araquen

The idea that Apple has to sell eleventy billion units to eleventy billion consumers every time Apple has a keynote is an investor desire, and of course, is completely ludicrous. Apple has never let itself be led by the nose like that, and frankly the idea of buying whatever is new in the moment is “fast” (or rather trash) fashion, which causes no end of waste. We should not be pushing the narrative of trash fashion, but rather lauding endurance. Apple having a “slow” sales cycle should be a GOOD thing - because that means they are building product that remains relevant, longer.

I usually get five years out of my devices. The only change was when I upgraded from an iPhone 11 to an iPhone 14 Pro, because, frankly, I figured it would be a long time before Apple offered a purple model again, and I knew the Pro would hold out a good long time. And while my 14 Pro won’t be able to do Apple Intelligence enhancements, I can wait until I need to upgrade. I’m in no rush.

Because aside from every year being a year someone will upgrade their phone, it’s also every year someone will want to upgrade *something* and I believe this year my watch is due for a refresh, and while I hate to lose my blood oxygen meter, the sleep apnea detection is a fair trade-off.

Apple Intelligence is low level (I think that’s the term) functionality that is being deployed across devices (over time) intended to enhance the user experience of those devices. It is intended to enhance what Siri is supposed to be doing. It is intended, eventually, to enhance the algorithms for services Apple customers buy.

So really there is no “catching up” because no other AI service is running “headless” like this. Every other AI is a product to be sold in and of itself.

For instance, Midjourney steals art to generate art for people who type in a few prompts. Apple Intelligence will, say, randomize a brush stroke effect to help your existing photo composition look more like a painting, or help you frame a pleasing photo composition. Instead of AI creating music compositions, Apple intelligence may introduce realistic defects into your Garage Band or Logic Pro compositions giving them a feeling that actual musicians played the notes, or that the recording came from vinyl, or make recommendations based on common music theories.

I see Apple Intelligence enhancing, if not replacing, Genius in Apple Music.

When we think of Apple Intelligence, it should always be with a “yes and” mindset with the “and” being a product or service Apple offers. Apple Intelligence doing preliminary diagnostics in Disk First Aid to assist in tech triage, or parse console logs to help narrow down an issue. Apple Intelligence turning Siri into your own personal “JARVIS” instead of it being a passive entity. Apple Intelligence refining your Home automation. Apple Intelligence connecting disparate data points from your various health apps to provide holistic feedback on the state of your fitness. Apple Intelligence enhancing health trends, or automatically micro-adjusting goals based on your current fitness levels. We’ve actually seen these pitches in the last two keynote presentations. It’s always been how Apple intelligence is going to make an Apple hardware product more functional.

Apple is NOT a software company. They sell hardware. Their software and services are intended to make their hardware offerings look more appealing. Apple Intelligence is Apple’s “next step” in Apple setting their hardware apart. Apple’s goal with Apple intelligence is to put the “smart” in the smart device.

There is no other AI product I am aware of that has the goal of enhancing someone’s device. every other AI product is selling AI itself as the product to do creative things for people, instead of providing additional tools for creators.

I highly doubt Apple will start charging again for their OS, just to monetize Apple Intelligence. Rather, what Apple is more likely to do is use Apple Intelligence to enhance the user experience for services. Perhaps “Enhanced AppleTV+” or “Enhanced AppleMusic” where the AI infrastructure is used to enhance the users’ experiences on those services. And I am on the fence about charging for that extra functionality. If Apple boosts prices for their services, it would be for far more than just “look it has AI now."

At the end of the day, it is easy to predict how Apple is going to do something once you understand that Apple is a hardware manufacturer first and foremost. Their goal is to have you buy their devices, originally the Mac. Even the iPhone was originally intended to be a supplement to the Mac, and Apple shifted gears when the iPhone proved to be as widely popular as it had become. But regardless of device - Apple wants to sell you their hardware. And they want to justify the premium consumers pay. So EVERYTHING ELSE Apple does is intended to be a value-add to make it worthwhile to have invested in Apple’s hardware. Everything. Mail. Messages. Pages. FaceTime. Numbers. Keynote. AppleMusic. Apple Arcade. iCloud. AppleOne. All the software and services are there to give your Mac, your iPad, your iPhone something to do without being dependent on the “kindness of strangers.” Because Apple hasn’t forgotten (nor have long-time Mac users), there was a time where developers were cheerfully refusing to develop for Apple offerings.

People call it “walled garden” but that assumes an even playing field. For decades, Apple has been on the periphery of popular tech, and barely anyone was developing for the Mac. The iPhone was largely developed because prior to that, not a single cell phone manufacturer would provide interoperability between their devices and the Mac (and I loved my Motorola flip phone, but its lack of connectivity to my Mac was a royal pain in my ***). The iPhone was the first cell phone Mac users could sync with their computer. From that point, Apple’s offerings remain consistent with: how do we (Apple) provide solutions that extend the efficacy of the products our customers already own? How do we keep improving the value of our brand to our consumers?

Apple’s goal isn’t to sell us an Apple Intelligence product. That’s Google’s world. Apple’s goal is to use Apple Intelligence as the infrastructural foundation for having Apple solutioning a “personal digital assistant” for their customers. That isn’t a product. It is core functionality of the hardware and software systems Apple provides.

But pundits (especially those driven by the limited vision of Wall Street) can’t understand this, so keep getting it wrong.

Trust me. Once you start looking at Apple as a hardware manufacturer first and foremost, whose business model is based on the idea of providing a boutique experience for their customers (who have paid a premium for such treatment) you’ll have a better understanding on how Apple intends to leverage its software and services solutions.

Grammarly - I found this intrusive, plus I was not going to pay a subscription. 

1Password - I was NOT a fan of moving to a subscription, and there was one update that “broke” attachments. If Apple’s native password manager lets me maintain parity between my Mac and my frankenbox (though with Microsoft screwing up Windows 11 as it is, I may not need the frankenbox anymore), I don’t mind removing another subscription from my budget.

Windows managers - I’ve tried them and this functionality doesn’t really work for me anyway.

Calculators - I never needed anything fancy. The apps on iPhone and my Mac are fine for my needs. PCalc has a digital dice app, which I did buy and I am sure Apple has no interest in. So if anyone wants to keep supporting PCalc, especially if you’re looking to get into TTRPs, Dice is worth the price.

Calendars and task managers - there has been NO calendar solution that does what Apple’s Calendar will do, with the exception of Palm’s Palm Desktop calendar, which maybe clung to live as late as 2008: which is the in-line coordination of to dos and calendar entries. Even Fantastical keeps reminders to a sidebar. I have been begging for “threaded” tasks and calendar entries for almost 20 years. If there is another calendar app that will do this, I can’t find it, and if Fantastical can do this, I was never able to unlock that feature (unless it was gated behind a subscription paywall).

Journals - I have never been able to journal, even though I bought several journaling apps (some of which switched to subscription, and I draw the line at subscription models for software.

The one app I really wish Apple would sherlock is TuneUp. To date, has been the best tagging software I have ever used - as long as you are diligent. It is no longer in development and can no longer be used with Apple’s jukebox (Apple Music). But TuneUp worked from the same database Apple uses, not the insanely inaccurate Musicbrainz current full featured music taggers rely on, and was able to determine what was an album track versus a complication track. It allowed you to force a recording into an album even if the identifier believed the track was from a compilation, and was able to use duplicates to build out multiple albums before flagging the file as a duplicate (great for, say, The Beatles, where the same songs appear on a LOT of albums, both as stand alone albums and compilations). It could also bulk process files, and didn’t require music files to already be in an album folder. You could literally have a drive full of music files and TuneUp would sort and tag all of it without you having to micromanage it. APPLE! SHERLOCK TUNEUP!

The reason this isn’s a “Sherlock” of Fantastical is because the reminders are in-line, which is a huge distinction for some. While Fantastical does keep reminders paced with your day, for those of us who are visual, having the reminders visually present on the day, and to see how your tasks and requirements (meetings) interact is huge.

My favorite calendar of all time was the calendar Palm put out for the Mac. On the weekly view, the reminders were listed at the bottom of each day’s column. It was a great way for me to juggle my work, and be able to figure out deadlines. Or be able to see if a meeting request is going to interfere with a task deliverable.

Apple’s current offering is a great “executive view” lifestyle, but is not good for “ground level.” Executives don’t have tasks the way the rest of us do. Executives delegate. So of course you want a clean calendar - you have other people managing the day-to-day and all you need to do is c collect updates from your own team meetings.

Now Apple needs to allow us to manage calendars in other ways than just creating a new calendar. Back to the Palm calendar, I had to manage multiple projects simultaneously, so used categories (tags) to organize my calendar, since these projects had their own timelines. These categories were color-coded, and allowed me to visually see which project was on deck at any given time. The current calendar model homogenizes what I track and makes it very hard to coordinate timetables and tasks across projects, whereas the Palm calendar made this super easy.

We have a lot of amazing calendar solutions, but none of them come close to the absolute joy the old Palm calendar was.