Apple Intelligence Is Out Today (theverge.com) 36
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Apple's AI features are finally starting to appear. Apple Intelligence is launching today on the iPhone, iPad, and Mac, offering features like generative AI-powered writing tools, notification summaries, and a cleanup tool to take distractions out of photos. It's Apple's first official step into the AI era, but it'll be far from its last. Apple Intelligence has been available in developer and public beta builds of Apple's operating systems for the past few months, but today marks the first time it'll be available in the full public OS releases. Even so, the features will still be marked as "beta," and Apple Intelligence will very much remain a work in progress. (You'll have to get on a waitlist to try Apple Intelligence, too.) Siri gets a new look, but its most consequential new features -- like the ability to take action in apps -- probably won't arrive until well into 2025.
In the meantime, Apple has released a very "AI starter kit" set of features. "Writing Tools" will help you summarize notes, change the tone of your messages to make them friendlier or more professional, and turn a wall of text into a list or table. You'll see AI summaries in notifications and emails, along with a new focus mode that aims to filter out unimportant alerts. The updated Siri is signified by a glowing border around the screen, and it now allows for text input by double-tapping the bottom of the screen. It's helpful stuff, but we've seen a lot of this before, and it'll hardly represent a seismic shift in how you use your iPhone. Apple says that more Apple Intelligence features will arrive in December. [...] Availability will expand in December to Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, South Africa, and the UK, with additional languages coming in April. Despite Apple's previous claim that Apple Intelligence wouldn't be available in the European Union due to the Digital Markets Act, the features will, in fact, be coming to Europe in April of next year.
Further reading: Apple Updates the iMac With M4 Chip
In the meantime, Apple has released a very "AI starter kit" set of features. "Writing Tools" will help you summarize notes, change the tone of your messages to make them friendlier or more professional, and turn a wall of text into a list or table. You'll see AI summaries in notifications and emails, along with a new focus mode that aims to filter out unimportant alerts. The updated Siri is signified by a glowing border around the screen, and it now allows for text input by double-tapping the bottom of the screen. It's helpful stuff, but we've seen a lot of this before, and it'll hardly represent a seismic shift in how you use your iPhone. Apple says that more Apple Intelligence features will arrive in December. [...] Availability will expand in December to Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, South Africa, and the UK, with additional languages coming in April. Despite Apple's previous claim that Apple Intelligence wouldn't be available in the European Union due to the Digital Markets Act, the features will, in fact, be coming to Europe in April of next year.
Further reading: Apple Updates the iMac With M4 Chip
Just goes to show ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Despite Apple's previous claim that Apple Intelligence wouldn't be available in the European Union due to the Digital Markets Act, the features will, in fact, be coming to Europe in April of next year.
This just goes to show that no matter how much a megacorp complains about being unfairly victimised by regulation, legislation, being busted for tax cheating and no matter how much they threaten to go home and sulk over it, when push comest to shove, they will not abandon a market of 450 million potential customers.
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Too lazy to find it but someone in the comments mentioned that the EU will just get a delayed release after its fairly certain the software is stable.
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that may be an undercount. everyone is a potential customer except the poors
Apple Intelligence name (Score:2)
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So Apple is trying to trademark AI? They already tried to trademark the letter i...
Just wait until Google trademarks Applied Google Intelligence. :-D
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Genius (Score:3)
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What a fucking nightmare. At the end of the day, I did get $4,000 worth of replacement parts for my laptop for $99, though.
That all being said, I've been playing with Apple Intelligence since it became available in the Developer Beta, and while its name is irredeemably stupid, its feature set is actually pretty fucking cool.
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Someone posted another one on Twitter this week. Their mother said a long hike nearly killed her. Apple Intelligence summarised it as having survived suicide and then gone hiking.
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Their mother said a long hike nearly killed her. Apple Intelligence summarised it as having survived suicide and then gone hiking.
Unless someone else made her take the hike, I'd say that's a hilariously accurate assessment.
enjoying the journey (Score:2)
After the clip cuts, old man says
"The journey. The journey's what brings us happiness not the destination."
I'm erased from all my wife's pictures (Score:2)
Talking about distractions....
I hope Apple Intelligence will do the right thing with my dick pics.
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is enlarge objects a feature?
SuperKendall must be so excited (Score:2)
SuperKendall hasn't been so excited for "writing tools" on an iPhone since Apple gave him content creation tools for the iPad!
Can we turn it off? (Score:4, Insightful)
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You can't even turn it on, since it's currently "waitlisted" and you have to be "invited" to enable it, and it's limited to the United States. (Which is odd, because I thought it was supposed to all run on-device.) Plus it only works on the latest iPhones: Apple is using it to try and sell phones.
None of which answers your question. Presumably you won't be able to turn it off after some random update in the future. When Apple says "it just works" they really mean "we don't give you any choice."
But right now
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Plus it only works on the latest iPhones: Apple is using it to try and sell phones.
Any other purpose would certainly be suspicious.
But are they trying to sell the latest phones, by having it, or clear out their stock of older phones by not having it?
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The most important question is, can we disable all this unnecessary junk, or is it force fed?
This is Apple. You will use it the way we tell you or you're just not thinking different enough.
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Yeah! Like how they refuse to acknowledge the curly quotes! You'll confine yourself to the programmers characters only, dammit. Think like we do!
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You just don't use it. Apple I is one of the less intrusive things. It's kinda a button "summarize" (shorten, check grammar, etc.) next to cut/copy/paste. Do not press the button and you don't get a summary generated.
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Currently, it is off by default. You have to opt in for it to be on the waitlist and get added. I predict Apple will roll this out to everyone in the future.
continue to burn up the planet for this crap? (Score:1)
Writing Tools" will help you summarize notes, change the tone of your messages to make them friendlier or more professional, and turn a wall of text into a list or table. You'll see AI summaries in notifications and emails, along with a new focus mode that aims to filter out unimportant alerts. The updated Siri is signified by a glowing border around the screen, and it now allows for text input by double-tapping the bottom of the screen. It's helpful stuff, but we've seen a lot of this before, and it'll har
because of the charger port, desktops need 2 mice! (Score:2)
Because this is my job, I don't fuck around. I can't wait for 30 minutes for the mouse to charge. Also, their charging warning are notorious inaccurate. You get the warning and the mouse starts disc
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If reliability and uptime is that critical, why are you even using a wireless mouse?
Also I've never had to install drivers for a mouse, and I've even had a few wireless ones.
because I joined a stupid cult (Score:2)
If reliability and uptime is that critical, why are you even using a wireless mouse?
Also I've never had to install drivers for a mouse, and I've even had a few wireless ones.
Apple doesn't offer a wired mouse. I'd much rather have one. I do use their gestures....but....yeah...I'm part of the problem. I don't want to think about what works and doesn't and just want to buy an 1st party solution and go about thinking about my job and nothing else.
It's not weird to want Apple products, even if the logic doesn't work out. I am just stating that as a side effect of making your mouse useless during charging, those of us who need things not to be useless either have to buy a spar
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Apple shit just works and it tends to last a long time.
You just wrote a post explaining how Apple doesn't just work, and then you wrote that?
I don't have to install drivers or any stupid shit like that.
Are you by any chance a manager? Do you have pointy hair? The last time anyone installed drivers to use a mouse was a long time ago.
iPhone 16 buyers suckered in (Score:2)
Suddenly it all makes sense (Score:2)
I was only just reading that Apple still puts the charging port on the bottom of the mouse. I guess this is "Apple Intelligence"
Dystopian Tag Line (Score:1)
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"AI for the rest of us" -- Is it just me, or does this tag line have dystopian resonance? It smacks of paranoia, of Apple viewing their community as having been somehow denied AI up until now.
You're reading the "for" wrong. What they mean by "for" is "to replace." Once the computer does all the thinking, who needs the pesky humans?
gimme what i want, what i really really want (Score:2)
I really want a useful Bookmark manager for my web browser, to not only sync bookmarks but to replace duplicates and to organize the bookmarks by category so they're easier to find. Also, stop duplicating between browsers! Just maintain a single list of my sources.
AI (Score:2)
Out (Score:2)
Did it leave an OoO message saying how long? I'm sure it will return your call when it gets back to work.