In this week’s “Sunday Reboot,” Apple Japan shines with its delightful ads, Siri engineers learn about AI, and a feel-good Apple executive retirement story.
Sunday Reboot is a weekly column covering some of the lighter stories within the Apple reality distortion field from the past seven days. All to get the next week underway with a good first step.
This week, users were scammed by a Freecash app that somehow got through App Store review, researchers came up with a way to steal $10,000 from a locked iPhone, and details surfaced about a paraplegic pilot’s death for an Apple Immersive Video documentary.
A very arty App Store ad campaign
Back in March, Apple released a bunch of high-concept videos to social media, bamboozling viewers with clips promoting the MacBook Neo. At the time, I enthused about them because they were delightfully cryptic and entertaining.
Thankfully, it seems Apple’s ad campaign is continuing down the artsy route, albeit in a more straightforward manner.
On April 13, we reported about a new campaign in Japan, promoting creative apps in the App Store. Three videos were released, showing off 16 pieces of artwork created by 13 artists.
All three videos follow the same idea, starting with a person tapping the App Store logo. Cue a beautiful montage of animated scenes while continually zooming into the App Store icon’s A.
Aside from echoing the White Stripes’ “Seven Nation Army” music video, the ads do have the slight issue of not saying what apps are being depicted or used. While we could guess what some of them are by the included characters or UI elements, we’re not gonna get them all.
That said, we may have a good chance of seeing more videos like this in the future. Apple often incorporates advertising from one region into others around the world, so more of these could be on the way.
Here’s hoping that they don’t lose their charm when they eventually do.
AI coding bootcamps to improve Siri
We are all well aware that Apple’s attempt to bring Siri up to speed with the rest of the AI industry has been quite slow. While we could dwell on the hows and whys behind it, Apple is at least trying to do something to catch up.
It’s using AI to make AI. Or more specifically, it’s using AI to help improve Siri.
An April 15 report said that about 200 engineers working on Siri are being sent to a “coding bootcamp.” Think of it as a mini course in software development, but one that focuses on using AI-based tools.
While this sounds weird, that a tech company has to send a bunch of engineers working on its digital assistant to learn more about AI-based coding, it’s not unsurprising. With a need to improve the speed of the Siri team following a glacial development period, this is the thing Apple had to do.
Xcode’s Agentic Coding addition helped me make an iPhone app in two minutes. Hopefully, Siri’s team will similarly benefit.
AI-assisted coding is something that the rest of Apple is already comfortable with, as agentic coding tools have been used in a number of departments, to good effect. It’s just ironic that the Siri team, making a product that typical consumers expect to be AI in the first place, is being told how to do AI coding.
Indeed, I can even personally attest to the speed of coding with AI assistance. My regular game development logs here have shown how useful AI-based coding assistance can be, especially when you’re trying to learn the subject area itself.
It is almost certain that the Siri team will come back to Apple’s offices and work faster and smarter with their AI learnings. It’s just a shame that it’s taken this long for the team to be pressed into doing so.
A good retirement story
We’ve seen a lot of stories about Apple executives retiring, or preparing to do so, in the last year. In April, there were two pretty negative stories about the subject.
Apple Fitness+ chief Jay Blahnik was said to be preparing to leave in July, departing after allegedly creating a toxic mental health environment. Meanwhile, John Giannandrea was already known to be retiring after the AI snafu, but his departure seems to be happening soon.
The timing is not coincidental, as it’s a common practice for employees to stick around until stock options vest. After they do, there’s little point in hanging around.
Stan Ng in a video presentation for the Apple Watch Ultra – image credit: Apple
While the Blahnik and Giannandrea stories are quite negative, that is balanced out by one from April 17. Stan Ng, who was Apple’s VP of Apple Watch and Health Product Marketing, has departed, and seemingly on very good terms.
Through a LinkedIn post, he described his final day at Apple Park, which included watching the sun rise while listening to his original iPod. That iPod, which was also taken to the gym for one last workout, is a sentimental item to Ng, and still has its original battery.
Ng leaves after 31 years at Apple, and used the day to finish off his bucket list of Apple things to do. “It was a joy to work at Apple and I truly loved what I did,” he writes.
While the inevitability of retirement comes for us all eventually, it’s nice to see that it can do so in a fairly nice and touching manner sometimes.
Last week’s Sunday Reboot covered attempts to upgrade the MacBook Neo, Apple’s relatively late acknowledgment of the whole Artemis II iPhone thing, and using a ton of Mac minis for AI processing tasks.
Source: www.appleinsider.com
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