Visual Intelligence: How to Use It, Features and More

[G5isAlive]

Neutrally, I was responding to your question and nothing more. I'm not here to convince anyone. If anything I want my iPhone to be better than the sub par experience it currently offers, and get closer to what is on offer with the other platforms. I think Apple has leaned too far into novelty and kitsch without a critical eye on whether the efforts to design genmoji- could have been better applied to make summaries not suck, or offer something useful along the lines of circle to search.

I find this more interesting than Apple's vision because of the actual day-to-day utility it offers

Eh, I find my iPhone experience to be amazing, you find it subpar.. Opinions, every one has one. And then you offer up a link to vaporware... Sorry I don't compare advertising to reality. I would also offer the Apple Vision Pro is not the ending but the beginning, Apple is not focused on one device today, but where the ecosystem is going. Sure, one can design a device to meet today's expectations, and maybe it might be better for just that, but betting against Apple in the long run is just ignoring history. That's the feature focus I find to be lacking. I enjoy my Apple Vision Pro and the glimpse of tomorrow. Apple is not just showing windows on a screen but building a whole new way of interacting with computing. Perhaps you are too young to know the days when command line interfaces ruled the day, and then came the Mac 128. Yes it was a rough start, but here we are today and command line interfaces are a thing of the past.

Sorry, just not getting that excited about the subpar experiences the google universe offers. Not to mention, I value my privacy. It's not always about a specific feature.

 

[StoneJack]

I like these features. They are not available on my Promax 15 but I can wait until 17 Air to upgrade the phone. Honestly, 15 pro max is as amazing as 16 so no need to update now for me, but in 2-3 years perhaps ok

 

[Macalway]

So you need the button, so that the inventor can pretend they made something useful.

Didn't they say the previous iPhone was enough for the fancy stuff? (Hard to keep up)

 

[JimmyHook]

Apple Intelligence is meh, but to be honest, Generative AI as a whole performs far worse than advertised. These OEMs are falling victim to corporate hype. What did the CEO of DeepMind say? It "has the IQ of a house cat." I hope Apple extracts the few useful things it does and trashes the rest. Who wants AI-generated visual slop anyway?

 

[tutis]

half of these new features don't require the power of the latest A18 chip, e.g. ChatGPT connection but there are others, yet Apple insists on making this a new phone only feature. That perfume of "greed and desperation" that Apple is wearing isn't its nicest yet.

 

[TechWhisperer]

The whole AI push feels half-baked and gimmicky, but what frustrates me most is how Apple continues to limit and control what users can do with their own devices. People want the freedom to decide for themselves what they can and can’t do, but Apple seems determined to take that away. It’s almost as if freedom of choice is something Apple actively rejects, and honestly, it’s starting to make me resent the company. I don’t even recognize Apple anymore, it’s a shadow of what it once was. For the first time in 17 years, I’m genuinely considering other phones. That speaks volumes.

 

[ATmahe]

I‘m wondering where the intelligence lies of those features …
Most of this things don’t require AI or is this the reason they call it Apple Intelligence?
I mean, most of those things worked before AI was born???
Translation, QR Code scanning (LOL), text to speech, …

 

[nottorp]

So... what do I need to press if I just want to take a photo? Should I be careful to take my finger off the camera button in less than 0.3 seconds or something? Should I practice doing that without dropping the too large phone?

 

[coolfactor]

Wow so one redundant button is keeping me from having this on my 15 Pro that has all other Apple Intelligence features? Does Apple have no shame left?
This is extra annoying as its the only truly useful feature that stands out in the extremely lacklustre Apple Intelligence Features released so far.

Are you sure it's just "one button" that's the difference between your 15 Pro and a 16? Same CPU cores? Same memory? Same camera?

There were actually hardware changes made to the 16 lineup that enabled these software features. Is Apple being overly cautious not to over-promise and under-deliver? Yes, but that's partly what will keep them separate from the competition. This is early days yet.

Apple Intelligence wasn't a thing when you bought you 15 Pro, so it's not like they didn't give you something that they promised, right?

 

[coolfactor]

I‘m wondering where the intelligence lies of those features …
Most of this things don’t require AI or is this the reason they call it Apple Intelligence?
I mean, most of those things worked before AI was born???
Translation, QR Code scanning (LOL), text to speech, …

This is where people are getting confused about what "AI" is... a phrase that's being way over-used.

Yes, these capabilities did exist, because they are driven by a subset of AI called Machine Learning, which has been around for decades. AI has always been an umbrella term for many technologies. What has changed in the past two years is "generative" AI... a new class of AI that can generate responses (text and images) organically. It still uses machine learning, but instead of returning a trained response, it can generate a response. Trained responses are still a thing, too.

Apple Intelligence also is an umbrella term for these capabilities — new and old — not just "one new thing".

 

[coolfactor]

So... what do I need to press if I just want to take a photo? Should I be careful to take my finger off the camera button in less than 0.3 seconds or something? Should I practice doing that without dropping the too large phone?

No, to take a photo, you need to keep one finger on your nose while pulling your ear, and then press the Camera Control buttons three times saying "There's no place like Camera. There's no place like Camera" while tapping your heels together. Make sure you're wearing slippers. It doesn't work with anything else on your feet. Good luck!

 

[coolfactor]

I bought it with the intention of having a phone they could introduce new features with adding the buttons via a software update...just as Apple touted back in 2007.

You are making a very good point. However, times have changed. If the Camera Control button was purely in software, you'd need to look at the screen to operate it. So it's a trade-off in this case. One small exception in 13 years of delivering on their stated promise. In a highly competitive market (which didn't exist in 2011), Apple is carefully trying to keep their offerings unique. Can't blame them, right?

Now, if they offered a case with a button that added Camera Control to older models, that would be cool.

 

[livetofail]

so apple did an image reverse search? Cool! Only been around for more than a decade.

 

[d3vilsadvocate]

This is ridiculous behavior by apple. The os gets more and more complicated to use with more and more feature buried in random places, and that includes the AI features. Making things fragmented even more isn't going to help at all.

 

[nottorp]

You are making a very good point. However, times have changed. If the Camera Control button was purely in software, you'd need to look at the screen to operate it.

Note that you used to be able to know if your phone is on mute without looking at the screen or even the phone, by feeling the physical switch in your pocket, but they got rid of that. So you need to assign them a different motivation.

 

[MacMan988]

Wow so one redundant button is keeping me from having this on my 15 Pro that has all other Apple Intelligence features? Does Apple have no shame left?
This is extra annoying as its the only truly useful feature that stands out in the extremely lacklustre Apple Intelligence Features released so far.

This is what Apple meant when they said the iPhone 16 is built for AI (Apple Intelligence).

 

[svish]

Can be very useful. Summarizing text by taking a photo is great. Too bad my 15 Pro Max is not having this feature. Other than this happy that it is getting all the features of the 16 Pro Max.

 

[Frantisekj]

Honestly these are all features that the google app has been able to do for years. Pretty sad that apple couldn't have built this for a quialtiy of life update that could get people excited for apple intelligence for all models. If you wanna try out these features just download the google app and see what you're missing. It's not anything special that should make anyone with a iphone 13/14/15 "need" to update.

But that is probably think many people do not want to do, to download Google app.

 

[johnnyenv]

the main feature that requires a 16 Pro thats already 3 months behind the product launch...

 

[Frantisekj]

None of this sounds useful. I’m sure it’s faster in most cases to just go up to the restaurant and look at the hours or go inside and make a res. If it’s closed, open Google Maps (Apple Maps doesn’t have enough good, worldwide data yet) and click on the place that’s right across the street? These don’t require the use of wasteful AI compute power.

What’s the logic of disallowing AI analysis of previously taken photos?

You're right none of it's particularly useful. Even the stuff on offer with the Pixel and the Galaxy, while much better as a whole in terms of offerings, is meh aside from their cool photo tools that aren't hampered like Apple's. I'd say Galaxy is the winner right now. Apple chasing this fad instead of holding strong and waiting to see what is actually of utility reeks of desperation frankly. I was fine for my 16PM not to have any of this stuff but they are gonna keep pushing software updates and doing goofy ill-executed stuff like summarization.

I think that more usefull will be features in apps like we can see now in video/photo editing, coding and office apps.
But Image playgroung can be usefull and I would use it if I had access to it depending on results.

But what I think will be really usefull be AppleScript like functionality in iOS, Shortcuts on steroids that will allow apps do things for you and even ask for it in human language. It will allow even less skilled to discover and use "pro" features.
Of course, without well working Siri that will understand your requests and be able to follow conversation it can be still pain.

Apple pushed AI into iOS 18 not to look being too behind and we should also consider they are allways a bit in disvantage as they do not wish exploit privacy that much. Maybe not because of us but themself 😃

Something I really do not like is that ability to ask Siri to help you operate phone and apps will be limited to on device AI. I stand behind idea that this should be server based task abailable to all users and hope that when Apple will build its server infrastructure we may get access in future. One can hope...

 

[w_aldo]

Are you sure it's just "one button" that's the difference between your 15 Pro and a 16? Same CPU cores? Same memory? Same camera?

There were actually hardware changes made to the 16 lineup that enabled these software features. Is Apple being overly cautious not to over-promise and under-deliver? Yes, but that's partly what will keep them separate from the competition. This is early days yet.

Apple Intelligence wasn't a thing when you bought you 15 Pro, so it's not like they didn't give you something that they promised, right?

Come on bro. The phones are almost identical, even down to the CPU and memory, there’s hardly any difference there at all.

 

[Mac Fly (film)]

That touch button on the side of iPhones should not exist. It confuses the product. Even the idea of it annoys me. Visual intelligence should probably be a separate app with its own app icon, away from the Camera app. Like a scanning app all of its own.

 

[Mac Fly (film)]

Hopefully switch it off.

Should be a separate app with all of those features, so we would have to choose it consciously rather than further bloating the Camera app.

 

[Mac Fly (film)]

I think the search function is okay, and I guess the ask thing could maybe be useful, but ChatGPT is so unreliable.

GPT is about to take over the world, yet it makes basic mistakes the whole time. Its egomaniacal founder continues to steal everyone's data so he can steal their jobs, and still the answers cannot be trusted at all. Constantly confidently wrong. Its was also programmed to be patronising. If it knows the answer: "glad I could be of help". Sometimes when it doesn't: "it looks like we got confused". Little s*** lol.

 

[9081094]

Visual Intelligence is going to make so much sense on the vision pro if and when it gets updated for it.

Google and Samsung already introduced that at a more affordable price than the Vision Pro. Their offerings go way beyond apples offerings. So another dead end for Apple.