The real indicator for me is: how many of these features are not available in the EU due to privacy concerns. Do we know that?
How do you know that? (How much of your net worth are you willing to bet on it?)
Between GDPR, the DMA and now the AI Act, there is a lot of unique regulatory cross section that Apple has in the EU. It would be surprising if there weren't additional legal checks it had to do, internally and on its suppliers, before launching a product or feature in the EU.
So while you are correct that there is no technical barrier, you are incorrect that they are the same under EU regulation. Involving EU regulators in product design for designated gatekeepers was the entire point of the law, so this is the desired effect. Regulators want the flexibility to e.g. work with the gatekeeper to design feature modifications, like the default browser selection screen[2], for other aspects of designated gatekeeper platforms.
One can choose to see this as good or bad, but this is clearly the intent of the law.
1 - https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_23_...
2 - https://developer.apple.com/support/browser-choice-screen/#:....
Apple just got dinged under the DMA [1][2]. The text of the law may not have changed, but the reality of its meaning has.
> they're really doing something horribly wrong if they can't be in compliance with GDPR
The point is verifying you are in compliance with a law has costs. Plenty of start-ups, for instance, are better off geoblocking jurisdictions they don't have the resources to comply with but don't want to accidentally do something illegal in. Not because they think they're violating anything. But because it isn't worth losing (a) nimbleness over or (b) future access to. (Common ones being the EU, China and India.) Apple isn't a start-up. But they probably don't want their design team to be half staffed with lawyers either.
[1] https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2024/01/apple-announces-chang...
[2] https://www.beuc.eu/sites/default/files/publications/BEUC-X-...
Lawyers and lobbyists are still getting their heads around the EU's AI Act [1].
[1] https://artificialintelligenceact.eu/high-level-summary/
Another example is my air filter. It’s nice to get a reminder when it’s time to change the filter since it’s so infrequent, but I can’t get that notification without also getting spammed with “news” about new machines I should buy. Apple actively enables this behavior while claiming that spam is against their terms of service.
They are clearly working for the spammers, not the user, because they profit off of their cut.
> Make sure people can manage their notification settings within your app. In addition to requesting permission to send informational or marketing notifications, you must also provide an in-app settings screen that lets people change their choice. For guidance, see Settings.
https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guideline...
I’ll even leave you with a third example: I can’t get shipping notifications about an online order I made without also opting into spam about sales and discounts. Apple could take a pro-user stance here and help us push back against scummy behavior, but they choose not to be helpful. They also happen to profit off of it, I’m sure that’s unrelated.
1) They could implement a “promotional” notification category the same way that they do “time sensitive” and let the user customize that the same way, or at least offer an opt-out.
2) Add a “report” button next to the disable notifications button.
3) Stop delivering notifications on behalf of apps that don’t correctly categorize promotional notifications.
4) Skip all this complexity and just ban developers that send spam. This is what their monopoly on app distribution is supposedly justified by: protecting users from malicious app developers.
Take a picture of a restaurant? Hey, did you know it's a place you can make a reservation at?
Your friend mentions a song offhand? Psst … wanna play it now?
Don't forget about how your cousin talked about that AppleTV+ series!
("Get an Android?" Yeah, I hear you, I switch ecosystems in anger with every phone, which is why I am so keenly aware of how badly Apple's anti-spam sucks -- but also why I am not over the moon at the prospect of my next switch: I know where the Android skeletons are buried, although hope springs eternal.)
With the months of nonstop and over-the-top hype of "Apple Intelligence" these all seem underwhelming.
Even in the idealized world of demoware there's no killer feature, not to mention that none of it is even available to real customers yet.
I was expecting something only Apple could do with their vast ecosystem of IP and partnerships, the must-have cool new thing that would stimulate a leap in demand for iPhone.
It's hard to see how any of this is enough to trigger a new upgrade cycle instead of just waiting until battery life goes to shit or the screen cracks so you have to upgrade.
None of that was coming from Apple, though. I don't think they can be held responsible for hype that gets put on them.
IMO these are all solid moves into AI integration without getting carried away by hype and doing things that will have very middling results.
My understanding is people knew Apple Intelligence existed before this event.
Is it accurate to say Apple wasn't involved at all in touting it? All external parties? Sounds wrong to my ear
- https://buttondown.com/ainews/archive/ainews-talaria-apples-...
- https://buttondown.com/ainews/archive/ainews-apple-intellige...
That means Apple has a much simpler problem: they don’t need to convince you that AI as a concept is worth hundreds of dollars, they just need to convince you that the hundreds of dollars you were already going to spend on a smartphone should go to them instead of Samsung or Xiaomi.
Anecdotally I tried to get my dad to a iPhone 14 and shift from Android, he basically kept using his Android and never switched,so my mom is using that device now(along with an Android) not too happily just cause no else one is using it and will switch back to Android fully next upgrade. There are plenty of people who simply prefer the Android interface or by now so used to it that don't want to change and vice-versa. I myself use and need both and cannot imagine exclusively committing to one ecosystem.
Even reminders is pretty bad:
"Hey Siri, add celery to the shopping list" "Okay John, I've added celery to the shopping list list (sic)."
Shopping list: - Celery
"Hey Siri, remove celery from the shopping list" "Okay John, I've added celery to the shopping list list."
Shopping list: - Celery - Celery
This is not meeting expectations.
Although somewhere I'm sure we can find an '80s pop-culture vehicle that predicts those shortcomings as well.
This is a killer feature. Everyone can understand the usefulness of just describing the video moment you want to find. Digging through years worth of photos and videos looking for that one specific moment can be a huge chore when you want to show it to someone.
"You're holding it wrong" - Steve Jobs
You know when you go to a restaurant and the menu is like 3 different cuisines, it's 12 pages, and each page has 20+ items?
The Intelligence section of the presentation felt a bit like that.
Generally, I was surprised how lightly Intelligence featured into the keynote: it wasn't a standalone talking point, nothing on the Apple site talks to it directly. It's conspicuous, given that they've dedicated hardware real estate to it ... and the hype cycle.
I go to a restaurant and look at the menu/see a commercial on TV, I can usually order the item now (other than films).
Apple Intelligence - certain feature(s) (can't recall now) are US-only in November, rolling out to other English-speaking countries in December. No idea when non English-speaking countries will get that feature.
Who knows what Apple Intelligence features are in the device on day 1?
Where were you when they were coming up with "when a friend texts a song name to you, remind them they can play it in Apple Music"??!
2) i actually do think dedicated visual intelligence button IS a killer feature. suddenly phone is ai's view into the world. yes probably v1 today will disappoint. but 5 years from now the kids will laugh when we say we had to take photos and upload them to an app back in our day. or manually enter in any information from the real world into our calendars and emails and texts.
I view users moving through interfaces in a mass abstracted form like electrical or hydrological currents. My job is to widen the pipes.
My impression of my non-tech friends is that they aren't too dumb to follow instructions, they just don't enjoy operating a computer like I do, so they are more okay with their choices being restricted if they don't have to waste time doing something they find boring.
Not everything is available like on a rooted Android of course, but I can at least create a Shortcut script and give it to any iOS user regardless of their technical expertise and they can utilize it, which is leagues ahead of the situation amongst non-rooted Android and non-technical Android users.
Apple has lost its way, just look at how the "normies" and the "neckbeards" responded to the Vision Pro. Apple doesn't know how to innovate anymore, just how to market, and mass produce things, which is honestly good enough to keep making money for now.
Such people are likely confused. The AVP makes sense as a high end POC and dev kit. It takes a minute for a new modality of computing to make sense to people, even for Apple's own devs to figure out how people can use it, to iterate the OS and default app suite for a few years.
Vision pro was an over-hyped dev kit that offers a taste of the future. That’s it.
They aren’t that dumb to think calling it now Apple intelligence powered will make Siri work
This is the perfect use of AI, at least for me.
Normies struggle with the nuance of devices. They understand what they want, they don't understand steps, like start here then do this, then go here and copy this, then go there. This SKIPS all the steps. This is huge for them, but (probably) just mildly convenient for others.
Google Googles did this 13 years ago https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Goggles
It remains interesting to me how much we have been able to do, already, with technology. But discoverability, walled gardens, and <hand waving>marketing/positioning/hype</hand waving> have obscured awareness/adoption.
Where's the innovation in word processors?
At this point, we're often talking about regression. Apple removed the audio output from its best-selling music player. It removed TouchID. It removed the SIM slot.
You know what would be "innovative?" Making a goddamned phone that can withstand being used for its primary purpose. The failure of the iPhone's design has been confirmed by millions upon millions of people, who have concluded that they must bury their "thin, elegant" phones in bulky, tacky cases. You have to shake your head at Apple's breathless announcement of NEW COLORS!!!! when the vast majority of them will never be seen.
Then there's the fact that Apple ignores an entire market: men who don't wear cargo pants all day every day. Maybe some of us don't want to look like a schlub with a TV tray jammed into his pocket (again, made even worse with a dumb case).
Edit: and currently, that looks to be you and the entire iPhone engineering team
Possible with current tech? Hell no. But within the realms of reality for handhelds to do this in the next 15 years? I think so. Probably less valuable over health and other potential device functions, I don’t think about these things and so I wouldn’t know.
Thus, we are not at a point where portable computers should be considered ‘mature’ from an innovation standpoint, even if current innovation is slow.
It's a button that'll be in the hands and pockets of >1 billion people soon.
Each press allows these billion people to connect with a supplier of Intelligence. Whether it's ChatGPT, Google's search, Apple AI or whatever supplier. Apple controls the hardware.
Just think of Apple's contract with Google that nets them $20 billion a year in profit. For comparison, Walmart, Amazon, NVIDIA, Volkswagen, VISA, all had about 20 billion in net income in 2023.
Or think of the appstore as an analogy. Apple controls the gateway between consumer and supplier, and gains from it. This action button will be no different.
On device, my own model. Great.
I'm on iOS 18.0 on my iPhone 15 Pro, rather that the 18.1 with the "AI". Recently had an eye doctor appt for one of my children and they scheduled a follow-up, giving me a little card with the details. I was in a hurry so took a picture of it intending to enter the calendar event later, and it immediately pulled up a fully-filled in, completely accurate new calendar event. Little affordance that is just so nice.
Indeed, in general the camera is getting...crazy. We have a pair of Maine Coon kittens and every picture is tagged with Maine Coon, despite the cats barely even coming into the breed's features yet. Constantly amazed at the stuff the built in camera is identifying.
My devices have finally figured out that a volleyball and photo of a hand of cards aren't people. I do miss getting a solid chuckle checking that tab.
* I think I got that name right...
but few times, there are instances where it doesn't recognize the date and time. I guess this is now a supported feature, instead of accidental feature.
I feel like loads of these features just quietly appear to be randomly discovered by users.
So it's AI, but not the big hype stuff that gets most of the attention.
The iPhone 16's camera button will gain the ability to soft-press to lock focus "later this year". Their software teams are so incredibly far behind, the new phone has literally one new feature, a feature medically prescribed to induce drowsiness, yet they can't even get the software for it finished for release.
It's been nearly 12 years and the supported language list is still the same.
In theory at least it should be straightforward to make LLM-based assistants like Siri truly multilingual.
I think it's quite telling that one of the main new features of the new iPhones won't even be available until next year for most of the world.
Mmmmm, feels disappointing to me if that is all we get from a multi trillion tech company + multi trillion technology
In their demos, they use the action button to capture an ambient song for Shazam, the power button to capture a voice command for Siri, and the camera button for an image for Visual Intelligence. All 3 captures should be performed using the same button.
And screenshots still require pressing 2 buttons simultaneously. Unless you want to share your screen with Siri in which case it's the power button...
People are going to use this button as a voice recorder, and Apple will announce native support next year.
While it's true that the first x characters of an email don't always have the most important bits, they're never _wrong_. It's always exactly what's in the email.
I'm worried about cases like this [0], where a summary is inaccurate or misleading. It may not happen often, but it's possible, so I have to be a little skeptical of every summary. Though I can see where AI summaries are a plus, the move from 100% accurate to <100% feels like a big downgrade.
[0]: https://mastodon.macstories.net/@johnvoorhees/11288700482217...
It feels like an endpoint that will get gamed by apps over time.
Anti-feature. I don't even want my phone listening to me and prompting some awkward speech search engine I didn't ask for.
The state of the camera app pisses me off. It could do so much but it does so little. Why can’t I snap a picture of a written WiFi password to connect to WiFi? QRs are so 2008. Why can’t it fully parse a menu and show me what each dish might look like? It’s mind-boggling to me that with thousands of engineers on staff they produce so relatively little. Thousands!
You can actually do that, as of last year's iOS release. It's sort of a pain, but it's doable.
You need to be at the point where it's asking you for the WiFi password, tap the text field, choose "AutoFill", choose "scan text", and use the camera interface to pick the text.
This is extremely undiscoverable, no argument, but it is at least a system-wide standard for how to scan in arbitrary text when you have a text input. (They've picked "AutoFill" as the brand-name for all their get-text-from-somewhere-else features, so it also contains standard password-filling from apps.)
Bafflingly underwhelming additions from the previous innovation leader who had a last mover advantage in the space.
Think we need to be holding Apple to a higher standard, what they did in spaces before with the OG iPhone, iPad, iPod was completely upend the industry and change the game through focusing a product on a few pain points of the existing market. Yet Apple Intelligence feels like a brief struggling to find a reason to be there.
notes:
- photos/album search now includes video understanding, which imo seems very good from the first 2 examples they showed. includes scroll to exact time of the moment you describe.
- Mail and Notifications will show summaries instead of str[:x]
- Siri now knows iPhone, becomes the ultimate manual on how to use the increasingly complicated iOS 18. and can read your texts (!) to suggest actions with Personal Context Understanding (also it will try to advertise apple tv shows to you... i'm SURE it will be totally objective and aligned to your preferences amirite)
- new iphone 16 camera control button is PRIME real estate - notice how OpenAI/ChatGPT is now next to Google search, and both are secondary clicks to Apple's visual search, which comes first
- camera adds events to calendar!
- "all done on device" and on cloud (though craig doesnt say that haha)
overall i think insanely good ideas on ai + phone integrations.