Apple's Journal

I wonder if developers like you get any advanced notice/info on Apple’s plans for its reported journaling app, allowing you to make any adjustments in preparation? I love staying in the Apple ecosystem for the sake of simplicity and integration, and appreciate how Agenda integrates.

We have no insight, no. I had heard this rumor, but not looked into it until just now. Apple sure as hell wouldn’t tell us, and we couldn’t tell you if they did :slight_smile:

Is it likely? Probably. Definitely sounds more like a Day One type personal journaling app. Some overlap with Agenda, but I think we are probably more prosumer/pro. Not that worried…yet :rofl:

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There’s been discussions in this forum about Agenda incorporating chatGpt. That might be nice. Maybe. But just about every significant app, which Agenda is, needs to have an AI strategy going forward to remain competitive. Apple’s reported Journal app is driven by AI and also their unique access to a user’s data. I think the Agenda devs should be thinking long and hard about ways to incorporate AI into the app. The difference between apps that incorporate AI and those that don’t will be really obvious in s year or so.

I never thought I’d say these words, but look at what Microsoft is doing with their apps to draw inspiration. Specifically co-pilot for all of their Office apps. Apple is late to the game in terms of AI and Siri is a joke. Maybe that will change at WWDC.

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No need for panic in regard to AI. I haven’t really seen truly compelling use cases that can’t be done just by copying data into ChatGPT.

It is easy to underestimate the cost as well. Apps like Notion are taking enormous costs on board to support it. They are VC funded, so they can probably take a hit. We don’t want to be VC funded, and can’t afford to burn money on this. The wiser route is to let them fight it out, and see what actually works, and what doesn’t. I see a lot of dead ends coming.

I also think Apple will be right on this. They have been doing serious work with AI for many, many years. They are no dummies in this space. I remember when ChatGPT went public, Apple released open source support within a day. That means they already had it waiting. Expect Siri to get much, much better, and that hopefully all apps on Apple systems will get access to on-device AI. Hopefully we will hear more in around a month.

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2 posts were split to a new topic: Tighter integration with Calendar

Well that’s one way to approach it. I wouldn’t bet on Apple. They were the first out-of-the-gate with that type of tech and SIRI by far is the worst of all the assistants. I find it unusable and pathetic. Apple is apparently betting on VR, that’s their big reveal this year, which feels really out of step.

AI isn’t just some new tech to come along - it’s a seismic shift, as big as the Internet. Anyway, I love Agenda and will continue using it either way. I just see a lot of opportunity here, and also the possibilitiy of being left behind.

I don’t see a compelling reason for you to incorporate chatGPT. I’ve already posted in this group a way to integrate with Agenda now using shortcuts. This will only improve over time.

There are AI models that can be implemented that won’t cost a lot of money, or require VC funding. That’s why I suggested looking at what Microsoft is doing with Office. Yes, there’s some GPT integration there but there’s also a lot of automation, like automating Excel and powerpoint from prompts that doesn’t require a model with on-going costs like chatGPT.

Anyway, I’m not attached to it. Just shared my thoughts in case they are useful. I develop software with qutie a bit of AI so I’m aware of what’s involved.

Cheers

Wait and see is definitely the way to go, this is all still up for grabs

I believe AI will inevitably be important. I read somewhere that the AI team is having trouble with siri, so, maybe, we won’t see many improvements in WWDC.
However, it is way better to wait because it is next month. Sometime the team should consider AI to Agenda, be it with API or integrated in the app itself. Some apps like Mem and Omniresearch are doing a great job at keeping track of your notes and helping you to find them.

Often, Apple and developers like Momenta BV, are better and wiser to be patient seeing how the technology, needs and benefits evolve overtime. Kind of a tortoise and hare thing. Or tail wagging the dog.

I’m at the point now where I find the AI prompting within Notion to be off putting. I’m hoping they can make it optional and have the ability to turn it off.

When this discussion about AI started, I had a feeling there would be a backlash at some point - some people wanting to have their notetaking to be a hand crafted experience!

That said, I can see a value in AI that looked for connections between notes - ‘do you want to see the notes you took when you met with this person last year?’ etc

Agree with Drew but AI tends to polarise anyway. His comment about not having seen any compelling examples (of AI usage) is something I can relate to.

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I was using ChatGPT quite a bit a month or so ago, but over time my usage has gotten less and less. I find it helpful for brainstorming, but only really in a “summarized search” kind of way.

About your point about it becoming useful if you could put the whole app into it, like an advanced spotlight. I think this is probably a good use case, but is not really an option. I think you want Apple to provide something for that, so that your data doesn’t have to leave device. I suspect Apple are looking at improving Spotlight with AI.

We did actually do some back-of-the-envelope calculations for this. Ie What would it cost to upload lots of notes to ChatGPT? Answer: a fortune. Not on the cards. And it is “a fortune” even with the enormous subsidies OpenAI and others are providing customers at the moment. The costs are insane.

My advice is to ride up the bubble, but jump off when everyone realizes the reality. We’ll continue to have neural nets and AI, but the predictions of it changing everything are probably overblown.

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the predictions of it changing everything are probably overblown.

That’s a bold statement.
Like it!

Remember when Elon said we’d all be riding in self driving cars by now? I think about that as I drive my Tesla :slight_smile: That’s AI. The first 90% is easy. The last 10% requires human levels of intelligence, and that is a long way off.

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Like the guys from The Grand Tour said:
Only if you can travel the ‘death road’ in Bolivia from start to finish in your self-driving car, while reading the newspaper (and without dying), are they ready for large-scale deployment.

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I can give you at least two excellent use cases.

  1. Chats with my Agenda data. AI tools because truly powerful when they have access to our real data. Yes, I can put together an automation that exports my notes from Agena, processes it into a vector database, and then give ChatGPT access to it. But why not just incorporate an LLM into the app? If the concern is making sure it is not going to bankrupt you, charge some sort of subscription (AI’s are getting cheaper to use all of the time), or give users the option to use the AI of their choice using their own AI key.

  2. Application Help functionality is truly ready for an upgrade. The ability to use natural language and have the Help function understand* what you are asking and give you a real solution would save a huge amount of time. Yes, having an AI assistant like Microsoft’s Copilot would be even better because it would be able to do the work for you, but I’m not asking you to go quiet that far just yet. I do think that is coming for all apps, however.

This is where AI could be useful, ie, as a more advanced search. Basically replacing spotlight functionality with something more intelligent that understands your dataset.

We considered this, and ran the numbers, and they were eye watering. If you have to upload your data to ChatGPT, it is very expensive at the moment.

Yes, you can probably embed something, but it will not be anywhere near as powerful as the online services. What’s more, the rumors are that Apple is already building its own LLM, which will work on the server and locally. It’s already being tested in iOS 17.4, so is probably coming at WWDC. It would be silly to preempt that with our own.

Re: Help, agreed, but again, that is something better handled by Apple.

Let’s wait and see.

I agree on this, what makes notion ai different (and mem too) are its searching abilities. Integrate ChatGPT can be done in some ways (I’ve been doing it, already shared a shortcut and will share some more eventually).
Waiting for this year’s wwdc is the way to go on about this topic (funny, because I said the same thing last year, but this year there’s no denying)

Actually, I really hoping that Apple’s LLM solution is both on-device and has a full knowledge graph with all of the privacy and protections that Apple is supposed to have. A real AI assistant that knows all of my local information–everything from every file and image to every bookmark and web history–would be absolutely amazing. Now we are really getting to the Apple Knowledge Navigator. (Search YouTube if you don’t get the reference). If they can manage to lump a LAM in with the localized LLM well…that is going to be mind blowing.