Looking at iOS 18.5 and I find that Apple is slow at iterating on AI. Nothing really new in AI. No mention of model improvements. Only a few things like turning off Mail automatic classification. I would have expected a much faster pace.
I’m again tempted by an Oura ring. One big showstopper: the mandatory annual subscription. 😒
It’s the time of the year when iOS feels the most stable. I’m liking iOS 18.4.
Apple users looking to improve their security posture? Here’s a guide that I wrote and shared recently.
Gurman: Jon Prosser’s iOS 19 Mockups ‘Aren’t Representative’ of Redesign - MacRumors
To be honest, Prosser’s video gives a very limited peak at iOS 19 redesign. More than 3 min 30 sec of introduction followed by a sponsor segment then followed by a short discussion about four limited mockups. Not his best work.
WWDC25: Still entirely online? No in-person labs or sessions? Only the keynote to be live? Is that it? Oh, and this glassy font, I’m not too fond of that.
So AirPods Max will get new audio features. The fact that only the USB-C model will support this is utterly frustrating, and I wish someone will sue Apple for that. Reason? When Apple launched the USB-C model last year, I don’t recall them saying there were upcoming features that wouldn’t apply to the Lightning port model. It looked like the only difference was the charging port. It appears that’s not the case, or Apple is trying to limit the features artificially to the new model.
Today, I’ve been to an Apple Store in Ottawa, Canada. My daughter in law bought a M4 MacBook Air. I even forgot to check the new blue Air! I wasn’t expecting this: I’m no longer excited to go visit an Apple Store. Times are changing.
A Canadian Discovered the iPad Fold Prototype!
BREAKING NEWS: a foldable iPad prototype was found on a table… at an IKEA store in Canada. The prototype was turned on and was running a special version of macOS Touch™. Tim Cook wants it back, but the guy who found set two conditions: you must resign because of Apple Intelligence fiasco, but before you must ask Trump to remove tariffs against Canada. Canadians can be nasty, too.
Questioning Apple Intelligence Improvements
Here is an observation about Apple Intelligence (yet another one you might say?): Image Playground was announced at WWDC2024. It finally made its debut with iOS 18.2, in December 2024. Since then, we got iOS 18.3, now iOS 18.4 is in beta. Did Image Playground improved? A new image style was introduced, in 18.3, I think. Does it provide better results? Not really. Is it easier to use? Nope. On this subject, I must confess that I personally find Image Playground not to be the best UX Apple ever created. I find it clunky and not always intuitive to use. After two releases, Image Playground is basically the same. Isn’t it surprising, coming from a company who’s playing catch up in AI space? The same questions could apply to Writing Tools. I didn’t test text proofing with each release of Apple Intelligence, but I would bet that it didn’t really improve. Strange.