Apple News App Comedy Tagging
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Apple News App Comedy Tagging

March 22, 2016

If you’ve not discovered Singletrack on Apple’s News App then you should check it out. Of course you will need an iOS device to do so. It’s a great way to keep up to date on our news stories on your mobile or tablet. In particular the latest iOS update to version 9.3 has made Apple News even prettier.

But one feature of the app has left us rather puzzled today. Each story is given a keyword tag by Apple. Clicking the tag button takes you to a page full of stories with the same tag. However, this tag is not assigned to stories by us and judging by the tags we spotted in one of our stories this morning either there is some ‘tag master’ at Apple with a sense of humour or perhaps Apple’s AI isn’t quite as sophisticated as we thought.

Take this story for example.

tag-rockshox

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Straightforward, logical and unsurprising tag there.

Or this one.

tag-crankworx

Crankworx is the appropriate tag for a story about, er.. Crankworx.

But WTF is this all about Apple?

tag-buttocks

We’ve carefully examined the article for buttocks and found none. We are assuming the mention of the term ‘back-end’ could be the source.

And then there is the obvious question of what happens if you click that tag. Well,, this..

buttocks

It was Stephen Hawking who recently suggested that the greatest threat to the human race was artificial intelligence. If Apple’s AI is anything to go by I think we may have a few safe years left.

news-feed

iOS Users Find Our News Feed Here

Android users needn’t worry for Google has its own version of Apple news. Google Newstand can be downloaded from the Google Play Store here.

If you spot any comedy or just plain odd tags in our Apple News stories then take a screen grab and let us know about them.

 

 

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Mark Alker

Singletrack Owner/Publisher

Mark has been riding mountain bikes for over 30 years and co-owns Singletrack, where he's been publisher for 25 years. While his official title might be Managing Director, his actual job description is "whatever needs doing" – from wrangling finances and keeping the lights on to occasionally remembering to ride bikes for fun rather than just work. He's seen the sport evolve from rigid forks to whatever madness the industry dreams up next, and he's still not entirely sure what "gravel" is. When he's not buried in spreadsheets or chasing late invoices, he's probably thinking about his next ride.

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2 thoughts on “Apple News App Comedy Tagging”

  1. I’ll rise to the bait.
    Given the fury of discussions about sexism in the cycling media at the moment, did you really need to fuel the fire by highlighting the sexism within the mainstream media? Surely a polite email or tweet to Apple could have knocked it on the head? Its all a bit #Dailymail

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