Day: 10 August 2021

The So-Far Failed Promise of the Smart Home ⇥ fastcompany.com

Jared Newman, Fast Company:

Those kinds of misfires are common in the smart home world. I’ve had Google Assistant refuse to set alarms or read upcoming calendar events for several days in a row, only to fix itself without explanation. My Ecobee thermostat occasionally gets stuck on a single temperature, requiring a reboot. I’ve had light bulbs inexplicably fail to connect to their hub device. And I’m pretty confident that every Echo speaker owner has experienced Alexa playing the wrong music at least once.

The problem, says Creative Strategies analyst Carolina Milanesi, is that smart home devices haven’t gotten much better at avoiding these problems even as the market edges toward mainstream users. Instead, a proliferation of new devices and use cases has multiplied the ways in which things to go wrong.

I still have no smart home devices. After reading articles like these and Troy Hunt’s adventure in trying to make a HomeKit-connected garage door opener work, I cannot see myself buying one any time soon.

One of the things I think about far too often for my own health is whether software is actually buggier these days, or if I just use more of it in more situations more of the time. I think that there are fewer catastrophic bugs, but there seem to be way more of these smaller problems that often fail silently. They add up, too: I have long felt that the stress of bugs accumulates exponentially, not linearly.

I cannot tell you how little I want to run software updates on my blinds or find that one burner on my stovetop will not turn on because of some Daylight Saving Time bug. This stuff all seems like a burden right now — a failed promise of increased ease and a more automated world, brought to you by Agile-developed software and technologies like Bluetooth. Is it surprising that it sucks so much?

The promises of this world are certainly compelling. Automated blinds, heat, and lighting can help optimize their use for better efficiency. It can make lives better for people with disabilities. These products can solve real problems. But they need to be treated with the respect and care they deserve, not as funny gadgets for people with enough time and technical capability to debug their kettle’s Wi-Fi connection.

Matt Birchler: ‘What I Like About the New Safari’ ⇥ birchtree.me

I completely agree with Matt Birchler’s list of genuine improvements made to the new version of Safari in iOS 15. I will even add to it: on some websites — like Defector and Wikipedia — the way that the theme-color status bar blends into the page header looks fantastic on the iPhone, and Tab Groups are a welcome addition. I also appreciate that some of the most glaring complaints about the first build, such as the “⋯” button, have been corrected. But there is still so far to go, particularly for the iPad and Mac versions.

Contrary to January 2020 Reports, Apple Is Not Currently Checking iCloud Photos Against CSAM Hashes ⇥ mjtsai.com

In my commentary about Apple’s recently announced child safety initiatives, I have repeatedly stated that the company was already checking hashes of images uploaded to iCloud Photos against NCMEC hashes of known CSAM. I was not the only one who thought this — the same idea was referenced by many others, like in the TidBits FAQ and by Jason Aten, who writes for Inc — but most of us were referencing sources that relied upon reporting from the Telegraph. That article carries this correction:

This story originally said Apple screens photos when they are uploaded to iCloud, Apple’s cloud storage service. Ms Horvath and Apple’s disclaimer did not mention iCloud, and the company has not specified how it screens material, saying this information could help criminals.

This note was appended one day after the Telegraph published its original report — that is, one day after it was cited by numerous other outlets. Unfortunately, none of those reports reflected the Telegraph’s correction and, because the Telegraph has a soft paywall and the title of the article remained “Apple scans photos to check for child abuse”, it is not obvious that there were any material changes to correct. Robinson’s Law strikes again.

Still, that is no excuse. I should have checked the claims of these reports against that original Telegraph article before relaying the same error. I regret not doing that. Please consider this a correction.

Via Michael Tsai who adds:

In any case, this changes how I interpret Apple’s FAQ, as well as speculation for the future. If photo library scanning is new, Apple is not reimplementing a previously working system in a way that is potentially less private (since it could be easily tweaked to scan non-cloud photos). It also seems less likely to imply a switch to making iCloud Photos E2EE. It could simply be that Apple wanted to implement the fingerprinting in a way that took advantage of distributed CPU power. Or that it wanted to avoid having a server scanner that it could be compelled to use. This also explains why Apple only made 265 reports in 2020.

This certainly changes how I read this entire situation.

Glass, a New iOS Photo Sharing App, Launches to a Wider Audience ⇥ om.co

Om Malik:

Let’s face it: everything Facebook touches eventually turns into an engagement honeypot behind which lies an algorithmic whirlpool designed to suck attention that can be packaged and eventually sold to advertisers. And that is why I am not surprised that Instagram is moving on from its photography roots. And why not: it had to keep up the likes of TikTok, who are sucking attention away from Instagram. Not surprisingly, many photographers feel a little double-crossed. Hey, welcome to Zuck’s Planet.

However, for two big tech refugees, Tom Watson and Stefan Borsje, this is an opportunity: they have created Glass, a photographer-focused community and photosharing service whose primary focus in photos and a community-focused on the art of photography. (For now, it is available only on Apple’s iOS.)

I have only been using Glass for a few hours, but I think it is a wonderful place. It is very much what you make of it: you post the photos you want to show others — with some exceptions — you follow who you want to follow, and your feed is just that combination. You see the most recent images without stuff being algorithmically injected into your feed, and everything feels very carefully considered.

Malik interviewed the two founders. I appreciate this response, from Watson, to a question about what makes Glass different:

But how we are going about implementing features. For example, currently, we don’t have likes. If and when we launch a feature in that vein, it’ll be private. We’ve intentionally avoided any public counts. We don’t want Glass ever to become a popularity contest. We’re not home for influencers. We are a home for photographers.

So, we have focused on comments in Glass, and there’s a big reason for that. We want to spur discussion about the photograph. For example, we highlight EXIF data in our app. That leads to conversations about lenses, for example. We’ve seen some amazing threads happen in our early testing by making comments the primary way to interact with a photo.

Glass really does feel different. It feels like a more creative, slower, and more laid-back kind of place. Instagram was the closest thing there was to a great photo sharing experience for phones. But its evolution into a marketing and video platform has robbed it of that initial charm. Glass does not feel like it aspires to boast a billion users, and it is better for it.