☃️ Winter OS Updates, Apple Shakes Up Its AI Team, and DeepSeek Shakes Up the AI Market

Plus: A Close Look at Apple TV+ on Basic AF

January 30, 2025

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Apple’s latest software updates have landed, bringing security fixes and a few small but notable tweaks—like Genmoji on Mac and changes to notification summaries. Meanwhile, big changes are coming to Siri, but will they actually make it better? Plus, Apple shakes up its AI team, and a new AI contender, DeepSeek-R1, is making waves. Let’s dive in!

⚙️ Apple’s Winter Updates Have Arrived

Genmoji have landed in macOS 15.3

On Monday, Apple released its latest round of updates:

  • macOS Sequoia 15.3

  • iOS 18.3

  • iPadOS 18.3

  • watchOS 11.3

  • tvOS 18.3

  • visionOS 2.3

These aren’t major updates in terms of new features, but highlights include:

  • iOS 18.3 adds support to Visual Intelligence on iPhone 16 models for adding events to your Calendar and identifying plants and animals. (Note: If you missed my Visual Intelligence overview in the last newsletter, you can find it here.)

  • Notification summaries for news and entertainment have been temporarily disabled while Apple figures out how to improve them. The company took heat from the BBC and others after misleading AI summaries were called out. Apple has also changed the appearance of notifications that have been summarized by italicizing the text.

  • macOS 15.3 brings Genmoji to Messages on the Mac.

  • watchOS 11.3 includes a new Black Unity watch face to go along with the Unity Rhythm wallpaper in iOS and iPadOS 18.3 and a new Black Unity Sport Loop band.

  • Apple added additional satellite features to iPhone by teaming up with SpaceX and T-Mobile to add support for the Starlink network; T-Mobile has launched a small beta.

The updates also include a big set of security fixes, so installing them relatively soon is a good idea.

The next round of updates should be more exciting as Apple Intelligence features are added to Siri. Here’s what is expected:

  • Personal context: Siri will use information on your device (emails, photos, files, messages, and others) to provide more personalized and relevant responses.

  • On-screen awareness: Siri will gain the ability to understand and interact with the content currently displayed on your screen. If a friend sends you their new address, you can say, “Add this address to their contact card,” and Siri will know what you mean.

  • App integration: Siri will have deeper integration with the apps you use. For instance, you could instruct Siri to add a photo to a specific note in the Notes app.

Will any of this actually work? Time will tell, but Apple’s history with Siri isn’t great, and in many ways, Siri is just outright bad. While it’s reasonable to be very skeptical, I’d love for Apple to surprise us and nail this.

Do you think Apple will succeed at improving Siri?

Siri has been bad for a long time. Do you think Apple will get it right with the new features expected this year?

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Apple Shakes Up AI Team

Bloomberg reports that Apple is changing things up with its AI team and has added Kim Vorrath, who has been with the company for over 35 years, as a “top deputy” to John Giannandrea, who leads Apple’s AI team.

Vorrath, who will focus on Apple Intelligence and Siri, has previously worked on Vision Pro and iPhone and, according to Bloomberg, is known for fixing problems and getting significant products to market. Apple Intelligence is off to a slow start and Siri needs a lot of work, so she’ll have plenty to do.

DeepSeek-R1 Shakes Up the AI Race

DeepSeek, an AI company in China, shook the market this week with DeepSeek-R1. This open-source model reportedly rivals ChatGPT and other AI tools while using fewer hardware resources and costing less. While NVIDIA took a big hit on the market, the DeepSeek app took off and reached the top of the App Store’s charts, displacing ChatGPT.

There’s an App Store version and the open source model, which you can download and run locally, provided you have the hardware to do it. I’m wary of the app, which sends information to the DeepSeek servers, until I see more about their privacy policy, where the data is stored, etc.

The DeepSeek news arrived on the heels of President Trump’s announcement of a $500 billion AI venture, Stargate, with OpenAI, Oracle, and Softbank.

🎙️ Basic AF Show: Apple TV+ with Ben Jancewicz & Joe Moyer

In this episode, Jeff and I are joined by Benjamin Jancewicz and Joe Moyer for a fun discussion on Apple TV+.

Chapter Listing:

00:00 - Intro

00:52 - Hello, Joe Moyer!

01:14 - Hello, Benjamin Jancewicz!

04:04 - Let’s Talk Apple TV+

09:54 - Apple TV+ vs the Market

20:48 - What to Watch

23:49 - Benjamin’s Recommendations

26:20 - Joe’s Recommendations

27:59 - Jeff’s Recommendations

31:44 - Tom’s Recommendations

34:28 - Viewing Habits

42:01 - Other Shows & Movies to Consider

54:34 - Close

Listen to and follow the show in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, all the other podcast apps, as well as on YouTube and YouTube Music.

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