Report on The Information about the state of Siri

April 12, 2025
Hartley Charlton at MacRumors has a recap of the new report in The Information about why Siri has remained so bad. Here are some of the bits that plainly make me angry, but not surprising the state of Siri today: "Apple’s AI/ML group has been dubbed “AIMLess” internally, while employees are said to refer to Siri as a “hot potato” that is continually passed between different teams with no significant improvements." "Apple AI chief John Giannandrea was apparently confident he could fix ‌Siri‌ with the right training data and better web-scraping for answers to general knowledge questions. Senior leaders didn't…

iPhone price increases

April 6, 2025
The iPhone X, launched in 2017 at a price of £999, hasn't gone up since. You can walk into an Apple Store and get the iPhone 16 Pro for the same price of £999 now. If I were to argue that prices of the iPhones have gone down - both in terms of increasing inflation and also in terms of the features the iPhone 16 Pro offers compared to the iPhone X 8 years ago - there wouldn't be much or any rebuttal against my argument. Every year it feels like a price increase is imminent, but the iPhone has…

Apple delaying the personalised Siri “Apple Intelligence” feature.

March 7, 2025
Apple dropping bad news on a Friday on Daring Fireball Not surprised at all, but the whole marketing point the iPhones 16 rode on was Apple intelligence and that series of iPhones 16 were the first phones “built for Apple Intelligence”. I never liked Apple marketing pushing Apple Intelligence when the phones did not launch with them and was promised that users will get the features during the year. So far we have seen Siri get a new coat of paint and a few other features and the consensus is that it’s very underwhelming. I personally like the ability to…

Why Vision Pro is the reason to bring back TouchID on iPhone.

January 20, 2025
Ryan Christoffel, writing for 9To5Mac: Face ID on iPhone does no good when Vision Pro is strapped to your face—an unfortunate detail I’m reminded of every time I use visionOS. I have been using a 6th generation iPad Mini for a couple of months now, and this is the first time I have been dealing with TouchID over FaceID (apart from my MacBook, that is). TouchID is my least favourite thing about this iPad. There are usually many discussions or debates online regarding TouchID vs FaceID, and I often thought of them as meaningless, as FaceID is always the clear…

Siri : New Look, Same Old Frustrations

December 13, 2024
Everyone has had more than their fair share of being frustrated at Siri. Apple brought the voice assistant feature to the masses by introducing Siri with the iPhone 4S in 2011, and it felt like it had never reached its full potential. There have been a few upgrades to Siri in the past thirteen years, but nothing as significant as the Apple Intelligence updates that were promised in the 2024 WWDC keynote. Apple Intelligence has been a hit and miss so far, and Apple is clever enough to still keep the "beta" tag associated with it. There have been a…

Apple releases iOS 18.2 with the best Camera Control feature yet

December 11, 2024
https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2024/12/apple-intelligence-now-features-image-playground-genmoji-and-more The biggest news is Apple Intelligence launching in other regions apart from the US. I have been using Apple Intelligence already by setting my region to the US. I can finally change to the UK Siri voice, which is significantly better! I was not on the 18.2 beta so there are some new features too : Genmoji, Image Playground, and ChatGPT integration to name a few. I will write about them when I have tried out these features. However, the most anticipated change for me is the ability to open the camera via a single control click when the…

On Apple Intelligence Notification Summaries

December 10, 2024
All the Apple Intelligence features promised during WWDC are not yet fully released, but one current feature is the ability to summarise notifications. This feature has been the subject of many jokes, but for me, it's mostly been excellent. I'm in numerous WhatsApp groups with numerous messages, and I lack time to read each one. When I return to my phone after an hour or two, Apple Intelligence collects and summarises discussed content in short, simple messages. This is an example of fifteen individual messages correctly summarised into something succinct: Because this feature has been widely mocked, I still read…

Apple and Sony teaming up to bring PSVR2 controllers to work with Apple Vision Pro

December 8, 2024
Mark Gurman of Bloomberg is reporting what feels like the best Apple Vision Pro news in a while. I recently purchased the PSVR2 and am having great fun playing Gran Turismo 7. Sony has been accused of not giving the PSVR2 much love since its release, and Apple has been similarly criticised regarding the Apple Vision Pro. For someone interested in both Apple and Sony (mostly PlayStation), this feels like two close friends deciding to get married. This partnership means most games developed for the PSVR2 can come to the Vision Pro, addressing the lack of third-party apps and games…

iPhone to go eSIM only in more countries

November 26, 2024
MacRumors is reporting that the iPhone 17 “Air” and other models will go eSIM only in more countries. This rumour pops up every year stating that the next bunch of iPhones will drop the physical SIM in many countries, in addition to the US. My first reaction is to dread the day this will happen, but then, on second thought, this isn’t going to be as bad as it sounds. I have been lucky enough to do a bit of travelling in the past few years. And have used an eSIM in every single country apart from one - Egypt.…

iPhone 16 Pro Max Review

November 4, 2024
The iPhones look the same, there is no innovation, Apple sells the same phone every year. We have all heard statements like this and are almost tired of them. But is there any truth to it? Should Apple even be releasing iPhones yearly? Like it or not, the new iPhones are here, and I have been using the iPhone 16 Pro Max since day one. It's very similar to the outgoing iPhone 15 Pro Max, but there are a few cool new features too—let's dig in. The Design The last truly revolutionary change in the iPhone’s design occurred with the…