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Comment by taylodl | Hacker News Reader

Apple has tons of user engagement data. You would think they would have a heatmap showing them where their customers are spending a lot of time trying to accomplish a task. I would focus Apple Intelligence, amongst other tools, to reduce the time needed to accomplish that task. If I were the PO, that's how I'd proceed. I'd want my customers to be able to reduce the time they're spending using the phone and yet getting more done. That open the opportunity for the customers to do new things, perhaps things you can monetize.

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I imagine my heatmap would show I spend a disproportionate amount of time trying to edit urls in the browser bar.

> 10.0.0.200

Redirects to > www.10.0.0.200

Thank you safari!

Oof, too relatable! I once saw a shortcut somebody shared that would turn your URL (really any text you shared to the shortcut) into a screen-sized edit box. I didn't grab it at the time, but it shouldn't be too difficult to recreate.

I think the data would likely to show most people are spending time on short videos.

Why do you think that?

because there are plenty of research showing majority of screen time is spent on video watching, followed by social media and games.

Ah, I didn't know that. I try to avoid video watching myself, especially shorts/tiktok-style content. My wife, on the other hand, primarily uses her phone for that stuff, so my gut tells me you're right.

> Apple has tons of user engagement data.

I suspect they don't have as much as you'd imagine. Stronger privacy means they have less data, and the data they have is less useful, and their legal teams will restrict things the data can be used for.

I think that's why Apple Intelligence is bad. They built it on mostly synthetic data.

That's not my experience.

You are correct about the culture of privacy at Apple and that is the awesome thing about Apple. The big "Allow Apple to collect anonymous data to help improve..." screen you get when setting up your device is the master opt-out switch where you can turn all data collection off.

For those that leave it on I think Apple have become very good about finding means to acquire user engagement data in a privacy-compliant way. For starters, by identifying user data with a cohort identifier when they can (which will cluster hundreds or thousands of user's data into arbitrary groups). Or if specific user engagement is wanted in order to see if usage patterns change they might create a rotating random identifier (that is regenerated to a new random identifier every 11 months so as to not build up an identifying profile).

I think the bigger question for me is if they have the tools and teams in place that can take full advantage of that data to improve user experience. Or if it is just a firehose of data points that are left instead to just curdle in a large vat.

The most useful thing for AI on an operating system level is in my opinion aggregation and summarization of data from different apps. And somehow connecting the different apps in a smart way. Like the iOS Shortcuts app, but with dynamically creating shortcut pipelines and much more powerful.

Probably not an easy task at all.

They arrived late to the VR party, while those companies were already pivoting into AI, and late to this one as well.

I'm still waiting for Google / Alexa / Siri to be the personal secretary promised a decade ago. Siri can set a timer or simple reminders, and with Apple Intelligence can do a bit more in a more natural language, but the reliability and accuracy drops off incredibly fast once things become more complicated, to the point where they're near-useless.

I'm still disappointed by what I'd consider to be simple stuff, like hands-free operation of my phone while driving, or even just simple instructions on operating the phone without needing to touch it (let alone look at it). I'm having trouble imagining what the product owners at Apple are actually expecting it to help us with - do they use it in their daily lives?

A family member is blind, and in many ways digital assistants and AI voice control have been a godsend, and Apple Intelligence should have been enabling in so many ways. Instead it's an exercise in frustration, advertising hope where there is nope, as well as being all but hostile to blind users (Apple's is the best of a bad bunch). Arguably the switch from tactile buttons to touch screen slabs has removed more autonomy for my relative than AI has added.

It's no wonder that Apple have found that people see no value in Apple Intelligence, then, because it doesn't add any practical value.

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