In his Power On newsletter, Gurman said that Apple now plans to make the Image Playground feature for generating images and the Genmoji feature for generating custom emoji available in iOS 18.2, which will likely be released in December.
Here is how Apple describes Image Playground:
Produce fun, original images in seconds with the Image Playground experience right in your apps. Create an entirely new image based on a description, suggested concepts, and even a person from your Photos library. You can easily adjust the style and make changes to match a Messages thread, your Freeform board, or a slide in Keynote.
Here is how Apple describes Genmoji:
Make a brand-new Genmoji right in the keyboard to match any conversation. Provide a description to see a preview, and adjust your description until it's perfect. You can even pick someone from your Photos library and create a Genmoji that looks like them.
The first Apple Intelligence features will be available starting with iOS 18.1, which is likely to be released to the public in October. These features include new writing tools for generating and summarizing text, notification summaries, suggested replies in the Messages app, the ability to record and transcribe phone calls, a new "Clean Up" tool in the Photos app that can quickly remove objects from a photo, and a few others.
Apple Intelligence will require an iPhone 15 Pro or iPhone 15 Pro Max running iOS 18.1 or later. The features will initially be available with device language set to English only. Apple said more languages will follow over the next year.
Tuesday November 19, 2024 12:12 pm PST by Joe Rossignol
Barclays analyst Tom O'Malley and his colleagues recently traveled to Asia to meet with various electronics manufacturers and suppliers. In a research note this week, outlining key takeaways from the trip, the analysts said they have "confirmed" that a fourth-generation iPhone SE with an Apple-designed 5G modem is slated to launch towards the end of the first quarter next year. In line with previo...
Sunday November 17, 2024 5:18 am PST by Joe Rossignol
Apple released the AirTag in April 2021, so it is now three over and a half years old. While the AirTag has not received any hardware updates since then, a new version of the item tracking accessory is rumored to be in development.
Below, we recap rumors about a second-generation AirTag.
Timing
Apple is aiming to release a new AirTag in mid-2025, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman....
Sunday November 17, 2024 3:03 pm PST by Joe Rossignol
While the Logitech MX Master 3 is a terrific mouse for the Mac, reports claiming that Apple CEO Tim Cook prefers that mouse over the Magic Mouse are false.
The Wall Street Journal last month published an interview with Cook, in which he said he uses every Apple product every day. Soon after, The Verge's Wes Davis attempted to replicate using every Apple product in a single day. During that...
Tuesday November 19, 2024 10:10 am PST by Juli Clover
Apple today released iOS 18.1.1 and iPadOS 18.1.1, minor updates to the iOS 18 and iPadOS 18 operating systems that debuted earlier in September. iOS 18.1.1 and iPadOS 18.1.1 come three weeks after the launch of iOS 18.1.
The new software can be downloaded on eligible iPhones and iPads over-the-air by going to Settings > General > Software Update. Apple has also released iOS 17.7.2 for...
Wednesday November 20, 2024 3:42 am PST by Tim Hardwick
AT&T has begun displaying "Turbo" in the iPhone carrier label for customers subscribed to its premium network prioritization service, according to reports on Reddit. The new indicator seems to have started appearing after users updated to iOS 18.1.1, but that could be just coincidence.
Image credit: Reddit user No_Highlight7476
The Turbo feature provides enhanced network performance through ...
Monday November 18, 2024 1:07 pm PST by Joe Rossignol
In a research note with Hong Kong-based investment bank Haitong today, obtained by MacRumors, Apple analyst Jeff Pu said he agrees with a recent rumor claiming that the so-called "iPhone 17 Air" will be around 6mm thick.
"We agreed with the recent chatter of an 6mm thickness ultra-slim design of the iPhone 17 Slim model," he wrote.
If that measurement proves to be accurate, there would be ...
Tuesday November 19, 2024 10:52 am PST by Juli Clover
The iOS 18.1.1, iPadOS 18.1.1, and macOS Sequoia 15.1.1 updates that Apple released today address JavaScriptCore and WebKit vulnerabilities that Apple says have been actively exploited on some devices.
With the JavaScriptCore vulnerability, processing maliciously crafted web content could lead to arbitrary code execution. The WebKit vulnerability had the same issue with maliciously crafted...
This makes sense after the rollout of the Google tool and everyone realized there weren’t sufficient guardrails in place to prevent (or at least reduce) the likelihood of generating offensive content from the tool. They’d rather have it locked down up front as opposed to having to tweak it afterwards.
While fully sensitive to "offensive," who can be the judge of that? Artistic expression at its best has no boundaries. As someone decides to set boundaries, art is "pinched" down.
I have zero desire to be exposed to "offensive" images myself... but my definition of what is offensive will likely differ from yours which will differ from the next guy. Someone's "absolutely offensive" is someone else's cutting-edge, "amazing" art(istic expression).
Trusting a corporation to police it will be getting their definition of offensive... which seems likely to lean as far to the "safe" for any and all eyes as possible... which means pinching the boundaries much tighter than you or I or the other guy might pinch it. I don't believe that is best... even if in one read, it might seem so to many. There are people who can be offended over what will seem like (towards) nothing to the masses. Filter offensive for them (also Apple product buyers) and I suspect the frustration with the tool being too "tight" for the masses will be criticized for overdoing it... especially with other options available with standards not set so tight.
This makes sense after the rollout of the Google tool and everyone realized there weren’t sufficient guardrails in place to prevent (or at least reduce) the likelihood of generating offensive content from the tool. They’d rather have it locked down up front as opposed to having to tweak it afterwards.
Apple should cancel the whole AI thing. Most people don’t feel comfortable with the whole idea and it will cause more problems in every way possible. Fixing Bugs is way more important and adding easier features.
You are going to get left behind if you do not embrace AI.
I've been using Office 365's AI feature for a while. It's such a mixed bag and I'm left feeling I really don't think AI is the big breakthrough that people want it to be. It's very hard to describe why.
On the one hand, it can do amazing things, and is ideal for some narrow circumstances. Want the outline for a report? Word will create it instantly, tailored to your subject area. Ditto it can create presentations. In Excel it can create pivot tables and charts by analysing data for interesting tidbits. The main Copilot chat tool can search all your docs and chats to find when something was mentioned.
It's very impressive. But it's somehow not actually that useful.
The first problem is that we need features in apps to be cast iron reliable. And AI just isn't. It's pretty good. But it has a habit of letting the user down. It's like having a ********ting friend. You might enjoy being in their company, and you may love what they say. But at the end of the day, you're a fool if you trust or rely upon them.
The second issue is that in the rush to get the AI products to market, nobody has really understood what they are.
Computers until now have been do-it-with-me. Steve Jobs said a computer was like a bicycle for the mind, and this was perfect. A computer enhances human intelligence. You can do the same things but better, and faster.
AI is a different type of computing. It's do-it-for-me. To use the bicycle metaphor, the computer will now steer the bike. All you have to do is point it in the right direction and pump the pedals to make it move. Hmmm...
It's reducing the necessity of the human's abilities, but the human is still right there. This is the fundamental issue.
Computers work great when they do-it-with-us.
They're problematic when they do-it-for-us. Nobody has yet realised this and I suspect a bubble is about to burst.
I think a lot of people in the tech industry over-estimate how much the "typical" user cares about AI. No one I work with would care at all if an iPhone was marketed as an AI device.
