elijahg

Perhaps people in the US now realise how those in the rest of the world feel when Apple excludes the ROW from a feature! 

Wesley_Hilliard said:

ApplePoor said:

Hopefully this is not just a distraction from or an addition to the disinformation at the iPhone 16 presentation in 2024. Also could be the only "big" new thing next month as we see the usual claims of all new device using last years enclosure, etc. But there will be "new" colors.....

Distraction? Nope, they've been developing this for years. Disinformation? Nope, Apple launched everything it announced, but delayed one product that was operational, but hallucinating more than they like. Last year's enclosure? Nope, we're getting all-new enclosures with camera bars and a new ultra thin model.

i recommend reading AppleInsider to keep up with all the news

By AI’s own articles there is proof that Apple fabricated almost all of the iOS interaction in the WWDC25 demos. Again AI’s own articles say it’s pretty much impossible to get Genmoji to generate emoji like the ones Apple generated in the WWDC demo. Apple was clearly blindsided by ChatGPT’s capabilities, and was absolutely nowhere near getting a LLM ready for release. Otherwise it wouldn’t have been delayed by a year. If it was as close as Apple’s demo showed, it was good enough for users at least in beta form. 

AppleZulu said:

elijahg said:

I wonder if it will be smart enough to access the various iCloud-linked data like calendars, reminders and iMessage without the owner's iPhone connected to the network. At the moment, HomePods complain that they can't access the iPhone. There is no reason HomePod and Apple Watch Siri can't forward requests to ChatGPT either, rather than "i found some results on the web" for anything but the most basic queries.

HomeKit needs more power as well - Home Assistant has the power but usability is poor. The automations in HomeKit are too basic; I have lights that are on low at night and when activity is detected they raise to be brighter. But there is no option to return to previous brightness/scene, they can either stay on at max, or turn off. You can sort of do it with shortcuts, but it's a faff.

That's a security measure rather than a 'not smart enough' thing. The HomePod's ability to use voice recognition to identify the user is pretty good, but requiring your iPhone to be connected to the same network makes it far less likely that someone without authorization could use your HomePod to access your personal data and communications while you're out of the house. 

If it's about security, why does it not use my phone's most recent location as long as it was updated at most a few minutes ago? Security may be a desirable (or not) side effect, but it's definitely not the primary reason it doesn't work. In fact, I'd wager that it would work just fine if my phone was connected over a VPN to the home network, giving a false sense of security.

Blaurieter said:

There have also been a lot of distractions: Project Titan - the $10 billion vanity project to develop an automated EV. Apple Vision while promising seemed to suck up a lot of R&D. My experience with Siri was not that it just floated for years, it actually went backwards. At one point it had, for sake of a better word, "endearing" elements. For example: "Beam me up Siri" would come back with an almost snarky funny line. Similarly, "Open the Pod Bay Doors" had the semblance of cultural awareness. There were also practical queries like "Siri, what planes are overhead" which would bring up exactly the flight information for the aircraft above you. Now you just get a dump link to FlightAware - not even with a GPS data point. Sir is now just an irritant with HomePods - it is easier to search for music and then hover transfer playing from an iphone without ever using Siri.

No, Siri has been going down hill for a long time - who can say what "vision" Apple has left - just more distractions.

This is exactly my experience too. Cook has stripped out the fun that Steve clearly enjoyed with Siri, he demoed a couple of similar things on-stage and laughed himself. Stuffy Cook clearly doesn't appreciate anything fun, which is why his "improving people's lives", "incredible" and "magical" comments on it always come across as so false and over the top.

Siri used to defer to Wolfram Alpha for a lot of things but that stopped working long ago. I imagine the license ran out. The lack of development in Siri has become more obvious with the likes of Alexa coming after and yet being better, and this is even more glaringly obvious now that there has been such a leap with LLMs. It's clear Apple was totally blindsided by AI, and Cook is flat out lying when he says they've been working on it for years. If they truly have had a decent sized team working on a LLM for "years", where are the results? As there are none, why has Cook allowed it to bumble on for so long with no actual progress whilst wasting $10bn on the car? The buck stops with Cook. He has become really stale and settled. He has changed Apple's structure from a nimble, collaborative place to a sluggish monolithic company. He needs to be replaced with someone younger, more charismatic, someone who understands and is more connected to the products. It is clear from his presentations that the only things he adds to his script are the buzzwords above. 

clexman said:

I don't want the BBC's logo to appear when I use another company's app. It makes perfect sense the way it currently works.

So the Apple logo should always be at the top of the screen when browsing, say, Facebook?