454: ‘Getting the Snack Right’, With Chance Miller

Summer’s felt quiet on the Apple side. We’re in that beta lull waiting for the next iOS 27 build, so when you texted about doing the show, I thought, sure, there’s not exactly a flood of news.

AI mania keeps broader tech busy, but Apple-wise, not really. The OpenAI lawsuit is dramatic, though lawsuits have their own strange calendar: you pick them apart early, then wait forever.

Beta five arrived while we were talking, perfect timing. Beta four had been rough: Spotlight finds apps but leaves icons blank, so looking for Instagram becomes app roulette.

Will Haynes’s tracking suggests this build may be three weeks late, and beta four felt grim on my phone. But a small team being away or diverted can easily push a release.

The new personal-context Siri has been remarkably dependable through Mail, Messages, Reminders, and Wallet. Weirdly, regressions are in old jobs: timers, shopping lists, HomeKit scenes. It says my existing list does not exist, then cannot make a new one.

I tried creating a reminder to return umbrellas to Andrea. It cycled through spellings, even after I picked one. Finally I said, “You pick,” and it chose the wrong name—but close enough that I knew what it meant. New-system weirdness, but oddly clever.

Siri dictation also seemed too cautious early on. I constantly ask when the Reds play, and it suddenly needed Cincinnati or Boston. Saying “the Reds” was no longer enough.

That’s the baseline problem. Forget frontier models building apps or reading giant codebases; a human assistant would quickly learn Chance means Cincinnati. Siri is progressing, but it still misses ordinary, useful memory.

Apple has a trust problem to undo. I avoided anything complicated because I assumed Siri would fail. Now it succeeds often enough that I’m retraining myself to try, but people will discover that gradually, not declare Siri great in September.

In real life I still use old methods automatically, then think I should’ve tried Siri. The dedicated app helps on iPhone, though it feels thin on Mac. I’m reaching for it before ChatGPT on my phone; it handles many tasks fine, just more slowly.

I’m glad Apple made a chatbot app instead of treating one as beneath them. Typing is natural for research. On Mac, though, it barely feels integrated, and that late decision to ship it probably shows.

Chat is a good interface: people understand the transcript and can revisit answers. Apple may have worried about privacy, but my locked phone is protection; iMessage history is far more sensitive than what I ask Siri.

Retention controls seem similar to Messages. People may realize how much personal material sits in old messages once Siri can retrieve it—somebody asked for a Social Security number and it went right to Messages.

If old Messages search fails, ask Siri to search Messages specifically. It works much better, ridiculous as that workaround is. Mail search seems improved, but Apple gave me a very Apple-ish non-answer about the Messages field.

I’m excited about live immersive baseball in Vision Pro: four games, including Yankees–Red Sox, Angels–Pirates, Padres–Giants, and Giants–Dodgers. Friday Night Baseball subscribers should get them live without the earlier local restrictions.

Launching with Yankees–Red Sox cannot be an accident. I’d watch minor-league ball this way for the experience, but a meaningful rivalry is excellent. The production will probably move us among camera positions rather than let us sit anywhere, and I’m not complaining. It’s finally here.

Even as a Yankees hater, their immersive stadium tour was a terrific Vision Pro demo. The small RAM-related price bump feels less like economics and more like Apple saying this product is alive.

The Apple TV increase is stranger—huge in percentage terms—and makes me wonder whether a modest refresh is near. A faster chip alone is not thrilling unless it enables better home-hub behavior.

The RAM shortage is the wild card. Apple called it a demand-forecast miss, but suppliers are booked out. This year, a bad forecast hurts far more because they simply cannot make more.

Reports say Apple explored Chinese-made RAM even for products sold in China, but that supply may be spoken for through 2026. This is not merely higher prices; more memory may not exist at any price.

For A20 Pro, memory is packaged alongside the chip in TSMC’s newer process. One report claimed a billion dollars’ worth of chips are waiting on RAM. The iPhone 18 Pro could launch on time yet be unusually hard to buy.

Apple could pull off the usual miracle, but this feels like the year to set an alarm for preorder morning. People ordering later that day may face weeks of delay.

On Apple’s lawsuit against OpenAI and io, Apple wants a preliminary injunction and accelerated discovery. I doubt a court shuts much down before trial, but faster documents and depositions seem plausible. OpenAI agreed to preserve evidence and stop using or disclosing alleged confidential material, while refusing device inspection and system searches.

That refusal is understandable whether OpenAI has nothing or something to hide. Apple’s strongest apparent evidence concerns Cheng Liu’s continued file access after leaving. The Tang Tan allegations look harder: ugly or against Apple policy is not necessarily illegal.

Apple says Liu involved a third-party cloud service and access months after departure, not the unusual employee iCloud setup. Then there’s the supplier allegation about seeking Apple’s proprietary metal finish while claiming permission. That could be the major unknown if Apple can prove it.

What’s unusual is Apple going after OpenAI itself, not only former employees. More than four hundred ex-Apple people are apparently there. Even if this yields little beyond one exit, it may make anyone considering that move think hard about the forensic scrutiny at the door.

I can’t imagine Tim Cook filing this against John Ternus’s wishes right before handing him the company. Maybe Apple has more evidence, or maybe it wants to make clear that moving to OpenAI is not like taking a normal job at Google.

The EU situation looks worse after guidance to Google on AI interoperability. It appears to demand deep, continuing background access and concurrent wake-word detection for third-party assistants: PC-style freedom on a phone, with major battery, memory, and security implications.

Apple’s trusted-system intermediary sounded much narrower: controlled outside access to selected capabilities. After seeing what the Commission seems to expect of Google, I’m far less optimistic Apple and the EU find a workable deal for Siri AI.

If third-party agents need unrestricted Siri-level access to Messages, Mail, Notes, contacts, and the semantic index, that is a nonstarter. Apple’s promise is that iPhone asks before outside apps get sensitive access. European users may simply miss features, as with iPhone Mirroring.

That’s the unfortunate part. If regulation meant to improve the consumer experience keeps producing worse products in that market, somebody needs to ask why Apple and Google will not take the deal.

Exactly: who is this helping? Anyway, we only broke one piece of news while recording, so I’ll take that as a quiet summer success. Chance, great show.

Thanks. You can find my work with the team at Nine to Five Mac, plus Nine to Five Mac Daily five days a week and Nine to Five Mac Happy Hour once a week.