Thread

1. hbn · 1790009859 · focus · HN ↗

   I'll say they definitely need to let people disable/offload the model, but if you haven't tried the new Siri, it's been great. Obviously it's not a state of the art LLM, but it's good enough, and the fact that it can search and take actions on your local data makes it incredibly useful. I definitely use it more on my iPhone where it's slower to get things done the traditional way, but I use it all the time now.

   "What was the quote for my insurance claim?" - it'll look through your emails and pull the number with the source email so you can jump right to it.

   The other day I asked "when did I arrive and leave Mexico City on my trip at the end of 2024?" and it nailed it based off my flight receipt.

   Since learning Spanish I get a lot more Spanish stuff in my feeds, and if I e.g. don't understand a meme I'll just ask "explain the joke here" and it reads the screen and explains it.

   You can have an article open in Safari and say "remind me to read this tonight" and it'll make a reminder with the link. Or you can modify reminders - "move my reminder to get groceries to tomorrow at the same time". Yesterday I told it to make me a reminder and it did, but I worded it in a clunky way so I followed it with "reword that to sound more natural" and it did it.

   We've been trained for a long time to think Siri can't do anything but I urge you to try it once you're on the new one, it's quite good. And I'm sure I've barely touched all the things it can do. David Pogue published a pretty thorough test other day:

   <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;pogueman.substack.com&#x2F;p&#x2F;125-tests-of-the-new-ai-siri" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;pogueman.substack.com&#x2F;p&#x2F;125-tests-of-the-new-ai-siri

   1. alwillis · 1790014365 · focus · HN ↗

      A couple of things I&#x27;ve done with Apple Intelligence on the Mac:

      * When I need a prescription refilled, the quickest way is to message my doctor using the patient portal. I created a Shortcut that lets me pick among 5 medications; Apple Intelligence then generates a message with the request to the clipboard which I paste into the message field and send.

      * I have a Shortcut that creates a morning summary: Apple Intelligence generates the weather report. I also get what’s on today&#x27;s calendar and any current or past-due Reminders.

      Just scratching the surface here; will flesh these out more later and create some new ones now that I&#x27;m running the release version of Golden Gate and not the beta.

      1. vinni2 · 1790017508 · focus · HN ↗

         Not sure if I want Siri to know my prescription medication.

         1. alwillis · 1790023453 · focus · HN ↗

            &gt; Not sure if I want Siri to know my prescription medication.

            Using Shortcuts, a user can use the Cloud model via Private Cloud Compute, the Cloud Pro with &quot;world knowledge, and the on-device model. It occurred to me I probably don&#x27;t need the Cloud; I switched to the on-device model, which worked fine.

            There&#x27;s no way for Siri or anybody else to know anything about a transaction using Private Cloud Compute:

                We designed Private Cloud Compute to make several guarantees about
                the way it handles user data [1]:
                
                A user’s device sends data to PCC for the sole, exclusive purpose of
                fulfilling the user’s inference request. PCC uses that data only to
                perform the operations requested by the user. User data stays on the
                PCC nodes that are processing the request only until the response is
                returned. PCC deletes the user’s data after fulfilling the request,
                and no user data is retained in any form after the response is
                returned. User data is never available to Apple — even to staff with
                administrative access to the production service or hardware.
            
            

            [1]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;security.apple.com&#x2F;blog&#x2F;private-cloud-compute&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;security.apple.com&#x2F;blog&#x2F;private-cloud-compute&#x2F;

            1. vinni2 · 1790024692 · focus · HN ↗

               I am sorry no amount of assurances from any company is going to make me reveal my medical information to products from any tech company.

               1. alwillis · 1790045783 · focus · HN ↗

                  &gt; I am sorry no amount of assurances from any company is going to make me reveal my medical information to products from any tech company.

                  Unlike your insurance provider or credit card company, which keep your prescription details, Apple Intelligence deletes the data once you receive a response—a fact Apple could verify if necessary.

                  It appears I did not need the cloud; my prescription information stayed on my iPhone to create the request, thanks to the Apple Foundation models running locally.

                  1. vinni2 · 1790053273 · focus · HN ↗

                     Luckily I live in a country with universal healthcare and our pharmacies don’t transmit prescription medication info to credit cards. They just show some prescription medication was purchased

                     1. pseudosaid · 1790059841 · focus · HN ↗

                        what a cute anecdote. much success to your assurances
      2. hbn · 1790018947 · focus · HN ↗

         The Apple Intelligence Shortcuts creation is great as well. I never had a desire to learn their visual programming language so I mostly ignored Shortcuts. Now it&#x27;s one-shot some really handy utilities for me.

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