Hands on Mac 143 Transcript

Please be advised this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word for word. Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-supported version of the show

00:00 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Coming up on Hands-On Mac. Let's take our first look at Apple Intelligence. Stay tuned Podcasts you love From people you trust. This is Twit. Welcome back to Hands-On Mac. I am Micah Sargent, and today we are taking a look at Apple intelligence features, because Apple has just rolled out to developers iOS 18.1, beta 1. And in that beta is a or I should say are a series of Apple intelligence features. These are, of course, the features that Apple has promised will become or introduced as part of the next version of iOS, ipados, etc. And while all of the Apple intelligence features aren't available, some of them are available in preview. I should say that give you access to some of the cool tools that Apple has been working on for the well for some time, actually.

01:05
At this point, so let's head over to iPadOS to take a look. All right, here we are on iPadOS, and the first thing that I want to show you is a little bit of information about Siri. So what I need you to do is kind of look at the edges of the screen here, and, in fact, what I think I'll do to kind of give you a better idea is we will kind of zoom out on the view so you're able to see what this actually looks like. So let me zoom out just a hair and watch the edges of the screen for me, as I tap and hold to activate Siri, you're going to see not the Siri orb that typically appears at the bottom, but instead Siri is going to kind of appear around the edges in a colorful pattern. So I'm going to tap and hold the button, you're going to see Siri kind of transcribe what I'm saying and just kind of watch along if you are watching. So here is Siri popping up, and Siri appeared from the kind of top left of the corner lots of color on the display and after kind of this glance of rainbow across the screen, siri just appears in the background edges of the frame, showing you that it is indeed listening. I am still tapping and holding the button, so it's still showing up. So what I'm going to do is release the button and after Siri clearly knows that I wasn't talking to Siri in that case and so it stopped.

02:38
Now what we're going to do is I'm going to show you one of the new features that it has, which is the ability to provide device support questions. So I could ask, for example, how do I turn off my iPad. To turn off your iPad, simultaneously press and hold the top button and either volume button until the sliders appear and drag the power off slider. I could also say something like help me figure out how to change the brightness on my iPad screen. I'm sorry, I'm afraid I can't do that. It should be able to do that. How can I change the brightness on my iPad screen? To change the screen brightness on your iPad, you can either. So in that case, it was able to tell me what I needed to do and it is showing transcriptions of what I'm saying. Now, if you pause and continue speaking, which I'm going to show you in just a moment, it's a little bit better at figuring out what it is that you're trying to do. So let me try. Hey, can you? Oh, how do I turn down? How do I turn down the volume on my iPad? To lower the volume on your iPad and in the previous version of Apple's intelligent assistant, it would struggle to be able to respond to me after all of those stumbles, those pauses, etc. So it's a little bit better about being able to do that Now. It also provides the ability to type to the virtual assistant, so you can do that as well.

04:21
Now, the reason that I'm on a Safari page is because I wanted to talk about one of the new features. We heard a little bit about Safari summaries, and while there is a new kind of view for the browser, if I tap the top left button in the browser, I can see a little bit of information about this page, including listening to this page. But if I tap show reader and I switch this to the reader view, I can read through this blog post with kind of a slimmed down, trimmed down view. But if you'll notice, at the top of the screen there is now a summarize button and next to it is the Apple intelligence logo. So I'm going to tap that button and we are going to be provided with a summary of this page.

05:04
Home pods offer a range of features beyond music playback, including alarms, ambient sounds, intercom, personal requests and home security. I'm also going to go to this page from the national archives about how Flora McDonald helped with Bonnie Prince Charlie back in the day. So we'll go to show to reader or show reader reader and we'll summarize this page and you can see that this summary is much longer here. So it says Flora MacDonald assisted Bonnie Prince Charlie in escaping from South East to Sky by disguising him as a woman and providing him with a boat. They stayed at Lady Clan Ronald's house and later at Kingsbury's, where MacDonald suspected Kingsbury knew the disguised prince's identity. The prince eventually reached Rosset to consult with Rosset himself for his future security. So, yes, the story of the Bonnie Prince Charlie and his particularly bonniness was there, so we will go ahead and tap on that and hide the reader again. That's what you can do in Safari.

06:05
There are also a few other features I will mention. I don't use the built-in mail app, but for folks who do, now you can get your mail kind of the most important messages as Safari sees it, or rather, as mail sees it at the top of your list. It's a lot like what you get with Google's Gmail and some other browsers and Mail clients that provide the same functionality, although a new feature included is and again like some other Mail clients is a smart reply feature. Another section I wanted to mention is in the settings app. Now there is a special addition to focus modes. So if I'm in, do not disturb. I can choose to toggle on a feature called intelligent breakthrough and silencing, and what this does is it uses on device intelligence to figure out what I would probably consider to be a priority and display those messages. Allow those messages to be pushed through if the system believes that they are important and appropriate to be displayed at a specific time. I also wanted to mention that in Photos, the Photos app, there are now new features, including being able to search for photos with just natural language, so you could say, look for the photo where my dog is wearing a hat, and Siri might be able to surface that for you. It can also help you to find specific moments in video clips, which is really great, and the ability to create memories using kind of natural language processing, so you can say create a video of my previous beach trips and it will intelligently put that together. The last feature is one that I can show you as well, and that is with the Pages app here. Pages app here, and so I'm going to type something out We'll go with.

08:09
Hands on Mac is a podcast about Apple technology. In the show, micah Sargent helps users make the most of their Apple gizmos and gadgets. Each week, he brings the answer to a question, an interesting new topic or the latest features and functionality from Apple If you own an iPhone, an iPad, an Apple Watch comma or any other Apple device comma watch comma or any other Apple device comma this show is absolutely for you. Be sure to subscribe to the show in your podcast app of choice. We'll see you soon. Period.

09:20
Now Apple has added some features for that. They call writing tools for interacting with text and almost any application that uses text. So the first thing I'm going to do is command A to highlight this text and you will see that, after cut and copy in the menu there's a new option called writing tools. If I tap on that, up pops this Apple intelligence window where it suggests a few things. So the first thing I'm going to do is choose proofread. So it's going to look through and it is going to not provide any suggestions. So what I'm going to do is actually, I am going to uh, I'm going to put something bad in here. I'm going to say there are, oh, I'm going to do check out, okay. So what I've done is I've used the wrong there. I've done a lot as one word, and then I've also added apostrophe to episode to pluralize it, which we all know, as we're listening and watching, that those are inaccurate. I will choose writing tools and I will choose proofread, and now it's surely going to make some. It didn't make some suggestions. That is surprising, but, as you can imagine, this is Still something that is in oh yeah, ok, it did, it did make suggestions, so it fixed things. There is spelled correctly, are a lot of special episodes with the proper, the proper lack of an apostrophe place it. So, again, this is beta and you are going to run into issues, as you can see here, and so I'm just going to copy the new version and we'll paste the new version in there instead. Now, that was just one of the writing tools, so I'm going to select this entire thing. I'm going to choose writing tools again and now I'm going to choose rewrite. After, actually, I take out that sentence, there are a lot of special episodes that you should check out, because it just comes out of nowhere. So we'll highlight that. We'll choose writing tools. Now we're going to choose rewrite. Now, rewrite is going to look at something and kind of add a little bit of flair to it or maybe just make it a little bit different. So here's the new version that Apple suggests.

12:07
Hands-on Mac is a podcast dedicated to Apple technology, hosted by Micah Sargent, the show aims to empower users to maximize the capabilities of their Apple devices. Each episode features a question, an intriguing topic or the latest updates and functionalities from Apple. Whether you own an iPhone, ipad, apple Watch or any other Apple gadget, this podcast is an absolute must-listen for you. Don't forget to subscribe to the show in your preferred podcast app. We look forward to seeing you soon. So we'll copy that version and add that in there.

12:37
I'm going to highlight again and choose writing tools, and now we have some options. We can make it more friendly, we can make it more professional, we can make it more concise. I'm going to choose to make it concise. Hands-on Mac, hosted by Micah Sargent, empowers Apple users to maximize their devices' capabilities. Each episode features a question topic or Apple updates. Whether you own an iPhone, ipad, apple Watch or any other Apple gadget, this podcast is must-listen. Subscribe in your preferred podcast app. We look forward to seeing you, and so I will put that down below. We'll select the text one more time. I won't go through all of them because that would take us forever, but I am going to choose friendly because I'm curious what that makes it sound like. So we'll choose friendly here. Hey there, fellow Apple enthusiasts, if you're looking for a podcast it's all about the latest tech from Apple, then you've come to the right place. Hands on Mac is hosted by the awesome Apple Micah Sargent, and it's all about helping you unlock the full potential of your Apple devices.

13:35
So we'll copy that version, we'll pop it down below. What I want to do, though, is go back to Safari, and I want to take the text here that we have about the Bonnie Prince Charlie, and I think down to that paragraph should be enough. I'll copy that and we will paste it into Whoa. Let's see about pasting it and matching the style. It doesn't seem to want to. Let me paste, so we will select all, and then we will make the text just a little bit smaller, because that's all very large. There we go, so I am going to start selecting this text, and what we're going to do, essentially, is highlight this, and we don't want the original thing, and the writing tool that we're going to use is there we go is summary, so we can get a summary of this, and it talks about Miss McDonald. Okay, that's good.

14:50
Now I want key points from this piece Bonnie Prince Charlie's escape. Miss McDonald assisted Bonnie, prince Charlie's escape from South East by disguising him as a servant and taking him to Sky, and then O'Neill's involvement. I want a list from this, which that'll be interesting to see what the list could be. It might be a lot like what we've had before. It's not necessarily made for a list, so I'll be fascinated by. Ah. So it gives some kind of bullet points of what happened.

15:18
And then, last but not least, this table. Of course, this doesn't really present for needing a table, but you can imagine that if I were to write something. You know, yesterday my dog ate two biscuits, three tablespoons of food and a teaspoon of peanut butter. Today my dog ate one biscuit, four tablespoons of food and half a teaspoon of peanut butter. That could end up being put into a table, and so Apple's intelligence tools could automatically do that.

15:59
Now, these are just the first set of Apple intelligence features that are part of the next version of iOS. This is currently a waitlist feature, so only developers who hop on the 18.1 beta and sign up for the waitlist are able to try it out available right now. Apple will presumably keep adding new bits of features that it is announced previously to the beta, but this is simply what we have access to now. Folks, thank you so much for tuning into this week's episode of Hands on Mac. I appreciate you joining me every week here for the show and I will see you again next week for another episode of Hands on Mac. Bye-bye.