Paul Stenhouse: Apple delays rolling out major features, implements RCS message standards

Apple Intelligence's most exciting features aren't coming anytime soon  

At their developer conference last year, Apple showed off a Siri that can dive into your personal data and understand more about your life than ever before (“What time is Mom's flight arriving?"). But that type of personalisation is hard to deliver, and Apple now admits that.  

"It’s going to take us longer than we thought to deliver on these features, and we anticipate rolling them out in the coming year.”  

They have delivered email, message, and notification summaries (which can sometimes be hilariously summarised), but they haven't delivered on the big headline grabbing features.  

This is bringing back the bad memories from the launch of iCloud and Apple Maps – it just wasn't ready.  

 

You'll soon be able to send encrypted messages between Androids & Apple  

Apple will be implementing the new Rich Communication Services (RCS) message standard. It seems they're going all in on that now, after previously adopting it to allow things like high resolution images, emoji responses, etc. Interesting that this is happening, especially as the UK wants to ban encryption.   

 

LISTEN ABOVE 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:07):
You're listening to the Saturday Morning with Jack Team podcast
from Newstalk ZEDB.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
Twenty three to two eleven on News Talks, they'd be
well befourteen o'clock this morning, Kevin Milne was expressing his
befuddlement with a bitcoin eightym that he happened to come across.
If anyone knows how to use a bitcoin eightym, I'm
figuring it'll be our textbot Paul Stenhouse. Paul, have you
ever come across one of these before?

Speaker 3 (00:31):
No, but there are some places I've been to where
you can you can choose to pay at the cash
register using bitcoin, right, And it was a really great
story with someone you know, this is now years ago,
probably ten years ago, paid for a pizza, yes, in bitcoin,
and that pizza today is now worth like.

Speaker 2 (00:49):
Like the bitcoin that he used to pay dollars. No,
I think it's I think it's literally like tens of
millions of dollars.

Speaker 3 (00:55):
It may even be yeah, yea yeah crazy. I mean
they were worth they were absolutely worthless, like it was
just and of course now they're not.

Speaker 2 (01:03):
But I mean, okay, so you see a few of
these ATMs around the place and maybe and buy a
pizza and stuff. But well, Kevin, I mean, he just
didn't have any of the kind of various apps and
things that you need in order to get it. And
also I don't I mean, he didn't own any bitcoin.
I'm not sure he wasterrible be enthusiastic about investing, but
maybe maybe he will be. I suppose you could argue, though,

(01:26):
that cryptocurrencies have kind of failed in them largely failed
at least to this point, if they were looking to
replace normal currencies.

Speaker 3 (01:35):
We don't.

Speaker 2 (01:36):
We people generally don't use cryptocurrencies for buying stuff. They
generally use them for speculative purposes or even the furious purposes.

Speaker 3 (01:45):
And some there was exactly the word I was going
to use, and Kevin, being the upstanding yes, of course,
obviously does not.

Speaker 2 (01:52):
It's never needed to lorn to hundreds of millions of
dollars necessarily.

Speaker 3 (01:55):
But the problem is is people just see them You're right, though, right,
there is this there is this real promise. And if
you listen to the people who are big into crypto,
they're like, it's gonna you know, money is going to
cross borders, international borders. We're not going to need But
the problem is is it's just at the moment, it's
full of scam artists. You've got people like you, you know,
the Donald Trump coin or the Milania coin. It's like
you just pump it up, you hype it up.

Speaker 2 (02:16):
And then you sell it and crashes. Yeah, yeah, yeah exactly. Anyway,
so Apple Intelligence was built as this kind of revolution
for people in the Apple sphere, people with iPhones.

Speaker 3 (02:28):
And talk about pumping things up.

Speaker 2 (02:30):
Yea, I was going to say. And one of the
big changes they were promising. So they launched a new
phone last year, i think their iPhone sixteen, right, and
they said Apple Intelligence is coming, but they did this
weird thing. They were like, Apple Intelligence is coming in
a few months and Siri, Yeah, and Siri, the Apple
Voice Assistant is going to be really amazing. It's going
to do things you never thought were possible. How's that going?

Speaker 3 (02:50):
Not well, quite simply. And it's kind of made me
think back to some of those really bad Apple launches,
like they try to launch iCloud. I still don't touch
iCloud because it was such a disaster launched. Yeah, Apple Maps.
I'm very rare open Apple Maps because do you remember
that was just it was sending people down roads and

(03:11):
roads didn't exist or roads were underwater. It took Apple
ten years basically to kind of like reget, you know,
to refresh their image and their brand around Apple Maps
to be something people actually want to use. And unfortunately,
this Apple Intelligence, which I've said to you, I think
is the most genius AI branding around Apple Intelligence. Love it,

(03:32):
it just hasn't delivered. And they really talked about the
Siri that we were kind of promised back when Surrey launched.
You know, a Siri that knows things that are going on.
It knows who your mum is, It knows that your
mum's on a flight. You can ask it, you know,
when when should I be going to the airport, and
it's going to say, well, actually, your mum's flight's delayed
by thirty minutes. You know. It was kind of like
that real Jetson's kind of future peace, and they just

(03:56):
they seemingly can't do it. And Apple has now had
to admit that it's going to take longer than we thought.
This is their statement, it's going to take us longer
than we thought to deliver on these feet, and we
anticipate rolling them out in the coming year. I think Jack,
they were so caught up in this AI hype because
I mean it's been it's been a hype cycle, right

(04:17):
that they pushed this out or they said that it
was coming, it was not ready. It still isn't ready,
and now they're having to deal with the consequences of that.
So probably they talked about it last year, so last summer.
So what ninelish months.

Speaker 2 (04:33):
I mean it is is there. I'm not just asking
you to put your your kind of bush lawyer hat
on here. Is there a false advertising kind of law
so that it could be taken Because I was considering,
you know, I need to upgrade my phone. I thought,
can I hang on one more year? And I remember
looking at all the promos and they talked it up
so much.

Speaker 3 (04:54):
There's a billboard right by the subway and it's got it.
It's this massive thing. It was, you know, partnered up
with one of the carriers. It's like, you know, get
the latest iPhone sixteen on Verizon now with Apple Intelligence.
And I remember looking at it just before I you know,
before they came up with this and thinking to myself,
it hasn't delivered, it hasn't come, it hasn't launched, And
I was thinking exactly that same thing. I wouldn't be surprised.

(05:16):
I think they've couched it. I mean they have delivered
on some of the features. So you can now get
your email summaries, your message summaries, your notification summaries that's
powered by Apple Intelligence. Yeah, you can create a memoji
that's powered by Apple Intelligence. So they probably have delivered.
I use that with loose terms on Apple Intelligence. But

(05:36):
the promise that they or.

Speaker 2 (05:38):
They made on Suria big stuff, the.

Speaker 3 (05:41):
Cool stuff about Sirih. I mean, I personally think that
Apple Intelligence has made my Suri dumber than it's ever been. Yeah,
I mean I used to love when Sirih used to say,
you have one alarms set and it's like, really one alarms,
one alarms, And now it doesn't even recognize my voice.
So I don't know. I don't know if Apple Intelligence
is very intelligent at all.

Speaker 1 (06:00):
Idea.

Speaker 2 (06:00):
Hey, thanks Paul, appreciate your time. Paul Stenhouse had text Bit.
They're seventeen to eleven.

Speaker 1 (06:06):
Or from Saturday Morning with Jack Tame. Listen live to
News Talks ed B from nine am Saturday, or follow
the podcast on iHeartRadio