Twitter App Introduces Rich Notifications Support in iOS 10
Twitter’s first-party iOS app recently began rolling out support for rich notifications for anyone on iOS 10, letting users get a larger glimpse at their incoming notifications without having to open their iPhone or the Twitter app. The new notifications include a few formatting retouches, as well as the inclusion of images in relevant posts.
With the new notification set-up, users will get pop-ups for the usual Twitter activities, including @ mentions and direct messages, but now a small thumbnail appears alongside the text of the Tweet on the iPhone lock screen and in Notification Center. Whenever users force touch the notification, they’ll get an expanded view of the content with a larger image, along with the normal options to like and retweet.
Rich notifications were one of the flagship features when iOS 10 launched in September, and have been included in many of Apple’s first-party apps like Messages and Mail. Other companies have slowly been adding support for the feature, including apps like Netatmo Security, which let users watch clips of a connected security camera directly within the notification.
Related Roundup: iOS 10
Tag: Twitter
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PlayStation Vue Now Available on Apple TV
PlayStation today announced that its PlayStation Vue television service has expanded to the fourth-generation Apple TV, allowing PlayStation Vue subscribers to watch live TV and access other Vue features on Apple’s set top box.
Priced at $30 to $65 per month, PlayStation Vue provides several different live streaming television packages that include live TV, sports, movies, and more, plus it offers on-demand video and cloud-based DVR streaming so recorded content can be watched across multiple devices.
Starting today, PlayStation Vue will be supported on Apple TV (4th generation), leveraging Apple TV’s latest hardware to create an innovative experience. You will be able to take advantage of Apple TV’s Siri Remote and easy navigation with touch, while enjoying PlayStation Vue’s sleek look and feel. PlayStation Vue brings popular programming to Apple TV, from live sports networks like ESPN and NFL Network, to premium channels like AMC, FX, HBO, and Showtime.
PlayStation Vue subscribers can link their accounts to the Apple TV after downloading the PlayStation Vue app, which is available as of this morning. PlayStation Vue allows for content to be streamed simultaneously on up to five devices at once, making it ideal for families.
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Workflow for iOS Updated With Improved Gallery That Makes it Easier Than Ever to Automate Tasks
Popular automation app Workflow is being updated today with a new design, a much-improved Gallery experience, and a streamlined on-boarding process, all of which help to make the app more powerful and easier to use.
For those unfamiliar with Workflow, it’s an automation app that can essentially do anything. It lets you create workflows to accomplish a wide variety of tasks like creating GIFs from a series of photos, grabbing images from a web page, translating an article, calculating a tip, posting photos to multiple social networks at once, and much, much more.
When you first open the Workflow app after updating, there’s a new on-boarding process that walks you through how the app works and all of the different things you can do with it. After a short tutorial, you’re asked to choose a few workflows that sound useful, like a teeth brushing timer or directions to the nearest coffee shop. The new on-boarding process makes it easier for new users to get started because the app no longer opens to a blank slate.
Workflow’s Gallery, which is what’s used to download new workflows, has been overhauled to make it simpler to find new ways to use the Workflow app. The Gallery is organized into several different curated sections that you can scroll through, like Essentials, iOS 10, Quick Shortcuts, Morning Routine, Around the House, Stay Healthy, Collaborate Better, Photography, and more.
Category names are more descriptive than they were previously, and there’s more content right at your fingertips. With a new search function, it’s easy to find exactly what you’re looking for, and there’s also an option to submit your own Workflows to the Gallery so other users can download them.
When adding workflows, there’s now an Import Questions option that simplifies customization, and some existing workflows have been updated to add more context for an improved experience. You’ll also notice that Workflow has seen some slight design changes, brightening up the look of the app.
Workflow can be downloaded from the App Store for $2.99. [Direct Link]
Tag: Workflow
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System Integrity Protection Inexplicably Disabled by Default on Some New MacBook Pro Models
Since OS X El Capitan, the operating system that runs on Macs has been protected by a feature called System Integrity Protection (SIP), which is designed to keep your Mac safe from malware by restricting the permissions of the root user account and preventing unauthorized access to protected files and folders.
System Integrity Protection runs behind the scenes and is generally enabled by default in Macs running OS X El Capitan or later, but it seems the feature is inexplicably turned off on some new MacBook Pro models, leaving them vulnerable.
Developer Jonathan Wight noticed System Integrity Protection was disabled on some machines and tweeted about it this morning, prompting developer Steven Troughton-Smith to do an informal Twitter survey asking users about the status of their new machines.
Consensus seems to be that some (but not all) Touch Bar models are shipping with SIP disabled. No reports of a non-Touch Bar/Escape doing so
— Steve T-S (@stroughtonsmith) November 17, 2016
System Integrity Protection is indeed disabled out of the box on a number of 13 and 15-inch MacBook Pro models, including one machine owned by MacRumors. Not all MacBook Pro models are affected, however, as there are users who are reporting that System Integrity Protection is turned on as expected.
As outlined in Apple’s developer documentation, users can check whether SIP is turned on by entering the “csrutil status” command in Terminal. Enabling SIP requires booting into Recovery mode, turning it on using Terminal, and rebooting.
Apple is aware of the issue and will undoubtedly deliver a fix for the issue in an update, but timing for a release is unknown.
Related Roundup: MacBook Pro
Buyer’s Guide: MacBook Pro (Buy Now)
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Xiaomi Mi Mix review – CNET
The Good The edgeless display on Xiaomi’s Mi Mix is simply amazing, and the ceramic rear gives the phone a luxurious feel. The base model has 128GB of storage.
The Bad The phone is only sold in China and in limited quantities, and it’s also Xiaomi’s most expensive yet. The camera’s pretty average at best and taking selfies can be awkward.
The Bottom Line The Xiaomi Mi Mix is a glimpse of the all-screen future of phones. But Xiaomi needs to improve on basics like the camera and find a way to make more of these before we can wholeheartedly recommend it.
Visit manufacturer site for details.
The Xiaomi Mi Mix is, I think, what most phones will look like a few years from now. And believe me, it’s awesome. The 6.4-inch screen covers almost the entire face of the phone, and the buttons you’d usually find on the front are now onscreen.
The premium ceramic back gives the phone a luxurious high-end feel with a very good grip, quite unlike glass. But while the material is pretty hard and scratch resistant, you definitely don’t want to drop it.
There are some weird omissions and weaknesses. There’s only one speaker in the traditional sense, which plays music and video. For calls, the phone uses a “cantilever ceramic piezoelectric actuator”, which just means that the phone’s body vibrates to deliver sound. The camera isn’t great, either.
The Mi Mix is only on sale in China, and even there in limited quantities. While you can get it from third-party online resellers, good luck getting it fixed if you break it, as the parts used in the phone are rare as hens’ teeth. Plus its 4G LTE bands are limited, so it may not work properly outside China.
Xiaomi’s Mi Mix is one amazing almost bezel-less…
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It’s also the most expensive Xiaomi phone so far. Our review model costs 3,499 yuan, which converts to around $510, AU$680 or £420. In China, that’s about half the price of phones like the Google Pixel. There’s also a premium model with 18-carat gold embossing, 6GB 0f RAM (up from 4GB) and 256GB of onboard storage (up from the base model’s 128GB) for 3,999 yuan, which is roughly $590, AU$770 or £480.
If you’re thinking of getting one, bear in mind that Chinese phones don’t come with Google services installed (like Google Maps and even Google Play), and you’ll have work to do to get those integrated properly. Big screen phones like the Google Pixel XL or the iPhone 7 Plus are much more easily procured — you’ll just have to accept a smaller screen than the Mi Mix’s mammoth 6.4-inch display.
Crazy-beautiful edgeless display is incredible
I kid you not. While our photos and video might be enough to convince you, it’s when you pick up the phone, hold it in your hand and watch the 6.4-inch screen come to life that the whole idea of a magical bezel-less phone sinks in. I’ve been using the phone for around a week now, and I still can’t help but feel amazed every time I turn it on.
Now, I’m really not a fan of big-screen phones. I personally feel anything above 6 inches is unusable, and I didn’t really like the Xiaomi Mi Max (the company’s other super large 6.4-inch phone). Strangely, I found myself learning to like and use the Mix a lot more. The screen is still pretty big, but it doesn’t feel it compared to the Max, which is bigger in size thanks to its bezels. The palm rejection system on the Mix is a lot better too, which means you don’t tap as many things by accident.
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Look ma, (almost) no bezels!
Aloysius Low/CNET
An edge-to-edge screen means my palms were almost always touching the display, but despite that I didn’t accidentally press buttons I shouldn’t have or move the home screen while holding the phone in my hand. This is great, particularly compared with my experiences with phones that don’t properly implement this feature.
Big screen phones tend to feel unwieldy, but not so with the Mix. While it’s a little on the heavy side at 209 grams (7.37 ounces), it’s perfectly balanced in your hand. I’ve been able to use it one handed at times, though it’s obviously a lot easier with both hands depending on what you want to do with it, like typing long messages.
To get a phone that’s mostly all screen, with a 2,080×1,080-pixel display, Xiaomi had to do some pretty nifty engineering. The phone’s selfie camera got moved to the bottom of the phone — not necessarily a good thing, as I’ll explain below — and underneath the display is the piezoelectric actuator that replaces your front speaker. The actuator converts digital signals into analog vibrations, using the body of the phone to deliver sound to your ears. It works, though you can feel the whole phone rumbling in time to your voice call.
There’s only one thing about the phone I don’t really like — well, apart from how much of a fingerprint magnet it is. It’s that the ambient light sensor, located at the bottom chin of the phone, is easily blocked if you’re resting the phone on say, a pillow, while using it, leading to a dimmer screen which can make things hard to see in normal light. You can turn off auto-brightness as a solution, so it’s a minor irritant in the grand scheme of things.
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While it lacks bezels at the top and sides, the bottom is where you’ll find a chin as well as a 5-megapixel selfie camera.
Aloysius Low/CNET
Android-powered…somewhat
Like most Chinese smartphones, the Mi Mix is powered by Android — in this case, Android 6.0, but a heavily customised version of it called MIUI. This is Xiaomi’s version of Android, and it has features taken from both iOS and Google’s software.
Kenmore 65132 dryer review – CNET
The Good The Kenmore 65132 dryer powers through wet clothes quickly and has controls that are simple to use. The appliance also has a very low sticker price.
The Bad The basic design and boring exterior of the Kenmore 65132 dryer won’t excite anyone. Outside of automatic drying cycles, this Kenmore dryer is devoid of fancy extras. Also, it has a lint screen that’s awkward to manipulate.
The Bottom Line The plain Kenmore 65132 dryer offers swift performance for not much cash but no extras either.
Visit manufacturer site for details.
Clad in a very basic design, and sporting simple mechanical controls, the $600 Kenmore 65132 dryer won’t win any points for style or sophistication. Neither will the laundry appliance wow you with extra features. But despite its modest appearance, hidden within this unassuming Kenmore machine you’ll find a surprising amount of clothes-drying power.
The Kenmore 65132 dryer is affordably priced especially when you consider how well it performs. Its old fashioned interface means it can be cantankerous to operate at times too Still, it’s hard to find a dryer this powerful at any price let alone one this affordable. Another penny-pinching option is the $650 GEGTD45EASJWS dryer which offers similar performance yet is a little easier to use.
This budget Kenmore dryer has freakish speed
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Design and features
All white and almost completely unadorned, there’s no escaping that this cube-shaped appliance is essentially a bland rectangular box. The only mildly interesting element is the Kenmore dryer’s back-mounted control panel. Specifically, the panel’s top edge slopes gently upwards at its center, then softly drops back down again — exciting stuff.
The Kenmore 665132 dryer looks boring and basic.
Chris Monroe/CNET
Measuring 43 inches tall by 29 inches wide and 28 inches deep, the Kenmore 65132 is relatively compact and offers a smallish 7-cubic-foot-capacity drum. It’s similar in size, shape and capacity to the $1,000 LG DLEY 1701V (7.3 cubic feet), another laundry appliance meant to squeeze into cramped laundry rooms. Of course, LG’s machine costs close to double the Kenmore’s asking price, is packed with features, and flaunts a beautifully designed exterior.
The only design flair to speak of is a curving control panel.
Chris Monroe/CNET
This Kenmore dryer’s controls are just as sparse as its appearance. There are just four dials on the machine and no screen or display whatsoever. Moving from left to right, the first knob sets cycle temperature according to fabric type; Low (delicates), Medium (casual), High (cotton). Next is the main control, the cycle knob, which selects whether the dryer operates automatically using its moisture sensors, dries by timer, or just runs cool air through the drum.
Last are dials to engage the Wrinkle Guard function, a final fluff cycle to stop wrinkles from setting in, and a Cycle Signal toggle that sounds an alarm when the dryer has reached the end of its cycle. This knob also doubles as the dryer’s start button. There are certainly no bells and whistles on this machine, such as fancy steam modes or specialized garment cycles. The upside, though, is that the dryer’s uncluttered controls are simple and straightforward.
The dryer door is small and doesn’t open all the way.
Chris Monroe/CNET
There are aspects of this machine’s basic construction, however, that I’d rather do without. For instance the drum door’s exposed metal hinges give the appliance a shoddy and unfinished feel. I also don’t like shape of the door, which is wider than it is tall and swings downward instead of left or right. The door doesn’t open all the way either but instead stops at a 90 degree angle (parallel to the floor). All this makes the door’s opening feel small and much too narrow.
Don’t miss this $95 savings on Lenovo’s ThinkPad 13 Chromebook!
Right now you can pick up Lenovo’s ThinkPad 13 Chromebook at Amazon for just $180, a savings of $95 from its regular price. The Chromebook has a 13.3-inch display with 4GB of RAM and 16GB of internal storage built-in. With its two USB-C ports you will be able to quickly transfer information to and from the machine, as well as charge it or another one of your devices. It is also nice and lightweight, coming in at just over 3 pounds and sits at under 1 inch thin.
This deal is only good for today, November 17, so don’t wait too long if you are interested in picking one up.
See at Amazon
Google Assistant needs to be Google consistent
“Ok Google, skip ahead 30 seconds.”
Go ahead and ask that to your Pixel while playing music. A useless web search, right? Now try it on Google Home. It actually works. And that’s the real shame, because this is happening across the board with Google Assistant: commands that work on Pixel don’t work on Home, commands that work on Home don’t work on Pixel, and don’t get me started on the stripped-down version of Assistant Google is trying to peddle on Allo. The fragmentation that Google Assistant has seen in just two months on two products doesn’t inspire confidence for current and potential users.
The fragmentation of Assistant across devices doesn’t inspire confidence.
I was so excited for Google Assistant. As a former Moto X user, I was quite looking forward to seeing an always-listening assistant who could connect and control more devices, more services, more tasks. While a Pixel was out of my price range, a Google Home was affordable (not cheap, but affordable) enough to indulge myself one. While many are dissuaded by the lack of services available at the moment, but as an early adopter of Chromecasts, I know it won’t be like that for long. Once Actions on Google opens up next month to developers, the list of commands Google Assistant recognizes will rise quickly. Not being able to set reminders or watch purchased YouTube videos is a pain, but that’s not the promise being lived down the most right now: it’s consistency.
The Pixel is billed as the first phone with Google Assistant. The Home is billed as a voice-activated speaker powered by Google Assistant. Google Assistant is not just some lofty idea, not some beta that we early adopters get to play with before everyone else; Google Assistant is a selling point. Selling points only succeed if they work, and right now Google Assistant works — barely.
Google Assistant is clearly meant to be a multi-platform assistant, from your watch to your car to your home and everywhere in between. If Google Assistant is going to be in all these places, and the closest/clearest device is going to be responding to your query whenever you cry “Ok Google” then no matter what device you pick up, the response needs to be the same. I should be able to say “Ok Google, skip ahead 30 seconds” in the car with as much success as I say it in the shower to Google Home. If I say “Ok Google, call my mom”, Assistant on Google Home should be able to recognize that it can’t place calls and kick the command back to my phone, just as it kicks the “Answering on another device” message to it every time I use OK Google in earshot of both devices.
Yes, Google Assistant is a service in its infancy, but the products it’s running on are otherwise complete thoughts. The Pixel is the first phone from Google where it feels like a complete thought rather than a beta device for developers, and Google Assistant is one of its secret weapons. Google Home is a powerful little speaker that works wonderfully as a Google Cast target, and its touchpad top is giving me all kinds of clickwheel nostalgia, but $130 is too much for a Cast-speaker alone. Google Home is going to live and die on Google Assistant.
There’s little doubt Google Assistant can be more amazing than voice-enabled chatbot or AI to date… but it needs to be whole to accomplish that, not fragmented across devices and platforms.
Google Pixel + Pixel XL
- Google Pixel and Pixel XL review
- Google Pixel XL review: A U.S. perspective
- Google Pixel FAQ: Should you upgrade?
- Pixel + Pixel XL specs
- Understanding Android 7.1 Nougat
- Join the discussion in the forums!
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Any.do takes on Todoist’s productivity smarts with AI-powered Assistant
Any.do is back for another round of productiveness.
Any.do has been around since the HTC Evo 4G was the best phone you could buy. I’ll just let that sink in for a second.
The productivity app has long been known for its attractive yet spare interface, gesture-friendly controls and extensive feature set, but in recent years has been surpassed by Todoist, Wunderlist and a host of competitors in one main area: context-based assistance.
Today, that changes with Any.do 4.0, which brings an AI-powered Assistant — basically a bot — that plugs into a number of external services to help you get stuff done.
After analyzing over a billion anonymized tasks captured by Any.do, we built a new type of assistant that can actually accomplish your tasks for you. Any.do Assistant automatically scans your list and selectively marks the tasks it can get done for you in the real world, then offers ways to do them.
Like Facebook’s M, which is not widely available outside a few U.S. cities, Any.do Assistant uses a “a combination of smart AIs and smart supervising humans, so you know that even a difficult and nuanced task – like finding your mom the right bracelet for her birthday – will be done right.” That’s why, for now, it is only available in the U.S., too — and, for now, only on iOS, with Android coming soon.
Other features in Any.do 4.0 are more universal: the company has integrated its once-independent Cal calendar app into the core experience, so users can coordinate due dates with particular tasks. There’s also a new “lightning-fast” real-time sync, which delivers instant updates across iOS and Android.
Back to the Assistant, Any.do says that it charges a “reasonable” 5-15% service fee for a connected service. It will be interesting to see whether it will gain traction.
It’s taken a while, but Any.do finally feels like it is the product it was always meant to be, built on a foundation of simplicity, beauty and, now, intelligence.
Huawei’s mid-sized MediaPad M3 tablet coming to the U.S. Nov 17
There’s another nice Android tablet coming to the U.S.
After a long period of European exclusivity, the Huawei MediaPad M3 is finally coming to the U.S.
Starting on November 17, you’ll be able to buy the 8.4-inch tablet that features some of Huawei’s best-ever tablet specs for a fairly reasonable $299. It will be sold through Amazon.
In his review of the tablet, Alex Dobie said that it was a great device let down by mediocre performance likely brought on by a too-high screen resolution:
The major takeaway here: Browsing and media consumption are just fine, but don’t expect the M3 to be a serious gaming tablet. The Kirin 950 simply doesn’t have the graphical horsepower to drive high-end games at 2560×1600.
He also said that the EMUI software, fine on phones, just doesn’t scale well on a tablet:
That said, the experience remains basically just like using an enormous Huawei phone. All our favorite features from EMUI on phones — tight control over background apps for improved battery life, handy tethering features, display tweaks like “eye protection” mode and direct control over screen density — remain intact.
According to Huawei, the MediaPad M3 “features exceptional audio-visual performance, ergonomic design, outstanding battery life, an 8MP camera, and Huawei’s world-leading fingerprint sensor.” These are all good things. The takeaway, though, is more about how few great Android tablets there are these days, and this is one of the best just because it exists.
Interested? Let us know in the comments below!
See at Amazon
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