I didn’t buy the first M1 Mac but waited for the M4 Mac instead. However, the much-hyped Apple Intelligence is practically useless to me. Siri is dreadful and doesn’t provide any coherent answers. Siri and Apple Intelligence seem to be linked; if Siri is disabled, Apple Intelligence is automatically turned off as well. The writing tools are generally pointless and only necessary if you use Safari. But if you use any other web browser, all those “Writing Tools” are available in the sidebar. Prioritising notifications is pointless, as it’s not for a bot to decide. Live translation? Fine, that might be useful on a phone, but on a Mac? Not so much.
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Has the AI (Apple Intelligence) been useful in Silicon Macs, or just a hype?
- Thread starter chmania
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I turned Apple Intelligence on once. After turning it back off it cheated system to believe it has 100 GB more free storage space available than it actually had i.e. purgeable space data got screwed up. It went back to normal when Apple Intelligence was on and went back to being wrong again after turning it off.
I ended up repartitioning, reinstalling and restoring Time Machine backup to correct the problem. While allegedly uncommon I have found at least some people with similar problem and same remediation to it as only solution. After that I set Siri language to different than system language so Apple Intelligence could not be turned on any more even by mistake.
Knowing how badly all development behind Apple Intelligence has been I would not even consider turning it back on - at least as long as BETA is staying on that icon. These are my 2 cents on this.
P. S. This was on Sequoia - so maybe Sequoia was partially almost as "utter garbage" as Tahoe is
I ended up repartitioning, reinstalling and restoring Time Machine backup to correct the problem. While allegedly uncommon I have found at least some people with similar problem and same remediation to it as only solution. After that I set Siri language to different than system language so Apple Intelligence could not be turned on any more even by mistake.
Knowing how badly all development behind Apple Intelligence has been I would not even consider turning it back on - at least as long as BETA is staying on that icon. These are my 2 cents on this.
P. S. This was on Sequoia - so maybe Sequoia was partially almost as "utter garbage" as Tahoe is
I had the exact same experience. Turn it on, create one image in Playground and turned it off.I turned Apple Intelligence on once. After turning it back off it cheated system to believe it has 100 GB more free storage space available than it actually had i.e. purgeable space data got screwed up. It went back to normal when Apple Intelligence was on and went back to being wrong again after turning it off.
I ended up repartitioning, reinstalling and restoring Time Machine backup to correct the problem. While allegedly uncommon I have found at least some people with similar problem and same remediation to it as only solution. After that I set Siri language to different than system language so Apple Intelligence could not be turned on any more even by mistake.
Knowing how badly all development behind Apple Intelligence has been I would not even consider turning it back on - at least as long as BETA is staying on that icon. These are my 2 cents on this.
P. S. This was on Sequoia - so maybe Sequoia was partially almost as "utter garbage" as Tahoe is
I use Claude, open AI, Gemini for various purposes, mostly coding
I also run kokoro TTS locally. Wish I had more than 16gb to run LLMs locally
Never turned on AI because I don't want it to download a bunch of stuff then never delete it or something. I made the mistake of downloading some Apple TTS voices and now have no idea how to delete them. Every trick I found by googling didn't work. I can't even find where they are on disk
I also run kokoro TTS locally. Wish I had more than 16gb to run LLMs locally
Never turned on AI because I don't want it to download a bunch of stuff then never delete it or something. I made the mistake of downloading some Apple TTS voices and now have no idea how to delete them. Every trick I found by googling didn't work. I can't even find where they are on disk
Now we know that Apple is failing in it so badly they had to resort to custom Gemini model (running in Apple's own datacenters) and paying Google for that.
However Apple is still "net-profiting" on the relationship as Google pays Apple way more for promoting Google search engine on iOS devices...
However Apple is still "net-profiting" on the relationship as Google pays Apple way more for promoting Google search engine on iOS devices...
I barely use it honestly, I'm mostly in ChatGPT and Gemini. More so with the nice ChatGPT desktop app, I even made a shortcut so it pops up the bottom of the screen for a quick chat with a minimal window and I use the web browser for anything deeper (or the full window desktop app).
Siri of course still sucks so, I barely use it except for alarms and using HomeKit. Even for those its not accurate.
Siri of course still sucks so, I barely use it except for alarms and using HomeKit. Even for those its not accurate.
Apple Intelligence is not a very accurate description at this point. I don't know why anyone wants AI baked into the OS? For algorithms to improve cpu/gpu and ram performance I love AI but for other things not so much. I don't want AI summaries and I don't want AI creating any content I would normally create myself. The only thing I would appreciate in AI is the ability to do things hands free and type a letter through dictation. However, for me there is something to writing or typing that helps me think and create that dictation doesn't allow for. I don't want my voice diluted by some AI slop.
I don't like generative AI phot edits or created wallpapers. They never look real to me.
Then there is the bloat. So much bloat now in the OS. iPad OS is close to 44gb just for the OS and system files. When you have a 5th gen base model 64gb iPad the bloat is taking up almost all my storage with just a few apps installed. I don't want Apple Intelligence and if it were a stand alone app you could download and install then the bloat would be optional. Instead they have put it into the OS so you have all the storage files taken up whether you use it or not.
At the very least with Apple you can turn it off unlike Co-Pilot in Windows.
I don't like generative AI phot edits or created wallpapers. They never look real to me.
Then there is the bloat. So much bloat now in the OS. iPad OS is close to 44gb just for the OS and system files. When you have a 5th gen base model 64gb iPad the bloat is taking up almost all my storage with just a few apps installed. I don't want Apple Intelligence and if it were a stand alone app you could download and install then the bloat would be optional. Instead they have put it into the OS so you have all the storage files taken up whether you use it or not.
At the very least with Apple you can turn it off unlike Co-Pilot in Windows.
iPadOS itself is not that large size. Large system files are usually due to copy-on-write snapshots.
It is optional though. That being said it is harder to remove these after installing.
I have an answer, but it has a pretty big, big qualifier.
No, Apple Intelligence is not particularly useful to me, outside of the proofreading option which is basically just a spelling and grammar check. Outside of that, though, no, not really.
However, and this is the big qualifier…
I have an Amazon echo Show with the LLM Alexa+, and I have also not found that very useful. If anything it’s significantly more inconvenient and harder to use and more frustrating than the traditional Alexa.
I have a Windows computer and I have never used copilot a single time.
I use Google services, even downloaded the Gemini app to give it a try and… Have used it a total of once where it promptly failed and I have never opened it again.
Literally the only “AI” I use is ChatGPT for one very specific purpose, image descriptions and OCR.
Outside of that, I have found absolutely no use for AI, not apples, not Google, not Microsoft, not Amazon’s, none of them.
No, Apple Intelligence is not particularly useful to me, outside of the proofreading option which is basically just a spelling and grammar check. Outside of that, though, no, not really.
However, and this is the big qualifier…
I have an Amazon echo Show with the LLM Alexa+, and I have also not found that very useful. If anything it’s significantly more inconvenient and harder to use and more frustrating than the traditional Alexa.
I have a Windows computer and I have never used copilot a single time.
I use Google services, even downloaded the Gemini app to give it a try and… Have used it a total of once where it promptly failed and I have never opened it again.
Literally the only “AI” I use is ChatGPT for one very specific purpose, image descriptions and OCR.
Outside of that, I have found absolutely no use for AI, not apples, not Google, not Microsoft, not Amazon’s, none of them.
Where are system speech voices stored in MacOS Monterey?
The default voices in Monterey are stored in /System/Library/SpeechBase/Voices/. I used System Preferences > Accessibility > System Voice > Customize... to install a few more US, UK, and n...
Where are system speech voices stored in MacOS Monterey?
The default voices in Monterey are stored in /System/Library/SpeechBase/Voices/. I used System Preferences > Accessibility > System Voice > Customize... to install a few more US, UK, and novelty voices, but I can't find where they are stored.
Prior to Monterey, the voices resided in /System/Library/Speech/Voices/, which still exists but is empty. The /System/Library/SpeechBase/ directory is apparently new with Monterey, but it does not contain the additional voices I installed. Where are these voices being stored?
Large system files aren't modified/written to in any case, aside from iOS updates, and as far as I'm aware Apple makes no use of its snapshot feature, which would be extremely useful for rollbacks. Even if you are talking about system files made to be written to, I have a hard time believing iOS is actively writing that much, and iOS is keeping snapshots to begin with.
What's far more likely is that space is being miscategorized by iOS and/or Apple's poor software quality is resulting in excess space being used, as we often see from macOS.
They are inside
Code:
/System/Library/AssetsV2/com_apple_MobileAsset_TTSAXResourceModelAssetsYeah I believe this is the case here.
We're not talking about firmware or immutable system snapshots, but filesystem being copy-on-write. System will allocate new data blocks rather than overwrite, and old data would accumulate, increasing space usage. APFS should purge these space when needed. And iOS won't tell you all these technical details, it just says "System Files".
Copy-on-write should enable built-in versioning, even though it doesn't seem like users are benefiting in a easily perceived way.
I immediately turned it off with 26.1 (activated in Sweden) on my MBP M4. I have no use for it.
I did a bit of research on AI in web browsers. If a web browser features AI in the sidebar, it reads your web pages, even those that aren't currently open. In a way, it keeps an eye on you. However, while you are working, it knows what you are doing and sends that information to those who own the AI, the web browser, and associated parties. Consequently, your privacy is at risk, even without considering the adverts they send you.
On the other hand, Vivaldi does not integrate AI into its system, but you can add any AI as a Web Panel, which is sandboxed and isolated from all other tabs. That AI cannot spy on you. An interesting take here.
On the other hand, Vivaldi does not integrate AI into its system, but you can add any AI as a Web Panel, which is sandboxed and isolated from all other tabs. That AI cannot spy on you. An interesting take here.
Good question; but difficult to answer.
The problem here, much like iOS, is that what Apple advertises as being 'Apple Intelligence' is really just a lot of marketing bluff. It's a way of selling quite normal features under a trendy AI banner, in the hope that consumers will expect to find them more useful than they actually are.
Machine learning and other methods of pattern learning have been around for a very long time, but it's only in recent years that the increased speed at which operations can take place have companies jumped on the AI bandwagon. Yes, it is the speed that has made new features possible since it now takes merely seconds for specific operations, but the principles really haven't changed greatly.
So I think a better question is "Has Apple's intelligence become more relevant/useful over recent years", to which I would answer a general No.
Prime examples:
Photo clean-up: Sorry, but this feature goes against Apple's philosophy of "It just works" and moves to "It may work okay, under certain circumstances". Instead of embracing authenticity and that not all photos are perfect, Apple tries to sell the idea that you can remove virtually anything you want from a photo to make it perfect. What they're not telling the consumer is that you need a more capable app, like Photoshop, and use the tools correctly to obtain a reasonable result - and even then there is some artistic license.
Writing features: Generally - turn natural language into something that... well, has clearly been written by a computer, which not only comes across as lazy but false to the reader. My attitude is that if I can't get my point across effectively, then I need to learn to write better - not simply expect a computer to work for me. Conversely, summaries can work very well and are a good example of a progressive utility.
Mail categorisation: Not useful for the majority of people who, through their iCloud account, receive a small number of emails a day. If anything it can slow down productivity and the categorising can be incorrect. I imagine this would only be useful if you received a huge number of emails each day and didn't have time to sift through the main inbox.
Mail and Messages summaries: Often inaccurate, and misses the point that many notifications are already summarised to begin with, which is why taking a summary and summarising it inevitably results in bizarre outcomes. Plus, it takes little effort to open a message and actually read it; a summary doesn't increase my productivity.
Image Playground: What could have been a great asset for images to insert into documents and presentations is a disaster. I can't even begin to describe how bad this service is, so I'll leave it there.
Genmoji: Takes more time to produce something worth sending than to just type the descriptive word or use an existing emoji. There are already so many emojis that there is no incentive to continue generating and reusing new ones.
Again, just my own thoughts and I understand that everyone's needs vary. But from my point of view, Apple has wasted a lot of time and resources in producing very mediocre 'AI' features that completely miss the point of assistance.
The problem here, much like iOS, is that what Apple advertises as being 'Apple Intelligence' is really just a lot of marketing bluff. It's a way of selling quite normal features under a trendy AI banner, in the hope that consumers will expect to find them more useful than they actually are.
Machine learning and other methods of pattern learning have been around for a very long time, but it's only in recent years that the increased speed at which operations can take place have companies jumped on the AI bandwagon. Yes, it is the speed that has made new features possible since it now takes merely seconds for specific operations, but the principles really haven't changed greatly.
So I think a better question is "Has Apple's intelligence become more relevant/useful over recent years", to which I would answer a general No.
Prime examples:
Photo clean-up: Sorry, but this feature goes against Apple's philosophy of "It just works" and moves to "It may work okay, under certain circumstances". Instead of embracing authenticity and that not all photos are perfect, Apple tries to sell the idea that you can remove virtually anything you want from a photo to make it perfect. What they're not telling the consumer is that you need a more capable app, like Photoshop, and use the tools correctly to obtain a reasonable result - and even then there is some artistic license.
Writing features: Generally - turn natural language into something that... well, has clearly been written by a computer, which not only comes across as lazy but false to the reader. My attitude is that if I can't get my point across effectively, then I need to learn to write better - not simply expect a computer to work for me. Conversely, summaries can work very well and are a good example of a progressive utility.
Mail categorisation: Not useful for the majority of people who, through their iCloud account, receive a small number of emails a day. If anything it can slow down productivity and the categorising can be incorrect. I imagine this would only be useful if you received a huge number of emails each day and didn't have time to sift through the main inbox.
Mail and Messages summaries: Often inaccurate, and misses the point that many notifications are already summarised to begin with, which is why taking a summary and summarising it inevitably results in bizarre outcomes. Plus, it takes little effort to open a message and actually read it; a summary doesn't increase my productivity.
Image Playground: What could have been a great asset for images to insert into documents and presentations is a disaster. I can't even begin to describe how bad this service is, so I'll leave it there.
Genmoji: Takes more time to produce something worth sending than to just type the descriptive word or use an existing emoji. There are already so many emojis that there is no incentive to continue generating and reusing new ones.
Again, just my own thoughts and I understand that everyone's needs vary. But from my point of view, Apple has wasted a lot of time and resources in producing very mediocre 'AI' features that completely miss the point of assistance.
"AI", and in context Apple Intelligence, can (could?) be extremely useful and helpful tools, but to me it's just another piece of software. And so far these tools offer me assistance on things I don't need to be assisted with. They are just a "fun feature" that I'm honestly not very interested in at the moment.
I agree with you here. And I think it doesn't just apply to Apple. The keyword in AI will always be the first one: Artificial. There's no intelligence involved whatsoever, except ours and no machine will ever be able to replace that. I don't really understand the hype actually. It's almost laughable. But I guess it's just, good business...
Free will, the ability to form opinions, to ponder, to make decisions, to choose. No matter how chatty our virtual "friends" can be they will always be devoted of that. In other words, a brain.
I have to admit though, there are really outstanding generative features in Photoshop now, and like I said above, this is a case where it IS, for me, a very helpful and time saving tool. The latest version of Cubase starts to incorporate quite a few interesting features too, as is Logic. But to me it's still, only, and will remain just a broader (yet quite fun to play with) palette made available to me so I can create music. No matter how powerful your DAW is and how good your sounds are, if the music is not good in the first place it will always sound like crap.
I guess maybe I went a bit off topic, but I swear, this message was not AI generated. 😉
I find type to Siri/gpt to be helpful in some circumstances. Usually definitions or little questions while I'm working on something and don't want to open a new tab. It's not critical, but it's nice. Summaries in Safari are nice too, but not for notifications.
Considering I know how to write, know how to search online, and know how to make simple image modifications, I'm still not sure what the hell any kind of AI is useful for unless you're using it to outline a long project/document.
I tried Apple Intelligence briefly and found it unnecessary.
It's not just an Apple problem ... the LLMs from many companies are widely problematic.
There's no "intelligence" in these systems.
AI is very nascent. Whatever utility AI will or will not have will evolve. Trying to categorize AI and its utility or lack of utility when AI is so nascent is a fool's errand. Instead just use what seems useful to you (or not) and watch the (rapid) evolution.
Most of all, do not for one second think that Apple's future AI is Siri circa 2025.
Just my $0.02.
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I find priority notifications more helpful than not and appreciate the summaries.
That’s about it.
I don’t know. I turned it off because it doesn’t have any features that seem useful
Let me know when it can do multiple steps of work for me, like telling it to take data from one app and process it (accurately) in another one, then make it into a graph and post that graph on Bluesky
That’s what I want AI to do
Let me know when it can do multiple steps of work for me, like telling it to take data from one app and process it (accurately) in another one, then make it into a graph and post that graph on Bluesky
That’s what I want AI to do
I find the proofreading to be rather useful. I use it all the time to catch silly typos on work emails and reports. I don't have much use for the rest of it.
I don't have much use for AI in general. Since I've been given a free year's worth of Perplexity Pro, it has turned out to be a more effective search engine than Google is for me. The only other use I've found for these chatbots is for parsing and interpreting log files (with abundant caution, and double checking).
I don't have much use for AI in general. Since I've been given a free year's worth of Perplexity Pro, it has turned out to be a more effective search engine than Google is for me. The only other use I've found for these chatbots is for parsing and interpreting log files (with abundant caution, and double checking).