U1 ultra-wideband chip inside, the HomePod mini also can serve as an advanced hub for home automation. A new Intercom feature promises to connect family members wherever they are. And, in typical Cupertino fashion, the speaker will work closely with other Apple devices.
Are you sick of Siri on Apple Watch butting into your conversations? Prevent it by customizing the way Siri works, or by disabling it altogether. It’s easy to do and it fixes one of Apple Watch’s biggest annoyances.
We’ll show you how.
A company based in Shanghai has filed a patent-infringement lawsuit that could stop Apple from offering products with its Siri voice assistant in China, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Does the voice data harvested by voice assistants like Siri give tech giants an unfair marketplace advantage? Lawmakers in Europe are currently pondering that exact question.
A European Commission investigation into the matter will look at whether this data is being used to stifle competition and maintain the position of companies like Apple and Amazon in the marketplace. This most notably relates to the rapidly expanding constellation of smart, connected devices.
“Hey Siri” can be inadvertently activated by other wake words including “A city,” “Hey Jerry,” and more, reveal researchers from Germany’s Ruhr-Universität Bochum and the Bochum Max Planck Institute.
Siri’s far from the only voice assistant with a weakness when it comes to false triggers, however. The study compiled a list of over 1,000 words that can accidentally activate different A.I. assistants.
If you ever stumble across a lost iPhone or iPad, you’ll want to sell it safely return it to its owner as quickly as possible. But how do you find out who it belongs to? Just ask Siri! Find out how with this handy pro tip.
You don’t need to be using a Disney face to get your Apple Watch to tell you the time. Using a simple tap gesture, you can have the time read to you while using any watch face. Find out how in this Apple Watch pro tip.
Apple purchased Inductiv, a Canadian company that focused on using artificial intelligence to clean up data. They created HoloClean, which was designed to get useful predictions from “noisy, incomplete, and erroneous data.”
The employees of Inductiv joined the team developing Siri, Apple’s voice-driven AI assistant, according to Bloomberg.
Ireland’s Data Protection Commission is questioning Apple over privacy concerns raised by an ex-contractor who transcribed users’ Siri requests in an effort to improve the voice assistant’s functionality.
Former Apple contractor Thomas le Bonniec this week said Apple should be “urgently investigated” over Siri data collection. It seems that the EU’s data protection authorities are listening.
A former Apple contractor says that Apple and other tech giants continue to ignore and violate “fundamental rights” with their “massive collection of data.” And he wants them investigated for it.
Thomas le Bonniec is one of the ex-Apple contractors whose job involved listening to users’ Siri recordings. News of the practice broke last year, but this is the first time le Bonniec has gone public.
Apple is seemingly looking to step up its work in speech translation, showing one more way that Cupertino is looking to incorporate cutting-edge approaches to artificial intelligence into what it does.
In a recent paper, published to the pre-print server arXiv, two Apple research scientists describe the challenges in the field, carrying out a fundamental survey of the problems with current speech translation.
No, they don’t have a magical solution. But the fact that Apple gave them such a task suggests the company takes seriously the need to hone its tools in this area.
Between a pandemic sweeping the world and the ramped-up rhetoric of a U.S. election year, 2020 has felt pretty apocalyptic thus far. It seems that Siri agrees, too — at least, based on the AI assistant’s response to the question, “How long until 2020 ends?”
Siri’s answer varies depending on when you ask the question. But one thing’s consistent: The doomsday clock only has a few hours left on it. Fortunately, there’s a logical explanation.
With all the iOS 14 leaks dropping ahead of WWDC 2020 we already have a pretty solid idea which new features will make the cut, but concept designer Stijn van Oosterwijk has a couple dozen other ideas that would make iOS 14 the biggest iPhone update ever.
Oosterwijk’s new iOS 14 concept video is jammed with new features. The video starts with a new incoming call screen and keeps pouring on other goodies. There’s lock screen widgets, a completely new Tools app, a translate app, an AR experience within the Maps app and so much more.
How many new features can you count?
A brilliant new iOS 14 concept shows how useful it would be to have multiple docks at the bottom of the iPhone’s Home screen.
The multiple-dock UI, published by designer Alessandro Chiarlitti over the weekend, would basically let you toggle between different widgets at the bottom of the screen. That would give you quick access to music controls and other apps without opening them.
Check it out in action:
Spotify’s newest update on iOS, out Thursday, lets users control their music using Siri on Apple Watch. Simply add “on Spotify” to the end of your voice commands to play your favorites artists, albums, playlists, and more.
Apple is jumping into the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic with a new website and app that allow visitors to screen themselves for COVID-19 symptoms.
The company partnered with the Centers for Disease Prevention and Control for the new site and app, found at Apple.com/covid19 and on the App Store. The goal is to give people resources so they can stay informed on steps they can take to protect their health during the coronavirus outbreak.
Apple enhanced its Siri voice assistant Saturday with a step-by-step query instructing users on determining if they have been exposed to COVID-19, the worldwide coronavirus pandemic.
The instructions are based on specific instructions from the U.S. Public Health Service, a division of the Department of Health and Human Services, as well as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Thanks to unprecedented early leaks, some of the biggest new features planned for iOS 14 have already been spoiled. Apple is supposedly making some huge changes to the Home screen, iMessages, HomeKit, Apple Pencil and much more in its next-gen mobile operating system.
The recent wave of leaks proved so overwhelming that we rounded them all up in one place. We will keep updating the list as we inch closer to this summer’s Worldwide Developers Conference, where Apple traditionally previews all of its upcoming platform updates.
It’s hard to imagine not hearing that voice. So smart, so reassuring, so — Siri.
That familiar iOS voice isn’t going anywhere, but a report claims Apple is working on a “software framework” to give developers custom voice synthesizers.
iOS 14 will ship with a brand-new Home screen layout that allows users to arrange icons in a list, according to a new report. The view is expected to be customizable and will incorporate Siri Suggestions for making your most frequently used apps easier to access.
It could be the biggest change to the Home screen since the first version of iOS debuted with the original iPhone in 2007.
Bose is rolling out a big firmware update for a bunch of SoundTouch speakers that adds AirPlay 2 support. You can install it via the free SoundTouch app for iPhone and iPad.
AirPlay 2 lets you stream audio from your Apple devices, and enables multi-room audio playback with other compatible speakers.
When I was a kid, we communicated in class by writing notes on pieces of paper, and passing them to other kids. It was called “passing notes,” and is now probably taught in schools as an artisanal pastime, along with “going outside” and conkers. In 2020, kids use insane workarounds to avoid actual writing.
Today we’ll see how to “pass notes” using nothing but two $700 iPhones and two $160 pairs of AirPods.
You know when you reply to a message on your Apple Watch, and it’s such a pain to write it out a letter at a time or to dictate your reply (only to have Siri mishear you)? The alternative is to use one of Apple Watch’s canned responses. Unfortunately, they all sound like your account got hacked, or that you don’t care about the sender enough to come up with a proper reply.
However, you can customize those replies to make them much more useful. And with one clever trick, you can make Apple Watch smart replies sound just like you really wrote them.
If you have a pair of AirPods Pro, then you know all about noise cancellation. That’s kind of the whole point of Apple’s top-tier AirPods, from the noise-sealing silicone tips to the software Ear Tip Fit Test. You probably also know that you can deactivate noise cancellation, and even quick-switch modes by squeezing the shaft of one of the earbuds.
But what if you never want to disable the excellent active noise cancellation on your AirPods Pro? Maybe you keep accidentally deactivating the feature (like I do). Today we’ll see how to switch off the shaft-squeezing shortcuts — and how to access them from your iPhone’s lock screen instead.