Apples WWDC, Personal Assistants And Us

I was watching Apples the WWDC 2018 event the other day.

Like many people I just wanted to see the latest and greatest coming out of Cupertino.

I was impressed by some of the features in iOS and macOS and underwhelmed by others.

As primarily a Microsoft Windows user I was stunned at some of the features just being added now to macOS.

But I digress.

Personal Assistants

What really caught my attention is Apple’s seeming direction toward providing products that will act as digital assistant and personal assistants.

While many of the so-called helpful features such as Tasks are rudimentary today.

It’s only because thinking and development behind them isn’t there yet.

Still, Apple continues to push consumers towards dependency on their products.

Primarily the iPhone and the Watch.

Driving someone to towards addiction is pretty simple.

It’s a cycle of act, experience and validate.

Repeated over and over until the person is hooked.

This was evidenced to me the fact that several of the features being released seem childish and lacking depth.

I don’t really need Memoji.

I would find it odd to have a business meeting with someone who insists on talking to me using a Memoji.

Buy hey, it could happen.

I understand that these features are designed for a personal consumer and not a business consumer.

Hence Apple’s push that the iPhone and Watch can act as personal assistants.

But for me.

I’d like a personal assistant that understands nuance.

And Apple’s digital assistant doesn’t understand me.

At least not at this point.

Apple can’t translate it into a platform at this point.

Neither can Google — although their further ahead.

Sure our phones are listening to us.

They are recording every part of our lives.

And this data is being used to build models around how we think and act.

In certain cases they’re trying to push us in a direction.

In another ways they’re trying to help us.

Us

For me — I just want to be able to live my day the way I want to live my day.

I want to do things.

How I want to do.

When I want to.

On my own time.

When I’m ready.

If I can’t regulate and control myself as a human being I don’t expect a machine to do that for me.

Maybe some people need that.

But I don’t.

I want to experience life as my own Self.

So yeah, I don’t want a personal assistant.

If I feel like doing nothing.

I will do nothing.

If I feel like going all in and working through the night.

I’ll do that.

I guess it boils down to what percentage of assistance you would like.

Some people may only need 10%.

Others might need a full time babysitter.

Everyone is different.

At the end of the day I was underwhelmed at Apple’s newest features.

Although the updated Watch is pretty cool.

So yeah, this whole personal assistant thing is still a bit underwhelming and Orwellian at the same time.

But if the future is based on Memoji‘s and Siri telling me how long my ride home is going to be.

Technology is not going to improve anything for anyone any time soon.

And Apple….

I expected more.

Oh wait, there’s that cool ECC on the on the Watch feature.

Now that’s a winner.