If you were to ask Old McDonald what was in the Apple news this past week, his answer would be A-I-A-I-Oh! Of course, AI is nothing new for Apple. It has been a part of the Memories feature of Photos for a long time, it is used extensively in the current iOS 17 to power features such as creating a Personal Voice that (sort of) sounds like your real voice and the greatly improved AutoCorrect feature, it is responsible for the excellent transcripts created with the Podcasts app, and much more. But Apple CEO Tim Cook announced last month that AI was going to be an even bigger topic for Apple later this year. And we started to get a hint at what might be behind that when Mark Gurman of Bloomberg reported this week that Apple may license Google's generative large-language models to power some AI features in iOS 18. For a number of reasons, including privacy and security, Apple likes to run things "on device" and I'm sure that some of iOS 18 will utilize AI that runs right on the iPhone. But just like your iPhone currently uses the online Google search service to search the web, perhaps iOS 18 will utilize some server-based AI to enhance what you can do on an iPhone. What will this AI do? It could be transformative, as Dan Moren discusses in an article this week for Six Colors and Macworld. All of this is making me very excited for what we will learn when Apple previews iOS 18 at its WWDC conference this Summer and when Apple released the 2024 models of the iPhone this Fall. And now, the other news of note from the past week:
- Yesterday, the U.S. Department of Justice filed a large antitrust lawsuit against Apple in federal court in New Jersey. I'm not an antitrust lawyer, so I'm not providing any legal analysis, but I did very much appreciate reading the non-legal analysis from Jason Snell of Six Colors. He does a good job of explaining what the lawsuit alleges and where the DOJ seems to be taking some liberties.
- John Gruber of Daring Fireball also offers some interesting reactions to Jason's reactions to the DOJ lawsuit.
- Apple released iOS 17.4.1 yesterday. It fixes some bugs and provides security updates, with no new features. Apple also released iPadOS 17.4.1 and visionOS 1.1.1, presumably for the same fixes.
- John Voorhees of MacStories reports that the part of the App Store that shows what you have previously purchased has been updated to provide additional details and more organization.
- Nvidia had a big conference this week, and one of its announcements was that companies will be able to use Nvidia's products to bring immersive 3D experiences to the Apple Vision Pro. Harry McCracken of Fast Company got a demo of what this might look like when he was able to wear a Vision Pro to check out an "uncannily realistic virtual" model of the upcoming 2024 Nissan Z sports coupe. Stories like this remind me that we are at only the beginning stages of Apple's Vision platform and I am so excited to see how the technology develops over time. (And on a side note, Apple and Nvidia have seemed to have a chilly relationship over the last few years, so it is great to see them working together.)
- Speaking of the Apple Vision Pro, Bennedict Evans has been using one for about a month and offers some incredibly insightful thoughts on what works, what doesn't, and what this all may mean for the future.
- If your complaint about the Apple Vision Pro is that it isn't expensive enough, Samantha Wiley of iLounge reports that Caviar will sell 24 versions of the Apple Vision Pro in 2025 that will cost $40,000 and up and will be covered with 18-karat gold.
- One of my biggest regrets in the history of Apple is that the company stopped making its AirPort line of wireless routers. If only Apple had purchased Eero instead of Amazon, it could have done some incredible things with home networking while keeping complicated technology easy to use. Joe Rosensteel agrees with me and believes that it is not too late for Apple to do something in this arena as he explains in an article for Six Colors entitled It's time for a new AirPort.
- If you have HomeKit devices that have batteries that need to be occasionally recharged or replaced, HomeBatteries is a new app that focuses on tracking the battery life and notifying you when you need more battery power. Brent Dirks reviews the app for AppAdvice, and it looks like a great idea for an app.
- If you are a fan of the Apple AirTag, like I am, you might be interested to know that, as reported by Eric Slivka of MacRumors, Apple is once again updating the firmware, this time to version 2.0.73. It's the first update since last October, but Apple hasn't yet explained what is new—so my guess is that it is just some bug fixes or something like that. There is nothing you can do to force an update; AirTags just update on their own eventually.
- Jason Snell of Six Colors explains a new feature in the MLB app that slows down the app and explains why that is actually a good thing.
- I've written in the past about how it is useful to occasionally connect a HomePod mini to a portable battery to turn it into a portable speaker. Niléane of MacStories discusses using the PlusAcc for HomePod Mini Battery Base ($40 on Amazon) to make it easier to switch a HomePod mini from being plugged-in to the wall to being portable. This does look like a more elegant solution than what I have been doing, and if I did it more than once every few months, I would consider getting one of these.
- This week, Brian Tong released an amazing video that gets my highest recommendation for numerous reasons. First, he talks to lots of Apple employees about the iPhone, photography, AI, and other Apple technology. Second, he does so on Apple's campus. And third, he does so while riding around Apple's campus in a golf cart, so at the same time that you are listening to the interesting video, you see the beautiful Apple Park campus in a way that you have never seen before. The video is 40 minutes long, and when I started it I figured I would just watch the first few minutes ... and then 40 minutes later, I was upset that there wasn't more. Check it out.
- And finally, Apple wants you to believe that there is so much space available on your iPhone that you don't need to worry about deleting old photos just to save some space. And thus, the company released this humorous video titled Don't Let Me Go:
