Apple's value isn't its tech, it's its users. They will sell access to their users and be able to impose whatever conditions they want in line with their "we're the good guys" privacy policies.
So Apple has all these users just because they had a great pitchman who died over a decade ago??
I don't get this rationale at all. Yes, obviously Apple has built a very "sticky" ecosystem, but saying "Apple's value isn't it's tech" is ludicrous to me. Apple depends on at least the belief that it has the best products to sustain its user base. If that belief starts to waver, so will their user base.
> Apple depends on at least the belief that it has the best products
Products are not tech. For example, before Apple Maps, Apple had the arguably best mapping product, but did not have the tech (that was Google's). They are in a similar position with respect to the current crop of AI technologies. They could build their own tech, or they could just go to, say, OpenAI and say: "We have all these users. It would be pretty great if they started using your platform, wouldn't it?"
Personally I don't know anyone that's hyped about OS level local or cloud AI IRL. If MS can't even properly iterate a few hundred installed programs in a start menu search, does that make me excited about rewind?
There's a killer app for local AI out there and I hope it's brought to us by 3rd parties that dogfood their own stuff.
Apple is usually a fast follower, they don't typically pioneer the tech they use. Maybe they're waiting to see if LLMs are overhyped and overfunded with little avenues for monetization. How do you make money off an LLM other than charging for it?
I've never worked there, but it never really seemed like anything more than R&D/experiments for Apple.
They seem to try stuff internally that other big players seem to jump into wildly. They had a self-driving project when Google/Thrun started out but didn't push it. They never really got into the cloud space when MS/Google jumped into the pit with AWS.
For merits and faults, Apple seems fairly laser-focused when it comes to priorities and are unlikely to go head first into The New Thing.
AI becoming commoditized will probably validate that. There doesn't seem to be much of a moat for big AI companies at this point, it's just a data arms race and Apple is as well-positioned as anyone to take advantage (when the time comes).
A lot of Apple's AI tech is not public. It's things like computational photography/image enhancement, image organization, speech recognition - the sort of backend services that you need for modern flagship phones. You do bump into researchers at the big AI conferences but they're nowhere near as profilic as Google, Facebook and Amazon for open research. And Siri, of course.
For me it feels like they went from an "innovate or die" mindset to a "don't rock the boat and let the money flow" mindset.
For the longest time they chased "thinner, lighter" only to have people complain that the products are too thin and would rather they had more battery. They made a big song and dance about dropping all that, did so for a bit and then went straight back to it with the ipads now. While we're at it, it's worth mentioning Vision Pro which is also fundamentally something no one asked for.
The reality is that their products are no longer built for their users, they're building for the shareholders. Built to make line go up which I think is going to be their slow death.
I'm not so sure about this. They innovate slower, but they still innovate. Sure, without Jobs there isn't one person who's a stand-in for the customer, but there are still plenty of folks at Apple representing the customer and trying to build real solutions to real problems.
As a hardware company, there's a constant need to produce the next iteration of device. Same with software. So you get pretty lackluster year-on-year improvements, but over a 2-3 year cycle, it's pretty impressive. They seem to be refocusing on software quality, which should show some innovation on that front. Apple Vision Pro was their attempt at "the next big thing" and it just didn't quite get there. They probably believed VR had soaked in the market long enough that there was a majority waiting for the best version of it. They sort of missed here, but sort of didn't. There's potential for spatial computing, but the hardware isn't quite there yet.
On the topic of AI/LLMs, they've always had machine learning in their stack, but they haven't highlighted it as something revolutionary and they certainly haven't referred to it as "AI" (because, well, it really isn't artificial intelligence). Right now, most AI products are just wrappers around chatbots. Chatbots are an okay experience, but not ideal. That particular interface, in my opinion, gives an impression of infallibility to these products when it couldn't be farther from the truth. They're nifty, but the current generation of AI products is primitive, rough, and in some cases dangerous.
Apple's caution on AI is actually refreshing. I'm optimistic that the focus won't be on providing AI as first-class product but rather as an augment that makes their existing technology better. Case in point is the improvement in iOS 17's predictive keyboard. They shipped a small language model that improved predictive text leaps and bounds (though, still primitive).
Apple is often behind. The company's modus operandi is finding ways to improve existing technologies (graphic interface, music player, mobile phone). And it can afford to be slow due to lock-in/customer loyalty.
Apple is often “behind” because it believes that generally, technological advancements are subordinate to product function and user benefit. It generally doesn’t do something just because it’s hip, cool, or trendy. it does something because it believes that something benefits the user.
Google was moving to vector rendering instead of static images for Google Maps, which uses a lot less data, so Apple wanted that. Google in turn wanted a lot more data from Apple about the user making the map requests. Apple didn't want to give Google more user data, and Google would't give Apple the better map product without it.
So Apple pushed ahead with their own maps instead, hoping that they'd be good enough to keep people from wanting Google Maps, which ... didn't pan out. Instead, Apple was forced to allow Google Maps in the app store, since their own maps weren't good enough, and people were complaining. So in the end, Google got the data, since lots of people use Google Maps instead of Apple's maps.
And in the long run it worked out fine. Apple Maps is a totally adequate product today despite being inferior to Google Maps for many years. Now we at least have some choice!
I mean, forcing Apple to allow a choice absolutely worked out for people. Apple Maps is decent, but I still generally prefer Google Maps. But iirc they both added my #1 desired feature, which is showing where traffic lights are.
I have been a global tech journalist and I have been covering Apple for 20 years, give or take. Just not in English, which I guess is my shortcoming…
I stopped counting the time that major publications would run Apple hit pieces like this based on speculation and “sources” that are subsequently disproven by how Apple does what it does, successfully, since the late nineties.
It’s not about defending Apple, it’s about fair journalism. This headline is a journalistic fallacy, as anybody who is actually an expert about the company would understand that determining where Apple stands in a software development cycle is simply impossible.
Maybe the Wsj is right this time after being wrong n times before, but I wouldn’t bet on that as much as I would bet that Apple has been working steadily and secretly at its own vertically integrated solution instead of flashing whatever AI research they had like all competitors. Which is exactly how Apple works, in case one is willing to stop and observe and report, instead of running sensationalist headlines to leech views right before a hyped event like wwdc.
I wonder if there’s an on device AI equivalent of PA semi (the company Apple acquired over a decade ago which gave them incredible ARM chip design capabilities in house).
Because that’s where they could leapfrog the others. They care enough to do things on device (even if it’s inferior)
I sincerely hope that Apple don't pull a Recall move, because at that moment I'll be forced to migrate off the ecosystem (maybe I'll install Asahi Linux on my M-series machine).
So thank you, Apple, for not running in this arm race. Not every race is worth participating.
It's a common figure of speech but still interesting WSJ framing the
headline. Apple is not a defence company. I guess we don't have "tool
races" or a "utility race". Not even just an "AI race". No, this
technology is definitely a weapon. Am I wrong?
I really do hate this framing. It's not an "arms race". LLMs are just another tool in the tech stack.
A new important one, but without the ability to reduce hallucinations or trace why the LLM chose the approach, the ascendancy of AI is a bit premature to judge.
I'm not so convinced that Apple has missed out so far. Yes, OpenAI and co are handing tens or hundreds of millions to smart engineers to push this tech forward, and probably an order of magnitude more spent on tech. But show me the product. Go on, show me the Samsung, Xioami, Google phones that are taking market share off Apple with AI features. They don't exist.
So far what we have is companies like Microsoft rolling out poorly thought through "AI Clippy is going to fuck your day up and boost our stock price 10 fold" type campaigns. Apple is not going to do that.
I think the main interesting news here is that it sounds a lot like Federighi has let Giannandrea fail on his own terms and now is moving in to pick up the pieces. If this is accurate, it doesn't bode well for Giannandrea's tenure at the company.
Yep, generally I feel like I'm missing something with the "[insert company] is falling behind on AI!" narratives.
What I see is a lot of flailing and tripping over one's own feet. Google most recently launched the AI Summaries which they've hurriedly backpedaled. Before that it was the embarrassment of their image generator.
Google has also announced various things that actually IMO look quite useful (ex. AI Teammate) but nothing has launched. The little they did let the press play with at I/O largely fell apart as soon as the reporters strayed even slightly from the demo use cases! As far as I can tell just about every LLM-based integration is a tech demo at best that's held together with prayer and glue, and falls apart if you breathe at it wrong. Production-ready these are not!
Microsoft has also repeatedly beclowned themselves, most recently with Recall, which seems to have some very grave privacy and security implications while offering questionable user value in exchange.
There may be in fact be something here, but we're acting like players have found strong PMF and are scaling when it's clearly not the case!
The merging of RAM and VRAM has made Macs particularly useful for running models locally and they were the first to do it, which isn't Apple's typical MO. Also, Apple's policy of not rolling out products until they are ready has already proven to be the right approach (see Google's disastrous Gemini releases or the negative responses to Microsoft's Lookback and Copilot announcements).
* GOOG might have search compromised by AI, so they need to invest.
* Both MSFT and GOOG see AI as a way of growing cloud and building stickiness
* MSFT is investing on AI on Windows and O365 to milk further their existing enterprise customers on O365
Where is AAPL competitive position being compromised?
* Android vs iPhone: they just need to continue executing
* Windows vs iOS: MSFT is actually telling them how to position
Given their technical moat on integrating hardware & software there is an hidden opportunity for them in being the best supporting local/on-device LLMs
Out of the major players they have less disruption risk, grow depends less on AI meeting expectations and they have hidden optionality. How is this falling behind?
41 comments
[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 87.9 ms ] threadSo Apple has all these users just because they had a great pitchman who died over a decade ago??
I don't get this rationale at all. Yes, obviously Apple has built a very "sticky" ecosystem, but saying "Apple's value isn't it's tech" is ludicrous to me. Apple depends on at least the belief that it has the best products to sustain its user base. If that belief starts to waver, so will their user base.
Products are not tech. For example, before Apple Maps, Apple had the arguably best mapping product, but did not have the tech (that was Google's). They are in a similar position with respect to the current crop of AI technologies. They could build their own tech, or they could just go to, say, OpenAI and say: "We have all these users. It would be pretty great if they started using your platform, wouldn't it?"
They can partner with AI companies and build expertise for on-device AI (as they have with photography) leveraging their hardware design talent.
Personally I don't know anyone that's hyped about OS level local or cloud AI IRL. If MS can't even properly iterate a few hundred installed programs in a start menu search, does that make me excited about rewind?
There's a killer app for local AI out there and I hope it's brought to us by 3rd parties that dogfood their own stuff.
They seem to try stuff internally that other big players seem to jump into wildly. They had a self-driving project when Google/Thrun started out but didn't push it. They never really got into the cloud space when MS/Google jumped into the pit with AWS.
For merits and faults, Apple seems fairly laser-focused when it comes to priorities and are unlikely to go head first into The New Thing.
AI becoming commoditized will probably validate that. There doesn't seem to be much of a moat for big AI companies at this point, it's just a data arms race and Apple is as well-positioned as anyone to take advantage (when the time comes).
For the longest time they chased "thinner, lighter" only to have people complain that the products are too thin and would rather they had more battery. They made a big song and dance about dropping all that, did so for a bit and then went straight back to it with the ipads now. While we're at it, it's worth mentioning Vision Pro which is also fundamentally something no one asked for.
The reality is that their products are no longer built for their users, they're building for the shareholders. Built to make line go up which I think is going to be their slow death.
As a hardware company, there's a constant need to produce the next iteration of device. Same with software. So you get pretty lackluster year-on-year improvements, but over a 2-3 year cycle, it's pretty impressive. They seem to be refocusing on software quality, which should show some innovation on that front. Apple Vision Pro was their attempt at "the next big thing" and it just didn't quite get there. They probably believed VR had soaked in the market long enough that there was a majority waiting for the best version of it. They sort of missed here, but sort of didn't. There's potential for spatial computing, but the hardware isn't quite there yet.
On the topic of AI/LLMs, they've always had machine learning in their stack, but they haven't highlighted it as something revolutionary and they certainly haven't referred to it as "AI" (because, well, it really isn't artificial intelligence). Right now, most AI products are just wrappers around chatbots. Chatbots are an okay experience, but not ideal. That particular interface, in my opinion, gives an impression of infallibility to these products when it couldn't be farther from the truth. They're nifty, but the current generation of AI products is primitive, rough, and in some cases dangerous.
Apple's caution on AI is actually refreshing. I'm optimistic that the focus won't be on providing AI as first-class product but rather as an augment that makes their existing technology better. Case in point is the improvement in iOS 17's predictive keyboard. They shipped a small language model that improved predictive text leaps and bounds (though, still primitive).
I do trust them to build the best hardware stack to enable a local LLM.
Will be interesting to see how this plays out in the short term.
But in the long run I think they're very competitive.
Apple Maps, Magic Mouse charging from the base, Butterfly keyboard...
So Apple pushed ahead with their own maps instead, hoping that they'd be good enough to keep people from wanting Google Maps, which ... didn't pan out. Instead, Apple was forced to allow Google Maps in the app store, since their own maps weren't good enough, and people were complaining. So in the end, Google got the data, since lots of people use Google Maps instead of Apple's maps.
I much prefer their directions UI to anything else out there. It’s really well thought out.
It feels like a perfect solution to me if the primary goal is to make sure customers have the Magic Mouse experience Apple wants them to.
I might swap it out for Siri, which still tries to call emergency services when asking simple questions from time to time.
It’s not about defending Apple, it’s about fair journalism. This headline is a journalistic fallacy, as anybody who is actually an expert about the company would understand that determining where Apple stands in a software development cycle is simply impossible.
Maybe the Wsj is right this time after being wrong n times before, but I wouldn’t bet on that as much as I would bet that Apple has been working steadily and secretly at its own vertically integrated solution instead of flashing whatever AI research they had like all competitors. Which is exactly how Apple works, in case one is willing to stop and observe and report, instead of running sensationalist headlines to leech views right before a hyped event like wwdc.
Because that’s where they could leapfrog the others. They care enough to do things on device (even if it’s inferior)
So thank you, Apple, for not running in this arm race. Not every race is worth participating.
It's a common figure of speech but still interesting WSJ framing the headline. Apple is not a defence company. I guess we don't have "tool races" or a "utility race". Not even just an "AI race". No, this technology is definitely a weapon. Am I wrong?
A new important one, but without the ability to reduce hallucinations or trace why the LLM chose the approach, the ascendancy of AI is a bit premature to judge.
So far what we have is companies like Microsoft rolling out poorly thought through "AI Clippy is going to fuck your day up and boost our stock price 10 fold" type campaigns. Apple is not going to do that.
I think the main interesting news here is that it sounds a lot like Federighi has let Giannandrea fail on his own terms and now is moving in to pick up the pieces. If this is accurate, it doesn't bode well for Giannandrea's tenure at the company.
What I see is a lot of flailing and tripping over one's own feet. Google most recently launched the AI Summaries which they've hurriedly backpedaled. Before that it was the embarrassment of their image generator.
Google has also announced various things that actually IMO look quite useful (ex. AI Teammate) but nothing has launched. The little they did let the press play with at I/O largely fell apart as soon as the reporters strayed even slightly from the demo use cases! As far as I can tell just about every LLM-based integration is a tech demo at best that's held together with prayer and glue, and falls apart if you breathe at it wrong. Production-ready these are not!
Microsoft has also repeatedly beclowned themselves, most recently with Recall, which seems to have some very grave privacy and security implications while offering questionable user value in exchange.
There may be in fact be something here, but we're acting like players have found strong PMF and are scaling when it's clearly not the case!
Where is AAPL competitive position being compromised? * Android vs iPhone: they just need to continue executing * Windows vs iOS: MSFT is actually telling them how to position
Given their technical moat on integrating hardware & software there is an hidden opportunity for them in being the best supporting local/on-device LLMs
Out of the major players they have less disruption risk, grow depends less on AI meeting expectations and they have hidden optionality. How is this falling behind?
Anyway.