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The best thing Apple Intelligence can do is hide your incompetence

Apple's ad for Apple Intelligence don't really give a reason why you would want to use it, unless you're incompetent.

Nick Broughall

Nov 1, 2024 • 9 min read

Apple has been going hard with its computing updates this week, sticking the new M4 processor into iMacs, Mac Minis and MacBook Pros.

Across all three announcements, plus the iPhone 16 and 16 Pro Max release before it, was the inclusion of – or, dare I say, focus on – Apple Intelligence.

For anyone who happens to be reading this and missed it over the past few months, Apple Intelligence is Apple's take on AI features. It was unveiled at WWDC this year, and a core part of the launch of the new iPhones this year, despite the fact it wasn't ready when the phones launched.

In fact, Apple Intelligence only launched this week for the US. Australians can expect it to roll out in December, though you can technically change your device's language to access it now.

Given there's been a big focus on having Apple Intelligence across its devices, you would think Apple would be able to tell you why you might want it, right?

Wrong.

Please enjoy the Apple's ads for Apple Intelligence. Once you've watched them, come on back for my rant.

Apple Intelligence: Your solve for incompetence

For a technology that is supposed to be the future, Apple is sure struggling to show how it can actually help real, normal people.

I know these ads are meant to be light-hearted attempts to amuse and intrigue. But I also know that so much of what is being sold to us as "AI" is unintelligible, generic slop that would make pre-schoolers embarrassed.

I had hoped that Apple – being so late to market with its AI offering – would at least have the marketing power to convince people why its Apple Intelligence is worth using.

And it hasn't. At all.

The two people highlighted in these two ads are, at best, incompetent. The first, "Warren", is not someone you should employ. Lazy, distracted, useless… he's the office worker nobody likes because he doesn't lift his weight.

He should be let go, but instead, he "impresses" his boss because he used Apple Intelligence to rewrite a text message-style email.

I'm sorry, but if that's the best scenario Apple can use to sell the world on its AI functionality, then I am the personification of disappointment.

But Warren pales in comparison to the second character, whose solution to forgetting her husband's birthday is to create a crappy movie in Apple Photos.

I've been married for 16 years now, and nobody has even come close to forgetting a birthday. Unless there's a medical cause, I'm confident I would never forget my wife's birthday. The concept is absurd.

But all the absurdity and light heartedness is adjacent to the main point. The best examples Apple could come up with to sell Apple Intelligence was re-writing emails or creating a movie from photos – both of which are features that have been around for years.

These are not unique features. And I truly doubt Apple has introduced anything groundbreaking to make its offering any better than the likes of Samsung or ChatGPT.

Which really comes down to the big issue with AI, doesn't it? It's a solution to a problem that doesn't exist.

There are some things that "AI" does that are quite remarkable – features like transcribing or translation in real time are genuinely useful. But they have a narrow focus – I lamented in my review of the Galaxy Z Fold6 that as good as the twin screen Interpreter function was, "for most people, it's a cool feature [most people] won't use".

But most of the features being sold to us with AI, and now "Apple Intelligence", are poor attempts at creation, which cannot compare with the skill involved from a talented human hand.

Which makes it little more than something to hide incompetence. Is that what we want?

This week in tech

Apple's week of Mac updates dominated this week's news coverage.

This week's reviews

It was a busy week for reviews. I may have too many products to have to test and write up at the moment... Including the new Kindle PaperWhite, which I unboxed this week.

Fetch TV Mini G5

DJI Neo

DJI Power 500

Thanks for reading

I'm actually trialling something a bit new with this week's newsletter, with a section just for the paid subscribers below. Hopefully the bugs stay away.

I haven't settled on exactly what it's going to include from week to week, but this week there are a bunch of great deals, a roundup of some excellent coverage from other independent media outlets and some previews of upcoming reviews.

As always, I'd love to hear your thoughts on this week's newsletter, or even some input on what you'd like to see in next week's roundup.

Until next week

Nick @ BTTR