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News on August 5,appleThe new smart features launched by Apple have not yet reached the height that is enough to widely ignite consumer enthusiasm. At the same time, the leadership change of Apple's design team and the company's third-quarter financial results jointly reveal the fact that Apple's smart phones still have a long way to go to meet the market's eager expectations.

The following is the translation

Last week, Apple showed developers a preview of its "Apple Intelligence" for the first time, unveiling a new generation of artificial intelligence features. However, consumers will have to be patient, because Apple analyst Mark Gurman predicts that these features will not appear in the first half of the year.iOS It will not be included in the first release of 18 and other new operating systems, but is expected to be released in iOS 18.1, iPadOS 18.1 and macOS Sequoia 15.1.

This means that the official release of Apple's smart system will miss September.iPhoneThe flurry of new product launches may not begin until October, and even then, consumers will only experience a small glimpse of the vision Apple unveiled at the Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in June.

After personally experiencing the first beta version of Apple's smart phone, Gurman pointed out that the current functions are not exciting enough. There is still a big gap between the current performance and the disruptive technological changes that the public and investors expect from Apple's smart phone.

Since its launch in June, Apple's stock has significantly outperformed the broader market, reflecting optimism that the new technology could boost sales, with some analysts even comparing it to a breakthrough comparable to the first iPhone.

However, Gurman is cautious, saying that Apple's smartwatch isn't there yet. Indeed, this is just the first beta version, and Apple will undoubtedly improve it in the coming months. He expects that when Apple's smartwatch is officially unveiled around October, it will have relatively complete functions.

Here’s an overview of the features already available in the first beta of Apple’s smartphone app:

- Provide short reply suggestions in the Messages app, which is a slight upgrade from the past. In the Mail app, more comprehensive reply suggestions are introduced.

-A new area has been added to the Mail app that highlights high-priority emails determined by the system and includes an email summary.

-Apple can intelligently summarize text messages and emails in notifications, and can also intelligently aggregate related information.

-A new "Reduced Distractions Focus" mode is essentially a flexible "Do Not Disturb" mode that allows users to receive important notifications, such as urgent text messages, smart home alerts, or specific emails.

-It has the function of recording calls and automatically transcribing and summarizing them. It is worth mentioning that a similar voice transcription function has appeared as part of the Voice Memos app in early beta versions of iOS 18.

- In Safari's reading mode, you can summarize web pages and articles.

-New text prompts feature in the Photos app, allowing users to create movies of photos and videos.

- "Writing Tools" is a set of efficient functions that, when focused on a text, can convert a paragraph into a list or table, summarize and simplify the text, proofread and rewrite the content in a different style.

-SiriThe new interface features an animation effect that wraps around the device screen. Users can quickly activate the "Type to Siri" option by double-clicking the bottom of their iPhone or iPad, and Siri's ability to maintain context across queries has also been enhanced.

Gurman believes that the email summary function is extremely useful and can effectively extract the core content of the email, especially in the email preview, which is a significant improvement over the previous method of only showing the first few lines. However, the summary of text message conversations, especially in fast-changing group chats, does not perform well and is not very practical. Although article summaries in Safari are helpful, Gurman believes that this is unlikely to become a particularly popular feature.

The most impressive features so far are the Writing Tools, Type to Siri, and the summary function for recorded phone calls. The Writing Tools cleverly integrate grammar and style features, which is excellent, although similar features have long been available on Android. In testing, these tools effectively improved the professionalism or friendliness of text in most cases (about 80%). The proofreading function is also commendable, although this has been a basic function in applications such as Microsoft Word and Apple Pages for a long time.

As for the reply suggestions in the Messages app, Gurman was not satisfied, believing that they did not significantly exceed the existing keyboard suggestions in iOS. He suggested that Apple could further improve this feature, such as making deeper use of the context of the chat instead of just relying on the last message.

The standout feature is undoubtedly the phone recording feature, which includes a transcript of the conversation and a summary of events. In Gurman's testing, this feature performed almost flawlessly, especially in terms of summarization, and is undoubtedly a great time saver.

The upgrade of "Type to Siri" is also very important. The new visual prompts ensure that users are clearly aware of the activation status of Siri on iPhone, iPad and CarPlay. However, these two interface improvements are not directly related to artificial intelligence. In fact, the function of inputting commands to Siri is already part of the auxiliary function. The new screen surround design is mainly a visual innovation. Although it does not directly enhance the artificial intelligence function, it has significantly improved the user's perception of the new generation platform.

It is worth mentioning that there are currently two search interfaces in the Apple operating system: "Type to Siri" and Spotlight. This has caused redundancy in the user interface to a certain extent. It is puzzling that Apple did not integrate the two in the early stage, and may need to take measures in the future to avoid user confusion.

Overall, although the above improvements have certain value, they are more of an optimization at the detail level and are not enough to become a key factor in driving iPhone 14 Pro users to upgrade to iPhone 16. Of course, the appeal of the marketing video may be enough to stimulate the purchase desire of some consumers.

The initial beta of Apple's smart system does not yet include all key features, such as the Genmoji tool, which allows users to use artificial intelligence to create their own emojis, which is expected to become a highlight of Apple's advertising. In addition, the Image Playground app, which is designed to use artificial intelligence technology to create unique photos, and the enhancement of the system's automatic prioritization of missed notifications are also missing.

In the future, Apple's mail app will introduce a new classification function similar to Gmail and integrate OpenAI's ChatGPT technology. These features are expected to be launched in November or December. The comprehensive revision of Siri will have to wait until 2025. The new interface launched this year mainly focuses on upgrading the appearance and interactive experience. Next year, based on a more advanced artificial intelligence model, Siri will reconstruct its underlying architecture.

The new technologies will include:

-Screen awareness enables Siri to recognize what the user is currently viewing, providing precise context for queries. For example, if you are viewing a photo of NBA star LeBron James, you can directly ask: "How many points did he score last night?"

-Personalized data integration capabilities allow Siri to respond more intelligently to requests, such as helping you make a restaurant reservation after picking you up at the airport. In theory, Siri can automatically know when your friend will arrive based on previous email or text exchanges.

- Precise control over apps, allowing you to ask Siri to pull up a specific document or article in your reading list, or edit a photo and send it directly to a Family group chat.

However, even with all of Apple's smart features now available, Apple is still trying to catch up with other companies. Take photo processing as an example.GoogleGoogle and other AI providers are already able to drastically change the background of a photo and simulate different perspectives captured by a camera in motion.

In addition, Samsung Electronics and Google have both launched the Circle to Search feature, which allows users to search by circling without having to type.

Although Apple has an efficient translation app, its competitors have taken a step ahead in real-time phone translation and image optimization, providing features such as deblurring and improving video quality. Apple also lacks a convenient option to automatically check the calendar when faced with emails asking about your schedule.

In summary, Apple's current efforts are more like a positive response to the artificial intelligence trend led by Google, OpenAI, Meta and Microsoft. If Apple wants to dominate more fields, it needs to accelerate the launch of more features with practical value. (Xiaoxiao)