In iOS 11, Safari will strip out Google AMP links for shared stories

Anyone haunted by annoying link cruft will be relieved to hear that iOS 11 will transform Google AMP links back into their original forms when sharing a story from Safari. MacStories editor Federico Viticci first spotted the change, which appears to be live in the new iOS 11 beta 7.

Google’s fast-loading AMP pages are ideal for platform-agnostic consumers looking for a quick read, but publishers tend to loathe them (with good reason). Pointing users toward Google domains instead of canonical links limits a publisher’s opportunities to drive further engagement by keeping a user on-site, hindering things like newsletter signups and subscription services that can be powerful monetization options for publishers.

Earlier this year, Google announced that AMP links now load twice as fast thanks to image compression improvements and other under the hood tweaks. For the rest of us who favor purity over unbridled speed, this little iOS 11 change is just one more reason to look forward to September.

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Building a smarter home

The Jetsons presented a highly entertaining vision of what homes of the future would look like . The animated television show anticipated a world where humans would be able to do everything with just the push of a button. In many ways, the show turned out to be prophetic; today we have printable food, video chats, smartwatches and robots that help with housework — and flying cars may even be on the way. The challenge for companies is to integrate digital technologies in meaningful ways that enhance people’s homes and improve their lives. Many of the innovations to emerge over the past few years have been geared toward this kind of “push-button living.” Thanks to the rise of smartphones and the proliferation of cheap sensors, it is possible to make just about any household appliance “smart” and “connected.” By 2019, companies are expected to ship 1.9 billion connected home devices, bringing in about $490 billion in revenue. ...

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