By John Moltz
June 14, 2024 2:00 PM PT
This Week in Apple: All In
It’s official! Apple has AI! (Coming later.) Its other new operating system features also made an appearance at the WWDC keynote and if you see a Microsoft employee this week, give them a hug. They might need it.
Bandwagon = joined
OK, yes, we’re going to have to talk about AI again, but I’m pretty sure this is the last time we’ll have to.
Apple unveiled a range of AI offerings starting with Apple Intelligence—a collection of features done via both on-device learning and through secure cloud-based processing—and ending with the ability to pass queries off to ChatGPT when only a demonstrably wrong answer will do.
Reaction to Image Playground, a feature that provides AI-generated images in response to prompts, seems to be a unanimous blech, largely based on the generic DALL-E-looking output, but also on the input. Hope you don’t use “the open web” because, like so many other AI companies, Apple appears to have helped itself to whatever works you might have put out there in order to train its system. Don’t worry, though. You can opt out now, after all the five-legged AI-generated horses have bolted.
It’s currently not clear exactly how Apple is applying what its Applebot learned from reading the entire web. If it’s just teaching it how to talk, that’s less bad than teaching it what to say. But clearly something went into training Image Playground how to make those images no one seems to like very much.
A big question on many minds is, will Apple Intelligence hallucinate? Sure, it will. Don’t we all? I know I do. What? Who said that? But Apple says it did its best.
“How will Apple’s new AI change your phone? I asked Tim Cook.”
Cook: It’s not 100 percent. But I think we have done everything that we know to do, including thinking very deeply about the readiness of the technology in the areas that we’re using it in.
You can’t make an AI without breaking a few eggs, many of which come in cartons of 13 and have an unexpected number of yolks.
The much-rumored and oft sought-after AI-powered better Siri even made a brief appearance, if just a bit of a cameo.
Speaking of which, if you want to have the original Siri do a Cameo for you, you can.
Also present
Turns out Apple did announce things that were not related to AI, if you can believe it. Not sure why they bothered, but they did.
The new version of macOS will be Sequoia and one of its big new features is, uh, your iPhone. A new feature of Continuity actually lets you remote control your iPhone right from your desktop. Apple has asked people not to then run Screens from their iPhones to then control the Mac as it could collapse the space/time continuum.
In terms of other platforms, visionOS also got some smaller updates and the iPad finally has a calculator, which has a number of cool new features, such as the ability to solve handwritten calculations. If you never thought you’d use algebra after graduating, you’ll at least use it to try this feature. And then probably never again.
As foretold, iOS 18 has new options for icons, including the ability to not show app titles, for those who like to live on the edge.
“I’m pretty sure it’s one of these blue ones. Maybe this? Nope. This? Wrong again.”
Not great, Microsoft Bob!
But enough about Apple. How was Microsoft’s week?
Could have been better.
First the company had to walk back its recently announced Recall feature because it’s a security nightmare. Then ProPublica published a lengthy expose on the company’s lack of reaction to a security bug.
Well, how bad could it have been? Well, it allowed Russia to:
…vacuum up sensitive data from a number of federal agencies, including, ProPublica has learned, the National Nuclear Security Administration, which maintains the United States’ nuclear weapons stockpile…
OK, I’m not an expert on nuclear weapons (you’re thinking of my brother) but that seems bad.
To add insult to injury received by stepping on multiple rakes…
“Apple Passes Microsoft to Become World’s Most Valuable Company Again”
This change is probably less because of the Recall fiasco and the company dropping the nuclear football and more because Apple simply made AI announcements. Wall Street has signaled that Apple checked that box it wanted checked. Good job!
[John Moltz is a Six Colors contributor. You can find him on Mastodon at Mastodon.social/@moltz and he sells items with references you might get on Cotton Bureau.]