Apple Intelligence: First Look at New Features
Apple has introduced a suite of new features under its Apple Intelligence initiative, promising a more integrated and creative user experience. The new Image Playground allows users to remove objects from photos, create photo montages, and more. Similarly, Genomoji enables users to design custom emojis for use across devices. While these tools unlock exciting creative possibilities, this post takes a closer look at Writing Tools and Siri.
These features are currently in beta and accessible only to users who join a watchlist. The application process is straightforward via the settings menu, it took us less than 30 minutes for approval. Contrary to early speculation, Apple Intelligence is fully accessible in the EU, however, language support remains limited to English (US), with no functionality for English (UK) or other languages.
Writing Tools: Promising but Restricted
Writing Tools are designed to streamline text-based tasks with the features like Proofread, Rewrite, Summarize, and Make Professional. While these tools perform well in standard text input fields across macOS and web apps, they currently fall short in specialized environments such as VS Code and the desktop versions of Slack. Here's a breakdown of what works well and where improvements are needed:
Pros:
• Contextual rewriting intelligently preserves links and attachments.
• Tailored suggestions allow users to apply edits selectively or all at once.
• Developers can exclude specific content (e.g., coding blocks) from rewriting, making Writing Tools more practical for fields with mixed content types.
Cons:
• Lack of customization - users can’t input their own prompts for more nuanced edits.
• Sometimes show unexpected warning messages or errors, even though the task is usually performed correctly.
Proofreading and the preselected re-writting options stand out as the most practical and polished features, offering real value for users. However, its full potential is hindered by limited adoption in key platforms. It’s likely only a matter of time before popular software catches up, and this feature sends a clear message to companies like Grammarly: the pressure is on.
Siri and App Intents: A Missed Opportunity
Siri’s integration with App Intents holds significant potential to close gaps in automation and boost productivity. Unfortunately, Siri's current performance falls short of expectations:
• Underwhelming Performance: Siri fails with simple tasks like finding a recipe online and generating a shopping list for the required ingredients. More advanced capabilities, such as searching for specific files on macOS, are still unsupported.
• Limited Contextual Understanding: While Apple promises Siri 2.0 will deliver personalized context and deeper app integration, its current underwhelming performance casts doubt on these ambitions.
That said, the App Intents framework has the potential to be transformative. It allows developers to integrate key app features for seamless interaction across devices, but its success hinges on Siri’s improvements. Meanwhile, Apple now faces growing competition from Anthropic's Model Context Protocol (MCP), an open standard designed to seamlessly connect large language model (LLM) applications with external data sources and tools in a streamlined and scalable way.
MCP offers a consistent framework for enabling AI to access and interact with diverse services, whether for powering IDEs, enhancing chat interfaces, or managing complex workflows. Featured servers already include Slack, GitHub, and Google Drive, highlighting the rising demand for AI solutions that effectively bridge the gap between data and applications—an area where Siri must evolve rapidly to remain competitive.
Other Features and Observations
• Notification Summaries: provide concise, context-aware summaries of app content, offering a synthesized way to view key information at a glance.
• Messaging: Critical messages can override Focus settings, and smart replies offer context-aware suggestions for quicker responses.
• Web Summarization: webpage summarization works effectively on pages where Safari's Reader View is available.
• Privacy: Apple introduces a downloadable JSON privacy report, adding transparency to its operations.
The Verdict
While Apple Intelligence introduces features that expand creative and productivity tools, its offerings feel more iterative than groundbreaking. Writing Tools show promise but need refinement, and Siri's underperformance undermines the potential of App Intents. The upcoming updates later this year may bring more substantial improvements, but for now, this is an evolution, not a revolution, in Apple's AI journey.
