Siri-ously, It’s Gemini 🍏🤖

👀 TLDR

In this week’s What’s Appening, we cover the finalization of the deal between Apple and Google to let the latter power the former’s AI products, including the new AI Siri. We also look at Claude Cowork, which is making waves as an agentic tool for “regular people”. Our Stat of the Week looks at Meta’s gargantuan task to close down kids’ accounts in Australia, and our App of the Week might help you finish that lengthy tome. We have all the latest from 3Advance, too!

🎬 Our Top Take

🍏🤖 AI – Apple Taps Gemini While Claude Cowork Makes a Splash

The big story making the headlines this week is that Apple, after a long courtship, has finally settled on Google Gemini as its partner for the AI version of Siri (coming in late spring, we hear) and its other foundational models. It’s considered a big coup for Google, as OpenAI and Anthropic were both considered. Now, it’s just a case of waiting to see how the partnership pans out. While Apple’s big handshake with Google took most of the attention, we do want to highlight the rollout of Claude Cowork as a story with underrated significance. Claude Cowork is, in effect, a version of Claude Code for general computing. What that means is that it’s an AI agent for “regular people.” It works for a wide variety of tasks that most of us consider laborious. You might, for instance, give it access to a file with your business receipts and ask it to create a spreadsheet of your company’s expenses. What’s interesting is that Anthropic decided to release Cowork because it noticed that so many developers were using Claude Code for those very tasks, so it decided to release a version for people who don’t know their way around a coding database. We feel this is important because it’s one of the first examples we have seen for an AI agentic application that is truly suitable for normies. It’s just been a few days since Cowork’s release, but keep an eye on it because it feels like a consumer-friendly agentic breakthrough. #Coworking Read more here.

📲 App of the Week: Seriatim Reader

Do you find reading on a phone or iPad screen difficult? For many of us, text-heavy content on a small screen can look like a big splurge of words. Seriatim Reader has been making waves with its solution. Effectively, the app breaks down longer texts – like eBooks – and displays each sentence separately in a vertical, sentence-by-sentence feed that you swipe through. It claims to increase focus and concentration and to improve your reading habits by mimicking how your brain likes to see sentences formatted. So, now you have no excuse to put off finishing Wuthering Heights. The app is free, and it does not push in-app purchases (yay!). Get Seriatim for iOS here and Android here.

🧐 Stat of the Week: 550K Accounts

📈📉 Australia – Meta Hits Deactivate Button After Kids’ Social Media Ban

You get the sense that many politicians around the globe are viewing Australia as a kind of bellwether after its social media ban for U16s came into force. For Meta, though, it’s a question of how it goes about enforcing compliance. The social media powerhouse claims to have already deactivated 550,000 accounts that it believed were held by minors. Meta claims the process will be staggered, as it is a big undertaking. Platforms have also been required to check if users are trying to bypass using VPNs. #SocialExperiment Read more here.

🗞️ Other Stories

📍 Meanwhile at 3Advance

This week 3Advance is heading to Philly for the United Soccer Coaches Convention. It's the ultimate conference for soccer coaches and those serving the soccer community in the US. We’ll be meeting our friends at Teambuildr, Soccer Resort, Impact Soccer, and many more. The World Cup is coming and we can’t wait to see what everyone’s got planning. If you’re headed to USCC, make sure to give us a shout!