When Apple Intelligence was announced, we had visions of an AI superhero swooping in to solve all our digital dilemmas. Apple, known for its slick launches, apparently didn’t get the memo that sometimes it’s wiser to walk before you sprint.
Apple, being the overachiever it is, wanted to jump on the AI bandwagon before their rivals could even say “machine learning.”, despite the fact that everyone else very much was already.
They crammed a mountain of ambitious tech into one package and wrapped it up with a shiny bow. The problem was, they skipped over a few critical steps, like making it actually useful, in their mad dash for glory.
Users quickly realized that integrating this shiny new AI with existing hardware and software wasn’t as seamless as promised as not only did it not work very well at launch, it only kinda worked on the latest tech, so a good amount of us were locked out. Now Apple might might say, sure that AI is hardware intensive stuff so the latest tech is a must. And they would be right except for the fact that other Mac and phones, some nearly 10 years old, can enjoy something like Microsoft’s Co-Pilot which is much better. But more on that later.
Fortunately I had an M1 Mac Mini and an iPad Pro on hand, once Apple Intelligence was fit to be used outside of the US because at launch it only worked in US English.
A more intelligence and integrated Siri was one thing we were promised – although some of the features are still not ready. While it certainly doesn’t lose its mind when you stumble over your words or jump in when you haven’t finished the question fast enough because you took a breath, it’s not nearly as conversational as Co-Pilot.
Asking random questions was always something that drove Siri users up the wall…fire or otherwise. Ask it the date or time and sure you’d get an answer. Ask her the best place to eat Mexican and you might get the “I have some web results, you can check them on your phone” nightmare.
As a digital assistant it was very do it yourself… very IKEA.
As a test I asked my iPhone12 (decidedly NOT Apple Intelligence ready) the question “What episode of Star Trek the Original series features Captain Kirk swapping bodies with a woman?”
The answer was, you guessed it, “here are some web results…”
Asking my M1 iPad Pro the same question resulted in the answer but in the form of a dialog box.
I then asked my iPad Pro how long it would take to get to Kingston from Theodore and it answered the question correctly… this time with audio just to keep me on my toes. But then I added the follow up question, “but what if I am walking”., she just gave up.
So as a comparison lets do the same with an AI assistant that can be used on a lot of different devices, including old ones like mine.
Co-Pilot is a Microsoft AI assistant based on Chat-GPT. It is a free app via the AppStore for iOS and it’s a web page for Mac. Although it’s very easy to create a web app and put it in the dock.
It is also baked into Word and Excel for the Mac… not that I would ever advocate using those products.
In either version you can type your request or talk to its very chatty and personable assistant.
Talking to it on the Mac it actually had a conversation with me. Asking the same question as before, the one about Capitan Kirk and a woman”, it answered the question and then finished it off with “that was the final episode of series 3, quite a memorable one, ugh?”
It did it faster as well.
Now, remember the Theodore to Kingston question with the twist of walking added at the end…?
Co-Pilot’s response:
“Hi again, Renny! Ready when you are.
From Canberra to Kingston, it’s roughly a 10-minute drive, depending on traffic. Not far at all!
What happens if I’m walking?
Walking takes about 50 minutes. It’s a bit of a trek, but doable!”
Writing tools was another trick up Apple Intelligence’s sleeve… apparently.
Asking Pages, one of the many Apple applications that support Writing Tools, to write me a long winded letter about being late for dinner produced a fair enough attempt but it used ChatGPT to do it and I had to start writing a sentence before it would even try. Seems it needed something to get it going.
Asking it then to make the letter funny was not bad. It was AI’s version of humour but you can’t have everything.
But then I asked it to convert the text to Latin and it fell over.
I am sure it won’t surprise to know that Co-Pilot did it all… and without me having to get it going with editorial training wheels.
So all in all Apple Intelligence is a bit of a dud. It is half baked and doesn’t really seem to do anything well or with confidence and seems so ‘in the background’ it’s hard to get involved.
Apple is late to the party and when they arrived they brought Shortbread.
On the other hand Co-Pilot is free, slick and easily accessible. I have found myself referring to it daily, hourly sometimes to just get what I need quickly.
One final example to drive the nail home.
For Christmas dinner I copied and pasted three websites into Co-Pilot asked it to write me a roster of what I needed to do and when in order to be ready by 1.00pm. Needless to say, it did it.
Now, I cannot reference multiple websites in Siri so instead I asked her to simply read a recipe from a URL I had pasted into her text box and tell me how many eggs I needed for that dish. Baffingly the answer was a list of other Apple Strudel recipes. Insane and not remotely the answer I asked for.
On the other hand, Co-Pilot correctly answered the same question with, well, this…
“You’ll need only one egg for this apple strudel recipe. You’ll need it to create a wash with some water so you can brush the strudel before baking1.
That’s one less thing to worry about. Now, are you ready to roll up your sleeves and bake this delicious creation?
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