This looks like a genuinely useful application of LLMs.

I wish more companies focused on how they can help humans instead of replacing us or squeezing us as hard as possible in the name of productivity.

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c0wb0yc0d3r 8 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I think we should reserve judgment until this lands in the hands of the people it helps.

My experience is limited to my elderly parents who have trouble seeing. With the text size Apple allows them to set it to, their phones are unreadable. Text runs off the screen in every app, 1st and 3rd party.

In their bill example, the user is told to confirm with the provider. Why not offer to call the number on the bill? Instead of telling them to use text detection, do it for them? Presumably Apple Intelligence would already have that capability. I’m afraid this will be a gimmick at best.

EDIT: Forgot to mention, the grip is good to see. Hopefully they don’t charge the apple tax on it.

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kps 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Yeah, I used to use iOS with text one step above the default size, and text was often cut off.

I have a problem with astigmatic halation that makes ‘dark mode’ difficult to read. Since iOS 26, multiple aspects of the system have been made dark only, contrary to the system setting. Writing text correctly should be the lowest of low-hanging fruit.

I suspect this is more of a flashy ‘AI’ promotion rather than reflective of any real commitment.

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skydhash 5 hours ago | parent [-]

I had to set macOS on high contrast to be able to differentiate ui elements at glance. But most electron-based apps do not get the hint or even provide a high contrast theme.

	▲	skydhash 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I checked teams and it has one, but it’s a dark theme which is a no go given my astigmatism.

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kakugawa an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

It's prob why they chose a11y features. They have more pain, so they're willing to tolerate more growing pains. (And prob more motivated to provide feedback.)

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tiffanyh 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

This is what Apple does best.

They treat new industry advancements as technology, not products itself.

AI will be a feature to improve the customer experience, not the product itself.

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lern_too_spel 6 hours ago | parent [-]

These features have existed on Android devices for years. What Apple does best is marketing.

https://blog.google/products-and-platforms/platforms/android...

https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2024/09/talkback-u...

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kube-system 5 hours ago | parent [-]

I think the above person was making a commentary about the things Apple chooses not to do. Apple strategy is often to be intentionally last to market, after the dust settles.

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RobMurray 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Apple was first to market with Voiceover. Google took a very long time to come close to catching up.

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lern_too_spel 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

The dust settled on these accessibility features years ago. Why would Apple choose not to do these things? Live captions in particular is useful even for those who are not hard of hearing because it lets people watch uncaptioned videos in environments that are too noisy or that need to be quiet.

	▲	kube-system 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		By "dust settled" I don't mean that the technology "exists" -- but rather that feature development has slowed down and most products have stabilized as feature complete and mature. The on-device ML models that are being used by Google and Apple are both quite new and in active development. Many of Apple's most successful products have shipped years or even a decade after their competitors. They have tried using first-mover advantage in the past but typically fail when using that strategy.

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bsanders343 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I agree. There seems to be a lot of potential in this space (from my outsider view). I really hope that this issue from an earlier article (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48178378) doesn't become common enough to make useful functionality like this a danger. Seems unlikely in the short term but as use cases grow, so might the bad actors.

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koolala 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Its with their servers right? Do they trust a iPhone with their life? Or they are trusting their data center?

	▲	nechuchelo 8 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Looks like some of the features might use on-device models. They mention subtitle generation works on-device.

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bilbo0s 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Let's be honest, compare the amount of money a corporation can make helping visually impaired people to the amount of money they can make replacing software developers and financial analysts.

Don't get me wrong, Apple using these technologies to help humans who are in need of help is laudable. But let's not pretend we don't know why most corporations don't look into this kind of thing. I think if we're being honest, we all very much know why they leave this sort of thing to the always nebulous "others".

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JimDabell 8 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Tim Cook has been pretty clear where he stands:

> “When we work on making our devices accessible by the blind,” he said, “I don’t consider the bloody ROI.” It was the same thing for environmental issues, worker safety, and other areas that don’t have an immediate profit. The company does “a lot of things for reasons besides profit motive. We want to leave the world better than we found it.”

— https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2014/03/07/why-tim...

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bilbo0s 8 hours ago | parent [-]

Again, it's absolutely great that Apple does these things!

I was just answering the question of why other corporations don't.

Money.

There's relatively little money in helping the visually impaired. You have to do it because you want to do it. Not because you're going to get rich.

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lern_too_spel 6 hours ago | parent [-]

Apple's competitors have had these features for years (Android for 7, Windows for 1), so it's really an indictment of Apple. They give lip service to helping the visually impaired, and this press release is good marketing for the non-visually impaired people who don't know this.

	▲	RobMurray 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Really? I haven't used Android recently, but I very much doubt 7 year old Talkback was any where near as good as Voiceover. I also haven't seen a single accessibility improvement in Windows recently. The most accessible Windows apps are usually based on older toolkits like win32. Edge is very accessible, but 99% of that comes from Chrome.

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lotsofpulp 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

>But let's not pretend we don't know why most corporations don't look into this kind of thing.

I assume almost everyone looks into spending less money than more money for equivalent goods and services.

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nickpp 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> help humans instead of replacing us or squeezing us as hard as possible in the name of productivity

Increasing their productivity is helping humans.

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jeffbee 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Aren't the LLM-based features of this announcement catch-up features? Describing the contents of the screen is something Gemini has been doing on Pixel phones for a while. It's a fairly obvious use case for a multimodal AI.

My one hope is that this eventually becomes widespread enough to stop alt text scolds.

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micromacrofoot 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

"looks like" there are a lot of automated accessibility systems that fall woefully short in practical use

this sort of thing really needs input from someone that uses it before we can judge it