I use Grammarly as a backstop for Cyber Security Headlines, largely to make my punctuation and spelling publication-ready. To be honest, I don’t like Grammarly. It feels overly invasive, it reads everything. I find its style suggestions stultifying and turn writing into mush. But within my specific work context, it does the job relatively quickly and efficiently. That being said, the idea that Apple Intelligence would be able to do similar AI-based reviews and edits was appealing. I liked that it was on-device and on-demand.

After trying it today with the podcast script workflow, it ain’t there. The implementation feels woefully incomplete. In a browser, where it will undoubtedly be used the most, it’s incredibly clunky. The primary problem is there is no system shortcut (that I know of) to bring it up. So the simple act of using it is impractical except as a spot solution. Your workflow is to highlight the text you want, right-click, select “Writing Tools” and then select what you want from the menu. There is a “Writing Tools” menu you can bring up, but it gives you no extra options, and I am unclear why you would use it.

Except that workflow doesn’t work in Google Docs, likely a very common destination for people that would use this feature. Since Google Docs co-opts the system menus, you have no right-click option. If you are in Safari, the writing settings can still be found in the app’s Edit menu. This means you must further navigate away from what you are doing and go through a menu. Right now, that option isn’t available in either Arc or Firefox. It remains unclear if third-party browsers will support it (or if they can, I don’t know if this is a result of them not enabling it or Apple not offering access to it).

Once you actually use the tool, the clunk doesn’t stop. Apple Intelligence doesn’t open a proper window like virtually any other app. It’s a weird system notification. This means you cannot move or resize the window. It also means if you click off the window to anything else the prompt goes away. And the feature has no memory. So if you do click off, you have to redo the request each time.

This is a problem because the system is slow compared to Grammarly. It’s not egregiously slow, but if you use the feature a lot and you’re coming from another tool, you’ll notice it. Combined with the clunky way to launch it just makes it feel like a sluggish experience.

There are other quibbles. It reeks of being a v1 product. There’s very little in the way of iteration possible from a prompt. As most GenAI tools are intention approximation services, this is a major problem. You can’t give any feedback on request. And unlike any spell check system since 1990s Word, you can review changes one by one. It’s all or nothing.

The exceptions to all this comes with a native app. If you use Notes, the Writing tools at least get a dedicated button in the compose window (still no keyboard shortcut). And you do get to review and accept changes. But given how much work is done in a browser, I’m shocked the feature isn’t treated like a class one citizen. It’s not like other Apple apps get much better treatment. Pages didn’t get any special access yet either.

This is to say that Apple could easily iterate on all these issues. A keyboard shortcut would go a long way toward making me want to use the feature. I’m sure there’s some way to negotiate that with the Shortcuts app. But that seems like such a table-stakes feature that I should have to hack it together.