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Last Tuesday, I gave a talk to over 300 developers at Deep Dish Swift about Apple Intelligence, where I made the following claim:
Apple will win the AI race
I'm an expert on App Intents, the API that powers the yet-to-be-seen features of Apple Intelligence – Actions and Personal Context. After designing implementations with my clients, and seeing the trends around AI-assisted coding, hearing rumors of an iOS 19 redesign, and seeing the acceleration effects of artificial intelligence, I believe Apple is skating to where the puck will be, rather than where it is now.
I'll leave the thesis for the talk – but if you're building for any Apple devices, you'll want to understand how important App Intents is to the future of the platform:
Watch the 54-minute talk from Deep Dish Swift on YouTube Live.
If you’re interested in “going” to WWDC, but don’t have a developer ticket – you should sign up for CommunityKit, the alternative conference1 for Apple developers, media, and fans.
From June 9 though 11, join us at the Hyatt House Cupertino to gather with your fellow participants, learn so many new things, and build some great memories.
Each day, we’ll be joined by our wonderful communities, such as Shortcuts, and iOSDevHappyHour, to name a few. We'll also be hosting a live recording of Swift over Coffee, focusing on everything new at WWDC.
Yes, you read that right – I’ll be hosting a Shortcuts/Apple Intelligence/App Intents meetup during one of the afternoons that week! Schedules will be announced later, and I’ll update this post plus create another when I know my official time slot.
Located just a few minutes away from Main Street Cupertino and the Visitor Center at Apple Park, this free conference is designed specifically to make it easy to know where to go if you’re in town for WWDC, merging past events like the watch party from the iOS Dev Happy Hour into one event.
You can watch the WWDC Keynote and State of the Union with developer friends on Monday, plus attend live podcast recordings, join community meetups like mine, and access a hackathon space to work on new ideas all day Tuesday & Wednesday.
To be clear: this means most social events are moving the from San Jose to being more focused in Cupertino this year, so folks don’t have to make their way back-and-forth across those 8 miles as much. This also means anyone coming from out-of-town or from San Francisco can stay/park at the Hyatt House each day and easily access most WWDC social events.
If you’re unsure if it’s worth coming to WWDC, let this post convince you – it’ll be a blast and you’ll have something fun to do to Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday that week.
WWDC is back!2 Get your free ticket to CommunityKit now.
- Not to be confused with the now-defunct AltConf. ↩
- Yes, the official conference has been back for years. But I kept hearing people at Deep Dish Swift ask if the social WWDC is “back”.
Yes, it is is! The social scene has been growing for a few years, but took a while to figure out better.
Now, more of us are coordinating together to make it like the old days where, if you didn’t have a ticket, you could go to AltConf. Now, you can go to CommunityKit! ↩
I'm super excited to be giving my talk on Apple Intelligence live tomorrow at Deep Dish Swift – if you're interested in tuning in to the conference stream, follow Deep Dish Swift on YouTube:
Check out Deep Dish Swift live and learn more about the conference.
In the process of switching my mounted overhead video setup from a backdrop bar to the Elgato Multi-Mount, I had to make one significant shift – filming upside-down, since the camera is now attached to the back of the desk instead of mounted above from the front. Unfortunately, that means all of my footage needs to be rotated before being usable in editing programs.
In Final Cut Pro for Mac, you can easily rotate clips once you’ve added them to the timeline. However, I’m not actively building a story yet, and I’m instead using the Browser to organize my footage into individual clips using in/out points and Favorites. For a long recording like an unboxing, I can turn an hour of footage into a full set of individual moments as clips, all timed exactly for the action, renamed as needed, and split apart as separate entities in the Browser.
This process and my footage means, by default, all my Browser clips are also upside-down, and at first glance this seemed like a big problem for my editing style – timeline editing is very different than clipping in the Browser, and I might be out of luck.
However, thanks to “2old2care” on Reddit (great username), the solution lies in the “Open Clip” menu option, which I’ve never used before:
Yes, you can invert the clip in the browser. Select the clip, then under "Clip" menu select "Open Clip". You can then go to transform and rotate the clip 180º. I don't know of a way to create a batch in FCP to do this, although it can be done for the original clips using Compressor.
To save myself the trouble of remembering later, I took screenshots of the process – here’s my setup in Organize mode (under Window > Workspaces > Organize):
How to rotate clips within the Browser using Final Cut Pro
- Select the clip you want to rotate – use the filmstrip to identify which files were filmed upside-down.
- In the Menu Bar, navigate to Clip > Open Clip, which has no keyboard shortcut. Optionally, assign a keyboard shortcut under Final Cut Pro > Command Sets > Customize (or use ⌥ + ⌘ + K / Option + Command + K to customize immediately).
- In the Final Cut Pro window, the selected clip will open in its own timeline view. In the Inspector, select Transform and change the Rotation from 0° to 180°.
- In the center of the window, find the clip name and click the dropdown arrow next to it to reveal a context menu – close the clip to return to the full Browser view. The filmstrip will show the flipped clip as you scroll, however it will continue to show the original upside-down version in the static filmstrip until you leave the project and navigate back/refresh the window.
- Repeat for each upside-down clip.
As 2old2care mentioned, batch-processing files like this would be a more ideal solution – I’ll update this post if I find one.
Check out the source on Reddit, get the Multi-Mount from Elgato, and get Final Cut Pro for Mac from Apple.
I've just added a new folder to the Shortcuts Library — my set of Perplexity shortcuts for asking Perplexity to do research for you.
Use these to open the sections of the website, ask questions in new threads on iPhone and iPad, interact with the Mac app using keyboard shortcuts, go deeper on the Perplexity experience, and interact with the API:
Website
- Open Perplexity AI: Opens the website for Perplexity AI in your default browser.
- Open Perplexity Discover: Opens the Discover page from Perplexity, which curates top stories for you and summarizes them.
- Open my Spaces in Perplexity: Opens the Spaces section of Perplexity, where you can create research and collaboration hubs built on top of Perplexity search.
- Open Perplexity Library: Opens the Library section of Perplexity, where you can see Threads and Pages around searches you’ve performed.
iOS and iPadOS app
- New Search in Perplexity: Opens Perplexity to a new, blank search using the Auto mode.
- New Pro Search in Perplexity: Opens Perplexity to a new, blank search set to Pro mode, which acts as your conversational search guide. “Instead of quick, generic results, Pro Search engages with you, fine-tuning its answers based on your needs.”
- Ask Perplexity: Prompts you to “Ask anything” before opening into Perplexity to search for your query.
- Play Perplexity Discover: Immediately starts a Live Activity session for Perplexity Discover, using stories drawn from the Discover feed and spoken by ElevenLab’s voices.
- Summarize articles with Perplexity: Creates a series of Threads in Perplexity for URLs shared as input, either from the Share Sheet or by detecting what’s on screen. Includes logic for multiple links, opening each URL in the background until the final query.
Mac app
- Set up Perplexity for Mac: Opens the Mac app for Perplexity AI, resizing the window to 1024×770 and moving it to the center of the current display.
- New Thread in Perplexity: Simulates the keyboard shortcut for Command + Shift + P, which activates the Perplexity search bar from anywhere.
- Voice Mode in Perplexity: Simulates the keyboard shortcut for Command + Shift + M, which activates the Perplexity voice mode in a popover window.
- Upload File in Perplexity: Simulates the keyboard shortcut for Command + Shift + U, which activates the Perplexity upload process and shows a Finder window where you can select the file to upload.
- Voice Dictation in Perplexity: Simulates the keyboard shortcut for Command + Shift + D, which activates the Perplexity voice dictation in the search bar so you can enter a query hands-free.
- Screen Capture with Perplexity: Simulates the keyboard shortcut for Command + Shift + 0, which activates the Perplexity screen capture and prompts whether to capture an Area, Window, or Fullscreen.
Deep Dive
- Open my Perplexity account settings: Opens the Perplexity website to Settings > Account, where you can change general settings like the Appearance, as well as subscription details or system settings.
- Edit my Perplexity profile: Opens the Perplexity settings to the Profile section, where you can tell Perplexity information about yourself and your preferences to inform results.
- Read the Perplexity blog: Opens the Perplexity blog, where you can see stories and announcements from the team on new updates or changes to the service.
- Open the Perplexity discord: Opens the deep link into Discord for the Perplexity channel using the unique ID and channel ID.
- Show the Perplexity Supply store: Opens the website for Perplexity Supply, the clothing line for fans of Perplexity.
API
- Open the Perplexity API docs: Opens the URL for the Perplexity API documentation, so you can quickly reference how to get started or learn about the API.
- Open the Perplexity API reference: Opens the Perplexity API website to the API reference, starting with Chat Completions, you can test your commands against the API and see what’s working.
- Get my Perplexity API key: Stores your API key for Perplexity. Store the result as base64-encoded text so it’s not readable as plain text, which is then decoded as this is run.
- Manage my Perplexity API keys: Opens the Perplexity website to your API settings, where you can manage API keys and payment details.
Check out the folder of Perplexity shortcuts on the Shortcuts Library.
The first look at Personal Context for Apple Intelligence is here as APIs available in the iOS 18.4 developer betas allow apps to further their content for the system to understand. This sets the stage for the most significant update to Siri so far, where all your apps can provide Siri with the available views and content to work with – in a secure and private manner, too.
As first mentioned by Prathamesh Kowarkar on Mastodon, there is now a suite of APIs in beta that associate an app’s unique content, called an entity, with a specific view – this allows Siri to read what’s indexed on-screen and use it with other app’s actions when triggered by a command.
APIs like this are necessary for the coming Siri update to actually do what Apple says Apple Intelligence is capable of – now that the functionality is here, however, it’s up to developers to implement everything to make sure the experience works well.
Here are the new pages:
- appIntentsDataSource
- NSCollectionViewAppIntentsDataSource
- UICollectionViewAppIntentsDataSource
- appEntityIdentifier(forSelectionType:identifier:)
- appEntityIdentifier(_:)
If these APIs are in beta now, it stands to reason they’ll leave beta after iOS 18.4 releases in full – which means Personal Context might be coming as early as iOS 18.4.
Check out the post from Kowarkar on Mastodon.
From the Apple Newsroom:
Apple today announced the new Mac Studio, the most powerful Mac ever made, featuring M4 Max and the new M3 Ultra chip. The ultimate pro desktop delivers groundbreaking pro performance, extensive connectivity now with Thunderbolt 5, and new capabilities in its compact and quiet design that can live right on a desk. Mac Studio can tackle the most intense workloads with its powerful CPU, Apple’s advanced graphics architecture, higher unified memory capacity, ultrafast SSD storage, and a faster and more efficient Neural Engine.
My M1 Mac mini from 2020 is also way overdue for an upgrade…
From the Apple Newsroom:
Apple today announced the new MacBook Air, featuring the blazing-fast performance of the M4 chip, up to 18 hours of battery life, a new 12MP Center Stage camera, and a lower starting price. It also offers support for up to two external displays in addition to the built-in display, 16GB of starting unified memory, and the incredible capabilities of macOS Sequoia with Apple Intelligence — all packed into its strikingly thin and light design that’s built to last.
I’ve been rocking the M1 MacBook Air from 2020, but it’s beyond time I upgraded…
New in iOS 18.4, Apple is making a new Food section available to Apple News+ subscribers, creating a curated browsing and recipe experience within the app. Located on iPhone under the Following tab and Food section, or in the Food section of the sidebar on iPad and macOS, this new category curates stories for you based on your chosen interests and browsing history, plus provides an entire Recipe Catalog and cooking experience for recipes with ingredients & instructions.
The entire experience for News+ Food is fantastic, albeit somewhat buried inside the News app – that’s why I’ve built a set of shortcuts to quickly access the sections from anywhere. In my folder of Apple News Food shortcuts, you can find shortcuts to access the main Food section, the Recipe Catalog, and two curated sections that are shown within the category for Healthy Eating and Kitchen Tools & Techniques.
You can use these with Siri, place them in a Medium widget, or even add them as Controls in Control Center or the Lock Screen – the Recipe Catalog would work great using Add to Home Screen as well, as Stephen Robles demonstrated in his video that highlights the Food feature.
So far, the News team at Apple has only ever created the Show Today Feed and Show Topic actions, and relied on the concept of “donations” (where an action only becomes available after the user interacts with a particular section) for sections like Magazines, Puzzles, and now the Recipe Catalog. Along this route, I’d love to see the Saved Recipes section available as a donated action, as well as being able to open directly to a saved recipe would make a lot of sense. But, going further, I wish the News team would adopt a full suite of actions like Get Recipes, Find Recipe, Save/Unsave Recipe, Cook Recipe, and Read The Story (for a recipe).
Get the folder of Apple News Food shortcuts in my Shortcuts Library (requires iOS 18.4).
I've just added a new folder to the Shortcuts Library — my set of Apple News Food shortcuts for the new Food section in Apple News+, available in iOS 18.4.
Use these shortcuts to browse stories from the Food, Healthy Eating, and Kitchen Tools & Techniques sections, as well as open directly to the Recipe Catalog.:
- Open Food in News+: Opens to the new “Food” section in Apple News+ that curates stories and recipes for you.
- Open Recipe Catalog in News: Opens the News app to stories from the Recipe Catalog feature, new in the new Food section in Apple News+.
- Show Kitchen Tools and Techniques: Opens the section for Kitchen Tools & Techniques in the new Food section for Apple News+ subscribers.
- Show Healthy Eating stories: Opens the News app to stories about Healthy Eating, located in the new Food section for Apple News+ subscribers.
Check out the folder of Apple News Food shortcuts on the Shortcuts Library.