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Apple shuffles AI executive ranks in bid to turn around Siri

finance.yahoo.com

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Re: Apple shuffles AI executive ranks in bid to turn around Siri

#11

Post by moandcompany »

bitwize wrote: post #8
ilrwbwrkhv wrote: post #3

I wonder if this would help either .vision pro hasn't done better in any way

Vision Pro is an amazing product looking for a purpose and a market. I've opined that it's the 128K Mac of the 2020s -- an expensive toy of very little practical use on its own, that portends a revolution in computing, later versions of which really do change everything. I don't know if that's true anymore. It isn't the 1980s, and initiatives that don't make money over their first year or so tend to get axed. There's…

The Vision/Vision Pro product was also years behind schedule, based on original expectations, and some people feel that they had to launch something so that's why we got what we got.

Re: Apple shuffles AI executive ranks in bid to turn around Siri

#12

Post by ein0p »

bitwize wrote: post #7
travisgriggs wrote: post #4

I wonder if there’s any “doers” in that top 100? Or is it all just “discussers” and “deciders”. I’ve owned Apple products forever. But as long as Pournelles Law of Bureaucracy remains on full display, these shuffling of the titanic deck chairs will continue. I wish it could be otherwise. I wish a company could introspect on itself and say “hey, our doer/decider balance is out of whack, let’s correct” but that just ne…

I can imagine Jobs being in there like "Tell me what you've done." "Well, um, sir, we've realigned our strategy around generative AI and..." "No no no, tell me what you've DONE. In the past six months. It shouldn't be hard."

[flagged]

Re: Apple shuffles AI executive ranks in bid to turn around Siri

#14

Post by LoganDark »

helveticabold48 wrote: post #10
LoganDark wrote: post #5

Why is Apple struggling so hard with LLMs? I get that they're a hardware company, but surely that can't be the full story. They must be suffering from some case of extreme perfectionism or something like that. I would assume it'd be very difficult to get an LLM to perform consistently and reliably without making it useless.

My guess: Their privacy centric image/strategy is a two-edged sword. You can only do so much on device locally.

This has already been solved since last year with Private Cloud Compute.

Re: Apple shuffles AI executive ranks in bid to turn around Siri

#15

Post by varunnrao »

imo, Apple are actually ahead when it comes to the hardware side of the whole thing. Their vertical integration gives them an edge not many can match, when it comes to running ML models. It's a no-brainer for Apple to reduce the barriers for devs to build really cool native Mac/i{Pad}OS applications and incentivize them to leverage the built-in AI/ML abilities to a greater extent. The iPhone in part took off _because_ of the whole app ecosystem that got built around it. Sure they might take a loss in their services revenue in the short term but they get to be _the_ AI platform for at least the next decade and half - both on-device and server side with their new Apple silicon servers.

It's just that most Apple software seems to suck in some fundamental way right now. I don't know if it's a technical issue (SwiftUI being meh when compared to UIKit for example) or a culture issue or the money coming in insulating management from accountability. Software execution has been lagging behind the excellent hardware execution for almost all of the Tim Cook era. They desperately need someone like Scott Forstall to come in, kick butts and get stuff going again.

They ideally have a couple of years while waiting for Moore's Law to catch up to turn around their software side. Otherwise, it's a real shame that all that great hardware is just being used to run Electron B2B SaaS apps.

Re: Apple shuffles AI executive ranks in bid to turn around Siri

#16

Post by monero-xmr »

bitwize wrote: post #8
ilrwbwrkhv wrote: post #3

I wonder if this would help either .vision pro hasn't done better in any way

Vision Pro is an amazing product looking for a purpose and a market. I've opined that it's the 128K Mac of the 2020s -- an expensive toy of very little practical use on its own, that portends a revolution in computing, later versions of which really do change everything. I don't know if that's true anymore. It isn't the 1980s, and initiatives that don't make money over their first year or so tend to get axed. There's…

We have to have thin glasses or contacts. No one wants to wear a bulky helmet thing. Until that happens it will forever be a hardcore enterprise or niche consumer product

Re: Apple shuffles AI executive ranks in bid to turn around Siri

#17

Post by mvdtnz »

LoganDark wrote: post #5

Why is Apple struggling so hard with LLMs? I get that they're a hardware company, but surely that can't be the full story. They must be suffering from some case of extreme perfectionism or something like that. I would assume it'd be very difficult to get an LLM to perform consistently and reliably without making it useless.

> They must be suffering from some case of extreme perfectionism or something like that.

Are you serious? Did you miss the headlines around their news and text message summary products?

Re: Apple shuffles AI executive ranks in bid to turn around Siri

#18

Post by eru »

bitwize wrote: post #7
travisgriggs wrote: post #4

I wonder if there’s any “doers” in that top 100? Or is it all just “discussers” and “deciders”. I’ve owned Apple products forever. But as long as Pournelles Law of Bureaucracy remains on full display, these shuffling of the titanic deck chairs will continue. I wish it could be otherwise. I wish a company could introspect on itself and say “hey, our doer/decider balance is out of whack, let’s correct” but that just ne…

I can imagine Jobs being in there like "Tell me what you've done." "Well, um, sir, we've realigned our strategy around generative AI and..." "No no no, tell me what you've DONE. In the past six months. It shouldn't be hard."

A good enough bullshitter will easily answer that question.

Re: Apple shuffles AI executive ranks in bid to turn around Siri

#19

Post by jsemrau »

LoganDark wrote: post #14
helveticabold48 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My guess: Their privacy centric image/strategy is a two-edged sword. You can only do so much on device locally.

This has already been solved since last year with Private Cloud Compute.

Great point

Re: Apple shuffles AI executive ranks in bid to turn around Siri

#20

Post by swatcoder »

LoganDark wrote: post #5

Why is Apple struggling so hard with LLMs? I get that they're a hardware company, but surely that can't be the full story. They must be suffering from some case of extreme perfectionism or something like that. I would assume it'd be very difficult to get an LLM to perform consistently and reliably without making it useless.

No commercialized LLM product released so far would meet Steve Jobs' standard for a high-profile Apple product, and while that standard is clearly much more lax now, there still is one and still higher than what people accept from OpenAI et al. I wouldn't call that perfectionism, just a struggling brand standard that can't afford to lose even more face.

I think many inside and outside Apple hoped that the ways that they scoped their features in the Apple Intelligence announcement would help them pull off something duly reliable and practical, but it's not that surprising that even those ambitions might have bought too deeply into the hype.

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