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Why is Apple, the worlds richest and most valuable company, so bad at A.I? Everything, from awful keyboard predictions/autocorrect to poor computational photogr

Why is Apple, the worlds richest and most valuable company, so bad at A.I? Everything, from awful keyboard predictions/autocorrect to poor computational photography. Is it because Tim Cook doesn’t provide enough funding to empower the A.I. divisions?

haswell 4y ago
I would challenge the assertion that they’re so bad at computational photography, over processing notwithstanding. They’ve been at the forefront of computational photography for some time, and issues notwithstanding, the iPhone cameras do spit out some excellent results at times. I just want more control of that processing pipeline. As for the overarching reasons for poor AI implementations in their other product lines, my pet theory is that Apple’s pace of progress is what you get when constrained by their stated privacy goals. I have little doubt that they’d be at the top of this game if they leveraged user data the way Google/Meta do.
- counttheforks 4y ago
  > I just want more control Then Apple is not the product for you.
  - haswell 4y ago
    Setting aside that Apple is not a product, tradeoffs are the name of the game regardless of vendor. I use apps like Halide to fill in the gaps in the stock camera app, and shoot with a standalone camera when I want full creative control. That doesn’t mean I don’t have a wishlist. The funny part is that the primary theme of my comment is about the control Apple gives you over your data - control you do not have when picking other products - and arguable a more important thing to allow me to control.
    - counttheforks 4y ago
      Sorry for not being born in an English speaking country. Would you prefer if I'd said "Then Apple's products are not for you"?
      - haswell 4y ago
        Nitpicks about sentence structure aside (sorry, that was needlessly snarky on my part), that wasn't really the point of my comment. I've decided that Apple products are, indeed, for me. Wishing they would provide certain features doesn't change that. Apple has shown repeatedly that they are continuing to invest in camera controls. The "RAW" button, support for ProRes, etc. are a few examples of this. Giving "creators" access to more creative modes in the camera is hardly an idea that is so opposite Apple's norms to imagine they might include it someday, or to conclude that I should abandon the ecosystem because they don't have it today.
- saiya-jin 4y ago
  You have misaligned expectations, whole Apple approach since forever to anything is to dumb things down so few power users are unhappy but rest doesn't care and appreciates lack of choices, or more like hopes best possible choices are done for them because they paid premium. Which sometimes works OK, sometimes less so. I mean underlying a lot of Apple stuff is linux. Do you feel you have linux device and its might and endless configurability when working with iphone? My wife can't force that f!@#!@ device to allow her pattern unlock of her phone without losing warranty, Apple rather prefers her having no safety at all (since face ID simply doesn't work for her line of work, and typing minimum 6 digits code 100x a day is extremely annoying... no other choices on 13 mini).
  - astrange 4y ago
    There ain’t no Linux anywhere. Not even GPL.
    - alexiaa 4y ago
      yeah, they avoid any gplv3 software on macos, not sure if ios has any that's even gplv2.
  - haswell 4y ago
    > You have misaligned expectations Which expectations would those be and how are they misaligned? I have no allusions about what using Apple products entail. That doesn't mean I can't want things. But my comment was more about the state of AI than anything.
  - alexiaa 4y ago
    it's unix (bsd), not linux. also, the minimum is actually 4 digits. you can tap "passcode options" when setting/changing passcode. not sure how much better that would be though. i generally like face id but i do hope they add in-display touch id sometime.
skavi 4y ago
Are they actually awful at it? Or just worse than Google? Is there a smaller company doing all these things better than Apple?
- drdaeman 4y ago
  OpenAI? Siri is incredibly stupid (ChatGPT also is, but at least it has a whole order of magnitude better at understanding; unlike Siri, which randomly fails at the most basic requests to the extent it's just about useful for "Hey Siri, turn bedroom lights off" - but even that doesn't always work as expected), and while they don't have photo retouching AI, Dall-E is quite renown in for working with images, so surely if they'd dabbled in that space they would be successful.
  - corobo 4y ago
    "Siri, timer, hour and a half" "Alarm named Timer set for 01:30" Learn British already, Siri! Also getting 01:30 from "hour and a half".. I get how it's happened technically but that's dumb as hell. Every damn time I both 1) forget to move the laundry to the dryer 2) jump out of my skin at 1:30am
OGWhales 4y ago
The autocorrect is impressively awful. I’d much prefer a simple autocorrect over what they have now, which will “fix” correctly spelled words with something that doesn’t even make sense. I’ve had a few times where it learns something from a typo I made a few times and it simply would not unlearn it without a complete reset of the keyboard. One of the most confusing examples I have of the terrible autocorrect is that anytime I wrote “20”, it would always get replaced with “2.0” and “50” would always get replaced with “5-0”. I finally realized it was because I had two apps on my phone, one which had “2.0” in the name and the other “5-0”. Once I deleted those apps, it stopped replacing those numbers. It’s really baffling to me their autocorrect would work that way. Similarly, I’ve resorted to using a 3rd party camera app to avoid the occasional picture coming out looking like an oil painting. I’ve been using halide mark ii, which works quite well, although I can’t recommend it anymore due to their new business model being a very pricey subscription. Luckily I got grandfathered in, so the app still works for me.
- devilbunny 4y ago
  The Apple keyboard is junk, especially if you use it in swiping mode. Swype on Android (and briefly on iOS) - RIP - was simply better in every imaginable way, but whoever bought it just buried it. Far better prediction (once they fixed the bug that interpreted a common swipe as "nee", which I almost never use, instead of "me", which I use constantly) and a host of useful features. Need to capitalize a word? Just Swype above the keyboard once during the motion. Need a double letter? Squiggle a bit on that letter as you move through the word. Swype-X, C, V for cut, copy, and paste. Swype-spacebar to bring up an editing keyboard that offered single-character cursor movement. Want to curse? Feel free, it won't forget it with the next version upgrade. Keyboard learned a typo? Delete it from your user dictionary and it won't appear anymore. That was a startup. Apple could buy out any patents they had with pocket change. But they didn't, and I can't figure out why.
- asdff 4y ago
  I've turned it off entirely. I'd rather have a typo of the correct word than the wrong word entirely when communicating with people.
- deleted 4y ago
cageface 4y ago
Especially frustrating is the slow animation on the autocorrect suggestions. It significantly slows my typing speed and annoys me every time I have to use it and there's no way to turn it off. This alone pushes me towards Android phones since the keyboard experience there is in a completely different class.

haswell 4y ago

I would challenge the assertion that they’re so bad at computational photography, over processing notwithstanding. They’ve been at the forefront of computational photography for some time, and issues notwithstanding, the iPhone cameras do spit out some excellent results at times. I just want more control of that processing pipeline. As for the overarching reasons for poor AI implementations in their other product lines, my pet theory is that Apple’s pace of progress is what you get when constrained by their stated privacy goals. I have little doubt that they’d be at the top of this game if they leveraged user data the way Google/Meta do.

counttheforks 4y ago
> I just want more control Then Apple is not the product for you.
- haswell 4y ago
  Setting aside that Apple is not a product, tradeoffs are the name of the game regardless of vendor. I use apps like Halide to fill in the gaps in the stock camera app, and shoot with a standalone camera when I want full creative control. That doesn’t mean I don’t have a wishlist. The funny part is that the primary theme of my comment is about the control Apple gives you over your data - control you do not have when picking other products - and arguable a more important thing to allow me to control.
  - counttheforks 4y ago
    Sorry for not being born in an English speaking country. Would you prefer if I'd said "Then Apple's products are not for you"?
    - haswell 4y ago
      Nitpicks about sentence structure aside (sorry, that was needlessly snarky on my part), that wasn't really the point of my comment. I've decided that Apple products are, indeed, for me. Wishing they would provide certain features doesn't change that. Apple has shown repeatedly that they are continuing to invest in camera controls. The "RAW" button, support for ProRes, etc. are a few examples of this. Giving "creators" access to more creative modes in the camera is hardly an idea that is so opposite Apple's norms to imagine they might include it someday, or to conclude that I should abandon the ecosystem because they don't have it today.
saiya-jin 4y ago
You have misaligned expectations, whole Apple approach since forever to anything is to dumb things down so few power users are unhappy but rest doesn't care and appreciates lack of choices, or more like hopes best possible choices are done for them because they paid premium. Which sometimes works OK, sometimes less so. I mean underlying a lot of Apple stuff is linux. Do you feel you have linux device and its might and endless configurability when working with iphone? My wife can't force that f!@#!@ device to allow her pattern unlock of her phone without losing warranty, Apple rather prefers her having no safety at all (since face ID simply doesn't work for her line of work, and typing minimum 6 digits code 100x a day is extremely annoying... no other choices on 13 mini).
- astrange 4y ago
  There ain’t no Linux anywhere. Not even GPL.
  - alexiaa 4y ago
    yeah, they avoid any gplv3 software on macos, not sure if ios has any that's even gplv2.
- haswell 4y ago
  > You have misaligned expectations Which expectations would those be and how are they misaligned? I have no allusions about what using Apple products entail. That doesn't mean I can't want things. But my comment was more about the state of AI than anything.
- alexiaa 4y ago
  it's unix (bsd), not linux. also, the minimum is actually 4 digits. you can tap "passcode options" when setting/changing passcode. not sure how much better that would be though. i generally like face id but i do hope they add in-display touch id sometime.

skavi 4y ago

Are they actually awful at it? Or just worse than Google? Is there a smaller company doing all these things better than Apple?

drdaeman 4y ago
OpenAI? Siri is incredibly stupid (ChatGPT also is, but at least it has a whole order of magnitude better at understanding; unlike Siri, which randomly fails at the most basic requests to the extent it's just about useful for "Hey Siri, turn bedroom lights off" - but even that doesn't always work as expected), and while they don't have photo retouching AI, Dall-E is quite renown in for working with images, so surely if they'd dabbled in that space they would be successful.
- corobo 4y ago
  "Siri, timer, hour and a half" "Alarm named Timer set for 01:30" Learn British already, Siri! Also getting 01:30 from "hour and a half".. I get how it's happened technically but that's dumb as hell. Every damn time I both 1) forget to move the laundry to the dryer 2) jump out of my skin at 1:30am

OGWhales 4y ago

The autocorrect is impressively awful. I’d much prefer a simple autocorrect over what they have now, which will “fix” correctly spelled words with something that doesn’t even make sense. I’ve had a few times where it learns something from a typo I made a few times and it simply would not unlearn it without a complete reset of the keyboard. One of the most confusing examples I have of the terrible autocorrect is that anytime I wrote “20”, it would always get replaced with “2.0” and “50” would always get replaced with “5-0”. I finally realized it was because I had two apps on my phone, one which had “2.0” in the name and the other “5-0”. Once I deleted those apps, it stopped replacing those numbers. It’s really baffling to me their autocorrect would work that way. Similarly, I’ve resorted to using a 3rd party camera app to avoid the occasional picture coming out looking like an oil painting. I’ve been using halide mark ii, which works quite well, although I can’t recommend it anymore due to their new business model being a very pricey subscription. Luckily I got grandfathered in, so the app still works for me.

devilbunny 4y ago
The Apple keyboard is junk, especially if you use it in swiping mode. Swype on Android (and briefly on iOS) - RIP - was simply better in every imaginable way, but whoever bought it just buried it. Far better prediction (once they fixed the bug that interpreted a common swipe as "nee", which I almost never use, instead of "me", which I use constantly) and a host of useful features. Need to capitalize a word? Just Swype above the keyboard once during the motion. Need a double letter? Squiggle a bit on that letter as you move through the word. Swype-X, C, V for cut, copy, and paste. Swype-spacebar to bring up an editing keyboard that offered single-character cursor movement. Want to curse? Feel free, it won't forget it with the next version upgrade. Keyboard learned a typo? Delete it from your user dictionary and it won't appear anymore. That was a startup. Apple could buy out any patents they had with pocket change. But they didn't, and I can't figure out why.
asdff 4y ago
I've turned it off entirely. I'd rather have a typo of the correct word than the wrong word entirely when communicating with people.
deleted 4y ago

cageface 4y ago

Especially frustrating is the slow animation on the autocorrect suggestions. It significantly slows my typing speed and annoys me every time I have to use it and there's no way to turn it off. This alone pushes me towards Android phones since the keyboard experience there is in a completely different class.