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Comment by alwillis | Hacker News Reader

A couple of things I've done with Apple Intelligence on the Mac:

* When I need a prescription refilled, the quickest way is to message my doctor using the patient portal. I created a Shortcut that lets me pick among 5 medications; Apple Intelligence then generates a message with the request to the clipboard which I paste into the message field and send.

* I have a Shortcut that creates a morning summary: Apple Intelligence generates the weather report. I also get what’s on today's calendar and any current or past-due Reminders.

Just scratching the surface here; will flesh these out more later and create some new ones now that I'm running the release version of Golden Gate and not the beta.

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Not sure if I want Siri to know my prescription medication.

> Not sure if I want Siri to know my prescription medication.

Using Shortcuts, a user can use the Cloud model via Private Cloud Compute, the Cloud Pro with "world knowledge, and the on-device model. It occurred to me I probably don't need the Cloud; I switched to the on-device model, which worked fine.

There's no way for Siri or anybody else to know anything about a transaction using Private Cloud Compute:

    We designed Private Cloud Compute to make several guarantees about
    the way it handles user data [1]:
    
    A user’s device sends data to PCC for the sole, exclusive purpose of
    fulfilling the user’s inference request. PCC uses that data only to
    perform the operations requested by the user. User data stays on the
    PCC nodes that are processing the request only until the response is
    returned. PCC deletes the user’s data after fulfilling the request,
    and no user data is retained in any form after the response is
    returned. User data is never available to Apple — even to staff with
    administrative access to the production service or hardware.

[1]: https://security.apple.com/blog/private-cloud-compute/

I am sorry no amount of assurances from any company is going to make me reveal my medical information to products from any tech company.

> I am sorry no amount of assurances from any company is going to make me reveal my medical information to products from any tech company.

Unlike your insurance provider or credit card company, which keep your prescription details, Apple Intelligence deletes the data once you receive a response—a fact Apple could verify if necessary.

It appears I did not need the cloud; my prescription information stayed on my iPhone to create the request, thanks to the Apple Foundation models running locally.

Luckily I live in a country with universal healthcare and our pharmacies don’t transmit prescription medication info to credit cards. They just show some prescription medication was purchased

what a cute anecdote. much success to your assurances

The Apple Intelligence Shortcuts creation is great as well. I never had a desire to learn their visual programming language so I mostly ignored Shortcuts. Now it's one-shot some really handy utilities for me.

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