Wednesday, May 10, 2017 ∞ 
Mikah Sargent at iMore compares the two leading smart thermostats, the new ecobee4 and the Nest Learning Thermostat.
I have an ecobee3 at home, and several Nest thermostats at the office. I picked ecobee for its HomeKit integration, which Nest lacks. I also felt uncertain about Nest's future in the wake of their acquisition by Google.
While ecobee looks great, I love the dial design of the Nest. I think Nest wins on aesthetics. It's just so satisfying to use.
ecobee comes with a remote sensor, and you can add even more if you like. This really makes the smart thermostat a lot more smart, especially if your home HVAC does not have multiple zones. Its larger touch display allows it to show more info, like outside weather and the local forecast.
Both of these are nice products. It's a tough choice.
Wednesday, May 10, 2017 ∞ 
Well, maybe not "redesigned," but Jason Yuan makes some smart tweaks and improvements to the usability of Apple Music.
I do have reservations about hiding actions behind gestures like double-tap or swipe, when it may not be obvious to the user that such options exist. Or when they may be invoked accidentally. Generally, I like to see all options represented visually in the UI.
Next, maybe Yuan could try a redesign of Apple Music on iPad, where the experience feels much more confused than its iPhone counterpart.
James Vincent at The Verge:
Amazon has officially unveiled its latest Echo product: a touchscreen device with built-in Alexa called the Echo Show. The device was extensively leaked this week, but is now available to preorder from Amazon for $229.99.
I'll admit, I don't understand the "voice cannister" category of products that began about two years ago with Amazon's Echo. My own experience with Siri has probably discouraged me, since I find it unreliable for anything beyond setting a timer or asking for the score of a game.
Today, Amazon released a new device, Echo Show, which includes a display. This enables some new features like video calling, and now the Echo can display its answers (like showing the weather, or a product page on Amazon) in addition to just speaking. But I still find myself baffled by this product.
At AllThingsD in 2007, Steve Jobs said:
We’re getting to the point where everything’s a computer in a different form factor. So what, right? So what if it’s built with a computer inside it? It doesn’t matter. It’s—what is it? How do you use it? You know, how does the consumer approach it?
So what about Echo Show differentiates it from any other computer? Certainly, putting the voice UI front and center does. I suppose the form factor, being stationary as it is, also differentiates to some degree. Still, I don't feel this device is particularly differentiated from, say, an iPad, which of course can handle voice interaction, video calling, and all the rest. The Echo is unique in that it puts voice first, but it is hardly unique in what it does.
When I already have an Apple Watch on my wrist, an iPhone in my pocket, and iPads, Macs, and Apple TVs all around my house, it's hard for me to see the value in the Echo products. But, they seem to have found an audience and generated significant interest in this new category.
Josh Constine at TechCrunch:
Instagram wants to be the photo app for the whole world, even if you can’t or won’t download it. In pursuit of international growth where networks are slow and data is expensive, Instagram has given its mobile website a massive upgrade that adds core features of the main app [...]
Great, but I do not understand why after almost 7 years there is no Instagram app on iPad. (iPad is actually older than Instagram.)
Glenn Fleishman at Macworld:
Many people didn’t like the switchover [to the new iWork], which Apple built from the ground up a few years ago. It’s really a different software package with largely similar features, but different interactions for many tasks.
I'm a big fan of iWork and I've been using it since Pages was first released as part of iWork '05.
The new versions are very capable but are still lacking some features of their predecessors. I realized the other day that Pages still cannot link text boxes, which is kind of a basic and essential page layout feature.
