Monthly Mini-Bytes - January 2025

 

The Current State of Apple Intelligence Apple Intelligence is out! Well... sort of. It's a Beta, meaning it's not a full release and we are all Apple employees now since we are doing the testing for them. If you have an iPhone 15 Pro or newer, or an M-Series powered Apple computer or iPad, you can participate in this public beta and test out all that Apple Intelligence promises to offer... when it is fully released. Apple Intelligence is not enabled by default. You need to opt in on each device to be able to use it. You must also use one of the American English voices -- not one from another country. So, if you choose British English, you are out of luck for now. Being a beta there is a lot missing from Apple Intelligence. The biggest gap is the absence of Personal Context where Siri learns everything about you and then is able to wield A.I. to be the most helpful. This is not promised from Apple until March. So, for right now, Apple Intelligence is a mishmash of tools you have probably used in other apps or platforms. The writing tools are similar to what you may have experienced using apps like Grammarly; Photos allows you to remove objects from the background much like Adobe Photoshop; and the ChatGPT integration is a nice touch. The summation feature for email and texts does not work as well without Personal Context, so you may find it frustrating and end up turning it off. If you do decide to jump in with Apple Intelligence, just know that it is a work in progress. It is not the final release -- Personal Context and Advanced Siri are missing. Without these tools to pull it all together right now it is a fun curiosity more than something that can help us be more efficient.

Here We Go! More iPhone Spying  The hits to our privacy and security just keep on coming! The National Security Agency has published a notice to disable location tracking for certain apps. These apps have been compromised and will unknowingly publish your location data to possible bad actors and third parties. This impacts iPhones and Android devices, too. It is specific to the location data and permissions allowed to each individual application. It is always best to restrict Location Services data to While Using or Never for your apps. You can toggle these settings per app by going to Settings -> Privacy & Security -> Location Services. Here you can see all the apps that have requested location information.  To read the article from Forbes, click here: https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2025/01/14/nsa-warns-iphone-and-android-users-disable-location-tracking/

All the Current Updates are Good!

If you are still on the fence about upgrading your iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, or Mac to the latest versions, then we are here to say that all of the new updates are good and well implemented. iOS/iPadOS 18 works surprisingly well, and macOS Sequoia actually breathes a little more snap into the M-Series powered Macs. But, if you're still on a Mac with an Intel chip, you may want to think about upgrading to a new M-Series Mac in 2025. They are so much faster and will allow you to take advantage of Apple Intelligence when it is fully released. It is also important to know that all of the software for Macs is being updated and programmed with the new chips in mind. The last Intels are from the 2020 model year, and five years is unfortunately a millennia in the world of tech.