Alexa and Cortana Teamed Up, But Consumer Tech Is Still Stuck in an Ecosystem War. The voice interfaces Cortana and Alexa will soon be able to activate each other for functions that one does better than the other, Amazon and Microsoft announced today. Its the kind of cooperation that we dont see enough between the Big Five, or really any company thats grown out of its desperately cobble together partnerships so we look relevant phase and into its abandon all cooperation that doesnt lock customers into our shitty ecosystem phase. Cortana and Alexas competitors, Google Assistant and Siri, wont be integrating any time soon. As Gizmodo notes, Google and Apple have far more users locked into their ecosystems, so they have far less incentive to cooperate with competing systems. By combining forces, Microsoft and Amazon are admitting theyve lost the war for mobile, the dominant user interface now, and holding onto their own core competencies Microsoft for business communication, Amazon for consumption. Meanwhile, though Google Assistant runs on i. OS, its very limited and cant be activated without opening an app. Siri wont run at all on Android. And even on its native platform, Siri wont control best in class apps like Spotify, Gmail, or Google Maps. Google Assistant is more flexible, but it cant order things on Amazon the way Alexa can. You can run Alexa on Android, but only through Amazons app, and again with limitations. Your device also wont play well with a competing desktop OS Apples Handoff and i. Fix iMessage and FaceTime Activation Errors with iOS 10, iOS 9, iOS 8. How to Use Your iPhone for Free Abroad Text, call, and use the internet while traveling abroad with your iPhone for free. Cloud make i. Phones and Macs work together seamlessly, whereas coordinating an Android phone with a Mac is clunky, and plugging an i. Phone into a Windows machine is eye twitchingly uncomfortable, thanks to Apples lousy Windows port of i. Tunes. The TV ecosystem is just as bad, largely thanks to Amazons own selfish decisions. Full Version Of Dvdfab more. Amazon still hasnt released its promised Apple TV app, so Prime customers have to stream Transparent and Curb Your Enthusiasm from their phones. How To Activate Imessage After Jailbreak What Next' title='How To Activate Imessage After Jailbreak What Next' />There are no plans for an Amazon app on the Chromecast, or for Spotify on Apple TV. You can retreat to a third party media player like Roku, but then you cant play videos purchased through i. Tunes without a wonky file conversion. Starting at the end of this month, Amazon will no longer sell the Chromecast or Apple TV. AndRead more Read. Meanwhile, Facebook runs around kind of integrating with all these other services while trying to push its own messaging and sharing platforms, and burying every post that dares link to You. Tube or Twitter. As a customer choosing a phone, computer, and media player, youre stuck with three choices Buy into an ecosystem that inevitably has some crappy elements. You could choose Google, and miss out on Apples slick interface and seamless desktop to mobile integration. Or choose Apple, lose a lot of third party functionality, and get locked into increasingly bizarre design choices your Lightning headphones wont work on your laptop and inferior software like Apple Maps, Mail, and Calendar. How-to-activate-and-draw-a-message-with-grafiti-tweak-for-iPhone.jpg' alt='How To Activate Imessage After Jailbreak What Next' title='How To Activate Imessage After Jailbreak What Next' />On desktop, choose Windows and miss out on that same integration, or choose Apple, pay more for the same computing power, and get your computer games a year late. Straddle ecosystems, running the Google Suite instead of MS Office and hooking your i. Phone up to your PC or your Android to your Mac. Run Spotify, buy an Echo, and live with their limited capabilities. Maybe even run Excel on OS X. All but the most basic users reach outside their main ecosystem at some point. Install Linux on your Chromebook, jailbreak your i. Phone, run Cortana on your Fit. Bit, hack your Echo to play Tidal, and write a viral Medium post encouraging people to unplug. In the short term, all these companies have good reasons to lock up their platforms wherever they still think they can steal market share from the others, and wherever they would rather focus resources on improving their own service instead of handing millions of customers to their competitors through a partnership. But in the long term, this lock in keeps the Big Five from innovating, their products leaning on the crutch of the ecosystem, alienating customers who will then abandon the ecosystem for third party services like Spotify, Dropbox, Whats. App, 1. Password, and Overcast. OS has a bunch of great podcast managers these days, but after testing all of them, our favoriteRead more Read. Historically, these ecosystems tend to open up, making way for the next battle. Macs and PCs didnt always run so many of the same apps. Internet Explorer and Netscape were much more mutually exclusive than Chrome and Safari. And for a while, your Internet came in flavors of AOL, Prodigy, or Compu. Serve. Even Android and i. OS used to have zero apps in common. But each time, interoperability won out, bringing most of each platforms strengths to everyone. But things could get worse before they get better. The Big Five are all racing to win at online payments, wearables, AI, AR, VR, smart homes, smart cars, and the growing Internet of Things. And as long as each company thinks it can win, it will try to push out the others instead of playing nice. Eventually there will be winners and losers, or decentralized cooperation. Every now and then, a new protocol will open up thats as decentralized as email or HTTP. And the giants of the day will move onto a new fight. In the meantime, theres nearly always some way to force the ecosystems to play together, at the expense of simplicity and not having your shit constantly break. Theres always some third option to jimmy into the gap and outperform all the defaults. And thats what Lifehackers all about. Download SAM to Activate i. Phone 43. GS Officially on i. OS 4. 3. 3. After jailbreaking your i. Phone 4 or i. Phone 3. GS on i. OS 4. 3. SAM on your i. Phone to activate it officially using i. Tunes. This will not only provide you with much improved battery life but will also enable fully working Push Notifications on your i. Device. For those who dont know, SAM tricks i. Tunes to generate legitimate activation packets for your i. Phone which in turn fully activates your i. Phone without official carrier SIM card. Steps to Officially Activate i. Phone 43. GS on i. OS 4. 3. 3 Using SAM Launch Cydia app on your jailbroken i. Phone, i. Pod Touch or i. Pad. Tap on Manage tab followed by a tap on Sources section. Tap on Edit button on the top right followed by tap on Add button on the top left. Enter http repo. CydiaAPT URL and tap on Add Source button. Tap on the Search tab at the bottom and type SAM in the search field. Choose SAM from the search results and tap on Install button on the top right begin SAM installation. Once done, hit the Reboot Device button to restart your i. La Vista Del Mar Beach Resort &Amp; Restaurant on this page. Phone. Once you have successfully installed SAM on your i. Phone, navigate to Settings SAM Utilities and tap on Revert Lockdown to Stock button. You will see Stockification Success message. If you see Stockification Failure message then it means you have not installed correct version of SAM on your i. Phone. Now tap on SAM button on the top left to go back to the main menu. Thats it. Plug your i. Phone to your PC or Mac via USB cable and launch i. Tunes. You will see the following screen in i. Tunes Wait while i. Tunes generate legitimate activation packets for your i. Phone. Once done, you are all set to sync and backup your i. Phone. After syncing and backing up your i. Phone, i. Tunes will throw error 1. Just ignore this message. Open SAM app on your i. Phone and click on the More Information menu. If you see Activation. State as Wildcard. Activated, thats it Your done To test if Push Notifications are working fine or not, install i. Pusher app from App Store. Once installed, tap on Test Push Notifications button and if you see Yay, push notifications work fine Push Notifications are working fine. Also note that to test Push Notifications using i. Pusher app, you must be connected to Wi Fi with an active internet connection. UPDATE1 Push Notifications Not Working on i. OS 4. 3. x After Using SAM How To FixUPDATE2 Fix SAM Error SIM Card Not Does Not Appear to be Supported. Contact Us for News Tips, Corrections and Feedback.