By John Moltz
August 2, 2024 2:00 PM PT
This Week in Apple: With Friends like these
AI is coming to a neck near you (probably not, actually), Apple still has several arguments going on, and get ready for the fall colors! (Pro line not included.)
Friendly banter
Apple released a developer beta of iOS 18.1 on Monday, creating a separate track for those who want to test out Apple Intelligence. The beta gives access to Writing Tools, enhanced Siri, Mail features like summarization and Smart Reply, and more. If every time you have to communicate with others, you break out into a cold sweat, this update’s for you.
Speaking of having interpersonal trouble, need a Friend?
“Your new AI Friend is almost ready to meet you”
But are you ready to meet it? Friend is an AI pendant that listens to what’s going on around you and sends you messages based on your current context.
Now, life is complicated. Not everyone has an easy time connecting with others, so maybe there is a market for a virtual friend for some people. It does seem like they might have a few kinks to work out, though.
“It’s very supportive, very validating, it’ll encourage your ideas,” [founder Avi] Schiffmann says.
The demo video, however, shows a Friend wearer playing a video game with some meat-based friends and the device sends him a message that says “You’re getting thrashed, it’s embarrassing!”
So supportive. Very validating.
Maybe they could run that through Apple’s Writing Tools on the Friendly setting before they ship it. That might fix it.
Applebeefs: Fightin’ good in the neighborhood
Apple is fighting back against the Department of Justice’s antitrust suit, demonstrating that all those hours of watching legal shows really paid off.
“Apple files motion to dismiss DOJ antitrust lawsuit, citing harm to innovation and user experience”
Please. My innovations.
The Government’s theory that Apple has somehow violated the antitrust laws by not giving third parties broader access to iPhone runs headlong into blackletter antitrust law protecting a firm’s right to design and control its own product.
“Your Honor, some of these third parties want to alter iPhone by adding a ‘the’ to it. Now, I ask you, is that right? Is that justice?”
In other news of Apple beefs, turns out Tim Sweeney has some weird ideas.
Sweeney says:
Years ago, a kid stole a Mac laptop out of my car. Years later, I was checking out Find My and it showed a map with the house where the kid who stole my Mac lived. WTF Apple? How is that okay?!
Uh, because the laptop is yours? I don’t… what?
Maybe the attitude that “He stole it! I guess it’s his now!” isn’t that surprising coming from someone who wants Apple to loosen restrictions on its monolithic App Store so he can set up his own monolithic app store.
It’s just a very weird thing to think it’s some kind of privacy violation to have a feature that lets you find something you lost. Maybe we should take up a collection to buy Sweeney a Friend. I bet he’d love that.
I don’t know, y’all. It just seems sometimes that making people with weird ideas titans of industry wasn’t such a great idea.
Color commentary
New leaks purport to show the colors of this fall’s base model iPhone 16 lineup. Check it out.
“iPhone 16 colors and redesigned camera bump revealed in new image”
Wow! What great colors! The blue is blue, the green is green, the pink is pink, the snozzberries tastes like snozzberries!
And, great news for those interested in the iPhone 16 Pro: they also were designed in a vast array of wonderful, bright colors! Unfortunately, due to a production mistake, they were rendered on a Classic Mac and came out grayscale.
“New image shows off iPhone 16 Pro colors, including darker Black Titanium”
You got your white. You got your black. And you got your in-between white and black, also known as grey. Sweet. There have been rumors of a bronze iPhone 16 Pro, called “rose titanium”, but that does not appear in these leaked images. Maybe it was dropped due to a copyright issue because, true story, I went to high school with a Rose Titanium.
(Disclaimer: not a true story.)
[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.]