Apple Intelligence Isn’t Ready to Wow You—Yet

Lastly, this one’s a bit of a sleeper hit, but try the search function in Apple Photos. There are now fewer guardrails when you search for a photo, meaning just inputting something like “at the park with [your spouse’s name]” should drum up all the images in your library for your perusal. It can understand that context, though you’ll need to take advantage of features in Apple Photos like labeling people and pets. (Google also just unveiled a very similar feature in Google Photos.)

The Second Coming

It’s not so much that what few features available in the first Apple Intelligence update are things we’ve seen from competitors years ago. After all, it doesn’t matter whether Apple is playing catch up or not, because Apple users can now take advantage of some of these capabilities in a more private, secure way thanks to Apple’s Private Cloud Compute (more info on this technology here).

But Apple should have waited to launch Apple Intelligence until all of its key features were available simultaneously, not in a piecemeal fashion. Siri’s reputation has long been in the gutter—Apple Intelligence promises to change that, but Siri is almost the same in iOS 18.1. Most of the time, when I ask a question, I get the same result: “Here’s what I found on the web.” Turns out you’ll have to wait for iOS 18.2, which brings the ChatGPT integration that lets you ask more open-ended questions and get more detailed responses. The current Apple Intelligence experience suggests you’re getting something new, but that’s not the case.

It’s with the next update that the most interesting voice features will arrive. For example, Siri will be able to understand the context of what’s on your device’s screen, so if someone texts you an address, you can ask Siri to save it to their contact card. And since Siri has access to your emails and messages, it will even be able to tap into personal context. Ask things like, “When do I have to leave for the airport to pick up my sister?” and Siri will provide the answer, looking at flight emails or messages your sister may have sent and then pairing that with traffic estimates.