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This third-year WWDC scholarship winner built an ML model to recognize beer in one day
Fire TV Cube: Amazon's new bid at smart-home simplicity
Valve's New 'Anything Goes' Policy Fails To Address Steam's Biggest Problems

This third-year WWDC scholarship winner built an ML model to recognize beer in one day

Posted: 06 Jun 2018 06:14 PM PDT

Every year Apple invites student developers to its Worldwide Developer Conference. This year there were 350 scholarship winners in attendance. This afternoon I met up with Collin DeWaters of Fredericksburg, Virginia, who already has four titles in the App Store and put together a new 3D racing game for his Swift Playground application in three days. He's 21.

WWDC scholarship winner Collin DeWaters

Student prodigies are all over the place at WWDC. I ran into two at this morning's Nike Run Club. But even by lofty WWDC scholarship winner standards, DeWaters seems extraordinarily diverse in his interests and his familiarity with Apple's APIs.

Despite being toured around as a guest of Apple during the event--which includes a trip to Apple Park's Steve Jobs Theater to meet with Tim Cook--DeWaters found time to build prototype code making use of the newest APIs to be released. He also managed a stop at Apple's Infinite Loop store to track down the just announced Pride Month band for Apple Watch. And during WWDC week, he made an appearance at AltConf (his interview there is on YouTube).

A Swift learner

DeWaters got interested in computers initially working with PCs, but then got a Mac in high school and spent a couple years figuring out Apple's Objective-C development language.

In 2014 Apple released Swift, and DeWaters quickly became a fan of the new language. He noted that it was easy to understand, easier to learn and easy to read and collaborate on code, particularly in comparison to ObjC. In 2015 he launched his first App Store title, "Avoid," a game where players dodge and defend against floating blips to stay alive as long as possible.

That year he also put in an application for a WWDC scholarship but wasn't accepted. That didn't stop him though. He created a social network for music and won a scholarship to attend in 2016. The next year, he worked with SpriteKit and GamePlay Kit to build the retro 2D game Bit Hockey, which he submitted as a Swift Playground and was again invited to WWDC.

This year, he applied with his latest project, a 3D racing game--with the intent of adapting it to work with ARKit. He's actually written the game twice: first as a conventional racing game for Mac that steers a car around a racetrack (there are billboards in the game cleverly advertising his other software titles), and again as an iOS game, with plans to turn it into an Augmented Reality title where players control the turning speed of Hot Wheels-sized cars that race around a track that can be virtually positioned on any ARKit-recognized horizontal surface.

DeWaters noted that most of the GameKit and SceneKit logic of his racing game was easy to port between Macs and iOS. The two platforms require more custom work in building their platform-native user interface, however. He stated that UIKit on iOS made it relatively simple to build the user interface elements, and in comparison to the Mac's AppKit API was a lot easier to understand.

One of the new features Apple demonstrated this year was an internal effort to host its own UIKit-based apps on the Mac in macOS Mojave, including News, Stocks, Home and Voice Memos. Each of the apps has a simple UI that's easy to adapt to the Mac's mouse and windowing UI without needing to rewriting it to macOS AppKit APIs.

Next year, after Apple polishes its implementation of UIKit on macOS, it expects to make this work public to third-party developers. DeWaters noted that this could facilitate moving his own iOS games (and other apps with a simple UI) to the Mac.

Music Memories

Of all of the projects he's worked on, DeWaters said he's most proud of Music Memories. That original app lets users select photos taken on specific dates, pick a calendar event or a selected date range and it then suggests (using MusicKit) the songs the user was listening to (using machine learning and some original algorithms), creating a zeitgeist playlist that can be accessed everywhere Apple Music works.

Once a Music Memory is created, the song playlist appears on iOS devices, Apple Watch, your Mac and can even be requested by Siri to play on HomePod.

The creative title (a free app) was recently featured by Apple in the App Store, jumping its user base to 1,000 daily users. It's already available globally, but currently limited to English. DeWaters said he's attending sessions at WWDC with an interest in localizing it for other speakers and locations.

He also has plans for a 2.0 version that makes use of a subscription model, featuring both a Mac edition of the app and the ability to save memories in the cloud. Its App Store reviews are glowing, with one user writing, "I love using this app especially with the 'dynamic memories'! I was able to listen to a playlist of music from 3 years ago in college! The fact that all of this works with the built-in Music app makes this app a real gem."

Mojave MacBook Pro, with Touch Bar

DeWaters was already using the new macOS Mojave on his MacBook Pro. He assured me he's dual booting it, but also said the new developer release is already very usable. I asked what he thought about the new Dark IU. "I'm never going to turn it off. I love it!" he said.

I asked him about the Touch Bar on his MacBook Pro. Did he find it useful? Turns out he's already built apps that use it. His iOS Bit Hockey game started out on the Mac, where he used the Touch Bar APIs to provide menu shortcuts and to pause the game.

He also said he finds his Touch Bar handy in other apps, including of course Apple's Xcode development tools, where with a single tap of the Touch Bar he can comment out a selection of code, isolating lines that might contain a problem.

What else does he anticipate Apple working on? Well, the rumors are swirling about eyewear featuring an Augmented Reality experience for AR without needing to point a phone. Maybe by 2020.

ML Beer

DeWaters already has plenty to think about right now. He somehow found time to work with Apple's newly released Create ML to build a machine learning model.

Yesterday (!) while at AltConf (a meeting held around the corner from WWDC) he whipped up a machine learning model to recognize drinks, and tell if a photo or camera image was water, wine, beer or some other drink.

He took 400 photos of peoples' drinks and created a model in ten minutes that he demonstrated for me by looking at image search photos.

"That's wine," he pointed out. "And here's a beer," he said, as his demo app labeled drinks in images as he pointed his camera at them, first with a confidence predictor and then with a pinned, 3D label floating in space. Seemed to be some gratuitous ARKit on display.

And speaking of beers: this year is DeWaters' third WWDC but tomorrow will be his first WWDC Bash where he's old enough to get an armband for adult drinks. Beers all around. </span>

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Fire TV Cube: Amazon's new bid at smart-home simplicity

Posted: 07 Jun 2018 08:00 AM PDT

30-amazon-fire-tv-cube — Amazon's latest Alexa-powered device hits the market on June 21.
Sarah Tew/CNET

Amazon on Thursday unveiled the Fire TV Cube, essentially the love child of a Fire TV streamer and Echo speaker rolled into one boxy design.

The device becomes Amazon's 11th Alexa-powered gadget, which may seem overwhelming for someone just learning about the company's smart speaker lineup. Yet the purpose of this particular device appears to go further than being just another Alexa product, pointing to Amazon's vision of making our connected homes simpler and more refined, not just jammed with more electronics.

At a briefing earlier this week in a Manhattan hotel, Sandeep Gupta, a Fire TV vice president, gestured toward three separate remotes that operated a nearby TV: there was the cable box remote, the TV remote and the sound bar remote. Using the Cube sitting by the television, he bypassed the familiar juggle of remotes with the help of voice commands and the Cube's slim remote.

"The goal here is to declutter people's lives, declutter the complexity of controlling your home entertainment system and make it easier to use," he said.

Review: Amazon Fire TV Cube is Alexa voice control for your entire AV system

The Cube, which the secretive company uncharacteristically teased out earlier this year, serves as one more element in Amazon's bid to dominate the smart home. That work includes the company's portfolio of Echo smart speakers, Ring and Blink security cameras and video doorbells, and its Amazon Key in-home delivery service. But as the company has raced to come up with more and more new gadgets for the home -- reportedly even cooking up a home robot -- it will likely need to combine more of these devices' functions and simplify things for us, lest we get confused by all these options or get crushed under a mountain of Amazon doodads.

The Cube may help with that, allowing folks to cut down on all those remotes, and remove the need for separate Fire TV and Echo devices. Those may be small steps, but could eventually add up to a more seamless smart home of the future. That's the hope, anyways.

The new gadget also highlights Amazon's work to specialize its Echo devices for every room and scenario in your home, starting with the generalist Echo speaker, then building up to the Echo Look for you closet, Echo Spot for the nightstand and now Fire TV Cube for the entertainment center. The Cube is also part of Amazon's continued work to add Alexa controls into nearly all its consumer devices, including its Fire tablets and previous Fire TV devices.

'Voice is the future'

Walking through a demo of the new Cube, Gupta said Amazon sought to create a device that was more than just a Fire TV streamer with Alexa crammed inside. To that end, the Cube is compatible with nearly all US cable and satellite set-top boxes, as well as streaming apps like Hulu and PlayStation Vue, to allow users to tune to live TV channels via voice. You will still need your cable remote to access your DVR and channel guide, so don't throw it out just yet.

Also, the Cube is able to control TVs, sound bars and A/V receivers with the help of several forms of connectivity, including infrared, Wi-Fi and HDMI CEC. Using these connections, you could set up your devices so the Cube can turn on the TV, connected lights and sound bar by simply saying, "Alexa, I'm home."

Now Playing: Watch this: Amazon Fire TV Cube: "Alexa, control my TV and AV system"

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The device also takes advantage of being connected to the TV by showing scrolling lyrics when music is playing and showing visuals for certain Alexa skills, such as the clues in the Jeopardy skill. (Similar capabilities are available on the smaller Echo Show and Echo Spot.)

Because the Cube also works as a standalone Alexa speaker, it will play music, operate connected gadgets and tell you the weather when the TV is off.

Amazon said it gave the Cube its shape for a variety of reasons. Because it's meant to be kept by the TV, its mic arrays are all upfront, unlike all around a cylinder-shaped Echo speaker. Plus, an Echo's circular light ring would've reflected on the TV, so the Cube's indicator light is only upfront, too. The Cube isn't a pure cube, though, to prevent the device from blocking the bottom of your TV.

Amazon priced the Cube at $120 and it will become available on June 21 in the US only. Prime members can preorder the device for $90 today and tomorrow.

15-amazon-fire-tv-cube — Playing the Jeopardy Alexa skill on TV via the Fire TV Cube nearby.
Sarah Tew/CNET

While Amazon has found success in smart home tech, the market is still new and is bringing in a lot of competition from Google, Apple, Samsung and a variety of startups. Logitech's universal Harmony remote and even Amazon's own prior Echo and Fire TV products -- which offer many similar features -- may stand in the way of the Cube catching on. Additionally, set up of smart-home devices still requires a lot of steps, so that may be a hurdle for customers to adopt the Cube and its various connections to other entertainment devices.

Despite those challenges, Gupta said he sees the Cube as another step in bringing more voice controls -- and simplicity -- to the smart home.

"We want to use your voice to get quickly to what you want to do," he said. "And with Alexa, we've continued to make that better … We really believe that voice is the future."

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Valve's New 'Anything Goes' Policy Fails To Address Steam's Biggest Problems

Posted: 07 Jun 2018 05:00 AM PDT

Credit: Valve

Valve is dropping the ball on quality control on Steam.

Valve just published a lengthy announcement about how the company plans to handle controversial games that are released on Steam.

Rather than try to police controversial content, the company will adopt an 'anything goes' policy, so long as games in question don't contain "things that we decide are illegal, or straight up trolling."

This is in response to struggles Valve has faced attempting to determine whether games like Active Shooter should be sold on Steam. That game was removed not because it was about being a school shooter but because the developer had a history of trolling and bad consumer practices.

Instead of policing content, then, Valve plans to develop tools to allow Steam users to simply not see the offending games. Here's Valve:

Valve shouldn't be the ones deciding this. If you're a player, we shouldn't be choosing for you what content you can or can't buy. If you're a developer, we shouldn't be choosing what content you're allowed to create. Those choices should be yours to make. Our role should be to provide systems and tools to support your efforts to make these choices for yourself, and to help you do it in a way that makes you feel comfortable.

With that principle in mind, we've decided that the right approach is to allow everything onto the Steam Store, except for things that we decide are illegal, or straight up trolling. Taking this approach allows us to focus less on trying to police what should be on Steam, and more on building those tools to give people control over what kinds of content they see.

As far as I'm concerned, this misses the point entirely. I'm much less concerned with potentially offensive games than I am with incredibly broken games showing up on Steam. Games that are little more than asset flips. Games that don't even contain a .exe file. Games that are so broken and so abysmal that they simply have no place in an online game storefront.

If I owned a bookstore, I would defend controversial books' right to exist. I would sell controversial novels by divisive authors with whom I disagreed. I would not sell books that weren't finished, didn't come with all the pages, or were flagrant plagiarism. I would not sell books that weren't actually books. And I would not tell my customers that it's their job---not the bookstore or its owners job---to determine which books were knock-offs, incomplete and so forth.

This isn't because I wouldn't trust my customers. I trust that gamers on Steam can tell when a product is bad. I just wouldn't want my bookstore to be filled with garbage. Steam is filled with garbage. It's getting worse on a monthly basis. Steam Greenlight, which allowed some shabby form of vote-based entry onto Steam, was an imperfect solution that didn't work well. Valve replaced it with the fee-based Steam Direct, which is even worse. Simply making it easier for any lousy game to get onto the platform doesn't make Steam a better service. This isn't even really what I'd consider laissez faire. Rather, it's just plain lazy.

If Valve wants Steam to be totally uncensored, fine. Allow controversial titles and let consumers make up their own minds. It's up to Valve on this one (though I shed no tears for the removal of Active Shooter.) However, I do think that Valve has a greater responsibility to filter what gets added to the store to begin with. Nintendo Direct isn't enough to stop a constant barrage of half-baked "games" to make their way onto Steam each month.

7068 games were released on Steam in 2017. Already in 2018, 4095 games have been released on the platform and we're not even halfway through the year. That's also more than the 4,603 games that launched on Steam in all of 2016; the 2,506 games that launched in 2015; the 1,356 games that launched in 2014; or the 563 games that came out in 2013.

Do we really think that in five short years, this many new games should be releasing on Steam each year? Is there any fathomable way that these are all quality products worthy of a spot on Steam's digital shelves? Or is this never-ending slew of new releases just making it that much harder for consumers to find quality games and for small developers who actually make good games to gain visibility? For my part, I find it much, much harder to keep up with the indie scene. It's simply too overwhelming on PC (and much easier on PS4 or Xbox One or the Nintendo Switch.) PC gaming has become much less appealing to me in recent years, and Steam in particular has become much less a cornerstone of my gaming than it used to be. I find myself on Battle.net or Epic's game launcher a lot more these days than I used to. Other services, like GOG.com, are also worth checking out.

Controversial games should be way down the priority totem pole for Valve. By all means, take a free speech approach to content. But at least have some modicum of human curation involved in what actually gets added to Steam. It's completely out of control and this policy will do nothing to change that. Steam makes Valve billions of dollars. This is a very wealthy company. Forbes pins Valve boss Gabe Newell's net worth at $5.5 billion.

Surely more can be done to create a store less overrun by fake games and still give users the ability to craft their own shopping experience?

As to those cheering Valve over this---because apparently this sticks it to the dreaded SJWs---you've missed the point entirely, too. This isn't a victory for free speech or against feminists, it's just another triumph of mediocrity.

Well, mediocrity and greed.

P.S.

The moment I heard of this announcement from Valve I asked myself, "WWJSS?"

As in, "What will Jim Sterling say?"

But when I checked Sterling's Twitter feed I saw nothing. By the time I finished writing this post, however, Jim had tweeted:

I’ve heard about Steam’s decision to fully open the floodgates and thus open itself to future culpability when something truly untenable appears.

I’ll have a video I’m sure but until then, good luck with that, Valve.

— Jim Sterling (@JimSterling) June 6, 2018