Visual Intelligence: How to Use It, Features and More

[@Brett]

The features on offer continue to be mid, it's probably cooler if you haven't had it on a Pixel or Galaxy already. Apple really needs to do better by users and do something only they can do with their hardware and software integration and this ain't it.

Apple is already doing better with system level integration. The features on the whole can and will improve through software updates. I would rather useful features and some privacy than no privacy and rushed out the door garbage.

 

[neotint]

Did anyone else notice the add event to calendar appears to be wrong? The handwritten note says January 15th, but the OCR capture detected it as January 18th. OCR always needs verification for numbers especially for handwritten text, the UI UX should be more emphatic about this. Can see so many people getting dates wrong for thing due to UX like this that is too subtle for real world busy hasty human beings.

Also, when will these features be released for prior iphones? Or would the performance really be too slow?

 

[Frantisekj]

All the things Apple is offering with their Apple Intelligence are dependent on Open AI (ChatGPT) or google’s offerings. They are hooks in apples iOS to use them more quickly.

What are apples own inventions in this?

Not gonna defent Apple but answer to youtr question is own LLM running in limited memory on device and not invention but seamles integration into system. It is not guaranteed with all competitors functions.

 

[Frantisekj]

Did anyone else notice the add event to calendar appears to be wrong? The handwritten note says January 15th, but the OCR capture detected it as January 18th. OCR always needs verification for numbers especially for handwritten text, the UI UX should be more emphatic about this. Can see so many people getting dates wrong for thing due to UX like this that is too subtle for real world busy hasty human beings.

Also, when will these features be released for prior iphones? Or would the performance really be too slow?

They had to make them server based. Who knows, they can surprice us in future.

 

[JimmyHook]

Lol at the folks who think a lack of a button is why they can’t use a new feature. No. It’s the Neural Engine and RAM.

 

[SMH4KIDIOT]

Lol at the folks who think a lack of a button is why they can’t use a new feature. No. It’s the Neural Engine and RAM.

Its not the Neural Engine and RAM. The A17 Pro has 35 TOPs vs A18 Pro 38TOPs, they both have 8GB RAM.

Apple added a button so they are using features that are already present on iOS but gating it under visual intelligence to phones with a button. You can already do visual search in google lens app, copy texts in images in the gallery app, get contact information from images etc. Even older iPhone have these features.

 

[Chungry]

Lol at the folks who think a lack of a button is why they can’t use a new feature. No. It’s the Neural Engine and RAM.

It's simply hardware-gated (meaning artificially restricted to the new phones only) nothing would stop them from just bringing it over. This is modern Apple's approach. Gone are the days of useful features compelling upgrades so they do this slimy business. Basically they don't have a compelling story around the phones because, really, they shouldn't be releasing year over year (aside from the silicon which doesn't matter to normies). So they invent gated features to artificially prop up the release. Every other year would make for a more compelling narrative. But this is new Apple so it's all about extracting value from customers and trading on the good will of their past accomplishments in mobile. They need to take a serious look at their M series and see what makes that work year to year. If phones have largely matured and plateaued then it doesn't make any sense to do yearly releases anymore. But they put all their eggs in the phone basket and services can't carry all that water on its own -yet

 

[JimmyHook]

It's simply hardware-gated (meaning artificially restricted to the new phones only) nothing would stop them from just bringing it over. This is modern Apple's approach. Gone are the days of useful features compelling upgrades so they do this slimy business. Basically they don't have a compelling story around the phones because, really, they shouldn't be releasing year over year (aside from the silicon which doesn't matter to normies). So they invent gated features to artificially prop up the release. Every other year would make for a more compelling narrative. But this is new Apple so it's all about extracting value from customers and trading on the good will of their past accomplishments in mobile. They need to take a serious look at their M series and see what makes that work year to year. If phones have largely matured and plateaued then it doesn't make any sense to do yearly releases anymore. But they put all their eggs in the phone basket and services can't carry all that water on its own -yet

There’s nothing you can ever say or do to dissuade people from buying products they want. Ergo, you are wasting your breath.

 

[JimmyHook]

Its not the Neural Engine and RAM. The A17 Pro has 35 TOPs vs A18 Pro 38TOPs, they both have 8GB RAM.

Apple added a button so they are using features that are already present on iOS but gating it under visual intelligence to phones with a button. You can already do visual search in google lens app, copy texts in images in the gallery app, get contact information from images etc. Even older iPhone have these features.

Wrong. GPU in A17 Pro has access to 6 GB of RAM, while the A18 Pro has access to 8. Besides the extra performance of the Neural Engine, it can run more parallel processes. Also, the GPU is 20 percent faster, essential for image recognition.

While you may scoff at those differences, they are meaningful enough to be the difference between a sluggish feature and a quick one. Apple won’t compromise on that, and I don’t blame them.

 

[SMH4KIDIOT]

Wrong. GPU in A17 Pro has access to 6 GB of RAM, while the A18 Pro has access to 8.

The A17 Pro and A18 Pro both have 8GB LPDDR5/X RAM. Apple Intelligence only works on Apple devices with 8+GB RAM.

Apple’s VP of hardware technology, Johny Srouji

Besides the extra performance of the Neural Engine, it can run more parallel processes. Also, the GPU is 20 percent faster, essential for image recognition.

If you don't know what you are talking about at least educate yourself. All Visual intelligence does is OCR, the other functions like google search or ChatGPT are processed in the cloud. The OCR part is done on device. These features have existed for a long time on devices much less powerful and does not need A18 Pro to work.

This is Pixel 4a and iPhone 12 Pro max which came out 4 years ago doing everything visual intelligence does except google does it better even though it is significantly less powerful than the iPhone 12 Pro max.

While you may scoff at those differences, they are meaningful enough to be the difference between a sluggish feature and a quick one. Apple won’t compromise on that, and I don’t blame them.

So iPhone 15 Pro Max with A17 Pro 8GB RAM is sluggish now? You do realize that what visual intelligence does which is OCR is considerably less compute intensive than running a LLM and and Image generation model which iPhone 15 Pro does right? Why is apple compromising on that front?