The ads for Apple Intelligence have mostly been noted for what they show, but there is also something missing: in the fine print and in its operating systems, Apple still calls it a “beta” release, but not in its ads. Given the exuberance with which Apple is marketing these features, that label seems less like a way to inform users the software is unpolished, and more like an excuse for why it does not work as well as one might expect of a headlining feature from the world’s most valuable company.
“Beta” is a funny word when it comes to Apple’s software. It often makes available preview builds of upcoming O.S. releases to users and developers for feedback, testing software compatibility, and to build with new APIs. This is voluntary and done with the understanding that the software is unfinished, and bugs — even serious ones — can be expected.
Apple has also, rarely, applied the “beta” label to features in regular releases which are distributed to all users, not just those who signed up. This type of “beta” seems less honest. Instead of communicating this feature is a work in progress, it seems to say we are releasing this before it is done. Maybe that is a subtle distinction, but it is there. One type of beta is testing; the other type asks users to disregard their expectations of polish, quality, and functionality so that a feature can be pushed out earlier than it should.
We have seen this on rare occasions: once with Portrait mode; more notably, with Siri. Mat Honan, writing for Gizmodo in December 2011:
Check out any of Apple’s ads for the iPhone 4S. They’re promoting Siri so hard you’d be forgiven for thinking Siri is the new CEO of Apple. And it’s not just that first wave of TV ads, a recent email Apple sent out urges you to “Give the phone that everyone’s talking about. And talking to.” It promises “Siri: The intelligent assistant you can ask to make calls, send texts, set reminders, and more.”
What those Apple ads fail to report — at all — is that Siri is very much a half-baked product. Siri is officially in beta. Go to Siri’s homepage on Apple.com, and you’ll even notice a little beta tag by the name.
This is familiar.
The ads for Siri gave the impression of great capability. It seemed like you could ask it how to tie a bowtie, what events were occurring in a town or city, and more. The response was not shown for these queries, but the implication was that Siri could respond. What became obvious to anyone who actually used Siri is that it would show web search results instead. But, hey, it was a “beta” — for two years.
The ads for Apple Intelligence do one better and show features still unreleased. The fine print does mention “some features and languages will be coming over the next year”, without acknowledging the very feature in this ad is one of them. And, when it does actually come out, it is still officially in “beta”, so I guess you should not expect it to work properly.
This all seems like a convoluted way to evade full responsibility of the Apple Intelligence experience which, so far, has been middling for me. Genmoji is kind of fun, but Notification Summaries are routinely wrong. Priority messages in Mail is helpful when it correctly surfaces an important email, and annoying when it highlights spam. My favourite feature — in theory — is the Reduce Interruptions Focus mode, which is supposed to only show notifications when they are urgent or important. It is the kind of thing I have been begging for to deal with the overburdened notifications system. But, while it works pretty well sometimes, it is not dependable enough to rely on. It will sometimes prioritize scam messages written with a sense of urgency, but fail to notify me when my wife messages me a question. It still necessitates I occasionally review the notifications suppressed by this Focus mode. It is helpful, but not consistently enough to be confidence-inspiring.
Will users frustrated by the questionable reliability of Apple Intelligence routinely return to try again? If my own experience with Siri is any guidance — and I am not sure it is, but it is all I have — I doubt it. If these features did not work on the first dozen attempts, why would they work any time after? This strategy, I think, teaches people to set their expectations low.
This beta-tinged rollout is not entirely without its merits. Apple is passively soliciting feedback within many of its Apple Intelligence features, at a scale far greater than it could by restricting testing to only its own staff and contractors. But it also means the public becomes unwitting testers. As with Siri before, Apple heavily markets this set of features as the defining characteristic of this generation of iPhones, yet we are all supposed to approach this as though we are helping Apple make sure its products are ready? Sorry, it does not work like that. Either something is shipping or it is not, and if it does not work properly, users will quickly learn not to trust it.