Here’s the video from the March Meetup. It was a fun time, where we discussed Apple Hardware and my Vestaboard. There was also an extended and insightful discussion of AI…
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There’s an interesting story right now about the latest Galaxy S23 and the moon. A person on Reddit made a blurry picture of the moon and then took a picture of that blurry image with his Galaxy S23, which used its particular, highly trained AI, to make it a clear and beautiful picture of the moon. That resulting picture wasn’t so much the same moon the photographer saw so much as it was an AI-generated picture of what the S23 computer brain expected the moon to look like in that particular photo.
I don’t really know how to feel about that. If I took a picture of my wife, would I want the picture of that lady that I love as seen through my lens in the moment or the idealized version of her the AI generates on the phone? That’s kind of a loaded question because, with all of the computational photography going on in all smartphones (iPhone included) you never really see exactly what the lens saw anymore. To me, the tipping point is where the image capture no longer matters. It appears the S23 is at that point when you shoot the moon.
I enjoyed this article from Dr. Drang about the robot-created AppleScript. I think AppleScript will be one of the most difficult languages for AI models to write because it was created to make it more human-readable, and that makes it quirky.
The other thing about AppleScript that will likely trip up the AI models (it certainly trips me up) is the modular nature of the language. Every app that implements AppleScript uses its own dictionary calls. From one app to another, these dictionaries vary greatly, and every script involving a new app requires a bit of spelunking.
Good luck with AppleScript, Robots, you’ll need it.
Email can get overwhelming for all of us. It just keeps coming. And the more emails you reply to, the more people write you back, generating even more email. When you get down to it, however, for most of us the truly daunting thing about email is sorting the wheat from the chafe. Where are the five email messages that truly matter in that inbox of 267 items? That’s where SaneBox, this week’s MacSparky sponsor, will save you time.
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Tidy up your inbox and let SaneBox deal with the clutter by sending them to your Sane folders. If you’re not quite sold, you can try it out for yourself. For MacSparky friends, SaneBox has a special offer. You can sign up for a free trial, and you’ll get a $10 credit you can use towards a SaneBox subscription. Welcome to email sanity, it’s that simple.
On this episode of Focused, business lawyer Mark Metzger joins me to talk about false urgency, the power of having a coach, and getting back on the wagon when life happens.
This episode of Focused is sponsored by:
I’ve heard from several readers and listeners about Whisper Transcription, a new native Mac App that is an AI transcription tool… This is a post for MacSparky Labs Level 3 (Early Access) and Level 2 (Backstage) Members only. Care to join? Or perhaps do you need to sign in?
I’ve seen Basic Apple Guy’s wallpapers popping up all over my feeds for a while now. Most recently, he released a beautiful Starry Night / Big Sur mashup. So I finally visited the site, and there is a mother lode of classy wallpaper there for you. While you are there, make sure to leave a tip. This was a lot of work.
Here’s the deep dive session on how I’m using OmniFocus these days…
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Tyler Stalman did a recent video comparing the iPhone to big, fancy cameras. The question comes up every few years, and every few years the percentage of people for whom big, fancy cameras still make sense gets smaller. Tyler is a professional filmmaker, so he’ll always need something more, but for the rest of us, big fancy cameras are getting harder and harder to justify.
We’ve been getting some news from Apple the last few weeks with the recent announcement… This is a post for MacSparky Labs Members only. Care to join? Or perhaps do you need to sign in?