The agentic iPhone

Last month Apple announced a partnership with Google that will mark a fundamental shift in the iPhone architecture. The integration of Gemini into iOS means the system is pivoting from a collection of apps to an agentic operating system. It turns the iPhone into a more powerful cognitive lever, but it demands you trust the “black box” more than ever before. I prompted Gemini to show me what that might look like. Excerpts below, the full thread here)

I asked how a new, more powerful iPhone might change the way I write or research my blog posts:


When the operating system moves from being a “file cabinet” to an “active participant,” the boundary between your thoughts and the machine’s suggestions begins to blur.

  • The Loss of Serendipity: When the AI “fetches” the exact answer, you miss the accidental discovery of a different, unrelated factoid in the “wrong” folder. The “digital twin” optimizes for efficiency, but creativity often thrives on inefficiency.
  • The Echo Chamber of One: If Gemini is trained on your “Personal Context,” it will get very good at sounding like you. There is a real risk that your blog posts will start to feel like they’ve been “laundered” through an AI that is simply reflecting your own style back at you, stripping away the rough edges of original thought.
  • The “Privacy vs. Utility” Trap: To get these benefits, you have to let the “Campos” agent index your “private thoughts.” You’re essentially trading the sanctity of your “unrecorded” mind for a more powerful cognitive lever.

I’m sure I’ll find some uses for the new iOS but writing my blog posts won’t be one of them. Near the end of the thread Gemini gives specific instructions for how to disable some of these features.

Watching movies/TV on the iPhone

The remote for our big LG TV died so I watched an episode of Mayor of Easttown on my iPhone last night. I do that from time to time and once again I found this a very satisfying experience. At no time did I have a sense of “this is such a tiny little screen.”

I asked Perplexity about typical movie/TV viewing distance on mobil phones:

“Studies that look at smartphone viewing distances for video and general “digital device” use show that phones are commonly viewed at around about 12–14 inches, similar to reading distance. Experimental work that tested video viewing at 20 cm vs. 40 cm used those as realistic “near” and “far” smartphone distances, supporting the idea that typical use falls somewhere between them, with averages in the low 30‑cm range.”

That’s pretty much me. Had the phone propped against a pillow on my stomach. This works for me (and others?) because the relative screen size is about the same, as I attempted to show in this 10 second video. Continue reading

“This call is being recorded”

When I started working at my hometown radio station in the early ’70’s, recorded phone calls included a “beep” every 10 or 15 seconds, to let the person on the other end of the call know it was being recorded. Not sure when that stopped but for a long time we made sure we recorded the permission of the person being recorded. As for the audio quality of the calls? Think transmission from Apollo 13.

The most recent update to iOS includes the ability to easily record a phone call… and gives you an automatic transcription of the call. 

Twenty years of cameras

Playing with the Pocket 3 is bringing back fond memories of cameras I have owned. I do not think of myself as a photographer or videographer, I spent a lot of hours (and money) over the past 20 years and most of them got a post or two on this blog.

  • 5/1/2008 – iMage Webcam (CamTwist, Ustream)
  • 5/22/2008 – Flip Video Camera
  • 6/13/2009 – Ecamm BT-1 “World’s first Bluetooth webcam” (related: twitCam) –
  • 12/8/2018 – Sony Handycam DCR-TRV 74 (I’m sure I was shooting video with the Sony much earlier but getting that video off the camera and encoded on a computer was such a time-consumer nightmare, it’s not worth mentioning)

I’d have to say my favorite cameras during those early days were made by Casio:

In 2009 I bought my first iPhone and that was pretty much it for point-and-shoot cameras but I have purchased a couple of GoPro cameras in the last couple of years.

iPhone 13 mini

I’ve never been a fan of the ever-larger phones so I almost pulled the trigger on one of the new iPhone SE’s Apple announced last week, until my buddy suggested I take a look at the iPhone 13 mini. Didn’t know there was such a thing but it was just what I was after. Smaller phone with lots of features. Arrives tomorrow. (The photo compares the 11 and the 13 mini)

I was at the Apple event in 2007 when Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone. I resisted getting an iPhone when they came out. I’d had a Tracfone since 2005. $19.95 at Wal-Mart and it lived in the glovebox of my car. In 2008 I broke down and bought an iPhone and bought the new model ever couple of years. iPhone 3GS (2009); iPhone 4 (2010); the first iPhone SE (2016); iPhone XS (2018); iPhone 11 (2020).