Apple Intelligence on Melabit

Siri AI and more on Apple Intelligence

Sat, 27 Jun 2026 18:00:00 +0000

Earlier today, I tried to activate Siri AI (Beta) on the Macbook Air M1 that I updated to Golden Gate a couple of weeks ago.

For now, and who knows for how much longer, here in Europe there’s no hope of using Siri AI on the iPhone or iPad due to the ongoing disputes between Apple and European regulators. But on the Mac, there shouldn’t be any issues, provided you use English as the language for both your Mac and Siri.

So, here I am again, heading to System Settings > Apple Intelligence & Siri — oops, on Golden Gate it has been renamed simply to Siri – to configure Siri so that it uses the same language as the Mac, which is already set to English.

Hey Siri (AI)

Nothing new so far. However, even though I was apparently placed on a waiting list to be notified when the new version of Siri would be available for my Mac,

after just a few seconds, a popup appeared allowing me to set up Siri AI right away.

As soon as I finished the setup, the System Settings > Siri pane changed to what you see below,

and, after the usual long wait for the language model download, my Mac running Golden Gate was finally ready to use Siri AI.

Now, I just need to find the time to give it a proper spin! 😇

Apple Intelligence on Sequoia

While I was doing all this, Apple Intelligence also got activated on the two Macs running Sequoia that I use daily for work. It all started with a notification on my Mac Mini M1,

and straight after that, the System Settings for Siri changed too, becoming as shown below.

The exact same thing happened on my Mac Studio M2 Ultra, which I hadn’t even touched yet.

It is clear that these changes were triggered by configuring Siri to use the same language as the Mac, in my case, English (though it obviously works for Italian and other major languages as well).¹

It’s strange, though, that this didn’t happen a couple of months ago when I did the exact same thing to use apfel and Apple Intelligence on the very same Macbook Air, which was running Tahoe at the time and has now been updated to Golden Gate.

But whatever the reason, Apple Intelligence’s Writing Tools are now working on Sequoia too,

even though, unfortunately, as already noted in my previous post on Apple Intelligence, they lack flexibility since there’s no way to change the default settings. Such flexibility is instead offered by apfel, which I can’t use here on Sequoia because it explicitly requires macOS Tahoe. Too bad!

Having activated Apple Intelligence now also allows me to use Image Playground on the Mac. Whether it’s actually worth using is a different story. In any case, it’s another tool to play around with, which never hurts.

Final thoughts

I didn’t know Apple Intelligence could work on Sequoia too. Reading the documentation, Apple Intelligence has been available in English since Sequoia version 15.1, released in late October 2024, while support for other major languages, including Italian, was added starting with 15.4 (late March 2025, now we are on 15.7.7).

But, partly due to the time that passed between the announcement and when Apple Intelligence actually became available here in Europe, and partly because Apple Intelligence requires both Siri and the Mac to be set to the same language, I had completely forgotten about it.

And I wouldn’t have noticed it today either, if I hadn’t seen the notification on the Mac Mini. A notification that definitely did not appear when, a couple of months ago, I did the exact same thing to try Apple Intelligence and apfel on the Air.

In any case, the requirement to use the same language for both the Mac and Siri just to activate Apple Intelligence is almost ridiculous nowadays. Using two different languages for your Mac and Siri might not be the norm,² but I’m certain it’s not such an isolated scenario as to not deserve the same attention Apple usually dedicates to other user niches.

As I noted in my post on apfel and Apple Intelligence, while you can set a Mac to use English and an iPhone to use Italian, Siri’s configuration is global. Therefore, once English is selected on any Apple device, the choice automatically propagates to all other devices linked to the same account. ↩︎
But I’m sure it’s quite common among those who, like me, work in software development and systems administration without being native English speakers. ↩︎

Apfel, an apple for Apple Intelligence

Mon, 11 May 2026 06:00:00 +0000

– Source: Julian Zwengel on Unsplash.

One of the (few) reasons to switch to macOS 26 Tahoe is the opportunity to use the language model that powers Apple Intelligence.

Apple Intelligence is the final product, natively integrated into the Apple ecosystem, with which we can process text (but also images) directly on our device. For example, by selecting a section of text and right-clicking with the mouse to choose Show Writing Tools, we have at our fingertips a useful tool for summarising those mile-long documents or for rewriting hastily jotted-down sentences.

As shown in the figure below, these tools are not limited to Apple applications alone, but can also be used in third-party applications like Firefox.¹

The language model (LLM) behind Apple Intelligence is accessible through the Foundation Models framework. And it is precisely this framework that allows developers to integrate artificial intelligence functions into applications running on macOS 26 as well as on iOS and iPadOS.

A few months ago, Apple added a new action to Shortcuts that also allowed end users to use the Foundation Models framework, but it wasn’t something that was really within everyone’s reach.

A few weeks ago a new tool called apfel (“apple” in German), became available, with which anyone can use the LLM integrated in macOS Tahoe via the command line and also through a simple GUI.

Installation

Installing apfel is a breeze for those who already use Homebrew. From the Terminal you must first run²

% brew update
% brew upgrade

to update homebrew, followed by

% brew install apfel

to install the application itself. Those who don’t use Homebrew (but they should!), can install it following these instructions.

As already mentioned, apfel only works on Macs with macOS 26 Tahoe and Apple Silicon. If you try to install it on Sequoia you get this error message.

% brew install apfel
==> Fetching downloads for: apfel
✔︎ API Source apfel.rb                                                                        Verified      1.1KB/  1.1KB
apfel: A full installation of Xcode.app 26.4 is required to compile
this software. Installing just the Command Line Tools is not sufficient.

Xcode 26.4 cannot be installed on macOS 15.
You must upgrade your version of macOS.
apfel: This software does not run on macOS versions older than Tahoe.
Error: apfel: Unsatisfied requirements failed this build.

Configuration

Before using apfel you must either close and reopen the Terminal or open a new tab.³ But that’s not enough, you also need to activate Apple Intelligence on your Mac by running

% apfel --model-info

and following its instructions, visible in the image below.

Basically, you need to go to System Settings > Apple Intelligence & Siri, configure Siri to use the same language as the Mac (I had to do this because I always use the Mac in English with Siri in Italian) and then activate the switch related to Apple Intelligence.

Don’t trust the 100% complete text that appears immediately after activating Apple Intelligence. This is probably a bug, because shortly afterwards, macOS starts downloading the model and this takes a while.

Once the model has finished downloading, apfel confirms that we are ready to use the model, so we can begin.

Many different ways to use apfel

The simplest way to use apfel, which is also suitable for integration into a program, is to run the apfel command from the Terminal followed by the prompt within quotation marks. For example:

% apfel "What is the capital of Italy?"
The capital of Italy is Rome.

The apfel command has several useful options, well described in the README of the program. The most interesting options are listed below, where the symbol <n> represents the numerical value associated with the option:

--temperature <n>, sets the temperature of the response. A lower temperature (<n> close to 0) makes the response more repetitive, a higher temperature (<n> around 1 or more) makes it more random and unpredictable.
--seed <n>, sets the initial value of the random number generator used by the LLM. Fixing the seed value means that the same question will always produce an identical response.
--max-tokens <n>, sets the maximum number of tokens in the response. A low value of <n> makes the response more concise, a high value allows the LLM to generate a longer response.
--permissive, allows generating responses with less strict security filters. Frankly, I didn’t quite understand what it means in practice, but maybe I didn’t ask the right questions. In any case, it seems that the responses acquire a lighter and friendlier tone.

It is also possible to activate a server based on apfel, which can be queried via the curl command. The advantage in this case is that the response is a JSON file that can be easily processed automatically.

Alternatively, you can open a chat session in the Terminal via the apfel --chat command. This allows you to communicate directly with the LLM without putting questions in quotes. Here, you can use the arrow keys to scroll through the history of the current session and edit the previous questions.

Lastly, a GUI for apfel is also available. It’s a very basic GUI, so don’t expect the same level of sophistication as with Claude, Gemini, ChatGPT and the like.

Putting apfel through its paces

Before starting, it is worth noting that Apple’s language model, unique among those produced by the major companies in the field (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Microsoft, Meta, you know the names), does not require an internet connection to work, but runs exclusively on the machine where it is installed (with some caveats). A guarantee for the privacy of our data that only Apple can offer.

However, as it has to run on iPhones, iPads and Macs, the Apple model has strong limitations in terms of size and, consequently, processing capacity. This is a detail to keep in mind when evaluating what it is capable of doing (and not doing). But this is a problem common to all local models, i.e., those that can be run on our personal machines. Ultimately, it’s a choice between power and privacy, and it’s never an easy one.

But, aside from answering trivial questions like the ones above, what is apfel really capable of doing (and consequently the Apple language model that apfel relies on)?

Forget about using it for math, logical reasoning or writing code. Apple isn’t exaggerating when it writes that all these activities are beyond the scope of its model.

In italian, the usual test on the death of Marie Antoinette produces very variable answers, sometimes correct and sometimes completely made up. When using English it performs slightly better, but that is normal because English is the native language of all LLMs. Math is not its strong point, either. It’s not so much because the answers are wrong, but because they are sometimes wrong. Would you ever use a calculator that usually gives the correct result, but every now and then makes mistakes? Needless to say, writing code is not an option, too.

When staying within the capabilities declared by Apple, things go much better.

I tried having apfel summarize a long note I dictated on my iPhone while I was out walking and, despite the presence of many transcription errors, repetitions and uncertainties, it did an excellent job. The note in question contains material that is still confidential, so having the security that the text fed to the LLM will remain only on my computer is an added value that far exceeds the model’s limitations.

No problem also asking it to be more or less concise, which in many cases can be really useful. It is also very easy to change the tone of the response, converting in a few seconds what we wrote into a press release or into a text understandable even by grandma.

It also does well with translations, I tried English and German but there’s no reason to think it wouldn’t do the same with other supported languages.

The responses are a bit slow, but I only tested apfel on a MacBook Air M1 (the only Mac I upgraded to Tahoe) and I guess newer Macs could give better results in terms of speed.

Why apfel and not Apple Intelligence?

It is simple: because the Writing Tools integrated in Apple Intelligence have default settings that work well in most cases. However, only apfel allows you to define in detail what you want to achieve.

Indeed, if I ask the Writing Tools to summarize the same note as before in a way that even grandma can understand, it replies that it cannot do it, without any further explanation.

If I ask the same thing to apfel, not only does it summarize the text without hesitation, but since I asked the question in English, it also translates it into this language (part of the text in the image below is blurred because, as I said before, it contains information that is still confidential).

In short, Apple Intelligence is a tool that anyone can use immediately. However, if you need flexibility, apfel is without doubt the best choice.

Conclusions

Apple is right: its language model isn’t a general-purpose model capable of competing with ChatGPT, Gemini, or Claude. But it does well what it is supposed to do, and the fact that it runs on a Mac (or an iPhone or iPad) is an added value that more than compensates for its limitations.

According to Apple, only the most complex requests need to rely on larger models in the cloud. This seems to be true when using apfel: whenever I disabled the network connection, apfel continued to work without any issue. However, with the Writing Tools, it’s a different story because some functions are deactivated as soon as the internet connection is lost.

A difference in behavior that deserves further exploration.

When using apfel you have to deal with a certain slowness in responses. I used a MacBook Air M1, on a newer Mac the processing would certainly be faster. However, I doubt it will be much faster because, after all, we’re still using a personal computer and not a server farm that costs billions of dollars.

From my point of view, the most serious flaw of Apple Intelligence and consequently of apfel, is that you have to configure your Mac and Siri to use the same language. As this change is global, it affects all Apple devices connected to the account. I noticed this when Siri on CarPlay suddenly started to speak in English instead of my home language. Luckily I was alone, otherwise I would have looked like a stupid presumptuous nerd.

If I want to go back to using Siri in Italian (and I do), I will be forced to deactivate Apple Intelligence, at least until Apple decides to remove this constraint. A constraint that technically makes little sense and seems only a retaliation against the rules imposed by the European Union on Apple and its competitors.

If you don’t like the screenshot (I don’t like it either), blame the designers of Liquid Glass. ↩︎
The % symbol in zsh (or the $ in bash) represents the shell prompt and is not part of the actual command. I use it to visually distinguish commands executed in the Terminal. which are preceded by %, from their responses, which do not include it. ↩︎
It’s a small annoyance that applies to any application installed via Homebrew. ↩︎

WWDC 25

Thu, 12 Jun 2025 06:00:00 +0000

When was the latest truly memorable WWDC? I’d say in 2020, a year that was already memorable in itself, when Apple unveiled the new Macs with Apple Silicon processors, capable of outperforming their equivalent Intel-based models.

I don’t know if what was presented at this year’s WWDC will be just as memorable, but there’s no doubt that Apple has came up with some interesting innovations.

First and foremost, there is an update to iPadOS that finally introduces (why did it take so long?) overlapping windows and a more decent file system management, virtually retiring Stage Manager.

I never liked Stage Manager. I’ve always found it annoying and too limited, with its four-and-no-more-than-four side mini-windows that come and go, with no way to pin one in place once and for all. I think few people will miss it.

The new overlapping windows in iPadOS 26 may have an “old-school” vibe, but they’ve been around for 40 years and are definitely more intuitive and easier to manage. If I have to adapt to something new, Apple should to offer me something better, not worse.

Getting Preview and Calculator on the iPad is no small bonus. As a more-than-satisfied Preview user, I’m really curious to try it on the iPad.

The other major new feature is the new “Liquid Glass” user interface, which will be rolled out across all Apple platforms, from Macs to iPhones and even Vision Pros. Beyond its look, glassy today, who knows tomorrow, what really matters is that from now on, all Apple platforms will speak the same visual language, with clear benefits in terms of ease of use and, I believe, also app development.

That Liquid Glass is the modern version of Aqua seems obvious at first glance. In the early 2000s, I switched back to the Mac from Linux not only because it had UNIX under the hood, but also because I absolutely loved Aqua.

The later shift to a metallic theme and to today’s muted gray tones, elegant as they may be, never really excited me, so I’m very curious to see Aqua 2.0 in action.

As for the rest of the keynote, I’ll admit that I don’t remember much. The fact that the Apple Watch now tries to convince me that I run better than Jacobs matters to me about as much as nothing. The same goes for the time that stretches or shrinks depending on the iPhone wallpaper. Or the ever-present Memojis. But if they get so much stage time, it must mean people like them, so maybe I’m the one who is out of sync with the times.

Apple improving the built-in apps in its operating systems should be standard practice. But this obsession with hiding features is getting a bit pathological (thinking of you, Camera).

Call Screening, on the other hand, could be a real game changer, assuming it actually works in my country.

And the fact that Federighi didn’t burst out laughing while claiming that over the past year Apple Intelligence has been relevant says a lot about how many times that scene was rehearsed.

Almost forgot: the new version numbering for the operating systems. Having a unified scheme for all platforms might be a good thing, but was it really necessary to use the year (and get it wrong, too)? Microsoft already tried that with Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows 2000. Was it really impossible to come up with something more original?

Anyway, this unification will force Apple to release a new version of half a dozen different operating systems every year, even when they will not have a single noteworthy new feature. Personally, I think an annual release cycle is excessive and unsustainable in the long run. But apparently, Apple’s marketing always needs something new, whether it’s useful or even works is another story.

A last, fairly sad note. How could Tim Cook and his team not find a minute during their hour-and-a-half-long keynote to remember Bill Atkinson? And at a developer conference, no less!

Apple wouldn’t be what it is today without his contributions. RIP.