With the release of iOS 18.2 today, iPhone 16 owners finally get access to the new AI-powered Apple Intelligence tools.
Whilst a welcome addition, they are very much a step in the right direction, rather than a huge technical leap forward. Especially given that in the many months since announcing it at WWDC, OpenAI and others have made much more prominent progress.
The criticism of the limitations has been fair, not least an underwhelming integration with text editing, despite Apple claiming ‘enhanced language capabilities’. And, as always in these situations, third-party developers are often quick to fill the gap.
Fixkey, a lightweight re-writing and grammar tool, is a perfect example of a simple UI that just works natively on all macOS apps, but with far more customisation than Apple offers.
Its killer feature is undoubtedly the ability to write your own custom prompts. For us designers, it’s reminiscent of something like GREP in InDesign that we’ve been using for many years – using simple scripted micro-alterations to improve and finesse your work.
Much like Alfred and others have pushed Apple to improve Spotlight over the years, hopefully the Cupertino product teams can take some inspiration here too.