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If nothing else, this was likely driven by Google being the most stable of the AI labs. Gemini is objectively a good model (whether it's #1 or #5 in ranking asi

If nothing else, this was likely driven by Google being the most stable of the AI labs. Gemini is objectively a good model (whether it's #1 or #5 in ranking aside) so Apple can confidently deliver a good (enough) product. Also for Apple, they know their provider has ridiculously deep pockets, a good understanding and infrastructure in place for large enterprises, and a fairly diversified revenue stream. Going with Anthropic or OpenAI, despite on the surface having that clean Apple smell and feel, carries a lot of risk Apple's part. Both companies are far underwater, liable to take risks, and liable to drown if they even fall a bit behind.

mbirth 9mo ago
I was more thinking about this being driven by the fact that Google pays Apple $20B a year for being the pre-selected search engine and this way, Apple still gets $19B and a free AI engine on top.
- asadotzler 9mo ago
  It was 20 billion dollars years ago, 2022. There's little doubt it's closer to $25B now, perhaps more.
tempodox 9mo ago
Nothing about OpenAI smells clean.
knallfrosch 9mo ago
Nothing about OpenAI is clean. Their complete org is controlled by Altmann, who was able to rehire himself after he was fired. Anthropic doesn't have a single data centre, they rent from AWS/Microsoft/Google.
- nxobject 9mo ago
  Also: they've dealt with Google for default search engine deals before even through the early Android/iPhone competition days (and for early iPhone Weather, Stocks, etc.) It's a familiar enough dynamic.
segmondy 9mo ago
Yup, Anthropic has constant performance problems (not enough GPU), OpenAI is too messy with their politics and Altman.
cush 9mo ago
> Gemini is objectively a good model (whether it's #1 or #5 in ranking aside) so Apple can confidently deliver a good (enough) product Definitely. At at this point, Apple just needs to get anything out the door. It was nearly two years ago they sold a phone with features that still haven't shipped and the promise that Apple Intelligence would come in two months.
- baxtr 9mo ago
  What are the top 3 features you’re missing right now?
  - woah 9mo ago
    Siri to function above the level of Dragon NaturallySpeaking '95
    - ohyoutravel 9mo ago
      Fantastic reference. I remember pirating this from microcrap.com in about 1996.
      - deleted 9mo ago
        [deleted]
      - mcny 9mo ago
        > 1996 I'm chuckling at the idea of pirating software in 1996. iirc even in 1999, I couldn't figure out why Windows update required me to use internet exploder. It would take forever to download updates over dialup.
        karlshea 9mo ago
        I definitely pirated Photoshop around 1996 from the macfilez (possibly zelifcam by then) AOL chat room.
        cbozeman 9mo ago
foobarian 9mo ago
Aren't both of those companies also both at the whims of Microsoft for the actual compute hardware? I'm not good at keeping track of who has actual hardware vs. who runs in one of the big clouds
- ada0000 9mo ago
  don’t forget oracle!
  - darkoob12 9mo ago
    Please forget Oracle. I don't even know the name of their cloud service. I haven't heard anyone using their service for AI.
    - ada0000 9mo ago
      OpenAI aren’t using their cloud directly, but have signed data center partnerships with them that are effectively huge amounts of debt not backed up with revenue. That’s all liability that Google doesn’t really have because they have revenue from other areas.
MaXtreeM 9mo ago
I agree with your point about Google being more stable company then the rest so the decision probably makes sense. But there was a study done by multiple news companies in Czechia by asking about news topics and Gemini was consistently the worst in citations and straight up being incorrect (76% of its answers had "issues", I don't have exact issues specification).
- rdn 9mo ago
  Apple is afraid of Siri succeeding
- codebolt 9mo ago
  I've noticed Gemini tends to struggle with current news.
ksec 9mo ago
>If nothing else, this was likely driven by Google being the most stable of the AI labs. I dont think the model is that much different if they thought Siri was half decent enough for so long. Judging from the past 10 years, I would say this is more likely driven by part of a bigger package deal with Google Search Placement and Google Cloud Services. When everything else being roughly equal. Instead of raising price again Paying Apple even more per user, How about we pay the less but throw in Gemini with it? Apple has been very good, if not the best at picking one side and allowing the others to fight for its contract. They dont want Microsoft to win the AI race, at the same time Apple is increasing the use of Azure just in case. Basically playing the game of leverage at its best. In hindsight probably too well into it they forgot what the real purpose of all these leverage are for, not cost savings but ultimately better quality product.
- echelon 9mo ago
  > I would say this is more likely driven by part of a bigger package deal with Google Search Placement and Google Cloud Services. Can the DOJ and FTC look into this? Google shouldn't be able to charge a fee on accessing every registered trademark in the world. They use Apple get get the last 30% of "URL Bars", I mean Google Search middlemen. Searching Anthropic gets me a bidding war, which I'm sure is bleeding Google's competition dry. We need a "no bare trademark (plus edit distance) ads or auto suggest" law. It's made Google an unkillable OP monster. Any search monopoly or marketplace monopoly should be subject to not allowing ads to be sold against a registered trademark database.
  - ksec 9mo ago
    >Can the DOJ and FTC look into this? I guess this venture into politics more than anything else. And I am opinionated on the subject. But other than that, the point worth centred on is Apple no longer care as much as being the best. They care much more about extracting best business deals and money out of their current position. Which is very different to Steve Jobs era, No money can put crap on his plate.
raxxorraxor 9mo ago
True. Also Gemini is the boring model, heavily sanitised for corporate applications. At least it admits this if you press it. It fits Apple here very well. Personally I wouldn't use it, it still belongs to an advertiser specialised on extracting user information. Not that I expect that other AI companies value privacy much higher. But clean smell also means bland smell.
- bayindirh 9mo ago
  Google, as the designer of the original transformer, is designer of the original "mechanism" for inserting ads into a prompt answer in realtime to the highest bidder, so it makes sense from that part too. Given my stance about AI, I'll definitely not use it, but I understand Apple's choice. Also this choice will give them enough time to develop their infrastructure and replace parts of it with their own, if they are planning to do it. > Not that I expect that other AI companies value privacy much higher. Breaching privacy and using it for its own benefit is AIs business model. There are no ethical players here. Neither from training nor from respecting their users' privacy perspective. Just next iteration of what social media companies do.
- willtemperley 9mo ago
  I suspect you're exactly right about it being the most sanitized model. I don't however like the idea of having Google deeply embedded in my machine and Siri will definitely be turned off when this happens. I only use Siri as an egg timer anyway. This seems like a odd move for a company that sells privacy.
  - timeon 9mo ago
    There is no US company using cloud, that could sell privacy.
espadrine 9mo ago
Counterpoint: iOS’s biggest competitor is Android. They are now effectively funding their competition on a core product interface. I see this as strategically devastating.
- deleted 9mo ago
  [deleted]
- compounding_it 9mo ago
  Is android really iOSs competition ? I feel like the competition is less android more vendors who use android. Every android phone feels different. Android doesn’t even compete on performance anymore the chips are quite behind. The target audience of the two feels different lately.
  - joe_mamba 9mo ago
    >Is android really iOSs competition ? It ISN'T in this day and age. People don't switch back and forth between iOS and Android like it's still 2010. They use whatever they got locken in initially since their first smartphone or where Apple's green/blue-bubble issue pushed them to or what their family handed them down or what their close friend groups used to have. People who've been using iOS for 6+ years will 98% stick to iOS for their next purchase and won't even bother look at Android no matter what features Android were to add. The Android vs iOS war is as dead as the console war. There's no competition anymore, it's just picking one from a duopoly of vendor lock-ins. Even if EU were to break some of the lockins, people have familiarity bias and will stick with inertia of what they're used to, so it will not move the market share needle one bit.
  - omnimus 9mo ago
    Of course android is iOSs competition. android is also 75% of the market that apple surely wants bigger piece of. Performance? We are many years past the point somebody cared about performance. I am writing this on iphone 11 pro and the experience is almost exactly the same as current iOS. You know what's not the same? Android became pretty great OS. I recently got older Pixel to see how GrapheneOS works and was surprised about Android (which i havent seen for a decade). iOS on the other hand has recently gone trough with very bad ui redesign for no reason. Imho the main thing Apple has going for it is that Google is spyware company and Apple is still mainly hardware company. But if Apple decides to pull their users data to gemini… well good luck.
lvl155 9mo ago
It has nothing to do with how good Gemini is relative to others. Apple is picking Gemini because they don’t want AI to be the selling point for Android phones. Apple execs do not care about innovations. They only care about keeping their monopoly intact.
jonwinstanley 9mo ago
With Anthropic or OpenAI they would have had to pay for it, but Google already pay them $20bn+ per year to be the default search engine - so they just knock $1bn off Google's bill for Gemini
- niutech 9mo ago
  What's the difference if Apple gets $20B from Google and spends $1B to another company or just gets $19B from Google and doesn't spend nothing?
  - jonwinstanley 9mo ago
    I suppose Apple is forcing Google to compete against itself. "Pay us less, or pay us more and we buy someone else’s model." Also accounting optics means Apple can shows lower revenue but cleaner margins

mbirth 9mo ago

I was more thinking about this being driven by the fact that Google pays Apple $20B a year for being the pre-selected search engine and this way, Apple still gets $19B and a free AI engine on top.

asadotzler 9mo ago
It was 20 billion dollars years ago, 2022. There's little doubt it's closer to $25B now, perhaps more.

tempodox 9mo ago

Nothing about OpenAI smells clean.

knallfrosch 9mo ago

Nothing about OpenAI is clean. Their complete org is controlled by Altmann, who was able to rehire himself after he was fired. Anthropic doesn't have a single data centre, they rent from AWS/Microsoft/Google.

nxobject 9mo ago
Also: they've dealt with Google for default search engine deals before even through the early Android/iPhone competition days (and for early iPhone Weather, Stocks, etc.) It's a familiar enough dynamic.

segmondy 9mo ago

Yup, Anthropic has constant performance problems (not enough GPU), OpenAI is too messy with their politics and Altman.

cush 9mo ago

> Gemini is objectively a good model (whether it's #1 or #5 in ranking aside) so Apple can confidently deliver a good (enough) product Definitely. At at this point, Apple just needs to get anything out the door. It was nearly two years ago they sold a phone with features that still haven't shipped and the promise that Apple Intelligence would come in two months.

baxtr 9mo ago
What are the top 3 features you’re missing right now?
- woah 9mo ago
  Siri to function above the level of Dragon NaturallySpeaking '95
  - ohyoutravel 9mo ago
    Fantastic reference. I remember pirating this from microcrap.com in about 1996.
    - deleted 9mo ago
      [deleted]
    - mcny 9mo ago
      > 1996 I'm chuckling at the idea of pirating software in 1996. iirc even in 1999, I couldn't figure out why Windows update required me to use internet exploder. It would take forever to download updates over dialup.
      - karlshea 9mo ago
        I definitely pirated Photoshop around 1996 from the macfilez (possibly zelifcam by then) AOL chat room.
      - cbozeman 9mo ago

foobarian 9mo ago

Aren't both of those companies also both at the whims of Microsoft for the actual compute hardware? I'm not good at keeping track of who has actual hardware vs. who runs in one of the big clouds

ada0000 9mo ago
don’t forget oracle!
- darkoob12 9mo ago
  Please forget Oracle. I don't even know the name of their cloud service. I haven't heard anyone using their service for AI.
  - ada0000 9mo ago
    OpenAI aren’t using their cloud directly, but have signed data center partnerships with them that are effectively huge amounts of debt not backed up with revenue. That’s all liability that Google doesn’t really have because they have revenue from other areas.

MaXtreeM 9mo ago

I agree with your point about Google being more stable company then the rest so the decision probably makes sense. But there was a study done by multiple news companies in Czechia by asking about news topics and Gemini was consistently the worst in citations and straight up being incorrect (76% of its answers had "issues", I don't have exact issues specification).

rdn 9mo ago
Apple is afraid of Siri succeeding
codebolt 9mo ago
I've noticed Gemini tends to struggle with current news.

ksec 9mo ago

>If nothing else, this was likely driven by Google being the most stable of the AI labs. I dont think the model is that much different if they thought Siri was half decent enough for so long. Judging from the past 10 years, I would say this is more likely driven by part of a bigger package deal with Google Search Placement and Google Cloud Services. When everything else being roughly equal. Instead of raising price again Paying Apple even more per user, How about we pay the less but throw in Gemini with it? Apple has been very good, if not the best at picking one side and allowing the others to fight for its contract. They dont want Microsoft to win the AI race, at the same time Apple is increasing the use of Azure just in case. Basically playing the game of leverage at its best. In hindsight probably too well into it they forgot what the real purpose of all these leverage are for, not cost savings but ultimately better quality product.

echelon 9mo ago
> I would say this is more likely driven by part of a bigger package deal with Google Search Placement and Google Cloud Services. Can the DOJ and FTC look into this? Google shouldn't be able to charge a fee on accessing every registered trademark in the world. They use Apple get get the last 30% of "URL Bars", I mean Google Search middlemen. Searching Anthropic gets me a bidding war, which I'm sure is bleeding Google's competition dry. We need a "no bare trademark (plus edit distance) ads or auto suggest" law. It's made Google an unkillable OP monster. Any search monopoly or marketplace monopoly should be subject to not allowing ads to be sold against a registered trademark database.
- ksec 9mo ago
  >Can the DOJ and FTC look into this? I guess this venture into politics more than anything else. And I am opinionated on the subject. But other than that, the point worth centred on is Apple no longer care as much as being the best. They care much more about extracting best business deals and money out of their current position. Which is very different to Steve Jobs era, No money can put crap on his plate.

raxxorraxor 9mo ago

True. Also Gemini is the boring model, heavily sanitised for corporate applications. At least it admits this if you press it. It fits Apple here very well. Personally I wouldn't use it, it still belongs to an advertiser specialised on extracting user information. Not that I expect that other AI companies value privacy much higher. But clean smell also means bland smell.

bayindirh 9mo ago
Google, as the designer of the original transformer, is designer of the original "mechanism" for inserting ads into a prompt answer in realtime to the highest bidder, so it makes sense from that part too. Given my stance about AI, I'll definitely not use it, but I understand Apple's choice. Also this choice will give them enough time to develop their infrastructure and replace parts of it with their own, if they are planning to do it. > Not that I expect that other AI companies value privacy much higher. Breaching privacy and using it for its own benefit is AIs business model. There are no ethical players here. Neither from training nor from respecting their users' privacy perspective. Just next iteration of what social media companies do.
willtemperley 9mo ago
I suspect you're exactly right about it being the most sanitized model. I don't however like the idea of having Google deeply embedded in my machine and Siri will definitely be turned off when this happens. I only use Siri as an egg timer anyway. This seems like a odd move for a company that sells privacy.
- timeon 9mo ago
  There is no US company using cloud, that could sell privacy.

espadrine 9mo ago

Counterpoint: iOS’s biggest competitor is Android. They are now effectively funding their competition on a core product interface. I see this as strategically devastating.

deleted 9mo ago
[deleted]
compounding_it 9mo ago
Is android really iOSs competition ? I feel like the competition is less android more vendors who use android. Every android phone feels different. Android doesn’t even compete on performance anymore the chips are quite behind. The target audience of the two feels different lately.
- joe_mamba 9mo ago
  >Is android really iOSs competition ? It ISN'T in this day and age. People don't switch back and forth between iOS and Android like it's still 2010. They use whatever they got locken in initially since their first smartphone or where Apple's green/blue-bubble issue pushed them to or what their family handed them down or what their close friend groups used to have. People who've been using iOS for 6+ years will 98% stick to iOS for their next purchase and won't even bother look at Android no matter what features Android were to add. The Android vs iOS war is as dead as the console war. There's no competition anymore, it's just picking one from a duopoly of vendor lock-ins. Even if EU were to break some of the lockins, people have familiarity bias and will stick with inertia of what they're used to, so it will not move the market share needle one bit.
- omnimus 9mo ago
  Of course android is iOSs competition. android is also 75% of the market that apple surely wants bigger piece of. Performance? We are many years past the point somebody cared about performance. I am writing this on iphone 11 pro and the experience is almost exactly the same as current iOS. You know what's not the same? Android became pretty great OS. I recently got older Pixel to see how GrapheneOS works and was surprised about Android (which i havent seen for a decade). iOS on the other hand has recently gone trough with very bad ui redesign for no reason. Imho the main thing Apple has going for it is that Google is spyware company and Apple is still mainly hardware company. But if Apple decides to pull their users data to gemini… well good luck.

lvl155 9mo ago

It has nothing to do with how good Gemini is relative to others. Apple is picking Gemini because they don’t want AI to be the selling point for Android phones. Apple execs do not care about innovations. They only care about keeping their monopoly intact.

jonwinstanley 9mo ago

With Anthropic or OpenAI they would have had to pay for it, but Google already pay them $20bn+ per year to be the default search engine - so they just knock $1bn off Google's bill for Gemini

niutech 9mo ago
What's the difference if Apple gets $20B from Google and spends $1B to another company or just gets $19B from Google and doesn't spend nothing?
- jonwinstanley 9mo ago
  I suppose Apple is forcing Google to compete against itself. "Pay us less, or pay us more and we buy someone else’s model." Also accounting optics means Apple can shows lower revenue but cleaner margins