Apple’s almost completely worthless Image Playground app is a good example of the company shooting itself in the foot to be on the right side of AI.
The AI image generator mostly makes highly stylized, cartoonlike pictures or illustrations.
This helps Apple circumvent sticky issues like copyright violations and offensive deepfakes, but it means the app can make images of only limited utility (and worse, at very low resolutions).
As a consequence, I don’t think I’ve ever seen an Image Playground picture in the wild. No one is using it when Midjourney, Nano Banana and myriad other AI image generators can spit out better and more useful mages.
Apple’s commitment to privacy and security in the AI era is laudable, but it’s clearly holding the company back as other, less scrupulous rivals forge ahead — privacy, security, copyright, people’s jobs and the like be damned.
Which puts Apple — and Apple users like us — in an interesting pickle this summer.
The world is about to undergo an enormous sea change in technology that will revolutionize everything, from how we interact with our devices to how software is built and monetized.
Welcome to the agentic AI era, which Apple is about to embrace with open-ish arms, but also with restrictions that might prove crippling.
Also in today’s newsletter:
Just as Apple starts to really target entry-level consumers, RAM prices are blowing the strategy up.
We love these highly portable external drives from Samsung, and our deals site has them on sale for better prices than Amazon (except for refurbs).
🔥 DEAL OF THE DAY: Wow. This on-sale camera tripod extends to nearly 6 feet high! It looks like a great piece of equipment for just over 50 bucks. #affiliate
As someone who’s often confused about the exact meaning of various emoji (I had to look up 👀 the other day), this is sage advice about using emoji in the workplace.
It’s interesting to go back and remind yourself that the original vision for Apple’s retail stores — like a lot of things the company does — were greeted with initial skepticism, which turned into admiration and then envy.
Years ago, when I worked for Wired, we regularly had ergonomic consultants tour the office and order specialist equipment, chairs and desks to correct the bad habits of chronic slumpers like me. For me, the interventions tended to make things worse, and I only got better when I returned to my bad old habits. But they definitely helped some of my colleagues. Here are 10 of the best ergonomic Mac setups we’ve seen over the years. There’s some very interesting equipment detailed in the post.
— Leander Kahney, EIC.
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One more thing ...
I was very lucky to grow up in a time when music really mattered. It wasn't just something in the background; it really mattered to a generation of kids growing up. It really changed the world. I think that music faded in importance for a while, and the iPod has helped to bring music back into people's lives in a really meaningful way. Music is so deep within all of us, but it's easy to go for a day or a week or a month or a year without really listening to music. And the iPod has changed that for tens of millions of people, and that makes me really happy, because I think music is good for the soul.
Today’s poll
Regular old iPhone or new-fangled AI agent iPhone?
Results from yesterday’s poll:
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