That happened several years ago before I retired, which is why I thought about it. Excel can save in ODS format. I guess Microsoft’s early adoption allowed NATO countries to continue using its software.
Fair call! 
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A “stewardess”. You’d might get hunted down by the political correctness police for that. :joy
I think I’m slowly drifting away from the mpu forum. 35%-45% of posts in 2026 are about AI. I use AI, but don’t really want a forum where it’s mostly about AI.
I’m wondering whether my Apple euphoria has ended after 19 years. I’m enjoying my pixel phone far more than I did my previous iPhone. I’m constantly frustrated at Apple OS decisions and dread further OS updates.
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This only solves the first issue, but you can mute categories on a Discourse forum, and most of the recent AI posts are from the new Robot Assistant category.
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I prefer Macs but I was never euphoric about some piece of hardware. They all do the same basic thing and I pick the one I think is currently best for the task.
Yes, AI has many of the MPU faithful excited. It has the world excited. The Google Cloud Next keynote this morning took about 2 hours to briefly announce the features of their Agentic Data Cloud. And to mention their collaboration with Apple.
Stick around, I doubt you will find a better apple centric forum. I haven’t.
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These things run in cycles depending on new products and apps, new technologies like AI, a new Field Guide, and so on. I suspect that whatever Apple announces about Apple Intelligence will keep AI front and center for a while, but then the focus will shift to Apple’s new CEO, robot HomePods, the folding iPhone, and more. I remember a great many posts about home automation that hold no interest for me. I simply ignore those. I hope you stay in the forum as a participant. Your input is appreciated.
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Of that I have no doubt! This is more about me than the forum. I used to watch Apple presentations and follow launch products with great interest. Then it went to meh, and now complete disinterest. This probably coincides with my user experience that has deteriorated over time. I really don’t see Apple producing anything better than Google, Microsoft or Samsung and I’d have no interest in a Microsoft Power User forum, so my interest in the Apple one is waning also.
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I think it also has to do with the digital industry (excluding AI, which IMO belongs to a category of its own) reaching maturity some time around 2020. Shiny new things stopped streaming in. The industry began turning from a race to the top into a race to the bottom.
Every cultural phenomenon in human society has a finite lifespan. Maturity is the middle point when the force of decline overwhelms that of ascent.
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I started skipping the live presentation, then fast forward through a replay later, several years ago.
Now I just wait for someone to post a “Apple WWDC highlights in 10 minutes” video.
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Of that I have no doubt! This is more about me than the forum. I used to watch Apple presentations and follow launch products with great interest. Then it went to meh, and now complete disinterest. This probably coincides with my user experience that has deteriorated over time. I really don’t see Apple producing anything better than Google, Microsoft or Samsung and I’d have no interest in a Microsoft Power User forum, so my interest in the Apple one is waning also.
@svsmailus, many of us, I suspect, feel less passionate about Apple product announcements than we once did, back when the iPhone, iPad, and Apple silicon Macs first arrived. Tech is like much else in life: once a thing is experienced, it takes more of it to produce the same response, the same dopamine hit, that it did at first. The new and shiny becomes the new normal, and normal rarely stirs passion. That strikes me as both inevitable and fine. None of us needs to live in a perpetual state of breathless anticipation.
Your experience is your own, and I will not presume to speak to it. I can say that my Apple products today are better and more useful to me than they were five years ago. The apps have improved, and the hardware fits together more tightly than before. When I pause to think about it, I find it genuinely remarkable that I can talk to my speakers, phone, Mac, iPad, or watch and have them carry out what I ask. Work I start on one device follows me to the next. Every file, every book, and every piece of research sits at my fingertips wherever I am. My watch tracks my workouts, sends me alerts, and can recognize a fall or a crash.
Plenty of other companies build fine products and offer fine services. Still, the combination of hardware quality, longevity, security, privacy, ecosystem integration across and within product lines, and the support behind it all remains difficult to match.
Is Apple perfect? Certainly not. Am I as enthusiastic about Apple, or about any tech company, as I once was? No. The technology has simply been woven into the fabric of daily life. Then again, Christmas no longer thrills me the way it did when I was a boy either. 
I am grateful for these powerful tools. They are not perfect. But then, neither am I. 
Perplexity’s CEO touts Apple’s ecosystem and silicon advantages as some of the reasons why the iPhone is positioned for continued success. It’s also, in his view, why Apple can afford to move slow with its long-delayed Siri overhaul.
“My sense is that even though a lot of people have opinions on how bad Siri is or good Siri is, [Apple has] the ability to take time and do things they want to do, because they have advantages as a brand that people truly trust. The ecosystem lock-in is underrated [emphasis added]. Auxiliary hardware devices, the chip advantage, all of this is really underrated right now”
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That is a reasonable assumption. Most people only use Siri for the basic features that have been around for years. And still work, more or less.
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That’s a big assumption. Perhaps in America people trust Apple, but I for one do not. I’ve already ditched the iPhone for a Pixel. To be honest the Pixel meets every expectation I have had and more. The iPhone 16 plus I had was a massive disappointment from day one. I think the article is failing to understand the user. They want something that works.
I also think Apple’s promise of AI and then poor delivery of AI will have knocked people’s trust.
I also don’t think they have a lot of time before people move on. People are fickle and when they see their friends phone doing something their phone can’t they’ll replace it.
Isn’t that because Siri doesn’t do anything else which is the whole problem?
Yes. I thought the original Siri, the app that Apple later purchased, was amazing. Today’s Siri is a punchline for jokes in TV shows.
I don’t think artificial intelligence was in Apple’s “corporate DNA” when ChatGPT surprised everyone in November 2022. And it was still missing when Apple showed its “personalized” Siri concept video at WWDC 2024.
Apple has time to become competitive in on-device, consumer focused AI, because its customers are used to waiting for features.
But I don’t see them ever competing with Google, Anthropic, or OpenAI, etc. in business/enterprise AI.