Apple @ Work is exclusively brought to you by Mosyle, the only Apple Unified Platform. Mosyle is the only solution that integrates in a single professional-grade platform all the solutions necessary to seamlessly and automatically deploy, manage & protect Apple devices at work. Over 45,000 organizations trust Mosyle to make millions of Apple devices work-ready with no effort and at an affordable cost. Request your EXTENDED TRIAL today and understand why Mosyle is everything you need to work with Apple. There’s a lot of hype around AI right now. Every product is “AI-powered” and every app promises to help you do more by doing the work for you. However, I think that real productivity improvements don’t come with bolted-on functionality. They come from building smarter tools that live where people already work and letting them focus on what humans do best. That’s why I think Spike’s new AI Feed is a solid example of workplace AI done right. About Apple @ Work: Bradley Chambers managed an enterprise IT network from 2009 to 2021. Through his experience deploying and managing firewalls, switches, a mobile device management system, enterprise grade Wi-Fi, thousands of Macs, and thousands of iPads, Bradley will highlight ways in which Apple IT managers deploy Apple devices, build networks to support them, train users, stories from the trenches of IT management, and ways Apple could improve its products for IT departments. I’ve been using Spike as an email client for nearly 5 years now. I feel like they’re onto something with their new AI Feed, which I want to see more of from Apple and Apple Intelligence. Spike didn’t build a separate assistant. They didn’t launch a chatbot. They added AI to the most-used part of your workday: your email inbox. The AI Feed lives inside your inbox, wrapping AI functionality into every aspect. It does it in a way that’s much better than anything I’ve seen from Apple Intelligence. That’s the direction I want Apple Intelligence to go. I want it to become my trusted advisor on how I spend my time and what I focus on vs just trying to create content for me. One of the features I have liked using most, Spike’s AI Feed, is how fast it helps you power your inbox when coming back after a long period. It summarizes messages and helps you take action as well. You can archive, delete, or mark messages as read without opening a single email. It aims to surface what matters and helps you clear away everything else. For me, that’s a huge time saver when you’re coming back to a long email with many back-and-forth responses or catching up with your inbox after a marathon of Zoom meetings. You get the context and take action right away. Right now, Apple Intelligence feels like something added on top of the macOS and iOS designed to help you write, not built into your workflows. It’s not that it’s completely unusable, but it doesn’t quite work the way my brain does. I don’t need Mail.app to write messages for me. I need it to look at my calendar, my reminders, and my inbox, and help me structure my day before I even ask. I don’t need help writing emails that sound like AI wrote them. I need help getting the key context that helps me reply in my own tone. A simple example for me is someone working in tech support. AI shouldn’t write a response. It should combine what the customer said, their problem, what they said before, and what we did last time. AI should flag when my day is packed and automatically block time to finish actual work. It should surface what matters, not create more noise, or help me write 500 words. Wrap up: What’s next for Apple Intelligence? I can’t help but feel that Apple Intelligence was designed as Apple was caught flat-footed on AI. macOS and iOS need to be completely optimized for AI. It should feel as natural as copy and paste. Right now, it’s a bolt-on. What I envision is that Apple Intelligence is the interface. I unlock my Mac; a widget pops up with an alert about my day:Bradley, you have four meetings today, but I’ve looked at your to-do list, and you need to focus on some key items. I will reschedule two of your meetings that lack an agenda to another day when you’re less busy. Here are the documents you need to work on and decisions to make. I want a virtual assistant (something Siri has always promised to become) and less of a writing chatbot. Spike is getting closer with its AI inbox. It reminds me that the best workplace AI isn’t the one that tries to do your job. It’s the one that gives you more space to do it better. If the AI Feed is the starting point, I’m curious to see where Spike takes it next. The inbox is already a goldmine of context. It holds information about projects, decisions to make, tasks to work through, and much more. AI that understands that context is powerful. If Spike starts connecting that context to other tools like calendars, docs, or team chat, it becomes a control center for your day. That’s the kind of integration Apple Intelligence should be aiming for. Apple @ Work is exclusively brought to you by Mosyle, the only Apple Unified Platform. Mosyle is the only solution that integrates in a single professional-grade platform all the solutions necessary to seamlessly and automatically deploy, manage & protect Apple devices at work. Over 45,000 organizations trust Mosyle to make millions of Apple devices work-ready with no effort and at an affordable cost. Request your EXTENDED TRIAL today and understand why Mosyle is everything you need to work with Apple. Add 9to5Mac to your Google News feed.  FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.You’re reading 9to5Mac — experts who break news about Apple and its surrounding ecosystem, day after day. 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