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Posts tagged with "AI"

Gemini for iOS Gets Lock Screen Widgets, Control Center Integration, Basic Shortcuts Actions

Gemini for iOS.

Gemini for iOS.

When I last wrote about Gemini for iOS, I noted the app’s lackluster integration with several system features. But since – unlike others in the AI space – the team at Google is actually shipping new stuff on a weekly basis, I’m not too surprised to see that the latest version of Gemini for iOS has brought extensive support for widgets.

Specifically, Gemini for iOS now offers a collection of Lock Screen widgets that also appear as controls in iOS 18’s Control Center, and there are barebones Shortcuts actions to go along with them. In both the Lock Screen’s widget gallery and Control Center, you’ll find Gemini widgets to:

  • type a prompt,
  • Talk Live,
  • open the microphone (for dictation),
  • open the camera,
  • share an image (with a Photos picker), and
  • share a document (with a Files picker).

It’s nice to see these integrations with Photos and Files; notably, Gemini now also has a share extension that lets you add the same media types – plus URLs from webpages – to a prompt from anywhere on iOS.

The Shortcuts integration is a little less exciting since Google implemented old-school actions that do not support customizable parameters. Instead, Gemini only offers actions to open the app in three modes: type, dictate, or Talk Live. That’s disappointing, and I would have preferred to see the ability to pass text or images from Shortcuts directly to Gemini.

While today’s updates are welcome, Google still has plenty of work left to do on Apple’s platforms. For starters, they don’t have an iPad version of the Gemini app. There are no Home Screen widgets yet. And the Shortcuts integration, as we’ve seen, could go much deeper. Still, the inclusion of controls, basic Shortcuts actions, and a share extension goes a long way toward making Gemini easier to access on iOS – that is, until the entire assistant is integrated as an extension for Apple Intelligence.

“Everyone Is Caught Up, Except for Apple”→

Good post by Parker Ortolani (who’s blogging more frequently now; I recommend subscribing to his blog) on the new (and surprisingly good looking?) Alexa+ and where Apple stands with Siri:

So here we are. Everyone is caught up, except for Apple. Siri may have a pretty glowing animation but it is not even remotely the same kind of personal assistant that these others are. Even the version of Siri shown at WWDC last year doesn’t appear to be quite as powerful as Alexa+. Who knows how good the app intents powered Siri will even be at the end of the day when it ships, after all according to reports it has been pushed back and looks like an increasingly difficult endeavor. I obviously want Siri to be great. It desperately needs improvement, not just to compete but to make using an iPhone an even better experience.

I continue to think that Apple has immense potential for Apple Intelligence and Siri if they get both to work right with their ecosystem. But at this point, I have to wonder if we’ll see GTA 6 before Siri gets any good.

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Beyond ChatGPT’s Extension: How to Redirect Safari Searches to Any LLM

xSearch for Safari.

xSearch for Safari.

Earlier this week, OpenAI’s official ChatGPT app for iPhone and iPad was updated with a native Safari extension that lets you forward any search query from Safari’s address bar to ChatGPT Search. It’s a clever approach: rather than waiting for Apple to add a native ChatGPT Search option to their list of default search engines (if they ever will), OpenAI leveraged extensions’ ability to intercept queries in the address bar and redirect them to ChatGPT whenever you type something and press Return.

However, this is not the only option you have if you want to redirect your Safari search queries to a search engine other than the one that’s set as your default. While the solution I’ll propose below isn’t as frictionless as OpenAI’s native extension, it gets the job done, and until other LLMs like Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, and Le Chat ship their own Safari extensions, you can use my approach to give Safari more AI search capabilities right now.

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One AI to Rule Them All?→

I enjoyed this look by M.G. Siegler at the current AI landscape, evaluating the positions of all the big players and trying to predict who will come out on top based on what we can see today. I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. The space is changing so rapidly, with weekly announcements and rumors, that it’s challenging to keep up with all the latest models, app integrations, and reasoning modes. But one thing seems certain: with 400 million weekly users, ChatGPT is winning in the public eye.

However, I was captivated by this analogy, and I wish I’d thought of it myself:

Professionals and power users will undoubtedly pay for, and get value out of, multiple models and products. But just as with the streaming wars, consumers are not going to buy all of these services. And unlike that war, where all of the players had differentiating content, again, the AI services are reaching some level of parity (for consumer use cases). So whereas you might have three or four streaming services that you pay for, you will likely just have one main AI service. Again, it’s more like search in that way.

I see the parallels between different streaming services and different AI models, and I wonder if it’s the sort of diversification that happens before inevitable consolidation. Right now, I find ChatGPT’s Deep Research superior to Google Gemini, but Google has a more fascinating and useful ecosystem story; Claude is better at coding, editing prose, and following complex instructions than any other model I’ve tested, but it feels limited by a lack of extensions and web search (for now). As a result, I find myself jumping between different LLMs for different tasks. And that’s not to mention the more specific products I use on a regular basis, such as NotebookLM, Readwise Chat, and Whisper. Could it be that, just like I’ve always appreciated distinct native apps for specific tasks, maybe I also prefer dedicated AIs for different purposes now?

I continue to think that, long term, it’ll once again come down to iOS versus Android, as it’s always been. But I also believe that M.G. Siegler is correct: until the dust settles (if it ever does), power users will likely use multiple AIs in lieu of one AI to rule them all. And for regular users, at least for the time being, that one AI is ChatGPT.

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Chrome for iOS Adds ‘Circle to Search’ Feature

Circle to Search in Chrome for iOS.

Circle to Search in Chrome for iOS.

Jess Weatherbed, writing for The Verge:

Google is rolling out new search gestures that allow iPhone users to highlight anything on their screen to quickly search for it. The Lens screen-searching feature is available on iOS in both the Google app and Chrome browser and provides a similar experience to Android’s Circle to Search, which isn’t supported on iPhones.
[…]
To use the new Lens gestures, iPhone users need to open the three-dot menu within the Google or Chrome apps and select “Search Screen with Google Lens.” You can then use “any gesture that feels natural” to highlight what you want to search. Google says a new Lens icon for quickly accessing the feature will also be added to the address bar “in the coming months.”

This is a nifty addition to Chrome for iOS, albeit a far cry from how the same integration works on modern Pixel phones, where you can long-press the navigation handle to activate Circle to Search system-wide. In my tests, it worked pretty well on iPhone, and I especially appreciate the haptic feedback you get when circling something. Given the platform constraints, it’s pretty well done.1

I’ve been using Chrome a bit more lately, and while it has a handful of advantages over Safari2, it lacks a series of foundational features that I consider table stakes in a modern browser for iOS and iPadOS. On iPad, for whatever reason, Chrome does not support pinned tabs and can’t display the favorites bar at all times, both of which are downright nonsensical decisions. Also, despite the existence of Gemini, Chrome for iOS and iPadOS cannot summarize webpages, nor does it offer any integration with Gemini in the first place. I shouldn’t be surprised that Chrome for iOS doesn’t offer any Shortcuts actions, either, but that’s worth pointing out.

Chrome makes sense as an option for people who want to use the same browser across multiple platforms, but there’s something to be said for the productivity gains of Safari on iOS and iPadOS. While Google is still shipping a baby version of Chrome, UI- and interaction-wise, Safari is – despite its flaws – a mature browser that takes the iPhone and iPad seriously.

  1. Speaking of which, I think holding the navigation handle to summon a system-wide feature is a great gesture on Android. Currently, Apple uses a double-tap gesture on the Home indicator to summon Type to Siri; I wouldn’t be surprised if iOS 19 brings an Android-like holding gesture to do something with Apple Intelligence. ↩︎
  2. For starters, it’s available everywhere, whereas Safari is nowhere to be found on Windows (sigh) or Android. Plus, Chrome for iOS has an excellent widget to quickly search from the Home Screen, and I prefer its tab group UI with colorful folders displayed in the tab switcher. ↩︎

NotebookLM Plus Is Now Available to Google One AI Premium Subscribers

In this week’s extended post-show for AppStories+ subscribers, Federico and I covered the AI tools we use. NotebookLM is one we have in common because it’s such a powerful research tool. The service allows you to upload documents and other files to a notebook and then query what you’ve collected. It’s better than a traditional search tool because you can ask complex questions, discover connections between topics, and generate materials like timelines and summaries.

Yesterday, Google announced that NotebookLM Plus is now available to Google One AI Premium subscribers, significantly expanding its reach. Previously, the extended functionality was only available as an add-on for Google Workspace subscribers.

The Plus version of NotebookLM increases the number of notebooks, sources, and audio overviews available, allows users to customize the tone of their notebooks, and lets users share notebooks with others. Google One AI Premium also includes access to Gemini Advanced and Gemini integration with Gmail, Docs, and other Google services, plus 2 TB of Google Drive cloud storage.

My DMA notebook.

My DMA notebook.

I’ve only begun to scratch the surface of what is possible with NotebookLM and am currently moving my notebook setup from one Google account to another, but it’s already proven to be a valuable research tool. Examples of the types of materials I’ve collected for querying include:

  • legislative material and articles about Apple’s DMA compliance,
  • my past macOS reviews,
  • summaries of and links to stories published on MacStories and Club MacStories,
  • video hardware research materials, and
  • manuals for home appliances and gadgets.

Having already collected and read these materials, I find navigating them with NotebookLM to be far faster than repeatedly skimming through them to pull out details. I also appreciate the ability to create materials like timelines for topics that span months or years.

Google One AI Premium is available from Google for $19.99 per month.

Gemini 2.0 and LLMs Integrated with Apps

Busy day at Google today: the company rolled out version 2.0 of its Gemini AI assistant (previously announced in December) with a variety of new and updated models to more users. From the Google blog:

Today, we’re making the updated Gemini 2.0 Flash generally available via the Gemini API in Google AI Studio and Vertex AI. Developers can now build production applications with 2.0 Flash.

We’re also releasing an experimental version of Gemini 2.0 Pro, our best model yet for coding performance and complex prompts. It is available in Google AI Studio and Vertex AI, and in the Gemini app for Gemini Advanced users.

We’re releasing a new model, Gemini 2.0 Flash-Lite, our most cost-efficient model yet, in public preview in Google AI Studio and Vertex AI.

Finally, 2.0 Flash Thinking Experimental will be available to Gemini app users in the model dropdown on desktop and mobile.

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Doing Research with NotebookLM→

Fascinating blog post by Vidit Bhargava (creator of the excellent LookUp dictionary app) about how he worked on his master thesis with the aid of Google’s NotebookLM.

I used NotebookLM throughout my thesis, not because I was interested in it generating content for me (I think AI generated text and images are sloppy and classless); but because it’s a genuinely great research organization tool that provides utility of drawing connections between discreet topics and helping me understand my own journey better.

Make sure to check out the examples of his interviews and research material as indexed by the service.

As I explained in an episode of AppStories a while back, and as John also expanded upon in the latest issue of the Monthly Log for Club members, we believe that assistive AI tools that leverage modern LLM advancements to help people work better (and less) are infinitely superior to whatever useless slop generative tools produce.

Google’s NotebookLM is, in my opinion, one of the most intriguing new tools in this field. For the past two months, I’ve been using it as a personal search assistant for the entire archive of 10 years of annual iOS reviews – that’s more than half a million words in total. Not only can NotebookLM search that entire library in seconds, but it does so with even the most random natural language queries about the most obscure details I’ve ever covered in my stories, such as “When was the copy and paste menu renamed to edit menu?” (It was iOS 16.). It’s becoming increasingly challenging for me, after all these years, to keep track of the growing list of iOS-related minutiae; from a personal productivity standpoint, NotebookLM has to be one of the most exciting new products I’ve tried in a while. (Alongside Shortwave for email.)

Just today, I discovered that my read-later tool of choice – Readwise Reader – offers a native integration to let you search highlights with NotebookLM. That’s another source that I’m definitely adding to NotebookLM, and I’m thinking of how I could replicate the same Readwise Reader setup (highlights are appended to a single Google Doc) with Zapier and RSS feeds. Wouldn’t it be fun, for instance, if I could search the entire archive of AppStories show notes in NotebookLM, or if I could turn starred items from Feedbin into a standalone notebook as well?

I’m probably going to have to sign up for NotebookLM Plus when it launches for non-business accounts, which, according to Google, should happen in early 2025.

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DeepSeek Tops the App Store Charts and Sends AI Stocks on a Wild Ride

DeepSeek's newfound popularity has made it impossible to log in as of the publication of this story.

DeepSeek’s newfound popularity has made it impossible to log in as of the publication of this story.

And just like that, ChatGPT has been dethroned from its perch at the top of the App Store’s free app list, replaced by DeepSeek, another AI app. What’s interesting is that DeepSeek, which was developed by a Chinese startup, was reportedly created at a fraction of the cost of ChatGPT and other large language models developed in the US, which has tech stocks in turmoil.

Last week, DeepSeek revealed its latest LLM, which matches or outperforms OpenAI’s o1 model in some tests. That’s nothing new. AI companies have been one-upping each other for months. What’s different is that DeepSeek was reportedly built with a fraction of the hardware and at a fraction of the cost of OpenAI’s o1 and models like Anthropic’s Claude.

DeepSeek is also open source, potentially undermining the financial viability of U.S. and other for-profit companies that have spent hundreds of millions of dollars developing models that require a paid subscription. And, because it’s free, DeepSeek rocketed to the top of the App Store’s free app list, passing OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which has been at or near the top of the list for months.

That has caused a stir in Silicon Valley. As VentureBeat’s Carl Franzen puts it:

The open-source availability of DeepSeek-R1, its high performance, and the fact that it seemingly “came out of nowhere” to challenge the former leader of generative AI, has sent shockwaves throughout Silicon Valley and far beyond, based on my conversations with and readings of various engineers, thinkers and leaders. If not “everyone” is freaking out about it as my hyperbolic headline suggests, it’s certainly the talk of the town in tech and business circles.

Now, as DeepSeek is starting to look like the real deal, the stock market is causing competitors’ stocks to drop, including NVIDIA’s, which, according to the Financial Times, fell 13% at the opening of the New York Stock Exchange.

If there’s one thing that has been a truism of the AI industry over the past couple of years, it’s that it moves very fast. Today’s leaders are tomorrow’s laggards. Will DeepSeek dethrone the U.S. AI companies? It’s far too early to know, but it certainly is beginning to look like there’s a new horse in the race.