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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Apple

The Food Tech News Show: Apple’s Building Home Robots!

Join us at 1 PM Pacific where we’ll be talking about the food tech stories of the week!

This week, we’ll be joined by Scott Heimendinger, former founder of Sansaire and current builder of the next big idea in home knives at Seattle Ultrasonics.

The live stream can be watched below.

We love robots - FTNS

Here are the stories we’ll be talking about:

Apple is working on robots for the home! – From Bloomberg: “The original concept for the robot was a device that could navigate entirely on its own without human intervention — like the car — and serve as a videoconferencing tool. One pie-in-the-sky idea within Apple was having it be able to handle chores, like cleaning dishes in a sink.

Google has used its latest AI to create a new tool that creates a fusion recipe between two culinary cultures. Lifehacker: “According to Google,  Food Mood can provide creative inspiration for your next meal. Select two countries and this fusion recipe generator will create one for you. You can choose whether you would like to cook a starter, a soup, a main course or a dessert. For example, why not try a unique blend of flavors from Sri Lanka and Uganda or mixing influences from Oman and Belgium? This experiment was created by artists Emmanuel Durgoni and Gaël Hugo, and uses Gemini 1.0 Pro via Vertex AI.”

Whirlpool has let the entire Yummly team go. Appliance giant Whirlpool has laid off its entire Yummly team. According to industry sources, the company recently laid off all the employees for the recipe and cooking app and website. These sources tell the Spoon that it’s unclear what the company plans to do with the property it acquired in 2017.

Amazon Pulling ‘Just Walk Out’ from Amazon Fresh Grocery Stores – According to a story published in The Information, Amazon is planning to pull its Just Walk Out cashierless technology from its large-format grocery store, Amazon Fresh.

One Robot Pizza Chain Operator Breaks Down the Cost Each Part of the Pizza-Making Process – For small operators (and big ones as well) in the pizza business, Andrew Simmons’s posts on Linkedin have become must-read material.

Apple App Clips is Out Today, Right in the Middle of the Contactless HeyDay

Apple’s iOS 14 drops today, which means a bunch of new features are coming to your iPhone. Among the batch of goodies to be found in the update is the release of App Clips, which could help accelerate the adoption of mobile contactless payments across the food retail and restaurant space.

We covered App Clips back when the service was announced at Apple’s WWDC event. In a nutshell, App Clips allows you to pull down just a portion of a native mobile app to give you its basic functionality, without needing to download and set up the full app.

Let’s say, for example, you are at a Starbucks but don’t have the Starbucks app installed on your iPhone. Normally, you’d have to download the full app, set up an account and then enter a payment method before you could even start your order. Through App Clips, you can grab just enough of the Starbucks app to order and pay. No need to download the full app, no need for an account and since it uses Apple Pay, no need to enter credit card information.

The big limitation right now is that a cafe, restaurant or retailer has to be participating the program and developed an App Clip. But if/when they do, App Clips can be opened by scanning QR codes, tapping NFC tags, or opening links via Apple services like Messages or Safari. For a full run down of how App Clips works, check out this post from 9 to 5 Mac.

App Clips is definitely arriving at the right time. The COVID-19 pandemic’s sustained presence here in the U.S. is pushing cafes, restaurants and grocery stores towards more contactless payment systems in an attempt to reduce human-to-human contact.

There are a ton of companies bringing contactless payment tech to market. Order for Me, PayJunction and Bbot are among the many startups building contactless payment systems for restaurants. Kroger launched a contactless payment pilot at its QFC store in Seattle last month. And there are a number of other companies doing contactless 2.0, basically through holograms, voice control and pay with your face.

The difference with App Clips, though, is Apple’s massive iPhone installed base. If this catches on, and given it’s utility (no downloading full apps just to get a cup of coffee!), that seems very possible, it could spur vast numbers of people to switch to contactless mobile payments. We just need to see if Apple has the right, well, touch.

Food Tech Intelligence Briefing: What Do App Clips Mean for the Food Industry?

This market power is derived from the strength of the iPhone. The device’s widespread adoption makes Apple and its associated app ecosystem a necessary consideration for any new consumer-facing technology (or technology adjacent) product launch. 

But as Techcrunch wrote last week, the world of apps that Apple ushered in a dozen or so years ago (yes, it’s been that long) has become long in the tooth. Not only are grid-based apps becoming less relevant in an age of voice assistants, AI, and chatbots, but most of us have become fatigued with app downloads and are reluctant to cede space on that ever-important first screen. 

This app fatigue is a problem for any products that rely on the aging app ecosystem Apple has built. If customers don’t use apps, brands can’t monetize through them.

Some products have tried to move almost entirely to voice, but it’s almost impossible to make a voice skill the primary interface for a device because they are so ephemeral. If we can’t see them, we aren’t going to use them. There is no first-screen for voice apps. 

Say Hello to App Clips

Which brings us back to Apple. At WWDC in late June, Apple introduced the App Clips, which are slimmed-down versions of an app or, more specifically, the portion of an app that is necessary in a given moment. 

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Apple App Clips Could Speed Up Adoption of Contactless Payments

At its developers conference today, Apple announced the launch of App Clips for iOS, which is designed to give users some functionality of a mobile app, without downloading the entire thing.

Apple’s presentation for the new App Clips highlighted some very Spoon-y real world scenarios: Paying for your morning coffee from Blue Bottle, discovering a restaurant nearby, and getting recipes for Drop-enabled connected appliances.

Typically, you would have to download three different apps to to engage in those three scenarios. But with App Clips, the user pulls down just a bit of the app through NFC, QR codes or special Apple Clips codes. The “Clip” pulled down allows the transaction to proceed without having to create a new account (because it uses Apple Sign In) or a credit card (because it uses Apple Pay). Android users already have something similar through that OS’ Instant Apps.

Apple Introduces App Clip at WWDC 2020

App Clips still needs to be adopted by the place you’re doing business with in order to work, but it’s easy to see why eateries would want to in this pandemic world. A ton of people use iPhones, and even though restaurants are re-opening, customers want to minimize human-to-human contact there, which means more contactless payments methods.

Apple is pitching this as a way to discover new apps, but it seems more like a way to avoid downloading them. Part of the problem with connected appliances, or contactless payments is that you have to download the app and create an account and enter your credit card number. A first world hassle to be sure, but a hassle nonetheless when you’re in a hurry. If I can just scan a QR code to grab a recipe from Drop or pay for a cortado from Blue Bottle without having to go through all the traditional rigamarole, well, I’m all for it, I’m tired of managing so many app accounts.

Apple Clips could open up a new micro-transaction business model for home appliance companies like Drop and June. Instead of signing into a service for a whole recipe book, I could just pay for the recipes I want.

The are potential downsides for companies participating in App Clips. How much of a cut is Apple taking on this quick transaction? Will that cut be worth it? How much data will Apple will share with the Clip participant? Will your local coffee shop get the sales data and analytics generated through Clips? Or will Drop know which customers are downloading which recipes? Knowing Apple, they probably won’t.

App Clips will put the onus on companies to make the full versions of their apps worth the full download. What kind of loyalty programs or features will make a permanent place on my homescreen worth it?

Clips make make contactless payments easier, but they could also clip some companies’ app-related wings.

Ember Integrates with Apple Health to Track Caffeine Intake, Sell Mugs at Stores

In news that will either excite or terrify coffee drinkers everywhere, Ember, makers of the precision temperature control mugs, today announced a new update to its app that integrates with Apple Health to help users track their caffeine intake. Ember also announced today that it will sell its mugs in Apple stores and the Apple store online.

The new Ember app allows users to track their caffeine consumption and set maximum caffeine intake measurements for the day. The app will notify you when you hit your limit, so you can make a different beverage choice. With Apple Health app data, users will be able to understand how their caffeine consumption impacts their heart rate and sleep patterns as well.

I got my wife an Ember mug for Christmas. With the coffee staying hot all the time, she unwittingly guzzled 8 cups worth before lunch and was practically vibrating. That’s obviously not a daily problem, but understanding your caffeine consumption (especially if you can tie it in with any sleep patterns) will probably be useful for a lot of people.

Ember’s move into Apple stores actually makes a lot of sense given the startup’s previous sales relationship with another premium brand, Starbucks. Apple is a high-tech, high-end brand where Ember’s stylish and expensive products won’t be out of place. As part of the deal, Ember is making a white version of its travel mug exclusively for Apple.

Adding another massive sales channel like Apple’s will also give Ember loads of more data to better understand its customers. For instance, the company has said before that 10:51 a.m. is peak coffee drinking time across the U.S. With the new caffeine tracker, Ember users will now know when it’s time to quit drinking coffee.

Visualize it: Augmented Reality and the Future of Food

All around us, augmented reality technology is beginning to give us more information about our immediate environment than can be seen with the naked eye. There are (AR) apps for overlaying where nearby WiFi signals are centered, and apps that help surface unseen nearby locations and attractions to visit. Now, food production is set for transformative developments thanks to AR.

On this front, Huxley has developed what it bills as the world’s first “augmented operating system,” which mashes up augmented reality with artificial intelligence. “ By combining vision, environment, and plant data, we can now grow more with less using AI,” Huxley reports.

Imagine a smart greenhouse of the future, where farmers with augmented reality glasses can surface information about what kinds of plants at various stages of growth surround them. The same greenhouse might have smart cameras that keep track of everything from watering status, to activity from pests and threats.

Huxley is being leveraged for these kinds of food production scenarios, and is even being leveraged to optimize marijuana production. It is a hands-free system that combines AR, AI, and machine learning to optimize “plant vision,” as seen in the screenshot here.

“Intelligent Automation for Controlled Environments is the future,” the Huxley team reports. “By collaborating with the most innovative companies and organizations we can provide anyone in any language the power of a master grower. Data just got dimensional.”

According to a recent Wall Street Journal story, augmented reality can also help optimize harvesting plants: “New cameras, sensors and smartphone apps help monitor plant growth. One company is even developing augmented-reality glasses that can show workers which plants to pick.”

The same story notes that companies are also developing new ways to grow vegetables in tiny spaces and often urban spaces, including rooftops, balconies, and abandoned lots. From controlled lighting to augmented reality solutions for discerning when to harvest plants, these solutions were not found on grandpa’s old farm.

Meanwhile, Danish researchers are investigating ways to use augmented reality to optimize the trimming and boning process for pork bellies. “The AR technology has demonstrated lucrative applications in industrial QA procedures and even farm management applications appear to benefit from applying the technology,” the researchers note.

So how might augmented reality boost your food frontiers when you are at the table in a restaurant? A company called Kabaq is on top of that concept. It is developing 3D and augmented reality menu and visualization technologies so that you can see exactly what your order will look like in front of you, from every angle. Check out the technology in action in this video:

Watch how you can use Apple ARKit in Food ordering

The technology driving augmented reality devices and applications is rapidly advancing as well. Apple is one of many tech giants driving the technology forward, and the result is likely to be ever smarter AR-driven food applications. Stay tuned to this space.

The Smart Home Weekly: HomeKit’s Big Week & The Debut of HomePod

Each week I look at the biggest story in smart home and give context to what’s happening in the connected home around the web.

This was the most important week for HomeKit since Apple announced it in June 2014.

That’s because, on Monday the company announced a host of critical updates to their smart home protocol and, just as importantly, launched their new wireless smart speaker/HomeKit hub, the HomePod.

Long rumored, the HomePod is what most of us thought it would be: a wireless speaker with built-in Siri. But with this announcement, Apple filled in many of the holes and showed us exactly how they plan to fight back against Amazon and Google in the digital home.

One thing is clear: Apple is leading with music, telling us that the HomePod will revolutionize home music. With HomePod and the launch of AirPlay 2 with multiroom audio, Apple is going directly after the Sonos consumer.  The device, which costs $349, is an impressive piece of hardware, with seven tweeters, six microphones for far-field listening and its own A8 processor.

It was also a big week for HomeKit. Apple’s long-gestating smart home protocol had its biggest week since it debuted at WWDC in 2014. And while the HomePod – a dedicated HomeKit hub – was the main attraction of the day, Apple made some important announcements about HomeKit itself:

Software authentication – At WWDC this week, Apple indicated they will now allow HomeKit hardware makers to create products without the dedicated chip. This is important because one of the reasons the slow rollout of HomeKit was the requirement of an MFI security chip in each HomeKit device. All that said, given Apple’s strong focus on security, there’s no doubt that the new software authentication will be very robust and HomeKit partners will have to work hard to get software-based authentication through the HomeKit certification process.

NFC and QR code pairing: Apple wants to make HomeKit set up experience easier. NFC and QR code pairing will go a long way towards doing just that.

HomeKit is opening up to anyone with developers license: Before this move, a company had to be a member of Apple’s MFI third party hardware program. Now, Apple is opening the doors to HomeKit to anyone who is an Apple developer. This will greatly increase the number of smart people innovating around the framework.

The Smart Home Show

This week’s episode of the Smart Home Show is all about Apple’s HomePod and HomeKit. Have a listen below:

New From Around The (Smart Home) Web:

Samsung Combo Wireless Mesh Router/SmartThings Hub Available for Pre-Order: Samsung put its mesh router/Smart Things hub up for preorder. The new Connect Home comes with a built in SmartThings hub with Z-Wave and Zigbee radios and built-in mesh Wi-Fi. At this point, the mesh Wi-Fi market is becoming crowded, but the combo of smart home hub and mesh is a nice differentiator for Samsung and makes them comparable in feature set to to the Almond 3 mesh router/smart home hub.

Unikey Gets More $: One of the original Bluetooth smart lock technology providers, Unikey, has received another round of funding, bringing in $5 million from two private equity firms, adding to other strategic investors such as Samsung Ventures. What’s interesting here is the company looks like they’re going to use the capital to expand further into the pro/commercial lock space and new markets like automotive. When I talked to Unikey CEO Phil Dumas on the very first Smart Home Show, he talked back then about possibly expansion into automotive.

Samsung Rumored To Be Working on Smart Speaker: Of course they are. In a way, the key battle in the digital home is not for the home router or set-top box, but now its for the interface, and it seems the smart speaker is becoming the default form factor and device to act as that key interface. Samsung’s version of a smart speaker will be powered by Bixby, the company’s voice assistant technology. Is this a good idea? In theory. I mean, it makes sense for a company like Samsung to create their own, but as always with Samsung and the connected home its about execution.

Make sure to check out the Smart Kitchen Summit, the only event about the future of food, cooking and the kitchen. Also, make sure to subscribe to get The Spoon in your inbox. 

Analysis: With HomePod, Apple May Finally Deliver On The Promise Of HomeKit

After months of rumors, Apple finally introduced a wireless streaming speaker called HomePod this week, their first new hardware product since the Apple Watch debuted in 2015.  The Siri-enabled wireless speaker also doubles as a HomeKit powered smart home hub, giving Apple a new fixed HomeKit control point beyond Apple TV. The HomePod will ship in December and is priced at $349.

There is a bunch to break down here, including the HomePod compares to Amazon’s Echo, but let’s first look at what exactly Apple introduced.

The Hardware

The new HomePod is an impressive piece of hardware. The HomePod includes Apple’s A8 chip, a system-on-chip CPU/GPU that debuted in 2014 with the iPhone 6. It has a six-microphone array with advanced echo cancellation, which Apple says will enable “Siri to understand people whether they are near the device or standing across the room, even while loud music is playing.”  The Siri-powered speaker also features seven beam-forming tweeters, each with an amplifier, and it also includes what Apple calls room-sensing technology that allows the device to optimize its sound based on the specific spatial characteristics of where music is being played.

During the event, Apple made a string of other important announcements that led up to the climactic debut of the HomePod:

AirPlay2

One of the most important foundational technology upgrades announced Monday was AirPlay 2, a much-needed update to Apple’s wireless streaming protocol. With Airplay 2 we finally get multiroom audio support, a huge upgrade that will allow homes with Apple’s HomePod – as well as products from partners like Bose, Bang & Olufsen, Marantz and others – to stream audio wirelessly to different rooms and to multiple speakers. The upgrade puts Apple’s streaming music framework on par with Google’s Chromecast for audio, which already supports multiroom audio.

Apple’s AirPlay 2 Early Partners. Image credit: The Verge

A notable absence from the list of initial partners was Sonos, a company that almost single-handedly created the wireless multiroom audio category.

HomeKit

The release of AirPlay 2 will not only bring multiroom audio support, but it also adds speakers to the list of devices controllable with Apple’s smart home protocol, HomeKit. By adding the speaker category to HomeKit, consumers will be able to control their wireless speakers through the iOS Home app.

The arrival of the HomePod also brings a second fixed smart home hub device into the lineup. Like Apple TV, the HomePod allows for remote access to any HomeKit compatible device through the Home app. However, with far-field listening capabilities and integrated Siri, the HomePod instantly surpasses Apple TV to become Apple’s most capable smart home hub.

What Does All This Mean?

The pricing, capabilities, industrial design and messaging gave us all we need to know to break down Apple’s strategy:

The HomePod Is, Above All, A Music Product: The HomePod is built to be a great wireless streaming speaker. With seven beam-forming tweeters – that’s one more sound driver than the Sonos Play 5 – it’s built to sound great. Sure, the HomePod has built-in Siri, but Apple messaged this as a revolutionary multi-room speaker first and a virtual assistant second.

This Is a Premium Product : The price of the HomePod, $349, may seem fairly affordable when compared to other Apple products, but at roughly double the price of the Amazon Echo and nearly triple that of Google Home, this is a much higher priced than other smart speakers.  It’s clear Apple has Sonos, probably moreso than Amazon or Google, in its crosshairs.

Apple Is Finally Bringing An Upgraded Siri Home: One of the messages from Apple this week is Siri has finally grown up. By adding anticipatory computer features, opening it up further to developers with a year two SiriKit and creating a Siri face for Apple Watch, the company finally feels they have a virtual assistant on par with Google Assistant. And now with HomePod, Apple has a true voice assistant to bring into the home.

Apple Vs. Amazon

Where does this position Apple relative to Amazon and the Echo?

I think given the premium pricing strategy, Apple appears to be ceding the fixed smart speaker mass market to Amazon. By choosing a music-first, premium approach, Apple appears content to let Amazon win the numbers battle with its lower-cost smart speaker.

However, letting Amazon blanket the mass market with $49 Echo Dots does not mean Apple is ceding the virtual assistant market to Amazon. In fact, if we learned anything this week it’s that Apple plans to leverage the hundreds of millions of Siri-powered iPhones, iPads and Apple Watchs in the market as it does battle with Alexa. .

And not only is Apple leading with iOS, but they plan to make it a much more rich and robust platform with new efforts like ARkit, their new augmented reality developer platform. Imagine pairing a well-done augmented reality app with a voice assistant capability in the home, and you might have something pretty cool.

Ok, so while it’s a bit of a risky strategy, it’s probably the right one for Apple. By ‘dancing with one who brought them’ in iOS and augmenting their home strategy with a premium-priced smart speaker/virtual assistant for the home with HomePod, Apple now at least has a strategy to do battle with Echo, even if their new smart speaker is priced out of reach for some consumers.

Lastly, let’s not forget that the HomePod with HomeKit is a true smart home hub, with all the built-in intelligence to make a powerful Apple-powered smart home come to life. While the Amazon Echo has done an good job integrating with hundreds of various smart home devices through its skill platform, it’s limited in its ability to execute on things such as scenes. With HomeKit and a new rev of the Home app for iOS, I think Apple may finally have what it needs with the HomeKit-HomePod combo to deliver on the early promise that had so many excited about HomeKit.

Make sure to subscribe to the Spoon newsletter to get it in your inbox. And don’t forget to check out Smart Kitchen Summit, the only event on the future of the food, cooking, and the kitchen. 

The WWDC 2017 Prediction Show (Smart Home Edition)

Are you ready for WWDC?

Apple’s big developer conference is just three days away, and so it’s time to make some predictions. I get together with my old friend Adam Justice from Connectsense to discuss what we can expect this coming Monday from Apple on the smart home front.

Topics discussed include:

  • We speculate whether Apple will release a Siri speaker
  • Possible features of a Siri speaker, such as camera, touchscreen, HomeKit capabilities and more
  • What’s in store for HomeKit
  • Ways in which Apple could improve the Home app
  • What to expect for Siri at WWDC

Microsoft Unveils Echo Competitor Powered By Cortana

Microsoft is not necessarily a leader in the smart home these days, trailing Samsung, Apple and Google in platforms and hardware offerings and instead focusing on other core offerings. But as the Amazon Echo and then Google Home voice assistants jumped onto the scene, the tech world speculated about whether Apple and Microsoft would put their respective AI voice assistants – Siri and Cortana – into physical devices, too.

Rumors abound that Apple is about to do just that – but they’ll be last to the table as Microsoft previewed its Cortana-powered wireless speaker on Monday. Ahead of their BUILD developer conference, which starts tomorrow, Microsoft showed off the Invoke, a speaker manufactured by Harman Kardon and enabled by the company’s digital voice assistant.

Invoke does what Google Home & Echo do for the most part – weather reports, news, music, reminders, timers, etc – and the details thus far are fairly underwhelming. The company reported Invoke will offer “deep integration with Microsoft’s suite of knowledge and productivity tools,” making it a potentially interesting tool for home offices or businesses as a scheduling tool. The device will also have integration with Skype, allowing users to make calls via the platform.  It will certainly sound better than the Echo with Harman Kardon audio engineering and design behind the speaker – and that feature alone might drive audiophiles to Invoke over the competition.

Microsoft’s blog does not detail how or if the device will allow for third-party developers to build additional features and functions – something both Echo and Google Home are capitalizing on to add use cases and turn the speakers into sous chefs, personal assistants and smart home controllers.

Harman Kardon’s press release announcing the speaker definitely positions the audio brand to offer a competitive device to other premium smart speakers like Sonos – with a high-powered AI engine inside. The speaker will have seven microphones and advanced ambient noise technology to help Cortana hear you even in loud environments – another area where HK’s contribution could give Invoke an edge over the Echo. Pricing wasn’t given yet but the product should be available via Microsoft stores in the fall.

With the BUILD conference starting tomorrow, we’ll be sure to share updates and details about Invoke and the features it might bring to the home and kitchen.