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What are your thoughts on Apple Intelligence so far?
- Thread starter AndronicusMaximus
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Have a look in the 18.1 beta threads, lots of info there.
There’s not a lot of what will be in AI available yet though.
It’s deeply integrated into iOS, but some features (natural language recognition and image generation) are 1-1.5 years behind the top AI brands.
There are some interesting new ideas like email summaries that make it a good addition to the Apple ecosystem.
Honestly, not that impressed. I walked by a coffee shop this morning, asked Siri when it opens and all I got back was a card showing its info and that it was closed. I then said "when does it open?" and it just showed me the same card, showing that it's closed, but wouldn't tell me anything about hours.
That's still useless.
That's still useless.
So far so good. "Reduce Interruptions" focus mode is easily my favorite. Run everything through the AI that pretty accurately figures out if something is important or not.
Summaries are appreciated across the board. Gives me the TL;DR right on my lock screen.
Summaries are appreciated across the board. Gives me the TL;DR right on my lock screen.
Siri has not changed, yet. We won't get an AI-backed Siri until January at soonest.
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It's kind of hard to tell. Siri, as mentioned, is unchanged. There are some quality of life improvements in the OS in places but overall it's hard to know or use all of them.
Right now, two features stand out with me: Clean Up tool in Photos, and that Siri can better understand us - even if she is not yet as "smart" as she reportedly will be.
The writing tools are cool; but don't mean much if you don't need them.
Frankly I hope that people do not overuse the writing tools, at the expense of their personality coming through their writing.
The writing tools are cool; but don't mean much if you don't need them.
Frankly I hope that people do not overuse the writing tools, at the expense of their personality coming through their writing.
clean up in photos is nice, though its not magic. I use writing tools quite a bit with my work, though it ends up always sounding a little too fake. Summaries are nice but not a game changer. All in all I would say 18.1 is good, im excited for stuff to come.
My thoughts on Apple Intelligence, and artificial intelligence in general, is: never allow someone else, and by extension someone else's software, to think for you. The only outcome of doing so is to produce a race of people who have lost the ability to think and reason for themselves.
Yes. Voice recognition (and thus dictation) seems quite fast and good.
I wish you could disable it in various apps. From what I can tell thus far it's an all-or-nothing thing. AI is great, but I don't need/want it in Messages, and find the animated text & prompting of responses to be annoying ... but I can't turn that off w/o turning off AI for everything on my system. 
I just enabled it on macOS as I would use the writing tools to improve my writing or summarizing text mainly, but it doesn't even work in all apps (it doesn't work in Slack for example).
I like the idea but I also have the BoltAI app (https://boltai.com/) and it does a much better job, also allowing me to choose which models I want to use for different tasks. I use Claude mostly.
I like the idea but I also have the BoltAI app (https://boltai.com/) and it does a much better job, also allowing me to choose which models I want to use for different tasks. I use Claude mostly.
Will they be adding more voices in macOS?
Recently I’ve been using text to speech a lot in macOS, so that it can read webpages for me while I can do something else. I am using default Siri voice because it is the best of the bunch that are offered, but I am curious if even more natural sounding voices will be coming.
Recently I’ve been using text to speech a lot in macOS, so that it can read webpages for me while I can do something else. I am using default Siri voice because it is the best of the bunch that are offered, but I am curious if even more natural sounding voices will be coming.
This could be said of communications and information technology, transportation, and other modern conveniences like supermarkets and plumbing. Where do we draw the line?
I feel it is best to draw the line where we are adopting a habit or practice for the sole purpose of avoiding work. For example, I am 60 years old and I walk about 8 miles per day. The reason I can walk 8 miles per day is because I do walk 8 miles per day. When I buy groceries I typically carry 20 pounds of groceries on my back during the 3 mile trek home from the grocery store. Most people my age cannot walk for 8 miles at a time because their body is out of shape, and their body is out of shape because they are always seeking convenience to avoid work. This attitude holds true for the physical self as well as the mental self - we don't need to open our cell phone calculator to perform basic mathematics when our brain is perfectly capable of doing the work.
I understand the need for some things in life - performing a 2 month hike to talk to a friend in another state would be illogical when I can send them a text message in mere seconds. But we cannot afford to let our bodies and minds rot away because we are seeking a perfectly comfortable life that no one ever promised us - perhaps we could benefit from adjusting our expectations. Convenience breeds entitlement and arrogance, whereas hardship breeds humility and compassion.
Improvement will never be obtained without performing the work that is required to get there.
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I believe Apple needs to think more deeply about some of the features. For instance on long email chains, the smart preview becomes static - so you can’t really tell what is going on with the latest reply in your inbox. This makes it an impediment to productivity.
This could be solved with better coding around the LLm vs a smarter LLm. Meaning, we’re not asking Apple to develop better AI (because let’s face it - they suck at that) just be thoughtful in the RAG.
This could be solved with better coding around the LLm vs a smarter LLm. Meaning, we’re not asking Apple to develop better AI (because let’s face it - they suck at that) just be thoughtful in the RAG.
To me Apple Intelligence was overhyped at first but with the iOS 18.2 beta on my iPhone 15 Pro, M2 iPad Pro and MacOS 15.2 on my M3 MacBook Pro it’s moved into the useful and promising category.
I love the changes to Siri, particularly the ChatGPT integration. That plus the changes we saw in 18.1 where Siri is much improved at following you if you make a mistake when asking a question and verbally correct yourself plus the ability to ask follow up questions has taken Siri from mostly annoying to useful.
I liked the Writing Tools and notification summaries in 18.1 and when you toss in the further refinements to those in 18.2 plus the changes to the Mail app and it’s ability to summarize and categorize e-mails on top of it plus the ability to get those summary notifications on the Apple Watch and Apple Intelligence has seriously enhanced my ability to communicate via the device. Not only can I better communicate my thoughts to others on the go but it’s a lot easier to quickly get the gist of what others are trying to communicate to me without having to spend as much time as I had to previously to separate what’s relevant in the moment from what can wait until later for a response.
As an iPhone 15 Pro user I’m kind of annoyed that I can’t take advantage of Visual Intelligence. The lack of a camera control button when iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max users have a customizable action button is a piss poor excuse for leaving a potentially useful feature like Visual Intelligence off limits in order to try and arbitrarily increase iPhone 16 sales.
All existing non-iPhone 15 Pro or iPhone 15 Pro Max users have to upgrade to an iPhone 16 to be able to use Apple Intelligence at all in the first place so to me this arbitrary limitation on iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max users is a bad look considering that prior to the iPhone 16 shipping this particular user base was the only one who could help beta test Apple Intelligence in iOS 18.1. Our thanks? Being forced to upgrade to use one of its features for no other reason than to nickel-and-dime us.
I love the changes to Siri, particularly the ChatGPT integration. That plus the changes we saw in 18.1 where Siri is much improved at following you if you make a mistake when asking a question and verbally correct yourself plus the ability to ask follow up questions has taken Siri from mostly annoying to useful.
I liked the Writing Tools and notification summaries in 18.1 and when you toss in the further refinements to those in 18.2 plus the changes to the Mail app and it’s ability to summarize and categorize e-mails on top of it plus the ability to get those summary notifications on the Apple Watch and Apple Intelligence has seriously enhanced my ability to communicate via the device. Not only can I better communicate my thoughts to others on the go but it’s a lot easier to quickly get the gist of what others are trying to communicate to me without having to spend as much time as I had to previously to separate what’s relevant in the moment from what can wait until later for a response.
As an iPhone 15 Pro user I’m kind of annoyed that I can’t take advantage of Visual Intelligence. The lack of a camera control button when iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max users have a customizable action button is a piss poor excuse for leaving a potentially useful feature like Visual Intelligence off limits in order to try and arbitrarily increase iPhone 16 sales.
All existing non-iPhone 15 Pro or iPhone 15 Pro Max users have to upgrade to an iPhone 16 to be able to use Apple Intelligence at all in the first place so to me this arbitrary limitation on iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max users is a bad look considering that prior to the iPhone 16 shipping this particular user base was the only one who could help beta test Apple Intelligence in iOS 18.1. Our thanks? Being forced to upgrade to use one of its features for no other reason than to nickel-and-dime us.
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