Apple doesnt innovate from scratchPublished inThe Medium BlogSent as aNewsletter3 min readJust now-- Four days! Stay informed but dont get sucked in.Issue #198: the French Bread Law, ancient lawn signs, and reigning in a free-ranging convoBy Harris SockelApple Intelligence dropped on Monday.*ICYMI, Apple Intelligence is marketing-speak for a handful of individual products. You can blurt out something impolite and Apple will recast your email in business-speak. You can create a little cartoon mini-me (a Genmoji of yourself). You can ask Siri how long it would take to drive to the moon, and she will understand that youre speaking hypothetically.Reviews are mixed. One blogger thinks its a lot of razzle dazzle (slick animations) disguising basic features like a Grammarly duplicate. A vlogger known as DailyTekk tested Apple Intelligence in beta and found it was helpful especially the ability to talk to Siri like its your friend, not your weird robot servant.In June, after Apple unveiled these features WWDC, Chris Messina inventor of the hashtag posted on Medium to contextualize them.Apple doesnt do a ton of ground-up innovation, he wrote. Instead, they identify technologies that havent yet achieved product-market fit and build compelling product experiences around them. They did this with digital music. Smartphones. Email, text messaging, and personal computing itself. Now, theyre tackling AI, building on ChatGPTs contextless text box on a blank page to help us begin to see what this new technology looks like when its part of a cohesive product.This is classic Apple. Take something that feels cold, futuristic, and isolating and make it feel warm and welcoming. Im reminded of this story by former Apple product designer Andrea Pacheco. She recalls how obsessed Apple has always been with building truly delightful product experiences, rather than shipping experimental MVPs. This moment sums it up well:Ill never forget this one time when I was at a meeting with a product team from Apple TV, and someone said that we could do a release on the web and mobile platform, but we didnt have the experience ready for TV. So the PM said if we cant launch the best experience across all our platforms now, were not launching it at all. If we need to wait another year to deliver the best experience for our customers, well wait.If youve tried Apple Intelligence, whats one specific use youve found for it? How has it helped you, or not?*Only if youre on an iPhone 15 or later! You have to download the latest iOS and then join the waitlist in Settings. Great, recent Medium stories in just 1 sentencePolitical lawn signs got their start in Ancient Rome when rich families would paint a candidates name on the houses walls to sway passing plebians. (Vishwas R. Gaitonde)France takes bread quite seriously, mandating by law that baguettes contain nothing but flour, salt, water, and leavening. (Eleanor Sigel)A proven way to curb your election anxiety: text a friend hey, Im feeling a little anxious about this (Catherine Sanderson, Author & Psychology Professor)Your daily dose of practical wisdomSimple problems + brilliant execution = success. (Many people get this turned around! They find a complex problem and execute in a mediocre way.)