New Apple updates incoming at WWDC, what would you like to see?

Feels like legislation needs to catch up with this. If AI is going to be useful, there does need to be some means of removing restrictions for certain people under certain circumstances. How that could be policed, I don't know but you can be sure that the criminal element are already working from the other end.

Aside from the usage by blind professionals, there is also the up side of an AI being emotionally removed from images and able to provide fact without the bias that makes humans human.

But yes, there is also the frustration from the blind perspective that certain elements, that would be freely understood by sighted peers which an AI, due to ethics defined by its creator, will be inaccessible to us. An example might be on a dating website where you wish to know what a potential mate looks like which is a perfectly natural and accepted means of establishing suitability for sighted people and there is zero reason why it should not be for the sightless.

Apple, I fear, will be high handed on such issues and rather than giving us the information we want, they will give us what they think we need.

We've all been discussing what AI will bring to the world of the sighted as well as the blind. I now bring you evidence of where exactly AI is taking us. Not to the limits of our imagination. not to new and exciting innovations in assistive technology.

Nay. AI is taking over the modelling industry.

The world may never be the same. . .

On a side note, I vote for Winter Roses for the next CEO of Apple Inc.

Thank you, that is all. 😃

What I want is to be able to ask Siri to write a summary of a page in Safari and hear it say "sorry, I can't do that, it's not responding. Would you like me to write you a haiku about the miserable experience you are having?" I think what we really need in Safari is to have something using more computational power as it's obviously got free time on its hands. (Says me writing this..)

I think the most useful thing they could add to Siri would allow me to ask Siri to create a video and send it along with a diagnostic dump to Apple accessibility and then follow it up every week asking for a progress report. Maybe intelligently converting the email to uppercase after a few weeks, then adding in more exclamation marks from that point on. Now that is an AI feature I would use.

Since the rumours are that Siri is going to be getting a massive AI improvement, I’ve got this image in my head of being able to construct our very own custom personal assistant with a face body personality voice and everything! I would also love to have the option to have it run in the background at all times sort of like what you see in those crime dramas where you always have an audio link to the analyst or whatever it’s called. Would also be great to have Siri be able to understand emotions, Learn our voices as time goes on and have a voice that actually sounds decent. Would also love to have moods and emotions of its own but that probably won’t happen.

I still wonder how and why we have got to the point where we are trying to make our computers appear more and ore human. I don't want to be friends with my Mac or my phone. I want them to do a job. I basically want them to do whatever I command. I don't want to get to the point where I'm worried about asking Siri because I think maybe she needs a bit of time off as I've been bothering her too much recently.

Like everyone I get caught up in it, but I also feel quite uncomfortable about this trend.

I think services like Call Annie are fine - it's not for me to judge if you like having a chat with a pretend person. I'm more thinking about how we will end up with all tech working this way whether we want it to or not.

All of these personality choices would be optional of course. If you prefer the way that it is now except you want it more smarter, that should be an option. I’m not necessarily talking about emotions that would affect the assistance job, but more something along the lines of having a much more expressive voice. Then again, it would be cool to have the option of negative emotions for those who wanted something more human. Also, Will WWDC have audio description? If so, how do I access it

I think the issue could come if people start conflating humans and human like AIs. How you treat a person matters, how you treat an AI does not, not that anyone should see an AI as a place to dump their darkness.

I think apple might actually be quite good at this, straddling the line between useful and usable and making sure we know this is a tool. Siri is already an utter tool.

I hope Apple leapfrogs current AI trends. We need - and current AI should be able to provide - more than overly detailed descriptions of images and videos. I want SIRI to be able to interact with websites on my behalf to, say, schedule flights, reserve AirBnBs, solve CAPTCHAs, or anything else I would normally need sighted help with.

Now who had the brilliant idea about Siri being an omnipresent personal assistant like in those crime dramas? Well, hurrah for that! except, my first thought was: no, not like in those crime dramas. 'So, Lewis, have you worked it out yet?' no no no - give me sidekick simon from Midmorning Matters where midmorning matters anytime. What a fine supplement to alan Partridge he has been! Or, better still, imagine having your Siri behaving like the great Michael from 'I'm Alan Partridge'? Telling you stories about its time in the army, or about how one day its pet monkey ate all its cigarettes so he picked it up and threw it in the sea? 'aye, well it didn't go straight in; it bounced off a rock.'

Siri, can you do me a cup of beans?

That is going to go over so many people's heads, I appreciate it though.

An XTC reference on AppleVis.

Will this event have audio description? If so, where can I access it?

AI is not AI. It does not learn from it self. Someone need to train it or teach it. AI will not be AI until Quamton computing comes. AI will learn from itself and will not need humans but just to monitor its understanding and ability to progress as AI. Truely AI will be AI when quamtom tech is develop.

I've never watched one of these before and excited though I am, I probably won't watch this one either. But I believe they do have audio descriptions. I'm sure I've heard them talking about it on double tap before.

I went to apple.com and they say you can watch it on their web site or the apple tv app. So personally I'd just open the app which already knows I want audio description and go from there.

If audio description is on in your settings on your device and you play in the apple tv app, you'll get audio description. ON the run up to it they usually have graphics messing about and these are also described so you can know if your AD is on.

I'm such a nerd...

Apple intelligence, Open AI integration, Smart Siri, I think new Siri voices and remote control of other iPhones and iPads. I’m really happy with that. I think with the AI having awareness of picture content, picture descriptions are going to get a lot more powerful too. Maybe more coming in the accessibility focussed keynote later this week.

I'm very curious about how accessible this will be. And it's not AI, so I assume no M1 chip requirement; just an iPhone on iOS 18 and a Mac on Sequoia..

which seems reasonable although I’m going to have to upgrade from my 14 Pro Max in September but I’ll already have it on my M1 iPad Pro. Yay! Features are rolling out later this year into next year for some languages and unspecified features though.

Safari underwent a significant overhaul for Sequoia. That, along with their claim that Safari is the fastest browser in the world, have me cautiously optimistic that SNR might finally be eliminated.

M1 or better for Apple Intelligence. They didn't say this was also a requirement for ChatGPT integration, but one would assume so.

Hello!
I am very skeptical about the 'PRIVACY' that Apple claims its intelligence has. I have my huge doubts about sharing personal information with it, and the fact that they have put it everywhere, like Google did at Google I/O (although I consider that Google did it more aggressively), makes me very apprehensive about privacy, even though it is currently non-existent anyway.
Something that made me very anxious was the mirroring of the iPhone on the Mac, although I don't have a Mac, it just makes me want to migrate permanently ahahaha.
And you, what do you think?

Yeh mirroring was very exciting, shame Macs don’t have a touchscreen but I’d imagine they can map the screen well onto the trackpad. It’s definitely interesting. Re privacy, I’m not at all worried. Google overtly make their money by using your data to make you profitable, Apple don’t do this. ?they have gone as far as I can imagine a company going to ensure privacy is respected including insisting on 3rd party audits of their code. Open AI google and everyone else don’t even try to suggest your stuff doesn’t belong to them, it just does. Apple have hung their hat on being the company who respect your privacy. If that turned out not to be true, the shareholders would take the execs for every penny and then see them behind bars. You can’t lie that overtly and expect to get away with it. Honestly, I am very re-assured by their claims in fact I worry they are going to fall behind because they don’t have our data. I don’t want them having it but also don’t want them falling behind because I use their products. lol.

I hope and expect that, when I've mirrored my iPhone onto my Mac, that I can interact with the iPhone using the Mac keyboard, in the same way that I interact with my iPhone using a Bluetooth keyboard.

So, how can I watch the accessibility Keynote and when will it be happen? thanks.
Also, do you know anything about new voices?

Can't enter passcode with a Bluetooth keyboard if quick nav is enabled.

I'm fairly impressed with how thoroughly Apple has integrated AI throughout their OSes and platforms. It's not just a SIRI revamp. We can look forward to writing tools, automatic image generation tools, GenMojis, and even code generation. XCode will feature something called SwiftAssist that sounds like it practically writes software prototypes for you.

I'm going to be following iOS 18 development very closely over the next few months, and I'll be paying even more attention to the hardware announcements in September. Over all, I'm very happy with my iPhone 13 pro, and was hoping to keep it for at least one more year, but it sounds like if I don't get a new device, I'll miss out on a lot of potentially game changing accessibility features. I'll have to really think about whether or not the new features are things I NEED, or if I can just hold out for one more year. I'll be curious to hear any new voices that become available, though. It doesn't help matters that the lidar sensor isn't available on the more basic iphones, so not only do I have to figure out how to budget for the new phone, but also I have to budget for it to be the pro model. I hope that Apple brings back the ability to pay for unlocked iPhones over time and interest free using our Apple card. I have plenty of credit available on my apple card, but those affordable, interest free monthly payments are the only way I can even think about buying new tech.

We got Crossfading last year which is sick, I hear Smart transitions are coming to iOS18. Hopefully this means calculation for each fade, or track. :)

In the keynote it sounded like a different US female Siri voice. Can anyone confirm whether there are new voices in iOS 18 Beta please? It also sounded like the Siri active sound got even more airy and indistinct. I know the old one was a bit in your face but at least you knew what was going on. When it was listening and when it wasn’t.

yes i curious what, if any new voices are there and what is the custom voice rotor? i happy with my 14 pro max so will stay on ios 17 even when 18 is out.