Spatial Photos and Future AI Outlook

So it's IiOS twenty seven. it's MacOS Golden Gate And it's Siri AI Inside a podcast after WWDC. Welcome to it. I'm William Gallaggh with Wesley Hilliard and I think actually was. A we both a little bit dazed from barrage of things we've just seen We're going to have a lot to talk about on the main show. Obviously, this is a quick summary if we can even call it a summary because I'm not even sure what we just watched. It was very fast, very busy Just to catch everyone up, normally, if this is your first WWDC, this is not how it goes. Normally Apple walks out on stage. they might have some pre announcement about privacy or some new OS feature design like liquid glass. and then they'll go, IOS, MacOS, Vision OS, watch OS, TVOS, one after the other, AirPods features, home pods. They didn't even mention the word AirPods. Well, no, actually we'll get to that in a second. I think they did. I just was writing at the time So day they did not do that. They walked out on stage, confused everyone with some banter about Apple intelligence. Mentioned Mac OS Golden Gate for a quarter of a second. and then we were like, oh, cool, MacOS is first No. They just dived into here's all the changes coming into liiquid Glass. Here's all the changes come to Apple Intelligence. And then was say no no individual keynote items It was definitely the standard intro to MacOest complete with the marketing stuff. I know it's the same every time but it was funny for it. They kept it was almost like they were apologetic, it seemed to me. We're talking about the mag, but we'll just talk about this bit first and then this bit and then we'll come back and we'll throw in something here about the sidebar. I don't think that's going to be a headline news anywhere, but you know, welcome and rounded corners are a bit more consistent. I've forgotten that that's been a criticism of MacOS time. So that's not' med on But enough because every other screenshot was someone saying MacOS is so bad. they got the corners wrong and like so this that was directed at those people for sure. I can kind of see it though now canan't unsee it once it's been pointed out, but now I don't have to see it again. So yeah, I'll go to Masteron for some other things. Speaking of other things, the moment we start finish speaking, I will be downloading the developer beta of MacOS Golden Gate I nearly said Big Bear then, I'm so relieved it isn't Big Bear. It is available for developers. Nobody in their right minds should download it yet because Apple is not paying you to break your machine, but I am tasked with writing a full review of it. It doesn't sound like it's going to take very long this time, but you know I'm in for it. But because the big thing is Siri AI. Yeah So this is what's funny about this one. and I actually want to talk a little bit about Google's keynote as well here because I think it's important. There was actually a lot of individual features. When Apple showed us the text screen that they sometimes show us of all the upcoming features There was stuff in there that was never mentioned in the keynote pile upon pile of new feature, new API, new design standpoint, new app function all through this keynote coming to all the operating systems. So William, I honestly think you have your work cut out for you. Now What's weird is we't OS summary page either. Now Apple does do these big preview pages. We haven't seen them yet as we record, but there will be a preview page of MacOS Golden Gate with every feature that is expected for it And then after that comes out, Apple also releases a giant PDF that is pages upon pages of every single line item change. So I expect there's going to be more than what we saw in this keynote. Funny enough Apple took a very different stance in this WWDC. and I I wonder if it's because of industry pressure. I think sorry, this is a roller coaster. I was bored with no Mac stuff. now I'm thinking there's a lot of Mac stuff. now Yeah, okay. I just want more Mac stuff. I may have mentioned before, I'm into MAacs more than anything else. I don't normally see Apple bowing to industry pressure, but it seemed to first time round with Apple Intelligence. so this one does. I was surprised there was even a little side mention of Gemini. in there, very low down in the mix. It's just on there. No it was okay. A the most information we've got so far and Actually confirmation that everything I've been saying about this is accurate, all right? because It wasn't some white label thing. It wasn't Gemin I is going sneak in and replace Apple intntelligence or whatever. Yeah. Apple said what I've been saying this whole time, which is what they've been telling us in much less words. This was the most detail we got is confirmed now unless someone's lying and there's a lawsuit later, which I doubt is Apple foundoundation models with systems trained by Google Gemini, Gemin's technologies. So their're core components which Apple actually used in the original training set of Apple intelligence. They use Tensor chips program Apple I intelligence originally. so this isn't really that new, it's just more of it. So tensor processors more Gemini as far as distilling information into Apple models. But the result is, as I have always said, now bear with me Apple Foundation models that have been improved through training from Gemini models Yeah that run on device and in private cloud compute privately securely all Apple systems. This is nothing none of your information ever touches a Google anything, period Other than maybe a rented server, but even in its private Cloud compompute, it's an Apple's name. This is not a Gemini product And then they proceeded to tell us line by line Dozens of features user facing operating system device named how you're going to use it a very user focused keynote And I want to put this in direct contrast to Gemin's or Google's keynote where It was not even developer focused, It was AI user focused. They never mentioned a product really. They didn't really talk about Android at all. It was just about how good their models are and what could possibly be done Apple's keynote was user centric. It still mentioned all of the operating systems showed the devices operating these products As user focused features So what was your takeaway from this? Did you pick up the same thing or were you a little exhausted by all the AI talk Well, funny enough. now you said it AI was everything, but I wasn't as bothered because they didn't keep saying A,I yeah, all of that stuff. They did what I expected and they did what Apple always does. They think about us rather Googled thinks about itself, and you know, why wouldn't you? big me. we like but yeah, the user focused thing. There did seem to be so many user focused features. I'm a little unclear about when they're coming. because some of them are later this year someome of them are not coming to all devices. that was I was more surprised at that than I realized I was going to be. I mean we have the home m ch to examine things and by then we will have really Deen will be using. at least some of these. But what were the kind of user features that Laptat it year. what do you expect you will actually use? clear I believe most of this is going to launch in beta because a lot of this is contextual protocol This is app intense, as we've discussed, this is on device learning. this is new imp. information indexing. This is new tools but they're all tied to system level features. So they should be there in beta one. A lot of the more advanced stuff perhaps some of the image formatting stuff might come later and Apple did mention tokens. We're not going to be able to just generate a thousand images for free. If you pay for iCloud pllus or a one or whatever, you'll likely have more options and you'll eventually hit a limit. and may have to pay for more or just wait another day to do more image generation or whatever it is you're doing U I want to point out a few things Yeahhead. Sorry, just to that point about tokens, because it' something that actually disappointed me Apple is selling us on what we'll use them for and that's what I want them to do and they do it very well, but occasionally they stop short of a little important detail. and one of them is the thing about daily usage limits, you will get greater limits. if you are on some ICI plus plans, but some does not mean all and they do not say even in the footnotes about it the press release so it's gy. They don't need to get into that There's just not No, but they also don't get it into it in the PR where actually they don't mention device limits at all. They actually say, I mean, unless they change this. Well that Apple intntelligence is limited basically they describe the same list as last time, but in the keynote, they say it's some need There's so much going on here and we're not going to have time to get into all of it. but basically ne of the most powerful devices is the iPhone seventeen Pro The M four and M five series devices, so Apple Vision Pro, iPad Pro, various Macs Those devices are going to have the most powerful on device models. Every device that can run Apple Intelligence will have all of the models justust less powerful ones unless capable devices Basically when they're downloading the models, they'll send a ping saying, Hey, this is my device configuration. Give me the model that's compatible with my unit And those with weaker models will more likely ping private cloud compute than the more powerful on device models, which is going to be a big selling point for the iPhone eighteen proro line Wh means if you want the best on device AI processing, you get the best iPhone which has always been the case, but now Apple's delineating it further basically saying you get the most when you pay the most. Now That isn't to say some features will be limited. Apple didn't go up and say image reframing is only for iPhone eighteen Pro or iPhone seventeen Pro. That's not what they're doing here. Some of this stuff is private Cloud compompute only. and I'm sure we'll learn more about this as we get it. But I think the key detail here is Whatever AI system you're using, you're always using Apple Foundation models until you choose not to And if you're whenever you're using Apple Foundation models that is all private, whether it's on device or private Cloud comppute, it seems like Apple really wanted to hammer that home Now they nailed a few things down here A thousand app store submissions per hour is what they're dealing with right now, which is maddening Yes The first thing that Keynote got into was platform improvements. So liiquid gllass now has a slider from less opaque to more opaque to basically turning it off, I suppose. We'll find out what that looks like in the beta I'm sure that'll also get tweaked throughout the summer they also announced So platform improvement. they also announced trust and safety was a big pivoting point. So they actually spent a lot of time. which is important in this regulatory environment in Australia, Texas, around the globe, Chren's safety and screen time, which I'm very interested in seeing how that's all implemented. That sounds very interesting and useful The operating systems across the board saw design changes with liquid glass to be more appealing, faster, more optimized. File transfers on iPad are eight times faster or five times faster. Just stuff like that across the board. So this is where that Mark Germman Snow Leopard thing came from because they did spend a lot of time on optimization faster loading, faster airdrops, faster home kit connections, so many things that weren't even mentioned in the keynote that were just footnotes in the slides. I've got to say fast airdrop is nice, but I've never had a problem with the speed of airdrop. I have a problem with it just sometimes deciding there I'm not going to work and think, so that's what I'll be looking for this but you talked about time spent. One unusual thing is that although they didn't name rivals, they did CQuake Ver spent some time criticizing All other AI companies, which is a little odd Apple, but I can't say he was wrong He was correct. even Google This is this is where it gets frustrating because I already know we're going to get an email The other systems, including Google with their private servers still collect more data than you would want from an AI interaction. They may not be training their models anymore on individual inputs, but they're still gathering user profiles. and some of this stuff can be end up in advertising profiles as well. That's not always the case. There's a lot of exceptions I know. but when it comes to Apple, The answer is just no. There's no gray area. there's no figuring it out. There's no reading along youula and agreeing to it. It's just they don't want your data, they don't use your data, you can safely U image playgrounds to generate an image which we'll get to in the main show, realistic looking images now Um which I don't know how to feel. I wonder what the limitations are on that. I wonder what that looks like But even so, because you're Apple Intelligence, the foundoundation models have access to your photo library. it will now suggest generated images and make them for you ahead of time and just show them to you in a library view which is using processing like tokens that you don't need to spend. This is all happening in the background. You don't have to worry about it, but you also don't have to worry about it for privacy reasons. They're not sucking up your photos to train a model or whatever.. And I actually trust that from Apple. I do not trust that from Google An Big surprises for you in this WWDC, apart from the strange formatting Nothing a lot of it was rumored. I think a lot of the rumors were incorrect in some of their implementation. I think the spatial reframing is the most interesting and biggest departure for Apple. So I want to get into that here since we have a couple more minutes It's the spatial Photos feature where you can convert any photo into a spatial scene But now that scene is getting image generative fill added to it instead of it being a blurry mess behind a figure, it's now intelligently filling that in And you can now rotate these subjects separate from the background and reposition how the photo is framed without altering the context That is do not know what I think of it Incredible, but it works. Would you use it? If it works. like ont it Uh, this is this is actually And important in my photo library Not so much. like I don't want to change something like that. Maybe some people are that persnickity. They're like, I really wish it was framed this way. They're gonna to use it. For me, I would just take a different photo. wast If I didn't like the framing, I would just fix it on the spot. I wouldn't wait til later to find out it was bad. These are, you know, giving us instant results. We don't have to go back and find out later on the film that it was poor Um But what I can see using it for is where it's appearing all over the system generating wallpapers, backgrounds for messages contact posters. Maybe I want it to be a very specific format for a contact poster and they're just not facing the right direction or the background's too distracting That's where this is going to come in handy is These AI features can be used as toys to play with in your system. And I think that is the right way to approach AI That is my biggest surprise honestly I didn't know what to expect from this keynote. I didn't know I had no idea other than We're getting new models that are better How is Apple going to approach that And they nailed it. I think again, this is initial reactions. we'll have more time to discuss later and feel fill it out. But from what I can tell Private secure On device when needed, private Cloud compute would not safe And useful, like the writing stuff is going to be great It's just proactively helping you correct your grammar I don't need it to write for me and they didn't even get into that. They weren't I don't even know, did they mention like writing an email for you? Yes. They did. If you usually write to your manager in short bullet points, it'll just do that for you. things like that, which is of zero interest to me at all. but I do know somebody who's English isn't their first language and so they keep falling back on chat GPT to rewrite things and I think it makes her emails a bit dull, really? Don't tell her No, I told her you said tellell her. Hopefully this will better way, but Yeah, We're right to say we wouldn't do it. Yeah One of the coolest moments there's two there's so first off, Vision OS twenty seven has some huge improvements. I'm very excited for. One of them is they they brou they blew past it U, but You can generate your own three D panoramas now using your own images or images you get from the internet uh and Make it your environment So you were no longer limited by Apple's pre conffigured Environment Library I miss that. I could be surrounded by the wacky races kind of thing. You could They'll let you do that, but they won't let you change watch faces still Watch OS was so barely mentioned in this keynote The other thing that was really cool was natural language processing, natural calendar entries, reminders, natural Pcessing for shortcuts, generating shortcuts just through SBS texts But the biggest Cool thing that they didn't need to do that was clearly AI before the AI segment They upgraded Apple Map satellite view. to look Oh yeah. It's gorgeous. W reflections and details I just thought that was a neat way to use the technology All of it is a neat way of using the technology. and I think that's the point is they're not technology first there what in the world will you use it for first? And I think that's 's what we've always said. One thing I do want to say before we have made sure to come all the details in there, but one thing You were quite right, you said that you had predicted Not predicted, you had reported correctly what Apple was doing with Apple intntelligence and Gemini and the rest. But that's you saying it. I want to point out, yes, you were always right. And now it's in retrospect, I think it will be seen to be obvious, but you saw it from the start So you know, yay you. I always always to see it pain it failure. Apple doesn't know what it's doing. It's scrambling. It's failing It's behind. It's never going to catch up. and What Apple just announced Yeah I'm going to do some research, but for my first impressions Apple' doing more with AI on its iPhones, iPads, Macs, all of its devices across the ecosystem evenven Google and Google has an ecosystem called Android. And Apple is doing more with AI than Google is. That It's fascinating. Yes. Wild that we just took one step out the door and that's all it took was them actually announcing things. which just What we've been talking about this whole time but we do need to close up. So I'll ask you How do you feel coming out of this keyne? I know you're not going to use all these features. Some of them might interest you But do you think this was a good WWDC or a poor one Oh, okay. As a show, I thought it was a bit more tricksy than before they had they goneond onto the same junk cut thing, which is fine, but gimmick couldn't be overused and think it was. I thought the in and the out was done nicely. Tim Cook's farewell was nice and understated. They got on with things. It was a new format. As a Mac fan, I was let down at first, but slowly came round I think on balance It was good. I think what I'm left with is all these integrated Siri features of it using multiple apps to find things. I'm wondering How long it will take me to find that normal? How long will I have to think ahead? What will I need it to do to do things But that's the kind of thing that I will It'll do it for you Yeah. It's supposed to proactively suggest things like Hey, this email has a phone number, maybe you should make a call. like I think that's what's important about this keynote and my closing statement here will be just to say Even with all of these announcements and all these tools You can still just ignore it Apple didn't make it a requirement to use its AI. It didn't beg us to use it. It didn't make it part of the OS in a way that is intrusive and convoluted. It's just there if you want it It'll bump up and say, Hey, I'm here Click me if you need to do this, but you can go into settings orurn it all If you really don't want to swipe orr you can dis it swipe I think that's what's really important here. Not only is it human centric and interesting in the way that they're actually coming up with features instead of just Tken maxing or whatever the heck they said during Google's keynote It's human facing features, private and secure on device first and just very thoughtful. I just thought it was a good keynote and a good way to present this new system And I can't wait to see everyone's reactions, honestly Well, if that's your closing remark, I will say mine is it's time for all the rumours about WWDC twenty twenty seven. Can't start too soon But on Friday, we will examine all this and we'll have more information as well. That's the most useful thing. So thank you very much for watching this. Thank you for watching and listening, and we'll be back with much more, so much more veryer soon. Final good morning to Tim Cook as well Oh yes toxing