Self-service from Apple

22 December 2022

Self-service from Apple

Reading Time: 2 minutes

‘We need to have more open ‘right to repair’ when it comes to Apple products’

Not long time ago, supporters of the movement ‘right to repair’ became openly irritated with the fact that Apple strictly controls the repairment procedures over their gadgets. As a response to this pressure, in November 2021, Apple announced launching this service for users that would like to try and fix devices on their own.

This novelty was not perfect at the beginning, the guidelines were not clear and detailed enough as well as some repairments were just destroying various features of the iPhone, for instance, replacing the display on an iPhone 13 was disabling Face ID, later on, this was fixed by the company. Moreover, not long time after this, Apple allowed its users to install different browsers and email apps from those that were set as the default ones. All those chages made Apple products even more user friendly.

What is more, the company not only allowed its customers to use their guidelines and videos to repair gadgets, but also, they started selling all possible details needed for the repairment as well as tools, directly to the customers.

However, only in December 2022, it was announced that Apple expanding their self-repair service over UK along with other seven European countries. This was made after the pressure from the members of the movement mentioned above.

Is everything as good as it seems to be?

The answer is no. Once the repairment is not provided by Apple, and it goes wrong, the warranty becomes invalid.

Along with this Apple has received tons of complains about the difficultness of the repairments, which became the disaster.

Which conclusion can be made out of this?

We should allow people to do what they are good at. The person who works, for example in finance and has small knowledge, not talking about deep one, in technologies or repairment works, should allow professional do their job, and vice versa. Such attempts of totally unskilled people to save money on repairments and bring them even more spending even to the point of buy a new gadgets

Tagged Apps, customer service, devices

12 November 2022

1 Comment

Apps, Business, Sharing economy

Why is all delivery food company still not profitable? and how they can attract investor?

Reading Time: 2 minutes

https://assets.brandinside.asia/uploads/2017/01/deli.jpg

There have a lot of delivery food company around the world but why they cannot make profitable but there are always investor ready to invest because they believe that someday a business will be able to make profitable.

How are these delivery food companies profitable? for example, delivery food company earnings come from deducting 25% of the ride fare. This mean that if the fare is 100 zloty, the driver gets 75 zloty, and all of these company get 25 zloty on the other hand the 25 zloty will go toward advertising, driver promotion, developer wages, self-driving car R&D, back office system, liaising with government in each country on legal matters, fight lawsuits and salaries of employees but it is less profitable.

On the other hand, why do investors still invest in this business ? for example this is Uber’s latest 4 quarter earning Q3 Year 2018, revenue around 2532 million dollar, loss around 835 million dollar, Q4 Year 2018, revenue around 2560 million dollar, loss around 751 million dollar Q1 year 2019, revenue around 2671 million dollar, loss 862 million dollar as you can see The profit is constantly increasing and there are still losses, making investors think that they can still make a profit and find a solution to the problem of losses of profitable.

In America when customer want to use delivery food service they have to spend a shipping cost, tip and cost of food but it make customer spend a lot of money for delivering 1 time that make they have to spend tip and shipping cost that makes this part of the cost almost equal to half the price of food and this isn’t worth for customer in America. In my opinion these food delivery companies might be difficult to do in the future because in this situation after COVID-19 pandemic people they didn’t work from home that make decreasing of profitable for those delivery companies. In the future, we have to see how these companies find the solution.

source:

Boom Time for Food Delivery Platforms, But Still Not Profitable (industryleadersmagazine.com)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uber

https://www.businessinsider.com/uber-biggest-risks-according-to-wall-street-2019-8

https://www.pymnts.com/news/ridesharing/2018/uber-grab-sale-acquisition-profit-q1/

https://brandinside.asia/food-delivery-service-war/

Tagged Apps, business, sharing-economy

17 October 2022

3 Comments

How could AI improve healthcare?

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Artificial Intelligence in today’s world is developing rapidly. It is expected that by 2025 AI systems market will reach 791.5 billion dollars in revenue. In my article I want to focus on how AI is affecting the world’s health care. And I’m not going to show you a super fancy robot that will replace every doctor and even perform surgeries, but something that is way more accessible to people around the globe.

Ada Health is a free medical, symptom-checking app. It helps you check your symptoms and discover what might be causing them. With the help of Artificial Intelligence, Ada compares your case with thousands of medical documents and conditions to give you the most possible causes. The app is available in seven different languages: English, German, Portuguese, Spanish, French, Swahili, and Romanian. Swahili and Romanian were added thanks to funding from Fondation Botnar. It gives 119 million people more access to medical guidance. Ada has now over 12 million users and completed 28 million symptom checks.

How does a symptom check work?

The app is designed like a chatbot. First you have to start symptom assessment. The AI gets smarter the more you tell so you are asked a few simple questions (name, gender, date of birth and some personal questions about your health state). Then you can choose whether this assessment is for yourself or someone else. From there you are searching for your symptoms and briefly describe it. If you don’t know any of the medical terms you have the ability to check it within the app (short explanation with a picture). When all the questions are finished Ada’s AI processes your answers and you get your report. Note that this is not a medical diagnosis, but only a suggestion what might be the cause and suggests what you could do.

Ada is providing people with more information about their current state and suggest taking better health related actions. With the use of Swahili, it will be a game changer in developing countries of Africa, where people don’t have access to proper healthcare, or it is too expensive for them. The app will make them aware of their own health.

Ada is doing a great job at what it is supposed to do, but there is still a problem with accessibility of healthcare. Governments in developing countries should work with initiatives like this one and develop a new healthcare system. In my opinion apps like Ada should be used to interview and diagnose. Then a person would only go for a quick examination and receive medical advice from a doctor. It could make the poor systems more efficient, and one doctor would serve more people at the time.

In the future the app should be developed to gain and use even more personal information about one’s health. It could involve congenital diseases, allergies, eating habits, sports activity, but also information gathered everyday thru your smart devices. It could be integrated into your personal medical system that guides you with every aspect of your health.

Thank you for your time. Let me know what you think about this project and could it actually improve healthcare?

Sources:

https://ada.com/about/

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/27/samsung-and-bayer-invest-in-ai-doctor-app-ada-health.html

https://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=US49571222

Tagged Apps, Artificial Intelligence, health, healthcare, machine-learning

24 March 2022

1 Comment

Apps

Google Letting Developers Use Their Own Billing Systems

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Google has decided to test the possibility of allowing developers to use their own billing systems on their apps, with Spotify being one of the first to be granted the opportunity.

Allowing such feature would allow users to pay or subscribe through the app rather than having to go to an external website from the developer. In this case users will be given the choice to subscribe to Spotify through the app using either their Google Play wallet, or Spotify’s own billing method. Under this new agreement Spotify will be charged less than the standard 30% commission, but the final figure has not been announced at this time.

I believe that the move is beneficial to both companies and will most likely lead to change in the app market, if this method proves successful it will allow more developers the ability to adopt this feature. Having the ability of using your own billing system is a big advantage and useful tool for developers. In the past when using Apple’s App Store, if users wanted to purchase a Spotify subscription they were required to pay £12.99 due to Apple’s 30% commission, Apple also didn’t allow the possibility of Spotify telling users to subscribe outside of the App Store system to pay less, which it was later ruled that the move was in breach of the EU Competition Law, following this Spotify stopped the ability for new users to subscribe with Apple, and to use their website instead. This move from Google will help to avoid problems like this on their platform, and may later push Apple in a similar direction of it proves to be a competitive advantage for Google.

Sources:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-03-23/google-opens-its-app-store-billing-starting-with-spotify

https://variety.com/2022/music/news/spotify-google-billing-system-subscription-deal-1235212772/

https://www.theverge.com/2022/3/23/22993417/google-pilot-test-android-alternate-billing-systems-spotify

https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answer/112622?hl=en

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/04/30/eu-says-apples-app-store-breaches-competition-rules.html

Tagged apple, Apps, google, Spotify

4 January 2022

8 Comments

Bez kategorii

FOREST – an app that will help you stick to your new year’s resolutions

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Forest App: Stay focused and plant real trees — https://res.cloudinary.com/madimages/image/fetch/fl_progressive,e_sharpen:100/https://www.mobileappdaily.com/public/uploads/mad_10109558bba.png

Probably many of you, when the 1st of January comes, decide to create a list of resolutions for the whole year. If anyone wants to be more productive this year, I recommend to you FOREST.

This is, in my opinion, the best productivity app, that helps you with staying focus. When you have a list of things to do and you lack motivation, there comes Forest. As many of you know, the Pomodoro technique is a productivity method where you have around 25-minute blocks of being focused mixed with 5-minute blocs of relaxation time. Forest allows you to set your own duration time of “work time” and time for breaks.

screenshot from my phone, the 1st thing you see after opening the app

How does it work?

During the time you are focused, the tree of your choice is growing in the app. When you set the timer for example for 25 minutes, it will start counting down that time and you will see a tree starting to grow in that time. The more time you spend, the more trees you will have in your own forest. Also you can choose from the 80 tree species.

Does our forest have an impact in real life?

Yes it does! In the app, you not only get to plant your own forest, but you also collect points, and after every 2500, the sponsor of the app “Trees for the future” will plant a real tree on your behalf, which I think is really great.

Why is it so helpful?

Avoiding distractions becomes much easier, when the app turns your effort into a game-like experience. One tree represents one successful session of undistracted work. Why undistracted? Because disturbing a session (so turning off the app or switching to another) results in a dying tree. When you find yourself tempted to use your phone and you exit the forest app, as you leave the app, you will almost instantly receive a notification that says that your tree will die if you don’t go straight back onto the app and continue with the timer.

Can you play with your friends?

Yes you can and I think it is a great option. You can add your friends in the app, which creates a little bit of a competition, because you can compare your focus time, but also allows you to study together (and then when one of you fails, the tree you were working on together, dies).

To sum up, I think Forest is an ideal choice if you are trying to become more focused and spend less time on your phone while completing your day-to-day tasks. And what’s important you are not only boosting your own productivity and focus, but you are also helping to encourage and contribute to the planting of real trees around the world

SOURCES:

https://www.forestapp.cc

https://happyheadspace.com/2018/09/19/how-to-use-forest-app-and-the-pomodoro-technique-to-increase-your-productivity/amp/

https://lizard.global/blog/apps-that-boost-your-productivity/

https://youtu.be/iL4HSVv5Ac4

Tagged Apps

2 December 2021

5 Comments

AI, Apps

Woebot – the future of the mental health?

Reading Time: 2 minutes

https://woebothealth.com/img/2021/05/06_Encouraging_2.gif

WHAT IS A WOEBOT?

Woebot is a bot, that invites people to talk with him and encourages them to have an honest conversation about their feelings, thoughts. On the webpage of Woebot is it said that:
“Woebot uses AI and Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques to learn from millions of conversations annually and to provide therapeutic encounters that are psychologically related, responsive to a person’s dynamic state of health, and targeted using tools from cognitive, behavioral, and interpersonal disciplines.”

The Woebot has a different versions for different people, like for example for being in control of a maternal mental health, not only during the pregnancy, but also in time of a postpartum etc. I think this is a really helpful for women especially during this time, because as shown by the Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System (PRAMS), CDC research shows that nationally, about 1 in 8 women experience symptoms of postpartum depression.

https://woebothealth.com/science-and-technology/

THE ADVANTAGES OF HAVING AN ONLINE CONVERSATION

Personally, I think that many people have the problem with being honest when it comes to talking about their feelings. Furthermore, the problems with mental health are often neglected, because of the social view on them. Many people are ashamed to talk about mental health, due to being scared of what others may think of that. When it comes to human-like therapeutic encounters and talking with a bot, many problems vanish. The fear of being judged is not an issue anymore. I also think it’s worth to mention that Woebot is free, so it’s available for everyone with a smartphone.

IS THE BOT REPLACING THERAPISTS?

No, Woebot isn’t created to replace the professional help. It’s only a useful tool for people who are seeking help in something different than traditional methods.

IS WOEBOT AVAILABLE IN EVERY LANGUAGE?

Unfortunately, as for now, the bot is talking only in English and partly in Italian.

The mental health awareness is really important and I’m really happy that initiatives like Woebot are becoming a thing.

Tagged Apps

1 November 2021

2 Comments

Apps

myKROSS – application for bike lovers

Reading Time: 3 minutes

MyKROSS is a free application available on mobile devices with Android and iOS. It brings together cycling enthusiasts of various levels, from those who go for a short ride on a bike to professional cyclists for long distances.

The app allows users to scan their KROSS’ bike, one or more, with the NFC code and add it to the app. The user can also add a different brand’s bike manually. After the bike appears in the application preview, the user can obtain all possible information about his model, the number of the frame, forks, wheels, driving elements, brakes and much more.

The application offers the creation of a community in which users create routes for cycling and share them in the application for the other bike enthusiasts by adding ratings, photos, and comments. Then, other cycling fans, regardless of what part of Poland they are in, can use the proposed routes in their area, filtering according to the length of the road, surface or opinions and comments. The application informs the cyclist on a current basis about the distance, speed and time covered by him and displays the route covered so far. Records all parameters that can be shared with other cyclists after the completed route.

Based on the interaction with the user, the date of purchase of the equipment and the number of kilometres travelled in different weather and terrain, depending on the bicycle manufacturer the application will suggest to the user a technical, warranty, periodic or seasonal review of the bike or its specific elements.

In the application, the user has access to the full specification of the bike even when he does not have it with him which allows checking the necessary information about the bike’s accessories, and then using the map of service points and shops recommended by KROSS to do the review, buy new equipment or prepare the bike for the cycling season.

MyKROSS is an innovative application for customers of the KROSS brand and the other cyclists. Not only for those who start their adventure by riding a bike or like to go for a short ride, but also the professional ones. It enables and makes it easier to check regularly your bicycle equipment. Allows you to discover and share new interesting routes and share your passion with others.

Sources:

https://kross.eu/pl/aplikacja-mykross

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=pl.kross.mykross&hl=pl&gl=US

https://apppage.net/preview/pl.kross.mykross

Tagged Apps, bike, cycling, KROSS, sport

28 January 2017

Back in time

Reading Time: 2 minutesHave you ever heard of Neo-Luddism? Or have you ever heard the term “Technophobia”? There are people in the world who oppose to technology or are afraid of it. Actually, how can you not be afraid of technology after watching Black Mirror? 😉

These two terms mentioned above refer to extreme phenomena. However, there is a trend in technology that aims at traveling back in time. Well, not literally. There are apps that will make people, who were born before widely accessible computers, feel pretty nostalgic. By that I don’t mean 1950s, but let’s bring 90s back!

VHS Camcorder

Do you remember the thing called VHS? Kind of old-school, I know. But don’t you sometimes miss it? Those white number in the bottom-left corner of the video that instantly tell you when it was recorded and that it’s a tape from your 3^rd, not 4^th birthday? Now you can have these back on the videos recorded with your smartphone. How cool is that! For $3 you can download it here.

Source: itunes.apple.com

Games

There are some classics you’ll never forget. Games of our childhood, which we really spent hours playing. They were not complicated and graphics were… well, were enough back then! Of course, now with the ocean of games and consoles like Xbox or PlayStation, with the growing market of Virtual Reality in the gaming industry it’s easy to find top quality entertainment. But don’t you sometimes miss good old Pac-Man, Snake, or Tamagotchi? I do! If you want to travel back in time when standing in a line or in the bus, just download old-school versions of those games.

Photography

Now let me show you one of my favorites! Meet Yoso, a new Polish product that can change your smartphone into an analog camera. Nowadays we tend to take gigabytes of pictures every day. You’re at a concert? You take 300 pictures. You’re going out? 50 selfies. In a restaurant? #instafood. Vacation? 1000 pictures. Most of them are the same, few of them are good. And most probably you won’t go back to the majority of your pictures because it’s just too much! Yoso will make you actually think before taking a picture, you won’t see it instantly, but then they’ll send you a physical copy. Wouldn’t it be great to have 36 awesome pictures from vacation and simply live the moment for the other 9964?

Conversations?!

It’s not an app, but still an exceptional idea. Last year MasterCard started a campaign in Warsaw restaurants called #PricelessTime. Its goal was to make people put their phones down and start having real conversations. That they did was installing special capsules in the restaurants. Based on the time people’s phones spent in the capsule, customers were given prizes.

The idea is brilliant and sad at the same time. Do we really need a prize to focus on the people we met with? I hope this campaign will inspire you to re-thinking the way you spend time with your friends. How about living real life even without special apps and capsules? 😉

Tagged 90s, Apps, back in time, technology

13 October 2015

7 Comments

Bez kategorii

Free to read! Charges may apply

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Put your hand in your pocket. Dig around. What did you find? A few coins? A paper? Or did you find a Smartphone? Yes. I bet you did. Now as you unlock your phone what is the first thing that your eyes see? You will say: “Just a bunch of apps”. Perfect. Now as well, its more than likely that you did not pay for this “Free” application. Because as the economist Milton Friedman said: “There is no such thing as a free lunch.” But one might think: “I just downloaded this application for free. How can they make money off me?”

Well that is a slippery question that has many answers to it. However this time I will focus on one, that is the ever growing gaming app industry. The Mobile Video Game Industry is set to make $30.3 billion dollars worldwide. The big name gaming apps that are generating this revenue are free-to-play. Some of these are Angry Birds, Clash of Clans, Temple Run, Candy Crush Saga, and Fallout Shelter just to name a few.

However the most interesting and lucrative part is how low cost these applications are to make. An application can cost to make between $10,000 to $250,000. One might say that is a high cost for a free to play application. However to create the average video game console/pc can cost between $1,000,000 to $140,000,000. That is a large sum and risk for the developer to take. As well for the consumer its a hefty tag to pay with the average game costing $60. This is why its becoming more intriguing, for big name video game companies to start creating free-to-play applications. Bethesda, the video game developer that has created iconic games like Skyrim (one of the highest selling games of all time) and Fallout, created a free-to-play application called Fallout Shelter. Within the first two weeks it made $5.1 million dollars, this game was created as form to advertise their upcoming game Fallout 4. But they might have stumbled within their actual cash cow with this free-to-play game, that will probably out gross the product that they were marketing for. Another highly addictive and revenue generating juggernaut is Candy Crush Saga. In 2014 they generated $1.5 billion dollars for a game that is just entering is third year of existence.

I wont give you any further examples since you know where this trend is going. Free-to-play apps make money. But how? Well through many different ways. One is in game purchases. The application offers you to shorten wait time, an extra life, an outfit, a character, more resources, pretty much anything in which the game revolves around. However they do this in a clever way. At the beginning they give you a few “tokens” in which you normally would pay, then they show you how they can be used during a “tutorial” and show you how advantageous it can be. So after playing the game a few times, the difficulty level starts going on an incline. Then eventually you are forced to either wait for your waiting time to end, or gain more life….but if you don’t want to wait, then you can pay.

Developers play with the addictive qualities of these games and smartphones to keep trying to fish for the money from your bank account. One might want to deny that these free-to-play games are going to go away but the forecast portrays that by 2018 mobile gaming will generate $45 billion dollars.

As you see this is the present and the future that is implemented into smartphones. But are you willing to get with the times, so you can spend your valuable time and money on a pointless application?

I’ll let you decide. I am gonna go read a book off my Kindle app…..wait….

Tagged Addictive, Apps, free-to-play, Gaming, smartphones

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