Good morning. Welcome to Comfort Zone.
I'm Chris Lawley. No, I'm Matt.
I'm doing the intro even though all three of us are here.
And it's only because Chris is coming to us live from
California, as I guess he always does, but without his studio
quality mic. Except.
Excuse me, Apple would disagree. These are studio quality
microphones. I am, I am coming to you live
not from the center of California, but Northern
California because I am on the ground floor in my hotel room
because my 2 Co hosts decided to start this recording at 6:00 AM
Apple Park time. And I and and it's Apple Park
doesn't open up for me until till 7:00.
So I was going to do a whole bit where I was filming recording
the podcast at Apple Park and probably gets told by security
at some point to stop, but yeah. Yeah.
But I'm in my hotel room. Well, welcome, Chris.
Thank you for making it. We're also joined by Neil Leon.
Neil Leon, how are you? Hello.
I'm fine, I'm fine. Finer than last year's WWE.
Excellent. This We were sitting there
watching this keynote and I was like, this is Neilion's iPad OS
26. No, I don't think so, but.
She got it a lot quicker than what I got.
IPad OS 20 like I. You had to wait.
One year, yeah. One year, yeah.
I had to wait a 10. I was telling some Apple people
I'm like, this is the first time going into a WWDC.
I'm not stressing about the iPad.
Wow, that's, yeah, that's a first.
I I think we should just get into it and talk about some of
the things. WWC.
We have a loose outline, but I wanted to start by saying this
was a weird presentation for someone who's used to it being a
certain way where they have a title card that says this is the
platform and here's the features.
And those features happen to be on everything anyway.
But that's how they broke it down.
And this year they were like, here is Chris's Apple OS 27 and
it is the same on everything. All these features are
everywhere. And we're literally not even
going to talk any about any differences.
We're not. We're just going to show the
things off. So, Chris, do you feel
vindicated? I do that word cloud slide of
like here's all the features and even that's still not
everything. I took that.
I threw it into codecs, had codecs basically break all the
features up and sort it. And a vast majority of them are
on every platform. There are some that are only on
one, there's some that are on 2. There's some that are like like
iPad, Mac and iPhone but not watching TVOSTVOS did get 7 new
features by the way. We can spend an hour talking
about that. I know you guys would rather
spend an hour talking about corner radiuses.
I saw that and I was like, oh God, that's all comfort zone is
going to be for the next 6 months.
But yeah, no, like I, I, it's not the Apple OS in name, but
it's definitely like like I see the trajectory like I don't, I
really do think like at some point like Darwin and all that
stuff will need to be updated for the next phase of
technology. And at that point, why build 3
separate OSS would? You update the theory of
evolution. Chris because Darwin.
That dude was nuts. Are we cancelling Darwin now?
Oh, no, yeah. How should we cancel Darwin?
I love when the episode title just so clearly it happens right
at the start. This is a good OK.
Can I say something? Please.
OK, I, I, I don't really care about your outline.
I'm sure that's but yes, it's. Fine, I assumed yes, yes.
But what I want to say is I would like, so this is like an
official statement in picture me in front of like a podium or
something. I would like to extend a
symbolic massive middle finger to everyone last year who has
kept telling me that Oh no, the floating sidebars are fine,
they're really nice. They look nice, actually.
You should just get used to it. And when I was making arguments
on Masonone as well as on this show about how it doesn't make
sense in terms of both user experience, but also like in
terms of visual coherence to have a floating sidebar, people
were like, no, no, no, you don't understand Apple's genius.
They know what they're doing and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,
blah, blah. So massive middle finger to you
all. I still love you, but still.
And yes, now what are you going to do?
What are you going to do, you all?
What are you going to say now that Apple itself has agreed
with me and decided that yes, it sucked and we should revert that
floating sidebars. No, no, no, no, no.
Nobody wants that. I, I, I mean, I love vindicated
Neil Leon. Yeah, yeah.
You got floating sidebars, You got a slider?
You got my video just froze for some reason because hand
reactions happened. You're still good for us.
OK, OK. All right.
That was weird. But you got floating sidebars
are gone, you got corner radius is fixed.
You got a slide bar for liquid glass to the point where if you
slide it all the way to the other end, I think what have you
said in our group chat sorry I haven't caught up this one.
I literally jumped in the shower, threw on clothes and
jumped on the call. It's very early here, but what
have you said? It looks like tiger right?
That's. Smith on, I think I agree.
Like the they've also updated the look of the buttons
generally and the fields. So now they have like some the
way they shine is very different from last year.
It looks very bubbly, much more like bubblier than last year,
because last year, I mean in Tahoe and 26, all the buttons
are flat. Like when they're against the
white background especially or even the dark background, the
buttons are all flat. Now they have some kind of 3D
aspect to them, even when they are on top of nothing basically,
and it looks a lot like the Aqua buttons of old, somebody said on
my son they look lickable and yes.
Yeah, lickable. I will say this computer is not
on the beta yet. What?
But my MacBook Neo is, my iPhone is, my iPad is and my Vision Pro
R and I messed around with the slider and I tried some things
out and I am currently using them all on maximum
Transparency, which is still better than normal transparency
last year. And it's because of those
things. Yeah, it's they are doing
whatever they're doing with the refraction of the stuff behind
it is easier to read. If it's a problem for you, you
can still slide and it'll be like super opaque and that's
fine. But for me there aren't as many
issues with it. Maybe I'll find more as I use it
more, but like the initial reaction is actually this is
better. And the, a low key thing that
has made it much nicer is there's a little outline around
every button. Now that is, I think it's
supposed to just look like the glass kind of falling off, but
it's, it's just an outline. And that goes a long way to
making it more defined and just feel more like, I don't know,
buttons in an interface, which they're supposed to be.
And the low key best thing is, you know, that stupid thing last
year where they, there were these like in the toolbar, the
buttons were just floating and all your, your, your content
would go under them and they would like fade and they would
kind of like be this gradient fade.
That was just horrible. Now there's a fixed line with a
background that, even on the maximum transparency, is pretty
darn opaque, so your buttons are legible.
It's it's a small thing, but it it goes.
A long way I I was listening to ATP this morning and John, so
your recuser said turns out tool toolbars need to look like bars.
Yes, But yes, the the way they they were dealing with so in in
26 the buttons they did not have an outline and the way they were
dealing with that is massive drop shadows around everything.
Yes. You, I'm opening Finder right
now. The buttons in the toolbar,
they, they all have massive drop shadows and that's the only way
that you were able to tell that there's like there's something
there. So now, and I've looked at many
screenshots yesterday and today, it seemed like all the drop
shadows are gone, at least for those elements, the buttons and
the fields and the toolbar elements, etcetera.
The shadows are gone. It's just a thin outline and it
does the job well. Yeah, I, I, I'm pretty sure
that's the case. Again, I don't have that one in
front of me, but I took a screenshot earlier and I I'm
pretty happy. Pretty happy with it, yeah.
Did, did you guys see the iPad even became a little more Mac
like this year as well? The menu bar is now shifted.
It's left aligned and you can set it up so that the menu bar
items are always present. But for some reason that's I, I,
yeah, I either don't understand how that's working or it's
broken in the beta for me because if I toggle that
setting, they still disappear. So I, I have a briefing later
today that I will ask about that, but yeah, it all they need
to do is move the time and date over to the right side and it's
just the Mac menu bar at that point.
It's kind of weird that they did this and kept the time on the
left. I know I.
Kind of thought the same thing. I kind of thought the same
thing. I really wouldn't be surprised
if next year moves over or even maybe in the middle of this beta
it moves over. I really wouldn't be surprised,
but I I really like it not being, you know, all in the
center now and it's a little smaller too.
It's it's maybe maybe I or maybe I, it's just my eyes and I'm not
comparing it. I don't have another iPad here
to compare it to, but it seems like it's a little more compact
and in line with the menu bar and not just kind of like this
tacked on thing. It feels more like it's supposed
to be there. Yeah.
Nice if we can delay the AI talk briefly.
OK. It's so obvious that we have
Touchmax coming this fall, right?
Oh my God, Touchmax and the dual screen iPhone.
If you look at the technical stuff, there's Drawing in Notes,
Drawing in free form on the Mac, there's what was it?
Sidecar better. Better, yeah, when you're using
Sidecar. Touch support, when you're using
Sidecar to be a second display for your Mac, you can just touch
it and swipe around everything just like you could if it was
the Mac screen itself. And then, yeah, the iPhone, they
were like, well now you've got your iPhone here and now, like
just what if it got like twice as wide all of a sudden?
What would that be like? So.
Now you can resize and for iPhone mirroring.
IPhone mirroring too. That was surprising, even if
your. Size I found mirroring and so
whatever app is running on your phone will just have a wider
aspect ratio and yeah and and you kind of and in 26.
I. Saw that they like the added
landscape orientation to a bunch of system apps as well.
So like Apple Music? File etcetera.
Sorry sorry if I keep talking over YouTube there is a massive.
Delay on my end. I'm I'm on hotel Wi-Fi There's
there's, there's, you know it is, it is what it is, but iPhone
apps on the iPad now can be resized as well and not just
like blown up. They can be like reshaped.
So that's kind of cool. It's it's still a little funky
like developers should really just make an iPad app looking at
you Notion calendar. I I would like to use you but
iPad, but yeah, so, so that, that's kind of cool.
Yeah, and again, iPhone apps are iPad apps, iPad apps are iPhone
apps. So this will just happen.
You don't even need the updates. And they're and they're Mac apps
as well. And.
They're Mac apps in a lot of cases, yes.
But yeah, it's super obvious it's happening and everyone will
be happy and I will get my vindication.
Oh, Chris, you got the iPad last year and Elion, you're getting
liquid glass this fall. And if I get Touch Max, it'll
just be a happy comfort zone. Yeah, what will we have to
complain about? We'll find people know, we'll
find something to complain about.
We'll have okay. Should we move on to Apple
Intelligence? Do we want to complain?
Please I have I have a lot of maybe.
One quick thing before we do that, so it's out of the way.
They had a whole section in the keynote about they called it
trust and safety. I believe, trust and whatever.
Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, the child protection.
And they unveiled a bunch of like massive, if I understand
correctly, enhancements to the to the how you can limit the
screen time of your children and how you can impose more limits
on like child accounts, which you can gradually upgrade of
time when the age up. Now there's the ability to
restrict websites as well, if I understand that correctly as
well. None of this has been tested by
anyone, so I'm just sitting off Apple from the from the keynote
anyway. So all of this is just
iterations, pretty big iterations to be fair, over
what's been there before. And I, I just can't help but
worry about like the political discourse that they've been
using in that presentation, for example, they, they kept saying
things like, who knows best than parents?
Well, who knows best than parents to for, for their
children. There's also 1.1 of the
presenters said, yeah, parents know something that along that I
don't remember specifically. But anyway.
And that's the kind of this is a discussion we already had on the
show right when we talked about age verification.
I think like I'm worried about this for for kids.
I cannot even begin to imagine what kind of life I would have
had if my parents had that kind of power over me when I was a
kid. And yeah, I saw a bunch of
people in Mastodon say the same thing.
Like there's massive, there's massive worry around this where
especially when talking about marginalized kids and queer kids
and etcetera. And the phrase parents know best
what's best for their children. Yeah.
Somebody posted this quote on Masonone, and with a line
underneath, queer kids have entered the chat.
Like if you're a queer kid, yeah, there's obviously some,
some families are accepting and it's great, but some families
are not. And then if you're a queer kid,
no, your parents probably don't know best what's best for you
anyway. So just wanted to mention that.
Yeah, I think it's wearing that Apple has fallen into this
narrative like they've had before, but now it's more
prominent. And I think it's also because
they're trying to come before all of the massive policy
changes around this around the world.
Yeah, it's, I mean, it's a tough thing if you have a kid with a
phone or an iPad, like you don't want them necessarily exposed to
the entire Internet all the time and you don't necessarily want
them messaging strangers. And like, so there is there are
reasonable limits. And I think especially from AUS
centric mindset, there's definitely the idea that we
don't want people outside the family making decisions.
Like government bodies, for example.
We definitely lean more towards yeah, parents making decisions
and everything. But like you said, there is a
line where they don't always know best, right?
For a lot of kids, they do. And like, you know, each family
has their own rules and systems and everything.
But yeah, so I don't know. I don't know how you balance
that perfectly. The one, the thing that's kind
of got me was the website limits, like setting you can set
it up so you can improve every single website they go to, which
seems a little crazy. And like, I can't imagine as
someone as as a kid how I would deal with that.
But I mean, you, you do like a Google search and then you like
open 5 tabs, right? And like, is that 5
notifications to your parents? Like they want to access all
these websites and like you don't even know what's on that
website yet. It's a little crazy.
So we'll see how it works in real life.
Like none of us have kids. So it's it's a little hard to
for me at least have a super strong opinion on it, but I
definitely. For yourself, I have Riley.
Sherman has no limits on his on his iPad, of course.
He's just buying all the microtransactions.
He is. So it's it's, I think it's kind
of one of those like impossible problems to get right for
everybody. So I hope they navigate it well
so that it it protects without endangering or restricting kids.
So I don't know what the solution is, but I was, I was
surprised. It was like a third of their
presentation, though that was surprising.
I think that's what I'm worried about the most because it used
to, it always used to be something like this kind of
features, but that it's become a like a first level title in the
presentation. And and also like, like I said,
the discourse that they used to justify and present the the set
of features that that that was worrying to me.
But yeah, we can move on to AI think we'll yeah, we'll we'll
talk about it more when we have more information.
Yeah. I got, I got 6 minutes left guys
before I have to bounce OK, all right.
What? What do you want to talk about,
Chris? Can I, can I just round off like
just rapid fire? A few things that I've learned
that are pretty interesting. Go ahead.
So the new on device model has let me pull it up here has a 20
billion parameter context window.
This is up from the four of the previous one.
That's why that's why the RAM increase happened.
Like you have to have 12 gigs of RAM to run this new the, the
high end on device Siri AI and the stuff I've seen so far and
I've only had, I haven't had the full Siri AI briefing yet.
I've had the Apple intelligence briefing and this is where it
gets really confusing. But the stuff I've seen so far
from the on device model, very impressive.
Like I'm I'm actually really impressed with it.
The new shortcuts stuff is interesting.
Shortcuts now defaults when you hit the plus button to create a
shortcut. It now defaults to the natural
language input so that it it you just type in what you want the
shortcut to be and it'll build it for you for simple shortcuts
and kind of like intermediate shortcuts, simple shortcuts that
should get it in one shot like no problem.
Intermediate shortcuts, it might get it in one shot.
You might have to go into the editor and like fix a couple of
things and advance shortcuts. It falls down like if you tell
it to make Federico's Apple frames, it ain't going to do
that. If you tell it to make my
snippet cut shortcut, it's not going to do that.
From what I understand. And this this could be wrong
because I've got mixed information, but the reliable
information that I have heard is that this doesn't work with
third party actions. And I haven't had a chance to a
chance to fully test that. In fact, actually, let me see if
I can just test that right now. But let's let's just test it
right now. Let's do a live on air make a
shortcut so that wait, do I have to do this on this machine
still? Nope.
What's a what's a make a shortcut so that I can enter an
event for fantastic Cal all right, so let's see if that
works. I should have tested that
before, but it's been a crazy I guys.
I didn't leave Apple park until 8:30 last night.
I got there at 7:30 AM and I didn't leave until 8:30.
OK so OK so I told it about Fantastic Health and it said to
create a shortcut using that app you will need to use the editor
so it does not work with third party apps.
Or maybe does maybe? Does that maybe mean that the
developer needs to update something?
Maybe, but I mean all the actions are there.
Like if this was an on device thing it would be able to just
see what actions were on device and and go from there.
The other thing I was told, but I haven't figured out how to
make it happen, is that you should be able to create
extensions on iPad and iPhone too.
In Safari. In Safari, yeah.
But I haven't figured out. I think that I think that person
might have been confused because I haven't figured out how to do
that just yet. And if again, I've had very,
very little time to do anything with this.
Yeah, it doesn't seem to be in the first developer beta that
functionality at all. So it's not even in the Mac OS
beta. And yes, I think I've seen it.
I've seen people use it actually on the Mac.
Have you? I could not find it.
Yeah, I saw some screenshots of it.
Interesting. OK, well, maybe it is.
OK, all right, we'll report back.
We'll we'll we'll figure that one out.
There was some other stuff that I am pulling up right now that
if you give me two seconds, I will have it for you.
So 11 more cool thing about shortcuts.
Well, cool ish. And I'm kind of annoyed about
this. So the automations tab and
shortcuts, you could no longer create new automations in the
Automations tab. There is no window for you to
pick a trigger. In order to create a background
automation and shortcuts. You have to do the natural
language input and you have to be.
When I get home, turn on these lights.
But there is some new. There is some new triggers, one
of which is when your iPad pairs with a keyboard or disconnects
from a keyboard. So now I have an automation
setup. So whenever my iPad pairs to a
hardware keyboard, it turns on the window mode.
Whenever it disconnects from a hardware keyboard, it turns off
the window mode. So it's that's, that's honestly,
I think that's actually should just be a setting like that
should be something there. But yeah, that's pretty cool.
Animation speed. It's and it's not just animation
speed. They actually made some tweaks
to like performance and stuff like that so that when you jump,
when you open and close apps, when you're switching windows
and stuff like that, things are faster.
And iPad OS, like there's a bunch of like tweaks and stuff
to basically make all the OSS feel faster.
There is undo and redo home screen edits, but it's just on
iPad OS, it's not on iOS. I don't know why.
Unbelievable iPhone not getting the respect it deserves.
And again, you know, it just doesn't do much for them.
I'm all over the place. I know shortcuts now has else if
actions, so it's you. So all those nested if actions
you can, you can kind of clean that up.
There's, there's also the ability to store data in
shortcuts. So I'm going to rebuild a bunch
of shortcuts over the summer so that instead of using an app
like data jar or something like that where you have to open it
in order to get it to sync with shortcuts, shortcuts will now
just be. So you can theoretically build a
proper clipboard manager now with shortcuts.
In the Shortcuts app. Itself I I believe it's saving
it in the shortcuts app. OK.
Interesting, the in Mac OS there is now HDR support for Mac OS
system UI. So Matt uranized monitors.
Actually I think this is a good thing.
Let me explain right now. So that fancy monitor I got, if
I plug my iPad into it, it supports Dolby Vision.
If I plug my MacBook Pro into it, it does not.
So this should bring I'm hoping this means it's bringing Dolby
Vision support to the Mac, but again, it's not something I've
been able to test. All I know is HDR for Mac, Mac
OS system UI, there's better ultra wide monitor support.
So if you have an ultra wide monitor and use it with the Mac,
you can do that. And they've added swipe down to
refresh to a bunch of apps like Mail, Safari, stuff like that in
Mac OS. That'll make a lot of sense for
your touchscreen Macs coming this way.
Yeah, they're kind of like they're not even trying to hide
it like this. Is.
Yeah. I mean, this is stuff.
They could have added later, but.
Yeah, I've lived through a lot of these.
They sneakily put something that indicates a future, future
hardware this year is very direct.
Yeah. Well, Chris, I know you have to
go. Yes.
You hate us. No, I'm sorry.
My schedule is wild. I, I literally have to, I, I, I
have to throw my shoes on, pack my backpack and go to Apple Park
to meet with the ADA developers, the ADA winners and briefings.
It's a tough life. Look, did I record app stories
yesterday with John Federico and Mike Hurley inside Apple Park
all together? Yes, I did.
You both are leaving me like Matt also recorded something
with somebody else. And he used comfort zone
property to do it too. All of a sudden I'm getting
emails from Riverside. Matt Birchler's recording is
ready and I'm like, I'm not Matt Birchler.
Why are you telling me this? Yeah, I didn't realize you got
emails for that. If you make any money off that,
we're owed 10%. Oh, here's the great news.
That podcast makes no money. OK, all right, well, there you
go. All right, I, I hope you guys
had a, a great WWDC. Thank you for letting me crash
in and and hijack and I can't wait to listen to the rest of
the show. Awesome.
Have fun, Chris. All right, talk to you later.
Bye. OK, so that guy was annoying.
Glad he's gone. Do we want to talk about Siri,
AI, Apple Intelligence? We can.
I know it's unavailable in the EU, so you will.
I have stuff to say about that. OK, let me say the good stuff
and the bad stuff. I think the good stuff, the
password reset is a cool use of agentic browsing in a way that
all the other agentic browsers are, like archive some emails,
book plane tickets. But you're obviously not going
to use it for that, so that's a cool thing.
Although in the UII tried to play with it, it seems to be an
all or nothing thing. So it has like 97 sites it wants
me to make a change on and the only option is to fix 97 sites,
which is not a button I necessarily want to hit, but
that's cool. The shortcuts, Chris talked
about it. When you start a shortcut now,
it does default to just like describe what you want.
You can still go to the old interface, but like it does
default to just tell us what you want us to make.
And then on the not so good side, I don't love the
photography stuff that they're doing with the expand and the
reframe. Like clean up I can be OK with,
especially because it doesn't do a great job at adding content.
It's cleaning up like something from the background or like
whatever I'm not super upset about for whatever reason.
But this idea of like actually reframing a photo and like I
thought their example sucked as well.
Like it was a perfectly fine photo of this guy's kids and
then he changed it into another photo that was equally just fine
And but with the without the benefit of being the actual
thing that happened, which is I don't love.
I think I saw John Syracuse a second Syracuse, a reference I
saw him post on Mastodon. Like in the next year's version,
they'll let you like replace the kids with better looking kids
and. Everything.
Oh my. God, like why do I have to
settle for my kids? Why can't these be different?
Yeah, I saw. He just weirds me out.
I saw already again somebody like screen recording this new
reframe and extend features and photos.
So there's two things. First, this is like straight up
from the future. Like the way it looks and it
works is very impressive. Like this.
Is. Like a video game engine on the
fly that that's using your photo as a frame of reference and just
building like an entire space around your photo.
This is incredible. Second, this is yeah, I agree.
This is who says, heck, what is I would understand it better if
this was like an image preg playground where you are
generating a scene or whatever. Like you're generating a 3D
scene and you can put whatever you want in that 3D scene and
edit it and move it around or whatever.
But to start from the place of what's supposed to be reality,
that is your photos and just create an alternative realm all
around it. And I I think this is not good.
Yeah, I, I was watching at home with my wife on the couch as
well and she's not super interested, but I was on the TV
so she was watching as well. And at this point both of us
kind of looked over each other and were like, oh, that's gross.
Like it is using it, it does. You aren't able to like totally
like spin the camera around like 360° or anything.
So it, they are kind of minor adjustments, but even still,
it's weird. They don't do text very well.
I had a picture of like a car that I took that had no parking
sign that was slightly obscured. And I reframed it to like so
that the sign would be visible. And it just gave me like 2 years
ago, like AI text, you know, like what it would do.
Yeah, yeah. Like it, it's, it's crazy what
it generated. So I mean, obviously that'll get
better, I guess. But like, it is, I don't love
it. I don't love the idea of these
edits and I didn't talk about it, but like Google has like
there's like these these standards that are being trying
to set up the word to like label things as AI enhanced or
adjusted. And I don't think Apple said
anything about those. So I don't know if they're doing
anything like. Oh, that's true.
If I reframe a photo and I post it somewhere, is there any
indication that that was edited? I don't know.
Good question. That's the thing to look up, I
guess. You.
Wouldn't you would not know without the label for sure?
No, especially like the minor ones.
You'd have no idea. Yeah, you have no idea.
Yeah. So yeah, I don't know.
I also saw somebody mention something I agree with is like
Apple doesn't talk about like consent either because they're
advertising how you can. So there's the photo editing
stuff, but there's also you can generate things with your
friends and contacts and family and like, there's no process at
all for them giving consent before you do that, it seems.
And yeah, that's not great either.
It is a little crazy like that. That's feels like a very appley
thing, like to be like we, because in photos it knows who
you are and then it has like the faces that you've saved and
everything. But like, I feel like if it's
not a face of you, then yeah, it should like require some sort of
request permission thing. It would seem like something
they would do. Totally.
So it is a little surprising. Yeah.
It's just cuz we're the heebie jeebies.
Also, that was another. Their AI demos are just so bad.
Any of their image demos are just so terrible.
It was like a birthday invitation where they put this
this woman in like a investigators coat and like had
like little cake in front of her and like it was like the saddest
looking like version of this person you could possibly
imagine. Like an Interpol shot like.
Yeah. Yeah.
It was, yeah. It wasn't come to my fun party.
It was like, please save me. Yeah.
Oh, yeah. So I don't know, the image stuff
really, really weirded me out. The other the just like Siri
updates where like the new animation and stuff is, is fine.
It does do some of the stuff like I asked.
It's like to pull some information from inside apps and
it did it and it's conversational.
So you can keep talking to it and your chats go into the Siri
app and you can keep you can resume them there.
So that's kind of cool if you asked it something and kind of
forgot what it told you, or if you wanted to do something else
with it. And it syncs across your
devices. So if you do something on your
iPhone on your Mac, you'll you'll have it there.
So that's kind of cool. Yeah.
But yeah, haven't had enough time to play with it to really
get a full impression. And obviously no third party
apps do anything with it yet, so it's hard to tell.
Yeah, I like the design. It looks clean and not over the
top and like, like the glow that they introduced with Apple
Intelligence that looked nice. But also I could see how they
could that would age quickly because it's very colorful, very
in your face. Yeah, this is more discreet.
It is, it is actually a weird experience because that the
glow, the around the screen glow is gone.
That's completely gone. So after you install the new
update, you actually go back to getting that like purple orb at
the bottom of the screen. And so I thought like, oh, I was
like, Oh no, I got like downgraded with Siri's.
So but you have to like join the wait list and once you're in,
once that's through, you get the new Siri.
But yeah, it is kind of weird to.
Like I'm going to have the the orb back because I'm not.
The orb is coming back, yes. And I'm not getting the new Siri
either, so OK, I'll just be stuck with the orb, that's fine.
Yeah, I do have to correct our good friend Chris.
OK. I think he mixed up parameters
in a model and context window in a model.
The local AI model has the exact same context window as before,
just 4000 tokens. The private cloud has 32,000
tokens which all developers have.
Well, developers with less than 2,000,000 downloads of their
apps have access to, which is good because that's the better
model. But the context window is 32,000
which is teeny tiny. I've put in for some context.
I put in a chart into our show notes of like how that compares
to the Claude models and like it's not even close.
Sonnet has done 200,000 for years and Opus is at 1,000,000
now. But the good news is the average
comfort Zone episode, which is an hour long is about 20,000
tokens. So all of the things I do with
like quick subtitles and chapter eyes, I can do that in private
cloud now because I do not have 2 million users and I can just
use that for free, which is cool.
So I'm very happy about that. But I've I've been watching
those sessions and it's very it's weird.
You got unlimited use of the on device model.
Of course you always have. But for the cloud one, the limit
is based on per user. So each user can use the cloud
model for a set amount of time. And if you have iCloud plus, you
get more usage. But it's unclear exactly what
those limits are. So it should be fine, but I
suspect those just there to avoid like abuse but.
I am happy about it because I can do some more things with
their their model which I couldn't do before.
Yeah. Did you want to talk about the
EU and Apple intelligence? Yes, let's talk about the EU,
so, because that was very interesting.
So in the video itself, like in the keynote itself, Craig
addressed it like right away, orally.
He said we are deeply disappointed we'll not be able
to bring it to the EU, blah blah, blah.
Very short and sweet. Then right when the keynote
ended, I got a push notification and a press release dropped.
They, they pressed like the Apple dropped the press release.
That was the first one they dropped, I believe even before
the iPad OS. First job of press release is
due to the what was the head? Let's look up the headline again
of their press release due to DMA Siri AI delayed in EU for
iOS 27 and iPad OS 27. So this does not affect Mac OS
and Vision OS and Watch OS, I suppose.
And yeah, and their press release.
Have you read it? Incredible piece of media, This
press release, basically this is like, it makes me so mad.
Anyway, the press release basically is.
So they expose the argument for why they're not bringing it,
bringing it to the EU. Basically it is the EU
Commission, for us to be in compliance with the DMA, wants
us to give any third party AI system unlimited access to a
user's device. So that means, so Siri AI does
all of this stuff that's integrated into the OS,
integrated with the apps, integrated with it, uses your
private data and all of that. And to bring that to the EU on
iOS and iPad OS, because we're consider the monopoly there and
we're forced to add interrupt, interrupt, interruptability.
Yeah, the EU wants us to give that access to 3rd party AI and
we don't do that because we respect our users privacy.
So that's their argument. And they also said in the press
release, which is very interesting, we proposed a
technical solution that we would roll out over an 18 month period
and they said no. So basically they, they went to
the EU Commission and said, so we have a solution which we call
it the trusted. I want to look at that name
again. They call they call it the
trusted system agent and into I'm quoting them again an
intermediary that would allow virtual assistants to safely
access the same features and capabilities as Siri AI for
devices in the EU. So basically like a middleman
for 3rd party AIS to yeah to to work like Siri AI on iOS and
iPad OS in the EU. And they said yeah, the EU
Commission said no. So when you come out reading
this you're like well the EU is an asshole what the heck?
What do you mean they want to they want to 1st Apple to let
the users data free or I don't know.
Sure, that's what it sounds like.
That's what it says even it's not what it sounds like they're
saying. Remember, the quote was the
quote. I'm quote, I'm quoting them.
The EU Commission wants us to give any AI system unlimited
access to a user's device. This is a quote from the press
release. OK, so when you look into it and
you think for two seconds, but my first thought last night,
before we had any additional context, my first thought was,
so it's a take like it's my opinion.
What really happened is with Siri, AI, Apple, they decided to
develop a brand new OS feature that's central to the OS, that's
central to many of the new features.
They decided to develop that knowing that it would not meet
the DMA requirements. Why do I know that they were
knowing that? Because they've been subjected
to the DMA now since 2023. So it's been three years.
So there's no way we know that they started work on this like
last year, year and a half ago. So obviously they were already
under the DNA. They knew the requirements they
had to meet and yet decided to move on is what I'm seeing.
And then they went to the Commission with this proposal of
a technical solution and they said, look, it's not ready, but
we would have to. And since it's not ready, we
would have to roll this out over an 18 month period.
And my opinion is EU Commission was like lol what do you mean
you plan to disobey the DMA again for the next 18 months
even though we already find you for the like, for the fact that
you were not in compliance for the DMA and the DMA in on many
counts. And the end of the story, Apple
releases this press release because the driver show that the
EU is being mean to them, then actually find a way to release
Siri AI at the same time everywhere in the world.
Yeah. And just before we start
recording, the EU Commission held a press relief as they do
every week or every morning. And so in a press briefing
today, as we're recording on the 9th EU Commission spokesperson
Tomas Renier stated that Apple was simply unable to develop
interpretability solutions that meet essential EU privacy and
security standards. So like the saying, the contrary
to Apple here, like the saying, Apple was not able to develop a
solution that meets our security and privacy standards.
So we have completely opposite discourses here on either ends.
And he also says, which confirms my take from last night, he also
says that basically that the inability to release Syria in
the EU before 18 months while being in compliance with the DMA
was a no go for them basically. And so looks like I'm right.
Looks like basically the EU Commission was like, OK, so
you're telling me that you will just spend a year and a half
developing this major new central OS feature knowing that
you would not meet the requirements that you're
supposed to like, respect. And you're telling me you don't
want to respect it for the next 18 months and next year and a
half, even though we already find you?
And yeah, so anyway, I just wanted like to present the full
thing here because I'm feeling that some commenters out there
are already seeing the the headlines from yesterday, some
people presenting this news that are like, oh, EU, the EU is
being mean to Apple, blah, blah, blah.
Like Apple is not saying. I think Apple is not being truly
honest, or at least they're being purposefully deceitful
about the full story here. And yeah, the EU, they're not
going to flinch it seems anyway. So yeah, what do you?
Think, I mean it is a little, it is interesting that the DNA has
been around for a while and this feature was developed and
doesn't seem to have taken it into account.
Yeah, I don't see. What's blocking the EU
Commission from agreeing to their proposal?
Yeah. I'm guessing like, and also the
wording in Apple's press release is interesting because they're
saying the EU Commission said no.
And they say this right after they said we plan to roll out a
solution over an 18 month period.
So they make it sound like I'm not saying they're lying, I'm
saying maybe it's purposefully written in that order.
It sounds like the EU Commission said no to the technical
solution that they proposed. Instead it seems to me like
after hearing the press briefing from the EU Commission, what
they said no to was not the solution itself, but rather the
18 month periods thing. The fact that it was not ready.
But at the same time, EU Commission also said that it did
not meet the privacy and security standards, but not
clear why what that points to precisely yet.
Out of curiosity, did they also I need to look at this The
Newsroom? Did they post something about
the China availability as well? I'm guessing no.
No, I don't. I've not seen that, no.
Because they this is a thing, they tend to complain loudly
about the EU requirements and then quietly do the China stuff.
But like in the in the keynote after Craig said like, hey, it's
not going to be available in the EU, He also said it's completely
unavailable. It's like Siri is completely
unavailable in China as well. But there's no press release
complaining about the Chinese government, you know,
interesting. So yeah, Oh my God, let's.
Get out. Well, yeah, I think in the the
the full story is not before eyes here.
I, I, I think it closely resembles what I'm saying more
than what they are saying. They are saying on in their
press release, Apple. I think it's more like the EU
Commission is not having it anymore.
They just don't want to give any more exemptions like whatever,
whether that's an 18 month delay or plain exemption, they are not
having it. And Apple showing up with a new
central OS feature that they're not able to release and with no
interoperability, I think obviously that's not going to go
through well with the EU, obviously.
Yeah, I, I don't know, it's a bit of, he said, she said.
But I do think it is an interesting thing.
Both Apple and the United States government are not used to
people saying no to them and like holding their ground.
And that is the thing we are starting to experience more and
more in both fronts, which is just just notable.
Yeah, yeah, definitely. What's happening here is that
maybe they were not expecting them to say no is maybe the
thing. Yeah.
Or you could have the nefarious interpretation where they were
expecting them to say no and this is just another way for
them to push. Back, we'll let our listeners
decide what they think. I don't know, I it's probably a
mix. It's probably they want to do
things their way they do want to do.
I think they'd probably have genuine concerns about privacy.
They talked about that a lot. They're like our models compared
to the other guys, which we won't name but are clearly we're
talking about open AI and Anthropic and Google.
They don't care about privacy. We do.
And you know, I, I could see why they wouldn't necessarily want
open AI full access to all of your stuff.
But yeah, I don't know. Yeah, I suppose from the E US
point of view, they are giving full access to Google's AI and
that's not a problem for them. From the press briefing that I
saw today, it seems like because at some point the spokesperson
highlights that he says, by the way, they had new series powered
by AI and that doesn't seem to bother them.
So seems like it's a point of argument for them.
Yeah, OK. Well, we'll see how this
develops and I'm sure everyone will be happy.
It'll be. Yeah.
We are running out of time, but I did want to bring up one thing
that immediately made me think of Neo Leon when I saw it come
up, which is Airpods now have an equalizer.
Yeah. Do you have any feelings about
this? What do you think I'm feeling?
I'm guessing skepticism, although some level of
excitement. I could not care less about EQ
on Airpods, you know, You know what's actually missing from the
Apples OSS in general and it's looks like it still is.
Is a system wide EQ This like if you want to tailor to audio
people in general, this is what you want to add.
You want to add a system wide EQ?
There's not one on Mac OS, not on iPad OS, not on iOS either.
So this is like a Band-Aid on something that wasn't that
nobody was asking you for, because why would you EQ your
Airpods like I don't? You could.
I mean, there's people who don't like how the new Airpods sounds.
Sure, but it's like it's it doesn't bring anything super
exciting to EQ your Airpods of all things.
I would like to EQ my fancy headphones when I plug them into
my iPhone is what I would like to do.
See. So for that I need a system wide
EQ not not Airpods EQ. OK, OK, well, I wildly
miscalculated. I thought you'd be excited.
I could not careless. And yeah, I think most people
will agree with me. The customer for Airpods will
just be fine for people who stumble upon it in settings.
OK. Yeah, nobody's going to look for
that. It's just you stumble upon that.
That's fun. OK, fine.
Yeah, OK, well, I tried. One thing that is exciting, I
think is Apple stole a feature from Android, which is, you
know, at this point that's you can just steal it from each
other on Android for a very long time.
You know how on iPhone, on the iPhone and iPad and everything,
like when you get a text message with a code, it like you go to
like a if you're in a text field, it suggests like you
should paste this code. For years now, Android has had a
they have, they do have that, but they also have when you copy
something to your clipboard and then you go to a text field or
any sort of input, it is the suggested thing.
You can just hit a button to paste what you just copied and
it's great. It's lovely.
And Apple added that this year. So if you copy something and
then go to something like copy URL in Safari and then switch to
messages, it will like when you just like open the the thread,
it'll say like paste from Safari and it'll show a preview of the
URL. And it's, it's so good.
OK, I love it. Yeah, that's nice.
Do we still have time so I can quickly talk about Safari?
Oh yes, OK, let's bring it home with Safari.
Yes, bring it up with Safari. We have the browser podcast.
I think it's like I'm curious from afar about what's happening
with Safari. So there's that feature we
mentioned earlier where you can looks like vibe code extensions.
I don't know how that works. You can ask Safari to create an
extension for you and it will do it.
So that's OK. I'm not sure we'll find A use
for that. But so the UI I'm because it's
like obviously getting the treat, the full liquid matte,
liquid glass update treatment updated.
So sure, it means it seems from screenshot that Safari looks a
bit nicer compared to Tahoe. So that's one thing.
The second thing I've read from thewebkit.org blog post where
basically every year when there's a major release of
Safari, they detail all the technical improvements of
grades, new standards that are adopted and new CSS stuff, blah,
blah, blah, blah, blah blah blah, the renderer HTML,
etcetera. But if you look at like some of
the performance sections, I'm curious whether that translates
to real life or not. They're saying, for instance,
that JavaScript performance is massively improved, like a bunch
of technical stuff under the hood is supposed to be massively
improved in terms of performance.
And they mentioned many times that it really should be that it
should help with web apps. Like they mentioned that by
name, web apps should perform much better in Safari, which is
one of like the low points of Safari right now is it will not
perform well with like more complex weather apps, even not
that complex weather apps such as YouTube.
So yeah, Yep. So I'm curious from afar like
it. I'm very tempted to either
install the technology preview on my Mac to check it out
because it should have all the in the hood improvements without
the UI. Or maybe you just upgrade to a
developer beta soon than rather than later because it seems that
it's fine. It seems that the Golden Gate
beta is fine. The Golden Gate beta has been
generally fine for me. One thing I will say is Xcode.
You must use the Xcode beta on the Golden Gate.
Yeah, I saw that. Which means I guess you're not
distributing through the app stores.
That might be OK for you, but for me it means I cannot use
this on my main. This is actually finally the
thing that'll make me not installed on my main Mac
immediately. But yeah, I think it will be
interesting. I actually watched the Web Kit
developer talk where they talked about here's all the things we
did for web Kit. And I do think like, I think
like he's talked about with the liquid Glass.
People being like, Apple did it right.
This is why they've done it perfectly.
They'll never do a slider. And the next year they change
these things and now there's a slider, which is very funny
whenever I complain about Safari, people are like, well,
Safari does it right. They don't do it first
necessarily, but that's because there's security reasons they
they do it best and it was very funny watching this developer
talk where like the head of Webkit at Apple, she's like,
yeah, we've, yeah, we implemented these things and we
did them wrong. We made some mistakes, so thank
you for your feedback. And we've we're fixing them and
we know that we've kind of, we're not as performant as like
Chrome. Chromium is faster than Webkit
at this point. So Webkit they were, they
enjoyed that time at the top. But like they do need to catch
up. But it is funny to like it is
always funny. I think when people say Apple is
flawless and what Apple's doing right now is exactly what they
should be doing. And then Apple themselves is
like, yeah, we screwed up guys. We're we're working on it and
it's like. Yeah.
Yeah, it's, it's very funny to me.
We can officially say, Matt, that Apple has agreed with us
with all our apples Safari. Absolutely.
Apple always agrees with us. Yeah, especially they agree that
Safari sucks and should be dealt with like this.
They have to. It should be dealt with
appropriately. Assassinated is what?
OK, OK. We're just saying that no.
No, no, no, no. I would like Safari to be to be
good. It should be good.
I'm I would honestly like. To use Safari.
Yeah, I'm sad not to be using it like I, I will say.
Yeah. OK.
Well, all right. I think that's it.
See you, I predict right now maybe in 2028 Siri AI will be in
some way available in the EU or something and I will review that
in that time. So OK.
Mark your calendars, people. Yeah, yeah.
I will review it three years later.
Five years? I don't know, maybe 10 years.
OK, well that will be fun. And by then comfort zone will
be, I don't know, on the moon or something that's too far away.
You. Didn't think about so Untitled,
yeah. Oh, that'd be fun.
Yeah, that. Oh, that'd be a new spatial
environment on the Vision Pro. I didn't even get to talk about
that. You can make panoramic photos
environments on your Vision Pro. I wasn't able to do that because
it. Took me nobody cares it's.
OK, it took me an hour to install the update on the vision
pro. I was going to do it before I we
worked this, we did this recording this morning, but it
took forever. So I.
I was surprised that they spent so much time about Vision OS in
the keynote like. Yeah.
Somehow they want people to know it's there.
They they're not running away from it yet.
So anyway, this podcast is actually almost as long as the
keynote itself, which was very short.
So thank you for doing this weird episode of Comfort Zone
where there's two, but kind of three now, two of us.
Again, we didn't go over topics, we didn't do a challenge.
We'll be back to normal next week.
But yeah, anything you wanted to plug this time outside of Tiny
Start, which will now be linked below.
Yeah, oh, Oh yeah, I saw. So again, we already said this
earlier in earlier show, but some people have been mentioning
me on Mastodon because they saw the the keynote and they're
like, Oh no, they're adding AI to my spotlight.
But thankfully next, thanks to tiny starts, I will have a
launch of about AI. So sure, if that's the way for
you to try a tiny start, you should.
It's a great reason to try out a tiny start.
Everyone should try out a tiny start.
Yeah, and apparently it runs well on the beta 1, so I've been
told. Nice.
OK, well, that's it for us. Thank you for listening.
It's Mac Stories podcast. You know the deal and we'll see
you here next time. Bye bye.
Yes, bye, bye.