On this episode of Smart Tech Today, Mikah and I talked about Amazon’s new voice-based printer integration, Wink’s recent outage (after the launch of its subscription service), and Apple’s new designed-by-Apple face covering.
Author: Matthew Cassinelli
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What’s New With Shortcuts – Issue #001
Welcome to the first issue of “What’s New in Shortcuts?”
Thank you for reading this newsletter – I look forward to sharing more about how to use Siri Shortcuts so everyone can learn more.
If you haven’t yet, check out the free Shortcuts Catalog with 300 shortcuts and 300 actions, plus the membership available.
With that, here’s what’s new this week:
This free newsletter is designed for anyone interested in learning more about Siri Shortcuts, covering:
* feature updates as they’re discovered,
* interesting ways to use Shortcuts related to topical stories, and
* creative new shortcuts or apps with Shortcuts actions.
In addition, What’s New in Shortcuts acts as a way to subscribe to learn about future updates to my Shortcuts Library, Action Directory, and upcoming additions to the Shortcuts Catalog.
What’s in the newsletter?
A few weeks ago, I had the honor of being invited back onto Tim Chaten’s podcast iPad Pros to discuss the updates coming to Siri Shortcuts and the Shortcuts app for iPadOS 14.
In the show, Tim asked me a detailed series of questions that covers pretty much every single aspect of what’s new in Shortcuts for iOS 14 on iPhone and iPad.1
Our conversation was so good that the show ended up being split across episode 90 and episode 91! Now that both episodes are out, you can listen to the whole chat and learn about what’s coming next.
On episode 41 of Smart Tech Today, Mikah and I talked about the following:
The Google Assistant has added some new homeschooling features to its smart displays and speakers, including a school bell and random facts delivered throughout the day. Apple and UCLA are working together on a depression study. Mikah and Matthew answer and share a whole host of listener questions and feedback, respectively.
On this episode of Smart Tech Today, Mikah and I talked about industry news as well as headlines around Microsoft, Google, and Amazon – and Mikah’s excellent tech for tracking health data.
Plus, we’re at episode 40! Thank you very much for listening. ?
Industry news
- CES 2021 in-person show canceled, will be held online | Android Police
- Belkin has a new WeMo plug | Macrumors
- Mellow made its ‘smart’ sous vide machine dumb unless you pay a monthly fee | The Verge
Microsoft
- Microsoft is shutting down Cortana on multiple devices, including iOS and Android | The Verge
- Microsoft’s new Family Safety app offers parental controls across phones, PCs and Xbox | TechCrunch
- Google Smart Display Games Go Live | Forbes
- Google AR animals now include 23 beetles, butterflies, cicadas, and other insects | Android Police
- YouTube is doing away with community-driven captions and translations | Android Police
Amazon
- Amazon doesn’t sell Echo speakers at a loss, says Bezos — unless they’re on sale | The Verge
- Amazon bought Ring for market position, not technology, emails suggest | The Verge
Mikah’s Automated Health Tracking
Picks of the week
Links for the show:
The venerable Rene Ritchie was kind enough to invite me back onto his YouTube channel to talk Siri Shortcuts in iOS 14 and everything that’s new:
I always appreciate the opportunity to share about Shortcuts on other people’s channels, and Rene always manages to make me look good.
As I said in the video, make sure to stay tuned for some fun new updates here on my website, as well as for my own upcoming iOS 14 video.
I had the pleasure of being a guest on episode 353 of the Clockwise podcast from Relay FM, joining Brianna Wu, Jason Snell, and Dan Moren for a 30-minute round table discussion of the week’s news.
We talked about Apple silicon and what it means for gaming as well as whether we’ll be buying the first round of Macs, our beta-installation strategies, and how to use Shortcuts for public good.
On this episode of Smart Tech Today, Mikah and I talked about:
- Our experiences testing new beta health and Accessibility features,
- Apple’s focus for their sleep efforts,
- Google’s acquisition of North,
- More updates for Google Assistant in the smart home, and
- Mikah’s new security system
Shortcuts creator and designer Brad Siefert has created a dedicated website for people looking to discover various links and creators related to Siri Shortcuts – check out the new Shortcuts Directory.
On episode 35 of Smart Tech Today, Mikah and I talked about:
- NASA’s innovative open-source project related to COVID,
- New hardware releases for outdoor cameras and security systems,
- Accessibility for sound recognition and assistant reminders,
- Google’s major updates during Voice Global 2020, and
- More updates on Shortcuts & automation from Apple’s WWDC
Plus, I included a special scoop about a new action in Shortcuts I haven’t seen anywhere else – enjoy!
Em Lazer-Walker, Cloud Advocate at Microsoft, on what she’s calling the “audio version of ARKit” in iOS 14:
They talked about this largely in context of playing movies with multi-channel surround sound, but that’s probably the least interesting application of spatial audio.
As someone who’s been working in the field for a long time — my research at the MIT Media Lab in 2015 and 2016 focused on location-based storytelling in public spaces using spatial audio — I wanted to try to give some context around why this is interesting and what it might enable.
Fascinating summary of Apple’s new Spatial Audio feature and its potential – this covers what it is, how it differs from surround sound, and goes into detailed applications for this like wayfinding, vocal content, and real-world play/gaming experiences.
Every year for the past few years, John Gruber of Daring Fireball has interviewed an Apple executive or two on his podcast The Talk Show, just after WWDC and often in a venue right nearby the conference.
This year, as with everything else WWDC, it was done online, with special guests Craig Federighi, Senior Vice President of Engineering at Apple, and Greg Jozwiak, Apple’s Vice President of Product Marketing.
Federighi and “Joz” filmed from Apple Park (in seemingly separate rooms, as one does nowadays) over the web with Gruber for over an hour and a half, which you can watch on YouTube:
On this episode of Smart Tech Today, Mikah and I talked about Google Assistant adding Podcasts and recipes to its Snapshot feature, the NBA’s use of the Oura smart ring to detect COVID-19 symptoms in players, and Apple’s whole host of updates for the smart home – and what’s new with Siri Shortcuts.
On this episode of Smart Tech Today, Mikah and I talked about grill follow-up, using Anonymous Camera for protests, tech companies responding to Black Lives Matter, the latest Sonos news, and automation during the pandemic:
Recorded June 11th, I had the privilege to be on Andru Edwards and Jon Rettinger’s podcast Geared Up.
We had a great conversation where I told them all about Siri Shortcuts, plus we covered Andru’s YouTube situation, Apple’s worldwide developer conference (WWDC) & the transition to ARM Macs, and the PS5 announcements – here are the show links:
On this episode of Smart Tech Today, Mikah and I talked about protests & activism, smart home news, and two great picks of the week:
For the month of May, my main public focus was publishing livestreams related to Shortcuts and my interests as a content creator.
I’ve long had a streaming setup and even covered most of iOS 13’s updates for Shortcuts in an hour-long stream last fall, but I’ve always wanted to stream more and never really did.
In these last 9 months since that stream, I’ve also seen a ton of new Shortcuts-related apps drop and for some reason I didn’t fully adopt them – I thought every one my shortcuts needed to be easily shareable, plus I was worried about depending on paid third-party apps that people would have to buy just to use my shortcuts.
But eventually, I realized I’d shot myself in the foot – these apps were necessary because of some shortcoming of Shortcuts in its current state, and by missing out on those apps I was handicapping myself in the process.
Once I started adopting the Shortcuts-related apps, my productivity skyrocketed and I realized I needed to learn these even more – enter livestreams with the developers themselves. Plus, I took the opportunity to stream with one novice user and another expert, both of which were great experiences.
Here’s the full list of videos:
On episode 30 of Smart Tech Today, I spent about 10 minutes describing a series of shortcuts I put together that take advantage of the accessibility actions found in the Shortcuts app ahead of today, May 21, which is Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD).
Accessibility features are incredibly important for modern technology to provide, making it possible for everyone to utilize their hardware & software regardless of their personal situation – you either have direct accessibility needs that require specific use of your technology, you’ll one day need them yourself, or you benefit from those features anyway (think Dark mode).
The Shortcuts app has always been an Accessibility priority for Apple, with them declaring as much in their confirmation story when they acquisition of the Workflow app before it became Shortcuts1:
“The Workflow app was selected for an Apple Design Award in 2015 because of its outstanding use of iOS accessibility features, in particular an outstanding implementation for VoiceOver with clearly labeled items, thoughtful hints, and drag/drop announcements, making the app usable and quickly accessible to those who are blind or low-vision.”
In iOS 13, Apple went further and added a set of actions to Shortcuts for controlling Accessibility features, available to use inside the shortcut editor in Apps > Settings.
On this episode of Smart Tech Today, Mikah and I talked about Apple’s response to coronavirus, which streaming services are free during lockdown, how to get smart home gear that’s affordable, and a Zoom wedding: