Live data from Hacker News

Apple releases MGIE, an AI-based image editing model

appleinsider.com

101–110 of 112 posts

Re: Apple releases MGIE, an AI-based image editing model

#102
post #101

I’m curious why so many AI papers consist mostly of people with Chinese-like names. I’m surprised there aren’t more witch hunts from the far right & skepticism that they can embed CCP propaganda into the models.

Why would we, the right-wing conspiracy nuts, need chinamen to do that when there are so many communists in america and europe who do it anyway.

Re: Apple releases MGIE, an AI-based image editing model

#103
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure why you'd draw that conclusion. I overheard a random group of people talking it at the dog park yesterday morning. Then I had breakfast with a friend today who isn't in tech at all, who does corporate conflict resolution, and he asked me if I'd tried a demo. Two other friends, also in no way connected to tech asked me about it and I did a demo to them over FaceTime. I think if you personally are ignoring…

I’m sure they’ll sell, and people know about it, but by “ignoring it” I was referring to the whole virtual reality goggles market, which while it’s ahead of the VirtualBoy just hasn’t really made anything near even “Apple Watch” waves, let alone smartphone waves.

Hasn't it? Are you head of a consumer sentiment research company with access to an unpublished report?

Re: Apple releases MGIE, an AI-based image editing model

#104
post #93
post #24

The significant part of this, for me, is not the image model. It's that Apple rarely publishes in the vision field. Back in Neurips (2016 I want to say?) Apple had a workshop where they said "we're going to engage more with the academic community, we're going to publish more," but since then only a small number of CV projects have seen the academic light of day. I remember one on detection of flashing lights, a white…

I wouldn’t know how good they are, but https://machinelearning.apple.com/research?page=1&domain=Com... has about 50 papers in 2023. Aren’t those in computer vision?

Thanks! I legit had no idea. I retract my earlier comment.

Re: Apple releases MGIE, an AI-based image editing model

#105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except with gen AI the interface is text and there are multiple companies that have equally acceptable products. Either apple solves hallucination or makes some other AI breakthrough (i doubt it since the best researchers are probably at the hottest AI companies), or else it's just losing out as other companies capture a new market. I think the second mover will have a huge disadvantage here as companies integrate th…

"Hallucinations" can't be solved, they are there by design. This is how people's mind works too.

Some answers are subjective and rely on justification/argument for support. Provided the argument is sound that's as good as we'll ever get. But it's farcical to claim AI could never always be objectively right.

Re: Apple releases MGIE, an AI-based image editing model

#106
post #90
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fitbit and various other "exercise-aimed" smartwatches were already out way before the Apple Watch, and there were other smartwatches (such as Pebble) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smartwatch has a whole listing. Apple came in quite late and slurped up much of the market. If their watch was Android-compatible, it'd be even more.

They may not have been the first in the category, but those products were arguably a generation behind what apple introduced. Fitbit in particular was like comparing a flip phone to an iPhone.

Fitbit was a fitness tracker that later adopted more smartwatch features -- but things like Pebble (early 2013), Android Wear (now Wear OS) (spring 2014), Samsung's Galaxy Gear (fall 2013) all already existed. Now were any of them as good as Apple Watch -- aside from Pebble (which could never have the same level of integration as Apple could offer for iOS, but still did a very good job), I would say no -- but I would also argue Apple Watch was fairly medicore outside of its core notification features at first too.

WatchOS until like fall 2016 really wasn't that great. The third-party apps were all garbage and we didn't even get "native" apps until six months after the device launched and that original Apple Watch (the Series 0) was woefully underpowered for what it needed to be. I bought one and don't regret spending $800 on the stainless steel variant with the modern buckle combo, but it also got like two years of software support, and even the support was limited compared to even the low-cost Series 1 released a year later.

Re: Apple releases MGIE, an AI-based image editing model

#107
post #96
post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's usually what they do (from a small number of examples, to be sure) - come in polished enough that it feels (or is ) a generation ahead to those who haven't been watching. I don't know if they've been able to pull this off with AVP, as most people are just ignoring it.

I'm not sure why you'd draw that conclusion. I overheard a random group of people talking it at the dog park yesterday morning. Then I had breakfast with a friend today who isn't in tech at all, who does corporate conflict resolution, and he asked me if I'd tried a demo. Two other friends, also in no way connected to tech asked me about it and I did a demo to them over FaceTime. I think if you personally are ignoring…

>but I see Apple having no trouble selling as many as they can make.

But right now, supply-chain analysts suggest that they can only make 160,000 or something this year. Apple could sell literal boxes of dog shit to 160,000 people, so I don't think we really know what the size of the market is.(And incidentally, although shipping is now two or three weeks out (an improvement from two weeks ago), I can pick up an AVP from a number of stores in my area today and at another store on Saturday. I don't think we can make any assessments as to the market size/demand right now, but I will say that in-store availability one-week post release was not something we saw for the first iPad or Apple Watch. The iPad 2 was consistently out of stock its first few months, even -- and not because they were supply constrained but because Apple sold every device they got in-store.)

Is interest/intrigue/vauge knowledge super high -- yes -- it's a new Apple product, that's a given. But prodct awareness != product success.

Re: Apple releases MGIE, an AI-based image editing model

#108
post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m sure they’ll sell, and people know about it, but by “ignoring it” I was referring to the whole virtual reality goggles market, which while it’s ahead of the VirtualBoy just hasn’t really made anything near even “Apple Watch” waves, let alone smartphone waves.

Hasn't it? Are you head of a consumer sentiment research company with access to an unpublished report?

I mean, if we're talking right now -- it absolutely has not. IDC predicts ~12 million AR/VR headset shipments in 2024, which is up 46% from 2023 (which was down 8.3% from 2022) but the Apple Watch, even though it had massive sales declines in 2023, was estimated to have sold 36-38 million units in 2023 [2]. Its wearables category did $39 billion in revenue in fiscal year 2023, which analysts estimate about half is attributable to Apple Watch.

So right now, the entire AR/VR category is expected to ship 1/3 of the number of units of just the Apple Watch. Even if Apple sells 180,000 AVPs all with an MSRP of $4000 (so I'm being extra generous here), that's only $720m in revenue, or less than 3.7% of Apple Watch sales.

And that doesn't even factor in all the Apple Watch units that are in use, which realistically, is probably 125 - 150 million units.

Does that mean AVP or headsets like it won't ever achieve Apple Watch-like sales or adoption? Not at all. But it certainly isn't now and it's probably doing the category a disservice to expect it to reach those heights anytime soon, let alone pretend that just because awareness is super high that sales are guaranteed to follow.

[1]: https://www.idc.com/promo/arvr [2]: https://medium.com/@mingchikuo/apple-watch-estimates-and-pre...

Re: Apple releases MGIE, an AI-based image editing model

#109
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It seems like they are biding their time and avoiding the hype knowing that they don't need to get their first This idea that Apple gets to things late to "perfect them" is an artifact of the iPod/iPhone era. Nothing Apple put out since then has met this bar. Apple does things low-key these days because it has to. Remember the Apple Maps fiasco? A few memes was all it took to send everyone scurrying back to GMaps f…

I’m not at all convinced about the inevitable success of the Vision Pro (which I maintain is in its current form, a dev kit being marketed as a mass-consumer device), but this just isn’t true. To use a few examples that have happened after Apple Maps: * The Apple Watch — Apple was at least 2 years behind other smartwatches when it launched in 2015 and now it basically owns the category. The first version wasn’t quite…

I don't think Apple Watch owns the smartwatch category, I think it exists in an entirely separate category: a wearable companion to iPhone.

AirPods...I have about 6 different "true wireless headphones". AirPods IMO worse than cheap version of Pixel Buds that google give away for free just for existing. Max and Pro are alright, but the original and 2nd gen AirPods are my least favorite headphones.

Their nice seamless device migration is nice, but only possible because they control all sides of it. Also, doesn't work well if connected to Apple TV for some reason - doesn't automatically switch when you pickup the phone.

Re: Apple releases MGIE, an AI-based image editing model

#110
post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not at all convinced about the inevitable success of the Vision Pro (which I maintain is in its current form, a dev kit being marketed as a mass-consumer device), but this just isn’t true. To use a few examples that have happened after Apple Maps: * The Apple Watch — Apple was at least 2 years behind other smartwatches when it launched in 2015 and now it basically owns the category. The first version wasn’t quite…

I don't think Apple Watch owns the smartwatch category, I think it exists in an entirely separate category: a wearable companion to iPhone. AirPods...I have about 6 different "true wireless headphones". AirPods IMO worse than cheap version of Pixel Buds that google give away for free just for existing. Max and Pro are alright, but the original and 2nd gen AirPods are my least favorite headphones. Their nice seamless…

I agree with you as someone who had Airpods and still use an Apple Watch.

For Airpods I fell for the hype in a moment of need and weakness: I needed new earbuds for a travel because they couldn't swap my old ones that needed a warranty return. I regreted it pretty fast after the honeymoon period. Sure, they wouldn't drop too much and the 2 buds were perfectly in sync (but that's a low bar to clear for earbuds...) but most of the rest sucked big time. In fact, their poor battery life made me regret the wire pretty fast and their mild sound quality doesn't really help being more forgiving of its shortcomings. Nowadays they make no sense for their price, and the "Pro" version is alright, but to get half decent battery life they had to increased case size wich was basically the only useful difference and in the end, they perform like buds half their price for sure. I think the iCloud sync bullshit to be unreliable and a stupid "feature" at that because it guarantees that it will only be useful with other Apple products when I definitely do not want to limit my tech to only one brand especially when said brand only sells at luxury pricing... What you really want is Bluetooth multipoint, a feature that many earbuds at this price have anyway.

I bought the Watch to track swimming because it seemed like the thing that would integrate easier with iOS and it seemed not too bad quality tracking. But in the end after years of using an Apple Watch for sports tracking (including thousands kms of running) I don't think the Watch is really good and most will get it to show off or because it's actually the only that can properly integrate with iOS thanks to limitations put in place by Apple themselves. Considering the price, the only really useful features (health/sports tracking) is extremely lacking, especially if you do not spend time looking for 3rd party solutions. The only reason it got such success is because of Apple brand recognition and other secondary factors like social status. In the end it's not a completely terrible product but if evaluated on its own at its price point its really not great...

Suffise to say I'm rather disenchanted with today's Apple gear and I feel they really need to make their products MUCH better for the price or lower pricing across the board. In the long term something will have to give because people won't be captivated by the brand forever and désillusion has already started.

Post reply on HN