This is Technology Bytes, episode 87 for November 3rd, 2024.
Technology Bytes is a microcast where I share brief bytes on interesting technology.
Enjoy, and here we go.
So you know me by now.
And so today I’m going to talk about Apple intelligence, especially in the form of the 18.2 beta.
And so I can’t help myself when those betas are available.
I find myself installing them almost immediately.
In fact, I sent my son a text and I said, you know, I’m still trying to decide, but I said, you know, by the end of the day, I’ll have 18.2 on everything that it can go on to.
And that was true.
So I just want to talk a little bit about my experience to this point with Apple intelligence and its relationship to the 18.2 beta.
Now, one of the big things that came with the 18.2 in the world of Apple intelligence was the image tools.
So Jinmoji, I think is the way you say it, the other drawing tools that, that Apple had available, but you had to sign up for that.
And so some people got it right away from what I understand.
I was listening to a podcast and, and one of the guys on there who’s well-known invited to many of the Apple events still doesn’t have access to it.
And I found that surprising, although it made me feel a little better because what are we a week plus into it already, and I still can’t use any of those.
So that’s okay.
That’s a fodder for future microcast on technology that I like to use.
So I’m just going to cover a couple of the other things that are available with 18.2 that are new and how I have used them at this point, some a little more than others and still getting through some of them to see how I want to use them.
So for some reason, I have a negative affinity for chat GPT.
I don’t know if it’s, I mean, the people I listened to the talk about it, don’t really say negative things about it, but I don’t know, there’s just something that.
Draws me away from it.
And I, you know, my, my boss at work uses it all the time and, you know, pays for an account and I knew I didn’t want to do that.
I, I couldn’t figure out how to use it.
Well, now in 18.2, it’s available with the Apple intelligence.
Basically it’s Apple saying, I’m not, we don’t really have the tools yet to do that, but we can send you to chat GPT for an answer.
But every time you do that, it says, you know, be aware that sometimes jet GPT lies, or I don’t remember exactly what the message says, but they don’t speak highly of it and, and almost scary in a sense.
In fact, the first couple of times that the, that my phone told me that was going to happen, I’m like, nah, it’s okay.
I’ll just do a Google search or something.
Um, so that was kind of interesting.
So I really haven’t used that link except maybe a couple of times.
And the one place that it’s used almost extensively is in the visual, um, intelligence.
So basically on the iPhone 16 pro and max, um, with the camera button, you can point your camera at something, click the button, and it either does a reverse Google search or it goes out to chat GPT and then tells you what it thinks that image is, whatever you’re pointing it at.
I was a little disappointed in that because I thought this would be something coming from Apple intelligence first.
And then if they didn’t know that I was taking a pair of Nike tennis shoes, it would say something like, Hey, we need you.
We’re going to take you out to chat GPT for this one.
So I think there’s a lot of work to do there.
Um, again, I haven’t said, okay, to go to chat GPT very often really is just that visual intelligence thing with the camera button that I’ve done at the most.
So that is still something future that I’ll probably need to get more used to.
So one of the other things that Apple did is greatly expanded the writing tools.
And instead of just, Hey, would you like me to proofread this?
Or would you like me to make it a little more friendly?
There’s a lot more you can do with the writing tools.
In fact, writing prompts that say, you know, write this in this type of way.
Um, and you can describe it by typing in a box, right?
And so a lot more options to do things with the writing tools.
And so I’ve used some of them in, in, uh, minor ways.
Um, but for the first time this week, I had to write something that was a little bit longer, very short to say the least, but, um, still it, it was like, I wonder what the writing tools would tell me to do.
So I wrote what I wanted.
It said pretty much what I wanted.
Then I selected all the text and went to writing tools.
And I said, can you make this more concise?
And this is new.
This wasn’t available in 18.1.
I don’t believe it’s just 18.2.
And so it rewrote those, it might’ve been five or six sentences.
And, you know, at the end of what it rewrote, it was still probably four or five sentences, so it really didn’t shorten it that much, but the wording was pretty significantly different.
And I really liked what it did.
I need to use the writing tools more.
I don’t write a whole lot in my, in my current job and on my podcasts, I don’t write, I just take bullet point notes and then speak from that off pretty much the top of my head.
But I think there’s opportunity there to either write more and be more effective by using the writing tools.
Um, one of the things that I heard on a, on one of the podcasts I listened to said that the writing tools get everybody to the median.
So if you’re a really good writer, it makes your writing worse.
But if you’re a really bad writer, it makes your writing better.
I thought that was kind of interesting way to look at it.
So one of the other things that is in 18.2 is categorization of your email.
And so I thought that’s going to be interesting.
And I opened it on my phone and there’s a number of categories.
And I think you can actually, um, modify those a little bit.
I haven’t played with that yet, but it’s got, you know, kind of announcements.
It’s got kind of like, Hey, these are news related things.
These are, you know, so the different categories and it actually is pretty cool.
I, um, it puts email in multiple categories, so I don’t know if that’s good or not.
I’m still obviously playing with it and learning how it’s doing it.
I haven’t tried to modify anything at this point, but it is kind of interesting to say, okay, these are announcements.
These are important.
It tries to put some priority on things.
And I found it interesting.
It was a little bit shocking when you first open the mail app, um, you know, Apple mail on your iPhone, because it’s just vastly different and how it presents it, um, what the email look like.
It’s, it’s just very, very different.
And it took some getting used to, I’m not sure I’m used to it yet.
In fact, the other day I was like, okay, I just need to see my list of emails because that’s what I’m used to seeing.
So I turned off the categories just to look at my list to react to an email.
And then I turned them back on.
So I’ve got practice.
I, you know, I’m an Apple fan boy.
That’s okay.
I, you know, there’s probably no, that doesn’t surprise anybody, but, and so I try to use what Apple has given us and thinking that they have put some thought into this and find that it is maybe a better way to work.
I understand it doesn’t work for everybody, but I like to try them to see if I can reach into Apple’s thought process, their engineering thought process, and see how these things were supposed to work and how they work for me and whether I like them, whether it makes it better, those kinds of things.
So I am going to be using it, but then the disappointment, and I think this is going to be a regular theme with Apple intelligence as they build it out over a matter of, of time, which is going to be months that there’s an expectation even from me that they aren’t doing enough.
And so when I am watching, I mean, when I’m looking at my email on my phone and I see the categories and I start to get used to that, and then I open email on my iPad and it looks no different than it did in however many versions of, you know, email you want to go back, but not, not any different than any of the other betas, um, really not different than 17 in my opinion.
And so you lose that training that you’ve kind of started with your iPhone and then you open mail on your computer and it looks just like it does on your iPad.
So it’s hard to use the categories on your iPhone when they don’t carry over to the other devices that you use to access your email and, and to read and do other things because that’s what you might be in front of at the moment.
So I’m a little disappointed in that because I’d like to use the categories and I need it to be everywhere so that I can decide if it’s worth using or not.
So it won’t surprise anybody to know that I’m a Apple one subscriber.
So I have all the things, you know, Apple TV plus Apple news plus arcade.
Um, what else comes with it?
Uh, family photo sharing, uh, shared storage, all those things that come with it.
Um, Apple fitness plus, yeah, those things.
And so, um, I found out recently that Apple news added a game to their Apple news plus games.
So they have crossword puzzles.
They have a, I don’t even remember what the name of it is, but it’s kind of how do you, how you can use this certain word in a given manner.
Um, I’m probably not giving it proper credit.
But I play the crossword puzzle games.
My wife and I play the simple ones on a regular basis when we’re in the car, just to pass the time of day.
And I do a Sudoku puzzle every morning while I’m eating my breakfast on a different app.
And now they have Sudoku on Apple news plus.
So I might be doing it there.
Um, although I’m do it at a certain level on my iPhone, whatever app I use.
So it doesn’t take me a very long time.
And on the moderate and harder versions on the Apple news plus, it takes me more time.
So I wouldn’t be able to finish a game necessarily while I was eating my breakfast, if it’s not in the more easy level, but those are things that I’ve used.
I’m looking forward to more being available as they release additional betas of 18.2, really looking forward to getting access to the image tools to see how that works because my iPad and my phone keeps saying, Hey, you can do this and you can do this, but I can’t because they haven’t given me early access.
So those are my initial thoughts on 18.2 and the Apple intelligence as it continues to grow and evolve.
And it’s always going to be interesting for the next 12, 24, I don’t know, rest of our lives kind of thing, but that is all I have for today.
Um, if you have any comments, suggestions, or questions, you can send them to technologybitesatmarigfamily.com.
That’s M E A R I G F A M I L Y.com.
As always, I want to thank you for listening to the technology bites microcast, and I look forward to the next time we are together taking another bite of technology.
