iPhone: December 2008 Archives

It was bound to happen. The writing's been on the wall for a long time. Apple announced today that its appearance at next month's Macworld Expo in San Francisco will be the company's last at that forum. Not only that, but according to CNET, Steve Jobs won't be delivering the keynote.

There once was a time when the San Francisco Macworld Expo was the center focus of the Mac community. But so much has changed. Apple now has hundreds of stores around the world, especially in the United States. People all over can touch the products, and talk to knowledgeable sales people. As Apple points out in its press release, its been pulling back from other trade shows, such as the National Association of Broadcasters show. Macintosh is no longer the only focus of Apple, and many of the most ardent Mac faithful came to resent the role the iPod and the iPhone have come to play at the expo.

Other companies have disappeared. I don't think Adobe was at the last Macworld Expo I went to. Oh yes, there's that too. The last couple of years, I haven't felt the same passion I used to, to fly to San Francisco and immerse myself in all things Mac. There's enough immersion elsewhere. Every day, I can read a half a dozen great sites covering all things Apple in minuscule detail. Although I wasn't present for the last couple of keynotes, there was nothing too surprising in them.

I suspect this will be the end of the Macworld Expo altogether. Not so long ago, there were two Macworlds; the other in Boston, then New York for a few years, then back to Boston. Apple pulled out, and after that, the Boston expo was abandoned.

One other bad thing about this, Steve Jobs' failure to participate is bound to stir up a whole new batch of rumors about his health. I expect Apple's stock price (which closed at 95.43 today) will be a bit rocky tomorrow.

Its too bad. Because Apple's decision to leave Macworld makes nothing but sense.

I saw Jerry Taft tweeting about vlingo, so I thought I'd check it out. Vlingo, available for the iPhone and Blackberry, is described on the company's website as:

a voice-powered user interface that unlocks access to mobile phone wireless data services.

Basically, vlingo is supposed to allow you to use spoken commands for a limited variety of services on your smart device. It's a great idea, but its far from perfect and has a lot of room for improvement.

I played with it for a while on my iPhone 3G. The interface is clean and attractive. In the middle of the screen, various examples of commands are shown. Below that, is a smaller button that leads to more detailed instructions. Below that, a very large button that you use in a push-to-talk manner. And an icon bar at the bottom allows you to select different types of searches.

One example of a search vlingo can attempt is a google search. Hold the button, and say "Google vlingo." It really only works with Google and Yahoo! I tried using it with Wikipedia, and it simply did the search on Google.

The real trouble is, it doesn't understand much. I've developed a newfound interest in fountain pens. But when I said "Wikipedia fountain pens," vlingo thought I said "wiki pedia elgin cams." Elgin is a town near my home of Chicago, so I give it credit for proximity! A second attempt got "wiki pedia function test," which sounds closer. A third try got to fountain pens.

The application did better with phone requests, usually successfully finding my contacts. But if I only specified a first name, the program only presents me with the first match. It would be nice if it would be able to see which contacts are on my iPhone's favorites list, and check that first.

Lastly, I tried posting a tweet to my twitter account. Twitter starts posts with my name, so to finish the sentence, I said "hates to admit it, but his Macintosh is not feeling well." Vlingo rendered it as "hate to admit it but his mcintosh is not feeling well" . So no punctuation, a dropped S on the first word, and even though this is a geeky tool, it doesn't go to the proper noun Macintosh. So I had to edit the post. It would have been easier to type the tweet in the first place.

The app is free, so if you feel like playing around with primitive voice recognition on your iPhone, the price is right. But don't expect this to become a regular part of your iPhone toolkit.