July 2024
Paul George ‘never wanted to leave LA,’ calls 1st Clippers offer ‘disrespectful’
“I’m like, ‘just give me what Kawhi got. Y’all view us the same. We came here together, we want to finish this s*** together. I’ll take what Kawhi got.'”
Making case for Giants to buy, sell before MLB trade deadline
The Giants enter the final week before the All-Star break with a 44-47 record, leaving them a few weeks to decide if they should buy or sell ahead of the MLB trade deadline. Alex Pavlovic examines the situation and identifies the likeliest path.
Carlos Mendoza explains pulling Christian Scott, using Eric Orze in Monday’s fateful sixth inning
Carlos Mendoza explains his decision to lift Christian Scott for Eric Orze in the sixth inning of Monday’s loss to the Pirates in Pittsburgh.
How to Watch the EURO Semifinals Using a VPN
The EURO 2024 tournament is almost at its end. The semifinals start this week, with Spain facing France and the Netherlands meeting England. If you’re looking to watch the matches with a streaming subscription, you can do so as long as you have the right channels. If you don’t, you can use a VPN to watch every EURO 2024 match instead. It is cheaper than signing up for one of the subscriptions most of the time, plus you can use a VPN subscription for more than just watching soccer games. Here are the semifinal games coming up and how to watch them with a VPN.
How to watch Spain vs. France semifinal with a VPN
On Tuesday, July 9 at 3:00 p.m., the first semifinal game of EURO 2024, will take place with the Spanish team facing the French squad. You can catch the match in English on BBC iPlayer or ITVX or in French with 6play and TF1. You’ll need an Express VPN subscription to bypass the geo-restrictions.
How to watch the Netherlands vs. England semifinal with a VPN
This Wednesday, July 10 at 3:00 p.m., the Netherlands plays with England to see who deserves a spot on the EURO 2024 final. To see which team ends up in the final, head over to BBC iPlayer or ITVX after you log into Express VPN to watch the match in English.
Express VPN is not the only VPN that works with bypassing geo-restrictions; you just need a VPN service that lets you choose a country of your choice as your server location. Express VPN is our favorite VPN for doing so. It will run you $12.95 per month, $9.99 per month for six months, or they also offer an annual plan for $8.32. Check out our comparison of ExpressVPN with NordVPN (another top VPN provider).
Who was the biggest All-Star snub in New York?
Yahoo Sports senior MLB analysts Jordan Shusterman and Jake Mintz decide which Mets position player was more deserving of a 2024 All-Star spot: Brandon Nimmo or Francisco Lindor. Hear the full conversation on the “Baseball Bar-B-Cast” podcast – and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen.
All-Star Game selections and snubs, results from the weekend series and a Padres attendance record
Jake Mintz and Jordan Shusterman discuss the All-Star Game selections and snubs, go through all the series from the weekend and talk about some fun and strange moments we saw from teams, their players and their fans.
All-Star Game selections and snubs, results from the weekend series and a Padres attendance record
Jake Mintz and Jordan Shusterman discuss the All-Star Game selections and snubs, go through all the series from the weekend and talk about some fun and strange moments we saw from teams, their players and their fans.
Here’s When Apple Plans to Roll Out Its Biggest Apple Intelligence Features
Apple made a splash during June’s WWDC keynote when it announced Apple Intelligence. It’s the company’s official foray into the trendy AI features most tech companies have adopted already. While Apple Intelligence might have generated the most headlines over the past week, many of its main features will not be present when you update your iPhone, iPad, or Mac this fall.
According to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, Apple is staggering the rollout of these highly-anticipated AI features. A key reason is, simply, that these features just aren’t ready yet. Apple has been scrambling for over a year to implement generative AI features in its products, after the tech exploded in late 2022. (Thanks, ChatGPT.) Many of these features are quite involved, and will take more time to get right.
That said, Apple probably could release these features sooner and in larger batches if it wanted to, but there’s a strategy here: By rolling out big AI features in limited numbers, Apple can root out any major issues before adding more AI to the mix (AI hallucinates, after all), and can continue to build up its cloud network without putting too much pressure on the system. It helps that the company is keeping these features to a specific, small pool of Apple devices: iPhone 15 Pro and 15 Pro Max (and likely the iPhone 16 line), as well as M-Series Macs and iPads.
Apple Intelligence in 2024
If you install the iOS 18 or macOS 15 betas right now, you might think no Apple Intelligence features are going to be ready in the fall. That’s because Apple is delaying these AI features for beta testers until sometime later this summer. The public beta is still scheduled to drop during July, so it seems like a safe assumption that Apple is planning on beta testing Apple Intelligence soon, but we don’t know for sure.
There are some AI features currently in this first beta, even if they aren’t strictly “Apple Intelligence” features: iOS 18 supports transcriptions for voice memos as well as enhanced voicemail transcriptions, and supports automatically calculating equations you type out. It’s a limited experience, but seeing as it’s only the first beta, we’ll see more features soon.
In fact, Apple currently plans to roll out some flagship features with the first release of Apple Intelligence. That includes summaries for webpages, voice memos, notes, and emails; AI writing tools (such as rewriting and proofreading); and image generation, including the AI-generated emojis Apple is branding “Genmoji.” You’ll also receive AI summaries of notifications and see certain alerts first based on what the AI thinks is most important.
In addition, some of Siri’s new updates will be out with iOS 18’s initial release. This fall, you should notice the assistant’s new UI, as well as the convenient new option for typing to Siri. But most of Siri’s advertised features won’t be ready for a while. (More on that below.)
The timeline for ChatGPT integration is also a bit up in the air: It may not arrive with the first release of iOS 18 in the fall, but Gurman believes it’ll be here before the end of the year. For developers, Xcode’s AI assistant, Swift Assist, is likely not out until later this year.
Apple Intelligence’s new Siri won’t be here until spring of 2025
The largest delay appears to be to Siri’s standout upgrades, many of which won’t hit iOS and macOS until spring of 2025, with a beta set for January. These upgrades include contextual understanding and actions: The big example from the WWDC keynote was when a demonstrator asked Siri when her mom’s flight would be getting in, and the digital assistant was able to answer the question by pulling data from multiple apps. This “understanding,” which would power many convenient actions without needing to explicitly tell Siri what you want it to do, needs more time to bake.
In addition, Apple is taking until next year for Siri’s ability to act within apps from user commands. When available, you’ll be able to ask Siri to edit a photo then add it to a message before sending it off. Siri will actually feel like a smart assistant that can do things on your iPhone, iPad, and Mac for you, but that takes time.
Siri also won’t be able to analyze and understand what’s happening on your screen until 2025. Next year, you should be able to ask Siri a simple question based on what you’re doing on your device, and the assistant should understand. If you’re trying to make movie plans with someone to see Inside Out 2, you could ask Siri “when is it playing?” and Siri should analyze the conversation and return results for movie times in your area.
Finally, Apple Intelligence remains English-only until at least next year. Apple needs more time to train the AI on other languages. As with other AI features, however, this is one that makes a lot of sense to delay until it’s 100% ready.
AI might be the focus of the tech industry, but big AI features often roll out to disastrous ends. (Just look at Google’s AI Overviews or Microsoft’s Recall feature.) The more time Apple gives itself to get the tech right, the better. In the meantime, we can use the new features that are already available.
Fantasy Baseball Waiver Wire: Brooks Lee leads hitter pickups
Get your bats in order this week with Dalton Del Don’s waiver wire pickups!