This is Technology Bites, episode 76 for August 18th, 2024.
Technology Bites is a microcast where I share brief bites on interesting technology.
Enjoy, and here we go.
This week I want to talk about Apple products.
Surprise, surprise.
But I want to talk about how you get assistance when you don’t remember how to do something, or maybe you don’t know how to do something, or you’ve forgotten how to do something on a system, whether it be the iPhone, whether it be the iPad, whether it be a Mac.
And so I’m running 18.1 beta 2 now.
And so one of the things that has come with that Apple intelligence forward look is something that is called the improved Siri.
And we all know that there are some struggles with Siri.
I don’t struggle with her because I only ask her what I know she can do.
And I also call her a she apparently.
But there are improvements in what Siri understands and how you communicate with her that you can actually continue a conversation and the topic will be remembered.
But one of the other things that Apple added is the ability to help the user understand and know how to do things with their system without having to do any other type of search.
So let me give you a little detail, I guess.
So in my life, if I don’t remember or recall how to do a certain thing on one of my devices, then I generally do an internet search to see if I can figure out why or how, not why, to figure out how to do something and what are the steps and which buttons do I have to push.
And that is normal for most people.
You may have someone that’s a technology nut in your life.
I am that for many members of my family where they will ask me initially how to do something.
And a lot of things I know how to do because of my constant use of Apple products and staying up to date with how they operate.
But even in my life, there are times where I have to search something out for them and they could do the search themselves, but they’re not exactly sure what to say.
How do you type out that search?
What’s the right terminology to use so that you get the answer for how to accomplish a task that you’re after?
And that works well, but it also takes you out of the system when you do that.
So you have to, well, you kind of have to have a dual window environment where your internet search and say Safari, because that’s the Apple product, gives you the answer for what you want to do and what the task you’re trying to accomplish.
But then you have to be able to read those notes and then touch the screen or device.
So maybe you have a task you’re doing on your iPhone.
So you pull up the instructions on your iPad so you can see it.
Or maybe you pull up the instructions on your Mac to do something on your iPad, pull up instructions on your phone to do something on your Mac.
I think you get the concept of what I’m talking about.
So what has Apple done to change that process and to make it maybe easier?
Well, what they’ve done is built in, it’s going to be odd that I even say this, but they’ve built into their operating system, the ability to know how to do things that are mostly common tasks, but ones that you may not do all the time.
So you may forget or ones that are maybe not so common that you’re not exactly sure, but someone has told you it can happen a certain way.
And they have made their system smart enough about themselves.
So internalizing their brain, I guess, so that they can actually tell you on the system that you’re using, how to accomplish a task that you might want to do.
So a very simple example, maybe how do you take a screenshot and the way you do that on an iPhone, very similar to how you do it on the iPad, but maybe a little bit of difference, but not similar to how you might do it on or how you would do it on a Mac.
So if you ask Siri on a iPad or on the iPhone or on the Mac, either way, how to do that, then the steps pop right up on the screen and then kind of hover, like float over top of whatever it is that you’re trying to accomplish so that you can read the instructions and then do the steps at the same time.
And they kind of stay out of your way and it takes you through step by step.
So if it’s in a system setting or if it’s a function key, it might even show you a keyboard to say this is the function key combo that you might have to press.
And so it might show you exactly how to do a screenshot.
And in the Mac, you can do different ones like just portions of the screen, the active window, the whole thing.
And then you can record videos of screens, all those kinds of things.
And the system knows now how that works.
So it’s almost like they took the manual that they write for each of their devices and that book is there.
You can get it in the Apple bookstore on every time a new operating system comes out, an updated one, they write a book on how that operating system works.
So you can see all that in that book.
But now they’ve like built that book into their Apple intelligence smarts.
So you can ask your device how to do something.
So you might say, how do I turn on private relay?
How do I turn on security settings for Safari?
How do I do a screen recording?
How do I do a FaceTime call?
What other things do you want to do with your devices?
And now it knows.
It’s like it’s read the manual and it knows all of it.
It doesn’t forget it.
Even though I like to read manuals, I still don’t remember everything that’s in the manual.
And so I need to go back and do reference.
And the Apple devices don’t forget, obviously, it’s a computer and they have the ability to look up anywhere in their manual how to do tasks that you might want to accomplish on the device.
It really is quite fascinating.
And I just ran into one little problem I’ll tell you about next.
So there are two ways you can interact with Siri on your devices.
One is you can type to Siri now.
I think that might have always been available on the Mac.
I get confused.
See, even I don’t remember exactly when things changed or how they always operate.
But on your iPhone and your iPad, you’re almost always talking to Siri.
And on your Mac, you can do the same thing and ask how to do something.
So I don’t remember exactly what I was trying to do.
It might have just been doing a screenshot.
And so I have a MacBook Air on my desk.
I have an iMac on my desk.
And I have an iPad on my desk at work and an iPhone in my pocket.
Well, the iPhone’s locked, so it’s not listening.
But the other three devices are all listening.
And so when I use the Hey Siri keyword, then all three of them respond.
And when I say, how do you take a screenshot, all three of them respond.
And well, that wasn’t what I wanted at all.
So that’s a little bit of an interesting twist.
When you have three devices all listening, how do you tell the device that you are actually talking to that that’s the one you want to answer the question?
I don’t even know how to do that or if it’s even possible.
But when I evoked Siri through a button on the iMac and asked the question, then it came right up and walked me through all the steps of exactly what I wanted to do.
So overall, I think it’s really cool that the devices have finally read their own manuals and that you can access them without having to use Safari or Google or any other search, that they’re right there at your fingertips.
That’s a good move and an Apple intelligence function that I will use for many days and weeks and years to come over and over again.
Well, that’s all I have for today.
As always, I want to thank you for listening.
If you have any comments or questions, you can send them to technologybitesatmerigfamily.com.
And I look forward to the next time we are together taking another bite of technology.
