Back in the ‘80s, when I was a teenager, my dad was a professor of artificial intelligence with the Open University, the U.K.’s largest academic institution.
Ofc, at that time, AI was NOT the hottest topic in tech as it is now.
Back then, it was largely dominated by “expert systems,” huge and clunky software programs that attempted to emulate the problem-solving abilities of human specialists such as geologists or stock traders.
My dad was very skeptical of neural networks, the underlying technology of today’s AIs like Claude, ChatGPT and Siri.
To him, neural networks were unknowable black boxes. And while interesting, they had few real-world uses at the time.
I was thinking of my dad, who passed about 30 years ago, when reading this report about Apple’s AI-powered AirPods coming next year.
He would have been thrilled! They would blow his mind!
It’s easy to be blasé about today’s devices, but we really do live in the kind of sci-fi future that was envisioned back then — robot vehicles, conversational computers and even flying cars (drones, coming soon).
And the capabilities of Apple’s next-generation AirPods would sound almost unimaginable to someone living just three decades ago.
Also in today’s newsletter:
To help run Apple’s next-gen AIs, the base iPhone 18 will get a pretty big memory bump, but luckily no price hike to match.
It looks like Apple’s saving some nifty iOS 27 features for the fall’s big product updates.
🔥 DEAL OF THE DAY: My idiot brother misplaced his keys and wallet the other day, despite me urging him for years to get on the Find My bandwagon. I’m going to recommend this $18 wallet tracker to him. Good brand, good price and solid reviews. #affiliate
Steve “no fans” Jobs would approve of these new high-power fast chargers from Mophie.
This behind-the-scenes privacy change should be good for developers.
If you’re a fan of iPhone wallets, these clever new ones from Moft are worth a look. I might recommend one of these to my brother, too.
— Leander Kahney, EIC.
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One more thing ...
There have only been two milestone products in our industry to date. The first was Apple II in 1977. The second was the IBM PC in 1981.... What we need now is the third industry milestone product, and that's what Macintosh is all about.
We've been working on this thing for over two years now, and those of us who've been really close to it will all tell you it is insanely great.
Today’s poll
Which new Apple product are you most excited about?
Results from yesterday’s poll:
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