For Apple, it makes sense that the company wants more people to use these features. After all, it has all but said that Apple Intelligence is the future – especially for the iPhone. — Reuters
Recently, Apple rolled out the release candidate for iOS 18.3, which included a significant change to Apple Intelligence: it will now be on by default. That’s according to release notes first reported by 9to5Mac. Previously, users had to enable Apple Intelligence in order to have access to features like notification summaries, Image Playgrounds, and writing tools.
The feature is still technically considered a beta, but it will now be enabled on every device that is able to run Apple Intelligence, once they upgrade to the latest version of iOS, iPadOS, or macOS. You will be able to turn off Apple Intelligence in Settings if you don’t want the features active on your iPhone, iPad, or Mac.
That probably seems like a small change, but it’s actually a big deal – defaults are powerful. Most people never change the default setting, and companies know that.
I think that, as a general rule, companies shouldn’t make new features – especially ones this unreliable or unready for public consumption – on by default. Apple knows that most people never change the default, which means that most people won’t turn off Apple Intelligence.
It also meant that most people probably didn’t turn it on. That’s not necessarily an indication that they don’t want Apple Intelligence, but rather that – again – most people don’t bother to figure out where they need to go to find the right settings to change whatever default was set by Apple. Even when people don’t like the default, the threshold is pretty high before they will make a change.
For Apple, it makes sense that the company wants more people to use these features. After all, it has all but said that Apple Intelligence is the future – especially for the iPhone. But I’m not sure any of that changes the fact that turning them on by default represents a major shift that is going to make a lot of people uncomfortable – or, even worse, angry.
First, the features aren’t that big of a deal. Apple Intelligence’s best feature is its integration with ChatGPT, and even that isn’t as good as just using the ChatGPT app. The rest of the features are more like gimmicks. They’re entertaining, but seem so far behind the competition as to wonder what is taking Apple so long.
Second, the most interesting features just don’t work the way they should. Image Playgrounds will only let you generate images from within a very strictly defined set of boundaries, unlike other tools (like ChatGPT), which will let you enter a prompt and get an image back. It also wants you to start with an image of someone in your photo library, which is fine, but it’s also weird that Apple is encouraging you to make AI-generated pictures of real people.
Notification Summaries are another good example. On the one hand, having your iPhone summarise a thread or group of notifications sounds super useful. On the other hand, LLMs are just not very good at this. I don’t know if that will change in the future, but right now, it’s pretty bad. It’s so bad that notification summaries seem like a way bigger headache than they are worth to users or to Apple.
Finally, Apple is still calling Apple Intelligence a beta. It’s trying really hard to make it clear that these features aren’t ready for mainstream use. Or, at a minimum, it’s trying to not be blamed when they don’t do what you expect them to do. That doesn’t sound like the kind of experience you’d want to enable for people by default. It’s sending a pretty mixed message to say, “Hey, we’re not ready to call this fully baked, but here is on by default.”
That’s the problem. When you make a change like this, you’re going to make some people mad. Sure, you can turn off features you don’t want, but why should you have to do more work to get rid of something you don’t want, especially when – until now – you could just go on using your device as if Apple Intelligence wasn’t a thing?
Maybe this was always the plan. Maybe Apple decided long ago that by the time it got to January 2025, Apple Intelligence would be turned by default for everyone with a capable device. At some point, that just makes sense. At some point, it will no longer be a beta feature and will just be a part of the software that powers your devices. I just don’t think anyone thinks we’re there yet. – Inc./Tribune News Service
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