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The Humming-Homes Edition Saturday, July 29, 2017

Putting Apple's HomeKit Smart Home Platform To The Test, by David Nield, T3

HomeKit was unveiled by Apple along with iOS 8 back in 2014, and yet there's still a scarcity of homes humming along with HomeKit-enabled appliances. Is it worth investing in the tech yet? Or do potential smart home owners need to give HomeKit more time?

To investigate the current state of HomeKit, we gathered together some Apple devices, some HomeKit-ready gear, and set it all up - here's what we found, and what we think your best options are if you're considering using HomeKit in your own place of residence.

ARKit: Augmented Reality For More Than Gaming, by Josh Centers, TidBITS

We seldom mention these frameworks because they’re usually of interest only to developers. But I think Apple’s upcoming ARKit is going to be a big deal for everyone once apps that incorporate it start appearing in iOS 11. And I’m willing to bet that we see a flood of them on day one.

[...]

After Apple releases iOS 11, tape measure apps will be the new flashlight apps — expect a bunch of them.

Apple Embraces A Multi-cloud Future, And That's Exciting, by Jonny Evans, Computerworld

The upcoming Files app in iOS 11 will bring real improvement to how we work on Macs and mobile devices. Not only will it let you access files on all your Apple ID-approved devices, but it will also link you up to online storage in your iCloud account. However, it doesn’t stop there—Apple (in its wisdom) has shifted its position slightly, and rather than forcing you to only use iCloud storage, it has decided to make third-party online storage services peer players in the new Files app.

This may seem of trivial importance. It may even seem to be a move predicated by the provision of consumer convenience, but the consequences of the decision mean Apple’s mobile devices are now much better prepared for a multi-cloud future.

Develop

We Mailed 100,000 Stickers Around The World And Made A Million Mistakes Along The Way, by dev.to

To celebrate our 100,000th Twitter follower in February, we offered to send out free stickers to dev.to users across the globe.

It felt like a great opportunity to reward our loyal followers by sending them a little something that physically connected them to the DEV community. Plus, how hard could it be to mail out some envelopes?

Notes

Apple Is About To Do Something Their Programmers Definitely Don’t Want., by Anil Dash, Medium

We would never presume to advise a company as successful as Apple about how to do products. Though we’re incredibly proud of Glitch and FogBugz, we of course have huge respect for everything Apple’s done for decades. But we didn’t want to let this one avoidable mistake go by without pointing it out, as it’s a shortcoming that Apple (and every company that has coders on its staff!) could easily fix.

We’re glad so many companies know it’s worthwhile to invest in their employees — in everything from great healthcare to having the latest-and-greatest computer hardware. But when it comes to forcing every worker to be in an open plan shared space, even when they’re trying to concentrate, it may be time for even the biggest and most successful companies to think… uh, differently?

Apple Removes VPN Apps From The App Store In China, by Jon Russell, TechCrunch

The Chinese government’s crackdown on the internet continues with the news that Apple has removed all major VPN apps, which help internet users overcome the country’s censorship system, from the App Store in China.

Bottom of the Page

With all the machine learning and artificial intelligence that my iPhone is going to have, do you think Siri will be able to answer these questions soon?

a. What is the address of that won-ton noodles shop somewhere at Tanjong Katong that I went to sometime in the last month during a lunch hour from work?

b. Based on my daily commute time on the subway, were there more problems with the subway trains this year than last year, or vice versa?

c. When was the last time I stay out late until the wee hours of the morning, or have I really stopped being a night owl?

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Thanks for reading.