TL;DR: Apple’s upcoming iOS 18, macOS 15, watchOS 11, and tvOS 18 updates are expected to be “ambitious and compelling,” featuring generative AI improvements, especially in Siri. The revamped Siri may offer enhanced integration with Messages, auto-generated Apple Music playlists, and productivity app integration. Apple is investing $1 billion annually in AI research, aiming to compete with Google and OpenAI. The company is debating whether to deploy the new AI technology via the cloud, on-device, or a combination. (via ChatGPT)
Lauded as ‘Ambitious and Compelling’ by Apple Execs
Well, if they say so it must be true
“This thing is ambitious and compelling” says people selling you the thing.
I’ve yet to find a product general AI helped.
I don’t want an AI to make Music playlists. I want simple rules that make sense. Pandora figured that out 23 years ago.
The only use I have found for ChatGPT is to generate replies for spam texts.
As a C programmer, asking ChatGPT python questions has been super helpful. I can reference some random python library from the corner of the internet and it’ll answer back like it’s an expert in the field. It’s not perfect, but I’m not going to waste my time writing python algorithms if ChatGPT can do it in 2 seconds.
In 2005 or so, I got a tip about an application called LaunchBar, which would later be copied by Apple to replace the Sherlock search tool, and later by Microsoft in its PowerToys suite. The machine learning LaunchBar used to tailor its responses based on my previous behavior was life-changing. Instead of configuring an application, I just had to use it to change how it behaved.
This is how language models and AI are going to improve your products. Subtly. Behind the scenes. Slightly improving a thousand different use cases, only a fraction of which your regular usage patterns are going to intersect with.
I think AI has some potential uses, but it feels like Apple has ignored its Music app for years, they just have the bare minimum and stopped giving a shit. Adding AI is probably the last thing they needed to do to improve their music software.
It does feel like it’s ignored, mostly due to features being inconsistently integrated like for example Smart Playlists, but would you really call it the bare minimum? IMO both mobile and especially desktop app is a lot better than e.g. Spotify in terms of what it can do. Of course it probably wouldn’t compare well against other current full music library managers though, I wouldn’t exactly call Spotify fully-featured either, but against other streaming services I’d say it definitely holds up.
I mostly interact with it through iTunes on Windows, which is sort of just sort of frozen in time and frustrating as hell to use (that’s a whole other issue in and of itself), but even switching over to a Mac and trying to interact with my iPod just feels like a more irritating experience than it should be. Hell, most of the stuff I that I should be able to do on the iPod itself, just can’t be done apparently and requires you hook it up to a PC/Mac. Simple things like just adding a song file, renaming a song name, adding it to an album, or adding a picture. Yeah, it’s easier on a computer, but there shouldn’t be any reason you can’t have the same functionality on an iPod or iPad at this point. I dread having to add songs to my iPod anymore, because half the time it will just refuse to add it and I’ll spend an hour or two trying to troubleshoot it to figure out what the problem is.
Not sure if you meant general AI or something else, that’s probably going to be a huge step if we ever get there. But the LLMs we currently have are already quite impactful even with their limitations. I don’t think anyone can deny that - and we’re clearly just at the beginning of this.
Gonna be a clusterfuck.
I have never been so glad that I talked myself out of buying the new iPhone this year! Siri is the primary input method I use for my iPhone. I would say I make around 20-30 vocal requests a day. It will be so nice to be able to do things like create a meeting on a calendar with a conversation instead of having to frame the request in a single sentence! I hope they do this rollout well.
