WWDC Prediction Results and Wrap Up

Coming up, we're unpacking all this week's WWDC announcements. Siri AI new Apple intelligence features, liquid glass changes, and all the software features Apple didn't talk about. pllus WDC prediction results Welome to the Cult Mat P podcast.'m host L Andanda Kaney, joining me today We have some Good friends from overseas. Charlie, Sarll. Hey, Charlie. Hey, how you doing? Very good, thank you We have Signor Graham from Barcelona, Hello Graham. L Dee, Griffin Jones from Ohio. Good evening All right, and Louis from just out the street. He, Louis. Hey, that's gone All right, howot are you, Lewis? I'm so hot, I'm melting. It's oddly, I think ' I've got all the blinds closed in this room. It's not that hot in this room yet, but I walked out into the other part of the house and he has like, yeah, it's actually warm in San Francisco today. Yeah, cringy. It's about three hundred degrees in here All right, let's talk about get onm with the show so we don't waste everyone's time. Siri, major redesign, chat interface, a dedicated app. Now I gotta say I was impressed with this. I thought it was actually, you know, it looked great after all these years. So Apple Smart Assists, Siri has been reinvented as Siri AI with a new range of advanced capabilities and its own dedicated app. Join the keynote Apple shows Sir AI engaging in multi turn interactions, pulling personal data from several sources and searching the web for real time data. As well as iPhone, iPad and Mac, Siri AI is also comeing to Apple Watch and the Vision Pro headset. There's also a new cross platform Siri AI app that reminds prior conversations that remembers prior conversations and syncs them via iCloud. So the conversations can seamlessly between devices During the keynote, Ceig Federigi, Apples software chief said, quote, Apple Intelligence uses ar device processing as well as private iCloud compute, which ensures your data is not stored or accessible to Apple or anyone else. Your data is only used to execute your request and outside experts can continue to verify this promise at any time So has anyone actually I'm on the waitlist? H any any of you guys managed to get hold of it yet? I applied basically An hour after the keynote ended, I installed the betas and got myself on the waitlist and it took me about, I mean, I took screenshots of this because I had to write an article later that day. So I actually had the timestamps of when I applied and when I got in and it was like three PM to like five thirty PM. so two and a half hours. But now I see people are waiting several days to get in the waitlist You know, they did this last time they had the first Apple Ielligence features. They had a waitlist for it. and I don't remember it being that extreme of a weight. To be honest, don't even really know why there is a wait list at all, but ' probably to stop their service from getting hammered, no, I imagine. Yeah. But yeah' if you're doing it on the Mac, you can bypass the waitlist with a default write command in the terminal Mat Grim has wrote about it today So yeet, who's just U Yeahah, Thanks, Charlie, for rining our podcast. I'd expect from you, you're just jumping cutting in line haveave you tried it out on your mac, Charlie No, I'm not installing anything like that on my mac. especially as I'm recording a podcast I don't know who would do that kind of thing, Griff? Oh no, that would be ridiculous to install developer beta one on your primary Mac, where you do all of your work. That's exactly what I did. I'm speaking to you right now from Golden Ging. Plus even if you stick this defaults write command in there, it will not in the EU anyway, it's, you know, you don't to it I think it will, you know because you know You're allowed to use Mac and Vision Pro with Siri AI in the EU. It's just a gatekeeper devices So you can't you can't use it on iPhone and iPad You can even use it on Apple Watch, which I think is a bit bizarre because Apple Watch, I'm sure, just offloads it to your iPhone anyway U Yeah, my understanding is we can use it on a Mac in the EU. Well, my understanding is that the Apple Watch does not offload it to the iPhone anymore That's why Watch OS twenty seven has such an aggressive cut off for hardware And that's why workout buddy now runs directly on the Apple Watch without a nearby iPhone because it's doing it on the watch So it's using the neural engines on the onn the watch itself. Wow. What did you think of you know, I mean, two years ago, Apple promised a smarter Siri. they failed to bring it to you know to get it out and then finally got our eyes on it. What did you think of it overall? Do you know were you impressed or? I mean, this is basically everything they announced two years ago, except you'll notice like during the keynote So many of the takes they did were all one shot They had like a split screen where they had both Mike Rockwell's face and like his his hand holding the phone and you can see like His hand moves exactly the same way in both of those shots. It is like a live shot of both of them You know, he gestures with his hands naturally when he's, you know, not presenting to camera. And so sometimes like you can If they were pre recording this, they would have done multiple takes of that, but they wanted it to like be obvious like no, this is all one shot It kind of worked against them, didn't it? Because it made it look slow I think it made it look, I mean, it wasn't that slow and I like that they were not like chopping it I tell him who somebody wrote a blog post about this and said you know, if the If it's slow, if the demo slow, you don't cut it That's not the way to fix it. The fix is to speed up the feature I think it feels slow because the rest of the keynote is so tightly edited that you then cut to like one long continuous take of this. and then it just feels slow relatively. But I mean, when I'm actually using it It feels perfectly fast, like it's normal for a Si interaction to take like a couple seconds to go through We're all used to that. We're just not used to watching Apple demos be slow anymore. Yeah yeah. Well I was really impressed and I was kind of like glad that they didn't show all kind of crazy stuff like agentic Siri, you know, going out and booking you an entire holiday. It seemed very grounded. It seemed to be very you know feature focused. So it was it was improving, you know, current capabilities rather than sort of You know, crazy far off future stuff. And it looks like it delivers, you know I mean some of the stuffed looked kind of I've seen some stuff on the socials like what people are doing. Max Weinback this morning said he got some spam email and he said, Okaykay, move all the emails from this domain into my junk folder. Bang, it did it. That kind of stuff looks crazy helpful, you It looks very, very impressive as long as its real As long as it works though. I mean it's fine to have a demo say that or even to do it. but like how do you trust that it's actually removed all of those emails and not move to ones that you don't want from different domains. without going to check And because that's the thing. unless Youve got to test it, but I don't see it's actually going to be any better than any other AIs and they're pretty unreliable from most things like this. Well, it's all tightly integrated into the operating system, isnt it and all your data as well. But yeah, use just sppotlight though. That's the other thing I'm worried about because I can't find stuff with spotlight half the time That's a good point. Well, supposedly they've redone how all of that is indexed. Like they especially called out mail indexing is much better than before. And like I can't remember the last time that I've done a search in mail and found what I wanted really quickly Much better than before beingans it kind of you know basically works now rather than doesn't work at all. Yeah yeah, so we'll see how that works. But like I've been asking the new Si a number of things to test it out The first question I asked was Who has the tallest hair on the Cultonak podcast And it said I could not confirm which host on the Cultimac podcast has the tallest hair The hosts of the podcast, also known as the cult cast are Airfon Elijah Lewis Wallace and De Griffin Jones. G you're like maleficent from Snow White. I just Who is the most beautiful with most luxuriant podcastter Who has the most luxurious? No just you I flying into a rage when they said Earthon Elijah is the most beautiful podcaster on. Is Yeah You should have asked it, who has any hair on the pk?. But I've asked a number of questions. L there was the thing last year where everybody was causing a fuss. Like if you ask Siri who won the Super Bowl from each year, it'll just give you completely random information. So that was a thing I tested, you know, who won the Super Bowl in nineteen ninety seven Green Bay Packers and it told me the score and I checked on wee What I notice is that u Sometimes usually if you're asking a question to chat GPT, you have to tell it, provide me a source for it to like give you a link most of the time. The new sery seems to do that automatically. L I didn't ask for it, but it gives me like a link to Wikipedia and to other sites. I tried replicating a few of the things that Mike Rogwell asks with by asking like similar questions like he asks, when's this artists like performing in San Francisco. And so I asked, well, when's Poe Bridgers touring in Detroit Because my friends are actually booking a trip to that show. and so I know what the correct information is and gives me the date, the time, which it was actually kind of hard to find the time online to verify it because it's like hidden in ticket master. But it was able to find it faster than I could. I said, how do I get tickets? And it says, know, the general sale public goes on sale this day The official artist pre saale is at this date and time remind me to set up When the lottery opens, it added a reminder I asked it to play one of the upcoming singles and it took a while I was asking on the Mac And it probably would have been faster on the phone just because the music app is much better on iOS than it is on the Mac Like it says, okay, generating link, thinking, finding. It briefly shows me this bizarre link URL that I don't recognize. and it says thinking. thinking And then it started playing it in Apple Music but it did work How do you think this is going to go? Because right now, Siri is something that everyone uses, it doesn't work and then no one uses it anymore I think it'll take a long time to build up the trust because If you tell Like right now When you use Siri, it says, o, these are the kinds of things you can ask me. But like if it's so open ended, it'll be hard for people to imagine I have this problem Oh, I should ask Siri that because it people need to build up an understanding of those are the kinds of things it can do. It'll take a long time to build up that trust Well, right, the model memory is takes a little while to change your habits, doesnn't it? Yeah. Well, this is what I was thinking. I'm a heavy user of like AIat I use chat GBT and I use Claud a lot And I was thinking how would this would I use this as well? Would I use it instead of Chat G BT and Claud sometimes To me, my first impression like the sniff test of it was it looked a little bit fiddly and all this business with the dynamic island. And those weird sort of two columns of tiles of queeries and stuff, it looked a little bit overd designed. And my instinct was as just a chat assistant Gemini is not quite as good as Claude and Chat GPT. And so I don't think it would replace Th those for me So I think what you, Leandra Enggriffin were saying, it's very much the case that it's like it could be useful because it can do things that ChatyBT and can't because it's hook directly into the data on my iPhone But it might take me a while to get my head around When it is useful But my instinct is because the design just looks so fiddly I might avoid using it unless I have to. And the one thing I was disappointed by actually was The voice You know, they said that we've massively improved the voice And to me, it sounded just the same. And when you compare the voices, you know, these crazy voices like sometimes I'll have a chat with Chat GBT. and It disturbs me how realistic the voice is You know, after a while, when you've chatted to it for a long time, you get to know it stick and it stoped a little bit more one note But it's still much more naturalistic than what Mike Rockwell demonstrated. And I was a bit surprised by that because I really thought that they would sort of leap into the modern day. Which one are you using Graham? Be are there I choice of five voices now? Like I download little to the British one yesterday I haven't tried it out yet. But actually I found that in the past, you know, like it understood me better if I use the British voice than if I use the American one. I hate having assistants talk to me with a British accent because it feels like they're taking the mickey You know. But you've talked to your assistants with an American accent, Greay. Well with Syri, I use an American American pronunciation because it often doesn't understand me otherwise. So so can you give us an example of your fake American accent? The set a timer for ten minutes It's a little uncenny valley to me as an American, but I mean, whatever works It works better. it works better I will say with regards to either interface It's It takes a little bit getting used to on the iPhone, like swiping down from the top of the screen, but Well I mean, at first I kept like trying to tap the dynamic island, thinking that's how works because that's how like Germinan described it in the rumors. And then I realized, no, no, it's a swipe down. Like you're bring down notification center just from the middle. and then that brings up Siri. And I think it's really nice on the iPhone because like before, you know, you could hold down the side button to do it in voice mode, or you could double tap on the bottom of the screen to type And like there were two different systems with two slightly different user interfaces. And I kept accidentally bringing up the tyype to Siri all the time because it's right down on the bottom of the phone And like my poem would naturally hit it sometimes. but I didn't disable it because I do genuinely like typing to series sometimes. if I don't want to speak my command out if I'm in a room full of people Having it from the top is really nice. I'll say I find it a little more fiddly on the mac actually becausecause now Syri and Spotlight are the same. So I noticed this just yesterday. I was talking to Sirri on my Mac. And then I also wanted to use Spotlight to open an app. and I was like, I'm in the middle of this So Then I remembered today that I have a tiny start by Neilon on my Mac and so I should just use that instead. If I ever cross those streams, but so they make they redesigned the look of it to where it's like a really like black to clear gradient on iPhone because it lives on the dynamic island. But they're going with that look everywhere. I think because I use my Mac in light mode, it's like when I bring up Siri, like this black hole opens in the middle of my screen. It looks very out of place I do think Apple's been a bit naughty there with not respecting light and dark mode. There's lots of apppps where they don't do that and it's not obvious why like the fitness and Yeah, the fitnesset would be an example in the Apple Watch app, that they have dark mode Hardwired, you can't have light mode And yeah, I think that's bad. And now with iTunes or not iTunes, Apple music Now they they've started introducing like they take the color from that cover art and then they use that for the UI. So if you've got an album cover with a white background, Th even if you've chosen Dark mode, you suddenly get a white background and vice versa But this seems to be the most egregious example of it yet, and it's just because they think It looks cooler they want to brand it in some way It reminds me a bit of Apple in the olden days when You know, under Steve Jobs, they had the brushed metal look and they would give brush metal to something that was important. So first of all it was time And then it was iTunes. And that sort of made sense because they wanted iTunes to look like a an appliance But then in the end, it's like, we'll put it on the Fer because we've jazzed that up and they start sticking it on all these different things. And I think Dark mode is one of those things that Apple uses to say, Ohh, look, this is a cool new thing that we've done. And so we kind of give it a different look But it's inconsistent. And I think that that was one of the things I reacted to a bit when I was looking at it. I think the Dark mode came out of the fact that it comes from the dynamic island And so if doing so on the dynamic island, it does have a black background then fromom that, it kind of But they also don't plan on having the dynamic island on iPhones forever. likeike, you know, their goal is to have an all screen thing without a black cutout in the top And so they're like marrying Siri to this visual look It's very tied in the dynamic island, like the sensor cut out, but they I mean, the folding iPhone isn't going have one on the inside because in the middle of the screen it's going to be like a crease. They can't cut out there, but Like so already, like within three months from now, it won't make sense even on the iPhone. Well, we've had so many false dawns for Siri, and each time there's a false dawn, there's a new look. And so, you know, like the last false stawn, like the notorious WWC twenty twenty four and they introduced the Pride Edition like rainbows around the edge of the screen You know, that was supposed to say, lookook, Siri is great now, but it's obviously like they couldn't ship the new Siri, but they couldn't resist shipping the rainbows around the screen. So we got that anyway. So they'd used that and they needed a new new look And I guess whether we get stuck with this Auster round and white texts look permanently depends on if they've really fixed it this time, if they have then maybe O an even more minor note I'm not a fan of the icon. The icon is so like there's a seri app now, but the icon is like white with like a it looks exactly like the old Pepsi Lego that everybody made fun of.'s has like a black swirl in it that kind of hints or alludes to like the You know, the animated colorful waves I like the colorful waves much more. I don't like how they flattened into this W. I think this is an ideological thing because they had to build it with Icon compomposer I think what I wanted it to look like was the beautiful three D marble like glass crystal ball that they have on Vision Pro. I think that's what they want to do, but you can't do that with Icon Composer because it has to be these layers of liquid glass. So they ended up with something which is a bit of an awkward compromise because it doesn't look like the cool Siri globe It looks like a kind of cutout Fude version app Sothough although you're in Spain, you're in Europe, you still have a UK Apple account. so you'll still have access to the new area if you want to use it, right Graham. I don't know if they're going to geo block it. I haven't found that out yet, but the frustrating thing is because my business is in Spain, then my Apple developer account is Spanish. just holding up a picture of David Bowie holding his crystal ball in the Labyrinth movie. that's the new serory Thank you for that purely visual joke from the one present on the podcast who doesn't show their video. I'll have to edit that in now. That bodcasting. Lewis, what are your opinions on the new series it looks as good as it did in twenty twenty four U S seemems like it works. I thought it was interesting the way they they did it on the u demos, you know, I mean, I too felt like it was like oh my God, it's like so slow. But it was kind of reassuring in a way, you know, like actually seems like it works And And you know, I thought of v you when they said this, they explicitly mentioned how they improved the dictation models. Yeah handful of devices That's one of the things that's limited to I think iPhone seventeen pro, right? I don't even know if iPhone seventeen gets that And' It's limited to the devices with the A nineteen Pro chip which are just the iPhone air and the seventeen Pro I think it's iPads with an M four or newer. Max with an M three or newer and obviously only like the last two models of Apple Watch. But I guess there's a little confusion about this. All of the deevices that currently support Apple intntelligence do get the new Siri. It's just only those special, more recent devices get a larger on device model which unlocks the better dictation and also the new Siri voice. So I can't get the newew Siri voice on my sixteen P. Yeah. well you know, that that was like the one thing I was talking to my wife about this. She's like, well, what does Apple say this week? You know I said, Well, you get this new Siri, they got this new a bunch of designed tweakets upuff most ofly it's about Syrian AI. And she's, can it understand what you're saying now? Oh yeah Well, actually yeah, you have a iPhone seventeen P. So yes, supposedly it will I mean, that's got to be the biggest kick in the teeth if you have anything older than that iPhone wise and it's still going to be garbage because it is still garbage was reminded just how garbage it is, you know, just this week, drive. I cannot get it to I find a stupid song in Apple music. For the life of me, I don't I mean, I set like a broken record with this, but That is such a frustrating inability and I just I don't even know how in the world, anybody who is in charge of that is still employed It's just horrible They had a pretty high profile person no longer employed John Jan Andrez so Yeah Yeah ye. Well, we were talking, Lewis and I were earlier about the beters and whether we could be you know download them and to what. And you know, for me, only my iPhone and maybe my Apple Watch Ultra supports it, but you know I can't run it on my Mac, I can't run it on my MacBook, I can't run it on my iPad They're all too old. Well, I can't run them you know, like you're saying, the new models whichich is going to be a frustration. I wonder about the, you know, the installed base is how much what percentage of the installed base can actually make use of these these new capabilities? You know, it's going to be, I don't know. It doesn't include the MacBook No, which is like currently still for sale What's the limitation on M one? I thought it was all M one Max. All M one Maxs run Apple intntelligence, but only M three Max in new wor. M three have the on device models that are better. Do you know the breakdown of the different? Becauseuse there's actually five different models now, right that Apple Intelligence. Does anyone know what the breakdown is? I don't think Apple has published or even explains when is used in which situation. They split up like the original Apple intntelligence foundoundation model like sort of incorporated a bunch of stuff in one, but now they split it up. so like the image model is like completely different now. it's like a separate entntirely separate thing that's trained independently, I think which is why I got So so much better Yeah. I think it there are going to be improvements for those older phones as well with you know, but the bit that I was puzzled by was the way that they said that they had merged their foundation models with models from Google Gemini. And I wondered if that was a little bit like It's like, is that true? I don't know how you merge models And you know, they showed a brilliant like science park graphic where they show like two like Nbulous molecules kind of m one And I felt like, you know, there's that clip from Starship Troopers where there's the kid that says, I'm doing my part. And I kind of thought this was like Apple like wanted to make out like, and we're using our models too. It's not just the Google Gemini model. And but are you, Apple? A you? didid you really merge it? And was it you merged it in terms of you used your logo and Google's more Well I think they've been at pains to say. I think Greg Jossby came out in an interview and said that it was at pains to emphasize that no, they're not using Gemini. They're using Apple models based on Gemini or, you know, so they took U You know, they're entirely Apple.'s not it's not using Gemini. You know he denied that said that quite explicitly. No, it's not Gemini. These are Apple Foundation models. I talking about the client that like we built our own client, but I thought the underlying model was but I might have got that wrong. Yeah, isn't it? I just like white labeled Gemini mean it's qu It's not actually sending off to Google serervice to do the request, but GeminI running on Apple serervice Except for when it is re usinging Google servers, but it's running private Coud compute on Google's data center infrastructure, which they you know, you can verify. They say private clloud compute. so it's open. At least everyone in the EU has exactly the same model ofing guidance. That's one of the model that they have, especially European model. That's a good segue. Let's talk about that. you know this unfortunately SI AI isn't coming to the EU. And Charlie, do you want to explain why that is? Yeah. So ye, not coming to the EU, which includes access to the new SI app, upgraded visual intelligence, integrated writing tools and for the new stuff Apple says that the EU well, yeah so this is another fight between Apple and the EU. with Apple saying one thing trying to spin it like the big evil EU is stopping it from bringing Ale intelligence to over here. Whereas that appears to be not the case at all So Apple says the EU's Digital Markets Act would require it to give third party AI assistants direct access to the user data and system features which they say would create serious privacy and security risks. even though We can already do that on the Mac So you know, and we'll be able to do that on the Mac. So this is just IiOS devices Oh, they're okay with serious privacy and security risks on the Mac. Exactly U To alleviate those privacy and security concerns, Apple says it's designed a trusted system agent, it calls it or TSA which is another another exise. It's a good acronym. That instills confidence and security. Yeah exactly. And that's it. And they've This will allow other virtual assistances access to the same features as Siri the EU, the Europe European Commission has rejected these solutions. Apple says submitted plans for this and said we're going to need eighteen months to actually build it But they actually also said that they're not working on it at the moment. They've got zero engineers working on it at the moment Pretty much what they've said is they've come up with these new features, knowing The DMA was not going to well may or may not let them U them in the EU. They said to the EU Just let us have an exemption.ust let us launch it without. And you know, for a year and a half. for year and a h we think you promise. Yeah. Now it's important that this the Digital Markets Act is specifically about competition not about security and privacy So this is if Apple gives itself access to all of the stuff on your iPhone in order to run a digital assistant, the new Siri It also has to giveif that to to rivals. Apple's not using its position give of an advantage If it was to get this eighteen months to just run this thing. and you know, in eighteen months time Apples could always say, oh yeah we haven't finished it y h You know, that gives them an eighty month headstop Nobody else has to have access to it And it goes back and forth. Well, I don't know. what do we think about? Graham, what do you What do you think of that being a fellow European and but also Apple bigger Apple phone than me Well, I'm obviously disappointed that I may or may not be able to get access to these things. It is worth saying that the way that the DMA works in the EU is there's only two Apple platforms that are covered by it because they are gateway devices, which is the iPhone and the iPad So we're only here talking about the iPhone and the iPad. This doesn't affect any of Apple's other platforms, just those two. Unfortunately, the iPhone is by far and way the most important one, which is why it's considered a gateway platform. I don't fully understand why the EU thinks the iPad is a a gateway platform, but it comes under this this rule as well. I imagine just because it' the same operating system as the iPhone Or probably market share, right? I mean, the t tabs There are no Android tabers to speak of, right. Yeah but about. I don't know. I mean, that my My brother's kids have all got Android tablets. I think people just buy them because they're really cheap. You know, you want to stick something in the kitchen to watch not me but my brother again, to watch YouTube videos while you're cooking You know, you don't buy it an iPad, you just you know, you I see a lot of junky cheap Android tablets, running Android phone apps But yeah, I mean, you could also be right Land. just I, you know I see a lot of bad Android tablets like out and about My h is, I don't think there's a problem here. I think everything's working the way that it should. If you look at the way that Apple develops new features This is a really consistent pattern. You see it absolutely with the health stuff and fitness that they develop a new thing and initially they just do it themselves. and then once they've got it working pretty well then they create a framework that they extend to third party developers So you know, as someone's been working on fitness apps, I've seen this time and again, and you know if Apple introduces something to the workout app one year, then you know a year or two later they will probably enable you to add that feature to your app as well And that's just how Apple works. And I think it's in the nature of software development that it does work that way because to create a stable third party API You really need to work out how that should work first and you do that with a first party solution to begin with So I don't think it's wrong that Apple developed this for themselves and wants to ship it now Apple, one should say, has been under a certain degree of pressure to get its act together on its AI solution So if I was the boss of Apple and it's like, shall we ship this now where it's legal? O should we wait another eighteen months so that we can concurrently ship it in the EU and the US And my reaction would be no, I'm going to ship it now in the U.S. where it's legal And then, you know, we'll work on the party frameworks and ship it in the EU in due course. and the EU legislation exists to create a competitive marketplace and that's You know, they use a democratic institution. That's what EU governments have decided that they want And I think that's fair enough. the consequence is that they have to wait longer for it and we have to wait longer for it That's just bothoth sides doing what they're supposed to do. It wouldn't have made any sense Apple to wait another eighteen months It just wouldn't have made sense. They have to ship this now And equally, I agree with what you're saying, Charlie, that there's no reason why the EU should give them an eighty month head start either. So I think everyone has made the correct decisions in the circumstances and this is just the way it is I don't think we're going to end up with a If they go ahead with this with this TSA thing this in between layer that is supposed which essentially, I guess means that An AI bottle or whatever, the third party one will have to query Appless one and get the answers from that and then send them back. I'm not sure how well, I'm sure it's more complicated than that. But we've got precedent for when Apple sticks a little layer in between, and that is Browser Engine kit. Are you familiar with this? This is Apple's way of allowing, okay, so the the EU told them You've got to put third party browsers on on the iPad. So Apple say, Okay we'll do it but you've got to use web, you know, you' got to use web kit And so really these are just skins around webkit U ye you can synchronize your bookmarks and things like that and your logins in Chrome But other than that, it's, you know, it's pretty much just safari U so They have I can't rem when it was like the year before last when they actually made it possible for you to run third party u rendering engines on on IOS Only in the EU, I think. or another territories which force them to do it But no one's done it because it's been such Ilement it so difficult to do. And they came up with something called Browser Engine which is a I won't go to it now, but it's an intermediary lay sounds like it's going to, you know, similar in principle to the TSA thing I'm enjoying calling it TSA U and it's terrible I mean, that's one of the reasons why because Apple doesn't use it. if they're not using it then they just, you know, they don't care about updating it, making it good. Same thing with the alternative app marketplaces, Apple made the rules so Byzantine and complicated and you still have to pay them certain amounts of money, but it's Bizarre. payment structure in system that nobody's bothered doing it And Apple's argument that privacy is behind this, though it doesn't want to give other people and now I don't want, you know other AI is it open AI, or anybody like that? I don't want them having access all the stuff on my phone of course not. I don't use WhatsApp or didn't until quite recently because it textual requires that you give access to your addressbook. And you know, that's not my data, that's all data of other people that just happens to be on my phone. So I don't want that, but I don't think this is I don't know. always says privacy, privacy when it doesn't want to do something. But the thing is you've got to trust Apple on this. and they've got, like we said, how many different models are there of intelligence? Like where is it? Where is this query? when I ask Is it on my phone? Is it not on my phone? Is it in Google data centers? Is it in private cloud computute? Is it one of the ones that get booted off to chat GPT No one's going I mean, we don't know that. and we're like super nerds who write about this stuff. So regular user is not going to know that and The idea that Apple is completely trustworthy maybe I mean, it's the operating system vendor, so you got to trust them to a certain extent. but Google is also an operating system vendor and I don't trust Android or Chrome I know there's a feature somewhere in setettings where you can bring up a report and see how many of your queries been processed on device and how many have gone to private cloud compute And I imagine this might break it down even further, but I mean again My job is to know everything and I can't find where it is in settings I mean, the Apple does say that they make this private cloud compute solution available to third party experts to to check that it's legit. I mean, I'm not the kind of expert who would be capable of checking that it's legit, but you know, the idea is there that they they can Anbody any security researcher can download the exact same software that powers private clloud compute on their own computer and do security research on it Cra I mean, I don't doubt Apple's stuff is 'sriv you know, privacy focused and it's probably as watertight as it can get. Probably this stuff's great because that is something they're really good at and they take it seriously But at the same time, I don't know. the amount that they are using, you know, that IOS to serve ads now. you know you see ads for Apple products in the settings in the App store and it's just slippery slope, I guess. I don't I do think C so this because they kind of have to. The EU is a big enough market that they will have to find some solution But I guess one of the things that they'll be looking at really carefully is what impacts the absence of these features has on sales of you know, when the new iPhone comes out doeses that impact sales in the EU? because that Ultimately Apple' a business and the bottom line will be whether or not it's really a priority to ship some kind of EU compliance solution for Apple will come down to are people in the EU still buying iPhones or not? you know If people vote with a with the wallets in the fall and decide not to buy the new iPhone because in the EU because it doesn't have Syrii That would certainly be sending Cupatino a strong signal. and then I think they They would prioritize a compliant solution But if they actually have a bumper, you know, a bumper around iPhone cells in the EU then it's not going to be a top priority for them. It's interesting, because when there's a feature that's region locked that Apple doesn't want to implement like alternative app marketplaces, then they really lock it down. Like if you are in the United States or outside Europe for more than thirty days, then the apps that you've installed using alternative marketplaces like shutdown and they won't launch. The previous Apple intelligence features before they were enabled in the EU We're still in there and you could still enable it. All you had to do was go into settings, general language and region and set your region to an non EU country. And presumably that's still the case I assume. I guess if any listeners in A European country would like to test that for me and verify Uh, that that'd be good to know But I assume that's still the case. but obviously Apple can't advertise it because that's not supposed to be an official feature I think they're going to do what they have to do. I think that all they all that this nonsense that we're talking about now is just Apple using one of its biggest platforms to, you know, it's the WWDC announcement to try and blame things on the EU. I think it's just leverage I think that they're going to just do what they told. eventually and as going grudgingly as ever. I'm curious about how do you guys feel about the DMA in general? know does this? I love it. For it or against it Forment overreach No, it's not government overreach. There's just tech is so under regulated. needes something. Everything else is regulated. We don't complain. We don't say that automobile industry is suffering from government overreach because we have to wear seatbelts or we have to drive, you know under a certain spepeed when we're Well in town. Some people are say out of this country, unfortunately Well, yeah. although lotots of people in this country hate seat belt laws. Oh my God. Yeah, but you know, laws. Yeah. well, that's true. Not really any though. I mean, this is like saying, oh, Fiat sells the most cars but you also have to be able to put in like a buick engine. Well, no, because they're not saying that you need to be able to put an interel chip in your map This is They're saying I mean, the software and stuff is like, I don't know. I find this whole if I lived there, I'd be furious about it. Every time I hear it I go, sheesh What's o, okay,a wait Lewis You also really don't like Siri. You haven't liked Siri before, you know, last week. If you boy you two say You're denying yourself the You're denying yourself the ability to install something that's better. Like if you had the ability to use Chat GPT as your voice assistant this whole time due to a regulation, you'd be thankful for it I could buy an Android phone if I wanted I like Graham's point that he's like or your fantasy that people are going to not buy iPhones because they don't have Siri. Oh we can't get the new Siri, so we're going to flip to Android. It's like when where Siri ever I ever a reason bu an phhone It's a reason to buy iPh I would only saying that that's something that Gupatino will be looking at closely. I know, I know. I wasn't. Well, they did a couple of years ago, you know whatever it was, the iPhone sixteen or the fifteen, it was I remember in one of the conference schools, they said that it's sold initially because of the promises of Apple intntelligence And this is one of the reasons why they got sued, wasn't it? Yeah Because they didn't deliver on this promised feature. I mean, the hardware was sold these on these features that they never delivered. But I remember them citing saying that they had a super cycle and it was because of these Apple intelligence features that were promised. So I don't think it's you know, I think Gam, you have a good point. I think it is possibly It's definitely a selling point, you know? And I mean, for you, for sure, right? I mean, you're definitely thinking about these things. I'm sure most of the the majority of Apple customers will take it into consideration for sure. It will be a factor. And I think you know, if you look at it the other way around, if was if Apple was a European company and then they were saying or they were picking a fight with the US government and refusing to ship some features in the US then there would be lots of American customers that would not feel so great about that company as a result And so it is going to affect consumer sentiment in the EU, for sure. I think the DMA Personally, it's trying to do the right thing and I think there's a couple of reasons why it's not necessarily succeeding. I have a lot of sympathy for what Lewis is saying about whether it's right for lawmakers to to design our devices for us that doesn't seem to be quite the right approach I think there's another problem that this legislation is all about competition. so it's about protecting the interests of big business. It's not about the interests of protecting consumers. So it's looking after the big guy, not the little guy. I'm not so keen on in it for that respect The third concern that I have about this is ultimately it doesn't work because even though the EU is massive, it's one of the world's largest single markets Um It's not big enough to really affect change. I think that is one of the biggest issues with stuff like app marketplaces. If Apple introduces a feature and region locks it to the EU There's no justification in investing in building that feature. So Take, for example, if Apple introduces a compliance solution, for third party AI assistants on iPhone. they probably will and probably no one will use it And that might be for the reason that Charlie stated that it might be a really difficult thing to use. But I think it would also be if you are atGBT or anthropic Are you going invest a lot of time in building a product that you can only sell in the EU and probably not I hope in happier times in the future, the EU and the U. S and maybe other, you know, we can have a more of an international approach to this in terms of working out what we think is important to protect consumers first and big business second and have a coordinated industrial policy puts consumer interest first and still to a reasonable extent, allows compompanies like Apple to innovate whilst at the same time protecting competitive markets Okay, let I' got a quick question here from a listener calledr Brad Thornborough who asked Via Macedon Brad As, will OS twenty seven or any all of Apple's platforms include a no AI please button in settings or perhaps an iCloud setting to disable AI on all your devices? What do you think about that? Do you think Apple's going to do that? In the previous version of Apple Intelligence, you could go to the Apple Intelligence in Sies settings and there was a toggle switch at the top where you could just turn it off entirely. That was the case on IOS eighteen and twenty six In Iow was twenty seven, that switch is gone So as far as I know, all of the Apple Intelligent settings are just enabled for everybody and you can't turn them off At the bottom of that settings panel, there's a big red button that says h Oh, let me let me bring it up here that just says Turn Siri off U, and I don't know what that button does I canz it I guess Yeah, yeah., like have they just renamed the button like to that disables the No Siri and you still get old Siri? doeses that exclusively turn off Siri, but then none of the other Aible intelligence features, it's a little vague. I mean, and I have to keep it enabled to, you know, my job and talk about the new seri. But no, I guess the answer is no, there will not be a no AI button anymore. If you upgrade to twenty seven, You you're stuck with it Maybe maybe they'aded or else you could just go in and say you live in the EU or something. That wouldn't be everything right. Then you'd also lose that Well, there's a lot of US features that aren't in the EU. Like you would lose access to your Apple card if you have an Apple card. bunch of other US exclusive features. It's kind of weird if they I didn't realize there was a turn it off button in IOS twenty six. I mean, I remember that you had to go in initially and get on a wait list to try these things, right? J like with Siri I don't remember And then after it launched, every time it' set up, it prompted you to turn them on and I didn't remember that There is a tiny text to the bom where you could say no or set up later or skip and it would leave that setting turned off. but It's enabled by default Yes, so have it, Brad, you're S OL afraid. Griffin, let's talk about fifteen great new Apple intelligence toature to try out beyond Siri AI. Yeah, so this is obviously a gigantic portion of the keynote I guess we should talk about the framing of the keynote itself for a brief moment. How it's always worked in the past and how we've always covered it is that Apple talks about all of the new features platformed by platform, like Vision OS, we'll do the vision OS section, iPad OS we willll do the iPad OS section, MacOS will do the MacOS section In last few years there's been like a little bit of bleedover like, oh, we'll talk about this feature later in the keynote in the iPad section, but it's coming to the Mac too. or other stuff like that. This they completely threw their normal format out the window. The first section was, oh yeah, we did a lot of little new things and features, but we're not going to talk about them. But a lot of little things are just generally better And then that was like ten minutes. Then the next section was the platform safety section, which I think everybody used as like a little coffee break. And then there was the Aive intntelligence section. At Culton Mac, at least, my assignment was to write up Vision OS. And there were like two moments in the keyne where they briefly mentioned a Vision OS feature in passing. It's like, oh okay, I'll add that sentence to my article. And then they get to the end and it's like, okay, the keynote's just over and they haven't talked about any of the platforms. like We were like melting down in slack. like what are we going to do? We're all sitting here with our pre rights open and we don't What we what are we write in there? So I guess I just wanted to share that with the audience. It was a weird keynote. Okay. All. Right back to what back back to what we asked originally. fifteen great new apples h just ask. M That's true. Maybe you better keep it to just a few. Yeah because there's more than just the new series. There's the photos I clean up editing features. So these are extend and reframe. And the general cleanup feature just got a little better with their their image model, but now you can uncrop a photo and you know, ify zoom out. you'll see like your photo in the middle and it'll be blurryy around the edges and then you you get it to where you think it wants to be and then it'll pause for like twenty seconds and fill it in. There's reframe where you can change the perspective of the image like you can If we take a group photo, but you know, it's just in front of a parking lot and it's kind of ugly, well you can Change the angle of the photo and make it more centered and it'll fill in the background Just quickly on that, have you seen what it does to backgrounds with text in them? Yes. it's not pleasant. It's not good at general contxt at all I love the way they framed that where they said We respect the integrity of a real original photo. look at all this. And they said that right after talking about image playground and right before talking about this Well, one of our writers, Ed Ed tried out the the Ehance I or extend extend extend. Eend and the results lookooked great. It looked really remarkable, but it added a whole bunch of stuff that wasn't there. Doors that don't exist and a balcony that doesn't exist. And you know, when I looked at this, I'm like, is that yeah, it's not a photograph anymore, is it really? I'm not sure that people really want to change the perspective of a photo, but I could imagine, you know, if you've got something off center And you just want you just need a bit more image on the left. I could imagine people might use that. Well actually, I thought the reframing thing looked kind of useful, you know the examples I've seen, it kind of works pretty great, you know, because sometimes you have something you know you're trying to take a picture of a person and then they have something weird behind their head and it ruins the whole composition. so then you just shift it a little bit. And off course the examples I'm seeing are curated, you there' people when it's worked well And they're proud of it and they want to put it up on social media. And so you know, all the examples so far I've seen it looks great. And that's the kind of thing that, you know, like when I'm trying to take a picture, I usually try to be kind of careful about the framing of it. But so it is, you know, like that one seem to seem to be less problematic to me than the extended one where it's purely adding stuff that's completely hallucinated Well, I was thinking like a potential use case for this is if you're at a concert or a stage and you're like taking a picture of somebody, but you're like way lower than them than you would normally take a picture. And I actually had an example of this in my photo library where I went to a Drag show Bingo and one of my friends won one of the rounds of Bingo and so they got up on stage and they were, you know they had won like a special basket that had been made. and so it's on a stage. So obviously I'm taking the picture like really far down low. and so I tried reframing it. You know, the people look mostly okay, but it completely butchers the text behind them because it doesn't know what's written there in giant letters on the stage and it's. Image playground. Its visual quality is kind of in the same vein where it feels like it's an image model from two years ago. and image models two years ago, they couldn't generate text at all That's that's the case with this too. It It might I know that it's supposed to say, you know, bingo behind there, but it doesn't know that that's the letter B. so it just throws up something else and it just It works great if there's no text to be found and also if you're in a location that you're not familiar with. So it's okay if it makes something up and it doesn't bother you. What kind of surprised me is that Apple didn't have any sort of story where, oh, we embed any AI pictures, eas these tools with like special metadata to indicate that it's an AI photo that you can't remove. They didn't have any story there whatsoever, which surprised me. Is that true? I read something about But maybe that was only things an image playground But they're talking about putting some kind of tag in there. I mean, there's digital water monks, I think, you know, any kid could just take a screenshot of the image anyway and that screenshot won't have the metadata in it so I think it's like I think that's a great idea, but in practice, I don't think it You know, if someone wanted to maliciously use these tools, there's no way of stopping it really. Maliciously using it to put extra doors in your Airbnb I bet there's going to be a whole genre on the Apple bloggerphhere of posts of all the funny things that these tools do. and I'm very here for it. I hope that Cultimac doesn't know I will read it Next up we have This is an interesting feature. passasswords can fix weak credentials automatically. the Apple passwords app has access to like a saafari browsing agent They can update and save your passwords for you So if you have a bunch of old passwords that you've reused over the years, I mean I always tell my friends, you know, hey, look at the warning section and Apple passwords go through and fix all those. That takes hours if you have hundreds of passwords that you need updated You know, if you've been using the same password for twenty years, then that's like hundreds of sites. Supposedly, by a single tap, Apple Intelligence navigates to the relevant website, signs in, upgrades the account to a strong password and saves that password back into the passwords automatically That sounds really good I want to try. That's great. I saw some people freaking out about this alth already on the socials like, Ohh my god, I don't want I don't want know my IiPhone changing my passwords for me unknown. Although I think you have to agree to each and every one, don't you, don't you? I saw something about saying that you have to actually you can't just say, okay, go ahead and just change all my passwords, you know agree to each one individually. Probably just to verify that it's actually worked. I'd like to try this out. haven't haven't fiddled with that yet. I want to know if sounds like a great feature gooes in and clicks the link in the email, responds to the text message, does all those things it's such a high risk thing to get an AI agent to do for you, because if they get it wrong, you could be locked out of an account And you know, so it feels like going from not to one hundred miles an hour in a single it's like Apple is going from having no agentic solutions for AI at all proposing that we use Siri to ch automatically change passwords on our accounts It's like is I think it's a great idea for a product, but it does sound very risky to me and I wouldn't it's difficult to change passwords and that's in itself is a reason why I wouldn't wouldn't trust Siri with it. If you don't trust Siri to tell you Wh won the Super Bowl last year Why would you trust Ei with reent chocolates? And you know, so I watch it with interest because I agree it's a great idea for a product. And I might use it in a years time, but I'm not going to be using it today Very reasonable. I was thinking of you, Leander, when they brought up this feature. Safari can automatically organize your tabs If you have dozens or hundreds of tabs, it'll like group them by topic intelligently. and I think it does that for bookmarks as well There's a new feature where you can have Safari notify you of any changes on a website if you like hit a button there It'll send you notification if like a page updates in the background Um, As was rumored, visual intelligence has moved into the camera and gains new tricks like reading nutrition labels, business cards sping restaurant bills It's a little crowded in the new camera app. Obviously they redesigned the camera app with the idea that you would just have like, you know the two buttons there photo and video and those would be the defaults and you know like the user interface is like perfectly sized for that. But now with Siri in there as well, at least on like the reggular sized iPhone it's probably easier on the plus siz phone, but they don't quite have room for all three. L video is slightly cut off, Siri is slightly cut off, but you have photo in the middle so. Nowhere to be seen is the customizable camera app as was heavily rumored by Mark German Not customizable at all sound like his only miss No, he said that Mike Rockwell wouldn't be in the keynote, didn't he? He said that Mike Rockwell was going to be maybe leaving Apple because he was excluded from the keynote, even though he was the savior of Sirry And I don't remember seeing that button. I wouldn't be surprised if like customizable cameras coming in like point one or two. O maybe that's like a feature that's supposed to be likeike one of the main features of the new iPhones. Sometimes they withhold like a software feature for those That's possible. Messages and mail offer one tap suggestions if somebody texts you about an event You know, currently it underlines it and you can tap to add it manually, but now it'll do more for you and it'll basically add it on your behalf. That's kind of handy Call context is an Apple intntelligence feature. So if you're calling The example they gave was an airline. If you're calling an airline, it'll bring up your flight information that it pulls out of your email to show it inline in the phone call So you don't have to like dig out of the phone call. I mean, That'll be great if it works, but often people book several Flights at once So I hope it brings up the right one, othertherwise they'll just be annoying. also people's birthdays, right? If you call somebody el and it has their birthday in their contact card, it'll remind you that it's their birthday. That birthday. It's look like a really nice feature. That's nounds handy, because who ever actually calls an airline It a very frustrated people, I imagine Calendar lets you add an event using plain language. So you can describe, you know, for example, this is my English class. It meets Monday, Wednesday, Friday, every other week, you know, from these hours or these hours, you know, rules that are able to set up in calendar but are kind of fiddly and complicated It can do that in plain language allegedly. I have yet to test that out. I'll be interested. I'll look up my old college schedule and see how easy it is for me to recreate that If you smart home things, it no longer floods you with notifications It combines them just into one if you receive a series of notifications I hope there's an API for that because that kind of bothers me about Snapchat as well. Like it sends you a notification if somebody starts typing a message in a group and also when they send the message. And so it' If you've got a busy group chat I mean it can really quick flood with a bunch of notifications that are all Kind of about the same thing Image Pground does photo realistic images, as we mentioned You can now describe a shortcut and it'll build it using natural language. I think as was also rumored. I actually tried this yesterday. I noticed in the Nes app, there's a new feature where you can copy the text of a note in markdown format And I thought, oh, that could be handy. But usually what I want is I want to start with a note and then get it to HTML so that I can paste it in WordPress as an article You know, if I'm drafting something in notes, then I want to be able to like paste it in WordPress very quickly. So I asked it, okay, build a shortcut looks at the clipboard. and if the clipboard is full of markdown, then convert it to HTML and add it back to the clipboard Yeah, it work? It did work. It worked really well. No why? really? That's encouraging. It only took like three or four actions as a shortcut So I guess it was probably an easier task than I imagined it being But yeah, worked pretty well. So I think I'll probably share that with the rest of our writing staff. That sounds really really useful. Apparently they've added new steps, new chunks to shortcuts because of this. Yeah, now now it does if else statements, which is like a logical thing that's been missing for a really long time which is handy for everyone And know, I really like that There's a few more. We'll link to this in the show notes. Those are the highlights of the best Apple intelligence features Bunch of cool features, I think, yeah, a lot of that stuff looks really useful, very helpful. I noticice send messages, some I was talking about meeting up someone later and there's now a very distinct button where it says know add this to your calendar and you click it and it's added. It's great The Troup is head said Canada, most of the time my spend is like tweaking the notifications You know, remind me one day before, remind me three days before, remind me seven thirty minutes before, two hours before, three hours before, that kind of stuff. That's why I spend most of my time doing is adding a bunch of those so I don't forget things. You need to add a bunch of notifications for the podcast. Well then then exactly, then I forget. And you schedule a meeting on top of the podcast Yeah, yeah, I know. Let's look get into that Let's talk about MacOS a little bit. Okay, MacOS Golden Gate. Yay, hometown, love it. I was surprised by I was surprised by Golden Gate. That's good.it, wait, let me re derail you just thirty seconds into this segment. The sort of like hero color of all the operating systems is here, like the wallpaper that they push as the default The default color scheme last year was blue. This year it's brown So like their twenty seven graphic on the keynote was like twenty seven over like these brown waves And that's like the default wallpaper now. How do we feel about that? Well it's like like having the zoom back, now? It's kind of bronze, isn't it? Yeah, I guess it's brown brrownish You'd think that if the name was Golden Gate that it would be like orange or international orange? International Oange. Yeah. Yeah Yeah, I don't know. I gott to say, it's not the most vibrant color palette, but what are you going to do I'll even say as an aficionado of the color brown that It's not a very good shade of brown. It's kind of beays or tan I don', I like the dark mode version is like all purple and it's like a really rich deep purple And it's quite pleasant. I'm surprised they didn't just go with that But anyways, brown Oh sry carry on Well, it's kind of golden. Dust dusty gold. It what it's What is the color that they always have? I can't even remember it all of a sudden Rose gold. It's kind of rose goldie Anyway. So the good news is, I mean, aside from the fantastic name, they've they're improving the liquid glass user interface and addressing many the frustrations and Oddities that came to plague Mac users with Mac OS Tahoe U So they've tweaked the liquid glass so the complex content behind is better diffused, addditionally adding a slider to let you adjust liquid glass attended effect' doing this Everything, right? I mean maybe not Apple Watch, but IOS and IPadOS U revamp the Max system icon so they stand out even more and so that there won't be one with every single item in a menu Uh Oh wait, that I guess that's I think when this system I they were talking about u it applies to both, right They also changed all the general app icons, right? So they gave them a more snazzy liquid glass look they're sharper, they don't look as blurry. it's really nice. I'm a really big fan of the icons. They changed like the gradients as well so they're a little more subtle They used to have like the default blue gradient that would be like light blue to dark blue. and now it's much more solid and richer. I'm a big fan of the new icons It was interesting watching the you know when they talked about these things and as we predicted, they were like, oh, well We're making it better. They're not saying, oh, it was bad. We're making it better And it looks like they did make it they got rid of some other problems Drove some people crazy, like the u corner radius of apps. I mean that was probably O the windows ye, that probably drove you crazy, right I'm so blind I can't even tell They of an ar at once. Yeah, so consistent window corner radius across apps, colored side by aricons, icons in the active app. I like that so that you can tell which app you're actually using if you had a bunch of windows open a sidebar that expands the window's edge and a unified toolbar at the top corner. So all these things that seem to make the Mac work better and more likeike a Mac less like a iPhone U they also said that it's faster, you know performance improvements like faster app launches, quicker airdrop transfers, As you mentioned earlier, they tootally rebuilt spotlight, rebuilt the foundation of spotlight in MacOS and IOS. New index architectures faster, more efficient, stable, Apple says Faster indexing get this, ensuring you can find the right files almost immediately. I mean, I'll just take It's assuring you can find the right files Imediately, that's even better New architecture, also powerowered new search experience in the mail app as we discussed. Let's see and child safety features I mean, I don't know if we want to discuss that stuff. It's kind of interesting, you know ask to browse a specific website. U Did anyone pay attention to that part of the keyne? I got I went to get a coffee and I totally tuned out. A actually. No, I watched it. Yeahah, I mean, it's, you know, it's As long as kids don' figure out a way to do it, you know, likeike saying, hey, if you want to visit a website that we haven't already pre apppproved, you gott to ask mom and dad. prettyt severe. Um Yeah time allowances and schedules Te allowances and schedules, like for instance, you could say Oh, I only want you to be able to use educational apps before school and during school. but after school, you can go on to you know social media and play games, whatever. So. I mean, It doesn't apply to me. My cat does not use any of my devices But it seems like they were It seem like they were I think they could be useful. I mean, if I was a parent and I had kids getting online stuff I don't know I think I'd be slightly terrified It felt a bit like they were trying to get ahead of The compliance issues here that you know, like just this week, the British Prime Minister, Kir Stama has been rattling his sabre at tech companies about this very issue of like kids having access adult content. and so I thought the timing was quite interesting and I know this has been an issue with legislatures in the US as well and like states are introducing their own different legislation, I think from Apple's perspective The worst situation of all would be in America, you have fifty states that each legislate in a different way and you've got a whole patchwork of different regulations that you have to comply with for every state And then you've got the rest of the world as well So I took this as Apple made a big feature of it. and I'm not cynical. I do think when they say, you know, we're parents when we take this seriously, I believe that But I think also that by taking the initiative and trying to get out in front of the issue, they're maybe trying to lead legislators in terms of, look, you don't need to legislate Trust us. We're parents and we're nice people and we've done this thing and it's the answer. which is probably a bit optimistic, but I think that that to me was what the whole section was was please Don't legislate because we've got this And a lot of these features are not actually new. They've been in screen timee and parental controls for a while They're just calling attention. I guess they redesigned the interface a little bit. They might have improved screen time behind the scenes to not be absolute garbage But u They're not entirely new features Overall, I'm not a fan of these. I mean, no, I don't have kids, but I do know what it's like to grow up you know, on the internet and it's having Digital freedom, I think is very important to be able as a step of growing up and discovering who you are and like Deiding what your kids can see and like going down with like a strict hammer on cutting them off from the world, that can It's sad. I It's genuinely sad. Maybe not for a six year old though. I mean You know, maybe you know, maybe don't want to make a seventeen year old ask you every time they want to go visit a website. but ye but I think of a lot of people who have who have extremely strict or parents who treat their kids like they're property and they don't let them make decisions for their own. And yeah, they will cut down on things like that until they are eighteen. and so long as they're living in the house, probably even longer. I mean I have adult friends who still have to live with their parents due to financial situations who are not out to their parents because they're afraid of being cut off. It's still a real thing for kids and like grown adults afraid to talk to their parents about these things hope Apple isn't allowing parents to control what their grown adult children do on their Pone. Yeah. I mean, not just kids, people have abusive partners as well. This is a m issue as well. Yeah, I mean you know my kids are all grown now, they're all in their late twenties and early thirties and they sort of grew up in that early they're digital kids too,, digital first kids they had the iPhone when they were little kids We never ever put any control whatsoever on whatever they looked at. which and I think it was better to educate the kids, you know, like to try to help them. but we have a great relationship with our kids, you know, very, very open and we're not controlling we try to be as not controlling. We try, you know, we try to help them develop into You know, healthy adults who could make their own decisions and to be autonomous as much as possible. I mean one time, you know, like I don't know, you know like I made my daughter change a car on a tire on a car, a wheel on her car. you know, and she keeps bringing this up. like it said. Oh my Godd, But you know, now she knows how to now she knows how to change a wheel on a car That was always my philosophy. was like let you know, empower the kids, be there, be supportive, Don't block things, donon't tell them they can't, you know don't take that I mean, you're not raising them to be a kid, you're raising them to be an adult my philosophy as somebody whot doesn't have kids. Yeah. But then again, things haveanged. you know, like there is a lot of, you know, social, you know my I I don't want to name it for prophecy Rvens, but a close relative m a kid, you know spends I think she spends too much. She texts with ALI all day every day you know the screen timee issues, I think that is I mean, that's something I would take a look at now. in other words, the digital landscape I think about this as well. Like when I was a kid on the internet in two thousand two, I was one of the only kids on the internet in two thousand two. was it certainly wasn't like big business of social media trying to capture my attention Very, very different. I'm glad I don't have to deal with this problem. Thes with social media and cyberbullying, I think is have been an emerging issue for kids. And I think sometimes, you know, cyberbullying is scary for adults and I think it could be terrifying for kids And so I totally get why parents would want to be able to control who gets to communicate with with their kids and to intervene. And I can see it's a difficult balancing act because I understand what you're saying Griffin too, about kids needing to have some autonomy to discover themselves and, you know, so I don't think it's an easy balance to reach Yeah, I only have a dog. I don't have kids, but if if I did have kids, that issue of cyber bullying or people being mean to kids online when they're just kids. That worries me, you know, and I think it's a real issue. I agree, I agree I agree All right, let's talk real quick about watch OS There was and Graham, do you want to tell us about this you know Okay chang. Yeah WatchS twenty seven introduces a dynamic app grid that places the new standalone SII app at the center surrounded by other suggested apps which include your most popular and recent ones. I'm a little dubious about that personally because I mean, they fiddled around with the frogs spawn menu over the years with Walway And And they're always kind of I felt I'd kind of nailed it with the last one. I was quite happy with with where it'd arrived at in the frog spot. I didn't use it. I used to switch to the the menu option. but with the new one where they had like more of a solid grid with larger buttons And I thought they'd kind of nailed that. so This, I don't know. and it' sticking the Si App icon right in the center It feels a bit like suddenly with Siri AI, Apple has a golden hammer so everything looks like a nail And it's like I don't know how useful SirA AI will actually be on Apple Watch. and I'm not sure it's the app that I would put in the center you know, for me, it would probably be the workout app and especially because on the Apple Watch, like you don't need to acccess Siri by tapping a button through an app icon. You can just hold it up to your wrist and just start talking to it and it listens I don't really know hopefully you can change it. What I'm curious about is like Uh so there's like a grip Just a small hexagon grid of seven icons, five apps, Sirrii in the middle And then another one on the bottom that's like another icon of another seven icons. And what I want to know is what happens when you tap on that list? Does it bring you back to the giant honeycomb of icons?? Does it bring you back to the list view I'm really curious about that, and I can't figure it out because my watch is too old to run W OS twenty seven Almost everybody's is Yeah It just feel like fiddling and maybe trying to tryrying to make Siri happen. And as you say Giffinute, kind of the only thing you really need is to raise your wrist and talk to Siri. I'm not sure that on Apple Watch you really even need the app because that's only if you want to go back and look at past chats. And I think if I needed to do that, I would probably do that on the iPhone anyway So it felt a bit extraneous. The next point, the SirI app will let you start conversations right from your wrist, which you already can do And or you can also ask a question on your iPhone and then pick up where you left off on the Apple Watch I find that hard to imagine when you would use that as well. I mean, okay, but then Workout buddy Now motivates you based on your fitness history and new data insights, including your progress for pace, distance, and workout duration. And it works without a nearby iPhone. So Griffin, that is what you were saying earlier. They also I was really surprised, but in the keynote, they made a big thing about it being in Spanish now, which I thought was great, but it's like, Why are they singling out that one language I mean, it's obviously the most important one, but why are they singling out body in Spanish, I thought that was a bit weird But I'm glad that it is in Spanish now I don't know. I've never used workout buddy. I'm kind of deaf. It drive me crazy. I have to turn it off these days because initially it was great and then Well not great. it was okay. but now it's annoying. So now I just the one good thing is if you're listening with AirPods, once it starts to speak, you can just click it and it dismisses it. But you know the current thing, it turns to surface stats that I really don't care about. It says, Oh, this is your third workout this week or you've exercised four thousand hours this year. I don't care about you know those aren't the stats I care about. In the middle, it gives you more interesting stats about your pace. I ride a bike, you know about my pace and speed and stuff like that. But the initial ones are I don't think initially when know it just tells you about the frequency of your workouts, which you kind of know anyway, or really I don't really care about. I don't know. I'm not really sure anyone would care about that, but When I'm mowing the lawn, I do an outdoor walk workout and workout buddy comes on. and almost every time it says, you've just set a new elevation record. L how is my lawn getting taller every other week every time I mow my lawn? I don't know why it thinks that. I also use work when when I'm go on a bike ride And it chimes in like Oh, you've just done like a split when you're riding your bike and I don't know what that means because it's I've gone longer than a mile And it's always some odd interval, like thirty eight minutes or thirty five minutes. and I don't know when it decides to tell me that I've hit a mile marker because as far as I can tell, it's not any milestone that I can discern. Do you know what that's about it'spe it'll be every mile or every kilometer depending on which you've got and they' say split one. I don't think that's workout budy. I think that predates workout buddy It would just tell you what your split pace was for the last kilometer or mile They also they claim that they've made The Treadmill runs more more accurate. I don't really understand How why Something I am interested in, more widgets appear in your smart stack when they're relevant. So earlier this year, I spent ages building this beautiful widget for the smart stack for my fitness app only to discover that the smart stack never displays it And it doesn'tay which is really annoying. It doesn't display it because the smart Stack has its own workout widget, which it always displays at the top when there's an active workout evenven if it's a third party, Fitness out And then the Sart act doesn't display to widgets if there's an active workout And so the smart stack isn't very smart because they're built in Smart Stack widget just shows the duration of the workout and nothing else You know, because my my fitness up is a it is a strength training app And so my widget shows an illustration of the exercise you're doing, the name of the exercise, the reps and the weight. And it also shows the elapsse time of the workout. and it's way better The Sart stack doesn't show it. And the only solution to that is you have to kind of go in and pin it basically so that it always stays in the smart stack So I'm hoping that their improved logic for the Sart stack will mean that all that work It is a lot of work that I put into My smmartstack widget will finally off because I bet a lot of people don't even realize it's there and it's kind of cool. Thank you.art Smarter smart stack on the Apple Watch was something that I was very pleased hear about. Music playback on Apple Watch now starts faster I really hope they fix this playback stuff because I'm like a hearing aid user And my hearing aids, they're made for iPhone hearing aids, and that ironically means they don't connect directly to Apple Watch. If I had Bluetooth hearing aids, those work with Apple Watch. Because I went to the trouble of getting ones that support Apple technology, they don't work with Apple Watch. So if I'm like taking the dog for a walk and I'm listening to a podcast then my hearing aids have to connect to The iPhone. notot the watch So I can use The watch as a kind of second screen for my iPhone podcast app It's so flaky. and I'm really hoping when they've said this is the year of fixing bugs that they finally fixed that It's a very bad experience for people with M for iPhone hearing aids, but from what I hear it's a really bad experience for just people using AirPods and Apple Watch as well. you know it frequently just forgets what you were last playing and you have to fish around on your iPhone to find that again. And this is something that We've seen so many regressions on this because when The original app watchatch came out This was robust, you know, when when I played something on my iPhone, it always appeared on my watch Always And it's just got progressively worse over the years To the point that I think some people have been giving up on the platform. So I really hope when they're like sweating the details and fixing the glitches, There's some serious glitches here and The fact that they're talking about making, playing music fast for Apple Watch What that means is they've really looked at the whole now playing experperience on Apple Watch and giving it a tune up because it really needs it. Just one more thing say on Apple Watch is that they don't even support the Apple Watch Ultra now with the Watch us twenty seven, which blows my mind. that's only like three years old And I use an Appleatch Ultra as my test device when I'm developing And so now what I have to buy a new Apple Watch so that I can my old Apple Watch Ultra three becomes my test device. And if I buy that now, then it's going to be so annoying because there'll be new Apple Watch is coming out in the fall. so frustrated by that. There's I saw some reports that they'd managed to get it working on the original Ultra. Oh really? I don't know how. or yeah, I saw something on socials ye into that. It might' true Yeah, Who knows? Let's move on. let's skip the vision Air stuff and go to WWDC predictions. And I have a request Griffin Please make this as quick as possible. Okay.. So if you're near the show last week, we talked about our predictions for the event. Leander was scared of playing the game, so he avoided being on the show. It's one of my favorite things. Oh yeah, I can tell. Yes I was really bummed that I missed it. So now that the event has happened, we can see who was right and wrong The first prediction in the software section, liquid glass UI significantly dialed back. All of us voted no on this. but I mean, looking at MacOS, I think it's pretty clear that that's absolutely the case walked back so many of the changes that they that they introduced just last year. Like with the sidebars, the app icons, the mini bar icons, the you know, the translucency and the toolbars So that was that was One of the more unanimous picks among our listeners as well, and everybody got that wrong Software updates explicitly called out as improving stability and performance I voted for that. so that's a point for me. They may have didid they say stability beginning? That was like the first fifteen minutes of the keynote where they talked about ouror stability once they did I never heard the word stability Yeah. I have questions about this adjudication. That was the whole thing. It's like Yeahah, of course they're going to talk about performance, but they're never going to say the word stability Yeah,. It looks like a bit of self dealing there. I think you need to re I think look, they spent like twenty minutes talking about all of the improvements that they made to the software update. They made it a whole section. went they gave us like sov many statistics. Airdrop is seventy percent faster. Connecting to a Wiifi network is faster. formformance This is I specifically said when this question came up, I said, yes, they will definitely talk about performance. They will not mention stability. And that's why I said no Okay, well, in that case, all right, well, I'll change that th, right We'll see if that how that affects the scores and Apple reintroduces smarter Aentic Si with personal context. That is a yes. Apple says Google powers some new Apple intelligence features in the main keynote Uh yeah, a lot of us voted for that. So that's the point for Lewis, myself and Charlie code for iPad, that was a no That's another point for Lewis, myself, and Charlie. MacOS is called Big Bear. I still don't entirely understand where that rumor came from. One file name All of us get a point for that so because none of us thought it was going to happen Vision OS gets more than five minutes of screen time. Obviously that didn't happen. Basically none of the software updates gottenin five minutes of screen time. They didn't really talk about those at all Hardware, uppdated Mac Mini and Mac Studio with M five chips. That is a big fat no So that's a point for Lewis and Graham Stehven Lemay appears on screen oruring voiceover H No Nowhere to be seen. My only wild card gas Yeah Finally, Tim Cook appears on screen for more than three minutes. This one was very close actually, because I realized the quote is actually written to say Tim Cook appears on screen. So all the parts where he's talking, but they have like something else on screen, like promotional pictures of stuff, I had to cut that out because he wasn't appearing on screen and it came down to Three minutes And four seconds. Oh very tight. These were always the hardest thing I trying to figure out, Oh my Godd. So I guess we don't know who the winner is off you know, I'll defer to Dave as our independent judge as to whether They improved performance or not I the liquid glass thing because I don't regard it as being a significant dialing back of liquid glass. It's still liquid glass and you've still got I mean, you've got a slider now, but You know, I think they've fines liquid glass, but liquid glass is still right there. They haven't really significantly changed it at all. It justust looks a bit crisper by default. In a lot of ways on Macco, they' just completely reverted it. like title bars They don't have like the progressive blur anymore. They're just like a flat edge on top. They don't have the sidear the liquid glass sidebar at all. It's now just what it was before from Big cer and earlier. Liquid glass is a material, right It's not really made of glass, G Liquid glass is basically a material that you can use in your UI. It's like the tab bar is made of liquid glass, the buttons in the toolbar are made of liquid glass. That's what liquid glass is It wouldn't make any difference to the scores though, because we all said the same thing sort of flip all of us. That's true. You're just ganging up on me I actually explicitly mentioned this last week. I said, yeah, I know liiquid gllass is technically the name of the material, but the broader user interface design is what the pick is about And I think that it's significantly change on the Mac So I guess we don't know who the winner is yet because I'll have to wait for I'll have to ask Dave for his ruling on that one pick. Get out the powdered wig But tentatively Tentatively, how I have it ruled is that the two winners are Lewis and I, both with seven points, Graham with five and Charlie with six. We had one listener, Stephven Morgan who scored nine points..ow.' always a nine point. I know, I know. crazy. Wow. O the chot. But I mean, don't congratulate him yet, We'll see follow up on next week's episode. So ye, whatever Stehven. So we don't find out what Stephven wanted to promote u until the adjudication is complete. Well, I can tell you now that Steven Morgan When asked if it was something he wanted to plug, he said No W. What? Fantastic G for him, I guess. I'll see. Yeah, well, we'll plug maybe we can plug Stehven himself Stephven Morgan, we congratulate you, maybe, tentatively But I think we should wrap it up there, don't you guys? Anyone else? good, I think dad? Be sure that sure. That's a wp Iess'll drag this out any longer. Please give us a five star rating, at least five stars or a review an Apple Podcasts. defefinitely a review not a one star one. Or share the show with anyone who think who would like to listen. We come in significantly shorter than some of our competing shows, which I think is a definite plus Text us an i message at cultomightpodcast Cloud. com. That's cultommic podcast at iCloudot com. Snd questions, comments, feedback for the show. You can send an audio message or a short video and we'll play it. Thanks to everyone for listening. Thanks for watching and we'll see you all next time. Have a great weekend everybody. Bye bye. goodbye. See ya