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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

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).

joshvm 2y ago
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.
- nkozyra 2y ago
  I'm not suggesting that Apple doesn't "do AI," just that they aren't interested in being a creating direct-to-consumer AI products.
xnx 2y ago
Apple is an excellent integrator and generally has good taste. Their list of in house developed technology is much shorter.
ActionHank 2y ago
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.
- Spartan-S63 2y ago
  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).

joshvm 2y ago

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.

nkozyra 2y ago
I'm not suggesting that Apple doesn't "do AI," just that they aren't interested in being a creating direct-to-consumer AI products.

xnx 2y ago

Apple is an excellent integrator and generally has good taste. Their list of in house developed technology is much shorter.

ActionHank 2y ago

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.

Spartan-S63 2y ago
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).