Apple Intelligence is Live-Oh Yay; Google Working on an AI Agent for Chrome that Does Everything-Project Jarvis; Microsoft Accuses Google of Astroturfing them in Europe; Lucid Gravity Electric SUV Orders Open Next week

With iOS 18.1 and macOS Sequoia 15.1, as well as iPadOS 18.1, we now have some of the features of Apple Intelligence. After messing with it a bit yesterday afternoon, I am a bit underwhelmed so far, but they noted in the pop ups that it is not nearly complete yet. The one feature I tried out that actually did what was claimed was in editing an email. I wrote a verbose fake email to send to another of my accounts and asked AI to make it more concise. It did fine at that. I tried using it in Text Edit, which I use all the time, but got a not supposed message. Today, I see the little logo, so will have to try it later. The picture editing…like removing unwanted items, works ok, but Android’s is better. I will try to have more later as they activate more features. By the way, there is a wait list to get Apple Intelligence. I signed up…while I was downloading the update to an iPad, I was accepted…the wait was only about 15 minutes!

Google has a Project Jarvis, a hat tip to Tony Stark of Iron Man fame. Androidcentral.com reports that it is supposed to automate simple tasks in Chrome while you are browsing the web. A limited test of Jarvis may be out in December, in conjunction with Google’s rumored release of Gemini 2.0. The Jarvis AI bot apparently can respond to a user’s commands by taking screenshots of their screen. It supposedly does this in order to ‘interpret’ what a user is doing before taking action. For example, Jarvis might click a button for you or fill in text fields with the requisite information. So far, reports have it that Jarvis ‘operates relatively slowly.’ In other words, it is light years away right now from working like Tony Stark’s fictional one in the Marvel movies!

Microsoft has accused Google of funding a proxy campaign designed to discredit it in the eyes of regulatory authorities and policymakers in the European Union and beyond. Engadget.com says this came in a blog post from Microsoft’s Deputy General Counsel. Microsoft claims Google has gone to “great lengths to obfuscate its involvement, funding and control” of the Open Cloud Coalition, a group of “cloud service providers, industry leaders and stakeholders” that says it’s committed to advocating for a “fair, competitive, and open cloud services industry across the UK and EU.” Redmond claims that Google has hired a lobbying agency in Europe to create and fund the organization. The accusations come after Google had reportedly attempted to derail an antitrust settlement Microsoft had negotiated with the Cloud Infrastructure Services Providers in Europe (CISPE). In July, Bloomberg wrote that Google had offered the group €470 million to go forward with litigation against its rival, an overture CISPE ultimately rejected.

Lucid’s Air electric sedans are sure head turners, and are selling decently for a start up. Now Lucid has said they will start taking orders next week..November 7th specifically… for their flagship electric SUV, the Gravity. According to electrek.co, the base price will still be below the promised $80,000, but you won’t be able to get that lower priced model initially. The less pricy Touring model at $79,900 won’t be available until late 2025. The Grand Touring one, which you can order next week, will set you back $94,900. There will eventually be a high performance Sapphire model, but no date given for that one yet.

I’m Clark Reid and you’re ‘Technified’ for now.