MacRumors

Microsoft has announced it is acquiring natural language and AI messaging startup Wand Labs as part of a larger strategy to build out "conversation as a platform" (via TechCrunch).

Founded in 2013 by former Google staffer Vishal Sharma, Wand Labs' stated aim is "to tear down app walls, integrate your services in chat, and make them work together so you can do more with less taps".

Previously, Wand apps focused on using conversational interfaces to allow users to perform collaborative tasks, such as enabling a friend to control a Nest thermostat, for example. (All Wand apps have been removed from the App Store since the announcement.)

"I'm proud of the work my team has done and what we've already accomplished in this emerging space," said Sharma in a statement on the Wand Labs website. "I'm delighted to be joining a company that shares our passion and enthusiasm for this new era where conversation is the central focus. Making experiences for customers more seamless by harnessing human language is a powerful vision and one that motivates me and my team."

The terms of the buyout have not been disclosed, but the fledgling Silicon Valley startup has just seven employees – a world away from Microsoft's recent $26.2 billion acquisition of LinkedIn, which has 9,700 full-time employees with offices in 30 cities around the world.

The two deals are likely related, however, as Microsoft appears to be maneuvering significant investment in the direction of conversational chat bot services backed by big data, natural language processing, and predictive analytics.

Wand employees are expected to be integrated into Microsoft's Bing and Cortana teams, as the company follows a larger tech trend towards an era of conversational AI services and virtual messaging assistants.

Introducing chatbots into popular messaging apps are becoming more and more popular, with platforms like Kik and Skype gaining bot features to provide users with interactive chat logs that provide information on the weather, entertainment, or world news.

Facebook recently introduced chatbots to Messenger, and provided developers with toolkits to create third-party customer service chatbots and live chat APIs.

In the smart home sector, similar moves are aiming to make virtual assistants more intelligent at performing tasks and more responsive to specific queries, such as Amazon Echo's recent "skills" upgrade, which enables its Alexa assistant to integrate with over 1,000 third-party apps.

Google recently announced its Echo rival, Home, while Apple is also rumored to be working on a similar, Siri-based device for the home.

Apple has reportedly been working on its rival device since before the Amazon Echo debuted in November 2014. Google Home will be available later this year, but it is not known when Apple will be ready to debut its home accessory or how it will fit into the company's existing product lineup.

In a related move, Apple announced this week that it would open Siri up to third-party developers with a public API, allowing users to summon Apple's personal assistant AI to access third-party services and apps hands-free, opening the door to a potential smart home assistant with enhanced functionality and contextual awareness.

In October 2015, Apple acquired VocalIQ, a UK-based startup that had spent the last 10 years researching natural language, belief tracking, decision making, and message generation, in an attempt to develop a next-generation natural language API.

It's early days, but Apple may introduce the API in its Echo competitor because of its ability to go beyond the "session-based" contextual responses touted by the likes of Viv.

During Apple's opening keynote address at this week's Worldwide Developer's Conference in San Francisco, CEO Tim Cook gave a shout-out to Anvitha Vijay, the youngest ever developer to attend WWDC.

Aged just nine, Vijay applied for and won one of 350 coveted Apple scholarships to attend the conference's coding and programming sessions, which are typically dominated by high school and college students. According to Fortune, the number of women who applied for Apple's scholarship also tripled this year compared to 2015.

A resident of Melbourne, Australia, Vijay was selected for a scholarship after she created an iOS app called Smartkins Animals, which lets young users have fun exploring the sights and sounds of over 100 animals. Prior to WWDC, the app had been downloaded "a few hundred times".

"It was like a dream to be here and meet so many people," Vijay said, speaking to USA Today. "I've just touched the tip of the iceberg in coding, there's so much to learn."

Vijay, who has Indian heritage, began teaching herself coding skills at the age of seven by watching YouTube instructional videos and using her mum's iPhone (users have to be aged at least 13 to hold an iTunes account). She said she was motivated to make an app using Xcode to teach her younger sister how to identify the names of animals.

"I want to be an innovator, to build things that people will love and benefit from," said Vijay as she handed WWDC attendees her business card, on which reads the motto: "I want to make a difference in people's lives through technology."

Vijay has now progressed to Apple's more advanced Swift programming language to develop a new app she's calling GoalsHi, which aims to give students more confidence in the classroom.

During Apple's WWDC keynote, the company revealed a new educational app called "Swift Playgrounds", which aims to introduce users to a new way to learn to code with Swift on an iPad.

The free app, due to be released with iOS 10 this fall, features custom "learn to code" lessons that focus on crafting visual cues around numeric coding data to slowly introduce kids into the world of coding.

All iPad Air and iPad Pro models will be compatible with the app, as well as iPad mini 2-and-later devices.

Apple Wallet was designed to allow users to easily place payment options like credit cards, debit cards, and gift cards alongside tickets and passes from companies like Fandango and EventBrite. However, Politico Europe has decided to try to use the app to deliver news to its readers, reports NiemanLab (via AppleInsider).

As a part of its coverage of the EU Referendum [next week's nationwide vote in which the U.K. decides whether to leave or stay in the European Union], Politico has started to test Apple Wallet as a news distribution channel via a new tool it calls EU Referendum Tracker. With the tool, which is available only on Apple devices, readers can opt in to receive live polling and results data, as well as breaking news alerts, which appear on the back of the pass.

Although the pass is largely used for the EU Referendum, the news organization has been experimenting with breaking news alerts. Earlier today, it pushed a breaking news alert about the death of British politician Jo Cox.

Kate Day, Politico's editorial director of growth, told NiemanLab that the news site turned to Apple Wallet in an effort to experiment with sending news notifications without developing and maintaining its own app. Currently, Apple only allows websites in Safari to send breaking news alerts on macOS. Politico chose the EU Referendum specifically because they believe users are more open to push notifications if they sign up for the specificity of a topic rather than general news.

Politico considered platforms like WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger for its project, but thought WhatsApp had scaling issues for publishers while Facebook announced its bot program after Politico began work on the Apple Wallet project. The experiment is a joint effort with ad agency Digitas LBI, which used Apple Wallet to deliver news about the U.K. general election in 2015.

Day told NiemanLab that although Apple Wallet was an unusual choice for breaking news notifications, the limitations allowed Politico to focus and simplify what they wanted to do and get across with the notifications.

The Politico Europe EU Referendum Tracker can be signed up for at Politico's website while on an iPhone.

Note: Due to the political nature of the discussion regarding this topic, the discussion thread is located in our Politics, Religion, Social Issues forum. All forum members and site visitors are welcome to read and follow the thread, but posting is limited to forum members with at least 100 posts.

Apple today announced the debut of a selection of new features and resources available to developers to help them test, optimize, and analyze their iOS, watchOS, and tvOS apps.

Apple’s TestFlight beta testing platform has been updated with support for iOS 10, watchOS 3 and tvOS 10, so developers can begin testing apps incorporating new features like SiriKit immediately and providing betas to beta testers.

The update, originally released on June 13, adds features like a 3D Touch Quick Action to all apps so beta testers can get feedback on new features quickly.

Apple has also updated its App Analytics feature with data on App Store Impressions, allowing developers to tell how many times an app’s icon has been viewed in App Store search results, the Featured section of the App Store, the Top Charts, and the App Store product page.

Today’s developer news also highlights a new support page outlining how to optimize for App Store search, with tips like choosing accurate keywords, using a simple and memorable app name, correctly using App Store categories, and more.

iOS 10, watchOS 3, tvOS 10, and macOS Sierra will be released to the public in the fall following an extended beta testing period.

Apple previewed iOS 10 earlier this week with new rich notifications that enable iPhone users to view photos and videos, listen to audio, or respond to messages directly within notification bubbles. If you receive an iMessage, for example, you will be able to reply to the conversation without leaving the Lock screen.

Apple has also provided developers with the ability to update existing notifications with new information, or delete them, which should help declutter the Lock screen and Notification Center. But many apps still generate multiple notifications, such as every photo, video, or message you receive on Snapchat.

MacRumors forum member chrf097 explains:

The problem with this current system is that notifications become easily cluttered. An active group chat can result in hundreds of individual notifications. For example I'm in a group chat of friends with about 12 active people, and I have to leave it muted anytime I choose not to participate, due to the amount of notifications that collect. In addition, this means that important information can get lost in the sea of notifications.

The solution, as seen in his concept below, could be to follow in Android's footsteps by collapsing notifications on a per-app basis.

The new design would save valuable screen space and allow you to glance at your Lock screen or Notification Center notifications much quicker. But collapsed notifications could inhibit the rich notification experience, so it would work best if collapsed notifications could be toggled on or off on a per-app basis in Settings.

Apple seeded the first beta of iOS 10 to developers earlier this week, and a public beta will be available in July. The free software update will officially be released in the fall for most devices compatible with iOS 9, excluding the iPhone 4s, iPad 2 and 3, original iPad mini, and fifth-generation iPod touch.

Apple could introduce collapsible notifications in a future iOS 10 beta, although changes will more likely be limited to minor tweaks and enhancements.

Despite announcing a handful of new additions to iOS 10 earlier in the week at WWDC, Apple kept silent on whether or not a much-requested "Dark Mode" would be coming to its mobile operating system this year, although it did announce a similar feature would be hitting Apple TV.

Yesterday, developer Andrew Wiik shared a few screenshots of what appears to be an early form of Dark Mode running on the first beta of iOS 10 inside Xcode. Wiik's tweet shows darkened versions of Messages, while a responding user corroborated his finding with pictures of Clock, Safari, and iTunes.

The Clock app is known to have gotten a darkened redesign in iOS 10, and a shot of iBooks is also included, but a reading-enabled "Night Mode" has been around since iOS 8. iTunes also presently uses a darkened scheme in its iOS app but, according to beta tester Mac Aficionados on Twitter, the system wide Dark Mode provides a unified darkened hue across all apps in comparison to what used to be an app-specific colorway with varying levels of black.

In a Reddit post sharing the screenshots, Wiik mentioned that "Apple has implemented the feature it just isn't available for us users yet." He went on to hope that "this won't be an iPhone 7 exclusive."

The potential for Dark Mode's inclusion in iOS has been around for a while now, but picked up steam thanks to speculation in a few concept videos shared earlier in the Spring. Closer to WWDC, possible hints from a few evasive Siri responses -- alongside additional concept images -- fueled more rumors than ever that the feature would be announced by Apple during its keynote.

Case designs, drawings, and renders for the "iPhone 7" and "iPhone 7 Plus" have been propagating online for several months now, with most agreeing that the 2016 smartphone will adopt the same design language of the iPhone 6s. Apple is still expected to introduce a few new exclusive features on this year's iPhone, possibly including a Smart Connector, dual-lens camera, redesigned antennae bands, and no 3.5mm headphone jack.

Some of these additions -- mainly the dual-lens camera -- are rumored to be solely found on the iPhone 7 Plus, while the existence of others are still debated as we move closer to September and the expected reveal of each handset. Today, designer Mathijs Schrauwen (via iPhoned) [Google Translate] has imagined these rumors into an iPhone 7 rendering, alongside the newest information coming out of WWDC regarding the feature-packed additions of iOS 10.

Schrauwen's designs show off the expected dual-lens camera system of the new iPhone, housed inside a small pill-shaped enclosure along with a horizontally aligned flash. The back also honors the rumor that Apple will realign the antennae bands from the current design, which cut across the back of the iPhone. The designer went for a Space Gray look, contrasting recent, questionable rumors that Apple might ditch the color in favor of a kind of "Deep Blue."

Thanks to iOS 10's nixing of the "Slide to Unlock" feature, placing more emphasis on Touch ID than ever before, Schrauwen also includes a touch-sensitive Home Button in his renderings. This falls in line with recent sketchy reports that the iPhone 7 could possibly be the first iPhone model without a physical Home Button.

The back of the new design renders double down on the Smart Connector rumor that is one of the more contested reports for the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus, with the earliest rumors saying it was coming in 2016, and newer ones contradicting that news. iPhoned also alleges that Schrauwen's designs remove the 3.5mm headphone jack, which is one of the more widely believed rumors, but none clearly show the bottom of the device.

Besides the hardware specifics, the renders are interesting insights into what a new generation iPhone might possibly look like running iOS 10. Schrauwen depicts screens running apps like Watch and Messages, and performing basic duties in the new widgets view. Instead of a downward swipe to access widgets in Notification Center, iOS 10 places them on the left-most screen of both the Lock screen and Home screen.

There's been a lot of news surrounding iOS 10 and all of its new features coming out of WWDC this week, with new details on apps like Messages, Photos, and the nuances of the redesigned Lock screen getting heavy attention. You can catch up with all the news you may have missed in the MacRumors iOS 10 tidbits post, and check out our most recent video, centering around the robust additions to Messages.