😺 Our HONEST take on Apple AI

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Welcome, humans.

Don’t mess with ChatGPT—or it might mess with you back. Case in point:

It knows where you live…

And DEFINITELY don’t ask GPT to tell you a scary story, or things might get a little too meta.

Now, for robots being cool (and not creepy), here’s a video of a robot that can identify and pick ripe apples, and another robot that can massage you. Okay, maybe we need to recalibrate our creepy meter…

Here’s what you need to know about AI today:

We tried Apple Intelligence and share our thoughts.
ChatGPT hit 250M users, dominated by paid subscriptions.
Meta rejected the new formal definition of open source.
AI computing could create iPhone-scale e-waste by 2030.

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We tried Apple Intelligence, and here’s what we think.

The promise of Siri, when launched waaay back in 2011, was that “She” would be your personal digital assistant—understanding natural language, managing tasks, and learning your preferences over time. Yeah, uh, that never really happened.

While Siri did help usher in the era of voice assistants, it never quite delivered on that original vision of a truly intelligent, context-aware AI companion.

Apple Intelligence is Apple's attempt to change Siri's legacy, and it’s out now in iOS 18.1 / macOS Sequoia 15.1. To use it, install the new update, and you'll see this icon:

Huh? Waitlist? Why?!? Actually, there’s a good reason for this.

We first tried to download it on our iPhones before we realized we needed an iPhone 15 or better. D’oh!

Then we downloaded it on our Macbook, which DID work—as long as you have an M1 chip (any Macbook from November 2020 onward) you can try it out (here’s how).

Once you get access, you can use AI to improve your writing, reply to messages quickly, summarize your notifications, clean your photos, and chat with the new Siri.

Here’s what that actually means in practice:

Writing Tools: Think Grammarly, but built-in everywhere. Rewrite text professionally/casually, proofread, or summarize into bullets and tables.
Smart Photos: Natural language search (“Maya skateboarding in a tie-dye shirt”), plus remove photo-bombers or unwanted objects.
Better Mail: Priority Messages surfaces urgent emails (like same-day invites or boarding passes), plus auto-summaries of long threads.
Smarter Siri: New design, better context understanding, and actually helps with Apple product questions (like “how do I share Wi-Fi?”).

How to use Writing Tools with Apple Intelligence | Apple Support

Our take: The new writing tools are nice, but not more convenient than GPT or Claude on Mac. Notification summaries were glitchy, though smart replies work well. New Siri is definitely smarter, but wasn't much more useful (yet).

That’s because the really interesting stuff drops in December:

Custom “Genmoji” emoji creation.
ChatGPT integration for Writing Tools and Siri.
Visual search through iPhone 16's camera.
Image generation from sketches.

Oh, and sorry Europe… Apple won’t release “Apple Intelligence” in the EU until April 2025. But hey, at least you have access to ChatGPT Advanced Voice Mode now!

Have you tried Apple Intelligence yet? What's your take?

When you pick an answer, you can write in to offer more feedback.

Already trying it out on my Mac / iPhone.

Have access but haven't tried it yet.

Can't try it - my devices aren't new enough.

Using Samsung Galaxy Ai or Google Pixel/Gemini instead.

Happy with Microsoft Copilot on Windows.

Waiting for the December features before I care.

Miss me with all this on-device AI hype - not interested.

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ChatGPT now has 250M weekly active users, and converts its free users to paying subscribers at a rate of 5-6%—as a result, 75% of its revenue is from consumer subs.
There is now an official definition of “open source”—but Meta disagrees with it, because the definition doesn’t apply to Meta’s projects.
Researchers found the rapidly advancing computing requirements of AI models could lead to the e-waste equivalent to 10B+ iPhones per year by 2030.

Prompt tip of the week.

Getting AI to do what you want is all about being super clear with your instructions. If you haven’t checked out this Prompt Engineering Roadmap, it’s a great resource for learning more about working with AI: