{"id":46765,"date":"2025-02-17T08:56:01","date_gmt":"2025-02-17T13:56:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=46765"},"modified":"2025-02-17T08:57:03","modified_gmt":"2025-02-17T13:57:03","slug":"on-the-undesign-of-apple-intelligence-features","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2025\/02\/17\/on-the-undesign-of-apple-intelligence-features\/","title":{"rendered":"On the Undesign of Apple Intelligence Features"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nick Heer<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The flaws in results from Apple Intelligence’s many features are correctly scrutinized. Because of that, I think some people have overlooked the questionable user interface choices.<\/p>

[…]<\/p>

Apple is not breaking new ground in features, nor is it strategically. It is rarely first to do anything. What it excels at is implementation. Apple often makes some feature or product, however time-worn by others, feel so well-considered it has reached its inevitable form. That is why it is so baffling to me to use features in the Apple Intelligence suite and feel like they are half-baked.<\/p>

[…]<\/p>

What this looks like on my Mac, sometimes, is as a blue button<\/a> beside text I have highlighted. This is not consistent — this button appears in MarsEdit but not Pages; TextEdit but not BBEdit. These tools are also available from a contextual menu, which is the correct place in MacOS for taking actions upon a selection.<\/p>

In any case, Writing Tools materializes in a popover<\/a>. Despite my enabling of Reduce Transparency across the system, it launches with a subtle Apple Intelligence gradient background that makes it look translucent before it fades out. This popover works a little bit like a contextual menu and a little like a panel<\/a> while doing the job of neither very successfully. Any action taken from this popover will spawn another popover.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

As with Translate, I don’t think popovers work well for large blocks of text that I want to interact with.<\/p>\n\n

Jason Snell<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

I’m sure Apple is pouring everything it can into building better, more modern models, and we’ll hear about that effort in detail in June. But what troubles me most about the Apple Intelligence rollout isn’t that Apple was caught flatfooted by the AI hype train and is struggling to catch up—it’s that Apple’s implementation of AI features also feels slapdash and rushed.<\/p>\n

Apple doesn’t have to end up with the best large language model around in order to win the AI wars. It can be in the ballpark of the best or partner with the leaders to get what it needs. But it can’t fail at the part that is uniquely Apple: Making those features a pleasure to use, in the way we all expect from Apple. Right now, that’s where Apple is failing.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Nick Heer<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

Apple has a chance to move A.I. features beyond a blinking cursor in a chat bot — like a plain language command line. Very little of what is out today is a thoughtful implementation of these features. Cleanup in Photos is pretty good. Most of the other stuff — summaries of phone calls, Notification Summaries, Writing Tools, Memory Movies in Photos, and response suggestions in Mail and Messages — are more cumbersome than they are elegant.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Previously:<\/p>\n