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Apple's accidental moat: How the "AI Loser" may end up winning

adlrocha.substack.com

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Re: Apple's accidental moat: How the "AI Loser" may end up winning

#31

Post by OccamsMirror »

skybrian wrote: post #9
dangus wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s even more superpowered than previous implementations of this strategy. When they made the iPhone, iPod, and Apple Watch they had no specific hardware advantage over competitors. Especially with early iPhone and iPod: no moat at all, make a better product with better marketing and you’ll beat Apple. Now? Good luck getting any kind of reasonably priced laptop or phone that can run local AI as well as the iPhone/Ma…

How do you know Gemini is losing money on inference?

They're talking about free inference like Android and Google Home devices. No one is paying subscription fees for these and they're running their inference in the cloud. Apple Intelligence, for the most part, is running on the device.

Re: Apple's accidental moat: How the "AI Loser" may end up winning

#32

Post by 16bitvoid »

slopinthebag wrote: post #24
TheDong wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't like companies forcing their newest features on me noisily and constantly trying to ship new features and see what sticks so you can't trust whether a feature advertised one week will even be there the next. However, I have even less patience for companies forcing paid-for third-party ads down my throat on a paid product. Slack at least doesn't sell my eyeballs. Facebook, Twitter, Google's ads are worse to me…

I haven't noticed this at all and I wonder if you're mistaking curation for advertising? When I open up the App Store I get a panel written "games we love" and a listing of indie games that are clearly not paid for ads. The ads in search are visibly marked as ads, and while I don't particularly like ads in general, they are pretty easy to avoid.

On iOS, if you open the App Store and click on the Today tab (it's the default tab if you kill and reopen), there's ads interspersed with curations.

For me, the second tile is an ad for Upside, some cashback app

Re: Apple's accidental moat: How the "AI Loser" may end up winning

#33

Post by lern_too_spel »

m463 wrote: post #27
grtteee wrote: post #2

This is the classic apple approach - wait to understand what the thing is capable of doing (aka let others make sunk investments), envision a solution that is way better than the competition and then architect a path to building a leapfrog product that builds a large lead.

Quietly they are doing things on-device. The OCR + copy/paste is genuine goodness - modestly functional.

That's also literally years behind the competition. https://www.androidpolice.com/2018/05/09/android-ps-new-rece...

Re: Apple's accidental moat: How the "AI Loser" may end up winning

#34

Post by slopinthebag »

livinglist wrote: post #10

But why do I feel like the quality of the software from Apple declined sharply in recent years? The liquid glass design feels very unpolished and not well thought out throughout almost everywhere… seems like even Apple can’t resist falling victim to AI slop

Software quality decline has been a recognised trend long before LLMs took the limelight. Apple included.

Re: Apple's accidental moat: How the "AI Loser" may end up winning

#35

Post by Gigachad »

rtpg wrote: post #19
Gigachad wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For consumers AI has anti hype right now. It's off-putting to see consumer products slapped with a hundred AI labels. I see people talk about how you can turn off all of Apple Intelligence with one toggle rather than hundreds on Samsung. Firefox is also marketing how easy it is to disable AI.

I think a lot of people are not hype about AI in their toaster, but... I don't think people are generally turned off form deeper integration in their OS itself. Especially when for some people this is representing ideas similar to how programmer-types get excited about Shortcuts. Decently accessible automation and discovery, without having to go figure out a bunch of stuff

People like features, benefits, and outcomes. AI isn't a feature, it's a technology that can enable features. But it's being marketed as the only thing that matters.

The user does not give two shits if the new laptop "has AI". This is how Apple has been killing it lately, they market the macbooks being powerful, cheap, with long batteries, and a premium feel. Things the user cares about. Most of the stuff marketers are just blanket labeling "AI" will eventually be shuffled to the background and rebranded with a more specific term to highlight the feature being delivered rather than the fact it's AI".

Re: Apple's accidental moat: How the "AI Loser" may end up winning

#36

Post by slopinthebag »

16bitvoid wrote: post #32
slopinthebag wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't noticed this at all and I wonder if you're mistaking curation for advertising? When I open up the App Store I get a panel written "games we love" and a listing of indie games that are clearly not paid for ads. The ads in search are visibly marked as ads, and while I don't particularly like ads in general, they are pretty easy to avoid.

On iOS, if you open the App Store and click on the Today tab (it's the default tab if you kill and reopen), there's ads interspersed with curations. For me, the second tile is an ad for Upside, some cashback app

Mine is Moneris Go, and the top review is titled "Garbage App!!!!" lol

Honestly the last time I remember using the App Store was years ago and I can't recall if they had ads or not. Imo it's distasteful and I wish they didn't have them. Still leagues better than the fucking ads in the start menu which caused me to give up on gaming and Windows forever.

Re: Apple's accidental moat: How the "AI Loser" may end up winning

#37

Post by tiffanyh »

SoftTalker wrote: post #25
grtteee wrote: post #2

This is the classic apple approach - wait to understand what the thing is capable of doing (aka let others make sunk investments), envision a solution that is way better than the competition and then architect a path to building a leapfrog product that builds a large lead.

When have they done that since the first iPhone in 2007? The watch maybe? Though not sure that's "leapfrog" better than anyone else's smartwatch, but I don't have one so maybe I'm wrong.

- AirPods

- Apple Watch

- AirTag

Those are a few that come to mind. All do multi-billions in revenue per year.

Re: Apple's accidental moat: How the "AI Loser" may end up winning

#38

Post by 46493168 »

foobar1962 wrote: post #23
46493168 wrote: post #16

Apple is almost 2 years out from their announcement of Apple Intelligence. It has barely delivered on any of the hype. New Siri was delayed and barely mentioned in the last WWDC; none of the features are released in China. In other news, people keep buying iPhones, and Apple just had its best quarter ever in China. AAPL is up 24% from last year.

A lot of the people that bought iPhones are now buying Macs as well.

Indeed, a lot of the people that bought iPhones are now buying Macs with a binned version of the chip they already bought. So much so that Apple is in danger of running out of them.

Re: Apple's accidental moat: How the "AI Loser" may end up winning

#39

Post by colechristensen »

TheDong wrote: post #18
pram wrote: post #12

I've had it turned off since Sequoia, and this I truly appreciate. It hasn't nagged me once to turn it or Siri on, and it isn't mandatory. When I open up JIRA or Slack I am always greeted with multiple new dialogues pointing at some new AI bullshit, in comparison. We hates it precious

I don't like companies forcing their newest features on me noisily and constantly trying to ship new features and see what sticks so you can't trust whether a feature advertised one week will even be there the next. However, I have even less patience for companies forcing paid-for third-party ads down my throat on a paid product. Slack at least doesn't sell my eyeballs. Facebook, Twitter, Google's ads are worse to me…

I get it but... well I think of App Store as... a store. I don't have to go there.

I'm actually pretty disappointed in the lack of discovery available in the App Store, but I rarely go there. I'm fine with advertising being there. I wish it was better but I'm not offended that there is paid promotion in a store.

Re: Apple's accidental moat: How the "AI Loser" may end up winning

#40

Post by sublinear »

> Pure strategy, luck, or a bit of both? I keep going back and forth on this, honestly, and I still don’t know if this was Apple’s strategy all along, or they didn’t feel in the position to make a bet and are just flowing as the events unfold maximising their optionality.

Maximizing the available options is in fact a "strategy", and often a winning one when it comes to technology. I would love to be reminded of a list of tech innovators who were first and still the best.

Anyway, hasn't this always been Apple's strategy?

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