Some things do seem clear to me, and I think that these will eventually become apparent to all—even those pitching spitballs at me on X. AI will get more powerful. People will find ways to use it to make their jobs and personal lives easier. Also, many folks are going to lose their jobs, and entire companies will be disrupted. It will be small consolation that new jobs and firms might emerge from an AI boom, because some of the displaced people will still be stuck in unemployment lines or cashiering at Walmart. In the meantime, everyone in the AI world—including columnists like me—would do well to understand why people are so enraged, and respect their justifiable discontent.
But it strikes me that Apple’s biggest opportunity might actually be at the edges of our lives, where traditional interfaces are harder or even impossible to use. A useful Siri instantly makes the Apple Watch, AirPods, CarPlay, and HomePod better—and could facilitate even more interesting products to come.
But first thing’s first: Siri needs to get vastly better. I hope that we get the first sign of that on Monday.
While this viral drama surrounding Adobe’s TOS “update” may blow over, hoards of creatives are watching the company like a hawk. Adobe will have to find an effective way to address those trust issues if it wants independent creators, who have come to expect the worst from the company, to see it as the friend it claims to be rather than a foe.
You can draw your own conclusions, but it’s time for tech companies to stop screwing around for their own benefit, listen to the users who pay them, and act in a transparent way. Their time is up.
Despite the cleanup efforts, this episode demonstrates how gun-shy everyone is about generative A.I. And perhaps there’s no population that has been more wronged here than creative professionals, many of whom feel that generative A.I. companies have illicitly trained their image-, video-, and sound-generation models on copyright works. Big Tech is splitting its loyalties between serving its existing audiences and taking advantage of self-propagating hype for generative A.I. But by doing this, it risks alienating loyal customers. No one wants to be treated like training data—even if that’s what we all are.
Apple today shared a funny new ad that focuses on the Double Tap feature available on the Apple Watch. In the spot, a man catches a giant fish and while he attempts to wrangle it, he is able to use Double Tap to trigger the Apple Watch to take a photo on a connected iPhone.
You can now configure Focus Filters for OmniFocus to limit which folders are visible when Focus mode is enabled, enabling you to automatically filter out any OmniFocus content that is not relevant to the current Focus. With the added Set/Remove Favorite Perspective shortcut, you can change your favorite perspectives based on your device focus or by using a Siri command.
Now, in Controller for HomeKit, you can leverage the iPhone’s LiDAR sensor to scan your entire home and create a 3D floor plan, on top of which you can overlay your lights, scenes, and other HomeKit accessories. The result is a fun, customizable, and interactive UI that works so well and is so intuitive that it almost feels like it belongs in Apple’s own Home app for the iPhone.
Sonny Software has released Bookends 15.0.3, adding the Library of Congress as a source in Google Books for ISBN searches in Autofill From Internet and Quick Add (both text and barcode searches).
While there is no clear “best” emulator available on the App Store, each one does have its specific advantages and disadvantages. As for which one will be best for you, that will depend on your wants out of an emulator.
Readdle has announced that its popular Calendars 5 app has reached the end of the road. After more than a decade of the legacy calendar app, the developer’s free/subscription-based Calendars: Planner & Organizer will take the spotlight.
Apple says that the updated forums will connect developers with more experts and with other developers for timely responses to technical questions. Apple engineers will provide code-level support, plus the forums have been reorganized into a layout of topics, subtopics, and tags to make it easier to find information.
I have no idea if this is what Steve Jobs meant in his commencement speech. He could have simply meant it in the positive, motivational sense. But increasingly I wonder if he may have also meant it in the cautionary sense as well. He had certainly overseen tremendous success and undoubtedly had to wrestle with the tension between preserving what you have and gaining something new.
No AI helped to assemble this little web page today.
In fact, no I was involved at all.
:-)
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Thanks for reading.