Recently I did an update on my Macbook and it started showing alerts about Apple Intelligence. I've heard a little bit of marketing about this but I haven't really spent any time trying to figure out if it is just hype. Well, I've tried it a few times and I'm completely underwhelmed.
One of marketed features is that Siri is much improved. That would be nice, I thought, because there are only a few use cases like "Set an Alarm" where Siri could ever do anything besides a google search.

So there are two times recently I tried to use this improved Siri to solve a problem. My background using AI: I use Copilot at work. I get mixed results for it, but it does use my local context (open files etc) and is able to ask follow up questions if my prompt is too vague.

First Use Case: I want to solve a technical problem on my laptop

• My Prompt: "Can you help me fix Discord so that audio is shared when I share a video stream"
• My Expectation: Maybe an AI summary of the cause of the issue. Maybe open up system settings or open up Discord or give an explanation of why this is a technical problem on Macs.
• Actual Siri Response: Does an internet search and shows some links. Essentially just did a google search which I could have done by typing the same prompt in a browser.

Second Use case: I want help finding a file on my laptop

In this case, I made a summary of my finances on my laptop a few months ago. I can't remember what I named the file or what kind of file it was. Maybe a spreadsheet? I know it was on my local computer.

• My 1st Prompt: Can you help me find a specific file on my computer
• My Expectation: Maybe some follow up questions where it asks me for a date range or something that is inside the file. Yes, I know that I can do this in Finder but I want Apple Intelligence to save me a few minutes.
• Siri: Shows the result of a web search on how to find files on a computer. The first few results are for Microsoft Windows
• 2nd Prompt: Can you help me find a specific file on my mac
• Siri: Tells me to use Command-space and use the search

In both cases, Siri just acted like a shortcut to a google search. It didn't even recognize that I was asking the question on a Mac. This is same as Siri has always been. I assume that it can still figure out to set a timer and do a few things, but it doesn't seem to be working in a way I would expect an AI to work at all.

Hey - I'm wondering if we've got any real-life recommendations for AI's out there?

I'm not looking for a list of AI's - they're everywhere! What I'm interested in is whether and how anyone here has started to use an AI on a regular basis to the extent that you consider it genuinely useful now?

For example,

• At work with have a ChatGPT3 wrapped app in Slack which I use quite often to improve summaries and formal comms I write. I think everyone knows it's basically good at that.
• I use Pi.ai as a "sympathetic" and filtered advisor for more sensitive topics relating to mental health that I have to deal with - it's useful insofar as I'm less worried about hallucinations or bad output when I'm using it. This might be misplaced confidence to be fair, but I've not had a bad experience with it so far.
• I use ChatGPT built into Apple Intelligence more and more since getting a device capable of using it. I think the use case I'm most warming to is that "search" is less and less useful nowadays because of blog spam and assumed corrections to my searches. I can use ChatGPT as a replacement to search in a growing number of use cases.

What I'm wondering about:

• Gamma.app promises to be a .ppt replacement via AI. I'm skeptical. I have to summarise and present a lot of content at work. Having a means of an AI doing some of the lifting here would be incredible, but I remain unconvinced.

Any sites/services you use regularly and effectively that you'd recommend?

I’m about to take a road trip and I want to be able to easily play my music and it would be a huge pain to do this with iTunes. I’ve got VLC but the UI leaves much to be desired. I can’t even view my music by album in CarPlay, which is how I’m going to be accessing my music. There are tons of music playing apps out there but they are all varying degrees of sketchy. Does anyone have any recommendations?

I am wondering what people are listening to this holiday season and hoping to build a playlist BEFORE Christmas Day. I have no particular allegiance to Christmas or any other specific holiday, but it’s fun to have a certain category of songs I only really listen to for one month of a year.

To start, I’m a big fan of the band BROS and they have a few small Christmas albums. Their artist page on Apple Music: https://music.apple.com/us/artist/bros/1151563604

Their actual website: https://dinealonerecords.com/artists/bros/

I'm not a very heavy tablet user, but generally like to have a tablet around for stuff I won't do on my phone. I bought a Pixel Tablet last year when I did my big tech upgrade (new phone, new smart watch, new upgraded tablet), but found the experience a bit lacking with the more important stuff I use my tablet for, largely taking notes with OneNote, and very light mobile gaming (which I usually use my phone for, since it's right there).

I'm curious if anybody's got any advice for a non-dedicated Apple user with an iPad. I'm already thinking about synergy with my multi-platform apps like Microsoft 365, Google Drive (free tier) and Mega (which I use as a backup repo for large data that isn't documents like games, music samples, etc).

I'm thinking some music apps would be great to take advantage of the generally lower-latency audio capabilities of the iPad, but aside from that can't think of too much. Otherwise, due to the 64GB, it's going to be my cloud-oriented low-storage tablet.

I saved $70 on a black friday deal on Amazon, so I bought a pen to go with it, which isn't the Apple Pencil and would be curious to know if I'm missing out on a ton doing that as well?

Side question: I would be curious what the third-party app world is like as well, ideally something like iOS F-Droid.

I work in IT, and was the caregiver for both my parents as they aged. You'd think I would be the one that people turn to to ask this question, and yet I have been utterly frustrated by my attempts to find such.

I have a few folks who are extended family and friends that are now in the early/mid stages of different forms of dementia, and a real pain point is that they no longer have the capacity to recognize ads, and will unfailingly click and install scam apps via the Apple store. Think things like 'cleaner' apps that have a $50/week subscription fee, and other abusive tactics. The #1 subject I get called about is some ad popping up after they've finished a puzzle, and now they think they're out of space, and in a panic.

This is not a small problem. The coloring and puzzles they can still do bring them happiness and stability through their day; removal of the ipads entirely causes them a lot of stress. (TV is nothing but ragebait, and a non-starter. They do have books on tape, but get tired of listening rather quickly.)

I have been completely unable to locate ad-free, paid versions of these types of apps. I'm not looking for free. I don't care about the cost. I just need apps that only do what they say they do, and don't have unexpected pop-ups, ads, or anything else, and I thought perhaps the folks here might know of some.

Any ideas?

[edit] Only five hours in, and I've already gotten more insightful, helpful responses than anywhere else I've asked. You all are the best.

Churchill Solitaire is a mobile game that you can play on Apple or Android devices. It came out in 2016. I found out about it in 2018. It had some very good reviews. It was mentioned that the game is difficult to beat. At the time I was playing some different solitaire games on mobile so I decided to try another. I paid $4.99 to unlock "all deals and free play".

The game is pretty good. $5 was a little expensive to pay for a game that only had one variation of solitaire. For example, I had the game Solebon Pro which has 160 variations. That game cost $10.

So Churchill Solitaire is not a great value. Not all games have the same value of course. But the reason I stopped playing it is because it charges you to get hints and undo moves. A game that is this hard just wastes your time if you can't undo. You can get quite near the end of a session and need to completely restart because you had several choices earlier and picked the wrong one.

Here is the In-App purchase list that is currently on the App Store in 2024. I don't remember if these prices were the same in 2018, but they are the current prices if you want to unlock any of the features:

• Undos - 15 Pack $0.99
• Hints - 15 Pack $0.99
• Undos - 100 Pack $5.99
• Hints - 100 Pack $5.99
• Unlock All Deals & Freeplay $4.99
• Game Pack 1 $0.99
• Daily Game (Monthly) $4.99
• Game Pack 2 $0.99
• Game Pack 3 $0.99
• Undos - 50 Pack $4.99

I understand that the developer should get paid money for unlocking the basic game. I understand that making additional winnable deals may take developer time (most deals are unwinnable in this game, but there is a "campaign" that has winnable deals). I understand that having a daily game may cost the developer to maintain servers and create winnable deals.

But I don't understand charging for hints or undos. I mean, I understand it from a greed perspective. But not from an "I respect the people who paid money for my game" perspective. Yes, I know about Candy Crush and all the other super addictive mobile games that are pay to win and farm money from whales. But this one just pissed me off in particular. This is the mobile game equivalent of heated seats in a BMW.

Since 2018 I've only bought 2 mobile games. So sorry other game devs, I don't even check the app store for games anymore.

Edit: It has been rightfully pointed out that this is a bit of a cranky post. I didn't make clear my intention. Maybe someone can recommend some recent small mobile games, like card or sudoku or something, that aren't pay to win. I am aware of one: Good Sudoku.

Hi, here is me asking for some advice.

I currently have the Sennheiser CX True Wireless but I feel like they are too heavy, big, and uncomfortable for my ears to the point that I feel my earholes are being stretched.

I am looking at AirPods right now despite not being committed to the whole Apple eco-system. They seem to be light enough and good quality enough, but I fear getting them is too expensive for what I'm getting given that I would want to use them with my Ubuntu desktop and my Android phone.

What alternatives could you suggest? Or is AirPods the best bang-for-your-buck even if you are not really into the Apple eco-system?

One of my very favorite musicians of all time has apparently decided to not put any of his music on any streaming service other than one album from one side project that made it onto Apple music. I've even posted on his Facebook (a site I basically never use) and gotten likes from some of his best friends but he never uploaded anything :(

I'm tempted to just put his music on Spotify, possibly with fake names in case he doesn't want the attention lol

I'll be going to my parents' house this weekend and I'm hoping to grab my old CDs so I can at least rip his music...if I can find a CD drive! Hopefully I can grab my Sufjan Stevens Illinois vinyl for a friend who listens to vinyls but has never heard of him. ^{as an aside, I have no idea how it's possible to be such a hipster that you still listen to vinyl but also don't know who Sufjan Stevens is, but I digress}

So how do you do it? I just want the music to be on Spotify 😢

I've been a long time Fi user on the Pixel line of phones, so I've always gotten the gold standard of service from Fi. My wife is an adamant iPhone user. We want to port her over to my plan, but I was hoping to get some recent feedback from anyone using a modern iPhone (just bought her a 16) -- All the things I find on Google are months to years old. If this is you, how well do the iPhone features (Visual voicemail, iMessage, RCS, FaceTime, 5G, etc) work for you on Fi?

Hi Tildes !

I was passively looking for an refresh of my current laptop (Thinkpad X1 carbon Gen 5; it's still working fine except some mysterious thermal profile¹), and a friend of mine working in retail told me he could sell me a Macbook Pro (the mid-range 14in one with the M3 Pro chip² at a heavy discount (more than half the price; it's a display model but he tells me it wasn't mistreated). It's a too good of a deal to pass on, so I accepted.

¹ it's constantly at 70C; I already changed the thermal paste and the battery.
² does that mean it's Macbook Pro Pro ?
³ and I guess the Thinkpad's going to be recycled as a home server. I half hope that running Linux on it will solve the thermal problem

My use case would be (in no particular order):

• photo/video processing: I know what I need and I already have a CaptureOne license. Davinci Resolve is enough (and plenty) for me
• programming (web dev, arduino; VScode's probably gonna be the second thing I'm going to install)(I'm kinda interested running a LLM locally, but have no experience with that)
• light CAD for 3d printing,
• gaming? My old gaming tower runs Elden Ring fine but struggle a bit with Baldur's Gate 3 (it's really the loading time, and loading textures), and it seems this MBP can run it fine.
• regular day-to-day browsing / office and adulting work

I would qualify myself as a power-user.

Background: I'm not entirely new to the Apple ecosystem. Back in uni I had the first unibody MBP sporting Leopard and then Snow Leopard. I then went with a X220t and then a my current X1.

Some questions:

• I see that BetterTouchTools is still a thing (back then I mapped three fingers swipe up to new tab, three finger swipe down to close tab, and twist to change tabs). I half remember one that was just a staging area living on a sidebar when moving file from one part of the finder to another (the name eludes me). Is there any other handy utilities I should be aware of ? That's also your prompt to plug in your favorite apps :)
• How's the dongle life (and what's the recommended one) ? While most of my stuff can be USB-C, I still have important stuff that requires USB-A (my photo printers, several portables hard-drive)
• Any interesting (gasp!) Android integration ? I'm not currently using any with my Windows machine (having Whatsapp/Telegram/Discord is sufficient), but I'm curious anyway.

I bought an M2 Macbook Air at the start of this year for uni. I only planned to use it for uni work as I have another 'more powerful' laptop that I use for everything else, but I kinda love the M2 and want to make it my daily driver laptop. Battery lasts for ages, screen is great, it's thin and light, etc. The problem is - as you might guess - I only got the 512GB model and if there's one thing Apple hates, it's people having control over their hardware, so no expandable storage. I can't afford to upgrade the entire laptop, so I need to work with what I have. Here's what I want to use it for:

• Graphic design: Adobe software, high-res images, typefaces, etc.
• Music production: Ableton Live 11 Suite, sample packs, plug-ins, project folders, etc.
• Music library: uncompressed .m4a files because iTunes hates Vorbis 😢, ~80% of my library (I don't have everything downloaded yet) is 25GB.
• Web-browsing: Firefox... this one isn't really relevant but I feel like I should include it for completeness.

Does anyone have any tips to stretch this 512GB as faaaaaar as it can go? I have a 2TB external SSD, but I'm wary of keeping anything important on it because it's small and I don't want to accidentally lose a bunch of stuff. I can spend a bit of money (maybe 30usd) if anyone has a good idea that requires buying something, but I can't spend any ludicrous amounts, I already did that to get the laptop!

I've copied the full tweet below (it's from August, I missed this news somehow):

We've been evaluating a number of C++ successor languages for @ladybirdbrowser , and the one best suited to our needs appears to be @SwiftLang 🪶

Over the last few months, I've asked a bunch of folks to pick some little part of our project and try rewriting it in the different languages we were evaluating. The feedback was very clear: everyone preferred Swift!

Why do we like Swift?

First off, Swift has both memory & data race safety (as of v6). It's also a modern language with solid ergonomics.

Something that matters to us a lot is OO. Web specs & browser internals tend to be highly object-oriented, and life is easier when you can model specs closely in your code. Swift has first-class OO support, in many ways even nicer than C++.

The Swift team is also investing heavily in C++ interop, which means there's a real path to incremental adoption, not just gigantic rewrites.

Strong ties to Apple?

Swift has historically been strongly tied to Apple and their platforms, but in the last year, there's been a push for "swiftlang" to become more independent. (It's now in a separate GitHub org, no longer in "apple", for example).

Support for non-Apple platforms is also improving, as is the support for other, LSP-based development environments.

What happens next?

We aren't able to start using it just yet, as the current release of Swift ships with a version of Clang that's too old to grok our existing C++ codebase. But when Swift 6 comes out of beta this fall, we will begin using it!

No language is perfect, and there are a lot of things here that we don't know yet. I'm not aware of anyone doing browser engine stuff in Swift before, so we'll probably end up with feedback for the Swift team as well.

I'm super excited about this! We must steer Ladybird towards memory safety, and the first step is selecting a successor language that we can begin adopting very soon. 🤓🐞

Nitter link:

https://nitter.poast.org/awesomekling/status/1822236888188498031

Original post:

https://x.com/awesomekling/status/1822236888188498031

Some of Kling's replies in that thread are also pretty interesting:

My general thoughts on Rust:
- Excellent for short-lived programs that transform input A to output B
- Clunky for long-lived programs that maintain large complex object graphs
- Really impressive ecosystem
- Toxic community

In the end it came down to Swift vs Rust, and Swift is strictly better in OO support and C++ interop.

The September monthly report for Ladybird released the day after I posted this. It provides basically the same information:

This Month in Ladybird September 2024

The section about Swift:

Successor language search progress

Over the past year, our core contributors have been exploring potential safe languages to complement or succeed C++. We evaluated several options, including Rust, Swift, Fil-C, and others. While some languages offered compelling features, many fell short in either C++ interoperability or providing the level of memory safety we needed.

After extensive testing and discussion, Swift emerged as the top choice among our core developers, thanks to the new Swift 6 interoperability features and its growing cross-platform support. As a result, we’ve decided to adopt Swift as our C++ successor language.

That said, this will be an incremental shift. The existing C++ codebase is deeply embedded in the project, and a complete rewrite would be impractical. Instead, we’ll be gradually introducing new components in Swift, carefully integrating them with our existing C++ code over time. Look forward to a dedicated blog post on the topic soon.

A pretty quick work trip has been planned. I will fly into Heathrow Saturday morning. I'll have until Sunday evening to get to Warwick. I'll be in Warwick for 5 days before flying back out the next Saturday.

I'm looking for any general advice but also if there is anything specific to the following:

• I'm going to book my own hotel in London the Saturday night I fly in. Saturday and Sunday are essentially my "tourist" days. Where is good to stay? Not too concerned with price.
• I'm taking a train to Warwick and mostly have that figured out but is there an app or pass that I should add to my Apple wallet for transit around London?
• I like museums of all types. Are there any in particular I should check out?
• Any classic pubs or restaurants I should try to get to?
• Once the week starts I don't think I'll have much time to do touristy stuff and I won't have a car. Any recommendations on things around Warwick/Birmingham that I can get to some evenings via train or bus?

Not quite sure if this is a ~tech question, or a ~sport question, or a ~health question. But at least it's a question!

I have a Garmin watch, and so does my wife. They track our activities. We would like to compete in challenges, but Garmin's challenge options are quite limited. Through Garmin, you can compete for the number of steps, or distances ran or swam and such, but those don't really work very well for us.

I was wondering, are there any apps that work on both iOS and Android, sync with Garmin Connect (either directly or through Apple Health / Google Health Connect), have a sensible privacy policy, and offer some or all of the following types of challenges, which I think would be more interesting:

• Total time exercised (either any exercise type, or specific sports)
• Time spent in "vigorous" exercise
• Time spent in "zone 2" exercise (or another zone)
• Active calories burned (either total, or percentage of your resting calories)
• Number of exercise sessions
• Number of consecutive exercise days, i.e who can maintain the longest streak (allowing rest days)

Does anything like that exist?

I also have a bonus question:

Garmin has Expeditions, which track the distance you have walked or run, and once you reach your Expedition goal (say, "walk the distance of the Appalachian Trail"), it tells you that you have reached your goal and gives you a badge. I like the basic idea, but the implementation is quite bland.

Are there any Expedition type apps where the app not only tracks the number of steps against the total needed, but actually shows on a map where you'd be currently going if you actually were walking the Appalachian Trail or something, and gives you notifications when you reach some interesting points along the way, with pictures and a little bit of information about the place? Now, that would be something!

The plan only costs $1 a month. Apple can almost certainly eat that cost, and anyone who cannot complete their monthly exercise challenge because of illness or injury can probably still afford the $1 to keep the plan going.

The monthly challenge in the Fitness app is tailored to each user based on their exercise habits, right?