Reading everyone’s comments it looks like there is a lot of rant with current iPhone state. I’m also feeling last releases introduced huge regressions. I bought an iPhone 16 seen many issues including keyboard ones.
I do hope Apple’s iOS 27 will be focused on fixes and optimizations.
Apple Intelligence isn’t useful if the basic experience is mediocre
As mentioned here already,
Lately Apple is about taking existing ideas and introducing them as new features.
(At least in Tim Cook’s era, only exception is Apple silicon)
Especially in the “AI game”. Just yesterday Xcode got fuller agent support for coding way later than most IDEs.
I’d expect some sort of Shortcuts integration in the near future.
There’s already Apple Foundation Models available to some extent with Shortcuts.
I’m pretty sure they’ll improve it and use shortcuts for agentic workflows.
Having said all that,
Maybe it’s my age. I think currently things are over-hyped
- Language models running in huge centers are still not sustainable. So even if you pay a few cents, it’s still running over capital fumes.
- it’s still a mixed bag. I guess it might be useful in terms of profession because like managing people to produce the desired result, you need skills to properly get desired results from AI. In that sense, fully automated agent filing my tax still feels concerning to me if later I won’t have coverage if something was off.
- on-device, this is where Apple shines hardware wise and I personally find it as more intriguing.
Until there will be a broad regulation that enforce any general purpose computing device to allow installing non-provisioned apps, we'll be in those situations.
It's related to the entire security balance which is bad (imho).
Until that separation, in the PowerPC/Intel supported days you had the option to remove one from the fat binary (Universal Binary 1).
This carried and I can still do that. But not on System apps. So now any system app is twice without ability to easily 'diet' it:
It won't be marketing wonder when new macOS dropping Intel will be it's 25% smaller (I guess they'll take the extra size for on-device models are other feature you won't be able to remove :) )
It’s a circle that needs to be broken. It has multiple parties even without device manufacturers.
Users - there is a broad scope of users. For sustainable eco-system you need also user interest and support of such.
Developers - that sounds funny. I know. But you need enough leverage to get apps or services to be open.
Companies/Software - a modern mobile device takes place in almost any interaction. Commuting, payment, banking, grocery shopping, social messaging, doom scrolling.
Biggest hope for the future is ensuring PWA becomes standardized enough.
That way the OS lock-in could be reduced.
> It’s a circle that needs to be broken. It has multiple parties even without device manufacturers.
Well, you're right, however badly I don't want to admit it. Google broke that cycle once with Android. I'm sure that Apple would have too, even if they were not the first mover. And there's no question that their wealth and influence had a massive role in it - something an open platform cannot match realistically.
But the current situation is simply untenable anymore. I want out, no matter how many others don't care for it. The open platform has to be just functional enough (including app support, even as PWAs), for us to break free from this duopoly. Just like how Linux and BSDs are on desktops. I'm able to do everything on it from work to netbanking. I would hate it really badly if I was forced to use Windows or MacOS these days.
I live in the EU and now traveling my family outside the EU. Today I’ve tried updating AltStore but it won’t let me. Even VPNing to my home won’t do it.
So until there will be more incentive to make it globally, the UX is intentionally crippled not only by making the minimal viable but also by region locking.
Imagine pairing headphones working great in EU and then you’re traveling somewhere and it’s broken.
This is the future of the internet. More and more countries have their local laws and international companies need to comply with local laws. This has been the case forever for companies selling products and (physical) services and some digital services restricting music and movie rights in certain countries, but it will expand to more and more services and apps in the future.
"Local laws" is quite the loaded term when your parent commenter's anecdote is about EU which currently encompasses 27 countries.
And when "comply with local laws" means "unbrick bluetooth pairing for third-party devices" then a company in good faith could just, you know, not brick the functionality in the first place. There's no law against products that "just work".
I think the EU believes they have more of an effect on the rest of the world than they actually do. Complying with every law in every jurisdiction that has access to a product sounds like a nightmare that will only stifle innovation.
Mmkay, now do something important. If the EUs fame is forced USB-C adoption, that’s very weak and almost narcissistic since we have to congratulate the EU for minimal effort. Also realize the USB-C standard is chaos and all that did was confuse people about what’s a data cable vs what’s a charging cable vs what is thunderbolt. Chaos is what the EU did there, brag more about it!
I’d also assume with many ad-supported apps they’re also leading source of ads (also on iOS)
Another point to consider,
Is they DO take fee from each device developer that includes Google App Services. So basically ALL devices with official Play Store sold by the manufacturer already pays a fee to include their store (but also that’s the only way to have official Gmail and other services users would expect when buying an android device)
The more I think about it I wonder why Chinese TVs using Android based TV don’t have Some GrapheneTV or basic trimmed down Android aimed to be “dumb”.
Unlike phones,
- if it should be air gapped then all you’d want is your HDMIs input and remote control to work.
- nice to have: ADCs/DACs for analog AV input and audio out and any antenna input if available.
- super nice to have: Bluetooth for passing audio out and maybe network (Ethernet, WiFi) stack if same.
But assuming the goal is airgapped. There are less security concerns in general,
You just want the Android TV to be lightweight and fast and don’t care it’s “stuck” in specific version or use closed blobs.
There's a lineageos template for Android TV. I don't think grapheneos will ever run on something like that (it doesn't even run on phones with ten times the security capabilities of TV SoCs) but alternative ROMs are available. There's also KDE Plasma if you want to go the non-Android route, though you'll struggle to find good support for that.
One problem with that approach is that you'll lose access to DRM'd contents, so while the official Netflix/HBO/Prime apps will install on lineageos, their video quality will be terrible or they will refuse to work.
There are a bunch of Google TV variants (brands like TCL and Philips) that will let you turn on "basic TV mode" (https://support.google.com/googletv/answer/10408998?hl=en), disabling pretty much everything other than displaying content.
As for why the Chinese TVs don't have a dumb mode, I think it's because the Chinese market is full of devices crammed to the brim with smart features, so smart TVs are sort of expected these days.
I do hope Apple’s iOS 27 will be focused on fixes and optimizations. Apple Intelligence isn’t useful if the basic experience is mediocre
—— Sent from my iPhone sorry for the autocorrect
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