Chat-GPT comes to the iPhone with this fantastic Shortcut

You can now integrate Chat-GPT with the apps and data on your iPhone and it's incredible.

Apr 17, 2023

It's hard to think of a technology development that happened as quickly as Chat-GPT. It's as though the world suddenly became aware of large language models (LLMs) and wants to integrate them everywhere. Obviously, it didn't happen overnight, but the public's awareness of generative AI sure seems as though it did.

The thing is, for the most part, Chat-GPT has been limited by the fact that people really have no idea what to do with it. Sure it's entertaining to ask a robot to write you a poem or tell you a story, but that's not necessarily useful. It certainly won't make you more productive.

Now, however, with a clever Shortcut, you can integrate Chat-GPT with the apps and services on your iPhone or Mac and it's amazing. I spoke with Federico Viticci, who is the Editor-in-Chief at MacStories.net, and the creator of the Shortcut, known as S-GPT.

"I saw that a lot of people had put together these shortcuts called like Siri-GPT--or something along those lines--to just talk to Siri and use shortcuts to have conversations," Viticci told me. "And, I thought that was cool. Ultimately, I get the appeal, but I kind of felt like there should have been something a little more than that."

The point is that while it's fun that you might be able to ask Chat-GPT to write you a poem, you don't need a shortcut for that. It's just doing the same thing in a different interface. S-GPT changes that completely.

That's because where this technology is really useful is when you use it integrated with your own data and information. Microsoft is doing exactly this with Copilot, which will, say, take a marketing presentation and turn it into a Powerpoint presentation. With S-GPT, however, you can unleash the capabilities on your iPhone.

Here's how Viticci describes the shortcut on his website:

More than a simple bot to have a conversation with ChatGPT in Shortcuts, I set out to create a tool that would connect ChatGPT responses to native iOS, iPadOS, macOS, and watchOS functionalities. I wanted to create a ChatGPT-based utility that would help you process your data and make things happen on your computer rather than simply answer trivia questions or write poems.

So, for example, you can use it to summarize a webpage in Safari or to check the grammar of an email simply by copying it to the clipboard on your iPhone. You could also ask it to look at your calendar and help you schedule a meeting by telling you which days are most busy. You can even use it to summarize text from a photo using Apple's Live Text feature. One of the most fun capabilities is that you can ask it to create a playlist of, say, the most popular songs from the year you graduated high school and it will add it to Apple Music for you.

Viticci says he spent a few weeks working on the shortcut, which has more than 250 actions. As shortcuts go, this one is incredibly involved. And, he says he's already working on future changes.

For example, with integration with the Mail app, you could take a photo of handwritten notes from a meeting, use S-GPT to read the text using Apple's Live Text feature, then summarize your notes and send them as an email to a colleague.

While Viticci says that he doesn't have any analytics built into the shortcut, and can't know exactly how many people have installed it, more than 50,000 people have clicked the download link.

"The response has been incredible," Viticci says. "I've been making shortcuts for eight or nine years, at this point. And, there have been some pretty successful ones. But, this one, I don't know if it's like a cultural zeitgeist thing at the moment...but it's been very surprising."

To be clear, setting up this shortcut does involve a few steps. First, you have to have at least a basic understanding of using Shortcuts on your devices. If that's foreign to you, I strongly recommend reading through Apple's official guide to get a basic understanding.

Once you've downloaded S-GPT, you need an API Secret Key from OpenAi. Viticci explains it all in his article about the shortcut, but you get one by visiting OpenAI's developer site and setting up billing. You will have to pay for queries with the API, but even if you use it a lot, the cost is very minimal (as in, I've been using it regularly for a few days, and literally haven't even spent a penny).

There are two things I love about S-GPT. The first is obvious, which is that it's incredibly useful and brings the power of Chat-GPT to your iPhone and other Apple devices in a way that hasn't existed.

The other is that Viticci saw something that was happening and figured out how to make that technology useful. He would admit that he doesn't know how to write code, but he is a Shortcuts guru and figured out how to make the thing he knows do what he wanted. Not only that, but he's sharing it with anyone who wants to download it and use it for themselves

"The main shortcut is always free, it will remain free for everyone," says Viticci who says he is also working on offering more advanced paid integrations that will be available.

"It will always have a lot of like free functionality in terms of integrations, but maybe some of the more advanced integrations or plugins--as I call them--maybe some of those will be paid plugins," he told me. "So, for example, I have a bunch of personalities that you can unlock with the membership program, one talks like Steve Jobs, one talks like Roy Kent from Ted Lasso, one talks like Super Mario."

That might be my favorite part. I mean, who doesn't want their S-GPT shortcut to talk to them like Roy Kent? Just because it's a productivity game-changer, doesn't mean it can't also be fun.

You can download S-GPT from MacStories.net.

Amazon Charging for Returns

One thing that has always been true about Amazon is that it tries to take the friction out of ordering things online, to make it easier than, say, going to a store to buy the same product. In some ways, this core principle might have been the single biggest reason Amazon became the world's largest online retailer.

Take free shipping, for example. When Amazon started out, paying extra to have goods delivered to your doorstep was a major pain point for people. Who would want to shop online and wait for something to show up a few days or weeks later, especially if you had to pay $8 or $12 in shipping for a $20 order? Free shipping became the default expectation for consumers because that's what it took to get people to shop online in a significant way.

Now, however, Amazon is making a surprising change. The company will now charge a $1.00 fee to drop off returns at a UPS Store. Technically, the charge only applies if there is an alternative within the same distance. So, for example, if you live near a Kohl's or Whole Foods Store, you'll be able to drop it off there for free, but would have to pay the fee to drop your return at a UPS Store.

Obviously, Amazon would prefer you never return anything. Returns are an expensive part of retail, and Amazon has been trying to cut costs. Recently, it has started to identify some items on its website as "frequently returned," the idea being that warning customers about items that often get returned may nudge them toward a different item instead.

My point is that Amazon is now charging customers to do something that had always been free.

Warren Buffett says you’ll never give up your iPhone, not even for $10,000

In every way you can measure it, the iPhone is the most valuable product ever created. It has certainly created the most shareholder wealth, making Apple the most valuable company on earth. It's also made it the most profitable. The iPhone is so valuable, that Warren Buffett believes that you wouldn't part with yours, not even for $10,000.

"If you're an Apple user and somebody offers you $10,000, but the only proviso is they'll take away your iPhone and you'll never be able to buy another, you're not going to take it," Buffett told CNBC in an interview.

Buffett believes Apple is such a great investment largely because of the way the company has created such loyalty for its most iconic product. "If they tell you if you buy another Ford motor car they'll give you $10,000 not to do that, you'll take the $10,000 and buy a Chevy instead."

Car people can be pretty loyal, and I'm sure there are more than a few Ford drivers who would not switch to a Chevy for $10,000. Still, there are a lot of great cars out there and even the most loyal Ford fans don't compare to iPhone users.

Most people would switch toothpaste or orange juice brands without hesitation for far less than $10,000. In fact, people switch all the time when an alternative product is on sale or more widely available.

The same thing is true for every brand I can think of. There are plenty of great products or brands that I really like, but none of them so much that I would pass up $10,000 to quit using them.

Stop plugging your iPhone into those USB plugs at the airport

On the one hand, the fact that USB charging ports have become ubiquitous is a helpful change from the days of panicked searching for an outlet to top up your iPhone. I can remember arriving at airports with a dead iPhone, and the challenge of trying to find a place to plug in, even for a few minutes, to have enough battery to look up my hotel or get an Uber. The fact that public spaces are now designed with easily accessible charging is generally a good thing.

On the other hand, any time you make technology easily accessible, it becomes a target. That's why the FBI is warning people not to plug their devices into USB charging ports at hotels, airports, shopping malls, or coffee shops. Why? Because hackers have figured out ways to use the ports to transfer malware onto devices.

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