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I don't know anything about Ternus other than WikiPedia saying he was VP of hardware engineering. Jobs of course (in addition to being an asshole) really was a

I don't know anything about Ternus other than WikiPedia saying he was VP of hardware engineering. Jobs of course (in addition to being an asshole) really was a product guy - he wanted to build seamless appliances that just worked, blending hardware, software and design into a beautiful thing that just did what you wanted (or what Jobs thought you wanted, which he was well attuned to). I think Apple took some missteps with the iPhone in later models, maybe too much influenced by Jony Ive and form over function. It certainly wouldn't be a bad thing to put more focus back on functionality if that ends up to be the case. I do think the challenge for Apple going forwards (but also for Android) is going to be how to best take advantage of AI. Maybe Ternus has a vision for that, but in any case the CEO can't be a one-man marketing dept - he just needs to know what he wants and hire the right people to get it accomplished.

ryandrake 6mo ago
> I do think the challenge for Apple going forwards (but also for Android) is going to be how to best take advantage of AI. IMO one of their great advantages so far is that they have not blindly bought into the AI hysteria and wasted $billions on it. They've shown you can still have a great company without chanting the "AI is the future" mantra day in and day out. It would be pretty disappointing for a new CEO to drag them into the cargo cult and declare "We, too, must find something that we can do with AI."
- samsolomon 6mo ago
  Honestly, I'm pretty bullish on Apple and AI. I think there move is in local, open source models. These are getting better and better for generic ChatGPT—type tasks. I'm kind of waiting for Apple to ship their own Ollama. And it's going to be a huge win for both them and consumers.
  - ryandrake 6mo ago
    I just think the concept of an LLM is counter to how Apple treats content on their products. See [1] for more of my thoughts here. I think the only chance Apple embraces AI is if they manage to research a 1. local model that 2. is purely deterministic, whose output can be reliably constrained and controlled by Apple. 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47849737 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47849737
  - jnwatson 6mo ago
    Apple is letting the market "commoditize its complements" without lifting a finger.
  - HarHarVeryFunny 6mo ago
    I don't see selling local LLM servers/software, as such, being something that makes sense for Apple, but selling an "Apple Intelligence" appliance that works with your Apple devices and/or provides home automation might do.
- raw_anon_1111 6mo ago
  You can’t compare Apple to any other company. Apple is the only successful consumer hardware company (with Samsung being a distant second). They can afford to sit out the AI arms race. You can’t be a software company without an AI story to tell.
  - MaysonL 6mo ago
    Apple _is_ a software company: everything it sells is based on a Mac OS X foundation.
    - raw_anon_1111 6mo ago
      I would buy Mac hardware running Windows long before I would buy x86 hardware running MacOS. In fact Mac OS on x86 was really nothing remarkable. Macs were objectively worse than most Windows PCs during the last few years on x86 at least the laptops were.
  - layer8 6mo ago
    That must be a very restrictive definition of “successful consumer hardware company”.
    - raw_anon_1111 6mo ago
      Name one other successfully computer hardware company? PC makers are barely profitable commodities, other phone companies aside from Samsung are making pennies, the Microsoft XBox division is on life support, Sony sold off its TV division. The PS5 is going okay but doesn’t sell in near the numbers of iPhones. Who is left?
      - layer8 6mo ago
        You didn’t say “computer”. And I would count the likes of Dell, Lenovo, Acer, Asus as successful. Without “computer”, Nintendo, Sony, LG, and so on. I don’t think it’s reasonable to restrict “successful” to iPhone-level unit sales and Apple profit margins.
- troupo 6mo ago
  > IMO one of their great advantages so far is that they have not blindly bought into the AI hysteria and wasted $billions on it. They both bought into hysteria and they've likely already wasted billions on it. Are you forgetting the interminable ads and announcements of "Apple Intelligence" from two years ago when even iPhones were marketed as AI-ready?
foobarian 6mo ago
Speaking of missteps, there was a period in late 2010s where MacBook Pros really took a bad turn IMO chasing some "thinness" fetish, but recovered nicely afterwards. My M4 is a glorious device built like a tank
- a012 6mo ago
  And dont forget the scissor keyboard and the fucking touchbar
  - alex7o 6mo ago
    Fight me but I miss the touchbar, it was customizable to be super useful with better touch tool
    - vel0city 6mo ago
      I think the touch bar was a neat idea with a lot of potential but IMO they should have kept the row of physical function keys as well.
      - alex7o 6mo ago
        The thing is I have never used the function keys on my laptop so that was not a problem form me, but also some of the custom functions I hard can just be mapped to fn keys so it is bit like it it us a huge loss
        vel0city 6mo ago
        I don't necessarily use the numbered function keys all the time (as in F1-F12), but I use those physical buttons constantly. Brightness, volume, play/pause, mic mute, are all buttons I press a good bit. Many of those I'd rather just have be a single quick button, especially things like speaker or mic mute.
        pie_flavor 6mo ago
tsunamifury 6mo ago
Only on hacker news would someone believe engineers would focus on the customer function. Engineers tend to be selfish and self oriented to building whatever is easiest for them to ship. Theres a reason why they almost always are shifted away from heading products.
- swiftcoder 6mo ago
  > Engineers tend to be selfish and self oriented to building whatever is easiest for them to ship You must be working with shit engineers. Every product I've ever worked on, it's the engineers holding the line on quality while the side of the house that has to care about costs steadily cuts
  - tsunamifury 6mo ago
    classic engineering delusion -- often hold the line on technical items that are irrelevant or simply not important to the consumer. I have worked at all top three firms, and never had engineers come close to being customer oriented.
    - swiftcoder 6mo ago
      > I have worked at all top three firms I've worked at 2/3, and sure, there are shit product teams all over FAANG, but you can always decide to go work on one of the ones that does proper engineering
    - troad 6mo ago
      I enjoy your contrarianism, tsunamifury, but I'd enjoy it more (and I think you'd get more thoughtful engagement) if you weren't quite so spiky about it. (This goes for a couple of your recent posts.)
thewebguyd 6mo ago
> It certainly wouldn't be a bad thing to put more focus back on functionality if that ends up to be the case. As long as they can go back to simplicity in the process. Apple has been shoving functionality into iOS for a long time now, but it's a haphazard mess. The settings app is a disaster of clutter, and searching for settings doesn't work half the time. It needs a complete rearchitecting before they start shoving more functionality into the phone. Did you know that iPhones have tap, double tap, and triple tap (on the back of the phone) functionality that can be set to custom actions? I didn't until recently, its buried deep in the Accessibility options for...reasons? This could be promoted to a core feature, with a dedicated space in settings instead of buried. I'm sure there's other useful functionality hidden behind the settings mess too.
WalterBright 6mo ago
I bought a newer iPhone. My older one had the button to go to the home screen, the newer one replaced that with swipe up. After a year, the swipe up is still a nuisance. It often doesn't work, and I have to swipe up several times.
- ErneX 6mo ago
  You are probably not swiping up from down enough.
- sholladay 6mo ago
  Do you use a case? My guess would be that when you swipe up, you're not quite starting low enough, perhaps unconsciously, because of the case being in the way. See if a case with a thinner front or smaller bezels helps. Using your index finger also works better than the thumb. If that doesn't help, there are some settings you can try: 1. Go to Settings > Accessibility > Touch > AssistiveTouch and turn on AssistiveTouch. Under Custom Actions, set Single-Tap to Home. Now you have a home button. You can move this button anywhere on your screen and adjust its "Idle Opacity" so it's less distracting when not in use. 2. Go to Settings > Accessibility > Touch > Back Tap and choose Double Tap or Triple Tap. Select Home from the list of actions. Now you can tap on the back side of your phone to go home. There's also Settings > Accessibility > Touch > Touch Accommodations, but that's more about preventing accidental touches and swipes, so that would probably make the situation worse for you.
  - WalterBright 6mo ago
    I had no idea. Thanks for the tips!
- locao 6mo ago
  It took me forever to upgrade because I was afraid the same thing would happen to me. Luckily it didn't, but I can imagine the frustration.

ryandrake 6mo ago

> I do think the challenge for Apple going forwards (but also for Android) is going to be how to best take advantage of AI. IMO one of their great advantages so far is that they have not blindly bought into the AI hysteria and wasted $billions on it. They've shown you can still have a great company without chanting the "AI is the future" mantra day in and day out. It would be pretty disappointing for a new CEO to drag them into the cargo cult and declare "We, too, must find something that we can do with AI."

samsolomon 6mo ago
Honestly, I'm pretty bullish on Apple and AI. I think there move is in local, open source models. These are getting better and better for generic ChatGPT—type tasks. I'm kind of waiting for Apple to ship their own Ollama. And it's going to be a huge win for both them and consumers.
- ryandrake 6mo ago
  I just think the concept of an LLM is counter to how Apple treats content on their products. See [1] for more of my thoughts here. I think the only chance Apple embraces AI is if they manage to research a 1. local model that 2. is purely deterministic, whose output can be reliably constrained and controlled by Apple. 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47849737 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47849737
- jnwatson 6mo ago
  Apple is letting the market "commoditize its complements" without lifting a finger.
- HarHarVeryFunny 6mo ago
  I don't see selling local LLM servers/software, as such, being something that makes sense for Apple, but selling an "Apple Intelligence" appliance that works with your Apple devices and/or provides home automation might do.
raw_anon_1111 6mo ago
You can’t compare Apple to any other company. Apple is the only successful consumer hardware company (with Samsung being a distant second). They can afford to sit out the AI arms race. You can’t be a software company without an AI story to tell.
- MaysonL 6mo ago
  Apple _is_ a software company: everything it sells is based on a Mac OS X foundation.
  - raw_anon_1111 6mo ago
    I would buy Mac hardware running Windows long before I would buy x86 hardware running MacOS. In fact Mac OS on x86 was really nothing remarkable. Macs were objectively worse than most Windows PCs during the last few years on x86 at least the laptops were.
- layer8 6mo ago
  That must be a very restrictive definition of “successful consumer hardware company”.
  - raw_anon_1111 6mo ago
    Name one other successfully computer hardware company? PC makers are barely profitable commodities, other phone companies aside from Samsung are making pennies, the Microsoft XBox division is on life support, Sony sold off its TV division. The PS5 is going okay but doesn’t sell in near the numbers of iPhones. Who is left?
    - layer8 6mo ago
      You didn’t say “computer”. And I would count the likes of Dell, Lenovo, Acer, Asus as successful. Without “computer”, Nintendo, Sony, LG, and so on. I don’t think it’s reasonable to restrict “successful” to iPhone-level unit sales and Apple profit margins.
troupo 6mo ago
> IMO one of their great advantages so far is that they have not blindly bought into the AI hysteria and wasted $billions on it. They both bought into hysteria and they've likely already wasted billions on it. Are you forgetting the interminable ads and announcements of "Apple Intelligence" from two years ago when even iPhones were marketed as AI-ready?

foobarian 6mo ago

Speaking of missteps, there was a period in late 2010s where MacBook Pros really took a bad turn IMO chasing some "thinness" fetish, but recovered nicely afterwards. My M4 is a glorious device built like a tank

a012 6mo ago
And dont forget the scissor keyboard and the fucking touchbar
- alex7o 6mo ago
  Fight me but I miss the touchbar, it was customizable to be super useful with better touch tool
  - vel0city 6mo ago
    I think the touch bar was a neat idea with a lot of potential but IMO they should have kept the row of physical function keys as well.
    - alex7o 6mo ago
      The thing is I have never used the function keys on my laptop so that was not a problem form me, but also some of the custom functions I hard can just be mapped to fn keys so it is bit like it it us a huge loss
      - vel0city 6mo ago
        I don't necessarily use the numbered function keys all the time (as in F1-F12), but I use those physical buttons constantly. Brightness, volume, play/pause, mic mute, are all buttons I press a good bit. Many of those I'd rather just have be a single quick button, especially things like speaker or mic mute.
        pie_flavor 6mo ago

tsunamifury 6mo ago

Only on hacker news would someone believe engineers would focus on the customer function. Engineers tend to be selfish and self oriented to building whatever is easiest for them to ship. Theres a reason why they almost always are shifted away from heading products.

swiftcoder 6mo ago
> Engineers tend to be selfish and self oriented to building whatever is easiest for them to ship You must be working with shit engineers. Every product I've ever worked on, it's the engineers holding the line on quality while the side of the house that has to care about costs steadily cuts
- tsunamifury 6mo ago
  classic engineering delusion -- often hold the line on technical items that are irrelevant or simply not important to the consumer. I have worked at all top three firms, and never had engineers come close to being customer oriented.
  - swiftcoder 6mo ago
    > I have worked at all top three firms I've worked at 2/3, and sure, there are shit product teams all over FAANG, but you can always decide to go work on one of the ones that does proper engineering
  - troad 6mo ago
    I enjoy your contrarianism, tsunamifury, but I'd enjoy it more (and I think you'd get more thoughtful engagement) if you weren't quite so spiky about it. (This goes for a couple of your recent posts.)

thewebguyd 6mo ago

> It certainly wouldn't be a bad thing to put more focus back on functionality if that ends up to be the case. As long as they can go back to simplicity in the process. Apple has been shoving functionality into iOS for a long time now, but it's a haphazard mess. The settings app is a disaster of clutter, and searching for settings doesn't work half the time. It needs a complete rearchitecting before they start shoving more functionality into the phone. Did you know that iPhones have tap, double tap, and triple tap (on the back of the phone) functionality that can be set to custom actions? I didn't until recently, its buried deep in the Accessibility options for...reasons? This could be promoted to a core feature, with a dedicated space in settings instead of buried. I'm sure there's other useful functionality hidden behind the settings mess too.

WalterBright 6mo ago

I bought a newer iPhone. My older one had the button to go to the home screen, the newer one replaced that with swipe up. After a year, the swipe up is still a nuisance. It often doesn't work, and I have to swipe up several times.

ErneX 6mo ago
You are probably not swiping up from down enough.
sholladay 6mo ago
Do you use a case? My guess would be that when you swipe up, you're not quite starting low enough, perhaps unconsciously, because of the case being in the way. See if a case with a thinner front or smaller bezels helps. Using your index finger also works better than the thumb. If that doesn't help, there are some settings you can try: 1. Go to Settings > Accessibility > Touch > AssistiveTouch and turn on AssistiveTouch. Under Custom Actions, set Single-Tap to Home. Now you have a home button. You can move this button anywhere on your screen and adjust its "Idle Opacity" so it's less distracting when not in use. 2. Go to Settings > Accessibility > Touch > Back Tap and choose Double Tap or Triple Tap. Select Home from the list of actions. Now you can tap on the back side of your phone to go home. There's also Settings > Accessibility > Touch > Touch Accommodations, but that's more about preventing accidental touches and swipes, so that would probably make the situation worse for you.
- WalterBright 6mo ago
  I had no idea. Thanks for the tips!
locao 6mo ago
It took me forever to upgrade because I was afraid the same thing would happen to me. Luckily it didn't, but I can imagine the frustration.