Live data from Hacker News

Tim Cook rallying Apple employees around AI efforts

bloomberg.com

31–40 of 157 posts

Re: Tim Cook rallying Apple employees around AI efforts

#31
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lucrative but not cool. There's no long term strategy if there's no new, category-defining, cool products. People will eventually sour on the same-old, same-old and expensive, fragile, unrepairable products. Excessive greed obliterates goodwill. You don't seem to understand sj placed cool first, while TC was the bean counter and continues to optimize this while jumping the shark. Current Apple has a deep, systemic la…

Misinformed take IMO. M-series chips are insanely cool (literally and figuratively) and have no competition even five years in. Same with the W-series SoCs on watches. Are there any third-party haptic vibration motors yet? Shoot, even their trackpads, which already stood alone, have gotten _better_ over the years. Nobody else will have their own vertically-integrated modem out in production. This will make budget iPh…

Vertically-integrated modems are not cool. I mean, they are to me and likely other geeks, but to the general public? Their eyes would glaze over.

Cool is the kind of thing people envy. It's the kind of product that gets namedropped in a music video.

Re: Tim Cook rallying Apple employees around AI efforts

#32

> there was a smartphone before the iPhone; there were many tablets before the iPad; there was an MP3 player before iPod That's the biggest shift I've heard from Apple. They were either "first" or ignored the existence of competing features/products for ages. I'm really surprised by this quote. Compare "smartphones before iPhone" to the original announcement: > iPhone also ushers in an era of software power and sophi…

That's actually very consistent for Apple. Apple doesn't generally claim to be the first to do something, but have always taken the line that they're the first to execute it well. Hence their fondness for words like 'reimagine', 'revolutionise', etc.

Re: Tim Cook rallying Apple employees around AI efforts

#34

I wish apple would provide a decent model to apple intelligence and let developers build on it. Like sure it would lose a lot of money right now, but it would mean that app developers making AI agents on the iphone could still charge modest amounts if they aren't responsible for the inference costs.

They announced this at wwdc this year in “Foundation Models”. Developers have access to an on-device llm (not sure how good it is yet).

Re: Tim Cook rallying Apple employees around AI efforts

#35

> there was a smartphone before the iPhone; there were many tablets before the iPad; there was an MP3 player before iPod That's the biggest shift I've heard from Apple. They were either "first" or ignored the existence of competing features/products for ages. I'm really surprised by this quote. Compare "smartphones before iPhone" to the original announcement: > iPhone also ushers in an era of software power and sophi…

And what exactly in your iPhone announcement quote was untrue?

Re: Tim Cook rallying Apple employees around AI efforts

#36

I wish apple would provide a decent model to apple intelligence and let developers build on it. Like sure it would lose a lot of money right now, but it would mean that app developers making AI agents on the iphone could still charge modest amounts if they aren't responsible for the inference costs.

I mean, they’ve released a framework to access the on device model https://developer.apple.com/documentation/FoundationModels

Re: Tim Cook rallying Apple employees around AI efforts

#38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Billions in cash on hand each quarter but don’t have the balls that zuck has to pay unreasonable money It remains to be seen whether this was a smart move, or just flailing money at the wall

The difference is it’s a move. Actually doing something rather than putting out internal PR. Zuck tried and flailed with the metaverse. That was a huge waste, but he can afford it and fortune favours the brave.

You don’t think Apple makes moves?

Not everyone has to make the same move at the same time.

Re: Tim Cook rallying Apple employees around AI efforts

#39

I wish apple would provide a decent model to apple intelligence and let developers build on it. Like sure it would lose a lot of money right now, but it would mean that app developers making AI agents on the iphone could still charge modest amounts if they aren't responsible for the inference costs.

Chief Bean Counter Cook doesn't do cool, goodwill, or long term strategy. Only making the same set of products incrementally better and more expensive, and increasingly prone to expensive repair.

Apple has a ton of problems, but your comments don't address them (primarily the perceived decline in software quality and app store developer gouging).

While cool is subjective, what new, mass-market products should they create? Which product market should they "re-invent"? I wish they'd buy Sonos and fix that shit show, but that's not a profitable market to enter.

Barring the price jump around the iPhone 7, their smartphones have stayed about the same price. [1]

Over half of all smartphone repairs are battery replacements, which implies people don't take care of their batteries or are keeping their phones long enough to wear the battery down normally. [2] Additionally, Apple ranks very well in repairability. [3] They also support their phone's software longer on older devices than the competition.

[1] https://www.androidauthority.com/iphone-price-history-322149... [2] https://www.businessresearchinsights.com/market-reports/smar... [3] https://www.ifixit.com/repairability/smartphone-repairabilit...

Post reply on HN