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Apple's accidental moat: How the "AI Loser" may end up winning

• grtteee 6mo ago
  This is the classic apple approach - wait to understand what the thing is capable of doing (aka let others make sunk investments), envision a solution that is way better than the competition and then architect a path to building a leapfrog product that builds a large lead.
  • HerbManic 6mo ago
    Pretty much it. That said, they did try to appease the markets by announcing 'Apple Intelligence' so they didn't appear to be behind everyone. They did do the smart thing of not throwing too much capital behind it. Once the hype crumbles, they will be able to do something amazing with this tech. That will be a few years off but probably worth the wait.
    • grtteee 6mo ago
      Yeah exactly the Apple Intelligence thing was pure BS to shut people up who kept saying apple was going to get disrupted by missing out. Apple seems to follow the values that Steve laid out. Tim isn’t a visionary but he seems to follow the principles associated with being disciplined with cash quite well. They haven’t done any stupid acquisitions either. Quite the contrast with OAI.
    • Gigachad 6mo ago
      For consumers AI has anti hype right now. It's off-putting to see consumer products slapped with a hundred AI labels. I see people talk about how you can turn off all of Apple Intelligence with one toggle rather than hundreds on Samsung. Firefox is also marketing how easy it is to disable AI.
      • rtpg 6mo ago
        I think a lot of people are not hype about AI in their toaster, but... I don't think people are generally turned off form deeper integration in their OS itself. Especially when for some people this is representing ideas similar to how programmer-types get excited about Shortcuts. Decently accessible automation and discovery, without having to go figure out a bunch of stuff
        • Gigachad 6mo ago
          People like features, benefits, and outcomes. AI isn't a feature, it's a technology that can enable features. But it's being marketed as the only thing that matters. The user does not give two shits if the new laptop "has AI". This is how Apple has been killing it lately, they market the macbooks being powerful, cheap, with long batteries, and a premium feel. Things the user cares about. Most of the stuff marketers are just blanket labeling "AI" will eventually be shuffled to the background and rebranded with a more specific term to highlight the feature being delivered rather than the fact it's AI".
          • grtteee 6mo ago
            Nailed it. I reckon most humans never learn the valuable lessons of the past. As you put it - nobody cares about the technology in and of itself. They care about “ok cool what’s in it for me?”. That’s what determines their decision to purchase/use a thing.
        • crote 6mo ago
          > Decently accessible automation and discovery, without having to go figure out a bunch of stuff Sure, but is this actually happening? Last time I tried, Atlassian's heavily-pushed AI couldn't even turn a Jira ticket number of Confluence into a clickable link. Similarly, Windows has been actively moving away from providing locally-installed applications in the Start menu search towards offering random internet garbage. I'm all for using a LLM to make something like Siri able to understand both "Siri, turn off the lights" and "Siri, make it dark!" - but that's not what's being pushed onto consumers, because there is no way anyone is going to pay $100/month for any version of that.
    • GeekyBear 6mo ago
      Apple's Neural Engine and the CoreML framework to leverage it are almost a decade old now. Apple Intelligence was a rebrand, and Apple has made some unique decisions rolling it out. For instance, the new chatbot version of Siri's hallucinations were seen as unacceptable, so its release was delayed. Is a chatbot that provides false information regularly really an advancement? Apple chose not to do photorealistic generative images, so they can't be used for deepfakes. Apple chose not to add a feature to write text for you, just one to clean up what you write, because they don't want to help kids in school cheat.
      • crena 6mo ago
        That is definitely true, but some time ago Apple’s marketing team has also put out some pretty cringey commercials to the contrary. It’s wild how they seemed to be encouraging people to cheat and hide their ineptitudes, rather than just being honest about it.
        • GeekyBear 6mo ago
          As far as I'm concerned, I would rather see the industry prioritize AI that doesn't provide false information over pushing slop out as quickly as possible. Hell, there are chatbots out there trying to convince kids that suicide is a great idea. How is prioritizing pushing out slop as quickly as possible with no consideration of the consequences acceptable?
  • dangus 6mo ago
    It’s even more superpowered than previous implementations of this strategy. When they made the iPhone, iPod, and Apple Watch they had no specific hardware advantage over competitors. Especially with early iPhone and iPod: no moat at all, make a better product with better marketing and you’ll beat Apple. Now? Good luck getting any kind of reasonably priced laptop or phone that can run local AI as well as the iPhone/MacBook. It doesn’t matter that Apple Intelligence sucks right now, what matters is that every request made to Gemini is losing money and possibly always will. This is especially true in 2026 where Windows laptops are climbing in price while MacBooks stay the same.
    • grtteee 6mo ago
      Apples advantage was that they did everything in house and had the marketing and distribution capabilities. And now you’ve got the ecosystem lock in. In hindsight it’s obvious why they pulled it off - nobody else could do it. They all had pieces missing.
    • skybrian 6mo ago
      How do you know Gemini is losing money on inference?
      • nl 6mo ago
        > How do you know Gemini is losing money on inference? It's not. People make this claim with zero evidence. But Google made around $20B profit on Google search in 2025 Q4, and that includes AI search.
        • grtteee 6mo ago
          Until the day comes that they properly break out the financials you, nor the other poster have any idea as to what the numbers are.
          • dangus 6mo ago
            And if AI was making lots of money they’d break it out and proudly display it in their financials on its own.
  • SoftTalker 6mo ago
    When have they done that since the first iPhone in 2007? The watch maybe? Though not sure that's "leapfrog" better than anyone else's smartwatch, but I don't have one so maybe I'm wrong.
    • tiffanyh 6mo ago
      - AirPods - Apple Watch - AirTag Those are a few that come to mind. All do multi-billions in revenue per year.
      • smt88 6mo ago
        None of those are the best product in their category, and all are only huge sellers because Apple anti-competitively privileges them in its ecosystem.
        • drBonkers 6mo ago
          What’s better than AirPods and AirTags? I want them
          • tsycho 6mo ago
            The parent poster is saying (and I agree) that Airpods and Airtags are only superior because Apple anti-competitively privileges their integration with iPhones. It's not that they are better at the hardware level by itself. And since iPhones form the largest single company's device network in the rich countries, that is a pretty big advantage.
            • benbristow 6mo ago
              Surely it's less of an advantage in rich countries because naturally less theft occurs?
        • npunt 6mo ago
          Bad take. Each of these offered novel user experience improvements at launch. Yes they leveraged ecosystem (and yes I agree ecosystem lock-in does move devices) but thats also exactly what unlocked the better UX. In your other thread you mentioned people don't necessarily want iPhones but they buy them to not be excluded from iMessage. I think you vastly underestimate how much regular people want low-bullshit tech experiences and are willing to pay for that.
  • eastbound 6mo ago
    > wait to understand what the thing is capable of doing My parents use Android to ask “What are the 5 biggest towers in Chicago” or “Remove the people on my picture” while apparently iPhone is only capable of doing “Hey Siri start the Chronometer / There is no contact named Chronometer in your phone”. My iPhone is lagging a ridiculous 10 years behind. It’s just that I don’t trust Google with my credit card.
    • Barrin92 6mo ago
      I want the reverse version of this, if Apple can promise me to 'lag behind' for another ten years I'll buy my first Apple device in ten years
    • smt88 6mo ago
      "10 years behind" would be an improvement for Siri. It's actively broken much of the time in a way that Google Assistant or Alexa never has been.
      • adrithmetiqa 6mo ago
        I would argue that they are as bad as each other. I have to repeat most voice commands to Siri and Alexa than getting it right first time. No experience with Google.
        • ghaff 6mo ago
          Voice assistants were going to be this revolutionary new category. I think Amazon was going to populate a whole office tower in Boston with Alexa engineers at one point. There have been incremental improvements here and there but, to a first approximation, none of it has really worked out.
    • Gigachad 6mo ago
      These are software/cloud features. You can install gemini on iphone if you want to talk about towers in Chicago. The only reason to care about it being OS integrated is to interact with functions of the OS, which siri does fine.
  • m463 6mo ago
    Quietly they are doing things on-device. The OCR + copy/paste is genuine goodness - modestly functional.
    • lern_too_spel 6mo ago
      That's also literally years behind the competition. https://www.androidpolice.com/2018/05/09/android-ps-new-recents-ui-includes-smart-text-selection-image-sharing-pulling-text-images/ https://www.androidpolice.com/2018/05/09/android-ps-new-rece...
      • bdavbdav 6mo ago
        But everyone talks about it like it was Apple, and isn’t that what matters (to Apple)?
        • oasisaimlessly 6mo ago
          I've never heard anybody (mis)attribute that to Apple.
          • drcongo 6mo ago
            I would have, and I work in tech. I'd guess that most people who use iOS have zero idea of what Android can and can't do, because they never use it and probably never will so what's the point of trying to find out.
            • 9dev 6mo ago
              Seconded. I never knew Android had this—but then again I couldn't care less about what Android can do. There is so much stuff fundamentally off-putting for me about the entire Google ecosystem that I'd never consider switching anyway.
        • dwaite 6mo ago
          The text from images feature launched as a Pixel 2 series-only feature. There's a lot clearer message to consumers on iPhone, since so many features are available on "every phone made in the last five years, once you update the software." On Android, that feature might be bound to an OS version, or might be rolled out in a Play Store update, it might be specific to just Google or Samsung, or even just to one of their phones. There's much less word of mouth "have you tried this new thing?"
  • socalgal2 6mo ago
    Yea, they nailed that with the Newton, Apple Pippin, and the Apple Vision Pro
    • blitzar 6mo ago
      How amazing is that Apple car
      • treetalker 6mo ago
        Depending on price I would or would not buy an Apple car; but I am quite interested in options for a car that (1) is electric; (2) doesn't spy on me and sell my data; (3) doesn't take video of me and my passengers and do weird things with it; and (4) doesn't support Republicans / white supremacists / Elon Musk. And I imagine that like-minded consumers are a pretty large market.
        • brikym 6mo ago
          (5) Doesn't support a dictatorship with camps.
        • SebastianKra 6mo ago
          Knowing Apple's track history with materials, I guess the seats will look like used iPad Smart Keyboard Folios after two years.
        • deleted 6mo ago
          [deleted]
      • ponector 6mo ago
        It has an excellent reputation of having no reported accidents!
        • blitzar 6mo ago
          My regular tow truck driver tells me he sees all sorts; fords, audis, mercedes, teslas, even the odd exotic car like a lambo - but never once an apple car would you believe it.
  • sidkshatriya 6mo ago
    Will this strategy work every time ? Maybe for AI it will work (market is competitive and Apple just purchases the best model for its consumers). But this approach may not work in other areas: e.g. building electric batteries, wireless modems, electric cars, solar cell technology, quantum computing etc. Essentially Apple got lucky with AI but it needs to keep investing in cutting edge technology in the various broad areas it operates in and not let others get too far ahead !
    • Crestwave 6mo ago
      It works often enough for the company to be wildly successful. They can simply cut their losses and withdraw from industries where it hasn't, such as EVs.
    • codeptualize 6mo ago
      I think their M chips are a good example. They ran on intel for so long, then did the impossible of changing architecture on Mac, even without much transition pain. Obviously that was built upon years of iPhone experience, but it shows they can lag behind, buy from other vendors, and still win when it becomes worth it to them.
      • moondev 6mo ago
        How is changing the architecture of a platform that only you make hardware for doing the impossible? They could change the architecture again tonight, and start releasing new machines with it. The users will adopt because there is literally no other choice. Every machine they release will be fastest and most capable on the platform, because there is no other option
        • crote 6mo ago
          The hard part is doing so without completely ruining the existing app ecosystem. Rosetta 2 is genuinely impressive.
          • 6mo ago
  • maplethorpe 6mo ago
    Didn't they rush to integrate ChatGPT into their OS back in 2024? Reality doesn't seem to align with your description.
    • swiftcoder 6mo ago
      They certainly announced they were going to. I've yet to meet someone who actually used that integration. Like many of these things, it seems to have been a sop to the investors who were accusing apple of ignoring the AI wave
    • dwaite 6mo ago
      I wouldn't describe it as 'rushed'. Its integrated pretty much exactly the way they said it would be, as a fall-back from Siri when you ask world knowledge questions. The part that doesn't work is having Siri locally smart enough to use it as a tool.
      • maplethorpe 6mo ago
        I used "rushed" because they decided to add it while everyone was still figuring out what it was for. That behaviour goes against the OP's claim that Apple "waits to understand what the thing is capable of doing" before acting. It feels like we're rewriting history. There was a lot of blowback at the time.
  • SirMaster 6mo ago
    Apple waited on smartphones? I thought the original iPhone was basically first. Do you count blackberry and palm pilot as Apple waiting to see?
    • kergonath 6mo ago
      > Apple waited on smartphones? They were not waiting for smartphones, but they did wait for the technology to enable them. They had been working on prototypes for a couple of years before releasing the first iPhone, and smartphones were not really a new thing at that point. What made it possible is improvements in digitisers and batteries (and they were not the first users of the capacitive digitisers in the first iPhones, they were the first to use it at that scale for a full screen), as well as progress on the software side, which took some effort. It was the same for the first iPod. They jumped when they got a hard drive they thought was small enough to fit in a product they believed was good. So yeah, they tend to wait and see, but they consider technologies, not only final products.
    • Eric_WVGG 6mo ago
      Apple was considered very late to the smartphone game at the time. Windows CE was introduced on PDAs around 1996, and was on phones by 2003, so the iPhone was arguably between four and eleven years late depending on how you define the space. Microsoft’s dominance was a safe bet because they had never really failed to dominate any market at that point in history. Also nobody imagined that the size of the mobile market would eclipse laptops, so “Windows CE already won” wasn’t an absurd statement at all.
      • SirMaster 6mo ago
        I guess it's just hard for me to consider those even "smartphones" with such small screens without capacitive multi-touch and with web browsers that didn't work properly on so many websites, at least compared to safari on the iPhone. And even other factors like the music and videos was so poor, granted they were built for business use which didn't really need a good media consumption experience.
  • scotty79 6mo ago
    That's what they famously did for VR. /s
• bigyabai 6mo ago
  I just realized that next year Apple's Neural Engine will be 10 years old, just like the "NPUs will change AI forever!" puff pieces. Here's to another 10 years of scuffed Metal Compute Shaders, I guess.
• worthless-trash 6mo ago
  Don't worry, when apple introduce it, it'll be revolutionary and 10% thinner.
  • Gigachad 6mo ago
    Apple will just drip feed locally running models that enable minor conveniences. They will probably drop the Apple Intelligence label later and just have things with their own names like "magic eraser".
    • bitpush 6mo ago
      Apple have had Siri for decades without any meaningful movement. If you think Apple is suddenly going to get better, that's just wishful thinking. Apple neither has the expertise nor the capability to do any of that. They'd hvae demonstrated that with Siri long time back. What Apple does it build beautiful hardware. The software has been shambles for a really long time.
• livinglist 6mo ago
  But why do I feel like the quality of the software from Apple declined sharply in recent years? The liquid glass design feels very unpolished and not well thought out throughout almost everywhere… seems like even Apple can’t resist falling victim to AI slop
  • slopinthebag 6mo ago
    Software quality decline has been a recognised trend long before LLMs took the limelight. Apple included.
  • linguae 6mo ago
    I don’t think it’s AI slop. Even before modern generative AI, I’ve noticed a decline in Apple’s software quality. Rather, I feel that Apple has forgotten its roots. The Mac was “the computer for the rest of us,” and there were usability guidelines backed by research. What made the Mac stand out against Windows during a time when Windows had 95%+ marketshare was the Mac’s ease of use. The Mac really stood out in the 2000s, with Panther and Tiger being compelling alternatives to Windows XP. I think Apple is less perfectionistic about its software than it was 15-20 years ago. I don’t know what caused this change, but I have a few hunches: 0. There’s no Steve Jobs. 1. When the competition is Windows and Android, and where there’s no other commercial competitors, there’s a temptation to just be marginally better than Windows/Android than to be the absolute best. Windows’ shooting itself in the foot doesn’t help matters. 2. The amazing performance and energy efficiency of Apple Silicon is carrying the Mac. 3. Many of the people who shaped the culture of Apple’s software from the 1980s to the 2000s are retired or have even passed away. Additionally, there are not a lot of young software developers who have heard of people like Larry Tesler, Bill Atkinson, Bruce Tognazzini, Don Norman, and other people who shaped Apple’s UI/UX principles. 4. Speaking of Bruce Tognazzini and Don Norman, I am reminded of this 2015 article (https://www.fastcompany.com/3053406/how-apple-is-giving-design-a-bad-name https://www.fastcompany.com/3053406/how-apple-is-giving-desi...) where they criticized Apple’s design as being focused on form over function. It’s only gotten worse since 2015. The saving grace for Apple is that the rest of the industry has gone even further in reducing usability. I think what it will take for Apple to readopt its perfectionism is if competition forced it to.
• javchz 6mo ago
  What I think was a wasted opportunity was not bringing the xserve back, being one of the few e2e solutions out there at scale.
• pram 6mo ago
  I've had it turned off since Sequoia, and this I truly appreciate. It hasn't nagged me once to turn it or Siri on, and it isn't mandatory. When I open up JIRA or Slack I am always greeted with multiple new dialogues pointing at some new AI bullshit, in comparison. We hates it precious
  • TheDong 6mo ago
    I don't like companies forcing their newest features on me noisily and constantly trying to ship new features and see what sticks so you can't trust whether a feature advertised one week will even be there the next. However, I have even less patience for companies forcing paid-for third-party ads down my throat on a paid product. Slack at least doesn't sell my eyeballs. Facebook, Twitter, Google's ads are worse to me than new feature dialogues. Which brings me to Apple. I pay for a $1k+ device, and yet the app store's first result is always a sponsored bit of spam, adware, or sometimes even malware (like the fake ledger wallet on iOS, that was a sponsored result for a crypto stealer). On my other devices, I can at least choose to not use ad-ridden BS (like on android you can use F-Droid and AuroraStore, on Linux my package manager has no ads), but on iOS it's harder to avoid. Apple hasn't sunk to Google levels in terms of ads, but they've crossed a line.
    • slopinthebag 6mo ago
      I haven't noticed this at all and I wonder if you're mistaking curation for advertising? When I open up the App Store I get a panel written "games we love" and a listing of indie games that are clearly not paid for ads. The ads in search are visibly marked as ads, and while I don't particularly like ads in general, they are pretty easy to avoid.
      • 16bitvoid 6mo ago
        On iOS, if you open the App Store and click on the Today tab (it's the default tab if you kill and reopen), there's ads interspersed with curations. For me, the second tile is an ad for Upside, some cashback app
• hapticmonkey 6mo ago
  Apple aren’t in the business of building chatbots to impress investors (other than some WWDC2024 vaporware they’d rather not talk about any more). They’re in the business of consumer hardware. Consumers want iPhones and (if Apple are right) some form of AR glasses in the next decade. That’s their focus. There’s a huge amount of machine learning and inference that’s required to get those to work. But it’s under the hood and computed locally. Hence their chips. I don’t see what Apple have to gain by building a competitor to what OpenAI has to offer.
  • discordance 6mo ago
    ~25% of Apple's revenue came from services in FY25 (and 50% from iPhone, ~25% from other hardware). They made $415B in that year, so ~$100B from services alone!
    • planb 6mo ago
      Services revenue is mostly just 30% from App Store Sales. This means every time a user clicks a pro account for ChatGPT or Claude on their phone, Apple makes more money than they could make with a self deployed model.
      • mdorazio 6mo ago
        Not true. App Store is less than 1/3 of services revenue.
        • planb 6mo ago
          Source? But it‘s true that I forgot about the Google Search deal.
      • benoau 6mo ago
        You're not wrong that they collect a ton of rent off AI apps, rumours a few weeks back claimed $900m in fees last year with 75% of that just from OpenAI. But services revenue is: - their 36% share of Google Ads for being default search engine, about $21 billion/year of pure profit - their IAP fees, court testimony reveals 75% profit margin - their first-party subscriptions, there's an antitrust about iCloud that alleges 52% of iPhone users are on paid plans and that the profit margins are 80-ish percent! https://9to5mac.com/2026/03/19/report-apple-made-roughly-900m-from-generative-ai-apps-in-2025/ https://9to5mac.com/2026/03/19/report-apple-made-roughly-900...
• 46493168 6mo ago
  Apple is almost 2 years out from their announcement of Apple Intelligence. It has barely delivered on any of the hype. New Siri was delayed and barely mentioned in the last WWDC; none of the features are released in China. In other news, people keep buying iPhones, and Apple just had its best quarter ever in China. AAPL is up 24% from last year.
  • foobar1962 6mo ago
    A lot of the people that bought iPhones are now buying Macs as well.
    • 46493168 6mo ago
      Indeed, a lot of the people that bought iPhones are now buying Macs with a binned version of the chip they already bought. So much so that Apple is in danger of running out of them.
      • foobar1962 6mo ago
        Indeed. I just watched a "leak" video that claimed Apple is already releasing the MacBook Neo 2 with A19 chip because they are running out of A18 chips.
  • trueno 6mo ago
    i dont even care about apple intelligence. stays off, not sure anyone really cares about it who is also interested in what this ai shenanigans is about on a local device. i think people keep conflating apple intelligence with all these convos about how macs are kinda dope for joe consumer wanting to tinker with llms. that's the other part of the story that matters, not apple intelligence. this writeup tries to touch on that, apple is uniquely positioned to do really well in this arena if/when local llm's becoming commodities that can do really impressive stuff. we're getting there a lot faster than we thought, someone had a trillion parameter qwen3,5 model going on his 128gb macbook and now people are thinking of more creative ways to swap out whats in memory as needed.
  • adamddev1 6mo ago
• nl 6mo ago
  > Then Stargate Texas was cancelled, OpenAI and Oracle couldn’t agree terms, and the demand that had justified Micron’s entire strategic pivot simply vanished. Micron’s stock crashed. Well.. no. The Stargate expansion was cancelled the orginally planned 1.2MW (!) datacenter is going ahead: > The main site is located in Abilene, Texas, where an initial expansion phase with a capacity of 1.2 GW is being built on a campus spanning over 1,000 acres (approximately 400 hectares). Construction costs for this phase amount to around $15 billion. While two buildings have already been completed and put into operation, work is underway on further construction phases, the so-called Longhorn and Hamby sections. Satellite data confirms active construction activity, and completion of the last planned building is projected to take until 2029. > The Stargate story, however, is also a story of fading ambitions. In March 2026, Bloomberg reported that Oracle and OpenAI had abandoned their original expansion plans for the Abilene campus. Instead of expanding to 2 GW, they would stick with the planned 1.2 GW for this location. OpenAI stated that it preferred to build the additional capacity at other locations. Microsoft then took over the planning of two additional AI factory buildings in the immediate vicinity of the OpenAI campus, which the data center provider Crusoe will build for Microsoft. This effectively creates two adjacent AI megacampus locations in Abilene, sharing an industrial infrastructure. The original partnership dynamics between OpenAI and SoftBank proved problematic: media reports described disagreements over site selection and energy sources as points of contention. https://xpert.digital/en/digitale-ruestungsspirale/ https://xpert.digital/en/digitale-ruestungsspirale/ > Micron’s stock crashed. [the link included an image of dropping to $320] Micron’s stock is back to $420 today > One analysis found a max-plan subscriber consuming $27,000 worth of compute with their 200$ Max subscription. Actually, no. They'd miscalculated and consumed $2700 worth of tokens. The same place that checked that claim also points out: > In fact, Anthropic’s own data suggests the average Claude Code developer uses about $6 per day in API-equivalent compute. https://www.financialexpress.com/life/technology-why-is-claude-actually-limiting-your-usage-viral-theory-debunked-4191594/ https://www.financialexpress.com/life/technology-why-is-clau... I like Apple's chips, but why do we put up with crappy analysis like this?
  • bitpush 6mo ago
    Apple's reality distortion field is really really strong. People love to claim Apple is doing 4D chess, when in reality Apple has certain strengths but AI is anything but. Which is why they were completely caught offguard with botched rollout of Apple Intelligence. Even when they were playing to their strengths, things have not gone for them (Apple Vision Pro). Liquid Glass has had mixed reception, and that's often explained away as "Apple is setting up a world for Spatial Computing by unifying design language" and when the lead designer was fired it was like "Thank God Alan Dye is gone, he was bad for Apple anyway". So essentially, Apple can do no wrong.
• rvz 6mo ago
  Apple never competed in the "AI race" in the first place, because they already knew they were already at the finish line. This was really unsurprising [0]. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40278371 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40278371
  • bigyabai 6mo ago
    > This is an obvious moat for Apple who can offer a cheaper alternative for training, inference AI server farms. According to Bloomberg, Apple's inference server farms are a flop: https://9to5mac.com/2026/03/02/some-apple-ai-servers-are-reportedly-sitting-unused-on-warehouse-shelves-due-to-low-apple-intelligence-usage/ https://9to5mac.com/2026/03/02/some-apple-ai-servers-are-rep... the chips [...] are not powerful enough to run the latest frontier models like Gemini, which the new Siri will be based on
    • russelldjimmy 6mo ago
      Go a little bit deeper than what the media directly wants you to think.
      • bigyabai 6mo ago
        By all means, enlighten me. What did I miss?
        • cindyllm 6mo ago
          [dead]
  • bitpush 6mo ago
    Your linked comment argues the opposite. > Won't be surprised for the re-introduction of Xserve again but for AI. This means, Apple is gonna spend a lot of money standing up data centers (CapEx). And the article in question is essentially saying that Apple is smart not to spend any money. It sounds like there's a bit of wishful thinking on - Whatever Apple is doing is 4D chess. Apple not spending any money - That's genuis. Apple re-introducing Xserve racks - genius.
• amazingamazing 6mo ago
  Gemma4 in my view is good enough to do things similar to Gemini 2.5 flash, meaning if I point it code and ask for help and there is a problem with the code it’ll answer correctly in terms of suggestions but it’s not great at using all tools or one shooting things that require a lot of context or “expert knowledge” If a couple more iterations of this, say gemma6 is as good as current opus and runs completely locally on a Mac, I won’t really bother with the cloud models. That’s a problem. For the others anyway.
  • slopinthebag 6mo ago
    Yep, and to be honest we don't really need local models for intensive tasks. At least yet. You can use openrouter (and others) to consume a wide variety of open models which are capable of using tools in an agentic workflow, close to the SOTA models, which are essentially commodities - many providers, each serving the same model and competing with each-other on uptime, throughput, and price. At some point we will be able to run them on commodity hardware, but for now the fact that we can have competition between providers is enough to ensure that rug pulls aren't possible. Plus having Gemma on my device for general chat ensures I will always have a privacy respecting offline oracle which fulfils all of the non-programming tasks I could ever want. We are already at the point where the moat for these hyper scalers has basically dissolved for the general public's use case. If I was OpenAI or Anthropic I would be shitting my pants right now and trying every unethical dark pattern in the book to lock in my customers. And they are trying hard. It won't work. And I won't shed a single tear for them.
  • colechristensen 6mo ago
    Local models seem somewhere between 9 and 24 months behind. I'm not saying I won't be impressed with what online models will be able to do in two years, but I'm pretty satisfied with the prediction that I won't really need them in a couple of years.
    • Gigachad 6mo ago
      We still aren't going to be putting 200gb ram on a phone in a couple years to run those local models.
• int32_64 6mo ago
  Nvidia restricts gamer cards in data centers through licensing, eventually they will probably release a cheaper consumer AI card to corner the local AI market that can't be used in data centers if they feel too much of a threat from Apple. Imagine a future where Nvidia sells the exact same product at completely different prices, cheap for those using local models, and expensive for those deploying proprietary models in data centers.
  • rpmisms 6mo ago
    Having your cake and eating it too. Consumer goodwill and printing money.
  • kube-system 6mo ago
    There’s long been professional segmentation for GPUs, long before people started running AI models on them
  • walterbell 6mo ago
    Nvidia-Mediatek Arm laptops will compete with Qualcomm and Apple, https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonmarkman/2026/03/16/the-arm-invasion-nvidia-targets-200-billion-pc-market-with-n1x-chips/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonmarkman/2026/03/16/the-arm-i... [WSJ] sources expect.. first units in H1 2026, with GTC as the most likely unveiling stage.. NPU reportedly exceeds both Intel and AMD’s current neural processing units.. If the integrated GPU delivers RTX 5070-class performance in a thin laptop form factor, it would eliminate the need for a separate GPU die, fundamentally changing how gaming laptops are designed.
    • whizzter 6mo ago
      If they can get Valve/Steam for an OS that handles most games well that could in fact be huge if the pricepoint is a bit lower initially but with plenty of unified RAM (both for AI but also games). That said, gaming laptops cooling issues are so often around the GPU so it'd also require a seasoned manufacturer to make it correctly.
      • 6mo ago
• sublinear 6mo ago
  > Pure strategy, luck, or a bit of both? I keep going back and forth on this, honestly, and I still don’t know if this was Apple’s strategy all along, or they didn’t feel in the position to make a bet and are just flowing as the events unfold maximising their optionality. Maximizing the available options is in fact a "strategy", and often a winning one when it comes to technology. I would love to be reminded of a list of tech innovators who were first and still the best. Anyway, hasn't this always been Apple's strategy?
• microslop2026 6mo ago
  I like how we are acting like this market is so novel and emergent revering the luck of some while lamenting the failures of others when it was all "roadmapped" a decade ago. It's like watching a Shaanxi shadow puppet show with artificial folk lore about the origins of the industry. I hate reality television!
• asdev 6mo ago
  Apple is just waiting for all the slop to inevitably crash to see what actually works
• ajross 6mo ago
  This seems mistaken to me. The core idea is that LLMs are commoditizing and that the UI (Siri in this case) is what users will stick with. But... what's the argument that the bulk of "AI value" in the coming decade is going to be... Siri Queries?! That seems ridiculous on its face. You don't code with Siri, you don't coordinate automated workforces with Siri, you don't use Siri to replace your customer service department, you don't use Siri to build your documentation collation system. You don't implement your auto-kill weaponry system in Siri. And Siri isn't going to be the face of SkyNet and the death of human society. Siri is what you use to get your iPhone to do random stuff. And it's great. But ... the world is a whole lot bigger than that.
• jayd16 6mo ago
  My capex is even less than Apple, I can ship to user's Apple hardware and I can't access iPhone user photos either...so really I'm the winner.
• -1 6mo ago
  Maybe they thought an investment in a product with lots of substitutes & high capital requirements wasn't very attractive.
• nielsbot 6mo ago
  > I am actually of the opinion that without some kind of bailout, OpenAI could be bankrupt in the next 18-24 months, but I am horrible at predictions I find this intriguing.. Does anyone here have enough insight to speculate more?
  • sky2224 6mo ago
    It's probably one of the biggest headlines right now. OpenAI has about $96 billion in debt and they don't have a revenue generating product yet.
    • dwedge 6mo ago
      I might be wrong but should you not have said profit generating? I pay them $20 a month so they have at least $20 of revenue
  • operatingthetan 6mo ago
    I don't think I have unique insight on this but the common belief is they are desperately trying to reach AGI or a least have some halo model that will allow them to rise over the other companies. The problem is they have a hilariously large monthly burn paying for compute. If they don't produce something, they are in trouble if investors stop offering capital.
  • Maxion 6mo ago
    1) Put data on X/Y chart 2) Find ruler and pencil 3) Draw line Doing this you will make all kind of fun predictions.
• 10keane 6mo ago
  there are always three elements in the equations of business model: 1. marginal cost 2. marginal revenue 3. value created for llm providers, i always believe the key is to focus on high value problems such as coding or knowledge work, becaues of the high marginal cost of having new customers - the token burnt. and low marginal revenue if the problem is not valuable enough. in this sense no llm providers can scale like previous social media platforms without taking huge losses. and no meaning user stickiness can be built unless you have users' data. and there is no meaningful business model unless people are willing to pay a high price for the problem you solve, in the same way as paying for a saas. i am really not optimistic about the llm providers other than anthropic. it seems that the rest are just burning money, and for what? there is no clear path for monetization. and when the local llm is powerful enough, they will soon be obsolete for the cost, and the unsustainable business model. in the end of the day, i do agree that it is the consumer hardware provider that can win this game.
  • dandaka 6mo ago
    I am super bullish on Google, they are my best bet to earn from models. Mostly because they are vertically integrated (other revenue streams) + open to provide services to other companies (Apple deal).
    • 10keane 6mo ago
      idk man. what do you think is their business model? is it more like ai value-add on their existing services?
  • rachel_rig 6mo ago
    [dead]
• sky2224 6mo ago
  Honestly, I think part of the reason Apple hasn't jumped deep into AI is due to two big reasons: 1) Apple is not a data company. 2) Apple hasn't found a compelling, intuitive, and most of all, consistent, user experience for AI yet. Regarding point 2: I haven't seen anyone share a hands down improved UX for a user driven product outside of something that is a variation of a chat bot. Even the main AI players can't advertise anything more than, "have AI plan your vacation".
  • jpalomaki 6mo ago
    Put proper LLM into Siri. Encourage developers to expose the functionality of their apps as functions, allow Siri LLM to access those (and sprinkle some magic security dust over it). Boom, you have an agent in the phone capable of doing all the stuff you can do with the apps. Which means pretty much everything in our life.
  • 0rbiter 6mo ago
    As for consistency, Apple's latest UI shows they don't give a damn any more.
    • f6v 6mo ago
      I'm pretty sure most people didn't notice any kind of inconsistency. I myself have a hard time figuring out what's going on. I'm so focused on doing the work with the computer that I don't have the time to notice what's "wrong" with the OS. Which makes me wonder if the whole thing is blown out of proportion.
• jbverschoor 6mo ago
  So Apple’s AI acceleration and memory architecture is accidental, but nvidia’s is not?
  • bigyabai 6mo ago
    Nvidia has research papers on accelerating Machine Learning as far back as 2014: https://research.nvidia.com/publications?f%5B0%5D=research_area%3A26 https://research.nvidia.com/publications?f%5B0%5D=research_a...
    • jbverschoor 6mo ago
      Apple's website from 2017 https://machinelearning.apple.com/research?page=1&sort=oldest https://machinelearning.apple.com/research?page=1&sort=oldes... That's also the year where they released on-chip acceleration for certain things, so they probably started a year or 2 before working on that tech? Not as accidental as assumed.
      • bigyabai 6mo ago
        Apple's Neural Engine from 2017 is an NPU that's basically obsolete today in light of Metal Compute Shaders. It was accidental, and Apple is redesigning their GPU architecture to subsume it. CUDA on the other hand continues to be relevant, and the compute capabilities from 2014 are still instrumental for accelerating training and acceleration workloads.
• gambutin 6mo ago
  That’s actually by design. Apple never jumps on the tech hype bandwagon. they wait until the dust settles before making their well-thought-out moves. Every time they’ve jumped the hype train too quickly it hasn’t worked out, like Siri for example.
  • bitpush 6mo ago
    How do you rate Vision Pro? It was not the first one, but it was certainly the best one. Total dud though, while Meta Ray Bans are selling like hot cakes (irrespective of what you think of the company)
• pjmlp 6mo ago
  What I don't get about Apple is when everyone else was giving up on yet another VR attempt, moving into AI, they decide AI isn't worth it, and it was the right time for a me too VR headset. So no VR, given the price and lack of developer support, and late arrival into AI.
  • lugu 6mo ago
    It is the same pattern, late on VR, late on AI. Those two tech have a pricing problem. I would guess that Apple is working to create the conditions to make these tech cheap enough to sell it to everyone.
    • pjmlp 6mo ago
      For everyone that can afford Apple, that is. They do have the mobile phone market duopoly advantage though, far from the 90's mistakes that almost closed shop.
  • KaiserPro 6mo ago
    > it was the right time for a me too VR headset. I think it was more that the experience was pretty much there. Hardware takes a loooong time to mature, even more if its a new style or package. I'm assuming that they were prototyping this in 2015-18. Also, Apple knows that AR glasses, if done right, and not turned into a cesspool of perverts (ie google glasses) will be a massive platform. However its going to take at least another 5 years to get something usable. So if its possible, I expect apple to come out with something just after Meta either gives up or has a string of failures.
  • a13o 6mo ago
    I think of it like a technology checkpoint. Make sure you got as far as everyone else when they gave up, so when the next innovation in that space comes along you can start back up on even footing. You want to have your own pathway to production that dodges competitors’ patents, is somewhat defensible itself, maybe a brand, etc.
    • bigyabai 6mo ago
• boxed 6mo ago
  It's the same everywhere: great fundamentals pay off. It's true of martial arts, dance, and absolutely about software platforms. You just have to trust that process and invest in it, which Apple does (although frustratingly not enough!).
• andsoitis 6mo ago
  Using the author’s logic, it is Google then that will lead. Unlike Apple, they have even more devices in the field PLUS they have strong models PLUS Apple uses Google models.
  • aflag 6mo ago
    Google is an advertisement company at the end of the day and that's a conflict of interest with user privacy.
    • lern_too_spel 6mo ago
      So is Apple. Worse, Apple is a company that is comfortable with the idea of restricting user control, so you can't get privacy even if you want it.
  • HelloUsername 6mo ago
    > Apple uses Google models Source?
    • romanovcode 6mo ago
      The article itself? lol
• rickdeckard 6mo ago
  I think the article is missing a whole aspect on how Apple is ensuring to not face actual competition while they're "playing it safe": Even if the investment is overblown, there is market-demand for the services offered in the AI-industry. In a competitive playing field with equal opportunities, Apple would be affected by not participating. But they are establishing again their digital market concept, where they hinder a level playing field for Apple users. Like they did with the Appstore (where Apple is owning the marketplace but also competes in it) they are setting themselves up as the "the bakn always wins" gatekeeper in the Apple ecosystem for AI services, by making "Apple Intelligence" an ecosystem orchestration layer (and thus themselves the gatekeeper). 1. They made a deal with OpenAI to close Apple's competitive gap on consumer AI, allowing users to upgrade to paid ChatGPT subscriptions from within the iOS menu. OpenAI has to pay at least (!) the usual revenue share for this, but considering that Apple integrated them directly into iOS I'm sure OpenAI has to pay MORE than that. (also supported by the fact that OpenAI doesn't allow users to upgrade to the 200USD PRO tier using this path, but only the 20USD Plus tier) [1] 2. Apple's integration is set up to collect data from this AI digital market they created: Their legal text for the initial release with OpenAI already states that all requests sent to ChatGPT are first evaluated by "Apple Intelligence & Siri" and "your request is analyzed to determine whether ChatGPT might have useful results" [2]. This architecture requires(!) them to not only collect and analyze data about the type of requests, but also gives them first-right-to-refuse for all tasks. 3. Developers are "encouraged" to integrate Apple Intelligence right into their apps [3]. This will have AI-tasks first evaluated by Apple 4. Apple has confirmed that they are interested to enable other AI-providers using the same path [4] --> Apple will be the gatekeeper to decide whether they can fulfill a task by themselves or offer the user to hand it off to a 3rd party service provider. --> Apple will be in control of the "Neural Engine" on the device, and I expect them to use it to run inference models they created based on statistics of step#2 above --> I expect that AI orchestration, including training those models and distributing/maintaining them on the devices will be a significant part of Apple's AI strategy. This could cover alot of text and image processing and already significantly reduce their datacenter cost for cloud-based AI-services. For the remaining, more compute-intensive AI-services they will be able to closely monitor (via above step#2) when it will be most economic to in-source a service instead of "just" getting revenue-share for it (via above step#1). So the juggernaut Apple is making sure to get the reward from those taking the risk. I don't see the US doing much about this anti-competitive practice so far, but at least in the EU this strategy has been identified and is being scrutinized. [1] https://help.openai.com/en/articles/7905739-chatgpt-ios-app-upgrading-to-a-paid-subscription https://help.openai.com/en/articles/7905739-chatgpt-ios-app-... [2] https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/data/en/chatgpt-extension/ https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/data/en/chatgpt-extensio... [3] https://developer.apple.com/apple-intelligence/ https://developer.apple.com/apple-intelligence/ [4] https://9to5mac.com/2024/06/10/craig-federighi-says-apple-hopes-to-add-google-gemini-and-other-ai-models-to-ios-18/ https://9to5mac.com/2024/06/10/craig-federighi-says-apple-ho...
• harrouet 6mo ago
  Thing is, Apple never considered racing against LLM runners. Apple's success comes from human-centered design, it is not trying to launch a me-too product just because it increases their stock price. iPod was not the first MP3 player. iPhone was not even 3G at launch -- in the middle of 3G marketing craze. They sure got lucky that unified memory is well-suited for running AI, but they just focused on having cost- and energy-efficient computing power. They've been having glasses in sight for the last 10 years (when was Magic Leap's first product?) and these chips have been developed with that in mind. But not only the chips: nothing was forcing Apple to spend the extra money for blazing fast SSD -- but they did. So yes, Apple is a hardware company. All the services it sells run on their hardware. They've just designed their hardware to support their users' workflows, ignoring distractions. With that said, LLM makes the GPU + memory bandwidth fun again. NVidia can't do it alone, Intel can't do it alone, but Apple positioned itself for it. It reminds me how everyone was surprised when then introduced 64-bit ARM for everyone: very few people understood what they were doing. Tbh there are NVidia GPUs that beat Apple perf 2x or 3x, but these are desktop or server chips consuming 10x the power. Now all Apple needs to do is keep delivering performance out of Apple Silicon at good prices and best energy efficiency. Local LLM make sense when you need it immediately, anywhere, privately -- hence you need energy efficiency.
• hansmayer 6mo ago
  For the love of all that's holy - folks please stop using AI to publish smart sounding texts. While you may think you are "polishing" your text, you are just disrespecting your readers. Write in your own words.
• pdhborges 6mo ago
  Apple's accidental moat now is taking the rise of hardware prices due to AI eat into their margins and just expand the mac user base.
• deleted 6mo ago
  [deleted]
• amelius 6mo ago
  In the larger scheme of things, the great winner will be open source, as we'll simply use AI to recreate the entire MacOS ecosystem :)
  • 0rbiter 6mo ago
    If AI coding does go anywhere and stays affordable, this would be a great outcome.
    • bredren 6mo ago
      I think AI needs to greatly accelerate open hardware design and make advanced manufacturing more accessible to really make a dent. User facing software is not the limiting factor in AI assisted replacement of Apple products.
• nottorp 6mo ago
  > Think about the App Store. Apple didn’t build the apps, they built the platform where apps ran best, and the ecosystem followed. As far as I remember Apple basically got forced into opening the platform to 3rd party developers. Not by regulation but by public pressure. It wasn't their initial intention to allow it.
• oliver236 6mo ago
  The whole premise is that if you don't get to AGI first then you loose. The idea is that Anthropic with AGI could build a better version of Apple, or whatever it wants. This was the conversation like 1 year ago. What has changed?
  • teekert 6mo ago
    Nothing changed, it's new ground, we are searching it with a search light. From some vantage points our view on things may feel quite complete, even insightful. Then we look at if differently and feel lost. It's a process we are in together.
  • signa11 6mo ago
    if you actually got to A.G.I, why would you rent it out ?
  • deleted 6mo ago
    [deleted]
• Kevin_VAI 6mo ago
  [dead]
• ianbooker 6mo ago
  Why is Nvidia so central to LLMs? Because they embraced ML a decade ago. Apple did as well, machine learning is central to so many things in the iPhone. Its not so surprising then, that a strong showing in ML sets you up good for LLMs..
• f_allwein 6mo ago
  maybe “The Only Way to Win is Not to Play”
• bawana 6mo ago
  Any field with abstraction becomes susceptible to ai disruption. In fact, ai susceptibility is proportional to the amount of abstraction. In this sense, the more abstraction then the more ai will displace people (my observation). This turns the millenia old model upside down. Traditionally more abstraction required more schooling and experience and was rewarded with more financial rewards. Until robots and world models become safe, affordable and ubiquitous, the financial apex of careers will be those that are abstraction resistant (technicians, emts, trades, etc) and those protected by requlation and the requlators(politicians, ceos)
• dzonga 6mo ago
  one day people will realize that Tim Cook as one of the best killer CEOs. by now - by now he has more hits than Steve Jobs. His precision, and being able to manage risk maybe due to his supply chain background have made Apple into the killer it is today. if we were in the age of Robber barons he would've been up there with them.
• an0malous 6mo ago
  The best part is that it’ll all run on your device, instead of siphoning off your data to the provider. Local first AI. I think the creatives will also turn around their seething hatred of AI for Apple AI because they use more ethical training data and it feels more like they own their AI, no one’s charging them a subscription fee to use it and then using their private data for training.
  • contagiousflow 6mo ago
    Why do you think "creatives" have a "seething hatred of AI"?
    • decimalenough 6mo ago
      Have you talked to an artist like a musician, an illustrator or a web designer about AI? It's ripping off their work without credit and making them unemployable.
      • contagiousflow 6mo ago
        So why would Apples AI features change their minds on either of those points?
      • satvikpendem 6mo ago
        A lot of them already use AI already, such as for example Photoshop AI features. It also seems to be a bimodal distribution, there are those who use it without caring what anyone else says about it, especially the loud minority, and there are those who don't use it.
• schnitzelstoat 6mo ago
  When using Siri recently it really struck me how much worse it feels after using ChatGPT. It struggles to understand what I say correctly and you have to give commands in more of a 'computer-friendly' form. I hope they can at least fix this, as I really only use it as a hands-free system while driving.
• Traster 6mo ago
  People can correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the core logic behind OpenAI's valuation was essentially that AI would work like search. Google had the best search engine, it became a centre of gravity that sucked everything in and suddenly network effects meant it was the centre of the universe. There seem to be 2 big problems with that though. The first is that for search, queries are both demand for the product and a way of making the product better. The second, is that Google was genuinely the best product for a very long time. Maybe point (1) was unclear at some point, but I think it's mostly clear today that's not happening. Training the model is modestly distinct from inference. Point (2) is really funny - because sure, at some point OpenAI was the best, and then Sam Altman blew the place up and spawned a whole host of competitors who could replicate and eventually surpass OpenAI's state of the art. It now looks like AI is a death march. You must spend billions of dollars to have the best model or you won't be able to sell inference. But even if you do, a whole host of better funded competitors are going to beat you within months so your inference charges better pay off extremely quickly. When the gap between models starts to drop, distribution becomes king and OpenAI can't compete in that field either. Google can do that. Meta can do that. MSFT probably can do that. Amazon can do that. OpenAI cannot. They do not have the cash to do it.
  • pstuart 6mo ago
    For actual searching, it seems like RAG would be the way. Instead of rebuilding models, focus on curating datasets and sources.
  • toyetic 6mo ago
    I think a large part of its valuation was it's ability to compete with search but thats understating it a bit. Unlike search it could/can be the platform users primarily interact with (ala a social media replacement) while having huge impacts on enterprise work and automation. I think its the combination of the ability for effectively one company to compete on every front in the modern web ecosystem thats contributed to the valuation. It's also important to note the valuation is not just based off of its possible concrete economic implications in these areas but also future "unknown" possibility ( I.E. whatever "agi" means to investors ). Thats not to say I believe it's possible to achieve this but rather a huge part of Sam Altman's job is increasing valuation through unfounded claims of AGI's possibility and possible impact.
• Ifkaluva 6mo ago
  I’m confused why he keeps calling out “the Mac Mini craze after claw went viral”. I thought the various versions of claw used remote models, not local models, and I thought the point of using a Mac mini was that it can send and receive iMessages, not anything about the hardware.
  • nedt 6mo ago
    You have a lot of private data. So running it locally makes you use less credits and then you also don't have your emails as training data for cloud models.
• gayboy 6mo ago
  [flagged]
• m3kw9 6mo ago
  Looks like Apple fell into a winning/winnable position in the AI wars. Their privacy/safety first culture is the cause of them not embracing AI as effectively as other more maverick styles. Their AI was always hindered by privacy, and local first AI is their savour.
• mring33621 6mo ago
  The moat is that they saved their money and can remain in business indefinitely!
• waffletower 6mo ago
  I wouldn't characterize Apple's AI strategy as "smart". "Accidental" is a perfect descriptor here. "Apple Intelligence" and "Liquid Glass" show they are asleep at the wheel. I wrote an email to Tim last year imploring him to leverage Apple Silicon and its unified memory for private AI. I didn't tell him that I had dumped 95% of my Apple shares.
• ebbi 6mo ago
  I think introducing the MacBook Neo now, at that price point, was a genius move. While they're playing the waiting game on AI, they're cementing the next generation into the Apple ecosystem and getting them to not sway towards whatever device(s) OpenAI is cooking up. The MacBook Neo feels like the iPod of this generation.
  • bigyabai 6mo ago
    > getting them to not sway towards whatever device(s) OpenAI is cooking up. Why is this even relevant? The Macbook Neo's biggest competitor is not an imaginary future product, it's the Chromebooks and Windows devices that constitute the majority of laptops sold.
    • ebbi 6mo ago
      It's relevant because it hooks people into an ecosystem. It builds brand loyalty when they have a good experience with the product...and the services that come with it (Music, Apple TV, iCloud, etc.). I'm not suggesting MacBook Neo is a competitor to what OpenAI will release. I'm suggesting Apple will be a brand competitor, and getting people familiar with the Apple ecosystem from now will potentially lead to higher loyalty when it comes time to decide between OpenAI product vs Apple AI product.
  • rk06 6mo ago
    can it run windows?
• rekabis 6mo ago
  It really comes down to the old saying, “The early bird might get the worm, but it’s the second mouse that gets the cheese.” Apple is hanging back, waiting for mousetraps to be triggered as AI companies make mistakes that could not have been reliably foreseen. Then it’ll swoop in, adopt the best bits, and put out a product that is immensely polished and easy to use. That has been, after all, one of its most important strategies over the years. They realized that early adopters only became industry leaders if their error rate remained low enough to keep ahead of those who let others make mistakes for them.
• 90d 6mo ago
  Apple is a marketing company now, not an innovative tech company. They will wait until model progress is not moving in such quick progressive strides then create a new flagship product by rebadging [top model] to match their aesthetic and increase the price 3x.
• rupayanc 6mo ago
  [dead]
• rldjbpin 6mo ago
  the core thesis of the article and comparison with non-"losers" seem vague at best. comparing model providers with hardware vendor with software ecosystem is like differentiating between apple to oranges. if hardware moat was to be discussed, then compare with nvidia, amd and google's tpu division perhaps. in-house intelligence is best left alone for apple. they are relying on the "peers" for underlying capabilities as is. [1] [2] outside of inference and (pro/con)sumer space, there is little to offer for the enterprise or the people developing the lowest end of the stack. even the recent tinygrad egpu is shockingly slow [3]. which might made gb10 look much more capable for in-house training. regardless, most of the industry "moat" does not appear sustainable at best. only time will tell how it will turn out for everyone but on a positive note, apple does not put all its eggs in this basket, which is probably wiser. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40636980 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40636980 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46589675 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46589675 [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4KWsmezXm4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4KWsmezXm4