Category Archives: Apps

Week 100 QotW – Voice and Amazon

This is our Question of the Week episode for this week, with our News Roundup to follow on Friday. This week’s question is “Is Voice the Next Big User Interface, and is Amazon Really Winning? ” The question comes from the prevailing narrative in the media, which often seems to hold both that voice is going to be the user interface that replaces current ones like touch screens and smartphones, and that Amazon is dominating that voice interface market. We pour some cold water on both assertions and use survey and other data to evaluate the true state of the market, what’s really going on, and whether anyone is really “winning”.

As usual, you’ll find some links to related content as well as other ways to listen to the podcast beneath the embedded Soundcloud player below.

We invite listeners to submit questions for subsequent weeks in the comments below, on Twitter (@jandawson@aaronmiller), or via email (jan at jackdawresearch dot com). We also have a dedicated Podcast Twitter handle at @BDPcast.

As ever, you can also find the podcast on iTunes, in the Overcast app, or your own favorite podcast app. Here is the RSS feed for the podcast if you want to add it manually to your app of choice.

Show notes:

Here are some useful links relating to this week’s episode:

Please leave us a comment or get in touch via Twitter to give us feedback. We’d love to hear from you. Also, we’d love it if you would leave a review of the podcast on iTunes.Please leave us a comment or get in touch via Twitter to give us feedback. We’d love to hear from you. You can reach the individual hosts on Twitter (@jandawson@aaronmiller), or via email (jan at jackdawresearch dot com). We also have a dedicated Podcast Twitter handle at @BDPcast. And we’d love it if you would leave a review of the podcast on iTunes or in your podcast app of choice.

Week 87 News Roundup – YouTube boycott, Samsung Bixby, Twitter subs, Apple news

This is the first of our new News Roundup episodes, which will usually appear on Fridays and discuss several of the week’s top tech news stories. This week, we cover:

  • Advertisers in the UK and now the US boycotting YouTube and to some extent Google more broadly over ads appearing next to undesirable content
  • Samsung’s pre-announcement of its Bixby virtual assistant, which will ship with the Galaxy S8 smartphone it’s expected to announce next week
  • Twitter testing a paid subscription service for power users, apparently built around Tweetdeck and costing $20 per month
  • Apple releasing a new, cheaper, 9.7″ iPad and a video creation and editing app called Clips, and its acquisition of Workflow.

As always, you’ll find links to these stories and other things we discussed underneath the SoundCloud player embedded below.

As ever, you can also find the podcast on iTunes, in the Overcast app, or your own favorite podcast app. Here is the RSS feed for the podcast if you want to add it manually to your app of choice.

Show notes:

Here are some useful links relating to this week’s episode:

Please leave us a comment or get in touch via Twitter to give us feedback. We’d love to hear from you. You can reach the individual hosts on Twitter (@jandawson@aaronmiller), or via email (jan at jackdawresearch dot com). We also have a dedicated Podcast Twitter handle at @BDPcast. And we’d love it if you would leave a review of the podcast on iTunes or in your podcast app of choice.

Episode 78 – Autonomous Driving, Q4 2016 Earnings Preview Part 1

This week, we’re back to our usual format. Our News Roundup features three topics: in streaming video, Netflix reported earnings this week and Hulu indicated that its download feature is coming soon; in the Android world, The Information reported that Android One might be coming to the US, while Pixels are still in short supply; and in the ongoing saga of Apple and its pro users, Apple updated Logic Pro X and GarageBand for iOS.

Our Question of the Week is “what is the state of autonomous driving and where does it go from here?” We do a deep dive into the definitions and current state of play when it comes to self-driving cars, talk about when we might see various levels of autonomous driving, and discuss the many barriers and hurdles that have to be overcome for autonomous driving to become a reality. All of this builds off Jan’s recent in-depth research on the topic.

Our third segment is part 1 of our preview of Q4 2016 earnings season, with a discussion of Samsung, Alphabet and Microsoft and what they’re likely to report next week. We’ll likely follow up with more next week of both preview and review of Q4 earnings.

Lastly, our Weekly Pick is a double book recommendation from Aaron.

As usual, you’ll find some links to related content as well as other ways to listen to the podcast beneath the embedded Soundcloud player below.

We invite listeners to submit questions for subsequent weeks in the comments below, on Twitter (@jandawson@aaronmiller), or via email (jan at jackdawresearch dot com). We also have a dedicated Podcast Twitter handle at @BDPcast.

As ever, you can also find the podcast on iTunes, in the Overcast app, or your own favorite podcast app. Here is the RSS feed for the podcast if you want to add it manually to your app of choice.

Show notes:

Here are some useful links relating to this week’s episode:

Please leave us a comment or get in touch via Twitter to give us feedback. We’d love to hear from you. Also, we’d love it if you would leave a review of the podcast on iTunes.

Episode 50 – Our First Year, WWDC Preview

This week’s episode marks the one-year anniversary of the first episode, with both episodes offering previews of Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC). It’s also episode 50 (we skipped the weeks of Christmas and New Year).

Given the anniversary, we thought it would be fun to do a little retrospective of some of the things we’ve covered on the podcast over the past year, and so we made that another topic of discussion on the latest episode. There’s now a permanent page on the site where you can easily see a full listing of past episodes, so you can easily browse them. But we spent some time highlighting some of our favorite episodes from the past year, as well as discussing the past year in consumer tech. Links to the episodes we mention are below in the show notes.

If, for whatever reason, you don’t feel like reminiscing with us, you can skip to 21:20, when we start talking about this year’s WWDC. Specifically, we talk about Siri and digital assistants in general, something Jan’s been asked about a bunch in the lead up to WWDC by reporters. Secondly, we talk about iMessage and the prospects for iMessage as a platform, something we discussed in Episode 33. We also talk through iOS getting more pro features, what we might see in tvOS and watchOS, Apple Music, the App Store changes announced this week, and the fact that we’re unlikely to see any new hardware announced.

As usual, you’ll find some links to related content as well as other ways to listen to the podcast beneath the embedded Soundcloud player below.

We invite listeners to submit questions for subsequent weeks in the comments below, on Twitter (@jandawson@aaronmiller), or via email (jan at jackdawresearch dot com). We also have a dedicated Podcast Twitter handle at @BDPcast.

As ever, you can also find the podcast on iTunes, in the Overcast app, or your own favorite podcast app. Here is the RSS feed for the podcast if you want to add it manually to your app of choice.

Show notes:

Here are some useful links relating to this week’s episode:

Please leave us a comment or get in touch via Twitter to give us feedback. We’d love to hear from you. Also, we’d love it if you would leave a review of the podcast on iTunes.

Episode 24 – Mac App Store, Facebook’s “Meta OS”, Apple Watch Dock

This week, we kick off our discussion with a review of what’s happened over the last week or so with the Mac App Store, which suffered from a certificate-related bug that broke a number of apps previously downloaded from the store. We also use this as a jumping-off point for a broader discussion about the Mac App Store and the various other issues developers have been complaining about for some time now. Our second topic is our Question of the Week, which is about why Facebook has so many apps beyond the main Facebook app. This ties into a post Jan wrote on Techpinions last week (link in the show notes below). Our third topic is the new dock Apple has just released for the Apple Watch in somewhat under-the-radar fashion, and again we broaden the discussion to cover Apple’s strange history with docks for its products.

As ever, there are relevant links and other material under the embedded SoundCloud player below.

We invite listeners to submit questions for subsequent weeks in the comments below, on Twitter (@jandawson, @aaronmiller), or via email (jan at jackdawresearch dot com). We also now have a dedicated Podcast Twitter handle at @BDPcast.

As ever, you can also find the podcast on iTunes, in the Overcast app, or your own favorite podcast app. Here is the RSS feed for the podcast if you want to add it manually to your app of choice.

Show notes:

Here are some useful links relating to this week’s episode:

Please leave us a comment or get in touch via Twitter to give us feedback. We’d love to hear from you. Also, we’d love it if you would leave a review of the podcast on iTunes.

Episode 23 – iPad Pro Reviews, Apple Watch vs. Apple TV, Cord-Cutting

We kick off this week’s episode with a discussion of the iPad Pro reviews that came out on Wednesday. We talk through the common themes – both the consistent gripes and the things that were consistently praised – as well as some of the unique things particular reviews picked up on. Our second topic is our Question of the Week, in which we pick up on a conversation we started last week around the Apple Watch and Apple TV and the prospects for these two devices. In particular, we talk about the total addressable market, the developer-related challenges each device faces, and the other constraints holding each device back, as well as the ultimate potential of each device. Lastly, we discuss cord-cutting, in the light of a post Jan wrote this week, and whether it’s likely to accelerate. We also talk some more about Apple’s potential TV service and how that might factor into all this.

The SoundCloud player is embedded below, and under that you’ll find some relevant links and links to alternative versions of the podcast (iTunes, Overcast, etc.).

We invite listeners to submit questions for subsequent weeks in the comments below, on Twitter (@jandawson, @aaronmiller), or via email (jan at jackdawresearch dot com). We also now have a dedicated Podcast Twitter handle at @BDPcast.

As ever, you can also find the podcast on iTunes, in the Overcast app, or your own favorite podcast app. Here is the RSS feed for the podcast if you want to add it manually to your app of choice.

Show notes:

Here are some useful links relating to this week’s episode:

Please leave us a comment or get in touch via Twitter to give us feedback. We’d love to hear from you. Also, we’d love it if you would leave a review of the podcast on iTunes.

Episode 19 – Music Survey Results, Elon Musk and Foxconn, Overcast and iOS Business Models

Our Question of the Week this week concerns Elon Musk’s recent comments on Apple’s car efforts. In an interview with a German newspaper, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said (among other things), “You can’t just go to a supplier like Foxconn and say: Build me a car.” Our Question of the Week is to what extent Elon Musk’s comment was justified. Around that middle topic, we have two others: we kick off the episode with a review of some of the findings of Jan’s recent music consumption surveys and what they tell us about Apple Music usage and subscribership. And our third and final topic is Marco Arment’s new Overcast app and its unique patronage-based business model, the controversy it’s caused, and what it says about the state of the iOS app market. And we wrap up, as always, with our Weekly Pick.

The SoundCloud Player is embedded below, and beneath that are links to other versions of the podcast and a host of links to things we mentioned on the show today and other relevant items.

We invite listeners to submit questions for subsequent weeks in the comments below, on Twitter (@jandawson, @aaronmiller), or via email (jan at jackdawresearch dot com). We also now have a dedicated Podcast Twitter handle at @BDPcast.

As ever, you can also find the podcast on iTunes, in the Overcast app, or your own favorite podcast app. Here is the RSS feed for the podcast if you want to add it manually to your app of choice.

Show notes:

Here are some useful links relating to this week’s episode:

Please leave us a comment or get in touch via Twitter to give us feedback. We’d love to hear from you. Also, we’d love it if you would leave a review of the podcast on iTunes.