The End of the Personal Computer
Published: 2024-06-11 14:00:00

It's been a while since Apple changed its company name. Since 2007, the company has no longer been called Apple Computer, Inc, but simply Apple, Inc.

Then came Cloud, subscription software and now: AI.

This is certainly not the first time (and probably not the last) that the end of the personal computer has been proclaimed.

Microsoft has announced an explosive tool: Recall. On ARM computers, the software collects screenshots to make the usage history of the no longer quite so personal computer searchable with the help of AI.

The data Recall generates by observing the user ends up in the Windows user profile folder under AppData, for example in C:\Users\bas\AppData\Local\CoreAIPlatform.00\UKP. There is a subfolder with a GUID name that contains an SQLite3 database and an “ImageStore” subfolder with the screenshots in JPEG format.

Alexander Hagenah has published "TotalRecall", a Python script on GitHub that backs up and analyzes the data contained in the database. This makes it easy to check on the command line whether a particular word appears in the data. Hagenah demonstrates this using the search term “password” as an example, which inspires headlines suggesting that passwords can be extracted from the AI data fog. This is not wrong, but the password must presumably have been displayed legibly on the screen.

The concerning nature of the function lies less in the fact that it stores individual secrets in the database than in the aggregation of the data: if bad guys have intercepted the data, they can quickly obtain screenshots from the user's online banking thanks to AI and can assess whether the victim's account balance is worth further effort. The data is presented on a silver platter and the database provides the table of contents.

But it's not just bad guys who might be interested in the aggregated data. After all, you can also learn a lot about the user's habits from this treasure trove of data. In the SQLite database, for example, there is a table that neatly documents how many seconds the user has spent in which application. Companies like to monitor their employees. With Recall, they only need additional software for targeted analysis. Perhaps specialized AI will help again?

Meanwhile, Apple presented new features yesterday.

As many had hoped, Apple let the AI cat out of the bag at the end of the WWDC keynote. Apple's AI is deeply integrated into the system, understands users and knows about them. The company emphasizes its high data protection standards. The computing capacity of the device and Apple's own servers with Apple chips are used for larger AI models. Many basic models are executed directly on the devices so as not to reveal any private details to Apple. More complex tasks are handled by servers, which Apple calls "Private Cloud Compute". Apple also wants to be able to quickly adapt and improve the AI models.

Apple also announced the integration of ChatGPT into all systems. The company is currently relying on the current language model GPT-4o from OpenAI. No account will be required. When accessing the OpenAI servers, the IP addresses are made unrecognizable and, according to Apple, OpenAI does not store any requests. Users will receive a warning when they access ChatGPT.

Elon Musk has already announced that he will no longer allow Apple devices in his companies.

With Apple's new features, a number of third-party providers are likely to lose a large part of their business model:

- Password Managers like 1Password
- Hiking Apps like Alltrails 
- Writing helpers like Grammarly
- Phone recorders like Tapeacall
- Math Notes Apps like Soulver
- iPhone Mirroring tools