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Apple's new Siri, which was just released in iOS 27 and other Apple operating systems, is finally good. My first impressions at least indicate that the LLM (a Google derivative) is now much better at understanding what I mean, and using it feels a bit more like GrokBot or ChatGPT on my phone without the hassle of "onboarding" service providers (Email, Calendar, etc.) because it uses the iPhone’s existing provisioned routes. That’s convenient. But it’s also that convenience that is not compatible with the DMA. If you live in the EU (the European Union), you will not get the new Siri or have access to it because Apple and the European Commission can't agree on terms for the rollout under the Digital Markets Act. Under the DMA, such functionality—accessing the iPhone’s functionality the way the new Siri can—should be made accessible to third parties. Apple's suggestion was to launch its new Siri and have a "Trusted System Agent" in place within 18 months. A...

  Apple has given us a vision of what their VR and AR future might entail. But as have others pointed out numerous times, the whole point of the showcase at the WWDC 23 was to let people experiment, I’ve heard others say that it’s like the launch of the Apple Watch when Apple didn’t really know what would become of it. This is similar and yet different.  Just like the Apple Watch (and the iPad before it), Apple sought to porting its whole ecosystem onto a watch – granted, the Apple Watch can’t live on its own and a better comparison would probably be the iPad. The iPad can live without any other Apple device and unlike the iPhone, never really had a clearly defined function other than to watch movies and browse the web. It was not until it gained the ability to be used with a pencil that artists and designers started to explore the potential.  I’m trying to point out that Apple took 5 years from the first iPad in 2010 to the iPad Pro with pencil in 2015 to find its “kille...

TL;DR I've recorded the outcome:  I am writing these lines on a computer system that has been in storage for almost 30 years. To be concrete, I am writing this on a NeXT cube with WordPerfect. Welcome to the world of vintage computing!   Goethe, the giant of German literature, concluded his experiences by bringing them to paper. I have taken that wisdom for myself on previous occasions and thus see this as essential to conclude not just a fun project but also something that has been nagging me for over 20 years. I started to collect computers around 1988. First, as a way to make some money (buying and selling) but it became clear to me that personal computer technology would represent an era in human development that would be akin to the most important developments of human achievements; so I started collecting computers that I thought would be a relevant representation of this era. Some of these computers I have used personally and, in my work, and are thus “sacred” to me. My...

I’m still following Apple and developments in hardware and software in general as it is still somewhat of a hobby of mine (having started my professional career developing on NeXT). Even after I have given Apple bad grades here and here , I think yesterday’s announcement that Apple is moving to their own Arm chips, is something that had long been coming and I think it will potentially alter the computing landscape. While I’m certainly no longer able to have insight knowledge or even be able to follow the last development in chip design, I do believe in phases or cycles of evolution and revolution in technology and I think that’s true for information technology as it is for cars or anything else for that matter. Apple just started to ramp up on a revolution cycle.   Reading the opinion of analysts regarding Apple’s risky move from Intel to their own Chips left me bewildered. After all, this is Apple’s third processor architecture change – from the Motorola 68K to the PowerPC a...