It’s no secret that this year Apple focused on enhancements and bug fixes for all of their operating systems. As a writer, there are several things that stood out throughout the beta process, and now that these features are public, I wanted to share them with other writers.
The best feature has to be Siri AI. The new version of Siri is now more useful than Apple’s AI has ever been. With baked-in intelligence and a new index of everything on your device, Siri can do so much more. I honestly stopped using other AI clients for day-to-day information and automation tasks. For years, what kept Siri behind other AI chatbots and digital assistants was that it was unable to know anything about you. That was done to protect user privacy. Apple this year has found a way to run their new Siri AI framework on your device, where it is encrypted and no one other than you has access to the data. When more advanced frameworks are needed, Apple uses end-to-end encryption to connect to a “Private Compute Server” in Apple’s data centers. These servers were designed to only be able to store information for the time it takes to complete the task asked of it before the server is wiped. This network is independently verified and can be checked by industry watchdogs to verify Apple’s claims of privacy and encryption. To put this in terms that anyone can understand, if you want to set an appointment based on an email with someone but you don’t know when the email was sent or where you are meeting the person, you can ask Siri to look for an email from the person and add the appointment and location to your calendar. Siri will process your email, find the details, and create a calendar appointment all based on that simple request. It is truly amazing and functions without a hitch most of the time. I was on the beta since June, and out of the hundreds of requests I’ve made to Siri AI, only five or six came back with an odd error, but that was beta.
Proofreading and rewriting is one of the most useful features of the latest operating systems. This feature replaced the writing tools feature in last year’s operating systems. Apple Intelligence is automatically checking as you type for grammar and spelling. A double click anywhere brings up a contextual menu, and the first option is Ask Siri. In this box you simply say proofread or rewrite, and Apple Intelligence can automatically give you suggestions to improve your writing. You can also ask Siri “how does this sound,” and Siri will just give you editorial suggestions to improve the tone. I still don’t plan to replace my human editor with Siri AI, but as a first pass, it makes my work more polished.
When I write in this blog, I typically always use AI to generate thumbnail images. Apple’s enhanced Image Playground is able to do a much better job this year. The images can look more photorealistic if you want and can incorporate multiple people. All this can be touched up with a simple description of the change that you want to be made. I can’t wait to see the images that I will be able to create.
While on the subject of images, last year Apple came out with a Clean Up feature in Photos to remove clutter from the background of pictures. This year their frameworks have been enhanced and the edits look so much more natural. Two new features join the Clean Up feature: Expand and Reframe. Expand allows you to take a photo and expand it. The space that is expanded will be filled in by Apple Intelligence using the Private Compute Servers to guess what the expanded space would look like. The other feature builds on Expand. If you take a picture and let’s say it would look better if you would’ve framed the subject lower in the frame, you can use Reframe to change the angle of the subject. The same servers will adjust the background to blend into the image. In both cases, Expand and Reframe are amazing. The pictures are flawless, and unless you were told that they were edited, you’d never know.
As a writer, I very seldom work at my desk all day. I have meetings, or work in several locations. Often I have to take my devices to different locations where they are connected to cellular or another Wi-Fi network. With the latest version of the operating systems, the transitions between cellular or wireless networks are more intelligent and smoother. Hopping from one to the other is just as seamless as we always hoped for with a wireless device.
I saved the most important feature for last. Apple has strengthened the privacy allowing all these aforementioned features without making our data accessible to anyone, even Apple. This makes Apple a clear winner in security and privacy. When your manuscript is on the line, all that hard work, you want it to remain private and secure until it’s released.
Have you tried Apple’s new operating systems? What is the feature that stood out to you the most?
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