- Hey, guys, welcome to another "Double Tap" on YouTube. I am Steven Scott. - And I am Shaun Preece, hello. - Hello, how are you? - I am great, thank you, Steven. It's so good to be on YouTube again. I'm loving it here, I'm getting used to it, you know. - I love this little box on the internet. I'm quite happy playing around in here. Okay, so today I wanna talk about she who shan't be named. That was actually harder to say than her name, to be perfectly honest. She who shan't be named, Lady S is who I'm talking about. She's inside my iPhone. Got the idea yet? Uh-huh, right. So can't see her name because it'll set it off. I had to make a change to my phone, because of you, by the way. ♪ Make a change ♪ - Can't sing on here. - Oh yeah, sorry. Okay, I take that back. - We'll be struck by the copyright police. - What change did you have to make because of me? What have I done? - Well, do you remember this issue we were having with Lady S discussing the, you know, the follow-up mode? I was talking to you about the whole issue where, you know, you ask a question, and all of a sudden it's just waiting, and waiting, and waiting for you to continue to talk. And I was like, "I've gotta turn this off." And it turns out you have to go into Accessibility to S Lady settings in there, and then you can turn on a feature called Type to Siri, which means that you can no longer use the side button to enact Lady S, I mean, it's just ridiculous. But all of a sudden the follow-up thing starts working, so that's useful, but I can't use the side button anymore, it's just rubbish. - Well, you can use it, it just brings up a keyboard where you type your command to Lady S. - I'd like to go back to my previous point, Your Honor. Rubbish! - Yes, okay. It's not great, I will admit, but I think we should explain what the problem is with follow-up mode. So in follow-up mode- - How dare you? People can figure this out, can't they? - Which was introduced in iOS 17, it meant that you could interrupt Lady S or continue a conversation with Lady S without having to say the wake word again. Which sounds great, and we've had that feature on the Amazon Echo Smart speakers for a while, difference being is that you were able to toggle it on or off. In iOS 17, you can't toggle it on or off. - Yeah, there's no setting for it. - No setting whatsoever. And the problem is that if you're using voiceover, or you cough, or someone else says something, while, Lady S. - Nearly. - Whilst Lady S is giving you an answer to something, it just shuts up and starts listening for your next command. So it meant that you couldn't listen to your messages or emails without it, you know, getting a few sentences in, and then just stopping and starting to listen. So, yes, that is the way to turn it off or disable it. It's not the greatest, it's a bit clunky, but it works. - And I miss having the side button option, I really do. I mean, I suppose I could turn my action button into that, but then it just feels a bit of a mess, to be honest. And it kind of leads, actually in a way it's kind of perfect for her, because it's just a mess anyway. The whole thing is a mess. - Wow, that's strong words, Mr. Apple fanboy, really? - But it is, let's be honest about it. I mean, Lady S has never been the greatest. I mean, she's been good for some things, but not all. And then, you know, I mean, on a HomePod, for example, great for telling you the individual members' ages of the Beatles at some point in, you know, recent history, but, you know, that's about it really. Beyond that, you know, as an assistant, I know there's people out there who disagree with me on this, who find great value out of her, but I've just not found it. This is the problem in some ways, it's not the capability that's the problem, it's the continual mistakes that are being made. So, you know, the other day I'm trying to call Marc Aflalo, and it says, "You don't have a Marco Polo in your contacts." "I know I don't, 'cause I asked you to call Marc Aflalo"! Then she says, wait for it, "You don't have a Marc Aflalo in your contacts. What would you like to do?" And I yelled, "FaceTime Marc Aflalo!" And it said, "Okay, I'll FaceTime them." - What? Hang on! Five seconds ago, he wasn't even a contact, and now you've figured out how to FaceTime? I mean, come on. - Shouting is the answer to everything, particularly in Scottish. - I don't think we're allowed to play the clip, but there's a clip, you gotta look it up, it's Larry David on "Curb Your Enthusiasm." Be aware of the language on it. But, you know, he's having a bit of an issue with Lady S in the car. It is very amusing and it is very true to life, you should definitely go check that out. But look, I think it kind of leads- - But, hang on, no, I wanna- - Well, no, no- - I wanna pick- - I wanna move on. - No, no, no, no, no, no, I wanna pick you up on something. - How dare you? - I think Siri was groundbreaking at the time. You remember when it was introduced at WWDC? And there was actually a blind person in the video to explain how useful it could be for sending texts and things. - Hooray! - We were all blown away. I think Siri has declined in its capabilities over the years, there's no denying that. I get so frustrated with it, but let's be fair, I mean, you know, it was the first, I think, the first of its kind. - No, you're right, I think weirdly it was better years ago than it is today. - Yes. - And we do forget that. We do forget that, because we're so used to what we're dealing with today. You know, you only remember the most recent experiences. And, you know, you're absolutely right, there was so many more things you could do with this back then, back five years ago, it was far more capable of playing voicemails, playing audio messages, reading emails, all that stuff. Now it just seems to struggle with all of that, which is a real pain. But it kind of leads us onto our topic today, which is what are we looking for in iOS 18? Because the rumor is that Siri will get huge enhancements. I mean, look, as far as I'm concerned, they should just take the whole apparatus that runs Siri, take it out to the back and torch it and start again. That would the best solution to the problem. - I think that's what they will do. - And I think that's exactly what's gonna happen. I think that the talk of almost replacing the engine in the car is the best analogy I've heard for this. Which is that they're gonna just take the whole engine out, toss it away, and put this new machine learning system in there. And if the rumors are true, and I really hope this has gotta be the year for this, Apple have got to get this right because they're way behind as it is, and Apple's not a company to react in this way, they're not used to this OpenAI world that we're now in where we're seeing huge advances week in, week out, that's not how Apple work. Apple take time, they like to take their time, but the problem is everybody else is beating them. Okay, Google's having a few problems at the moment with Gemini. Don't ask it to paint a picture of the Founding Fathers of America, you might get a surprise. - Yes. - You know, that kind of thing, and that's gonna be resolved and that'll be fixed, right? But you look at Sora from OpenAI, you know, this new text to video tool, now there was a video that keeps getting shown online of Will Smith eating spaghetti, which was like a made-up video a year ago. It wasn't a real video, obviously, it's an AI video, but it was absolutely terrible. It's like he's eating spaghetti, but he's putting his whole hand in his mouth and, you know, the spaghetti's getting flung over his shoulder. - His head disappears. - It's like the way I eat! That was like a real version of me eating, but it was Will Smith. - Yes. - And, you know, that video compared to today where they've kind of done a similar video, is like you would swear it was him, it's so good. And, you know, the improvements in a very short space of time, in a year, are incredible. Apple need to catch up, right? - I think so, well, absolutely they do, yes. But you know what it's like with Apple that it's been said so many times, it's they'll wait and see, and then they come out with something that's so polished and ahead of everything else. Do we think that could happen now with AI? I would be absolutely amazed if that happened, I must say. But, then again, it's Apple. You know, there's always that slim chance that they may come out and say, "Yeah, we've seen how you've all been doing AI, now here's the Apple AI," I can see that. That wouldn't surprise me that much, but I think they've maybe have left it a little bit too late. But is that all we want from iOS 18? Is it going to be all about AI? I'm not sure, AI is everything we're talking about lately though. - If you believe the rumors, the idea is that it will improve. There'll be new UI designs, gonna be lots of changes coming up, which will, I guess, usher in these changes. Talk of macOS perhaps next year getting a bit of a redesign. But I think a lot of us are kind of intrigued to see, and that's the thing, we are kind of looking not so much for just improvements in the AI front, but I think that is definitely the area Apple needs to show its face, or at least show its hand perhaps is a better way to put it. - Yeah, yeah. - You know, I think we all have to remember though, and this is an important part of this, the reason that Lady S is actually as bad as she is, is because we don't, you know, Apple doesn't go off and mine for information and, you know, suck in lots of our private data in order to create a better assistant. That is how every other one works, it's about taking your data and creating a better assistant. The Amazon Echo, for example, everything you say is used to enhance it. So if it gets something wrong, it will be able to learn from that. She, the Apple version, doesn't have that option. It doesn't do that. Now there's talk that it does to some degree, but it seems to be more on device. And I think this is where Apple will- - It's anonymous. - Well, yeah, that's it. It's anonymized, so it makes it more difficult to get personal results in a better way, or be clever in some ways. And I think that, you know, in the background to all of this, I think that it's gonna be, ultimately a fight is gonna erupt, I think, between Apple and the other companies around where the data lives, that's where things are gonna change. So Apple, for example, will, I think, do everything on their device. Everything you do will be on device. - I agree. - All the data will be stored and it'll build from there, right? And then, when you look at the other companies, they'll be sending off to the cloud and that data will be anonymized, of course, but that will be used to- - But mined to, yeah. - Pick up the slack on everything as a bigger project. - So is that the reason why we're waiting for Apple to make their move into machine learning, into the AI? Because of the privacy, Apple almost sets up obstacles in its own way because of its stance on privacy. That's probably actually a good call, it probably is something to do with that. But, at the same time, we talked about it before, I'm still using that Pi AI. Okay? - Mhmm. - And I'm using that more and more just asking questions. Just the other day, so I just got the Orbit Reader 20 and I asked it, "How do I do a factory reset on a Orbit Reader 20?" And, you know, two seconds later, it's telling me step-by-step guide. - Yep. - And the way it's telling me with that amazing, beautiful voice, and, you know, the way, I don't have to think about how I'm phrasing it, or if I stumble through my sentence halfway, I don't have to restart, I can just correct myself and carry on, and it knows exactly what I'm saying, that is the future, and that is the way to interact with technology, and AI enables that. And I think unless Siri, it's gotta be this year, I think it's got to be, or at least mentioned this year at WWDC, even if it's not rolled out, they've gotta give us a glimpse of what's gonna happen, because otherwise they may just wait too long. - Do you think there'll be any connection between it and accessibility, whatever it is? - Oh, well, I would hope so. I mean, just the fact that, you know, giving it more power to understand exactly the context of what you're asking it, and understand the commands better, and giving that system-wide integration, so, you know, turn on, I mean, what do we use right now? We both used, just before we started recording, turn on Do Not Disturb, for example. - Yeah. - But, you know, taking that to the- - Which it always gets wrong as well, by the way. - Well, yes, I had to say it twice... - It always tells me, "It's already off." - Because it's already off. - I know, "Could you turn it on, please?" - Exactly right. But I think, you know, the voice interface is key to accessibility. And we talked about this before as well on the radio show, about how AI could change the face of not just the Windows or Mac operating system, but assistive tech as well, how we use screen readers, all of it could change because that understanding of context and natural language is key for getting to people to use technology. - And you're seeing that already, right? I mean, just asking for those instructions about the Orbit Writer, that has given you information in a way that is easy for you to understand, deal with, you know, step by step through. That would've taken you going onto the web with a screen reader, going through headings to get to the answer, getting to the search results, getting to the webpage, navigating that, accepting the cookies, all that stuff. - Oh, yes. - It just bypasses all of that stuff and just goes, "Right, here you go," straight to the information, that is where AI can excel, I think, for accessibility. That alone would be amazing and there's gonna be so much more, but that alone is brilliant. - Yes. - And I think we've got that and that's good, and of course that's available on our iPhones right now, but I think that Apple themselves could do a heck of a lot. I just hope it doesn't come out as a gimmick. I hope it isn't about just taking, you know, like creating images from text. I mean, I just don't get this obsession people have with creating pictures all the time. It's like, what on earth is this gonna be used for that is in any way purposeful? I don't get it. Is this a blind thing? I just don't get it. - I kind of agree with you, and I always sort of stop listening at that point. But, then again, you know, when we're talking about Sora just then with the text command line, just text commands to generate videos. There are blind people out there that will want to use that and are very excited by the possibility of creating our own images and videos just by telling AI a description of what we're looking for, that could be incredible. How else would we do that without getting someone else involved? We couldn't. So there's another way that AI can actually assist us when it comes to accessible and producing artwork and videos. - I must admit, I can't argue with that one. The video one appeals to me way more than the image thing does. I think partly because the images just doesn't, I don't get it. I'm like, I get it from a creator point of view or someone who wants to be like a digital artist, or whatever, I can understand that. But like, why would I wanna, you know, see, oh, you know, a picture of a dog with a cake on its head? I just don't see the point in that. It's like, "Okay, I've got the picture now, but so what? What am I gonna do with it?" - Just for fun. Well, it depends, I mean, everyone's got their own use case. Maybe I wanna create my own funny T-shirt, or whatever, that I want a picture on the front. I have no idea what the use case is, but the fact is that it now becomes something that we can do, which previously we couldn't do without assistance. - Okay, final question, what happens if Apple doesn't show off its top, you know, machine learning tool this year? What happens there? Because we're in an interesting point, OpenAI moving along, Google moving along, Amazon moving along, Samsung, of course, as well, moving along with this, and every company's sticking AI into absolutely everything, I mean, you'll find a toaster soon with AI in it, if there isn't one already. - And you would buy it. Straight away. - And I'll buy it, absolutely, if it can get my toast just right. But, you know, or it can burn the "Double Tap" logo into it, you know, that's the kind of toaster I want. - Cool. - Exactly, right? How cool would that be? Now I'm creating images. - See, we found a use case. - I'm not creating new images, I'm creating toast-based images. Okay, all right, you've got me. But, you know, what happens if Apple doesn't pull the trigger on this, this time around? - Well, quite honestly, it's Apple, probably nothing. They will get another year of grace and bring it out later on to great applause. I mean, this is Apple. They've got quite a lot of leeway in the tech world, so I think they'll be absolutely fine. - You think they can get away with it for a year? - Yes, I do. I do think they'll get away of it for a year. I don't think they should. I hope, I really hope that they're working on it purely from a end user, from a customer point of view, because I want Lady S to be better. I want my experience of using the phone to be easier, so I hope we get there. And because of all those AI apps that are out there now, ChatGPT, the Pi that I mentioned before, and so many others, we now got a taste of what this could be, and I'm getting annoyed and frustrated with how limiting Lady S is at the moment. But I think, quite honestly, I think Apple could get away with another year. - Wow, okay, well, we shall see what happens at WWDC. That is one event, I mean, I must admit, I always look forward to any Apple event, as you well know, but this one could be interesting. There's no way of knowing, you know, everyone will tell you they've got rumors and they've got inside knowledge, they don't. We only know until actually, you know, when it turns up. But one thing we do know for sure is that whilst this year is being seen in the PC world as the year of AI in PCs and, you know, some manufacturers of smartphones, Android smartphones, in particular, are making similar claims about their smartphones, it's important to remember Apple have had this technology, this machine learning capability built into their devices for some amount of years now, more than you'd think, and so the capability is there. They're not sitting like, you know, for example, Intel or, you know, other companies waiting for Nvidia to get more GPUs created, they've got all this hardware in their devices now. That's what Apple silicon, I believe, was built for, it's built to do this kind of machine learning. And we maybe never realized it at the time, but I think we'll look back and say, "That was what silicon was all about. It was creating the capability and the speeds to allow, and the processing actually, to enable us to have the best experience of machine learning on an Apple device," and that will be interesting to watch. So I hope this year we are. - I agree. - And bear in mind as well, one final thought, whatever we see at WWDC this year won't turn up until later in the year. So the chances are there'll be a new iPhone that will have, I'm gonna predict this, an even faster processor, with even more capabilities than ever before, that will be built specifically for this function, even though your existing iPhone will also be able to do it. - Going out on a limb there, Steven Scott. - I know, pushing it. - I predict it will be the best iPhone we've ever made. - Ever. Yeah, bigger, faster, better. - I really hope we see some movement when it comes to the voice assistant, because it would just be so exciting. I can't wait, I'll be honest. - What do you think? Comment below. And, of course, email us feedback@doubletaponair.com. We'll catch you for another YouTube chat soon. Thanks, Shaun. - Thank you, bye-bye.