620: The State of Apple in 2021

Just to be pedantic 'cuz you’re an academic sort, I would say it raises the question rather than begs it. :slight_smile:

As for the answer, I think advancement of one’s life in a “hugely impactful” way will be more likely when the AI gets sophisticated enough that it understands things in a more “natural” manner rather than a purely rule-based one, and particularly it realizes when to help and when to get out of the way.

For the “understanding” aspect…

Our language parsing via smart devices seems to still very much at the “programmatic parsing” stage. It analyzes your input, whatever that is, and applies rules that basically amount to a Google search for the info. If we get beyond that to the point of true “intelligence”, it would actually take stuff off our plate. Imagine, for example, being able to say “Hey (dingus), I need to buy a new (gadget). Find me the top 10 highest recommended products in the $50 to $200 price range, and show them to me.” Or “Hey (dingus), Sally wants to learn to draw. Put together a video playlist of the top introductory videos on the topic, ordered by difficulty from easiest to hardest.”

Right now, that’s work that has to be done by a human. Even if there’s a video playlist that would help Sally already out there, somebody else had to put it together - and I need to Google to find it. Taking some of the analysis off our plates would be hugely helpful.

For “getting out of the way”, just to use Apple examples…

Siri Suggestions is a neat feature, but until I figured out where to shut it off (I hope!) it kept hassling me about my Due reminders. So I’d get repeated notifications from Due, then repeated notifications from Siri after I’d addressed the Due recurring reminder, and that led to me a couple of times clicking through the Siri thing and dismissing tomorrow’s reminder. It’s a “step forward” that’s almost a step backward.

The fact that I can auto-pair my Apple headphone devices to my Apple TV is cool, but the fact that it pops up a not-obvious-how-to-dismiss notification when I walk into the room while my girlfriend is watching TV? Not so great. There are settings to disable it entirely, but they’re just that - settings, buried in a sub-menu somewhere.

How great would it be if you could just yell something a bit more abstract like “don’t ever make a Siri suggestion about taking my pills”, or “don’t offer to pair my PowerBeats automatically if you see that my girlfriend’s iPhone is in the room”, and it would say “okay” - then just automatically figure out how to make that happen?

I think that’s the chasm that needs to be crossed.

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Yeah. I used to have a catalog case I’d carry around to Bible studies that had a 4-way NIV / KJV / NASB / NLT interlinear, a huge concordance, and several other reference books. Now I have a phone with Logos. And it works faster. :slight_smile:

And a fair bit of that can be actually managing the technology itself. Take the never-ending debate about which task manager is the best. Usually the underlying requirements aren’t hard for a human to understand - but translating them into a piece of software is mind-blowingly challenging. Which results in tons of hours to figure out how to get things into and out of software that could be much better spent doing, quite literally, anything else. :slight_smile:

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On the bright side, she may be more likely to take your advice in the future.

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And when the “dingus” advances enough to be really useful (with some self-direction and something of a personality) but becomes resentful and tires of taking orders? What then?

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I too have watched how technology has changed the legal profession. My mother started out two decades ago using Amicus Attorney software and today I think you could do twice the work with a quarter of the “stuff”. I agree on AirDrop as well…it’s so simple but I use it all the time now.

A month ago someone asked “why do we still represent the Save function with an icon of a floppy? And what are going to use to replace the iconography of the floppy for people moving forward”

I thought about it for a bit and wrote back "nothing …if computing goes where it needs to go everything you do on your computer should be auto-saved. Small files should but sync’d immediately while larger files can be schedules snapshots with granularity. If we don’t go in this direction we’ve failed on the promise of Cloud Computing and broadband access for everyone.

I think the Mac/iPad OS should be replicated to the cloud in key areas. I think I should be able to go to a computer running Mac OS/Windows/Linux and login to my computer and experience a slower but faithful representation of what’s important to me. People should be more concerned with having fast broadband or 5G than if they have they have a 512MB or 1TB iPad model. I don’t want to carry my photo library across 4 devices when they’re backed up to the Cloud with levels of redundancy.

I want to think of data as Offline or Online. Because of my child’s obsession …I’ve watched Encanto 10 times in the last two weeks. Each time I stream it …knowing I’ll end up doing it again because it’s not easy to flag a movie and store it offline where I don’t have to pull from a CDN that is likely using dirty power.

Just bought a Sense monitor and gaining perspective on my home’s electricity usage. It’s a stop gap for now because in the next 18 months I’m going to replace my Service Panel with a model that will give me detailed consumption for every branch circuit. This will help inform me of my next major Appliance purchase which will likely be replacing the AC portion of my HVAC and eventually going Solar.

My point is not to crap on Apple because honestly I think SharePlay done correctly could be the biggest thing Apple has done in recent years. Every Christmas I think about how cool it would be to be able to have friends and family “drop in” to a running camera feed and how collaboration could improve by leaps on bounds.

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Gotta make it 3 Laws Safe. :slight_smile:

It’s useful to note that the question was what it would take for it to massively impact one’s life, not whether it would be possible….or even a good idea.

I think Covid and the resulting “Work From Home” initiative has irrevocably changed the course of Employer/Employee expectation and filtered over to the family life. Whereas consumers disliked the idea of TV with camera built in a decade ago this stuff is the new normal today and there’s going to be a rush to bring scaled down conferencing solutions to the home. Apple historically been a poor social media company but this may change.

The VR stuff is the buzzword compliant “sizzle” but it’s the synchronous realtime collaboration that is going to offer the most potential IMO. Perhaps such initiatives like iTunes U were simply too early for their time and may come back under a new name and direction. Deal me in for new collaborative versions of Swift Playgrounds, Logic Pro, Final Cut Pro and please please a return of Aperture.

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I’ve been hoping for a true digital assistant since I download the Siri app. I also had to turn off Siri Suggestions, and auto-pairing. What kind of “assistant” disconnects your AirPods when you are on an important call and make the “mistake” of looking up some information on your iPad.

I’m retired, which means I don’t have the luxury of waiting another decade for Siri to make her way to Apple’s “A list”. So I’ve hired an assistant that, while not perfect, is at least consistent in the things it can and cannot do.

Massive impact, achievement possible, good idea? The three questions are entwined. A really useful “dingus” (as @webwalrus addresses it) with initiative and something of a personality could have massive impact on our lives.

However I do not think it will be possible for us to build an Asimov positronic brain with the Three Laws to keep humanity safe.

So, will real AI be a good idea? No, it won’t. For example, I believe we’re already on the verge of embodied AI of the simpler kinds suggested in Philip K. Dick’s story Second Variety.

I present a clip that has a dual purpose:

  1. It represents Apples attitude towards its customers in quite a lot of cases.
  2. It made me guffaw because of how well it represents the chemistry of @ismh and @MacSparky

Sparky getting his reality adjusted a bit

In fact, it made me stop in -2c weather at 07:00 in the morning while walking the dog to learn how to make clips in Overcast. The (African) dog is not amused and pulled me straight home with no ifs, ands or butts(!).

ps: if anyone knows how I can just embed the clip instead of linking to it, let me know…

  1. Yes, Apple loves things that increase their revenue per customer. What company doesn’t?
  2. Yes again. :grinning:

I’m impressed and blessed by such thoughtful responses! Why can’t all of the internet be like the MPU forum!? :slightly_smiling_face: Thanks for taking the time to respond!

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This really is a good community. I’ve abandoned most other sites other than MPU. High signal to noise ratio here.

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So true. She was just telling me today that she’s going to be more conscientious. The good news is that only her screen died, so she’s been able to retrieve her data.

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I think one glaring thing missing in Apple’s lineup is CarOS. The big migration into EV cars brings with it more tech-focused cars. And right now all the exciting new EVs are run with Amazon or Google software. I really was interested in a Rivian; but I’m really turned away by Amazon owning my car. Apple really needs to step things up in the automobile space. Now is the time.

Wait….Amazon wrote Rivian’s OS?

“More precisely, Rivian is utilizing Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service to manage and orchestrate software updates. For the deployment of updates, it is using Amazon CloudFront.”

In that case I highly recommend you watch “Long Way Up” on Apple TV+ , if you haven’t already. The riders support team drove the first two Rivian prototypes from the tip of South America to Los Angeles.

If we didn’t do business with any companies that used Amazon infrastructure we’d have to stop doing business with Apple too. :slight_smile:

That said, I don’t think that means Rivian is running “Amazon software”, and certainly not a case of “Amazon owning my car”.