Apple has updated an essential enterprise product — its IT training courses, which have now been updated for the latest iterations of its operating systems, iOS 18, iPadOS 18, and macOS Sequoia. The company first introduced these courses in their current format in 2022 and has updated them with each OS iteration ever since.
The company offers four courses:
Apple Device Support (14 hours and 15 minutes of coursework, and an exam).
Apple Deployment and Management (11 hours and 45 minutes of coursework, and an exam).
Mac Security Compliance (5 hours).
Apple Business Essentials.
Who are these courses for?
Apple recognizes there is a growing need for Apple skills to feed enterprise deployments. As ever more enterprises deploy Apple’s kit across their business, the need for trained staff has grown to the extent that demand for these skills is expected to grow faster than for most other occupations. Enterprises need Apple professionals to help manage their systems.
“More people than ever are using Mac, iPad, and iPhone to do their best work, and the demand for Apple-certified IT professionals has never been greater,” Susan Prescott, Apple’s vice president of enterprise and education marketing, said when Apple first introduced these courses.
“Apple Professional Training helps anyone with an interest in technology — whether they are changing careers or upping their skill set — pursue high-paying IT jobs with certifications that will stand out to potential employers. We believe deeply in inclusion in technology, so the new courses are self-paced and freely available, and we are working to ensure ability to pay isn’t a barrier to earning Apple certification,” she said at the time.
The training is delivered in an online, self-paced format. Users can demonstrate their competency with two new exams and earn certifications from Apple. Here are more details about the courses:
Apple Device Support
This is an extensive course that looks at every aspect of managing devices in enterprise environments. It focuses on mobile device management (MDM), Apple Accounts, iCloud, Passkeys, security, and app, network, and security management. Essentially, the course should equip IT staffers with the insights they need to prepare devices for management, and to manage them after that. Hardware insights include use of Configurator for setting up network management and how to use diagnostics to figure out device problems. You can follow the course for free, but the exam costs $149. A pass gives you Apple Certified IT Professional status.
More information concerning the course is available here.
Apple Deployment and Management
This core course provides the knowledge, skills, tools, and services required to manage large numbers of Apple devices. It’s an extensive and wide-ranging set of tutorials supported by a certified examination. Once again, you can follow the course for free, but as with Apple Device Support, the exam costs $149; passing it gives you Apple Certified IT Professional status, which is a marketable skill in its own right. Topics covered include MDM planning and preparation, device management, enrollment, and redeployment.
By the time you finish the course you should understand how MDM works on Apple devices and have enough insight to help you set up an appropriate MDM system in your enterprise. More info here.
Mac Security Compliance
The Mac Security Compliance course has seen some significant improvements, including access to the macOS Security Compliance Project (mSCP), an open source attempt to provide a programmatic approach to achieving security best practices. It’s a joint project of federal operational IT Security staff and volunteers from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA), Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Idaho National Laboratory, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the US State Department, Leidos and the Center for Internet Security (CIS). The five-hour course guides admins through good practice approaches to developing, implementing, and managing security compliance strategy, including reporting and documentation.
More information pertaining to the Mac Security Compliance course is available here.
Apple Business Essentials
This course will help admins get to grips with how device management works on Apple’s systems. It explains the systems, hardware, and software required to bring devices into management with Apple Business Essentials and guide IT through setup, deployment, enrolment, configuration and security for managed devices. The course also explains how to use AppleCare+ with Apple Business Essentials, which is made available within some plans. More information on this course is available here.
Registration for new Apple exams based on the new operating systems is open now. The exam and exam preparation guides are available in English and will appear in Chinese (Simplified), French, German, Japanese, and Spanish by spring 2025.
One thing that is certain, however, is that demand to join these courses will increase in direct response to the company’s growing enterprise market share.
With her claim that retailers are seeing high returns of Arm PCs, Intel interim CEO Michelle Johnston Holthaus appears to be trying to scare buyers off the rival processor architecture. But enterprise buyers who look before they leap have little to fear.
Speaking at Barclay’s annual technology conference late last week, Holthaus said “if you look at the return rate for Arm PCs, you go talk to any retailer, their number one concern is, ‘I get a large percentage of these back because you go to set them up and the things that we just expect [to work], don’t work.’”
Fake AI clips of celebrities are becoming increasingly common, something that affects, among other things, artists and actors who have their voices and looks cloned without their permission.
With that in mind, YouTube has announced a collaboration with Creative Artists Agency (CAA) aimed at detecting and removing fake AI clips of celebrities.
CAA has created a database called the CAA Vault that contains digital copies of celebrities’ faces, bodies and voices. The idea is that the new tool can compare the content of uploaded Youtube clips with the information in the CAA Vault; if there’s a match, the clips should be able to be deleted automatically.
According to The Verge, YouTube has also developed a tool that detects when AI has been used to simulate someone’s singing voice.
While Windows is a powerful operating system for productivity, so much of what we do with work these days revolves around the web. Whatever your browser of choice — Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Brave, or any of the more contemporary options — there’s a decent chance you spend a fair amount of your workday working with apps inside that environment.
That’s fine: I recommend using the right tool for the job, whatever that is. And often, it’s a web app! But when nearly every application you use exists in a browser tab within a single desktop window, you’re missing out on some of Windows’ most powerful productivity advantages.
So consider this: What if all those web apps you rely on were integrated into Windows — with their own desktop windows, taskbar icons, and more? What if they worked with the Windows taskbar, Alt+Tab switcher, Task View, and Snap?
It’s something you can make happen in just a few clicks — if you know the tricks.
Many popular web apps now offer official Windows versions, too. It sounds a little obvious, but this wasn’t always as common as it is today. You may have started using a web-based tool when it was available only in a browser, but it may work nicely on your Windows desktop today without any real effort other than taking the time to find the right option.
For example, at our email newsletter-focused small business The Intelligence, we use applications like Notion for documents, Trello for planning, and Microsoft Designer to whip up the occasional piece of AI art. These are normally thought of as web apps, but every single one of them offers an installable Windows desktop application — and I’ve linked the desktop versions in that list.
For file and photo storage, of course, services like Google Drive and even Apple iCloud offer downloadable Windows apps.
And yes, whether you’re using Windows 11 or Windows 10, many of those installable apps are still based on web technologies. But they don’t have to be confined to a browser tab, and going with the “app” version gives you an even richer and more integrated experience.
When in doubt, search the Microsoft Store app for an application or check out its official website for a Windows desktop download.
Windows web app trick #2: Instant install
Even if an official download isn’t available, you can turn any web page into an “app,” complete with its own dedicated window, taskbar icon, desktop shortcut, and Start menu shortcut. This is particularly useful for strictly web-based applications like Gmail, which you might want to keep just a single click away.
All you need is Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, or some other Chromium-based browsers. (Unfortunately, Mozilla Firefox doesn’t offer this feature.)
In Google Chrome, first head to the web page you want to use as an app — like Gmail.com, for example. Then, click the menu button, point to “Cast, save, and share,” and select the “Install page as app” option.
In Microsoft Edge, head to the page you want to transform into an app and click menu > Apps > Install this site as an app.
Some pages offer the option to be installed as progressive web apps (PWAs). If you try this same process on such a page, you’ll see a slightly different “Install” option. PWAs often offer more features, like offline support — and they similarly transform the website into its own unique window, with a more native-app-like feel that’ll be right at home on your Windows PC.
With Gmail in its own window, you won’t have to hunt down your email in a browser tab again.
Chris Hoffman, IDG
Windows web app trick #3: The alternate route
While you could give Gmail and Google Calendar their own taskbar icons using the trick we just went over, you also have another option: You could access things like your email and calendar events by pulling their data into other dedicated desktop apps.
There’s no shortage of available native-to-Windows options, but the new Outlook is built right into the Windows operating system you’re using — and it works seamlessly with Gmail and Google Calendar. The classic and once-again-under-development Mozilla Thunderbird application works with both Gmail and Google Calendar, too.
By bringing your web-centric data into any such application, you can then read your emails, get desktop notifications, and send emails right from the native Windows app environment. Unfortunately, Outlook will only let you view Google Calendar events, but Mozilla Thunderbird will let you modify your Google Calendar, too.
While I’m focusing on Gmail here, you could also add mail and calendar from Apple iCloud or Yahoo to these applications. You’d get a more desktop-style email experience complete with offline access.
Microsoft’s new Outlook email app supports a variety of email accounts.
Chris Hoffman, IDG
Windows web app trick #4: The third-party path
Beyond the big names, your Windows PC supports an array of less well-known native apps that can also do the job and let you work with web-centric data in a Windows app environment. For example, the Fantastical calendar application that was long popular on Macs is now available on Windows PCs. If you use quite a few different calendars and want them all in one powerful application, the $57 per year it costs may be well worth it — particularly for professional purposes. I’ve heard so many good things from Mac users about this application over the years.
Windows 10 had a very nice calendar feature: It would show your calendar events when you clicked the clock, and that worked with Google Calendar. This feature is missing in action on Windows 11 and was lost in the operating system transition, but for $4 you can get the similar Calendar Flyout application for convenient access to Google Calendar and Microsoft-powered calendar events, too. It adds a handy icon to your system tray for easy viewing and clicking. My colleague JR Raphael of Android Intelligence fame says it looks and works exactly as described — and is quite nice to use!
The point: There’s a whole universe of applications that can better integrate whatever web apps and services you use with Windows. You’ll just need to do a little digging to find the right ones for you.
Windows web app trick #5: The browser tune-up
At the end of the day, there’s nothing wrong with using web apps in your browser — if that’s really how you prefer it. You may go full circle playing with the other options here and conclude that some applications just work best in a traditional browser tab. But there’s still a lot you can do with a browser-tab-based app to turn it into an even more effective productivity tool.
For example, some web applications offer offline support, even while running in your browser. (While many people wonder why offline support is so necessary these days, I like the knowledge that I can always use applications on my laptop even if an airplane’s Wi-Fi isn’t working properly, if there’s some kind of connection blip, or if I’m out and about in an area without readily available internet access.)
Google’s web applications have powerful offline features, but you have to go out of your way to activate them.
Chris Hoffman, IDG
Web applications like Gmail and Google Calendar can also be set as your PC’s default applications for their respective purposes. That means whenever you click an email address on the web or in any other program on your computer, Windows will automatically open a new email draft with that address present within Gmail in Google Chrome. Gmail will normally ask you to set this up when you start using it, so you may have already granted it default email client status.
Beyond that, it’s a good idea to bookmark web apps you use regularly within your browser’s bookmarks toolbar for easy ongoing access. That way, you can get to those quickly by pressing Ctrl+Shift+B from anywhere on the web.
You may also want to pin especially common applications like Gmail so they’re always ready to go. Check out my collection of Windows browser tab tricks for even more ideas!
Get Windows knowledge in your inbox with my free Windows Intelligence newsletter — three new things to try every Friday and free in-depth Windows Field Guides as soon as you sign up.
While Windows is a powerful operating system for productivity, so much of what we do with work these days revolves around the web. Whatever your browser of choice — Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Brave, or any of the more contemporary options — there’s a decent chance you spend a fair amount of your workday working with apps inside that environment.
That’s fine: I recommend using the right tool for the job, whatever that is. And often, it’s a web app! But when nearly every application you use exists in a browser tab within a single desktop window, you’re missing out on some of Windows’ most powerful productivity advantages.
So consider this: What if all those web apps you rely on were integrated into Windows — with their own desktop windows, taskbar icons, and more? What if they worked with the Windows taskbar, Alt+Tab switcher, Task View, and Snap?
It’s something you can make happen in just a few clicks — if you know the tricks.
Many popular web apps now offer official Windows versions, too. It sounds a little obvious, but this wasn’t always as common as it is today. You may have started using a web-based tool when it was available only in a browser, but it may work nicely on your Windows desktop today without any real effort other than taking the time to find the right option.
For example, at our email newsletter-focused small business The Intelligence, we use applications like Notion for documents, Trello for planning, and Microsoft Designer to whip up the occasional piece of AI art. These are normally thought of as web apps, but every single one of them offers an installable Windows desktop application — and I’ve linked the desktop versions in that list.
For file and photo storage, of course, services like Google Drive and even Apple iCloud offer downloadable Windows apps.
And yes, whether you’re using Windows 11 or Windows 10, many of those installable apps are still based on web technologies. But they don’t have to be confined to a browser tab, and going with the “app” version gives you an even richer and more integrated experience.
When in doubt, search the Microsoft Store app for an application or check out its official website for a Windows desktop download.
Windows web app trick #2: Instant install
Even if an official download isn’t available, you can turn any web page into an “app,” complete with its own dedicated window, taskbar icon, desktop shortcut, and Start menu shortcut. This is particularly useful for strictly web-based applications like Gmail, which you might want to keep just a single click away.
All you need is Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, or some other Chromium-based browsers. (Unfortunately, Mozilla Firefox doesn’t offer this feature.)
In Google Chrome, first head to the web page you want to use as an app — like Gmail.com, for example. Then, click the menu button, point to “Cast, save, and share,” and select the “Install page as app” option.
In Microsoft Edge, head to the page you want to transform into an app and click menu > Apps > Install this site as an app.
Some pages offer the option to be installed as progressive web apps (PWAs). If you try this same process on such a page, you’ll see a slightly different “Install” option. PWAs often offer more features, like offline support — and they similarly transform the website into its own unique window, with a more native-app-like feel that’ll be right at home on your Windows PC.
With Gmail in its own window, you won’t have to hunt down your email in a browser tab again.
Chris Hoffman, IDG
Windows web app trick #3: The alternate route
While you could give Gmail and Google Calendar their own taskbar icons using the trick we just went over, you also have another option: You could access things like your email and calendar events by pulling their data into other dedicated desktop apps.
There’s no shortage of available native-to-Windows options, but the new Outlook is built right into the Windows operating system you’re using — and it works seamlessly with Gmail and Google Calendar. The classic and once-again-under-development Mozilla Thunderbird application works with both Gmail and Google Calendar, too.
By bringing your web-centric data into any such application, you can then read your emails, get desktop notifications, and send emails right from the native Windows app environment. Unfortunately, Outlook will only let you view Google Calendar events, but Mozilla Thunderbird will let you modify your Google Calendar, too.
While I’m focusing on Gmail here, you could also add mail and calendar from Apple iCloud or Yahoo to these applications. You’d get a more desktop-style email experience complete with offline access.
Microsoft’s new Outlook email app supports a variety of email accounts.
Chris Hoffman, IDG
Windows web app trick #4: The third-party path
Beyond the big names, your Windows PC supports an array of less well-known native apps that can also do the job and let you work with web-centric data in a Windows app environment. For example, the Fantastical calendar application that was long popular on Macs is now available on Windows PCs. If you use quite a few different calendars and want them all in one powerful application, the $57 per year it costs may be well worth it — particularly for professional purposes. I’ve heard so many good things from Mac users about this application over the years.
Windows 10 had a very nice calendar feature: It would show your calendar events when you clicked the clock, and that worked with Google Calendar. This feature is missing in action on Windows 11 and was lost in the operating system transition, but for $4 you can get the similar Calendar Flyout application for convenient access to Google Calendar and Microsoft-powered calendar events, too. It adds a handy icon to your system tray for easy viewing and clicking. My colleague JR Raphael of Android Intelligence fame says it looks and works exactly as described — and is quite nice to use!
The point: There’s a whole universe of applications that can better integrate whatever web apps and services you use with Windows. You’ll just need to do a little digging to find the right ones for you.
Windows web app trick #5: The browser tune-up
At the end of the day, there’s nothing wrong with using web apps in your browser — if that’s really how you prefer it. You may go full circle playing with the other options here and conclude that some applications just work best in a traditional browser tab. But there’s still a lot you can do with a browser-tab-based app to turn it into an even more effective productivity tool.
For example, some web applications offer offline support, even while running in your browser. (While many people wonder why offline support is so necessary these days, I like the knowledge that I can always use applications on my laptop even if an airplane’s Wi-Fi isn’t working properly, if there’s some kind of connection blip, or if I’m out and about in an area without readily available internet access.)
Google’s web applications have powerful offline features, but you have to go out of your way to activate them.
Chris Hoffman, IDG
Web applications like Gmail and Google Calendar can also be set as your PC’s default applications for their respective purposes. That means whenever you click an email address on the web or in any other program on your computer, Windows will automatically open a new email draft with that address present within Gmail in Google Chrome. Gmail will normally ask you to set this up when you start using it, so you may have already granted it default email client status.
Beyond that, it’s a good idea to bookmark web apps you use regularly within your browser’s bookmarks toolbar for easy ongoing access. That way, you can get to those quickly by pressing Ctrl+Shift+B from anywhere on the web.
You may also want to pin especially common applications like Gmail so they’re always ready to go. Check out my collection of Windows browser tab tricks for even more ideas!
Get Windows knowledge in your inbox with my free Windows Intelligence newsletter — three new things to try every Friday and free in-depth Windows Field Guides as soon as you sign up.
Ah, the holidays. No matter what manner of winter celebration you prefer (I’m a Festivus man myself), late December is a fine time for kickin’ back and collecting your thoughts for the coming year.
That means it’s also a fine time for contemplating that crazy little computer in your pocket and the steps you can take to make it even more powerful — ’cause guess what? A few minutes of tuning up now will make your life measurably easier throughout all of 2025. Think of it as a gift to yourself — one that keeps on giving and, best of all, doesn’t cost you a single dime.
In case you missed any of ’em the first go-round or maybe just didn’t have the time to try everything out, here are some of my favorite productivity-boosting Android tips from Android Intelligence in 2024.
So pour yourself some cocoa, polish up the ol’ Festivus pole, and give yourself the gift of finely tuned technology — and be sure to sign yourself up for my free Android Intelligence newsletter, too, so you can get my best Android tips in your inbox all year round (and get a free copy of my awesome Android Notification Power-Pack the second you sign up!).
Google’s next big Android version has an extremely useful new nuisance-reducer — and with a teensy bit of crafty configuration, you can bring a similar superpower to any Android device this instant.
These out-of-sight Android shortcuts can make you meaningfully more efficient — if you (a) figure out how to tap into their full potential and (b) remember to use ’em.
We all love getting new gadgets, but what to do with the old ones? Here are 25 clever ways to put all your old Android phones and tablets to good use, too.
Thanks as always for reading, and happy holidays to you and yours!
Ah, the holidays. No matter what manner of winter celebration you prefer (I’m a Festivus man myself), late December is a fine time for kickin’ back and collecting your thoughts for the coming year.
That means it’s also a fine time for contemplating that crazy little computer in your pocket and the steps you can take to make it even more powerful — ’cause guess what? A few minutes of tuning up now will make your life measurably easier throughout all of 2025. Think of it as a gift to yourself — one that keeps on giving and, best of all, doesn’t cost you a single dime.
In case you missed any of ’em the first go-round or maybe just didn’t have the time to try everything out, here are some of my favorite productivity-boosting Android tips from Android Intelligence in 2024.
So pour yourself some cocoa, polish up the ol’ Festivus pole, and give yourself the gift of finely tuned technology — and be sure to sign yourself up for my free Android Intelligence newsletter, too, so you can get my best Android tips in your inbox all year round (and get a free copy of my awesome Android Notification Power-Pack the second you sign up!).
Google’s next big Android version has an extremely useful new nuisance-reducer — and with a teensy bit of crafty configuration, you can bring a similar superpower to any Android device this instant.
These out-of-sight Android shortcuts can make you meaningfully more efficient — if you (a) figure out how to tap into their full potential and (b) remember to use ’em.
We all love getting new gadgets, but what to do with the old ones? Here are 25 clever ways to put all your old Android phones and tablets to good use, too.
Thanks as always for reading, and happy holidays to you and yours!
Apple has been accused of knowingly financing a trade characterized by atrocities in criminal litigation launched by the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). It relates to use of so-called “blood minerals” in its devices.
While Apple will be the first tech firm to be targeted, it is unlikely to be the last, given that every digital device makes use of these materials.
The accusations reflect an unfortunate truth: that to some extent, the digital world and the devices used to drive it are built on slavery and other forms of human misery.
That’s the take-home message at the heart of the litigation. It claims Apple’s supply chain is contaminated by “blood minerals” (also called “conflict minerals”) sourced in sub-Saharan Africa. Criminal complaints have been filed against subsidiaries of Apple in France and Belgium. In its complaint, the DRC argues that by enabling such contamination within its supply chain, Apple is contributing to atrocities taking place across the region.
What exactly are blood minerals?
They are rare materials, in this case including tin, tantalum, and tungsten, that are extracted by various forms of coerced labor, including slave and child labor, at mines controlled by armed groups in eastern Congo. These materials are in enormous demand across tech.
To understand the vast suffering generated by the hugely profitable trade, it is important to note that the region has an estimated $24 trillion value of these materials remaining to be tapped — and also has one of the world’s poorest populations. Blood minerals fuel instability and conflict, with armed groups using the profits to purchase weapons, creating a never-ending cycle of violence and misery. Millions have died as a result of the ongoing conflict. This is far from being a new problem.
While attempts have been made to mitigate this trade by use of various verification schemes, it remains highly possible that at least one and possibly all of the electronic objects that you use contain at least some minerals sourced from this exploitation.
After all, tin, tantalum, and tungsten are used in solder, semiconductors, batteries, memory, RF filters, and microprocessors, all of which you’ll find in almost any digital device.
Most manufacturers have adopted some form of policy concerning the trade. In fact, the denials of any involvement in the mining and use of conflict minerals are so strong you’d be forgiven for wondering how the trade actually makes any money. But that plausible deniability may not be all it seems.
Apple perhaps not the biggest culprit
While it is the whipping horse for this litigation, Apple may not be the biggest culprit. Eager to be recognized for its “values,” Apple has made big commitments to responsible sourcing, saying that while it doesn’t source materials directly, it does require its suppliers to source materials responsibly.
“In 2023, 100 percent of the identified tin, tantalum, tungsten, gold (3TG), cobalt, and lithium smelters and refiners in Apple’s supply chain completed assessments to verify compliance with our standards,” the company said last year. “We work with third-party audit programs at an industry-wide level to identify environmental and social, and governance risks at the smelter, refiner, and mining levels.”
The company also sits on the steering committee of the Responsible Minerals Initiative (RMI).
Apple will presumably soon publish its 2024 Conflict Minerals Report, as required by the SEC. Its last report covering 2023 appeared in March 2024. In it, Apple confirmed that it removed 14 smelters and refiners unwilling to face an audit to ensure lack of involvement in the conflict minerals trade. The company has cut ties with 25 manufacturing supplier facilities and 231 suppliers since 2009.
“We view removing a supplier from our supply chain as a last resort, because in our experience, it does not provide workers with needed remedy and could allow violations to continue elsewhere in the industry,” Apple said in its report.
“Based on our due diligence efforts, including analyzing the information provided by third-party audit programs, upstream traceability programs, and our suppliers, we found no reasonable basis for concluding that any of the smelters or refiners of [tin, tungsten, tantalum, and gold] determined to be in our supply chain as of December 31, 2023, directly or indirectly financed or benefited armed groups in the DRC or an adjoining country,” that report said.
A reliance on systemic wrongdoing?
The DRC’s litigation doesn’t buy some of Apple’s arguments, claiming instead that the company is using them to mask the damage it is doing.
In a press release supplied by Amsterdam & Partners, the litigants claim Apple uses minerals laundered through international supply chains. It is also accused of “using deceptive commercial practices to assure consumers that the tech giant’s supply chains are clean.”
Reuters reports that the complaint filed in France states, “It is clear that the Apple group, Apple France and Apple Retail France know very well that their minerals supply chain relies on systemic wrongdoing.”
The claim points to Apple’s use of the International Tin Supply Chain Initiative (ITSCI), arguing that Apple is using the discredited monitoring and certification scheme to falsely claim its supply chain is clean. The RMI — a group Apple helps steer — rejected ITSCI two years ago.
The criminal complaint cites research from the United Nations, US State Department, and international NGOs that shows an extensive laundering enterprise through the illegal trade in conflict minerals sourced from Congolese territory.
“These organizations have demonstrated the dependent nature of relationships between perpetrators of this looting and some of the biggest producers of consumer electronics, such as mobile telephones and computers, and companies in the automotive, aviation and renewable energy sectors,” the press release explains.
A need for a united front
That may be true, and Apple may be able to defend itself using the same argument.
To truly combat this trade, a true industry-wide commitment must be reached, regulated or self-regulated. In its absence, conflict laundering will continue to be a problem.
Paula Pyers, Apple’s then Senior Director of Supply Chain Social Responsibility, said as much in 2017: “If more companies do not come to the table to press for change through their own supply chains, particularly in the absence of regulation, the types of systemic change we are all seeking are frankly not going to occur.”
Ultimately, the situation is hard to clarify, in part because alongside the conflict minerals there are also thousands of informal small-scale mines and miners, with some of the world’s poorest people taking great risks to make some money. Corruption and instability at some otherwise ‘clean’ mining sites means conflict minerals can still get into the system, making it next to impossible to deliver a cast-iron guarantee.
The inability to make that guarantee forms part of the argument the DRC is making in this case.
However, it also forms part of Apple’s counter-argument, giving it the power to say that it is already doing everything it can to combat the trade using what resources it has available.
The truth of that argument will be for the courts to decide.
Putting them out of business
The biggest way to prevent any illicit trade is simply to stop using the products based on it.
Its most recent Environmental Progress Report promises that cobalt, tin soldering, gold plating, and rare earth elements will all be 100% recycled by 2025. Already, “more than 99 percent of the tungsten in our products comes from recycled sources,” the company said.
While the criminal lawsuit against Apple may generate problems, it may also give the company a podium from which to promote the need for a more unified approach to policing the trade in blood minerals. It will certainly give it a pulpit from which to preach its move to recycled components and work toward a circular manufacturing system.
What the truth of the matter turns out to be will be for the courts to decide.
You can do a lot more with generative AI (genAI) in Google Sheets than get help writing spreadsheet formulas. Thanks to extensions such as Claude for Sheets, you can also do things like:
Determine whether text sentiment is positive, negative, or neutral
Classify text into categories
Extract email addresses, phone numbers, and other entities from plain text
And you can do this without having to write computer code in a language like Python.
Instead, you only need spreadsheet formulas as simple as:
=claudeExtract("sentiment of positive, negative, or neutral", A2)
Let’s see how to implement some of these use cases with the help of Claude for Sheets, an add-on for Google Sheets offered by Anthropic, maker of the Claude family of large language models (LLMs).
Just remember:
LLMs aren’t always accurate. The more important your task, the more effort you should put into checking Claude’s results.
Think twice about sending sensitive data to an LLM. If it’s corporate data, follow company policies.
Claude for Sheets costs money to use. It’s a pretty trivial amount for moderate amounts of text, but understand the pricing if you’ve got a massive data set. (Although for a lot of data, performance will be slow and you’re probably better off with another solution.) More on pricing in a bit.
Claude for Sheets setup
You’ll need two things in addition to a Google account in order to run Claude for Sheets: an Anthropic API key and the Claude for Sheets extension.
You can get an Anthropic API key by creating a free account. Once you log in, your dashboard home page should show an option to create API keys.
You can request an API key from the Anthropic dashboard home page.
Sharon Machlis / IDG
Click the button to create a key and heed the warning to copy your API key (just a string of characters) when it appears — once you close that dialog box, you won’t be able to access it again on the Anthropic website. Store the key securely, just as you would a password.
You’ll likely need to add some money to your Anthropic account before you can use the Claude API. You shouldn’t need much unless you’re uploading a lot of data. (I added $20 months ago and still have more than half left — and I’ve coded public-facing apps using Claude in addition to playing with Sheets.)
You need to set up Claude for Sheets in each spreadsheet where you want to use it. Create a new Google spreadsheet and go to Extensions > Claude for Sheets > Open Sidebar. Then click on the sidebar’s hamburger menu (three horizonal lines), choose Settings, and click on API provider. You want to choose Anthropic. Enter your API key where it says the key is missing.
Choose a default model to use in Claude for Sheets. Haiku is the smallest and least expensive.
Sharon Machlis / IDG
As of this writing, Haiku costs 80 cents per million tokens in and $4 per million tokens out. One million tokens is roughly 4 million characters or 750,000 English words. The priciest and most powerful model, Opus, is $15 per million input and $75 per million output. The middle model, Claude 3.5 Sonnet, is $3/M in and $15/M out.
Whatever you choose as the default model for a spreadsheet, you can override it by specifying a different model in the formulas you create, as we’ll see in the examples below.
Case 1: Sentiment analysis
Start by entering the text you want to analyze in your A column. I entered the following five sample “review” text blurbs into my spreadsheet’s A column (ReviewText), one item per row:
ReviewText
Sentiment
The new iPad Mini 7 has a great display, speedy response, and is light enough to hold for long periods of time. It’s a significant upgrade from my old (ancient?) iPad 5. My lone nit is that the form factor is thicker and less sleek now due to the change in connectors, but I’m still glad I upgraded.
This desktop computer has a better processor and can handle much more demanding tasks such as running LLMs locally. However, it’s also noisy and comes with a lot of bloatware.
The charger is affordable and does exactly what I want.
This charger doesn’t work like I expected.
This charger seems like a great value – until you try to use it. The connection is flakey and my device often ends up not fully charged overnight.
In column B (Sentiment) — more specifically, in cell B2 next to my first text item, I added the formula
=claudeExtract("sentiment analysis of 'positive', 'negative', or 'neutral’", A2, "claude-3-5-haiku-latest", "temperature", 0)
And then I clicked and dragged the formula down the rest of the rows next to cells with text.
Here’s an explanation of the formula.
=claudeExtract uses the syntax claudeExtract(property, text, model, argumentValuePairs)
Property is defined in the help file as “The property to extract from the text, e.g. ‘phone’.” For this case, I used a property of “sentiment analysis of ‘positive’, ‘negative’, or ‘neutral’” since that’s what I want Claude to extract from my text.
Text is my source cell location. If my first row of text is in cell A2, text value will be cell A2. Clicking and dragging the formula down the rest of the column applies it appropriately to the other text cells.
Although I chose a default model in Claude for Sheets main settings, I specified a model in the formula too so I could add optional arguments at the end of the formula. Google Sheets formulas don’t like it if you skip expected parameters when adding more at the end. Anthropic’s Model names documentation helpfully lists the specific syntax to use in formulas for each of its available models. In this case I chose claude-3-5-haiku-latest — which specifies the latest available version of the Claude 3.5 Haiku model.
The one optional argument I added was to set the model’s temperature to 0. An LLM’s temperature tells it how much randomness to use. Should it opt for the most likely result again and again (low temperature) or try to mix things up a bit (higher temperature)?
It’s sometimes helpful to view temperature as a measure of model “creativity.” Higher temperature can be nice when chatting with an LLM, so it doesn’t sound robotic and repetitive. However, for technical tasks, “more likely to be accurate” is a better idea than “be creative,” and that means lower temperatures. Anthropic advises: “For multiple-choice or analytical tasks, you’ll want [temperature] close to 0.”
Note: This ability to set model parameters like temperature is one advantage of using the LLM’s API via a spreadsheet or computer programming instead of a free chatbot without granular temperature control.
Results
Below is Claude’s sentiment analysis on my sample text. I agreed with all of them:
Haiku: Sentiment analysis
ReviewText
Sentiment
The new iPad Mini 7 has a great display, speedy response, and is light enough to hold for long periods of time. It’s a significant upgrade from my old (ancient?) iPad 5. My lone nit is that the form factor is thicker and less sleek now due to the change in connectors, but I’m still glad I upgraded.
positive
This desktop computer has a better processor and can handle much more demanding tasks such as running LLMs locally. However, it’s also noisy and comes with a lot of bloatware.
neutral
The charger is affordable and does exactly what I want.
positive
This charger doesn’t work like I expected.
negative
This charger seems like a great value – until you try to use it. The connection is flakey and my device often ends up not fully charged overnight.
negative
Two important tips:
If you see errors or delays in some cells, you can ask Claude for Sheets to recalculate those by opening the Claude extension’s dropdown menu (Extensions > Claude for Sheets) and clicking on Recalculate all “DEFERRED / THROTTLED / #ERROR! Cells.
Claude may not finish all your spreadsheet calculations in one pass. If that happens, you can ask it to recalculate cells with missing values via the Extensions menu.
Sharon Machlis / IDG
To keep results from updating — which might change them and costs more API money — copy and paste the column values only (excluding the formulas) to a new column and then delete the original column with formulas. Anthropic says Claude for Sheets results are cached for a week, so opening the spreadsheet again after a week may cause everything to recalculate.
Case 2: Text classification into categories
For this test, I took a few social media posts about the R programming language (often used for data analysis), genAI tools, and other topics — some modified to try to make the topics slightly less obvious — and asked Claude to categorize them as Data, Generative AI, Security & Privacy, or Other.
I used the same workflow as above, just changing the formula’s property text using natural language instructions:
=claudeExtract("one or more categories among 'Data', 'Generative AI', 'Security & Privacy'. If more than one apply, include all. If none apply, say 'Other'.", A2, "claude-3-5-haiku-latest", "temperature", 0)
Results weren’t bad but were imperfect. The Haiku model didn’t apply both Security & Privacy and Generative AI to the text about LLM vulnerabilities, and it didn’t know that R involves data.
Haiku: Text categorization
Kyle has some great resources for using the GIS data sets he mentions, especially “Analyzing US Census Data: Methods, Maps, and Models in R” and the tidycensus package
data
OpenAI today announced new model 4o — basically 4o preview out of preview — it says is better and faster than the preview version. And multimodal. Also a new “pro” tier for ChatGPT and its 4o model, at an eye-popping $200/month.
generative ai
An Introduction to R is a free online book by several professors (Univ of Aberdeen, Danish Technical Univ) and R practitioners that aims to, well, introduce you to using R. If you teach R, feel free to use some or all of the content in this book [with attribution]”. https://intro2r.com
other
Prompt injection and supply chain vulnerabilities remain the main LLM vulnerabilities but as the technology evolves new risks come to light including system prompt leakage and misinformation. https://www.csoonline.com/article/575497/owasp-lists-10-most-critical-large-language-model-vulnerabilities.html
security & privacy
This story “tracked thousands of US military & intel personnel coming & going from classified sites, incl. NSA hubs & nuclear vaults. We know where they sleep, what they eat, and which brothels they visit. It’s an ocean of blackmail & national secrets within reach of every spy agency in the world.”
data,security & privacy
“Logging on to Bluesky for the first time felt a bit like walking into your apartment after a professional deep clean. The layout is the same, as are the appliances and furniture. But it just felt good to be there. I wanted to hang out.”
other
When I tried with the Sonnet model (by swapping in claude-3-5-sonnet-latest as the model name), it did apply both categories to the LLM security text but also couldn’t recognize the R blurb as being data-related. The Opus model (claude-3-opus-latest) didn’t know R is data-related either.
My conclusion on categorizing text after this and other experiments: Either the text needs to be fairly straightforward about topics, or the prompt should include specific instructions about phrases likely to show up in your data that the LLM doesn’t know how to classify. In other words, experiment a bit and add examples or more detailed explanations when needed. When I added “Text about the R programming language is topic Data.” to the end of my prompt’s property text, Haiku applied “data” to my R-related posts.
Case 3: Entity extraction
I used some sample text to test extracting email addresses and phone numbers. The text was originally generated by a chatbot (Perplexity), and I modified it a bit. I then added that text to a new tab on the spreadsheet, and inserted the following formulas in columns B and C:
The team is at marketing@company.com and (914) 737-9938. Headquarters is @ 512 Main St.
914-737-9938
marketing@company.com
John Smith from accounting (j.smith@business.net) will be out of office until Friday. For urgent matters, reach him at 888-555-9012.
888-555-9012
j.smith@business.net
Contact support: help_desk@tech.org or 1-800-555-3456 Technical issues? sarah.tech@company.com For appointments: +1 (444) 867-5309
1-800-555-3456, +1 (444) 867-5309
help_desk@tech.org, sarah.tech@company.com
Meeting notes from yesterday: – Dave (d.wilson@dept.com) will handle the project – Marketing team contact: marketing@company.com / 555.777.8888 – Emergency line: 911-555-0123
555.777.8888, 911-555-0123
d.wilson@dept.com, marketing@company.com
Please forward any invoices to billing@finance.com or fax to (777) 555-0147
777-555-0147
billing@finance.com
Trying to extract company names was tougher, since it’s a lot easier to spot phone number and email address patterns than to know the difference between a company name and a product name.
I tested company and product extraction with some recent headlines and summaries from Computerworld’s home page, asking simply for “companies” and “products” in my formulas. Haiku’s results:
Haiku: Company and product name extraction
Text
Companies
Products
10 steps to smarter Google account security Give yourself some added peace of mind by giving your Google account a thorough set of security reinforcements, both on Android and your desktop.
Google
Google account, Android, desktop
How ChatGPT works with iOS 18.2 iPhones and Siri Apple Intelligence is about to receive its first important update — introducing ChatGPT access.
ChatGPT, iOS, Apple, Siri
ChatGPT, iOS 18.2 iPhones, Siri, Apple Intelligence
OECD: GenAI is affecting jobs previously thought safe from automation Though the technology will likely lead to new jobs, they may not benefit those who lost work due to automation.
OECD
GenAI
Microsoft moves to stop M365 Copilot from ‘oversharing’ data The generative AI assistant can surface sensitive information in over-permissioned files, a growing concern for businesses testing the technology. Microsoft is adding new features to SharePoint and Purview to make it easier to control what the tool can access.
Microsoft
Microsoft 365 Copilot, SharePoint, Purview
It was a bit disappointing that Haiku tagged ChatGPT, iOS, and Siri as companies. Sonnet did better on that one overall but worse on the last listing, adding two products as companies along with Microsoft:
Sonnet: Company and product name extraction
Text
Companies
Products
10 steps to smarter Google account security Give yourself some added peace of mind by giving your Google account a thorough set of security reinforcements, both on Android and your desktop.
Google
Google account
How ChatGPT works with iOS 18.2 iPhones and Siri Apple Intelligence is about to receive its first important update — introducing ChatGPT access.
Apple
iOS 18.2, iPhones, Siri, ChatGPT
OECD: GenAI is affecting jobs previously thought safe from automation Though the technology will likely lead to new jobs, they may not benefit those who lost work due to automation.
OECD
GenAI
Microsoft moves to stop M365 Copilot from ‘oversharing’ data The generative AI assistant can surface sensitive information in over-permissioned files, a growing concern for businesses testing the technology. Microsoft is adding new features to SharePoint and Purview to make it easier to control what the tool can access.
Microsoft, SharePoint, Purview
M365 Copilot, SharePoint, Purview
When I tried the pricey Opus model, it got rows 2-4 correct but added Android as a company on the first row. My conclusion: I either need to give these models better prompts and more examples for a task like this or tolerate some inaccuracies.
However, models continue to improve, and a task that’s beyond their capabilities now may work better a few months down the road.
For the sake of comparison, I gave all this text to OpenAI’s new o1 model in the ChatGPT Plus chatbot and asked it to extract products. Those results were better: o1 correctly identified Google account, Android, ChatGPT, iOS 18.2, iPhones, Siri, M365 Copilot, SharePoint, and Purview as products.
And it was the only model to extract just Google, Apple, and Microsoft as “companies” — OECD, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, is not technically a company. When I asked o1 to extract both companies and organizations, it responded: Google (company), Apple (company), OECD (organization), and Microsoft (company).
(OpenAI doesn’t have its own extension for Google Sheets, although there are some paid third-party applications.)
Meanwhile, though, if you can tolerate some imperfect results and less than top-speed performance, you can start doing LLM-based natural language processing right within a spreadsheet. As Ethan Mollick, author of Co-Intelligence: Living and Working with AI, advised on Bluesky recently:
“I think firms worrying about AI hallucination should consider some questions:
1) How vital is 100% accuracy on a task?
2) How accurate is AI?
3) How accurate is the human who would do it?
4) How do you know 2 & 3?
5) How do you deal with the fact that humans are not 100%?
AI is everywhere, but from where I sit, there are some strong signals that suggest the road to AI Everywhere is going to be a long-distance endurance race, rather than a sprint.
While these tools are seeing a lot of use since ChatGPT burst upon the scene, they are also generating lots of cost — and despite all the marketing, it still isn’t really clear if consumers are buying hardware based on ‘AI Inside.’ (Though it is already clear that workers are using AI in the shadows).
Even iPhone users — usually the fastest adopters of cutting-edge tech — seem to want convincing that AI is all it’s cracked up to be.
It’s almost as if people purchasing these products are a little turned off by a technology that threatens to destroy their employment, exacerbate wealth inequalities, and supercharge surveillance advertising in exchange for email summaries and a search engine powerful enough to help you file your next welfare benefit claim.
A recent survey of 2,000 US smartphone users by trade-in site SellCell found that 73% of iPhone users and 87% of Samsung users say the AI features they have been provided with in the latest software updates are adding little or no value. Samsung introduced its first genAI smartphone in March this year, while Apple rolled out Apple Intelligence with iOS 18.1 in October.
The survey was taken before Apple introduced iOS 18.2, and while it can’t be seen as representative, I think it shows that the expectation that AI will somehow deliver a big bump in device and PC sales may be misplaced — though server sales will see a big spike as service providers and businesses implement AI in their systems.
This doesn’t mean iPhone users aren’t interested in AI. Among iOS users who responded to the SellCell survey, 47.6% called it “key” in choosing a new phone; just 23.7% of Samsung users felt the same way. It may also matter that 21.1% of smartphone users already see AI as a very important deciding factor when choosing a new device.
What are the most popular AI features on phones?
While the survey does show there’s some journey to go before the promise of AI resonates fully with its audience, it also reveals which of the features made available in iOS 18.1 (pre-Genmoji) most interested users: Writing Tools (72%), Notification summaries (54%), Priority Messages (44.5%), Clean Up in Photos (29.1%), and Smart Reply in Mail and Messages (20.9%).
For comparison, Samsung AI users checked out thusly: Circle to Search (82.1%), Photo Assist (55.5%), Chat Assist (28.8%), Note Assist (17.4%), and Browsing Assist (11.6%).
It’s clear that Apple’s decision to Sherlock Grammarly (and do it privately) has given the company its most attractive suite of AI tools. People like tools that help them do everyday things better, it seems.
That desire for enhanced productivity is also what is driving employees to use AI services for their work, sometimes to the detriment of security policies and customer privacy.
At this stage in AI deployment, consumers still need convincing, and companies still need time to think about how best to deploy the tech — though a recent CCS Insight survey of business leaders showed that 82% are in the process of deployment. We are early in the mass adoption curve, and in that environment, taking a cautious and deliberate stance to adoption seems to be the best way to avoid falling into any unexpected disasters. Which is, oddly enough, how Apple has been approaching the topic since the get-go.
Will you pay for AI?
While I don’t see platform-wide AI as anything like the same animal as the fast-growing assemblage of customized focused AI services for specific industries and tasks, it still feels like the opportunity to monetize general purpose mass-market AI services remains some way off.
Apple users are a little more ready.
They are a lot more likely to consider investing in AI subscriptions (which may yet justify OpenAI’s gamble to offer its services through Apple’s kit), but subscription is a trickle, rather than a flood. The survey tells us 11.6% of them are likely to pay for a subscription to use AI services, in contrast to just 4% of Samsung users.
However, most smartphone users (86.5% of iPhone users and 94.5% of Samsung users) said they would not pay to use AI.
The decision seems pretty polarized in that just 1.9% of Apple users aren’t sure if they’d pay or not — in other words, there’s a pretty clear division between the two sides. That means the task of convincing people to adopt is already entirely based on showing those refuseniks compelling usage cases that help them come to terms with, trust, and develop the desire to use AI in some way.
Gathering the tribes
Eroding this resistance and bestowing these services with an increased perception of value will clearly be part of the product management journey for Apple AI, and every other kind of artificial intelligence. It may well be that as the uses of these tools become more widespread, people’s enthusiasm will increase. It is worth noting that at some point prior to the introduction of Apple Intelligence, some reports were claiming that some inside Apple themselves remained uncertain if the first echelon of tools to ship would resonate with consumers.
They may find themselves slightly relieved that while AI features don’t seem to grab the attention of every iPhone user, the ones who are making use of the tools seem pretty enthusiastic. iPhone users are also trying the new AI services as they appear, with 41.6% of those owning an iPhone that supports them confirming they’d used them, mostly writing tools, notification summaries, and priority messages.
What does this tell us?
I think it tells us that the current trend of just waving at a gadget that happens to support genAI and calling it an “AI smartphone” or an “AI PC” — or, in Apple’s case, a “complete mobile to PC AI ecosystem” — may need to be refined.
People need to feel more trust in these solutions, want to be convinced that potential damaging use is mitigated against, and most of all want applied use cases in which the tech can be applied in positive, life-enhancing ways. It’s also possible that the hype of AI is already behind us, and that now the search must shift to identifying those compelling instances in which the tech addresses significant human need.
