OS X.2 Updates Boost Apple Intelligence and More
Apple has released macOS 15.2 Sequoia, iOS 18.2, and iPadOS 18.2 with new and improved Apple Intelligence features, plus watchOS 11.2, visionOS 2.2, tvOS 18.2, and HomePod Software 18.2 with other improvements.
The Apple Intelligence updates introduce ChatGPT integration with Siri and Writing Tools, the Image Playground app, custom Genmoji on the iPhone and iPad, and Image Wand for Apple Pencil users on the iPad. Writing Tools lets you describe how you’d like something rewritten rather than limiting you to canned styles. iPhone 16 users can also use the Camera Control button to learn more about their surroundings using Visual Intelligence.
Despite Apple’s emphasis on Apple Intelligence, the other new features in this beefy set of updates may have a more significant impact on your overall experience. Let’s examine those first.
Shared macOS, iOS, and iPadOS Improvements
As is usually the case, many of the new capabilities in Apple’s apps and services cut across the company’s three main operating systems. Shared improvements include:
- Photos displays the Favorites album in the Utilities collection as well as the Pinned Collections for easier access. You can also clear the album history for Recently Viewed and Recently Shared.
- Safari offers a few new background images to customize its Start Page, tries to use secure HTTPS on all websites, and simplifies import and export for history, bookmarks, and passwords.
- Find My allows you to share item locations with trusted third parties (see “Find My Will Let You Share Lost Item Locations with Anyone—Including Airlines,” 25 November 2024).
- Apple Music and Apple TV now support natural language search, which lets you describe what you’re looking for using any combination of categories, such as genres, moods, actors, decades, and more. Now, you can ask Siri to play “1960s soul Christmas music” with theoretically better results. This also works on the HomePod once you update to HomePod Software 18.2.
- Podcasts adds Favorite Categories to simplify finding new shows. (On the iPhone, tap your avatar in the upper right, then tap Manage Favorite Categories to select some, after which a Categories item appears in your Library. On the Mac, Categories appears on the sidebar.) Podcasts also now personalizes the Search page to highlight the most relevant categories and collections.
- Apple News+ subscribers now get three difficulty levels of Sudoku.
- Stocks provides pre-market price quotes for tracking the NASDAQ and NYSE tickers prior to market open.
macOS 15.2 Sequoia Improvements
New options that are unique to the Mac under macOS 15.2 include:
- Presenter preview lets you choose a window or the full screen before you share it when connecting to an external display or using AirPlay.
- System Settings > Control Center enables you to place an icon for Weather in your menu bar so you can get current conditions and click through to forecasts.
macOS 15.2 also includes fixes for 42 security vulnerabilities. To protect older versions, Apple released macOS 14.7.2 Sonoma, which includes fixes for 25 vulnerabilities, and macOS 13.7.2 Ventura, which addresses 22 vulnerabilities.
iOS 18.2 and iPadOS 18.2 Improvements
You’ll find even more noteworthy additions on the iPhone and iPad using iOS 18.2 and iPadOS 18.2:
- Mail Categorization on the iPhone (but not the iPad, oddly) sorts your email into buckets for Primary, Transactions, Updates, and Promotions. In my experience, its accuracy is poor, particularly with the distinction between Promotions and Updates, but it’s easy to retrain.
- Mail’s new Digest View groups all the messages from one sender into a single collection for easy browsing (see above).
- Photos improves video viewing by letting you scrub frame by frame and adding a setting to turn off auto-looping video playback. It also fixes a bug that prevented recently captured photos from appearing immediately in the All Photos grid.
- Safari gains a File Download Live Activity that shows the progress of a long download in the Dynamic Island on the iPhone’s Home Screen.
- Voice Memos on the iPhone 16 Pro models now supports layered recording, so you can add vocals over an existing song idea without needing headphones. Apparently, this is a big deal for musicians.
- Hearing Test on the AirPods Pro 2 is now supported in Cyprus, Czechia, France, Italy, Luxembourg, Romania, Spain, the United Arab Emirates, and the United Kingdom. Additionally, the Hearing Aid feature now works in the United Arab Emirates.
- Camera no longer degrades Night mode photos captured with long exposures on the iPhone 16 Pro models.
iOS 18.2 and iPadOS 18.2 address 20 security vulnerabilities. Apple also released iPadOS 17.7.3 with fixes for 14 of these vulnerabilities; I don’t know why iOS 17.7.3 wasn’t released alongside it.
watchOS 11.2 Improvements
The least impressive update of the collection comes from watchOS 11.2, which has only two additions that most TidBITS readers won’t notice:
- Tides expands map support for tidal conditions and coastal locations in China.
- Camera Remote can now pause iPhone video recordings.
watchOS 11.2 addresses 15 security vulnerabilities, though all are in shared code.
visionOS 2.2 Improvements
For some, visionOS 2.2’s changes might make the Vision Pro worth another look:
- Mac Virtual Display offers two new aspect ratios: 21:9 and 32:9, the latter of which is equivalent to two 5K displays next to each other. This feature may make the Vision Pro more compelling to someone who wants to use it for a massive Mac desktop while traveling.
- Mac audio can be routed directly to the Vision Pro.
- Apple TV on the Vision Pro allows sports multitaskers to watch up to five Major League Soccer or Major League Baseball games simultaneously with Multiview.
- SharePlay lets you watch live sporting events with others.
- Safari can display spatial photos and videos embedded on Web pages.
visionOS 2.2 addresses 12 security vulnerabilities, again in shared code.
tvOS 18.2 Improvements
With tvOS 18.2, the Apple TV 4K picks up a few enhancements:
- Screen Savers adds Snoopy and Woodstock animations that adapt to the day, weather, and holidays. If only the featured photos screen saver didn’t obscure images with an entirely unnecessary clock.
- Enhance Dialogue works with the second-generation HomePod to help you hear speech more clearly over background sounds.
- Cinematic playback on compatible projectors and displays supports 21:9 and other cinematic aspect ratios for home theaters. You also get ultra-widescreen viewing for FaceTime calls. However, cinematic playback is only available on the third-generation Apple TV 4K.
tvOS 18.2 eliminates 15 security vulnerabilities that appear to be the same as the watchOS versions.
HomePod Software 18.2 Improvements
Along with Enhance Dialogue when paired with an Apple TV, HomePod Software 18.2 provides one important new capability:
- Siri supports the new Apple Music natural language search, so you can describe what you want to hear using any combination of categories, such as genre, mood, decade, or activity.
Apple Intelligence Additions
With these releases, Apple continues its phased rollout of Apple Intelligence features, with many more of the promised features making their debut.
Note that Apple Intelligence features only work on a Mac with Apple silicon, an iPhone 15 Pro or any iPhone 16 model, or an iPad equipped with an M-series chip or the newest iPad mini featuring the A17 Pro. The device and Siri language must be set to localized English for Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, South Africa, the UK, or the US. Apple says Mac users in the EU can access Apple Intelligence when using a compatible device with supported settings and languages, and iPhone and iPad users in the EU will start to get Apple Intelligence features in April 2025.
Although these releases significantly add to the Apple Intelligence features, Apple says that future updates will give Siri access to personal context and onscreen awareness for tailored responses, plus enable it to take action in external apps. Priority Notifications will give preference to your most important notifications, and Image Playground will add a Sketch style.
We’ll have more in-depth coverage of some of these features in separate articles, but here’s a brief overview of what’s available now:
- Image Playground: An entirely new app, Image Playground lets you create images using text descriptions—as you swipe left, it keeps creating new possibilities. Images can be created from scratch or in the likeness of a person from a photo. Deepfakes won’t be happening with Image Playground since you’re limited to two styles: Animation, described as “a modern 3-D animated look,” and Illustration, “which offers images with simple shapes, clear lines, and colorblocking.” Along with the Image Playground app, you can create images directly in Messages, Freeform, Keynote, and others. Images remain in your library and sync across all your devices.
- Genmoji: With Genmoji, you can use text descriptions to create custom emoji. Invoke the feature by tapping the button to the right of the search field in the Emoji keyboard, then describe your desired emoji. As with Image Playground, you can keep swiping left to generate more possibilities. Tap an emoji to insert it, and remember that if you’re sending it in Messages, it will be large if it’s in a message by itself but small if it’s added to text. Created Genmoji are added to your emoji collection, but they’re actually stickers, so you can remove them by tapping the ⊕ button in Messages, tapping Stickers, and using touch-and-hold on a Genmoji to access the Remove button.
- Image Wand: Notes now provides an Image Wand tool for iPad users who take notes with an Apple Pencil. Select the tool, circle a rough sketch, and Image Wand turns it into a polished image. If your circle includes text, Image Wand tries to consider it when building the final image.
- Visual Intelligence on the iPhone 16: With iOS 18.2, the Camera Control button gains superpowers. Press and hold it (whenever the Camera app isn’t already open, since that will trigger video recording), and Visual Intelligence presents Ask and Search buttons on either side of the shutter button. You can tap either button to ask ChatGPT about the image or perform a Google image search. Press the Camera Control button again or tap the shutter button to freeze the image in case you can’t immediately tap Ask or Search.
- ChatGPT integration with Siri: Many people hoped that integrating ChatGPT would make Siri less stupid, but it may have instead muddied the waters. Siri can send queries to ChatGPT, but unless you explicitly specify that, Siri’s responses can mix its own answers with ChatGPT’s, leading to random and inexplicable results. The interface is also awkward because you generally speak to Siri, but there’s no option to have ChatGPT’s responses read back to you. Additionally, you cannot scroll back to any response before the most recent one without using the ChatGPT app or website. I plan to write more about issues with Siri and ChatGPT soon (see “Functional and Conceptual Pitfalls in Siri’s ChatGPT Integration,” 13 December 2024).
- Writing Tools: Adding ChatGPT to Writing Tools is likely a bigger win. The new Compose option taps ChatGPT to generate content wherever you’re writing, and it can also use ChatGPT’s image-generation capabilities to add images. Writing Tools also lets users describe their own changes to selected text (including recasting it as a poem, for example) instead of relying solely on the canned options to make the text friendlier, more professional, or more concise.
Should You Update? Should You Upgrade?
[After the initial publication of this article, Shirt Pocket Software reported that macOS 15.2 prevents SuperDuper from making bootable backups (see “macOS 15.2 Sequoia Breaks Bootable Backups in SuperDuper,” 16 December 2024). Despite what I say below, until Apple fixes the bug or we learn more about what’s going on, anyone relying on a bootable backup—as opposed to a data-only backup—should hold off updating or upgrading. –Adam]
The answer to both questions is now yes. For those who have already upgraded to this year’s crop of Apple operating systems, these updates bring numerous new features, a few bug fixes, and security updates. Apart from waiting a few days to make sure nothing unexpectedly ugly crops up, I see no reason not to update.
What if you’ve been waiting in the wings to upgrade? I’ve had no qualms about recommending upgrades for everything besides Macs. I haven’t encountered any notable problems with any of those operating systems. Nor has macOS 15 Sequoia proved problematic in my testing, but I’m more cautious in recommending Mac upgrades because it’s far more likely that someone would rely on an app that hasn’t yet been updated or a piece of hardware that isn’t compatible.
The main issues that remained after macOS 15.1 revolved around networking—specifically interactions with Apple’s built-in firewall and VPNs. For instance, Objective Development’s Little Snitch ran afoul of two bugs in Apple’s Network Extension framework. Apple said nothing about such fixes in macOS 15.2’s release notes, but that means little—the company often fails to call out general fixes.
Those relying on a VPN or firewall should wait until compatibility has been confirmed, but I think it’s now safe for most others to upgrade to Sequoia. Along with a positive personal experience, my consultant friends generally recommend upgrades to their clients. Plus, the holiday break often provides some time to upgrade and explore new features when you aren’t faced with work deadlines.
Please don’t interpret the fact that I’m saying you can upgrade to mean that you must upgrade now. The main downside to putting it off for another few months is not being able to take advantage of new features. But as always, don’t delay too long. My experience is that the longer the wait, the more likely problems are to crop up after upgrading and the more trouble you’ll have adjusting to all the changes.
Well…so far no issues with updates (watch, ATV, MacStudio, phone and homepods). However, I always seem to wonder: should I first update the Mac Studio, then connect my phone via cable and run sync/backup and update from there, or update the phone first. Its rhetorical as best practice is to do it from my mac…not that reverting would be simple process…but having full backup is peace of mind.
I did run into one snag: the homepods took hours. And I mean, I ran Home app from my iphone, checked that my updating was set to automatic but then saw a red button Update Available so I pressed it. The updating of the homepods (pair, synced for stereo) started and the circle just went round and round.
And hour passed and I looked a phone and still doing it. It was now 2 hours and I looked and seemed hung on same updating. This is ridiculous. So I quit the app. But just as I was, the Home app said it lost connection. I checked the pods (get ladder, climb up to beam they sit on) and Asked Siri for any weather info and she said Sorry, your iphone is not connected. Hmmm. So I pulled the power to them…and then replugged in. Launced home app and started update again. Went to bed. This morning, I checked and all updated.
I don’t like how everything is taking longer or not clear on what its doing. Even on my work laptop, now doing the 15.2 update push from JAMF, expected “about 30 mins remaining” which start at 6:45am…
Adam: where did you get template or the iPhone screen grab outlines from for your images? I need something like that for work, that shows recent iPhone model but lets me paste in text or screen grab.
My general approach is to update every device individually and directly from Apple. So I would never use my Mac to update an iPhone or iPad. I don’t see any benefit to doing so, and it adds additional points of failure.
The exception to this is watchOS, which has to be installed from the paired iPhone. I always update iOS before updating watchOS on the principle that any bugs in the watchOS update process would be fixed in the latest iOS.
My other rule, which applies to your HomePod situation, is to avoid watching the update process, which is a modern-day version of “a watched pot never boils.” It always takes longer than you expect, and you will always start to second-guess what’s happening. Even when there are progress estimates, they’re always wrong (in one direction or another), so it’s best to ignore them entirely. With devices like the HomePod and Apple TV that can update themselves, it’s easiest to let them install whenever they feel like it, but if you do want to force an update, let them run overnight.
I triggered my HomePod updates last night at dinner, and they must have completed sometime in the night because they’re all running 18.2 now.
The update to my iPhone (15 Pro) now shows the mail categories. Nice. But my new iPad Pro only shows Priority. Is there a switch to turn on the other items?
You absolutely can initiate an update of WatchOS from the Watch itself. It has to be on the charger, connected to WiFi too, of course, and > 50% charge.
As far as I can tell, when you do it this way it downloads and updates directly to the watch, without involving your iPhone. (I’m sure sufficient free storage space on the watch is also a factor.)
But the advice to update the phone first either way is a good one: anecdotally, I’ve had problems in the past if the WatchOS was newer than iOS.
Mail categories are only on the iPhone for now.
Dave
I believe that mail categories is iOS-only right now, for iOS 18.2 and later. Nothing for iPadOS or MacOS.
I wonder if 18.2 is the update where Apple will prompt all users on iOS 17.x to upgrade without an option to continue to update iOS 17 (to 17.7.3 released yesterday, for example?) It always seems to happen in December.
[update: Yes, it is. No iOS 17.7.3 for devices that can run iOS 18.2.]
The iOS 18.2 Mail app now shows Contact photos/avatars in the message list view. It’s a reasonable approach, and I imagine many will like it, but I prefer the previous, denser, text-only list view that did not include photos/avatars.
I was happy to find that Apple made that an optional feature, rather than forcing it on us. To go back to the avatar/photo-free interface, go to
Settings > Apps > Mailand toggle “Show Contact Photos”.It does seem that there are more user-configurable options in Mail and other apps in 18.2 than in some earlier versions of iOS, so even if you are not normally a feature-tweaker and 18.2 is only an incremental release, it may be worth poking around the Settings app.
Once again Apple frustrates (me) with another app exclusively for the phone. Whilst I don’t make emojis or custom profile cartoons, I imagine Image Playground will expand to greater AI image generation which is definitely something I will use in the future (I use it already with ChatGPT).
The Mac really has become the poor cousin of Apple’s family tree. I lament ‘Journal’ being phone only - one of the few apps Apple have released in the past 5 years I would actually use. but I despise typing on a phone
Image playground IS available on the Mac. It appeared after I downloaded MacOS 15.2. I initially accessed it by searching for it, but it also appears in my Applications folder.
Thanks! I don’t have an iPad running iPadOS 18 and forgot to take out the assumption that Mail Categories would appear there once the iPadOS 18.2 release notes finally appeared (they were significantly delayed this time). Updating the article…
Thanks for the correction! I will admit a blind spot with watchOS since I find it easier to do things on the iPhone whenever possible, so I haven’t poked around in the watchOS Settings app much.
It just seems like a bad idea. :-)
Ahh, thank you, I’m scheduling the update for later today. I take it all back Apple, I still love you. Now please port Journal.
FYI- My work colleagues are reporting issues with Airplay to Apple TV. Seems something in the networking of 15.2. Solution for now is not to push 15.2 update and that turning off the Firewall will allow it to Airplay. YMMV but this is related to work/enterprise use.
On a positive note, the Snoopy screensaver for tvOS is delightful and entrancing.
Thank you! I’ll be postponing my upgrade
I’ve posted a complete diagnosis of the issue on Apple Communities.. To have a successful connection, you can either connect your Mac via Ethernet or connect it by WiFi and turn off the firewall.
Urgh - I updated my iPad this morning and there is no longer a full stop or comma displayed on the keyboard! Fortunately they are still work with the unshifted ! and ? keys,
No issue here.
Here is what I see
I will try a restart!
… I briefly saw the dot and comma and then they vanished when I started typing!?
When you started, was the CAPS automatically on since it was the start of the sentence?
CAPS is not on when I start typing and toggling the CAPS on/off is not making a difference.
I will try changing the keyboard settings.
… no change
The dot and comma are now back! The only change I can think of is that I was typing something else in landscape mode and the symbols appeared. Now they are there is portrait mode. Must have something to do with the system “optimising” space on a smaller iPad screen?
To all of the people cloning MacOS to external disks with tools like SuperDuper, I ran across this post from Dave Nanian that suggests that cloning the full system with MacOS 15.2 is broken at the moment.
https://www.shirtpocket.com/blog/index.php/shadedgrey/youre_a_mean_one/
Of all of the things promised in Apple Intelligence for this year’s OSes, this is the one that I was looking forward to the most. I was a big fan of this back when Google implemented it in Gmail, particularly in the old InBox app. The Gmail app for iOS supports this still, but it has drawbacks compared with InBox and I really don’t like the app otherwise on iOS or iPadOS (one of the drawbacks are the inclusion of ads in the list of mail messages.)
I no longer use Gmail as my primary email account, so I hoped that Apple’s mail would offer a similar feature someday. But this isn’t working well for me so far, and the biggest culprit are the messages coming from this forum. Apple’s categorization implementation (so far) uses who sent the mail to allow re-categorization, but even though the mails from this forum are sent by the email address
"[email protected]", the “From” field in the header also resolve to the name of the person who created the content in the message and categorization ignores the email address associated with the content. So when I create this message, the headers of the email that will be sent will say:And there is no way to train the filter to say anything that includes (or starts with) “[TidBITS Talk]” in the subject line should be categorized as Updates, for example. And so far Mail has categorized some of you as Promotions, some of you as Updates, some of you as Primary, and even some of you as Transactions. Right now my choices are to categorize each sender as the one I want (Updates), but there are a lot of us, and it also means that I need to remember not to delete messages from iPad Mail or MacOS mail until I get a chance to check the categorization on my phone. It also means that some content gets split between different categories though they have the same subject line. So right now I am just using the All Mail view.
Hopefully Apple will improve this going forward.
Huh! I’ve never seen ads in Gmail on my iPhone.
Oh boo, that’s weak. I recategorized a bunch of stuff when I was playing with it, but apparently nothing from a mailing list. (I read TidBITS Talk purely on the Web.)
Some users (on a different forum) who updated to iOS 18 experienced problems connecting with GM’s infotainment. Anyone experience problems with MyLink/CarPlay and iOS 18.2?
Just a quick comment about Genmojis, which are described as “custom emojis”. Note that they are actually much bigger than standard emojis—more like stickers. I sometimes add strings of emojis to my personal messages, but genmojis are not intended to be used this way. Otherwise, they are a welcome addition to the standard set of emojis, 90% of which are pretty lame.
I’m in a quandary. In the past, upgrades have resulted in a drastically slowed computer, resulting in having to upgrade the hardware to restore functionality. My 2023 M2 15" MBA is supposed to be able to cope with Sequoia 15.2, but I am wary. Should I or should I not?
I wouldn’t worry with such a Mac Robin. My M1 Max Is sailing along, my issues are with an i9 intel iMac.
The update to Mail in iOS 18.2 sucks. Please Apple get rid of the stupid categories. I can sort my own mail, thank you.
I don’t think this is a good example to complain about Apple because, in this case, they actually give users complete control.
You can turn off all the new stuff:
Mail > … (ellipsis menu at the top right of any inbox) > List View
Settings > Apps > Mail > Show Contact Photos > Off
I personally haven’t found anything in 18.2 that I actually want or like, but I do appreciate that new stuff isn’t just being forced upon users, but rather folks are given the choice if they want new stuff or prefer sticking with the ≤18.1 way.
I wish it were always that way.
I agree completely. But you can turn them off.
Tap the “…” button in the upper-right corner of the Mail app (red box). You can select “Categories” or “List View” (blue box). Change it to List View in order to get rid of the categories.
Also, if you find the user-icons annoying or a waste of screen space (as I do), you can turn them off as well. Go to Settings → Apps → Mail. Then turn off the “Show Contact Photos” option.
Just a quick note to add that if you have multiple email accounts you need to do this in each of their In Boxes. Turning off Categories in the All Inboxes view doesn’t turn them off for the individual mail accounts.
I’ll also add that if you do leave categories on, I didn’t like the “Group by sender” feature, and you can turn that off for each category with the same menu control next to “Select”. For TidBITS talk messages, for example, this grouped messages by each if us rather than by subject, which was weird. Plus I also noticed the effect of having multiple shipping notification emails from the USPS gathered together, and I once accidentally deleted a bunch without noticing, since they were gathered together as one in the list. (I like to keep them until I actually receive the package.)
I’ll also add that while I’ve said that the categories aren’t working well enough for me (at least so far), I’ve left them on and will keep checking on them going forward. If you go all the way to the right in Categories, past “Promotions”, there is one called “All Mail” which is just the usual uncategorized view.
To add one more thing: I’d love the ability to drag a message to the category of my choice rather than using a menu command (from the reply button of all things) to re-categorize the sender.
I’d like the subject folders I created on my Mac, not the Apple created ones — or at least the ability to create my own for IOS.
Alan
They are indeed stickers, but what I’m seeing is that when you put one in a message by itself in Messages, it’s large. Put two or three in a message and they’re medium. Add any text or put four or more in a message, and they shrink to small.
There were some updates to the Passwords app as well, iOS and iPadOS 18.2 and macOS 15.2.
Right-click or tap-and-hold for Large Type. (I always liked this feature in 1Password.)
Mac-only: one-click copy of user names, passwords, and codes from detail views. This previously took two clicks.
Mac-only: Use Passwords menu > Get Browser Extension… to view installed browsers and open the page to install the Passwords extension
Mac-only: Improved compatibility importing CSV files exported from other apps
The contents of the Security section of the app are now searchable and multi-selectable
“Never saved” websites have moved to app settings
Thanks, Adam. Great tip! I’ve just started playing with the new genmoji, but I do notice that the genmoji images do not appear to be optimized for the small display size of standard emoji; so some of them don’t read as well at this size as a typical emoji. It is fun to have the capability to create new emojis on the fly, however.
Hallucinating AI is catching up to Apple. This is what happens when humans do not vet “AI content”.
Source : Apple Faces Criticism Over AI-Generated News Headline Summaries - MacRumors
I realize this is a quibble, but to me, this isn’t a hallucination in quite the same way that we’ve seen LLMs generate untrue statements.
Generally speaking, when LLMs make stuff up, we usually don’t know what the response was based on, so the error seemingly comes out of nowhere. It must have been statistically probable, but statistically probable is not the same as accurate.
There are also instances where the source text is known, and the AI response is “correct” in the sense of properly summarizing or relaying incorrect source information, as was the case with Google’s AI search summary recommending glue for keeping cheese on pizza because of a satirical Reddit post. That’s a completely different sort of mistake—the AI is failing to compare satire with reality and come down on the side of reality.
Apple Intelligence’s false summary is more of a real failure. It presumably had a source article about Luigi Mangione, and somehow summarized that to indicate that he shot himself. In what I consider a complete lack of journalistic follow-through, no one has identified the source article on the BBC. Everyone just points at the BBC’s complaint to Apple, and even that article doesn’t link to the source. The alternative is that the summary was based on several articles since the BBC has published multiple articles as the case unfolds.
I’m sure there are developers within Apple who are desperately trying to figure this out. But the real answer may be that some things are just too hard to summarize concisely and accurately, especially while taking informal communications into account.
Perhaps we need to remember that Apple considers that Apple Intelligence is a beta.
Personally I like the summarized notifications, particularly for news sources, which seem to think a lot of things are breaking news that need notification when I disagree with its importance (I have tried to minimize news app notifications to the minimum but still stuff gets through that just seems trivial to me). I always tap the summary to see exactly what the notifications say anyway. Did anybody do that with the infamous BBC summary to see exactly what was summarized? So far all I’ve seen are complaints about it. At least that MacRumors article detailed how The NY Times summary derived the incorrect summary that Benjamin Netanyahu had been arrested.
But if you have a device that can summarize notifications and don’t like them until Apple improves them, Settings / Notifications / Summarize Notifications and turn them off altogether, or for any particular troubling app.
With article summaries, there is a feedback button where you can send the offending summary to Apple.
I did this on an article that was talking about the financial collapse of France and Germany and how Germany will need to hold new elections in February 2025. The summary said “February 2024” which was completely wrong and missed the entire point of the article.
With summaries that bad, I’m hesitant to rely on them for any critical details.
Another stupid error I’m seeing with email summaries is it will summarize previous parts of the email. For instance, I will email an article to my uncle. His reply contains the full article I sent him (as quoted text), with a one sentence comment from him at the top. Apple “Intelligence” will summarize his entire email, including the quoted article, which isn’t necessary.
Did Apple tell you they were introducing new “features” like email categories? I had big problems with Google’s categories because their implementation diverted important mail – like bills – from the main InBox into promotions where they weren’t checked regularly without telling me, which had consequences because I didn’t know the bills had arrived.
Their release notes sure did.
I complain when Apple issues crappy or incomplete release notes, but in this case they said exactly what they were doing and they gave people a simple switch to turn it off.
In this instance I really don’t think Apple deserves to be chastised. They did the right thing here IMHO.
Thank you for your advice, Tommy. When I get some spare time, I will download the upgrade. Fingers crossed.
Both I and my mother have seen lots of nudges from Apple on our respective devices to try out Apple Intelligence since updating to latest OS — for now it’s turned off, and I’ll review with my mum in the new year.
Ummm, is “Unread” gone??
As always, there is a filter control bottom-left that can turn on the filter for unread email (as well as other filters) for all views and in boxes, including with the new categories.
2 samples in my notifications today.
Those are Terrible.
I have second thoughts about upgrading my 2023 15" MBA to Sequoia. I read an article in Ars Technica about the minimum RAM to handle OS’s with AI. Mine has only 8GB; all new Macs come with 16GB. I think there is a message there. I would like to hear from users on how their computers cope with Sequoia on 8GB of RAM before upgrading.
If performance ends up being a problem, you can turn off Apple Intelligence in Sequoia. There is a toggle switch:
System Settings > Apple Intelligence & Siri.Also, when you first install Sequoia, Apple Intelligence is not turned on by default.