We are talking about Apple’s AI. The M3 chip is in the MacBook Air, and the battle for the best laptops is now being fought on a whole new level. Apple released a new 13- and 15-inch MacBook Air with an M3 processor. And going beyond the fact that there is an updated chip, there is one more thing about the news that stood out to me above all else.
Apple is talking about AI. In the first paragraph of the MacBook Air press release, Apple wrote, it is the world’s best consumer laptop for AI. Apple said AI. Apple does AI, but Apple never says AI. Apple is careful with language. It likes to use other terms, like machine learning. Apple never bothers itself to be tied to the latest buzzwords. It doesn’t get caught up in the hype races.
But here we are, suddenly embracing AI and all the baggage that comes with that label, because AI is the battlefield for laptop and PC companies right now. Apple, once the world’s most valuable company, is feeling Wall Street’s pressure and desperate thirst for all things artificial intelligence ever since Microsoft overtook Apple in the top spot. Microsoft is now valued more than Apple, and now AI chip maker NVIDIA jumped to the third highest valued company spot, so Apple is caught smack inside an AI fever sandwich.
This goes beyond laptops. On a recent earnings call, Apple CEO Tim Cook confirmed that generative AI software is coming to Apple products later this year. That means phones too. All right, Apple wants to finally talk about AI? Let us talk about AI.
I will go over what Apple’s new AI could look like this year and what I wish Apple would do to make our lives easier without falling into the creepy and uncomfortable side of AI.
Let us start with a word about how AI fits into the new MacBook Air. On the outside, this laptop looks the same as the previous model. It’s also at the same starting price of $1,099. It’s got faster Wi-Fi 6E support and you can hook up two external displays if the lid is closed. Whoop-de-doo! But Apple says this new M3 processor can handle AI tasks even better than before. Apple is setting the stage for the AI that is to come. Apple boasts that the M3 performs well when running AI models for language and image generation locally on the device.
So prepare yourself for debates on which laptop is best for working with AI. There is a report from the news site Windows Central saying that Microsoft could debut its first AI PCs later this month. So that means we’re going to see Surface laptops that are centered around not just having powerful processors for AI, but also having built-in software for AI experiences.
What if you could turn everything you do on a computer into a searchable moment using everyday language? You could ask the computer, find me a list of restaurants Jenna said she liked, or at least that’s one example that was reported on. So could we see similar AI tricks later this year in macOS? We might find out at WWDC in June when Apple unveils the new macOS and iOS 18 as expected. Bloomberg reports that a big part of the new iOS and macOS will be AI features.
We could hear Apple introduce a tool that makes it easier to build programs with Xcode. That’s Apple’s programming software. Maybe it could predict and complete blocks of code on its own based on what you ask it to do. It’s a way for programmers to perhaps save time.
Now what about chat bots? Is there an Apple version of chat GPT? Well, there has been talk about Apple testing something in this space, but not much is known yet on how it would be implemented if it does come out. Bloomberg says Apple has explored AI that could automate the creation of Apple Music Playlists or make slideshows for you in Keynote. AI could also be used to make search smarter in the Spotlight tool. Perhaps you could search for something across apps in a more conversational way.
Building AI into the operating system itself means software could create personalized experiences, stitching together many points of information into a new thing. It could make predictions of what you want before you even know you want it, be it on a laptop or a phone.
Fellow CNET reporter Katie Collins saw the future of AI in phones when she was at the tech show Mobile World Congress. There was a concept phone made in part with help from the company Brain.ai, and it was able to book a flight just by having you say exactly what kind of flight you needed without having to dive into different apps. So would a future phone just eliminate the need to use an app for everything and instead use interactive AI to create this natural feeling back and forth to help you navigate a task? Does the phone become a personal genie? Or is that what we think of as a smarter Siri?
A main selling point of sticking with an Apple product is the privacy protections. And right now, a lot of generative AI must feed off some sort of data to learn. And Apple needs to be careful how it plays in this space. When we say we want a smarter, more conversational Siri, there is a fine line to walk between helpful and uncomfortably nosy about my home conversations.
