Cancel Darwin

Good morning. Welcome to Comfort Zone. I'm Chris Lawley. No, I'm Matt. I'm doing the intro, even though all 3 of us are here, and it's only because Chris is coming to us live from California, as I guess he always does, but without his studio quality mic. Except. Excuse me. Apple would disagree. These are studio quality microphones. Uh, I am I am coming to you live, not from the center of California, but northern California, because I am on the ground floor in my hotel

room. Uh, because my 2 co-hosts decided to start this recording at 6 AM Apple Park Time. I know what you're talking about. And I, and, and, Apple Park doesn't open up for me until, till seven. So I was gonna do a whole bit where I was filming or recording the podcast at Apple Park and probably gets told by security at some point to stop. But. Yeah. But I'm in my hotel room. Well, welcome, Chris. Thank you for making it. We're also joined by Niléane, Niléane, how are you? Hello, I'm fine.

I'm fine. Finer than last year's WWDC. Excellent. This, we were, I was sitting there watching this keynote and I was like, this is Niléane's iPadOS 26. No, I don't think so. But she got it a lot quicker than what I got iPadOS twice. Like, I literally... I've literally been telling... Yeah. One year. Yeah, I had to wait a 10. Um, I was telling uh, some Apple people. I'm like, this is the 1st time going into a WWDC. I'm not stressing about the iPad. Wow.

That's, yeah, that's a first. I think we should just get into it. and talk about some of the things in WWDC. We have a loose outline, but I wanted to start by saying this was a weird presentation for someone who's used to it being a certain way where they have a title card that says this is the platform and here's the features, and those features happen to be on everything anyway, but that's how they broke it down. And this year, they were like, here is Chris's AppleOS 27 and it is the same on everything. All these features are

everywhere. And we're literally not even going to talk about any differences. We're not, we're just going to show the things off. So, Chris, do you feel vindicated? I do. Um, that word cloud slide of like, here's all the features, and even that's still not everything. Um, I took that. I threw it into Codex, had Codex basically break all the features up and sort it, and a vast majority of them are on every platform. There are some that are only on one. There's some that are on two.

There's some that are like, like, iPad, Mac, and iPhone, but not watch and TVOS, TVOS did get 7 new features, by the way. We could spend an hour talking about that. I know you guys would rather spend an hour talking about corner radiuses. I saw that and I was like, oh, God, that's all Comfort Zone's going to be for the next 6 months. Um, But yeah, no, like, I, I, it's not the Apple OS in name, but it's definitely like, I see the trajectory.

Like, I don't, I really do think, like, at some point, like Darwin and all that stuff will need to be updated for the next phase of technology, and at that point, why build 3 separate OSs? Why would you update the theory of evolution, Chris? Ah, because Darwin, that dude was nuts. Are we canceling Darwin now? Oh, no. Yeah. Hashtag cancel Darwin. I love when the episode title just so clearly happens right at the start. This is good. Okay. Can I say something? Please. Okay. I

don't really care about your outline. I'm sure. But yes, it's fine. I assumed, yes. But what I want to say is, I would like, um, so this is like an official statement in picture me in front of like a podium or something. I would like to extend a symbolic, massive middle finger too. everyone last year who has kept telling me that, oh, no, the floating sidebars are fine. They're really nice. They look nice, actually. You should just get used to it.

And when I was making arguments on Mastodon as well as on this show about how it doesn't make sense in terms of both user experience, but also like in terms of visual coherence, to have a floating sidebar, people were like, no, no, no, you don't understand Apple's geniuses, they know what they're doing and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So massive middle finger to you all. I still love you, but still. And yes. Now, what are you going to do? What are you going to do you all? What are you going to say now that Apple itself has agreed with me and decided

that, yes, it sucked and we should revert that? Floating sidebars? No, no, no, no, no, nobody wants that. I, I, I, I love vindicated Niléane. Yeah. Yeah. All right, you got floating sidebars. You got a slider. You got, um, my video just froze for some reason, because hand reactions happen. I don't know. You're still good for us. That was weird. Okay. Okay, all right. That was weird. But you got floating sidebars are gone. You got corner radius

is fixed. You got a slide bar for Liquid Glass. to the point where if you slide it all the way to the other end, I think one of you said in our group chat, sorry, I haven't caught up this one. I literally jumped in the shower threw on clothes and jumped on the call. Um, it's very early here. But what have you said? It looks like Tiger, right? Um, that's, uh, that's, uh, I think I agree, like, the, they've also updated the look of the buttons generally and the fields. So now they have like some the way they

shine is very different from last year. It looks very bubbly, much more like bubblier than last year because last year, I mean, in Tahoe and 26, All the buttons are flat. Like when they're against white background, especially or even a dark background, the buttons are all flat. Now they have some kind of 3D aspect to them, even when they are on top of nothing, basically. And it looks, it looks a lot like the Aqua buttons of old. They

look, as somebody said on Mastodon, they look clickable. And yes, yeah. I will say, I am, this computer is not on the beta yet. What? But my MacBook Neo is. My iPhone is, my iPad is, and my Vision Pro are. And I messed around with the slider and I tried some things out and I am currently using them all on maximum transparency, which is still better than normal transparency last year. And

it's because of those things. Yeah, they are doing whatever they're doing with the refraction of the stuff behind. It is easier to read. If it's a problem for you, you can still slide and it'll be like super opaque and that's fine. But for me, there aren't as many issues with it. Maybe I'll find more as I use it more, but like, the initial reaction is actually this is better, and the, a low-key thing that has made it much nicer is there's a little outline around every button now that is, I think it's supposed to just look like the glass kind of falling off, but it's just an outline, and that goes a long way to making it more defined and just feel more like, I don't know, buttons in

interface, which they're supposed to be. And the low-key best thing is, you know, that stupid thing. last year where there were these like in the toolbar. The buttons were just floating and all your your content would go under them and they would like fade and it would kind of like be this gradient fade that was just horrible. Now there's a fixed line with a background that even on the maximum transparency is pretty darn opaque. So your buttons are legible. It's a small thing, but it goes a long way. I was listening to ATP this morning, and John Siracusa

has said, turns out, toolbars need to look like bars. Yes. But yes, the way they were dealing with, so in 26, the buttons they did not have an outline, and the way they were dealing with that is massive drop shadows around everything. Yes. I'm opening Finder right now, the buttons in a toolbar, they all have massive drop shadows, and that's the only way that you were able to tell that

there's, like, there's something there. So now, and I've looked at many screenshots yesterday and today. It seemed like all the drop shadows are gone, at least for those that immense the buttons and the fields and the toolbar elements, et cetera. The shadows are gone. It's just a thin outline and it does the job well. Yeah, I'm pretty sure that's the case. Again, I don't have that one in front of me, but I took a screenshot earlier and

I am pretty happy. Pretty happy with it. Um, did you guys see the iPad even became a little more Mac like this year as well? The menu bar is now shifted. It's left aligned, and you can set it up so that the menu bar items are always present. But for some reason, that's I, I, yeah, I either don't understand how that's working or it's broken in the beta for me because if I toggle that setting, they still disappear. So, um, I have a briefing later today that I will ask about that. But, um, yeah, it, all

they need to do is move the time and date over to the right side and it's just the Mac menu bar at that point. It's kind of weird that they did this and kept the time on the left. I know. kind of thought the same thing. I kind of thought the same thing. I really wouldn't be surprised if next year it moves over or even maybe in the middle of this beta it moves over. really wouldn't be surprised. Um, but I really like it not being, you know, all in the center now. And it's a little smaller too. It's, it's, maybe, maybe

I, or maybe I, it's just my eyes and I'm not comparing it. I don't have another iPad here to compare it to, but it seems like it's a little more compact and inline with the menu bar and not just kind of like this tacked on thing. It feels more like it's supposed to be there. Yeah. Nice. Uh, if we can delay the AI talk briefly. Okay. It's so obvious that we have touch Macs coming this fall, right? Oh my god. Touch Macs? And the dual screen iPhone. If you look at the technical stuff, there's drawing in

notes, drawing in free form on the Mac. There's, um, what was it, Sidecar, better, better... Yeah, when you're using sidecar, when you're using sidecar to be a 2nd display for your Mac, you can just touch it and swipe around everything just like you could, um, if it was the Mac screen itself. Um, and then, yeah, the iPhone, uh, they were like, well, now you've got your iPhone here, and now, like, just what if it got like twice as wide all of a sudden? Um, what would that be like? So now you can resize on iPhone

mirroring? iPhone mirroring too. That was surprising. Even if you're... size, I found mirroring, and so whatever app is wearing on your phone will just have a wider aspect ratio and, yeah. And in 26, I saw that they, like, added landscape orientation to a bunch of system apps as well. So like Apple Music, fast. Sorry if I keep talking over you two. There is a massive delay. Uh, I'm on hotel Wi-Fi. There's, there's, you know, it is what it

is. Um, but iPhone apps on the iPad now can be resized as well, and not just like blown up. They could be like reshaped. Uh, so that's kind of cool. It's it's still a little funky, like developers should really just make an iPad app, uh, looking at you, Notion Calendar. Um, I would like to use you, but... iPad. But yeah, so so that that's kind of cool.

Yeah, and again, iPhone apps are iPad apps, iPad apps are iPhone apps. So this will just happen. You don't even need the updates. And they're... And they're Mac cast as well. in a lot of cases, yes. Um, but yeah, it's super obvious. It's happening and everyone will be happy. And I will get my vindication. Oh, Chris, you got the iPad last year, Niléane, you're getting Liquid Glass this fall, and if I get touch Macs. You'll just be a happy Comfort Zone. Yeah, what

will we have to complain about? We'll find people know we'll find somebody to complain about. Okay. Should we move on to Apple Intelligence? Do we want complain? Please, please. I have I have a lot to say. Maybe one quick thing before. Okay. We do that. So it's out of the way. They had a whole section in the keynote about, they called it trust and safety, I believe, trust, and whatever. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The child protection. Yeah. And they unveiled a bunch of like massive, if I understand correctly, enhancements to the

how you can limit the screen time of your children and how you can impose more limits on like child accounts, which you can gradually upgrade over time when they age up. Now there's the ability to restrict websites as well, if I understand that correctly as well. None of this has been tested by anyone, so I'm just citing off Apple from the keynote. Anyway, so all of this is just iterations, pretty big iterations, to be fair, over what's been there

before, and I just can't help but worry about like the political discourse that they've been using in that presentation. For example, they kept saying things like who knows best than parents. Well, who knows best than parents for their children? There's also one point one of the presenters said, yeah, parents know something that along that line. I don't

remember specifically. But anyway, and that's the kind of, this is the discussion we already had on the show, right? When we talked about age verification, I think I'm worried about this for kids. I cannot even begin to imagine what kind of life I would have had if my parents had that kind of power over me when I was a kid. Uh, and yeah, I saw a bunch of people on Mastodon say the same thing. Like there's massive, uh, there's

massive variety around this where, especially when talking about marginalized kids and queer kids and et cetera. And the phrase parents know best what's best for their children. Yeah. somebody posted this quote on Mastodon and with a line underneath. queer kids, I haven't heard the chat. Like, if you're a queer kid, yeah, there's obviously some families are accepting and it's great, but some families are not, and then if you're a queer kid, no, your

parents probably don't know best what's best for you. Anyway, so just wanted to mention that. Yeah, I think it's worrying that Apple has fallen into this narrative, like they've had before, but now it's more prominent, and I think it's also because they're trying to come before all of the massive policy changes around this around the world. Yeah, it's, I mean, it's a tough thing. Um, if you have a kid with a phone or an iPad, like, you don't want them necessarily exposed to the entire internet, all the time, and you don't necessarily want them messaging strangers, and, like, so

there is, there are reasonable limits. I think, especially from a US centric mindset, um, there's definitely the idea that we don't want people outside the family making decisions, um, like government bodies, for example, we definitely lean more towards, uh, yeah. parents making decisions and everything. But like you said, there is a line where They don't always know best, right? For a lot of kids, they do. And like,

you know, his family has their own rules and systems and everything, but yeah, so I don't know, I don't know how you balance that perfectly. Um, the one, the thing that kind of got me was the website limits, like setting, you could set it up so you can approve every single website they go to, uh, which seems a little crazy and like, I can't imagine as someone as as a kid, uh, how I would deal with that, but, I mean, you do like a Google search and then you like open 5 tabs, right? And like, is that 5 notifications to your parents, like they want to access all these websites and like, you

don't even know what's on that website yet. It's a little crazy. So we'll see how it works in real life. Like none of us have kids, so it's a little hard to, um, for me, at least have a super strong opinion on it, but I definitely... Be for yourself, I have Riley. Sherman has no limits on his iPad, of course. Whoa, he's just buying all the microtransactions. He is, he is. So it's, it's, I think it's kind of one of those, like, impossible problems to get right for everybody, so I hope they navigate it well so that it, it protects without, uh,

endangering or restricting kids. So I don't know what the solution is, but I was I was surprised it was like a 3rd of their presentation, though. That was surprising. I think that's what I'm worried about the most because it used to, it always used to be something, like these kind of features, but that it's become a, like, a 1st level title in the presentation, and also, like, like I said, the discourse that they use to justify and present the set of features that that was worrying to me. But yeah, we can move on to AI. I

think, yeah, we'll talk about it more when we have more information. I got 6 minutes left, guys, before I have to bounce. Okay. All right. What do you want to talk about, Chris? Um, can I can I just round off, like, just rapid fire, a few things that I've learned that are pretty interesting? Go ahead. Um, so the new on-device model. has, uh, let me pull it up here, has a 20000000000 parameter, uh, uh, context window. Uh, this

is up from the 4 of the previous one. That's why that's why the RAM increase happened. Like, you have to have 12 gigs of RAM to run this new, the high-end on-device Siri AI. Um, and the stuff I've seen so far, and I've only had, um, I haven't had the full Siri AI briefing yet. I've had the Apple Intelligence briefing and this is where it gets really confusing. But the stuff I've seen so far from the on-device model, very impressive.

Like, I'm actually really impressed with it. Um, the new shortcuts stuff is interesting. Shortcuts now defaults. When you hit the + button to create a shortcut, it now defaults to the natural language input so that, um, it, it, you just type in what you want, uh, the shortcut to be and it'll build it for you for simple shortcuts and kind of like intermediate shortcuts. simple shortcuts that should get it in one shot. Like no problem. Intermediate shortcuts, it might get it in

one shot. You might have to go into the editor and like fix a couple of things. Um, and advanced shortcuts, it falls down. Like if you tell it to make Federico's Apple Frames, it ain't gonna do that. If you tell it to make my snippet cut shortcut. It's not gonna do that. From what I understand, and this could be wrong because I've gotten mixed information, but the reliable information that I have heard is that this doesn't work with 3rd party actions. And I haven't had a chance to fully test that. In fact, actually, let me see if I can just test that right now. Um,

But, uh, let's let's just test it right now. Let's do it live on air. make a shortcut so that, wait, do I have to do this on this machine still? Nope. Uh, what's a, what's a, uh, make a shortcut so that I can enter an event for Fantastical. All right. So let's see if that works. I should have tested that before, but it's been a crazy. Guys,

I didn't leave Apple Park until 8.30 last night. I got there at 7.30 AM and I didn't leave until 8.30. Okay, so, um, okay, so I told it about Fantastical, and it said to create a shortcut using that app, you will need to use the editor. So it does not work with 3rd party apps. Oh, maybe does that maybe mean that the developer needs to update something? Maybe, but I mean, all the actions are there. Like if this was an on-device thing, it would be able to just see what actions were on device. And um, and go from there.

The other thing I was told, but I haven't figured out how to make it happen is that you should be able to create extensions on Safari. I've had an iPhone 2. In Safari? And Safari. Yeah. But I haven't figured out. I think that, I think that person might have been confused, um, because I haven't figured out how to do that just yet. And if, again, I have had very, very little time to do anything with this. Yeah, it doesn't seem to be in the 1st developer

beta, that functionality at all. Oh, so it's not even in the MacOS beta? Oh, yes, I think I've seen it. I've seen people use it actually on the Mac. Have you? I could find it. Yeah, I saw some screenshots of it. interesting. Okay. Well maybe it is. Okay. All right. We'll report back. We'll figure that one out. There was some other stuff that I am pulling up right now that if you give me 2 seconds, I will have it for you. Um, So, um,

one more cool thing about shortcuts. Well, cool-ish, and I'm kind of annoyed about this. So the automations tab in shortcuts, you could no longer create new automations in the automations tab. There is no window for you to pick a trigger. In order to create a background automation in Shortcuts. You have to do the natural language input, and you have to be, when I get home, turn on these lights. But there is some new, um, there is some new, uh, triggers, one of which is when your iPad pairs with a keyboard or disconnects from a keyboard.

So now I have an automation setup, so whenever my iPad pairs to a hardware keyboard, it turns on the window mode. whenever it disconnects from a hardware keyboard, it turns off the window mode. So it's, that's, that's honestly, I think that actually should just be a setting. Like that should be something there. But, yeah, that's pretty cool. Um, Animation speed. And it's not just animation speed. They actually made some tweaks to like performance and stuff like that. So that when you jump, when you open and close apps, when you're switching windows and stuff like that, things are faster in

iPadOS. Like, there's a bunch of like tweaks and stuff to basically make all the OS's feel faster. Uh, there is undo and redo home screen edits, but it's just on iPadOS. It's not on iOS. I don't know why. Unbelievable. iPhone not getting the respect it deserves. And again. You know, it just doesn't do much for them. Um, I'm all over the place. I know. Shortcuts now has else if actions. So, uh, it's you, so all those nested if actions, you can uh,

you can kind of clean that up. There's there's also the ability to store data in shortcuts. So I'm going to rebuild a bunch of shortcuts over the summer so that instead of using an app like Data Jar or something like that, where you have to open it in order to get it to sync with shortcuts. Shortcuts will now just be so you could theoretically build a proper clipboard manager now with shortcuts. I would say that in the shortcuts. I believe it's saving it in the Shortcuts app. Okay, interesting.

Um, the, and macOS, there is now HDR support for macOS system UI, so Matt, your nice monitor. Actually, I think this is a good thing. Let me explain. Right now, so that fancy monitor I got, if I plug my iPad into it, it supports Dolby Vision. If I plug my MacBook Pro into it, it does not. So this should bring, I'm hoping this means it's bringing Dolby Vision support to the Mac, but again, it's not something I've been able to test. All I know is HDR for macOS system UI. Uh, there's better ultra wide

monitor support. So if you have an ultra wide monitor and use it with the Mac, you can do that. And they've added swipe down to refresh to a bunch of apps, like Mail, Safari, stuff like that in macOS. That'll make a lot of sense for your touchscreen Macs coming this week. Yeah, they're kind of like, they're not even trying to hide it. This is, yeah, I mean, this is stuff they could have added later, but yeah, I've lived through a lot of these. they sneakily put something that indicates of future future hardware. This year

is very direct. Um, yeah. Well, Chris, I know you have to go. Yes. You hate us. No, I'm sorry. My schedule is wild. I literally have to, I, I, I have to throw my shoes on, pack my backpack and go to Apple Park to meet with uh, the ADA developers, the ADA winners. briefings. It's a tough life. Look, did I record AppStories yesterday with John Federico and Myke Hurley inside Apple Park all together? Yes, I did.

You both are leaving me. Like, Matt also recorded something with somebody else. And he used Comfort Zone property to do it too. All of a sudden I'm getting emails from Riverside. Matt Birchler's recording is ready, and I'm like, I'm not mad, Birchler. Why are you telling me this? Yeah. I didn't realize you got emails for that. If you make any money off that, we're owed 10%. Oh, here's the great man. That podcast makes no money. Okay, all right.

Well there you go. All right. I hope you guys had a great WWDC. Thank you for letting me crash in and hijack, and I can't wait to listen to the rest of the show. Sure. Have fun, Chris. All right. Talk to you later. Bye. Okay, so that guy was annoying. Glad is good. Do we want to talk about Siri AI? Apple Intelligence. We can.

I know it's unavailable in the EU, so you will... I have stuff to say about that. Okay. Let me say the good stuff and the bad stuff. I think the good stuff. The password reset is a cool use of agentic browsing in a way that all the other agentic browsers are like, uh, archives some emails. Uh, book plane tickets, but you're obviously not gonna use it for that. So that's a cool thing. Although in the UI, I tried to play with it. It seems to be an all or nothing thing. So it has like 97 sites. It

wants me to make a change on. And the only option is to fix 97 sites, which is not a button I necessarily want to hit. Um, But that's cool. Um, The shortcuts. Chris talked about it. When you start a shortcut now, it does default to just like describe what you want. You can still go to the old interface, but like, uh, it does default to just tell us what you want us to make. Um, and then on the not so good side, I don't love the photography stuff that they're doing with

the expand and the reframe, like cleanup I can be okay with, especially because it doesn't do a great job at adding content. It's clean up like something from the background or like whatever. I'm not super upset about for whatever reason, but this idea of like actually reframing a photo and like, I thought their example sucked as well. Like, it was a perfectly fine photo of this guy's kids, and then he changed it into another photo that was equally just fine. Um, and but

with the, uh, without the benefit of being the actual thing that happened, uh, which is, I don't love, I think I saw John Siracusa, um, 2nd Siracusa reference. I saw him post on Mastodon like in the next year's version. They'll let you like replace the kids with better looking kids and everything. Like, why do I have to settle for my kids? Why can't these be different? Yeah, I saw He just weirds me out. I saw on Reddit, again, somebody like screen recording, this new reframe and extend features and photos. So there's 2 things.

First, this is like straight up from the future. Like the way it looks and it works is very impressive. like this is like a video game engine on the fly that that's using your photo as a frame of reference and just building like an entire space around your photo. This is incredible. Second, this is, yeah, I agree. This is gross as heck. What if I would understand it better if this was like an

image break playground where you are generating a scene or whatever, like generating a 3D scene and you can put whatever you want in that 3D scene and edit it and move it around and whatever. But to start from a place of what's supposed to be reality, that is your photos and just create an alternative realm all around it. I think this is not good. Yeah, I was watching at home with my wife on the couch as well, and she's not super interested, but I was on the TV, so she was watching

as well. And at this point, both of us kind of looked over each other and were like, oh, that's gross. Like, it is, ugh, um, using it. It does, you aren't able to like totally like spin the camera around like 360 degrees or anything. Um, so they are kind of minor adjustments, but even still, it's weird. Um, they don't do text very well. I had a picture of like a car that I took that had no parking sign, um, that was slightly obscured and I reframed it to

like so that the sign would be visible and it just gave me like 2 years ago, like AI text, you know, like what it would do. Yeah, yeah, yeah. it's crazy what it generated. I mean, obviously that'll get better, I guess, but like it is, I don't love it. I don't love the idea of these edits, and they didn't talk about it, but like, Google has, like, there's like these standards that are being trying to set up the word to, like, label things as AI enhanced or

adjusted. And I don't think Apple said anything about those. So I don't know if they're doing anything like... If I reframe a photo and I post it somewhere, is there any indication that that was edited? I don't know. That's the thing to look up, I guess. You wouldn't you would not know without a label, for sure. No, especially like the minor ones, you'd have no idea. Yeah, you have an idea. Yeah. So yeah, I don't know. I also saw somebody mentioned something I agree with is, like, Apple doesn't talk about, like, consent either because

they're advertising how you can, so there's the photo editing stuff, but there's also you can generate things with your friends and contacts and family. And, like, there's no process at all for them giving consent before you do that. It seems. And that's not great either. It is a little crazy. Like, that feels like a very Apple-y thing, like, to be like, we, because in photos, it knows who you are, and then it has, like, the faces that you've saved and everything, but, like, I feel like if it's not a face of you,

then, yeah, it should, like, require some sort of request permission thing. It would seem like something they would do. totally. So it is a little surprising. Yeah, it just gives me the heebie-jeebies. Also, that was another, their AI demos are just so bad. Any of their image demos are just so terrible. It was like a birthday invitation where they put this, this woman in like a, uh, uh, investigators coat

and like had like little cake in front of her and like it was like the saddest looking like version of this person you could possibly imagine. It was like an Interpol shot. Yeah. Yes. Yeah, it wasn't come to my fun party. It was like, please save me. Oh, yeah, so I don't know. The image stuff really, really weirded me out. The other, the just like Siri updates where like the new animation and stuff is is fine. It does do some of the stuff like

I asked it like to pull some information from inside apps and it did it and it's conversational so you can keep talking to it and your chats go into the Siri app. and you can keep, you can resume them there. So that's kind of cool. If you asked it something and kind of forgot what it told you or if you wanted to do something else with it. Um, and it syncs across your devices. So if you do something on your iPhone, on your Mac, you'll have it there. So that's kind of cool. Um, Yeah. But yeah, haven't had enough time to play with it to really get a full impression. And obviously no

3rd party apps do anything with it yet, so. It's hard to tell. Yeah, I like the design. It looks clean and not over the top, and like the glow that they introduced with Apple Intelligence, that looked nice, but also I could see how they could that would age quickly because it's very colorful, very in your face. Yeah. This is more discreet. It is

actually a weird experience because that the glow around the screen glow is gone, that's completely gone. So after you install the new update. You actually go back to getting that like purple orb at the bottom of the screen. And so I thought like, oh, I was like, oh, no, I got like downgraded with Siri. Um, so, but you have to like join the wait list and once you're in, once that's through, uh, you get the new Siri. But yeah, it is kind of weird to like, I'm going to have the orb back because I'm not getting... The orb is coming back, yes. And I'm not getting the new Siri either, so. Okay, I'll just be stuck with the orb. that's fine Yeah.

I do have to correct our good friend Chris. Okay. Uh, I think he mixed up parameters in a model and context window in a model. The local AI model has the exact same context window as before, which is 4000 tokens. The Private Cloud has 32,000 tokens, which all developers have, well, developers with less than 2000000 downloads of their apps have access to, which is good because

that's the better model, but the context window is 32,000, which is teeny tiny. Um, I've put in, for some context, I put in a chart into our show notes of like how that compares to the Claude models and like it's not even close. Uh, Sonnet has done 200,000 for years and uh, Opus is a 1000000 now. But the good news is the average Comfort Zone episode, which is an hour long, is about 20,000 tokens. So, all of the things I do with like,

uh, quick subtitles and chapter eyes, uh, I can do that in private cloud now because I do not have 2000000 users. And I can just use that for free, which is cool. So I'm very happy about that. But I've been watching those sessions and it's very, it's weird. You got unlimited use of the on-device model. Of course, you always have. But for the cloud one, the limit is based on per user, so each user can use the cloud model for a set amount of time. And if you have

iCloud plus, you get more usage, but it's unclear exactly what those limits are. So it should be fine. I suspect those just there to avoid like abuse, but I am happy about it. Because I can do some more things with their uh, their model, which I couldn't do before. Yeah. Um, did you want to talk about the EU and Apple Intelligence? Yes, let's talk about the EU. So, because that was very interesting. So in the video itself, like in the keynote itself. Craig, addressed

it like right away, orally, he said, we are deeply disappointed. will not be able to bring it to the EU, blah, blah, blah. Very short and sweet. Then right when the keynote ended, I got a push notification and a press release dropped. They pressed, like, the Apple dropped the recipes. That was the 1st one they dropped, I believe, even before the iPadOS, I, 1st drop press release is due to the, what was the headless look up the headline again of their press

release? Due to DMA, Siri AI delayed in EU for iOS 27 and iPadOS 27. So this does not affect macOS and visionOS and watchOS, I suppose. And yeah, and their press release, have you read it? Incredible piece of media, this press release. Basically, this is like, it makes me so mad. Anyway, the best fit

is basically is, so they expose the argument for why they not bring it to bringing it to the EU. Basically, it is the EU commission, for us to be in compliance with the DMA, wants us to give any 3rd party AI system unlimited access to a user's device. So that means, um, so Siri AI does all of this stuff that's integrated into the OS integrated with the apps, integrated

with, it uses your private data and all of that. And to bring it out to the EU on iOS and iPadOS, because we're considered a monopoly there and we're forced to add interoperability, um, Yeah, the EU wants us to give that access to 3rd party AI and we don't do that because we respect users privacy. So that's their argument. And they also said in the press, which is very interesting. We proposed a

technical solution that we would roll out over an 18 month period. And they said no. So basically they went to the EU commission and said, so we have a solution, we called it the trusted, I want to look up that name again. They call they call it the trusted system agent. And into, I'm quoting them again, an intermediary that would allow virtual assistants to safely access the same features and capabilities as

Siri AI for devices in the EU. So basically like a middleman for 3rd party AIs, to, yeah, to work like Siri AI on iOS and iPadOS in the EU. And they said, yeah, the EU commission said no. So when you come out reading this. You're like, well, the EU is an asshole. What the heck? What do you mean? They want to, they want to force Apple to let users

data free, I don't know. Sure. That's what it sounds like. That's what it says even. It's not what it sounds like. They're saying, Remember, the quote was the quote. I'm I'm quoting them. The EU commission wants us to give any AI system unlimited access to a user's device. This is a quote from the press release. Okay, so when you look into it. and you will think for 2 seconds. My 1st thought last night, before

we had any additional context. My 1st thought was, so it's a take, like, it's my opinion. What really happened is with Siri AI, Apple, they decided to develop a brand new OS feature that's central to the OS, that's central to many of the new features, they decided to develop that. Knowing that it would not meet the DMA requirements. Why do I know that they were knowing that because they've been subjected to the DMA now since 2023. So it's been 3 years.

So there's no way, we know that they started work on this like last year a year and a half ago. So obviously they were already under the DMA, they knew the requirements they had to meet and yet they decided to move on is what I'm seeing. And then they went to the commission with this proposal of a technical solution. And they said, look, it's not ready, but we would have to, and since it's not ready, we would have to roll this out over an 18 month period. And my opinion is the EU commission was

like, uh, LOL, what do you mean? You plan to disobey the DMA again for the next 18 months, even though we already fined you for the, like for the fact that you were not in compliance for the DMA and the DMA in on many counts. And the end of the story, Apple releases this press release because they'd rather show that the EU is being mean to them, than actually find a way to release Siri AI at the same

time everywhere in the world. Yeah, and just before we started recording, the EU commission held a press briefing as they do, I believe, every week or every morning. And so in the press briefing today, as we're recording on the ninth, EU commission spokesperson Thomas Regnier stated that Apple was simply unable to develop interoperability solutions that meet essential EU privacy and security standards. So like they're saying the contrary to Apple here. Like

they're saying, Apple was not able to develop a solution that meets our security and privacy standards. So we have completely opposite discourses here on either end. And he also says, which confirms my take from last night. He also says that basically that the inability to release Siri AI in the EU before 18 months, while being in compliance with the DMA was a no-go for them, basically. And so looks like I'm right.

Looks like, basically the U commission was like, okay, so you're telling me that you will just spend a year and a half developing this major new central OS feature, knowing that you would not meet the requirements that you're supposed to like respect, and you're telling me you don't want to respect it for the next 18 months, the next year and a half, even though we already fined zero. And yeah, so. Anyway, I just wanted like to present the full thing here because I'm feeling that some commenters

out there. I'm already seeing the headlines from yesterday. Some people presenting this news that are like, oh, EU, the EU is being mean to Apple, blah, blah, blah. Like Apple is not saying, I think Apple is not being truly honest or at least they've been purposefully deceitful about the full story here. And yeah, the EU, they're not going to flinch, it seems so anyway, so. Yeah. What you think? I mean, it is... a little...

It is interesting that the DMA has been around for a while and this feature was developed and doesn't seem to have taken it into account. Um, Yeah. I don't see what's blocking the EU commission from agreeing to their proposal. Yeah. I'm guessing like, and also, the wording in Apple's press release is interesting because they're saying the EU commission said no.

And they say this right after they said, uh, we plan to roll out a solution of an 18 month period. So they make it sound like, I'm not saying they're lying. I'm saying maybe it's purposefully written in that order. It sounds like the EU commission said no to the technical solution that they proposed. Instead, it seems to me, like, after hearing the press briefing from the EU commission, what they said no to was not the

solution itself, but rather the 18 month period thing, the fact that it was not ready. But at the same time, the EU commission also said that it did not meet the privacy and security standards, but not clear why what that points to precisely yet. Out of curiosity, do they also, I need to look at this, the newsroom. Did they post something about the China availability as well? I'm guessing no. No, I don't, I've not seen that. No, because

they, this is a thing. They tend to complain loudly about the EU requirements and then quietly do the China stuff, but like, in the keynote after Craig said, like, hey, it's not going to be available in the EU. Um, he also said, it's completely unavailable. like Siri is completely unavailable in China as well. But there's no press release complaining about the Chinese government. You know. Interesting. So, yeah. Oh, my dog wants to get out.

Well, yeah, I think the full story is not before I is here. I, I, I think it closely resembles what I'm saying. More than what they are saying, they are saying on in their press release, Apple. I think it's more like the EU commission is not having it anymore. They just don't want to give any more exemptions, like whatever, whether that's an 18 month

delay or a plain exemption, they are not having it and Apple showing up with a new central OS feature that they're not able to release and with no interoperability. I think obviously that's not going to go through well with the EU. Like, obviously. Hmm. Yeah, I don't know. It's a bit

of he said, she said, but I do think it is an interesting thing. Um, both Apple and the United States government, uh, are not used to people saying no to them and like holding their ground, and that is a thing we are starting to experience more and more on both fronts, which is just uh, just notable. Yeah, yeah, definitely what's happening here is that maybe they were not expecting them to say, no, is maybe the thing. Yeah.

Or you could have the nefarious interpretation where they were expecting them to say no and this is just another way for them to push back. We'll let our listeners decide what they think. I don't know. It's probably a mix. It's probably they want to do things their way. They do want to do. I think they'd probably have genuine concerns about privacy. They talked about that a lot. They're like our models compared

to the other guys, which we won't name, but are clearly we're talking about OpenAI and Anthropic and Google. Uh, they don't care about privacy. We do. And, you know, I could see why they wouldn't necessarily want OpenAI full access to all of your stuff, but, yeah, I don't know. Yeah. I suppose from the EU's point of view, they are giving full access to Google's AI. And that's not a problem to them. From

the press briefing that I saw today, it seems likely, because at some point the spokesperson highlights that. He says, by the way, they had new Siri powered by AI, and that doesn't seem to bother them. So it seems like it's a point of argument for them. Yeah. Okay, well, we'll see how this develops in them. I'm sure everyone will be happy. It'll be. Yeah. We are running out of time. But I did want to bring up one thing that immediately made me think of Niléane when I saw it come up, which is AirPods now

have an equalizer. Do you have any feelings about this? What do you think I'm feeling? I'm guessing skepticism, although some level of excitement. I could not care less about EQ on AirPods. You know, you know what's actually missing from the Apple's OS's in general, and it looks like it still is, is a system-wide EQ. This, like, if you want to tailor to audio people in general, this is what you want to add. You

want to add a systemwide EQ. There's not one on macOS, not on iPadOS, not on iOS either. So this is like a Band-Aid on something that wasn't that nobody was asking for because why would you EQ your AirPods? Like, I don't... You could. I mean, there's people who don't like how the new AirPods sound. Sure. But it's not, it's, it doesn't bring anything super exciting to EQ your AirPods of all things. I would like to EQ my

fancy headphones when I plug them into my iPhone is what I would like to do. See? So for that, I need a system-wide EQ, not AirPods EQ. Okay. Okay, okay. Well, I wildly miscalculated. I thought you'd be excited. I could not get this. And yeah, I think most people will agree with me. The customer people AirPods will just be fine for people who stumble upon it in settings. Okay. Yeah. nobody's going to look for that. It's

just, oh, you stumble upon that. Oh, that's fun. Okay, fine. Yeah. Okay, well, I tried. One thing that is exciting, I think, is Apple stole a feature from Android, which is, you know, at this point, that's you can just steal it from each other. Um, on Android for a very long time. You know how on iPhone, on the iPhone, an iPad, everything, like when you get a text message with a code, it like, you go to like a, if you're in a text field, it suggests like you should paste this code.

For years now, Android has had a, they do have that, but they also have, when you copy something to your clipboard, and then you go to a text field or any sort of input. Uh, it is the suggested thing. You can just hit a button to paste, which you just copied, and it's great. It's lovely. And Apple added that this year. So if you copy something and then go to some, like copy a URL in Safari and then switch to messages, it will like, when you just like open the thread, it'll say like paste from Safari and it'll show a preview of the URL. And it's it's so good. I love it. Yeah that's nice. Do we still have time so

I can quickly talk about Safari. Oh, yes. Okay. Let's bring it home a Safari. Yes, bring it up with the browser podcast. Um, I think, uh, it's interesting. Like, I'm curious from afar about what's happening with Safari. So there's that feature we mentioned earlier where you can looks like vibe code the extensions, I don't know how that works. You can ask Safari to create an extension for you and it will do it. So that's okay. I'm not sure

I will find a use for that. But, uh, so the UI, um, because it's like obviously getting the treat, the full liquid, Liquid Glass update treatment updated. So, it means it seems from screenshot that Safari looks a bit nicer. compared to Tahoe. So that's one thing. The 2nd thing, I've read from the webkit.org blog post where basically every year when there's a major release of Safari, they detail all the technical improvements, upgrades, new standards, that are adopted, new CSS stuff, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, the

renderer, HTMLs, et cetera. But if you look at like some of the performance sections. I'm curious, whether that translates to real life or not. They're saying, for instance, that JavaScript performance is massively improved, like a bunch of technical stuff under the hood is supposed to be massively improved in terms of performance, and they mentioned many times that it should be that it should help with web apps. Like they mentioned that by name, web apps, for

much better in Safari, which is one of like the low points of Safari right now, is it will not perform well with like more complex web apps, even not that complex web apps, such as YouTube. So, yep. Yep. So I'm curious from afar. I'm very tempted to either install the technology preview on my Mac to check it out because it should have all the under the hood improvements without the UI, or maybe

just upgrade to a developer beta soon rather than later, because it seems that it's fine. It seems that the Golden Gate beta is fine. The Golden Gate beta has been generally fine for me. One thing I will say is Xcode, you must use the Xcode beta on the Golden Gate. I saw that. which means, I guess you're not distributing through the App Store, so that might be okay for you. But for me, it means I cannot use this on my main, this is actually finally the thing that'll make me not install it on

my main Mac immediately. But, yeah, I think... It will be interesting. I actually watched the WebKit. developer talk where they talked about, here's all the things we did for WebKit. Uh, and I do think, like, I think, like he's talked about with the Liquid Glass, uh, people being like, Apple did it right. This is why they've done it perfectly. They'll never do a slider, and then next year they change these things and now there's a slider, which is very funny. Whenever I complain about Safari, people are like, well, Safari does it right. They don't do it 1st necessarily, but

that's because there's security reasons. They do it best. And it was very funny watching this developer talk where like the head of WebKit at Apple, she's like, yeah, we've, yeah, we implemented these things and we did them wrong. We made some mistakes. So thank you for your feedback and we were fixing them. And, uh, we know that we've kind of, we're not as performant as, like, Chromium is faster than WebKit at this point. So WebKit, they were, they enjoyed that time at the top, but like, they do need to catch up. But it is funny to like, it is always funny, I think, when people say Apple is flawless and

what Apple's doing right now is exactly what they should be doing and then Apple themselves is like, yeah, we screwed up guys. We're working on it. Um, and it's like, yeah. Yeah, it's very funny to me. We can officially say, Matt, that Apple has agreed with us with all our Apple Safari. Absolutely. Apple always agrees with us. Especially. They agree that Safari sucks and should be dealt with. like this. It should be dealt with appropriately. Assassinated is what I... Okay, okay, we're just saying that. No, no, no, no. No, I would like Safari to

be to be good. It should be good. I would honestly write to you, Safari. I'm sad not to be using it. Like, I will say. Yeah. Okay. Well, I think that's it. See you. I predict right now, maybe in 2028, Siri AI will be in some way available in the EU or something, and I will review that in that time. Okay. Mark your

calendars, people. Yeah, yeah. I will review it 3 years later, 5 years. I don't know. Maybe 10 years. Okay. Well, that will be fun. And by then, Comfort Zone will be, I don't know. On the moon or something, that's too far away, you even think about. On Titan? Yeah. Ooh, that'd be fun. Oh, that'd be a new spatial environment on the Vision Pro. I didn't even get to talk about that. You can make panoramic photos, environments on your Vision Pro.

I'm able to do that because it took me... It's okay. It took me an hour to install the update on the Vision Pro. I was going to do it before I, we worked, we did this recording this morning, but it took forever. I didn't. I was surprised that they spent so much time about visionOS in the keynote. Like, somehow they want people to know it's there. They're not running away from it yet. So anyway, this podcast is actually almost as long as the keynote itself, which was very short. So, uh, thank you for doing this weird episode of Comfort Zone, where there's two, but kind of three, now two of us again.

We didn't go over topics. We didn't do a challenge. We'll be back to normal next week. But, uh, anything you wanted to plug this time? Outside of Tiny Start, which will now be linked below. Yeah. Oh, oh, yeah. I saw, so, again, we already said this earlier, in an earlier show, but some people have been mentioning me on Mastodon, because they saw the keynote, and they're like, oh, no, they're adding AI to my Spotlight, but thankfully thanks to Tiny Start. I will have a launch without AI. So sure if that's a

way for you to try a Tiny Start, you should. It's a great reason to try out a Tiny Start. Everyone should try out a Tiny Start. And apparently it runs well on the beta on beta one. So I've been told. Nice. Okay. Well, that's it for us. Thank you for listening. It's MacStories podcast. You know the deal, and we'll see you here next time. Bye bye. Yes, bye bye.