Apple News App Comedy Tagging

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.

Straightforward, logical and unsurprising tag there.

Or this one.

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

But WTF is this all about Apple?

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..

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.

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.

Mark Alker

Singletrack Owner/Publisher

What Mark doesn’t know about social media isn’t worth knowing and his ability to balance “The Stack” is bested only by his agility on a snowboard. Graphs are what gets his engine revving, at least they would if his car wasn’t electric, and data is what you’ll find him poring over in the office. Mark enjoys good whisky, sci-fi and the latest Apple gadget, he is also the best boss in the world (Yes, he is paying me to write this).

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