I hate to steal Google’s tagline for this I really don’t but this year felt like Apple trying to make platforms more helpful. There’s this general consensus that Apple is behind in AI, missing out on chatbots and ignoring what most consider to be the next generation of experiences. The common saying is chat is the new UI, and everything will be conversational.

Apple isn’t there yet, nor do they want to be. Apple made that very very very clear in interviews after the event. What Apple did, instead, was bake intelligent features, some with Apple Intelligence and some without, into the new OS 26 platforms. These aren’t all flashy and as big as something like ChatGPT, but frankly they don’t need to be. If I want ChatGPT, I’ll download the ChatGPT app.

Where Apple really showed off platform dominance is infusing intelligence into platforms, making these platforms more helpful and proactive at remembering things that matter to you, could matter to you, or just helping you.

I think my two favorite examples of this are Workout Buddy and package tracking. These are two smaller features, but thematically paint the broader picture across the ecosystem.

First, Workout Buddy. It’s an Apple Intelligence powered “agent”, I know Apple didn’t call it that but that’s what it is, that exists on your Apple Watch to motivate during workouts! It’s an AI that can talk to you, from your Apple Watch using AirPods, pulling in your real time health information, music, and historical information. I was using it yesterday on a quick walk, which my Apple Watch auto detected, and it started out by giving me a run-down of what I’ve already done, the ~18 minutes of walking around San Jose’s Santana Row, then comparing that to what my walks normally are. It finished off by introducing the music that was playing on my iPhone and starting a new song.

Let’s break this down: Workout Buddy using a speech model running on my Apple devices, trained on an Apple Fitness+ trainer, powered by a small language model on my iPhone, that’s able to use function calls to pull in current and historic data from both my iPhone and Apple Watch in the context of what I am actively doing to motivate me and give feedback on my workout. This is using machine learning models from three different Apple products, all in unison, powered by a language model, pulling health and music data from two different devices at the same time to generate real-time feedback. This is an agent, this is not only a really cool agent, it’s a state of the art, practical application of this really cool technology that happens to run fully on device across multiple devices within an ecosystem.

The next one is simple enough, package tracking. Apps like Shop or PayPal have been doing this for ages, but again it’s all about how it works. Shopify and PayPal link your Gmail to the apps, scan all incoming emails for tracking information like Shopify, Amazon, USPS, etc orders, and add that tracking information to your app. It all happens on a data center, requires a direct link to your Gmail giving XYZ company access to your entire inbox. It also means linking all accounts to it, for example I have 2 emails I often use for orders. I’m not able to have these apps scan both. Apple Intelligence now does this in the Mail app, exporting all packages into the Wallet app, from anyone in all of my accounts. It happens entirely on device!

Now, one of these features seems way more advanced than the other, right? An SLM that’s actively pulling and processing real time and historic health data! The reason I choose these is to paint a picture, dear reader, that hopefully helps explain this idea of a more helpful Apple. Background processes, using innate intelligence and ML models on device, to complete actions to make the devices more helpful.

This extends into quite a few different features on OS 26 platforms, and yes these are intelligent features not products. Call screening and hold assist, helping solve paint points in classic phone experiences. Screen spam calls before you even pick them up, have your phone wait on hold for you (yes, Google did this first a few years ago on Pixel, good to see it available for the masses). Live Translate, also a Google/Samsung first, now helps manage language barriers over Messages, FaceTime, Phone, and other apps with the Live Translate API. Visual Intelligence in screenshots to search for things on your display, or even take actions like creating calendar events based on a screenshot! Apple Maps now learns the routes you prefer to take and will alert you if there’s traffic along your normal route, making it easier to travel how you want while still getting the benefits of real-time navigation data!

These are all features, like it or not, that solve pain points and make life as an Apple user easier. This is pervasive intelligence. Some of these are powered by Apple Intelligence, like Visual Intelligence, some of it isn’t powered by Apple Intelligence like call screening or Apple Maps routes. It’s just the background engine, this platform of intelligence that exists to be more helpful and more useful to users.

Ok back to the AI is the new UI point to end this off… I’m not here to make a statement or claim on that, I don’t think this is a realistic or universal truth for the future of computing. It’s been almost a decade and people still complain about getting rid of the headphone jack and want wired headphones, even when touch screens and voice are great in cars there is still demand for buttons. Consumer habits are hard to break, experiences are hard to change, and desire for interaction and control hard to give up. Some people view chat and conversational interfaces as the future, others don’t think so. What is agreed upon by nearly everyone is that, regardless of the interaction method intelligence and AI will power these platforms. We’ll see what happens, I’m in the camp of using AI to augment experiences we’re already used to rather than fully replacing these with AI, but who knows!

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