4 ms·

I’m not surprised that Apple has been struggling to integrate LLMs. By their very stochastic nature they go against Apple’s philosophy of total vertical control

I’m not surprised that Apple has been struggling to integrate LLMs. By their very stochastic nature they go against Apple’s philosophy of total vertical control of every aspect of their products. There’s no way to guarantee that an LLM will do anything and so they would be ceding control of the user experience to a random number generator.

hylaride 1y ago
The problem with Apple is that their corporate culture doesn't vibe well with a lot of new tech. Their culture of secrecy held them back with the original "smart assistants" as all the best talent were PhDs who wanted to publish, but apple wouldn't allow that; on top of that, they didn't pay top dollar like Google or Amazon did at the time, either (whom also let their employees publish on top of that!). Apple is being far too conservative with a far too fast a developing piece of technology to possibly keep up unless they loosen up. But they're being run by a bunch of 50+ year old white guys trying to still be cool, but not understanding what's really going on. I'm not saying they need to publish a roadmap or anything, but they need to tell their marketing dept. to piss off and that not everything needs to be a "delightful surprise" on stage.
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago
  > problem with Apple is that their corporate culture doesn't vibe well with a lot of new tech Apple has never been the company that does it first. They're the company that does it right. Arguably, their fuckup with LLMs was rushing a garbage product to market instead of waiting and watching and perfecting in the background. > Apple is being far too conservative with a far too fast a developing piece of technology Strongly disagree. OpenAI and Anthropic are blowing billions on speculative attempts at advancing the frontier. They're advancing, but at great cost and uncertainty in respect of future returns. The smart move would be to recapitulate the deal with Google, possibly being paid by these cash-burning companies for the default AI slot on the iPhone, all the while watching what Apple's users do. Then, when the technology stabilises and the best models are known, Sherlocking the whole thing.
  - bitpush 1y ago
    People love to parrot this, yet if you think for a second this isnt true at all in all the many ways. 1. Siri - not the first assistant, absolute garbage. 2. Apple Maps (original) - utter garbage at launch, slightly better today in US. 3. Vision Pro - Not the first VR headset. Massive failure. If anything, Apple has been tremendously successful few times when they were not first (phones, tablets, silicon ..) but they have also been tremendously faltered when they were not first.
    - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
      Non sequitur. Nobody argued everything Apple has ever launched has been a success. I'm just pushing back on the notion that the "problem with Apple is that their corporate culture doesn't vibe well with a lot of new tech." That's not a problem, that's the key to their success (where it's been found).
    - barkerja 1y ago
      To be fair, Apple Maps is FAR better today than when it first launched.
      - bitpush 1y ago
        Yup, but limited in scope. And occasionally fails spectacularly.
    - mingus88 1y ago
      These first two bullets launched well over a decade ago. The third bullet is soft because ALL vr headsets have been flops. All told you are actually painting a pretty solid picture of apples track record. They’ve launched so many things in the past 20 years and expanded into new markets (wearables, headphones, streaming hardware and services) that it’s impressive there aren’t more flops
  - hylaride 1y ago
    My point is that some tech needs to be iterative. Apple Maps could have been a huge success at the same quality level if it was treated as a public beta. Map applications are never done, either. They require constant work anyways. It doesn’t matter if you’re first or not, but even if the tech for AI stabilizes, it’s still going to need constant input for news, events, etc. It will never be static. Apple needs to form those data relationships asap if it wants to own the tech.
hombre_fatal 1y ago
Then how does Siri deliver on that philosophy? The UX of Siri is that it probably won't understand your request but it might, and only through trial and error do you realize the specific commands it might know. And even then, your queries can fail for unknown reasons. So I don't think this a likely explanation. Maybe they just wanted to have an in-house solution but realized they have no chance at delivering that value on their own. But it can't be about UX predictability because Siri has none unless you're setting a timer.
leumon 1y ago
They actually once used a neural net on-device in iOS 14, when they introduced the translate app. It worked offline, but actually sometimes produced some bad or hilarious translations.

hylaride 1y ago

The problem with Apple is that their corporate culture doesn't vibe well with a lot of new tech. Their culture of secrecy held them back with the original "smart assistants" as all the best talent were PhDs who wanted to publish, but apple wouldn't allow that; on top of that, they didn't pay top dollar like Google or Amazon did at the time, either (whom also let their employees publish on top of that!). Apple is being far too conservative with a far too fast a developing piece of technology to possibly keep up unless they loosen up. But they're being run by a bunch of 50+ year old white guys trying to still be cool, but not understanding what's really going on. I'm not saying they need to publish a roadmap or anything, but they need to tell their marketing dept. to piss off and that not everything needs to be a "delightful surprise" on stage.

JumpCrisscross 1y ago
> problem with Apple is that their corporate culture doesn't vibe well with a lot of new tech Apple has never been the company that does it first. They're the company that does it right. Arguably, their fuckup with LLMs was rushing a garbage product to market instead of waiting and watching and perfecting in the background. > Apple is being far too conservative with a far too fast a developing piece of technology Strongly disagree. OpenAI and Anthropic are blowing billions on speculative attempts at advancing the frontier. They're advancing, but at great cost and uncertainty in respect of future returns. The smart move would be to recapitulate the deal with Google, possibly being paid by these cash-burning companies for the default AI slot on the iPhone, all the while watching what Apple's users do. Then, when the technology stabilises and the best models are known, Sherlocking the whole thing.
- bitpush 1y ago
  People love to parrot this, yet if you think for a second this isnt true at all in all the many ways. 1. Siri - not the first assistant, absolute garbage. 2. Apple Maps (original) - utter garbage at launch, slightly better today in US. 3. Vision Pro - Not the first VR headset. Massive failure. If anything, Apple has been tremendously successful few times when they were not first (phones, tablets, silicon ..) but they have also been tremendously faltered when they were not first.
  - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
    Non sequitur. Nobody argued everything Apple has ever launched has been a success. I'm just pushing back on the notion that the "problem with Apple is that their corporate culture doesn't vibe well with a lot of new tech." That's not a problem, that's the key to their success (where it's been found).
  - barkerja 1y ago
    To be fair, Apple Maps is FAR better today than when it first launched.
    - bitpush 1y ago
      Yup, but limited in scope. And occasionally fails spectacularly.
  - mingus88 1y ago
    These first two bullets launched well over a decade ago. The third bullet is soft because ALL vr headsets have been flops. All told you are actually painting a pretty solid picture of apples track record. They’ve launched so many things in the past 20 years and expanded into new markets (wearables, headphones, streaming hardware and services) that it’s impressive there aren’t more flops
- hylaride 1y ago
  My point is that some tech needs to be iterative. Apple Maps could have been a huge success at the same quality level if it was treated as a public beta. Map applications are never done, either. They require constant work anyways. It doesn’t matter if you’re first or not, but even if the tech for AI stabilizes, it’s still going to need constant input for news, events, etc. It will never be static. Apple needs to form those data relationships asap if it wants to own the tech.

hombre_fatal 1y ago

Then how does Siri deliver on that philosophy? The UX of Siri is that it probably won't understand your request but it might, and only through trial and error do you realize the specific commands it might know. And even then, your queries can fail for unknown reasons. So I don't think this a likely explanation. Maybe they just wanted to have an in-house solution but realized they have no chance at delivering that value on their own. But it can't be about UX predictability because Siri has none unless you're setting a timer.

leumon 1y ago

They actually once used a neural net on-device in iOS 14, when they introduced the translate app. It worked offline, but actually sometimes produced some bad or hilarious translations.