ElevenLabs, a company that creates realistic-sounding voices using AI, released a new iPhone app this week called Reader. You can give it any text and it will read the text out loud. We've seen this technology for a long time, but what caught my attention is that the app includes four voices that the app calls Iconic Voices: the (licensed) AI voices of Sir Laurence Olivier, James Dean, Burt Reynolds, and Judy Garland. So if you want the app to read you the Wizard of Oz using Judy Garland's voice, it can do that. In a similar vein, I saw this article in Vanity Fair in which Tom Kludt explains how NBC convinced legendary sportscaster Al Michaels to let the network digitize his voice to use during the upcoming Olympic coverage. The network will offer recaps tailored to your favorite events and it will sound like Al Michaels is providing the narration. The text will be created by an AI that will analyze subtitles and metadata to produce a summary of what happened. NBC says that this could result in millions of different versions of customized recaps. All of this sounds interesting and fun, but of course, the line between appropriate use of this technology and malicious deep fakes is thin. Photoshop has been around for so long that we are way past the days of thinking that you can believe something just because you see what appears to be a picture of it, so perhaps we are ready for this next step forward in the use of AI. I hope so. And now, the news of note from the past week:
- Apple recently announced a relationship with OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT. I think that is a good idea, but the OpenAI company has been the subject of controversy. Thus, I was interested to see the report from Chance Miller of 9to5Mac that Phil Schiller of Apple will have an observer role on OpenAI's board of directors.
- Fernando Silva of 9to5Mac reviews the Clicks Keyboard, an external keyboard that attaches just below the iPhone.
- Cory Bohon of Gadget Hacks provides a helpful and large list of keyboard shortcuts that you can use when you connect an external keyboard to an iPhone.
- A Dutch cardiologist believes that an Apple Watch can detect heart blockage, a leading cause of heart attacks, as reported by Leander Kahney of Cult of Mac.
- The Apple Vision Pro is now available in China, Hong Kong, Japan, and Singapore. There is a page on the Apple website that shows interesting pictures of people at Apple stores in those countries trying on the device on Day 1.
- Tammy Rogers of iMore reports that an upcoming firmware improvement to the AirPods, now in beta, will vastly improve the microphone audio quality when connected to a Mac.
- In an article for Six Colors and Macworld, Jason Snell points out that when Apple Intelligence is available for the iPhone, we will live in a world in which Siri is much more powerful on some Apple devices than on others, and he shares some thoughts on how that might work. It's an interesting dilemma.
- Apple's AirPods Max over-the-ear headphones are currently $100 off at Amazon, selling for only $449. There have been a few rare occasions when I've seen the price go a little lower than that, but that's a great price on this device. I don't see many people using an AirPods Max, but when I do talk to people who use the product, they consistently tell me that they really like it.
- When you buy an Apple Product, should you purchase Apple Care+? John-Anthony Disotto of iMore used to work at an Apple Genius Bar and he offers his advice. I purchased AppleCare+ for my Apple Vision Pro because it was so expensive and seemed relatively easy to drop and break, and I purchased it for my new iPad Pro M4 13" for similar reasons. But I typically don't purchase AppleCare+ when I get a new iPhone each year. It's not an easy decision, but it is an important one that Apple users need to make all the time.
- Life in Seven Songs is a new podcast from the San Francisco Standard that asks people to identify seven significant signs from their lives, and Episode 3 is an interview with Jony Ive, the former chief designer at Apple. I enjoyed listening to this episode. He describes meeting Steve Jobs for the first time and also talks about his work on the Pixar movie Wall-E.
- For every product that Apple releases, there are many more that never make it out of the labs. D. Griffin Jones of Cult of Mac shows off some interesting prototypes from Apple's history.
- Will Apple ever make a ring? Malcolm Owen of Apple Insider discusses two decades of rumors and speculation about an Apple ring.
- If you have fond memories of playing Minesweeper on a now-ancient PC, Anna Washenko of Engadget reports that there is a modern version of the game now available for the iPhone from Netflix. The game is free to play (with no ads) if you have a Netflix account. I tried it, and I thought it was fun to play the game again after all of these years.
- Apple TV+ doesn't disclose the number of subscribers, but Devesh Beri of the Mac Observer reports that JustWatch has come up with its own estimates for all of the streaming services. It believes that Apple TV+ recently surpassed Paramount+ to become the sixth-biggest streaming service in the United States. JustWatch estimates Prime Video and Netflix have over 20% market share, Max around 14%, Disney+ around 11%, Hulu around 10%, and Apple TV+ at 9% and growing.
- And finally, the Notes app from Apple was not very impressive when Apple first released it, but over the years it has gotten better and better, and today it is a fantastic app that I use daily. Stephen Hackett of the 512 Pixels website and many podcasts including Mac Power Users recorded a presentation about the Notes app that he gave to a user group in Texas and it is full of interesting information. I love the subtitle of the presentation: From a Joke App to a Superstar. If you want to go deep on the Notes app, check this one out: