At Apple's annual Worldwide Developers Conference,
the world's once most valuable company finally drank the AI Kool-Aid
after being usurped by First Microsoft and then in Vidya,
in terms of the world's most valuable companies. And now, all the Apple faithful
will drink this Kool-Aid too. Apple Intelligence is the company's new set of features
and tools that leverage, primarily, Apple's own custom models running on device.
But they also announced Private Cloud Compute, a brand new standard for privacy in AI,
which reportedly extends your privacy bubble to include some server space.
Apple said that unless a given server's security has been verified by them,
Apple devices will cryptographically refuse to talk to them,
a phrase that I'm definitely going to steal. Use it for under your in-laws.
I cryptographically refuse. Yeah, Apple took great pains this morning
to assure everyone that if this all fails to respect user privacy, Craig Federighi will commit Sudoku
with a new Apple pencil. He's a deeply troubled man. So what are these Apple Intelligence features?
Well, Siri has a new icon. It's AI generated.
No, Siri has basically taken the Bradley Cooper
limitless drug and can now retain more context
and conversations, use what it sees on your screen and all the info it knows about you,
AKA personal context, to search for stuff and perform cross-app actions.
You could ask Siri in messages to add this address to Damien's contact card.
Now show me photos of him in a pink coat. Now edit it and make it pop.
Now add this to my note where I'm collecting details about his life,
at which point Siri would probably start feeling uncomfortable
if it could feel. But it can't yet. I'm still better. Developers can define actions like these
with the App Intense API. So this kind of power won't be limited to just Apple apps.
Nor will the new system-wide generative writing tools
like rewrite, proofread, summarize, and smart reply,
which have wonderfully descriptive names and will work across any app.
Image Playground, meanwhile, is a standalone app
for generating images in three available styles
based on discrete concepts you select
rather than a written prompt. It runs entirely on device
and so can theoretically be used to generate images forever.
It can be hooked into from other apps like Messages and can even generate images of people in your photo library
to really give your stalking report some extra pizzazz.
This is what I imagine they look like in my head. Also, I'm a cat.
You can also generate emoji. So they called them GenMoji.
Frankly, I think Apple could do better. Photos now has a cleanup, which is just magic eraser,
as well as natural language search for photos and videos
and a feature that will create a slideshow movie with music based on a prompt.
There's a handful of other OS features like mail summaries, priority notifications,
and the focus feature using AI to determine which messages are okay to distract you with.
But wait, what about that open AI deal? Well, if Siri's brain juice is wearing thin,
she'll ask you if she can ask ChatGPT for help.
The chatbot can also be accessed through the aforementioned writing tools
with no open AI account required, although paid subscribers can link their account
to access their benefits. Now, Apple says all of this will be available to try this summer, launching as a beta with iOS 18
in the fall. Sadly, Apple did not mention working on AI-powered robots,
although IMO, it is getting harder and harder to believe Craig is a real person.
He's too perfect. No man was born with those eyebrows.
Now, that was all the AI stuff. Apple also announced miscellaneous updates
to their various OSes, including a lightning round
of Vision OS 2 updates for the tens of Vision Pro users
although that figure will go up now that Vision Pro is coming to more countries, sadly.
Just imagine, instead of tens, they could have dozens of users.
You can now look at photos with other Vision Pro users
so you can relive your daughter's first steps while also staring at your mother's dystopian cyber ghost.
I don't know, Apple moved on from all this quick, so I will too. iOS 18 will give iPhone users a taste
of Android's custom color themes for app icons, customization of the quick settings.
I mean, control center, although you can also adjust widget size there,
so fair enough, and the ability to hide apps in a locked folder.
Developers can also allow their apps to privately pair with certain devices
instead of the user pairing the device on a system level,
which sounds more secure, I think.
Messages now supports text formatting, fun new little text effects, message scheduling,
which they call send later, and messaging via satellite.
That will definitely feel cooler.
It's going to space, nice. Mail has categories now,
which I'm surprised it didn't have already. Tap to cash will let iPhone users
ape the old way we used to transfer money, and iOS 18 has a game mode now,
because real gamers use Apple, and they are valid.
But what about the really big iPhones? That's right, iPads.
Many iPad OS apps will now have an Apple TV-esque floating tab bar,
which morphs into the sidebar, and you'll be able to draw while sharing your screen and share play,
but most important of all, at long last.
iPad has a calculator app. I'm not crying.
I kind of forgive Apple for taking so long because it's got a feature called Math Notes
that looks sick. It will execute handwritten calculations,
generate interactive graphs, and even create contextual sliders
to modify values that you wrote in there. Fine, Apple, whatever, okay?
It's cool. In Notes, you can train the SmartScript feature
on your own handwriting, and then it will conform your hasty, messy handwriting
into that style, along with text you paste, and then you can just scribble to delete,
which is not as cool as making the other end of the pencil and eraser, but I'll take it.
And then of course, we have the new macOS Sequoia,
which will support full-on iPhone mirroring, complete with full-screen control, audio,
and the ability to drag and drop files
directly into iPhone apps from your Mac. At this point in the presentation,
Craig force-grabbed his iPhone for no reason,
and unironically, that was just funny and cool,
and I just wanted to tell you about it. Moving on. macOS will finally have Windows-style window snapping,
along with an actual passwords manager called Passwords,
and Safari will have these contextual highlights and page summaries.
Now, last couple things here, Assassin's Creed Shadows will come out on Mac,
AirPods will let you nod or shake your head
to tell Siri yes or no, so you don't have to talk to her in public,
because that's embarrassing. And WatchOS 11 will come with a new vitals app
that can monitor your vitals and tell you if something's off,
and that sounds potentially life-saving, while the new effort rating that tells you
whether you're slacking in the fitness department just sounds judgy, which is a perfect way
to end the Apple stuff. Time to move on, let's go.
Don't judge me, Craig. Graphics card manufacturer PowerColor is using AI
to make AMD Radeon GPUs much more power efficient.
Now, there are some downsides, mostly that PowerColor is naming the technology Edge AI.
My response to that is no thank you. I don't want to get edge by AI.
PowerColor claims that by equipping Radeon graphics cards
with an NPU from AI partner Canaron, maybe,
running Cyberpunk and Final Fantasy XV consumes about 22% less power.
This is likely due to Edge AI putting the GPUs into what some researchers call a goon state.
Impressively, those numbers are even higher than what can apparently be achieved
by AMD's own power saving feature. Having said that, the Edge AI does have a slight effect
on frame rate based on live demos from PowerColor's booth at Computex.
Two systems running the Final Fantasy XV benchmark were shown, the system without the NPU
achieved 118 FPS while consuming 338 Watts.
The system with the NPU only consumed 261 Watts
while maxing out at an FPS of 107, not bad.
But these results seem to be from Edge AI's ECO mode,
which is meant to be more power efficient. According to Canaron, there is also apparently a boost mode
for high performance and stability, which is good
because I've heard things can get unstable if you edge too much.
Quick bits, oh yeah, I've got quick bits.
Do you, do you want them?
AMD's upcoming Ryzen 9000 X3D series CPUs
may be coming up much sooner than you think. An allegedly trustworthy source told outlet Club 386
that Team Red's next 3D vCache-equipped chips
could launch just two months after the 9000 non-X3D processors.
And that would be particularly impressive since AMD told PC Gamer they're making big improvements
to their X3D line from last time. Now this probably means they found a workaround
for the 3D vCache's higher thermal resistance allowing for higher boost clocks.
I mean, it's not like they've cracked the fourth dimension.
Unless, hello science, I'd like to report a time crime.
There Jacob, I did it, okay, I did it. While this weekend's Xbox showcase came and went
without the rumored reveal of an Xbox handheld,
Xbox chief Phil Spencer kind of basically
mostly confirmed it existed during an IGN live interview.
Not only did Philium Wallace say the hardware team
at Xbox is working on different form factors, but he literally said he thinks
Xbox should have a handheld. And he's in charge of those things.
And he's- So we should have a handheld? I think so.
I think we should have a handheld. Do you want to say anything about it? No, I don't want to say anything.
Since he's the boss, that should mean we're getting one
unless he doesn't realize he's the boss of Xbox.
I mean, for all we know, he might think he's just a model for casual jackets.
He looks good. Privacy officials in Canada and the UK
are launching a joint investigation into 23andMe's recent data breach
to determine if the company had adequate safeguards to keep client information secure
and whether they alerted authorities and affected clients within a reasonable timeframe.
Whatever safeguards there were clearly weren't adequate
in the sense that sensitive data from 6.9 million clients was stolen
despite only 14,000 accounts being compromised.
And it apparently took around five months before the company noticed. But maybe the British have some other definition
of what adequate means, like how they call them biscuits instead of cookies.
You know, we don't know how it works over there. I think everything's upside down.
Rubber beans eraser. Oh, I made a mistake. Have you got a rubber?
Windows isn't the only OS getting ARM-based laptops.
Linux notebook manufacturer Tuxedo is apparently also getting in on the fun.
They unveiled a prototype laptop at Computex featuring a Snapdragon X Elite SoC.
Tuxedo is currently working on porting their in-house Tuxedo OS
Linux distribution to ARM architecture, but the notebook should be ready by Christmas.
That means that this year, San is gonna give us a multitude of comments online
saying how Windows on ARM is so much worse
than Linux on ARM. We know it's gonna happen. Oh, oh, oh, I use Arch.
Did you know? And Nokia says that it has made the first phone call
using 3D spatial audio, using the Immersive Video and Audio Services,
or EVOS codec. Sure.
The EVOS codec is part of an upcoming upgrade to 5G cellular networks that's supposed to be faster,
more efficient, and better at cellular positioning,
which is big news for fans of not dying because an ambulance can't find you.
According to Nokia, spatial audio could be enabled for most phones
with two or more microphones. This would give calls a richer quality
and allow users to deploy Google's new audio fart emoji
with surround sound reverb.
Whoa, I feel like I'm there. But there's no audio emoji for the tech news,
so you'll just have to come back on Wednesday for another episode of TechLinked.
Nothing can be done. I mean, we'll work on it.
I could make a genmoji for it. I'm stupid.