Tim Cook Named to President Trump's American Workforce Policy Advisory Board

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U.S. Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross and Advisor to the President Ivanka Trump today announced the 25 members of the Trump administration's new American Workforce Policy Advisory Board, including Apple CEO Tim Cook.


The Advisory Board's recommendations will help guide the National Council for the American Worker's efforts to establish a strategy to ensure that American students and workers have access to "affordable, relevant, and innovative education and job training that will equip them to compete and win in the global economy."

The members of the Board include:

• Jay Box, President, Kentucky Community and Technical College System
  
• Walter Bumphus, President & CEO, American Association of Community Colleges
  
• Jim Clark, President & CEO, Boys & Girls Clubs of America
  
• Tim Cook, CEO, Apple
  
• Tom Donohue, CEO, U.S. Chamber of Commerce
  
• Juanita Duggan, President & CEO, National Federation for Independent Business
  
• Elizabeth Goettl, President & CEO, Cristo Rey Network
  
• Marillyn Hewson, Chairman, President, & CEO, Lockheed Martin
  
• Eric Holcomb, Governor, Indiana
  
• Barbara Humpton, CEO, Siemens USA
  
• Al Kelly, CEO, Visa
  
• Vi Lyles, Mayor, Charlotte, North Carolina
  
• Bill McDermott, CEO, SAP America
  
• Sean McGarvey, President, North America’s Building and Trades Unions
  
• Doug McMillon, President & CEO, Walmart
  
• Craig Menear, Chairman, President, & CEO, Home Depot
  
• Michael Piwowar, Executive Director, Milken Institute
  
• Scott Pulsipher, President, Western Governors University
  
• Kim Reynolds, Governor, Iowa
  
• Ginni Rometty, Chairman, President, & CEO, IBM
  
• Scott Sanders, Executive Director, National Association of State Workforce Agencies
  
• Johnny C. Taylor, Jr., President & CEO, Society for Human Resource Management
  
• Jay Timmons, President & CEO, National Association of Manufacturers
  
• Sheree Utash, President, WSU Tech
  
• Marianne Wanamaker, Professor, University of Tennessee

More coverage can be read over at CNBC.

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.

Tags: Tim Cook, Donald Trump

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iPhone-Connected Mattress 'The Pod' Dynamically Adjusts Temperature as You Sleep

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Sleep fitness company Eight Sleep today announced "The Pod," a smart bed that lets users control the temperature of their side of the bed through their iPhone. Not only that, but The Pod will dynamically warm or cool you (55 to 115 degrees Fahrenheit) as you sleep based on settings you enter in the app.


The Pod does not support HomeKit and Eight Sleep has no plans to do so as of now. When we asked about HomeKit integration, the company pointed out that The Pod does support IFTTT, which opens up many smart home connection possibilities. The Pod also integrates with Alexa devices, Google Home, Philips Hue, Wemo products, and more. With these integrations, you can say things like "Alexa, cool down my bed" to prepare for nighttime.

This "smart temperature mode" is powered by machine learning and biofeedback, and is accompanied by a thermo alarm that leverages temperature to wake you up more naturally, without disturbing a sleep partner and without the need of a noisy alarm. This mode gradually cools your side of the bed in the minutes prior to the wake-up time you set on your iPhone.


In addition, The Pod includes biometric tracking to monitor time slept, time to fall asleep, time of wake up, respiratory rate, heart rate, heart rate variability, temperature in bed, sleep breaks, light sleep, deep sleep, and REM sleep. All of this is fed into Eight Sleep's AI engine to calculate your "sleep fitness score" and rate your sleep each night.

You can then take this score to adjust your next night of sleep as needed, change settings in The Pod, and even compare scores with friends.


Sleep monitoring has become a popular market over the past few years, and even Apple has shown interest in the technology by acquiring sleep tracking company Beddit in May 2017. Beddit is a slim sensor strip that you place over your existing mattress to monitor sleep stats like sleep time and efficiency, heart rate, respiration, temperature, movement, snoring, room temperature, and room humidity.

You can reserve Eight Sleep's Pod for $95 beginning today, and the remaining balance will be due at the time of shipping in April 2019. The Pod is available in Full ($1,995), Queen ($2,195), King ($2,495), and Cali King ($2,495), and each mattress will have a 100 night trial period with free returns.

Tags: The Pod, Eight Sleep

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Apple Tweaks British and Australian Speaking Voices for Siri on HomePod

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Over the past 24 hours, we've seen a handful of reports talking about a new update to the speaking voice of Siri on HomePod in a few regions. These reports are mostly located in the United Kingdom and Australia, and mention the British (Male and Female) and Australian (Male and Female) speaking voices for the assistant, specifically on Apple's HomePod smart speaker.


The change appears to be very subtle. MacRumors readers described the Australian Female and British Male voices as "more natural" and "much clearer," and similar reports have emerged about other voices. Although there are many different descriptions for each voice, the consensus appears to be that the tweaks make Siri sound more human-like.

HomePod users can choose any Siri voice no matter the region they are located in, but as of now the vast majority of these reports appear to be located in the same regions as the voice they represent. This may be the beginning of a wider rollout, but that's still unclear at this point.

Twitter user @callumjcoe recorded the difference between the current iteration of the Australian Female voice (on an iPad) and the updated voice (on HomePod). Of course, distortion and muddled sound quality from a recording don't provide a perfect example, but there is a slight change between the two heard in the video, which is likely much more pronounced in person.

So will the real #Siri please stand up. pic.twitter.com/8a8LCyarqI

— Callum (@callumjcoe) February 13, 2019

As of writing, MacRumors hasn't noticed any similar updates to Siri on HomePod (for any voices) in the United States. Apple has updated Siri over the past year with improvements to the assistant's ability to recognize local businesses and destinations, as well as new jokes, but many Apple users remain frustrated with the technology. One of the last major updates to Siri came in iOS 11 in 2017, when Apple gave Siri a more natural voice that had better pronunciation and different inflection depending on what's being said.

In early 2018, Siri creator, co-founder, and former board member Norman Winarsky talked about the origins of Siri and the company's intentions for the assistant before Apple acquired it. According to the co-founder, Siri was originally meant to be incredibly intelligent in just a few key areas -- travel and entertainment -- and then "gradually extend to related areas" once it mastered each. Apple's acquisition pivoted Siri to an all-encompassing life assistant, and Winarsky said that this decision has likely led Apple to search "for a level of perfection they can't get."

Although unconfirmed, the new voice changes to Siri may be Apple's latest attempt to make the voice assistant more personable and easy to talk to, in the wake of ongoing user complaints. If the changes roll out to other regions, we'll update this article.

(Thanks Sebastian, Robert, and Jared!)

Related Roundup: HomePod

Tag: Siri

Buyer's Guide: HomePod (Neutral)

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Apple Introduces Quicker Way to Manage Subscriptions via App Store

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Apple recently introduced an easier way to manage subscriptions via the App Store, as spotted by MacStories editor-in-chief Federico Viticci.

Apple recently made a change (seems iOS 12.1.4 and 12.2 beta) to make it easier to manage subscriptions for iOS apps.

Now you just need to open the App Store, tap your profile, and choose 'Manage Subscriptions'. pic.twitter.com/4PtxvAQjTm

— Federico Viticci (@viticci) February 13, 2019

iPhone and iPad users running iOS 12.1.4 or iOS 12.2 beta can now simply open the App Store, tap on their profile picture in the top-right corner, and tap on Manage Subscriptions to view and edit App Store, Apple Music, and Apple News subscriptions.

We've confirmed this Manage Subscriptions shortcut is not in earlier iOS versions.

iOS 12.1.2
Managing subscriptions previously required an extra step of tapping on the box with your Apple ID name and email address via the App Store or Settings.

Tag: App Store

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Got Chrome OS 72? Here’s how to download Android movies and music to an SD card

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Xiaomi Mi LED TV 4A Pro 43 Review: No Netflix And Chill

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Nintendo's 'Fire Emblem Heroes' Crosses $500M in Player Spending on Two-Year Anniversary

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Further cementing its status as Nintendo's most successful mobile game to date, Fire Emblem Heroes has officially crossed the half-a-billion-dollar revenue mark, which it hit just after the two-year anniversary of its launch in early February 2017. The game's $500 million in player spending includes players on both iOS and Android (via Sensor Tower).


Fire Emblem Heroes is a free-to-play game that lets players spend real money inside the app once they download it. Most of Nintendo's apps have followed this structure, except Super Mario Run, which requires players to pay $9.99 to see the full game. In total, Fire Emblem Heroes has brought in "more than seven times the revenue" of Super Mario Run, and grossed more than twice the combined earnings of all of Nintendo's other mobile games, according to Sensor Tower.

To date these include Miitomo (now defunct), Super Mario Run, Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp, and Dragalia Lost. Released just last September, Dragalia Lost has already become Nintendo's second most lucrative mobile game, surpassing Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp and Super Mario Run.


In terms of platforms for Fire Emblem Heroes, players on Google Play/Android accounted for the majority of spending at 54 percent, while the iOS App Store made up 46 percent of player spending. Most players are located in Japan, which accounted for 56 percent of the game's $500 million total, while the United States is the game's second largest market at 31 percent of player spending.

Despite Super Mario Run performing poorly in comparison to the free-to-play games, Shigeru Miyamoto has stated that Nintendo will "continue pushing" for pay-once mobile games over freemium experiences. One senior official at Nintendo called the F2P structure of Fire Emblem Heroes as "an outlier" in the grand scheme of Nintendo's mobile strategy, claiming that Nintendo "prefers" Super Mario Run's payment model.

Despite this, Nintendo's next two mobile game releases will be free-to-play: Mario Kart Tour will launch this summer and Dr. Mario World is set to release later in 2019.

Tags: Nintendo, Fire Emblem

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