We use this in our app, it's very US-heavy though I think. NSDataDetector can do a lot of cool stuff, very ugly API to use and is confusingly similar but not the same to what's available through dataDetectorTypes on a UITextView.
There is a cost to making features discoverable. The cost is visual complexity. Apple can present only one UI to every first time user. They need to make hard choices about what to keep and what to remove so that the most non-technical user does not feel overwhelmed. At the same time, they have to figure out subtle ways to gauge user intent and carefully make a feature discoverable such that only the user who might consider using it (a power user) discovers and acts on it, while not getting in the way of the average Joe. It’s more art than science and I watch this with fascination. Not many companies seem to have the attitude of being totally OK with hiding features that took time and money to make.
To me, it’s quite clear that Apple is OK with letting a hundred power users miss a hidden feature than having even one non-techie overwhelmed with choice anxiety (I am exaggerating the numbers surely).
One thing that power users used to do, is explore the control panels and preferences for the system and the apps they use to see what features can be turned on.
One of the Youtubers, who had previously been a lifetime Windows user, complained that he loved using iMessage on his laptop, but it didn't receive his SMS messages like his phone does.
After getting a ton of comments suggesting that it was a feature you have to turn on in the preferences, his next video was him being amazed that the phone would not only forward him the SMS messages, but that the Mac would recognize SMS messages with two factor verification codes and offer to fill them into the proper place automatically.
Another thing is that those less prominently exposed features can be taken away from the few of their users without causing much uproar when they don’t catch on with a wider audience.
I disagree, it was perfectly integrated into messages and spotlight. He discovered it as soon as it came up. The paradigm is "I have to have an app for that." Fwiw, for how poorly siri, spotlight, and shortcuts are utilized by end users Google has it even worse on Android.
- any text field you're in will let you scan text directly from the camera.
Granted, maybe they could go further to show people when they go into the photos app or something, but it's definitely a very highlighted feature relative to others.
It's pretty amazing how Apple does incredible stuff on the down-low, without lots of marketing.
Their Google-street-view-like feature is just an unobtrusive link that says "look around" or something like that in their maps app on the iphone. Never mind that this is a massive amount of work, and that they're in the process of mapping all of Europe, and I assume the US.
Apple likes end users to discover stuff like that on their own. They hyped it up a ton at the WWDC keynote before it came out, but only a small % of mostly developers see that. Part of their philosophy is to delight users along the way and maybe finding things like that is delightsome?
They rarely throw "check out the new features!" dialogs on upgrades. (Sometimes they do, but it's rare relative to the # of new features.)
I hate that feature. It breaks double tap to zoom for me at the most frustrating times. I am yet to need to copy text from an image. Funnily enough I think this should be less discoverable.
It was a pretty big part of the keynote where they announced it, I think it’s just that they don’t really do in-product promos for new features in iOS.
It is a big feature on macOS and I remember them announcing it. I use it sometimes, though I do wish it worked in Chromium-based browsers and supported Cyrillic alphabet.
I am in US, running iOS 15.5 and I tried US flights as well as international flights but it still doesn’t work for me.. so not sure if there is some privacy setting blocking it or if some feature we need to enable.
Worked for me with KL flight numbers, but only a few and they were all enroute to or from the US at the time of searching. So that may have something to do with it?
Edit: KL605 to SFO worked while typing (it's in the air now), KL1125 to Copenhagen did not work while typing but did show up after pressing search (it's in the air now). Similar for KL713 to Paramaribo worked after pressing search, while it's still on the ground.
I think it barely works outside of the US, but this is usual with most of the quick actions in Spotlight. Its kinda crazy all the extra options you get on Spotlight once you land in the USA.
I’ll probably never do it, so I’ll throw it out here as an idea:
A journey-constrained social network. E.g. if you frequently travel between New York and Paris, you’ll be allowed to join the JFK-CDG group, then you can talk about travel deals, where to go in each city (as you’re likely from there or going there, and it’s a fair exchange with the other groups), what’s cheaper or worth buying as a gift from one place back to the other, etc.
Doesn’t have to be flight specific as the journey method.
Me and a partner actually have an MVP built out for this. Its kind of stagnate right now, but this specifically does this:
Define areas of interest. Create tour routes. Geo-specific content (You can post audio, links, etc, to a particular point of interest.
When you arrive within the designated (content poster defined) area, and are within a certain range of the POI - the content can be auto played, such as the audio description of a view point, landmark etc.
It will do way finding and pathing...
We have a working MVP on android, but like I said its currently dormant.
One feature that is useful to emergency responders is the ability to provide geo-cache locations, so when the scouts for firefighters are scoping a best route to address front-line wild fire, they can mark a point where they leave an equipment cache, take a photo of it and share the route with firefighters.
We have a digital LED wayfinding strip in the brim of a hat - so you have the way finding light compass to tell you the way.
There's this Jetlovers thing that connects to Foursquare/Swarm and logs your flights, provided you check in at every airport. You can follow people to see their recent flights in your news feed. Your idea feels like it belongs there.
There is one of these for sports scores too and it drives me crazy that there’s not an easy way to use it directly.
For instance, I like to keep up with my colleges sports teams, but I don’t need the live tracker stuff (if I wanted that I’d watch the game on tv). But I’d love to have a Home Screen button that would bring up the “app” for “Georgia Tech baseball score” or “Georgia Tech basketball score” to quickly see what’s going on what I’m in between meetings at work or out doing something with the family.
No ads, no frills, it’d be gloriously simple and I assume there is some way to do it but I could not find it.
On my to-do list is making a personalized page where you can select exactly which teams you want to follow, something closer to what dpeck wants, but I've been having trouble finding the time...
I wonder if there is a a way you could do it with a man Apple Shortcut or a web page linked as an icon on your Home Screen. Maybe a URL that searches spotlight.
I figured there had to be, and that there might be a way to figure it out with connecting up developer tools from mobile Safari but I never pursued that path so might be completely wrong.
Readit News
[0]: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/uikit/uidatadetect...
https://developer.apple.com/documentation/uikit/uidatadetect...
To me, it’s quite clear that Apple is OK with letting a hundred power users miss a hidden feature than having even one non-techie overwhelmed with choice anxiety (I am exaggerating the numbers surely).
One of the Youtubers, who had previously been a lifetime Windows user, complained that he loved using iMessage on his laptop, but it didn't receive his SMS messages like his phone does.
After getting a ton of comments suggesting that it was a feature you have to turn on in the preferences, his next video was him being amazed that the phone would not only forward him the SMS messages, but that the Mac would recognize SMS messages with two factor verification codes and offer to fill them into the proper place automatically.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8Xjz5v0jDw
- it was shown off at the keynote last year https://youtu.be/TfRMXk53wPY
- I believe the tips app will mention it to you
- they have support articles describing it https://support.apple.com/en-ca/HT212630
- any text field you're in will let you scan text directly from the camera.
Granted, maybe they could go further to show people when they go into the photos app or something, but it's definitely a very highlighted feature relative to others.
Their Google-street-view-like feature is just an unobtrusive link that says "look around" or something like that in their maps app on the iphone. Never mind that this is a massive amount of work, and that they're in the process of mapping all of Europe, and I assume the US.
They rarely throw "check out the new features!" dialogs on upgrades. (Sometimes they do, but it's rare relative to the # of new features.)
It’s also in the Tips app, which is great to go through from time to time!
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/tips/id1069509450
Edit: KL605 to SFO worked while typing (it's in the air now), KL1125 to Copenhagen did not work while typing but did show up after pressing search (it's in the air now). Similar for KL713 to Paramaribo worked after pressing search, while it's still on the ground.
A journey-constrained social network. E.g. if you frequently travel between New York and Paris, you’ll be allowed to join the JFK-CDG group, then you can talk about travel deals, where to go in each city (as you’re likely from there or going there, and it’s a fair exchange with the other groups), what’s cheaper or worth buying as a gift from one place back to the other, etc.
Doesn’t have to be flight specific as the journey method.
Define areas of interest. Create tour routes. Geo-specific content (You can post audio, links, etc, to a particular point of interest.
When you arrive within the designated (content poster defined) area, and are within a certain range of the POI - the content can be auto played, such as the audio description of a view point, landmark etc.
It will do way finding and pathing...
We have a working MVP on android, but like I said its currently dormant.
One feature that is useful to emergency responders is the ability to provide geo-cache locations, so when the scouts for firefighters are scoping a best route to address front-line wild fire, they can mark a point where they leave an equipment cache, take a photo of it and share the route with firefighters.
We have a digital LED wayfinding strip in the brim of a hat - so you have the way finding light compass to tell you the way.
We have a patent on the hat...
https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/dopplr
For instance, I like to keep up with my colleges sports teams, but I don’t need the live tracker stuff (if I wanted that I’d watch the game on tv). But I’d love to have a Home Screen button that would bring up the “app” for “Georgia Tech baseball score” or “Georgia Tech basketball score” to quickly see what’s going on what I’m in between meetings at work or out doing something with the family.
No ads, no frills, it’d be gloriously simple and I assume there is some way to do it but I could not find it.
On my to-do list is making a personalized page where you can select exactly which teams you want to follow, something closer to what dpeck wants, but I've been having trouble finding the time...