Thoughts on Siri and Devices the Size of an iPod nano

Siri has a metric ton of potential. In just a week and a half it has made a significant impact on the way I interact with my iPhone.

Something that has been in the back of my mind since I first began using Siri is this thought about all the other types of products and devices that Siri could affect. But the device that has most been on my mind is the iPod nano.

Currently the iPod nano plays audio, helps with fitness tracking, and can tell time. When people got the idea of wearing the nano as a watch, then the next leap in functionality seemed obvious: use the nano as a remote to control the Apple TV. And now, with Siri, I think we’re seeing another glimpse into what could be down the road.

Aside about Bluetooth 4.0 and BLE

Apple is using Bluetooth 4.0 technology in the iPhone 4S. A subset of Bluetooth 4.0 is Bluetooth low energy (BLE). What’s great about the BLE is that the chips need very little power. What’s bad about BLE (at least in this context) is that it does not have an audio profile.

The iPod nano would, naturally, want to use the low energy Bluetooth chips. But as they currently stand, BLE would not allow an iPod nano to send or receive audio (i.e. phone calls or Siri commands).

This article’s entire premise of an iPod nano that uses a power-friendly Bluetooth chip to send Siri voice commands isn’t yet possible. It assumes there are some technical hurdles which currently have not been overcome, at least that I know of.

If an iPod nano were to be built using today’s market technology then it would either: (a) not work with Siri and the phone; or, (b) it would need to use a more power-hungry technology of Bluetooth that would allow for audio profiles, but that would require much more frequent charging.

And so, for now, let’s just speculate about what could be.

An iPod nano With Siri

Imagine an iPod nano that could connect to your iPhone. Give that nano a microphone and a speaker, and you’ve got a bluetooth wrist watch that can be used for phone calls, voice commands, and much more.

And so, with an iPod nano that’s connected to our iPhones — and thus has Siri — you could do quite a bit:

  • Send text messages and emails
  • Check the weather and stocks
  • Create, move, view, and edit appointments
  • Dictate notes
  • Create reminders and to-do items
  • Make phone calls

None of those things would be easily done on the nano’s 1.5-inch screen — it is far too small for any sort of substantial text input. About the most you could do is probably tap in the phone number you’d want to dial. Siri, however, could easily enable a nano-sized device to for all those tasks.

I think the idea of a product like this — a touchscreen watch that plays music and also has phone-like capabilities and an ability to connect to and control our other devices — is a no-brainer.

In fact, another company has already announced something along these lines. Recently the i’m Watch website went live. You can now pre-order one of these nano-sized, touch-screen, Android-based, “smart watches”.

The website seems pretty vague when it comes to specifics about what the i’m Watch can do. Also, I have been unable to find any live demoes of the device except for a 2-second clip where the company’s president, Manuel Zanella, is shown swiping left-to-right through a couple photos and then pulling down the notification panel. It’s right around the 03:28 mark of the promo video.

But, from what I can gather, the i’m Watch is meant for two things:

  1. By connecting via Bluetooth, it becomes an extension of your smartphone. Thus you can use the i’m Watch as a way to make and answer phone calls, and read text messages and emails.

The website doesn’t say anything about sending texts or emails, and so, I assume that you cannot. I mean, how in the world could you be expected to type a message on a 1.54-inch screen, without simply scrolling through the alphabet where all the letters and numbers are in a horizontal row? It’d be worse than rotary dialing.

Moreover, the i’m Watch supposedly has only 30 hours of standby time when Bluetooth is on (48 hours with it off). That is not very long at all. It means if you use your watch with your phone, you’ll have to charge it every single night. This is exactly why low energy Bluetooth technology would be so helpful.

  1. The i’m Watch will also be able to run some apps. It will play music, show photos, check the weather, connect to Facebook and Twitter, and other things.

But if you’re going to have a “shortcut” device like this — something that lives on your wrist and makes it easier to quickly answer your phone or view a text message — it needs to truly work like it should. It has to be more than a novelty item. And, I think it should be able to connect to more than just your phone.

Interface design, input, and ease of use are important enough for a device with a 3.5-inch screen. These things become even more important, and more difficult to maintain, as the screen-size shrinks to that of a wrist watch. Put another way: as the size of a smart device shrinks, its interface and input challenges grow.

Siri (or, if you want to be generic about it, voice input) is the way to overcome those input and interface challenges. Siri can (and likely, will) enable the creation of vast usability and functionality on an extremely small device such as the iPod nano.

If the iPod nano does eventually become capable of being an all-connected remote window device that works with our iPhones, Apple TVs, and computers, well, that would be pretty slick.

Thoughts on Siri and Devices the Size of an iPod nano

Regarding Bluetooth 4.0 in the iPhone 4S  →

The new Bluetooth chip that’s in the 4S is very light on power consumption:

The phone, which went on sale Oct. 14, is the first to have a new type of Bluetooth chip that can connect using very little power. The chip uses so little power that it can go into devices that are powered only by a standard “button cell” battery common in watches. The battery can last for years.

Could be a great way to give the iPod nano Bluetooth connectivity without sacrificing battery life or form factor. And I can sure think of a few good reasons to put Bluetooth in the nano.

Update: I discovered that the low energy subset of Bluetooth 4.0 (BLE) does not have an audio profile. Sigh.

(Via Ben Brooks.)

Regarding Bluetooth 4.0 in the iPhone 4S

This Week is My Week to Contribute to the Read & Trust Newsletter  →

Each week one of the members of the Read & Trust network writes an article for the newsletter. And tomorrow is my turn. I had a lot of fun writing this week’s piece; it’s on the history of my gadgets and it includes some hand-drawn sketches. (Fair warning: I am a lousy, lousy sketch artist. But that didn’t deter me. No. No it didn’t.)

The newsletter is $5/month. I am a subscriber (though, to be honest, I get a complimentary subscription) and each week it is always an enjoyable read.

This Week is My Week to Contribute to the Read & Trust Newsletter

PDFpen from Smile [Sponsor]  →

My thanks to the fine folks at Smile Software (makers of TextExpander), for sponsoring the RSS feed this week to promote PDFpen.

PDFpen is a professional-grade PDF editing tool that is easy and affordable for even the non-professional. With it you can edit text, insert images, annotate documents, and much, much more.

You can highlight text, strike it through, post your own comments, and more. This type of functionality is extremely helpful for marking up a PDF proof of a design mockup.

PDFpen lets you edit text that is embedded within the PDF file itself. Allowing you to make corrections or edits when only small parts of a PDF file need changing.

And, taking text editing to an even higher level, PDFpen has a search and replace feature. Just like you would use in a word processing program, but you can search for and replace words within the PDF. Additionally, you can search and redact. Very clever if there is a certain name, number, location, or whatever littered throughout a document in which you want all instances of it to be blocked out.

Moreover, PDFpen has fantastic OCR capabilities. If you’re wanting to create a paperless office, then PDFpen is one of the best of the bunch. When you open a photo or scanned image that has text, then a dropdown menu appears, asking if you want to OCR the whole document or just a certain page. (PDFpen recognizes 12 different languages for its OCR.)

Marco Arment, when on the hunt for a good OCR app, tried several and concluded that PDFpen was the best of the lot. Stating that with PDFpen, the image quality was maintained perfectly (many OCR apps will degrade the image quality of the documents they scan), it had very few OCR errors, and that it can even be automated with AppleScript.

In short, PDFpen is a smart and well-designed app. It’s built by the folks at Smile who have a fantastic reputation — they’re some of the good guys.

You can download a free trial of PDFpen from the Smile website, or buy it for $59.95. It’s also available on the Mac App Store.

PDFpen from Smile [Sponsor]

Regarding the Condition of a 17-Month Old, Well-Used, iPhone 4

Yesterday on Twitter, Thomas Wong asked me about the state of the glass on my iPhone 4. After using the phone for so long, how did it hold up?

I thought this was a great question and worth mentioning briefly.

After using my iPhone 4 every single day for nearly a year and a half, the glass on the front and the back was still in near-mint condition. The only physical blemishes to the glass were some minor nicks that were only noticeable when all fingerprints had been wiped off and you were holding the phone at just the proper angle.

For some, accidents do happen, and I was lucky enough to have never accidentally dropped my iPhone off the roof of a tall building and onto a concrete sidewalk. In fact, I have never catastrophically dropped any of my iPhones.

Moreover, I refuse to put any sort of case or even a clear screen protector on my iPhone.

I’ve owned a cell phone of some sort for 13 years. My iPhone 4 probably got used more than any cell phone I’ve owned previously. And, what’s remarkable, is that after the 18 months of daily usage, none of my phones were in as good of a condition as the iPhone 4 was:

  • The exterior glass was still in near-mint condition.
  • The battery still held a good, full charge and would last me two days of normal usage.
  • In fact, even the usefulness of the iPhone 4 actually increased thanks to software updates and the App Store.

Would it be stretching it to say that the iPhone 4 (and now, 4S) is like fine wine?

Regarding the Condition of a 17-Month Old, Well-Used, iPhone 4

Dan Frommer on How Apple Could Finally Put the “TV” in Apple TV  →

The current box-top peripheral known as the Apple TV is built as an addition to most people’s TV setups and wouldn’t work for a lot of households as the only television software and programming available. Dan’s post is a good look at how Apple could bring a TV to market that is for everyone, rather than just for geeks.

I’m with what Marco said in his Apple TV post yesterday: geeks like us don’t really “watch TV”. I’ve never had a cable TV subscription, and I probably never will.

I have an Apple TV, and I love it. It serves three purposes: playing music through our stereo, playing Netflix on occasion, renting iTunes movies on occasion. I only ever bust out the bunny ears if there is a football game on or something is especially news worthy. But as for the TV and Cable market: folks like Marco, you, and I are the exception, not the norm. Apple would need to do more than just put their Apple TV software into a TV set.

Dan Frommer on How Apple Could Finally Put the “TV” in Apple TV