5 ms·

This is a very clever platform play. If you make Siri / your mac the central access point for all AI related workflows and make models interchangeable, then App

by akie 18d ago

This is a very clever platform play. If you make Siri / your mac the central access point for all AI related workflows and make models interchangeable, then Apple has a huge weapon in the AI race.

freedomben 18d ago
I don't disagree, but I do feel the need to point out this was not Apple's plan A. Luckily for them they have so many tools and options at their disposal, that they are able to massively fail at developing their own models and still end up in a good position.
- dgellow 18d ago
  Apple “genius” has been to accept their plan A failed (the original Apple Intelligence), and instead of doubling down, let the others explore the space, then offer a good interface (I say that, I haven’t seen if it’s actually good). So many other actors in the industry would have just doubled down and follow the race to the bottom
  - bel8 18d ago
    Genius would have been for Apple to get Siri in a better state after so many years. This looks more like a participation medal, if at all.
    - dgellow 18d ago
      They didn’t invest in Siri and became the most valuable company in history. I don’t think Siri being better would have mattered much to be honest. Not joining the financial black hole that is AI training seems to have benefited them well so far. But yes, it’s definitely a case of failing upwards. Adding quotes around “genius” as it seems you misunderstood what I meant
      - bel8 18d ago
        > They didn’t invest in Siri... What makes you think that? They insisted on Siri for so long and even made a big deal of Apple Intelligence in WWDC. Then Apple threw the towel and waved the white flag with regards to Siri and replaced their efforts with third party AI.
        dgellow 18d ago
        Because Siri didn’t seem to change over time. If they worked on it over the past decade it’s not to the point where it was visible to users.
      - Danox 18d ago
        What a way to go falling upward with Apple Silicon, five Operating systems, and five ecosystems. In comparison to their competition who are all currently burning billions of dollars. Their advantage is they are the last vertical computer from the 1980's. One problem they do have memory will need to come in house.
    - sicktriple 18d ago
      Meh, AI is deep in it's diversification stage -- there are soooooooo many players in the game right now and basically one maybe two will survive once the dust settles. All these frontier labs are fighting tooth and nail to be the one left standing. Apple is making a measured approach saying "hey, we're probably not going to be the Google of AI, but the smartest thing for us to do is to put infrastructure in place so that once there is a contraction (which there will be, think the search engine landscape in the 2000s) we're relatively ahead for relatively little effort/cost."
    - Grombobulous 18d ago
      I imagine that Google assistant only makes money for Google because they’re an advertising company. Alexa loses money for Amazon and it’s becoming more gated to Prime subscription features as a result. Amazon thought everyone would be buying stuff with their voice and that future never panned out. It turns out that voice assistants aren’t all that important. Customers aren’t willing to pay for them and they’re more of a nice to have convenience feature.
    - deleted 18d ago
      [deleted]
    - juiceland 18d ago
      >This looks more like a participation medal, if at all. This would be insulting if it even mattered. Apple has fumbled AI while having record breaking quarterly profits. The market does not care.
  - sublinear 18d ago
    I don't know why you're getting downvoted. You're spot on. Almost everyone developing their own AI is doomed to fail. I would not be surprised that when the dust settles, Microsoft CoPilot and Google Gemini will be left standing while OpenAI and Anthropic fade away. They will get what they need and then throw them away. "Embrace, extend, extinguish" is the same playbook for decades, and you can only do that when you make money. Yes, making money still matters and post-capitalism is a big fat lie.
    - Danox 18d ago
      I don't think Nadella will survive Copilot if it isn't a roaring success.
      - sublinear 18d ago
        Copilot is part of the enterprise suite, so like everything else Microsoft does in that regard it's never been anything but a roaring success by its own definition. Of course that's relative to how these kinds of things are used, but it really does get used. It might be the best feature of MS Teams. Copilot is the cockroach of corporate AI. It ain't going nowhere.
  - notatoad 18d ago
    maybe wait until their plan B succeeds before calling it genius. all we know so far is that plan A has failed.
    - dgellow 18d ago
      It’s a very low risk and low effort plan, even if it fails it’s fine. To be contrasted with all the AI players accumulating costs and risks for the AI rollout
  - fennecbutt 18d ago
    So basically do what they have always done for decades? Apple Intelligence was an outlier in how they historically operate. I mean they literally just put out a folding phone after waiting what, a decade, for others to perfect it first.
    - dgellow 18d ago
      Yep. I will never understand why none of their competitors follow that strategy. It’s good we have first movers ready to take some risk Apple has shown over and over again how well their approach to product works. Wait for the market to be discovered and the technology to mature, then enter with a clear vision and high quality product
    - Danox 18d ago
      How can you perfect it when you don't have control of an effective in house operating system or in house chip design. When the dust settles Apple will be number 1 or 1A and number 1 in hardware/software integration.
      - fennecbutt 17d ago
        Are you serious. As a left handed person apparently I'm like a witch or something and can't use Apple's folding phone anyway. You call that perfect? And by your logic where do you draw the line. Apple do not have control over TSMC's internal processes. Or Samsung who make the display for them. So your statements reek of culty faff than objective truths.
- deleted 18d ago
  [deleted]
- spiralpolitik 18d ago
  It's the same plan. Apple's model is: Handle the query on device. If the device cannot handle the query, push the query to Private Cloud, If Private Cloud cannot handle the query, push the query to a third party of the users choosing. Which is pretty much the same as what they announced a few years ago. Apple underestimated the amount of time and work needed to get to work and really the only bit that I think changed is that Private Cloud (and possibly the on device model) is a white label Google model rather than being developed in-house by Apple.
  - robotresearcher 18d ago
    The problem with that approach is that “how do I handle this query”, and “did I handle that query ok” are both AI-hard problems, and must be tackled near the user, where the large model is not. It also requires a relatively complex distributed architecture. I worry about how successful they can be with this approach, in terms of best user experience.
evgenysokov 18d ago
[dead]
lern_too_spel 18d ago
The EU forced this on Apple and other manufacturers. Apple fought this bitterly, but there is only so much market share they are willing to lose before capitulating. https://futurium.ec.europa.eu/es/apply-ai-alliance/community-content/android-and-applesiri-simple-explanation-how-phones-could-let-ai-assistants-work-together-safely https://futurium.ec.europa.eu/es/apply-ai-alliance/community...
lilytweed 18d ago
I’ve been thinking recently about moving my notes from Notes.app to e.g. Notion because the latter jacks into ChatGPT and Claude, thereby giving them way more power as a personal assistant. This is the exact kind of move that would keep someone like me locked in.

by akie 18d ago

This is a very clever platform play. If you make Siri / your mac the central access point for all AI related workflows and make models interchangeable, then Apple has a huge weapon in the AI race.

freedomben 18d ago

I don't disagree, but I do feel the need to point out this was not Apple's plan A. Luckily for them they have so many tools and options at their disposal, that they are able to massively fail at developing their own models and still end up in a good position.

dgellow 18d ago
Apple “genius” has been to accept their plan A failed (the original Apple Intelligence), and instead of doubling down, let the others explore the space, then offer a good interface (I say that, I haven’t seen if it’s actually good). So many other actors in the industry would have just doubled down and follow the race to the bottom
- bel8 18d ago
  Genius would have been for Apple to get Siri in a better state after so many years. This looks more like a participation medal, if at all.
  - dgellow 18d ago
    They didn’t invest in Siri and became the most valuable company in history. I don’t think Siri being better would have mattered much to be honest. Not joining the financial black hole that is AI training seems to have benefited them well so far. But yes, it’s definitely a case of failing upwards. Adding quotes around “genius” as it seems you misunderstood what I meant
    - bel8 18d ago
      > They didn’t invest in Siri... What makes you think that? They insisted on Siri for so long and even made a big deal of Apple Intelligence in WWDC. Then Apple threw the towel and waved the white flag with regards to Siri and replaced their efforts with third party AI.
      - dgellow 18d ago
        Because Siri didn’t seem to change over time. If they worked on it over the past decade it’s not to the point where it was visible to users.
    - Danox 18d ago
      What a way to go falling upward with Apple Silicon, five Operating systems, and five ecosystems. In comparison to their competition who are all currently burning billions of dollars. Their advantage is they are the last vertical computer from the 1980's. One problem they do have memory will need to come in house.
  - sicktriple 18d ago
    Meh, AI is deep in it's diversification stage -- there are soooooooo many players in the game right now and basically one maybe two will survive once the dust settles. All these frontier labs are fighting tooth and nail to be the one left standing. Apple is making a measured approach saying "hey, we're probably not going to be the Google of AI, but the smartest thing for us to do is to put infrastructure in place so that once there is a contraction (which there will be, think the search engine landscape in the 2000s) we're relatively ahead for relatively little effort/cost."
  - Grombobulous 18d ago
    I imagine that Google assistant only makes money for Google because they’re an advertising company. Alexa loses money for Amazon and it’s becoming more gated to Prime subscription features as a result. Amazon thought everyone would be buying stuff with their voice and that future never panned out. It turns out that voice assistants aren’t all that important. Customers aren’t willing to pay for them and they’re more of a nice to have convenience feature.
  - deleted 18d ago
    [deleted]
  - juiceland 18d ago
    >This looks more like a participation medal, if at all. This would be insulting if it even mattered. Apple has fumbled AI while having record breaking quarterly profits. The market does not care.
- sublinear 18d ago
  I don't know why you're getting downvoted. You're spot on. Almost everyone developing their own AI is doomed to fail. I would not be surprised that when the dust settles, Microsoft CoPilot and Google Gemini will be left standing while OpenAI and Anthropic fade away. They will get what they need and then throw them away. "Embrace, extend, extinguish" is the same playbook for decades, and you can only do that when you make money. Yes, making money still matters and post-capitalism is a big fat lie.
  - Danox 18d ago
    I don't think Nadella will survive Copilot if it isn't a roaring success.
    - sublinear 18d ago
      Copilot is part of the enterprise suite, so like everything else Microsoft does in that regard it's never been anything but a roaring success by its own definition. Of course that's relative to how these kinds of things are used, but it really does get used. It might be the best feature of MS Teams. Copilot is the cockroach of corporate AI. It ain't going nowhere.
- notatoad 18d ago
  maybe wait until their plan B succeeds before calling it genius. all we know so far is that plan A has failed.
  - dgellow 18d ago
    It’s a very low risk and low effort plan, even if it fails it’s fine. To be contrasted with all the AI players accumulating costs and risks for the AI rollout
- fennecbutt 18d ago
  So basically do what they have always done for decades? Apple Intelligence was an outlier in how they historically operate. I mean they literally just put out a folding phone after waiting what, a decade, for others to perfect it first.
  - dgellow 18d ago
    Yep. I will never understand why none of their competitors follow that strategy. It’s good we have first movers ready to take some risk Apple has shown over and over again how well their approach to product works. Wait for the market to be discovered and the technology to mature, then enter with a clear vision and high quality product
  - Danox 18d ago
    How can you perfect it when you don't have control of an effective in house operating system or in house chip design. When the dust settles Apple will be number 1 or 1A and number 1 in hardware/software integration.
    - fennecbutt 17d ago
      Are you serious. As a left handed person apparently I'm like a witch or something and can't use Apple's folding phone anyway. You call that perfect? And by your logic where do you draw the line. Apple do not have control over TSMC's internal processes. Or Samsung who make the display for them. So your statements reek of culty faff than objective truths.
deleted 18d ago
[deleted]
spiralpolitik 18d ago
It's the same plan. Apple's model is: Handle the query on device. If the device cannot handle the query, push the query to Private Cloud, If Private Cloud cannot handle the query, push the query to a third party of the users choosing. Which is pretty much the same as what they announced a few years ago. Apple underestimated the amount of time and work needed to get to work and really the only bit that I think changed is that Private Cloud (and possibly the on device model) is a white label Google model rather than being developed in-house by Apple.
- robotresearcher 18d ago
  The problem with that approach is that “how do I handle this query”, and “did I handle that query ok” are both AI-hard problems, and must be tackled near the user, where the large model is not. It also requires a relatively complex distributed architecture. I worry about how successful they can be with this approach, in terms of best user experience.

evgenysokov 18d ago

[dead]

lern_too_spel 18d ago

The EU forced this on Apple and other manufacturers. Apple fought this bitterly, but there is only so much market share they are willing to lose before capitulating. https://futurium.ec.europa.eu/es/apply-ai-alliance/community-content/android-and-applesiri-simple-explanation-how-phones-could-let-ai-assistants-work-together-safely https://futurium.ec.europa.eu/es/apply-ai-alliance/community...

lilytweed 18d ago

I’ve been thinking recently about moving my notes from Notes.app to e.g. Notion because the latter jacks into ChatGPT and Claude, thereby giving them way more power as a personal assistant. This is the exact kind of move that would keep someone like me locked in.