Google's Assistant and Amazon's Alexa are rapidly increasing their reach, and Apple's Siri is supposedly getting smarter. But all of these AI assistants are still too clumsy in day to day. David Pierce, writing for WSJ: My virtual assistant desperately wants to help me. Google Assistant, Amazon's Alexa, Apple's Siri -- even Samsung's Bixby and others -- have begun allowing users to set up "routines" that combine many actions into a single command. Shout "OK Google, good morning!" at your smart speaker and it can (in theory) open the blinds, turn on the lights, show you traffic and your calendar and turn on NPR. Tell Alexa to start a dance party, and watch it turn on the disco ball and fire up the "Glitter and Glowsticks" playlist. These routines embody what virtual assistants are meant to do, connecting all our gadgets and services and making everything work together. All you have to do is ask. And maybe not even that -- these tools aim to get to know you so well, they'll anticipate your needs. But these multistep systems are complicated to create, and they often require buying "smart" accessories and memorizing specific phrases.

In most cases, voice-controlled assistants have hit a wall where they perform a specific set of tasks well and not much else. They may be crazy ambitious, but they aren't ready to take on real work. If you are willing to do some finagling, there are already ways to make your devices and services work together better. Tools like IFTTT and Zapier let you connect web services, so you can automatically save every photo you share on Instagram into a Dropbox folder, or file your sales contacts into a spreadsheet. [...] All these tools offer sample routines, and I recommend trying a few. If you want to create a specific routine from scratch, just know: It's hard. It feels like putting together Ikea furniture without the instructions -- most of the pieces are there, but good luck building something that stands up. [...] A sufficiently smart home should observe and adapt to your needs. That kind of proactive, thoughtful help is a long way off. It will require computers that understand far more about us than they do now.

If the late 2018 deal that brought Apple Music to Amazon Echo speakers wasn't surprising enough, Samsung today announced a similar partnership with Apple for 2018 and 2019 Samsung Smart TVs: support for iTunes movies, iTunes TV shows, and AirPlay 2 will be coming in spring 2019. From a report: The deal is all but unprecedented for Apple, which has historically restricted playback of iTunes videos solely to its own devices, including Apple TVs, iPods, iPhones, iPads, and Macs, with no support for competing media players such as Roku, or various smart TV platforms. That said, PCs running iTunes have been able to play iTunes videos, and the company has allowed third-parties to license both AirPlay and AirPlay 2 for years. According to Samsung, a firmware update to 2018 Smart TVs will add a new iTunes Movies and TV Shows app in more than 100 countries. AirPlay 2 will become available on Samsung Smart TVs in 190 countries around the world. There are lots of unanswered questions about this iTunes deal. The Verge: Is Apple going to allow Samsung's smart TV tracking to snoop on iTunes viewers? Smart TVs are notorious for tracking what people watch, but Apple's entire brand is privacy. What usage data will Samsung see from the iTunes app?

Samsung smart TVs run Tizen, Samsung's wacky custom operating system. Is Apple building a Tizen iTunes app? Is there a Tizen team inside Apple? Or is Samsung building this app? Who will be in charge of updating it and fixing bugs? Smart TV apps are not known for being updated well or very often.

An anonymous reader shared a report: Historically, Apple hasn't had an official presence at CES. It's not surprising given the company's success at hosting and hyping its own product launch events -- long before the iPod and iPhone brought Apple to the top of the technology mountain, Steve Jobs keynotes were can't miss events. The company is also very deliberate about its marketing campaigns; when I see Apple billboard ads, they focus on new product close-ups with minimal messaging. This is why the giant ad banner I saw when I arrived in Las Vegas yesterday for CES 2019 caught my eye. Positioned not far from the convention center where CES takes place, the sign is a cheeky riff on the old "what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas" slogan -- and with just a few words, it casts an Apple-shaped shadow over the convention.

Fred Imbert, writing for CNBC: Larry Kudlow, director of the National Economic Council, said Friday that Apple's technology may have been stolen by the Chinese. "I don't want to surmise too much here, but Apple technology may have been picked off by China and now China is becoming very competitive with Apple. You've got to have rule of law," Kudlow said in an interview with Bloomberg. "There are some indications from China that they're looking at that, but we don't know that yet. There's no enforcement; there's nothing concrete." Kudlow's comments came shortly after China's Commerce Ministry said Chinese and U.S. officials will meet next week to discuss trade. Both countries have been engaged in a trade spat for months that has sent ripples through global markets. John Gruber at DaringFireball comments: I think what he's saying here is that the Chinese stole Apple technology, copied it, and are now flooding the Chinese market with phones based on that stolen tech. I'm 99.8 percent certain that hasn't happened -- if there were Chinese phones built with stolen Apple technology we'd know it because we'd see it.

During the holiday season, Apple's App Store broke records with customers spending over $1.22 billion between Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve. On New Year's Day alone customers spent $322 million, setting a new record for the App Store's biggest single day. CNET reports: "The App Store had a record-breaking holiday week and New Year's Day. The holiday week was our biggest week ever with more than $1.22 billion spent on apps and games, and New Year's Day set a new single-day record at more than $322 million," said Phil Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing. Gaming and self-care were the most popular app categories over the holidays. The Cupertino tech company calls out Fortnite, PUBG, Brawl Stars, Asphalt 9 and Monster Strike as the top downloaded games.

Qualcomm is enforcing a court order banning the sale of some iPhones in Germany that violate its patents on power-saving technology. As a result, Apple is likely going to pull some iPhone models from its German stores. Reuters reports: The chipmaker posted the [security] bonds of 1.34 billion euros ($1.52 billion) as part of a legal requirement by a German court, which found on Dec. 20 that Apple had infringed Qualcomm patents on power-saving technology used in smartphones. The iPhone maker had earlier said it would pull iPhone 7 and 8 models from its 15 stores in Germany when the order came into force. The order took effect when Qualcomm posted the bond. According to the court order, Apple has to stop the sale, offer for sale and importation for sale of all infringing iPhones in Germany. Apple had said it was appealing the decision. The court also ordered Apple to recall the affected iPhones from third-party resellers in Germany, according to a statement by Qualcomm.

On Wednesday, Apple CEO Tim Cook issued a dire warning to his investors. Apple, the world's first trillion dollar company, lowered its revenue forecast for the first time since 2002, thanks primarily to China, he said. But there was at least one more issue at play.

Motherboard: The lengthy letter cites, specifically, that people are buying fewer iPhones because they are repairing their old ones. Apple has long fought efforts that would make iPhones easier to repair: It has lobbied against right to repair efforts in several states, doesn't sell iPhone replacement parts, sued an independent repair professional in Norway, worked with Amazon to get iPhone and MacBook refurbishers kicked off Amazon Marketplace, and has deals with electronics recyclers that require them to shred iPhones and MacBooks (as opposed to allowing them to be refurbished.) The Department of Homeland Security, meanwhile, has seized iPhone replacement parts from prominent right to repair activists in the United States.

[...] Apple has never clearly articulated why it doesn't want people to fix their own iPhones or to have independent experts repair them. It has previously said that iPhones are "too complex" for users to repair them, even though replacing a battery is pretty easy and is done by average users all the time. But the fact that repair hurts Apple's bottom line came out in Cook's official communication with shareholders, who he is legally obligated to tell the truth to.

MikeChino writes: Is Apple branching out into clever clothing? On January 1, 2019, the tech giant was awarded an original design patent for "Fabric." First filed for in September 2016, the "Fabric" patent shows a swatch of a ridged material in gray, dark gray, and white to represent contrasting appearances. Apple has filed for several patents in the last few years related to combining technology with fabric, but this is the first glimpse we've had at what that fabric might look like. The "smart" fabric could sense environmental changes, warn the wearer of various events, and/or respond to pressure and touch.

As Dwell notes, "Apple's other fabric-related patents have involved a jacket that sends tactile or audible signals to visually and hearing impaired users -- so they can walk around without a cane or guide dog -- and a force-sensing fabric with interwoven circuits that could be used in a glove to track a wearer's vital signs and control devices wirelessly."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Apple CEO Tim Cook published a letter to investors today warning of weaker than expected first-quarter earnings, citing "fewer iPhone upgrades than we had anticipated." The weakened demand came primarily from China, although Cook notes that "in some developed markets, iPhone upgrades also were not as strong as we thought they would be." In his letter, Cook offers several explanations for the lower earnings guidance: earlier launch timing of the iPhone XS and XS Max compared to the iPhone X, the strength of the US dollar, supply constraints due to the number of new products Apple released in the fall, and overall economic weakness in some markets. But the core issue remains simple: people just aren't buying as many new iPhones as Apple hoped. All in all, Apple's revised Q1 guidance forecast is dropping by up to $9 billion in revenue compared to its original estimate.

Glenn Fleishman, writing for MacWorld: It seems like it was only yesterday that I first used BareBones Software's BBEdit, but in actuality, yesterday is so far away -- 25 years, in fact. With all the twists and turns across more than two decades of Apple as a company, Mac hardware, and the underlying operating system, you might think that BBEdit stands alone as a continuously-developed app shepherded largely or exclusively by the same independent developer -- an app without a giant company behind it. As it turns out, BBEdit is one of several apps that's been around the block more than a few times.

The longevity of indie apps is more extraordinary when you consider the changes Apple put the Mac through from the early 1990s to 2018. Apple switched from Motorola 680x0 processors to PowerPC to Intel chips, from 32-bit to 64-bit code, and among supported coding languages. It revved System 7 to 8 to 9, then to Unix across now 15 major releases (from 10.0 to 10.14). That's a lot for any individual programmer or small company to cope with. Bare Bones's head honcho, Rich Siegel, and the developers behind three other long-running Mac software programs shared with me their insight on development histories for over 25 years, what's changed the most during that time, and any hidden treasures users haven't yet found. You can hear more on BareBones Software's in this recent episode of The Talk Show, a podcast by DaringFireball's John Gruber.

From a 9to5Mac report: As the new year begins in Pacific Time, where Apple's Cupertino headquarters are based, the AirPower charging mat has officially missed its 2018 release window. The charging mat promised to charge iPhone, Apple Watch and AirPods on a single compact mat with flexibility on where devices can be placed. However, the product has been rumored to have faced internal development challenges as late as this past summer, which prevented Apple from bringing the product to market as smoothly as it expected.

[...] Unusually, Apple has not provided a statement to press with an update on AirPower's status. Apple refused to acknowledge the product at its September and October events, and has not responded to press requests for comment at the end of December. The product therefore enters 2019 still in limbo.

Apple has for years been a premium brand that rarely, if ever discounted products. Every year, the company could raise prices on products, and consumers would not only happily pay, but stand in long lines for the privilege of doing so. From a report: So when Apple started putting misleading, but seemingly consumer-friendly posters in front of Apple Stores at the end of 2018 offering a new iPhone model for $300 off (with trade-in of your current phone), you know something different happened for the company this year. Consumers fought back. Many analysts have reported that in the wake of poorer-than-expected sales for this year's crop of iPhones, Apple cut back on production, including on the $1,100 iPhone XS Max, the $999 iPhone XS and the XR, the "budget" model that replaced the previous entry-level new phone, the $349 SE. The price for the XR (the one Apple is hawking discounts for): $749.

"This should be a wakeup call for Apple," says Daniel Ives, an analyst with Wedbush Securities. "They swung, and they really missed." The prices on the new phones are "far too high," says Terry Walton, a tourist from Auckland, New Zealand. He has an iPhone 7 and didn't even consider any of the X-series iPhones because it still works just fine. Upgrading "didn't enter my mind at all," he says. It wasn't just iPhones that got price hikes. Apple also upped the cost of the top-of-the-line iPad to $1,000 as well (or over $2,800 for a loaded model) and added $300 to the cost of the Mac Mini and new MacBook Air computers.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Netflix is further distancing itself from Apple's 15% iTunes tax bracket. Earlier this year, the streaming giant enabled iOS users in more than two dozen markets to bypass the iTunes payment method as part of an experiment. The company now tells VentureBeat that it has concluded the experiment and has incorporated the change globally. "We no longer support iTunes as a method of payment for new members," a Netflix spokesperson told VentureBeat. Existing members, however, can continue to use iTunes as a method of payment, the spokesperson added. Additionally, the support rep added that customers who are rejoining Netflix using an iOS device, after having canceled payment for at least one month, also won't be able to use iTunes billing. The move, which will allow Netflix to keep all proceeds from its new paying iPhone and iPad customers, underscores the tension between developers and the marquee distributors of mobile apps -- Apple and Google.

schwit1 shares a National Review report: After three years, there is no proof that Apple's, Google's, and Microsoft's infiltration of the classroom is producing actual academic improvement and results. Take Facebook's efforts for an example. The company -- under fire for privacy breaches worldwide -- is peddling something called "Summit Learning," a web-based curriculum bankrolled by CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan. Last month, students in New York City schools walked out in protest of the program. "It's annoying to just sit there staring at one screen for so long," freshman Mitchel Storman, 14, told the New York Post. He spends close to five hours a day on Summit classes in algebra, biology, English, world history, and physics. Teacher interaction is minimal. "You have to teach yourself," Storman rightly complained. No outside research supports any claim that Summit Learning actually enhances, um, learning. What more studies are showing, however, is that endless hours of screen time are turning kids into zombies who are more easily distracted, less happy, less socially adept, and less physically fit. Standing up to the Silicon Valley Santas and asserting your family's "right to no" may well be the best long-term gift you can give your school-age children.

According to several reports, iPhone users around the world who have upgraded to the latest version of iOS are finding that it cuts off mobile data services. From a report: One Twitter user @kevbruh says that "Apple update 12.1.1, I had no cellular data. I tried inserting my SIM card again, hard resetting my device, and tried resetting the network settings. Nothing happened and the problem persists." In addition to North America, similar issues are being reported in South America, Europe and Asia. Other iPhone owners are reporting that they can't make or receive calls and others are saying that they can't text or receive texts. [...] Many more iPhone users have come forward on Twitter claiming that they are having connectivity issues related to iOS 12.1.2. Apple is advising some to try to update their carrier settings using this guide.

theodp writes: "Have you ever made something wonderful but were too afraid to share it?" asks Apple's heartwarming "Share Your Gifts" 2018 holiday ad, which features a girl who keeps her creations secret, until they're let out into the world by her dog and enjoyed by everyone around her. Arguably deserving writing credit for the ad is the late Steve Jobs, who thirty-five years ago preached a similar "Real Artists Ship" message to the original Mac team as he led them on a holiday "death march" to get their creation out into the world.

Andy Hertzfeld recalls: "The software team worked hard over the Christmas break of 1983. [...] By the first week of January, the software team was working around the clock, testing and fixing problems that were found. [...] Randy Wigginton brought in a gigantic bag of chocolate covered espresso beans, which, along with medicinal quantities of caffeinated beverages, helped us forgo sleep entirely for the last couple of days." Seeing Apple spin "Real Artists Ship" into "Share Your Gifts" -- which Adweek honored as the 9th Best Commercial of 2018 -- would no doubt be appreciated by master of Reality Distortion Jobs.

Four months after a mysterious group was outed for a digital espionage operation that used novel techniques to target Mac users, its macOS malware samples continued to go undetected by most antivirus providers, a security researcher reported on Thursday. Ars Technica reports: Windshift is what researchers refer to as an APT -- short for "advanced persistent threat" -- that surveils individuals in the Middle East. The group operated in the shadows for two years until August, when Taha Karim, a researcher at security firm DarkMatter, profiled it at the Hack in the Box conference in Singapore. Slides, a brief description, and a report from Forbes are here, here and here, respectively.

On Thursday, Mac security expert Patrick Wardle published an analysis of Meeting_Agenda.zip, a file Karim had said installed the rare Mac malware. To Wardle's surprise, results from VirusTotal at the time showed that only two antivirus providers -- Kaspersky and ZoneAlarm -- detected the file as malicious. Wardle then used a feature that searched VirusTotal for related malicious files and found four more. Three of them weren't detected by any AV providers, while one was detected by only two providers. The reason the findings were so surprising is that Apple had already revoked the cryptographic certificate the developers used to digitally sign their malware. That meant Apple knew of the malware. In fairness, the control servers the malware contacts are no longer available on the Internet. That means any infected computers aren't in danger of being surveilled. Also in fairness, the number of detections has slowly risen in the day since Wardle published his analysis.

Research firm Loop Ventures published its annual Smart Speaker IQ Test this week. Like earlier iterations of the test, it put the top smart assistants and speakers head-to-head, grading them on a wide range of queries and commands. From the report: We asked each smart speaker the same 800 questions, and they were graded on two metrics: 1. Did it understand what was said? 2. Did it deliver a correct response? The question set, which is designed to comprehensively test a smart speaker's ability and utility, is broken into 5 categories:
Local -- Where is the nearest coffee shop?
Commerce -- Can you order me more paper towels?
Navigation -- How do I get to uptown on the bus?
Information -- Who do the Twins play tonight?
Command -- Remind me to call Steve at 2 pm today.

It is important to note that we continue to modify our question set in order to reflect the changing abilities of AI assistants. As voice computing becomes more versatile and assistants become more capable, we will continue to alter our test so that it remains exhaustive. Results: Google Home continued its outperformance, answering 86% correctly and understanding all 800 questions. The HomePod correctly answered 75% and only misunderstood 3, the Echo correctly answered 73% and misunderstood 8 questions, and Cortana correctly answered 63% and misunderstood just 5 questions.

A reader shares a report from The Verge: Apple has confirmed to The Verge that some of its 2018 iPad Pros are shipping with a very slight bend in the aluminum chassis. But according to the company, this is a side effect of the device's manufacturing process and shouldn't worsen over time or negatively affect the flagship iPad's performance in any practical way. Apple does not consider it to be a defect. The bend is the result of a cooling process involving the iPad Pro's metal and plastic components during manufacturing, according to Apple. Both sizes of the new iPad Pro can exhibit it.

Those who are annoyed by the bend shouldn't have any trouble exchanging or returning their iPad Pro at the Apple Store or other retailers within the 14-day return window. But it's not clear if swaps will be permitted outside that policy. I've asked Apple if it has communicated with stores about the issue, as I've read some accounts of employees telling people it's accidental damage and warrants an AppleCare+ claim (and deductible) to replace. That shouldn't be the case for a slight bend. Apple also says it has not seen a higher-than-normal return rate for the 2018 iPad Pro so far.

"Qualcomm was granted a second injunction against Apple on Thursday, banning it from selling some iPhone models in Germany that use chips from Intel and parts from another supplier, Qorvo," reports CNBC. This is the second major win for Qualcomm against Apple after a Chinese court granted an injunction against Apple for an alleged patent violation on Dec. 10." From the report: In a statement, Apple said it plans to appeal the ruling. Under this condition, Judge Matthias Zigann told the court earlier Thursday, the ruling would not go into immediate effect. However, Apple said that throughout the appeal process, iPhone 7 and iPhone 8 models will not be sold in its 15 retail stores in Germany. Its newest models, iPhone XS, iPhone XS Max and iPhone XR, will still be sold in those stores, Apple said in the statement. All iPhone models will still be sold through carriers and other third-party retailers in Germany, Apple said. But Qualcomm said in a press release that the injunction will be in effect as soon as it posts the required bonds. It said it would complete the process "within a few days."