I enjoyed reading (and participating in) Jason Snell’s annual Six Colors Report Card. It’s a nice barometer of how Apple is viewed from the outside by people who spend a lot of time thinking about the question.
The Lab Report for February 7, 2025
In this week’s episode of The Lab Report: A new app from Apple, Vision Pro turns One, still no 18.4 beta, and Sparky wraps up another year on the planet.
… This is a post for MacSparky Labs Members. Care to join? Or perhaps you need to sign in?
Sparky’s Email Machine
I recently came up with an interesting shortcut that writes an email for you combining ChatGPT instructions and a few regular expressions. It sounds complicated but it really isn’t. Check out this video and see for yourself.
… This is a post for MacSparky Labs Members. Care to join? Or perhaps you need to sign in?
Mac Power Users 782: Apple Intelligence Review
Stephen and I have been using Apple’s AI features since they showed up in betas last year. On this episode of Mac Power Users, we share our findings and talk about what’s worth your time — and what’s not — when it comes to Apple Intelligence.
This episode of Mac Power Users is sponsored by:
- Squarespace: Save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain using code MPU.
- Indeed: Join more than 3.5 million businesses worldwide using Indeed to hire great talent fast.
Testing DeepSeek
There is a lot of talk about with the new the DeepSeek LLM coming out of China. In this video I take a look and share a few thoughts.… This is a post for the Early Access and Backstage MacSparky Labs Members. Care to join? Or perhaps you need to sign in?
The Lab Report for January 31, 2025
In this week’s episode of The Lab Report: There’s a new Siri Sheriff in town, Apple’s AI priorities, the Pebble Watch is making a comeback, and Sparky recommends a delightful soundtrack from a popular iOS game.
… This is a post for MacSparky Labs Members. Care to join? Or perhaps you need to sign in?
Focused 222: The 2025 Productivity Field Guide
On this episode of Focused, I reflect on a year of teaching the Productivity Field Guide, talk about what’s new and what’s changed, and Mike shares the details of his interesting twist to time-blocking.
This episode of Focused is sponsored by:
Will Siri Ever Get Smart?
It is worth noting that in January 2025, 13 years after it was first released, Siri continues to be a joke. Every time I try to use Siri in front of a member of my family, there’s a 50–50 chance of success. When it fails, they laugh at it, and at me.
Recently, I was going to bed and told Siri to turn off the bedroom lights. Instead, it turned out all the lights downstairs on the rest of my family. (For bonus points, the bedroom lights stayed on.)
Paul Kafasis and John Gruber most recently documented Siri’s failings. I can’t help but feel we are at a crossroads. Apple made many promises in June about Siri improving with the arrival of Apple Intelligence, and we haven’t seen it in the public betas yet. I hope we get a peek with the next beta cycle, iOS 18.4.
I am not encouraged by the rumor that there is yet another Siri brain transplant rumored to happen in the future. I find it hard to believe that Apple lacks the competency to substantially improve Siri, which makes me wonder when they’ll get the resolve to do so. I sure hope it’s this year.
It’s easy to quarterback from the outside, but if I were in charge, I’d start a “boil the ocean” project to fix Siri and I’d seriously consider rebranding it to something else so that normal folks (like my family) don’t immediately associate it with a joke.
The March of the Agents
Late last week OpenAI introduced Operator, an AI agent that can go to the web and perform tasks for you. This essentially gives ChatGPT its own browser so it can look up webpages, scroll, type into them, and otherwise interact with the web on your behalf. It’s currently a research preview and limited to people with a ChatGPT Pro account, currently costing $200 per month.
Now that the gauntlet has been thrown down, I expect that we will see “The March of the Agents” from OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic, rolling out over the course of this year. I fully expect by the end of 2025 to be able to have an AI agent successfully order a pizza for me without any interaction from me aside from the instruction. And I expect this will be possible without a $200 a month account(!).
Up until now, our interactions with LLMs have been through an app or a web window where we direct a text conversation. Agents will change that, and it’s coming soon.
Mac Power Users 781: The 2025 Productivity Field Guide
I have updated the Productivity Field Guide for 2025. On this episode of Mac Power Users, Stephen and I discuss what’s new in the course, what changes I have made to my various production workflows, and more.
This episode of Mac Power Users is sponsored by: