Any plans to integrate AI, like ChatGPT?

It will work, but we have a very customized text view, so there will no doubt be things we have to look into. Not a 5 minute job.

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My hope is AI or ChatGPT will be opt-in; as a dynamic library, if possible.

I for one really appreciate it that Agenda is one of the few notes apps on the market, that has not integrated AI (yet) and I would prefer it that way. Non-AI apps are becoming really hard to find so it would be great to have an at least and opt-out option (better opt-in), if it should ever be integrated.

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The plan for now is to integrate what Apple are offering. There is nothing that will run without you triggering it, so in that sense it is opt-in. It should be mostly on device too, or in Apple’s fancy new private cloud, which they have no access to.

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This is the way.

Just wanted to follow-up and note that Apple Intelligence Writing Tools in the first developer beta are working as expected with Agenda! And I verified that they work on-device, at least Proofread and Rewrite do, even in Airplane Mode.

Been using it to clean up a bunch of my old notes.

Whooo!

P.s. Developer Beta of iOS and iPadOS 18.1 is currently US and US English language only.

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Oh, wow. Sounds like we don’t need to add any support at all then.

Unfortunately we have no access to test it, being based in the EU.

Ahh, but you might.

Apple has, as you mentioned, restricted access to the iOS and iPadOS 18.1 betas that include Apple Intelligence in two geographic locations - the EU and China.

China probably has something to do with security or something, but the EU is because of the uncertainty brought by the EU’s viewpoint that some how being the manufacturer of not the leading phone in Europe makes them a “gatekeeper”.

The EU hasn’t applied that strange logic to the Mac, fortunately, and so the MacOS 15.1 beta with AI is, in fact available worldwide, except for China, as long as the device’s regional language settings (not AppleID mind you) are set to English (US).

This is no doubt because of the LLM and LORAs at the heart of AI - in order to have as many neurons as possible in as small of a space as possible, they’re trained specifically on a given region / language combination and, as you might expect for a super early beta, the only one included is the one for where the manufacturer is located.

So if you have a test M series Mac available (or maybe even a VM) that you can use, I’ve placed the steps below to get it to upgrade.

If you are able to, I’d also love to know if the iOS simulators running on an upgraded Mac with 15.1 and AI are able to be used to test apps with AI dependent features. (My MacBook Pro is the last of the Intel family so I don’t know).

Although I do wonder if I could use Xcode Cloud to run tests….

Jim

Steps:
These should work anywhere in the world except China.

  • Change system region: Set your system region to the United States.
  • Set system language: Adjust the system language to English (US).
  • Set Siri language: Make sure Siri’s language is also set to English (US).
  • Install macOS 15.1 beta: Download and install the macOS 15.1 beta version.
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Hmm, that is interesting. I was almost certain I saw devs saying it wasn’t working on Mac either.

I think I did see that the simulators don’t work, so that problem still exists.

I will take a look with the new macOS 15.1 beta. Thanks for the heads up!

Let me know how it goes. I’ve seen posts on X and YouTube from Europeans from a variety of member states who were successful with those instructions, so hopefully you will be too.

Jim

Unless you are running a very specificly non-AI distro of Linux, I doubt you are going to find anything that doesn’t have some GenAI integrated in the very near future. While Apple Intelligence isn’t going to be in Europe, that doesn’t mean there is not AI. All Apple devices have some level of machine learning at this point. The chips themselves are built with ML cores for that purpose.

Sounds like it is time to open a USA office!

Not interested. This is total BS from Apple, and we won’t be going out of our way to facilitate it.

I’m sure it will be in there after a few months, and Apple feels they have punished the Europeans enough.

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The problem isn’t so much Apple, as the vagueness of the rules that the EU has imposed upon them pretty arbitrarily, and the lack of a certification/approval process.

What’s needed is for the EU to establish some kind of testing and approval process, similar to those in other industries, so vendors that they are targeting can come to market with products and services that have already been certified as compliant by a testing lab, rather than having to guess and get sued when a regulator changes their mind, or doesn’t provide clear enough specifications.

Otherwise, they run the risk of vendors pulling out of the market when the risks associated with doing business there become too great.

That’s Apple’s line, but no developer I know believes it, certainly nobody outside the US.

The rules are quite clear. We were in conversation with Apple for several years about it, so they knew what was expected. And everyone who saw Apple’s response to the DMA knew it was in violation. Apple decided to use it as a negotiation tactic, but it was just a violation. Now they are trying to ‘punish’ Europe for it.

To be clear, it is extremely easy to comply. Apple have to ensure that their OS team generates APIs that their other teams can use, and then expose those same APIs for others to use. Not difficult at all. They have to make some form of API anyway.

Apple should wake up now. The EU is only the first, it won’t be the last. Governments are lining up. People are getting sick of these monopoly abuses, including in the US. You can better take responsibility when given the chance.

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The concept that Apple is a “monopoly” is ludicrous. You can’t be a monopoly when it comes to access to your devices. A monopoly is when you dominate the market for a type of device - and there are many manufacturers of smartphones. Competition is very present in that market, but for some reason, competitors haven’t been able to / don’t care to make their product ecosystem work as well as Apple’s does.

Plus, what we have here is a Cartel - the EU - abusing its power to favor companies that are part of the cartel over companies that are from other countries, at the expense of consumers. Look at how Spotify has jacked up prices, for example. Not to mention the harm done to consumers by the decrease in privacy and security that the EU rules bring.

And that’s my last word on the subject. We can agree to disagree.

The DOJ disagrees. They are prosecuting on the basis of their monopoly position. So not just the “crazy” EU. EU are basically calling out practices that developers have found distasteful for years (no linking to web sites; no other payment processes etc).

But let’s just wait and see. I can see where this is headed given Apple’s stance…

Most of the industry also agrees that the DOJ is off their collective rockers as well.

The key difference between the EU and the US, is that in the US, it’s consumers that matter – and given that the US smartphone market is highly competitive, with Google, Samsung, Xfinity, Apple, and a number of other manufacturers actively competing – with consumers strongly benefiting from that competition, there’s not really anything for the suit to stand on. There’s no evidence that Apple has acted to keep consumer prices higher (since they’re not).

In the US, even if there was a market that Apple was found to be a monopoly in, monopolies aren’t illegal – what’s illegal is leveraging a monopoly in such a way as to enable the monopoly to raise prices. Apple doesn’t control prices on the App Store – those are set by the developers of the software. Additionally, Apple’s app store fee schedule applies to all developers, perfectly legal. It would be illegal anti-competitive activity if they gave certain developers special pricing (beyond volume discounts), but they don’t. And their program to provide a reduced fee schedule to small developers is seen as a positive thing that benefits consumers by enabling smaller developers to better compete against larger ones.

Mastodon? Please. That’s largely an echo chamber that by no means is representative of professional developers’ thoughts.

Just like shopping malls, where the marketing activities of the mall operators bring in traffic that results in far more incremental revenue than the commission percentages in the rental contract cost, device and OS manufacturer marketplaces increase developers’ reach and income far beyond the commission amount. As long as they do not illegally promote their offerings over others in the marketplace, and have clear rules that do not favor (or pay) one developer over another (like Google has), then nothing anticompetitive or subject to antitrust laws has occurred.

Are you on X or something?:joy: In my Mastodon timeline, of mostly US based third party developers, I see very few supporting Apple. This last weekend, when they threatened to throw Patreon off the App Store, my timeline went completely nuts with outrage about Apple, and how far they had fallen.

You can disagree with the DMA in practice, but to say it isn’t about protecting consumers is a bit crazy. What else is it for? It’s about creating a level playing field, and stopping anticompetitive practices. You only have to look as far as our own app to find examples where Apple Notes has access to system level features that we (a competitor) have no access. It’s textbook anticompetitive behavior.

No, they just add 30% to them.:smile:

Just by taking 30%, Apple are abusing their position, especially when they do that without allowing any other option. A direct competitor to Apple in services like music or video has to charge their customers 30% more, and give that money to Apple. Effectively, Apple can undercut competitors by around half as a result, simply because they are the “gatekeeper”. Who pays the price? Consumers ultimately, with higher prices, and less competition.

That’s what DMA is about: allowing non-gatekeepers to compete fairly. Having to pay 30% to Apple already means they can’t really compete fairly. Apple can undercut them every time.

I don’t think we are going to agree on this, so let’s let them fight it out in court. We’ll see how it pans out.

For the record, I have been an Apple fan and user since I was 15 and my father brought home a FatMac in 1985, so I have as much invested in the company as anyone (including my livelihood).

But I am hoping that they change their ways one way or the other, for the benefit of everyone, including Apple. If they just have to compete fairly with others, I think we will see better stuff come out of the company. For now, it has just lost its innovative edge. It’s just a marketing driven company, pushing out more of the same, and botching any attempt to try something new.

Oh, and on Patreon — Apple never “threatened to throw them off the app store” - Apple merely told them that they had to play by the same rules all other developers do.

As far as Creators hosted on Patreon go, Patreon has a history of both gouging creators as well as taking extreme steps to lock Creators into their platform. For example, it’s nearly impossible for a creator to download all their content from Patreon in order to move it somewhere else.

Who’s the bad guy there now?