Mail and Message Filtering
Despite repeated predictions of the demise of email, there’s no shortage of third-party apps that attempt to do intelligent things to help users manage their inboxes. However, one thing that almost all of these apps have in common is the need to rely on a back-end service to handle the analysis, with all of the privacy implications that come with it.
For many users, email, text messaging, and photos make up the most private data on their iPhone, and even Facebook is starting to get this. Apple’s focus on putting its machine-learning directly into its own silicon — something it’s already famously done with its Photos analysis — is a huge selling point for those concerned about privacy.
Although some will argue that Apple’s Mail and Messages apps should remain fairly simple, Apple should at least provide some intelligent on-device filtering for things like notifications. Apple’s VIP List and Thread Notifications are both useful features, but they’re beginning to seem like an anachronism in a day when many other apps can much more intelligently surface those messages you need to see, whether it’s a new message coming in, or an old one that you’ve forgotten to reply to. There’s no reason why Apple shouldn’t be able to do both of these things, and do them directly on an iPhone, iPad, or Mac, providing AI that’s independent of any particular email provider.