Key Takeaways
- Apple Intelligence is in preview as part of the developer betas for iOS 18.1, iPadOS 18.1, and macOS 15.1.
- Siri sees some welcomed improvements with a redesign and stumble understanding.
- Mail, Messages, Notes, and many more apps have received Apple Intelligence features.
Apple Intelligence is finally here alongside the developer beta for iOS and iPadOS 18.1 and macOS 15.1. So far, I’ve been providing extensive coverage of the several features beta features hitting Apple’s operating systems this fall, in addition to Apple Intelligence. But now, I’m taking a first pass at what AI looks like on Apple’s platforms. Keep in mind that Apple Intelligence is not currently available for general use or part of Apple’s public beta program. It’s only available as an early beta for developer testing.
Let’s look at how Apple Intelligence impacts your devices and see how these new features could benefit you.
Siri
Apple’s voice-activated assistant is redesigned and better
Siri’s limitations as a voice assistant are nothing new. Poor Siri is endlessly mocked for its lack of flexibility when processing voice commands. As a person who chronically mixes up his requests, I’ve often been frustrated after asking Siri to do the wrong thing. Excitingly, Apple Intelligence brings substantial improvements to Siri.
From a visual perspective, Siri now ripples across your display when activated and creates this multicolored hue along the bezel on iOS and iPadOS. If you like to type to Siri, that’s improved, too — just double-tap on your swipe bar, and a keyboard appears. Siri can now also provide information and guidance on your device. Simply ask Siri how to do something, and it’ll provide the relevant instructions from the device’s user guide.
Where Siri impacts me most is its new ability to update your request after a mid-sentence stumble or if you provided the wrong information. For example, if you want to set a one-minute timer but say two minutes instead, Siri can now catch that mistake and update your timer. This is a substantial improvement for me. Siri also now maintains context between requests, allowing you to ask about the weather and follow up with a clarifying question about the humidity, for example.
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9 new auto-magic ways to adjust text
Upon selecting text within these new developer betas, a new option is available: Writing Tools. Selecting Writing Tools shows the following nine options: Proofread, Rewrite, Friendly, Professional, Concise, Summary, Key Points, List, and Table. Each of these nine options readjusts your text based on the prompt, similar to how ChatGPT or another LLM might.
Proofread acts similarly to Grammarly, making grammatical edits and showing you suggestions. Based on the prompt, Rewrite, Friendly, Professional, and Concise reconstruct your text. Summary, Key Points, List, and Table reformat your text accordingly.
As a daily user of Grammarly, I’m excited to use these features more to see if that’s one more subscription I can cancel. Regardless, they’re an interesting addition to have baked into Apple’s operating systems as a quick way for the average user to produce better writing.
Intelligence Breakthrough & Silencing
A new Focus Mode setting
Focus Modes are getting some AI attention, too. Within all Focus Modes, there’s a new toggle called ‘Intelligent Breakthrough & Silencing.’ The purpose of this new setting is to intelligently select which notifications are important enough to break through your Focus Mode and interrupt you. There’s also a new Focus Mode, Reduce Interruptions, dedicated to automatically reducing the number of notifications that bother you while active.
Intelligence Breakthrough & Silencing is by far the feature I’m most skeptical about. If it’s anything like Siri Suggestions, it’ll be utterly inaccurate about what’s important enough to break through the Focus Mode. However, as someone who is increasingly trying to find new ways to reduce how their device distracts them, this is interesting nonetheless.
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Summarize Safari and Mail
Gauge what’s important
If you’ve ever faced down a wall of text hoping to just seek the key points, Apple Intelligence may be your new saving grace. Within the Apple Mail app and Safari’s reader view, there’s a new Summarize button to concisely summarize the presented text. As part of this feature, multiple notifications from the Apple Mail app will also be summarized for ease of previewing, and critical emails will appear at the top of the Mail app. Personally, I don’t see the Safari summary feature as overly valuable as I want to read the article I’ve selected. On the other hand, as someone who finds long corporate emails exhausting, I can see tremendous value in quickly triageing whether an email is valuable enough to read through.
Transcription in Notes and Phone
Read through your recordings
Apple Intelligence brings transcription for recordings stored in Apple Notes. Users in meetings or lectures are likely to find great value in this. With iOS 18, iPhone 15 Pro (and presumably iPhone 16) users can record phone calls. The recording and associated transcription for those phone calls are stored in a new note. It’s easy to see how valuable recording transcription can be for those attending many in-person meetings or lectures. I also can’t wait to start using the call recording feature when calling customer service numbers to create a record of the call.
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Smart Replies in Messages and Mail
Faster responses, incoming
There are now smart reply suggestions when replying to new messages and emails with Apple’s .1 betas. Predictive text has long been a feature of Apple’s operating systems, helping users quickly select words that commonly come after whatever’s been typed. However, with smart replies, Apple Intelligence suggests partial and complete responses where predictive text lives. Users can also select a written response and use the new Writing Tools to rewrite and reformat text to best suit their response and its audience. Smart Replies are one of those small quality-of-life types like predictive text and the swipe keyboard that make us a little more efficient at replying to our communications.
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Photos
Search and Memory Move improvements
Personally, I find the redesigned Photos app in iOS and iPadOS 18 and macOS 15 to be terrible. Every year, I’m frustrated at how Apple focuses Photos on suggesting new curated ways to view random photos rather than making it easier to select and view the images I want. Like Apple, why are smart albums limited to the Mac? Anyways.
Apple Intelligence brings some new natural language-focused features to Photos. Users can now create a new memory movie by trying a description rather than solely relying on automatic suggestions. There’s also natural language search, where you can describe what you’re looking for to easily find photos and moments within video clips. This isn’t the Photos app update I’ve been wanting, but everywhere Apple adds natural language, it’s a win.
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