Apple Intelligence on iPad: Very First Look
I just set up the new iPadOS 18.1 beta, which gives us our very first look at Apple Intelligence. Apple has promised a smarter, more context-aware Siri that can pull information from your messages, calendar and email, hand off to ChatGPT, generate images, help rewrite emails, and more. This first beta has only a few fragments of that.
Siri
It’s buggy. Holding the side button sometimes doesn’t launch Siri, and “Hey Siri” works on and off. When it does, you get the cool new glow all around the edge of the screen (and my 17 other devices answer at the same time).
You can now type to Siri by double-tapping the bottom of the screen. I asked “What’s my next flight?” and got generic web results, so it isn’t reading my emails or messages yet.
Siri is a little more conversational, though. I asked for flights from Austin to Boston, then said “Actually, I think I want to fly to Omaha, Nebraska,” and it adjusted the search without me repeating the whole question.
Writing tools
This is one of the coolest parts. I pasted a not-so-tactful email demanding a project status update, basically calling someone a jerk, then selected it and opened Writing Tools. You can:
- Proofread for grammar and spelling.
- Rewrite it, or ask for a tone: friendlier, more professional, or more concise.
- Summarize, pull out key points, or turn it into a list or table.
“Professional” came back with “It is imperative that you take immediate action to rectify the situation and devise a comprehensive solution to restore the project’s trajectory.” That’s a bit much. “Friendly” gave me “I’d really appreciate it if you could get your team back on track and find a solution to get us moving forward.” That might help at my next status meeting.
Summaries
Web page summaries, which seem to work in iOS 18.1, didn’t show up on my iPad. Mail summaries worked sometimes: tapping Summarize on a long email from a potential sponsor gave me a much shorter version, and it can summarize whole threads too.
That’s about all for this first beta. Updates should come quickly, and I’m installing the macOS Sequoia 15.1 beta on my MacBook Air to compare.
CalDigit sponsored this video, with its TS4 Thunderbolt dock.
Links
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