Rui CarmoBesides the showmanship demonstrated by the keynote opening (nice touches there, Tim) and the visual effect when you open it, the iPhone Duo is… strangely familiar, and yet, somehow just strange as well:
- I am not a fan of the weird signal/battery status bar indicator or the vertical dock, although the ergonomics of moving toolbars there are undeniable–the bottom-right buttons are going to be very hard to reach single-handedly, though
- I am a fan of having Touch ID back, as well as the under-display camera (which I suspect will eventually find its way downrange over the next few years)
- I kept wanting to see the typing experience in “laptop” mode and Apple Pencil support (Apple says support for the USB-C Pencil is coming later this year)
Most of the UX we saw so far was both predictable and familiar to anyone who’s played with a Samsung Z Fold (Apple did not invent screen splits, app swaps or drag and drop), and so was the camera placement.
Oh, and the price, of course. Definitely not a surprise even if shocking.
It won’t stop a lot of people, even if it is about as much as a couple of (sorry, three or four) iPad minis, but I am definitely not getting one–nor any other iPhone this year. Nor AirPods either, given I have excellent open ear $50 earbuds.
But I am interested in the new Watch, both due to the improved heart rate tracking and battery life (the dark bronze look and redesign versus my Series 9 doesn’t hurt either).
I am, however, more than a bit put off by the Live Rewind and Recap features, simply because it doesn’t sit well with me to have anything listening constantly, even if with a short retention window (Apple says these are opt-in and raw audio is deleted after processing).
That said, as it happens I have been investigating how to duplicate the Index 01 smart ring’s (deliberate) press-and-hold recording and transcription for notes with my Watch, so I found the feature intellectually interesting.
But I find it incredibly frustrating that Apple consistently fails to get even the basics right.
For instance, currently my voice memos from the Watch are neither transcribed nor synced to my Mac (Apple says they should sync), and Apple’s unwillingness to do any sort of useful automation on the Watch has become a huge turn-off.
Remember when Workflow ran on the Watch before they acquired it and nerfed it into Shortcuts? Those were the days.
Update: I forgot to mention that, obviously, none of the AI features are going to be available in the EU. Which only makes the lack of flexibility and automation all the more annoying, because I can’t even script sending audio to my own endpoints to process.
Update 2: Apple has released a whitepaper on Audio Intelligence Privacy that outlines how it works and how audio is handled on-device with only condensed, generalized and encrypted transcripts making it to their private cloud compute (where it is actually summarized), and… Well, OK, fine, I guess. It does require opt-in.
Update 3: Yes, I am aware quite a few of the outdoor sequences for some of the new adverts were shot in Lisbon, thank you–I cannot claim any influence in their picking at least 2 spots within walking distance from my house, though…