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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

#71

Post by nozzlegear »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #61
colechristensen wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Where do you install apps from then? I get an app recommendation from a friend, I go to the App Store and search for it. I have to be super careful about which link I'm actually clicking on and which app I'm installing, because the App Store is riddled with spam and malware. I wouldn't mind, except that Apple charge 30% of everything with the justification that they are keeping the ecosystem free of spam and malware.…

I thought the justification was that they curate an ecosystem of apps with loyal/paying customers

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

#72

Post by sidkshatriya »

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.

Will this strategy work every time ? Maybe for AI it will work (market is competitive and Apple just purchases the best model for its consumers).

But this approach may not work in other areas: e.g. building electric batteries, wireless modems, electric cars, solar cell technology, quantum computing etc.

Essentially Apple got lucky with AI but it needs to keep investing in cutting edge technology in the various broad areas it operates in and not let others get too far ahead !

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

#73

Post by swazzy »

amazingamazing wrote: post #22

Gemma4 in my view is good enough to do things similar to Gemini 2.5 flash, meaning if I point it code and ask for help and there is a problem with the code it’ll answer correctly in terms of suggestions but it’s not great at using all tools or one shooting things that require a lot of context or “expert knowledge” If a couple more iterations of this, say gemma6 is as good as current opus and runs completely locally o…

similar vibes as "640k ought to be enough for anybody"

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

#74

Post by Crestwave »

sidkshatriya wrote: post #72
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.

Will this strategy work every time ? Maybe for AI it will work (market is competitive and Apple just purchases the best model for its consumers). But this approach may not work in other areas: e.g. building electric batteries, wireless modems, electric cars, solar cell technology, quantum computing etc. Essentially Apple got lucky with AI but it needs to keep investing in cutting edge technology in the various broad…

It works often enough for the company to be wildly successful. They can simply cut their losses and withdraw from industries where it hasn't, such as EVs.

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

#75

Post by am17an »

mh- wrote: post #64
Gigachad wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We still aren't going to be putting 200gb ram on a phone in a couple years to run those local models.

A lot of people are making the mistake of noticing that local models have been 12-24 months behind SotA ones for a good portion of the last couple years, and then drawing a dotted line assuming that continues to hold. It simply.. doesn't. The SotA models are enormous now, and there's no free lunch on compression/quantization here. Opus 4.6 capabilities are not coming to your (even 64-128gb) laptop or phone in the pop…

Don’t underestimate the march of technology. Just look at your phone, it has more FLOPS than there were in the entire world 40 years ago.

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

#76

Post by codeptualize »

sidkshatriya wrote: post #72
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.

Will this strategy work every time ? Maybe for AI it will work (market is competitive and Apple just purchases the best model for its consumers). But this approach may not work in other areas: e.g. building electric batteries, wireless modems, electric cars, solar cell technology, quantum computing etc. Essentially Apple got lucky with AI but it needs to keep investing in cutting edge technology in the various broad…

I think their M chips are a good example. They ran on intel for so long, then did the impossible of changing architecture on Mac, even without much transition pain.

Obviously that was built upon years of iPhone experience, but it shows they can lag behind, buy from other vendors, and still win when it becomes worth it to them.

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

#77

Post by tokioyoyo »

smt88 wrote: post #57
hapticmonkey wrote: post #13

Apple aren’t in the business of building chatbots to impress investors (other than some WWDC2024 vaporware they’d rather not talk about any more). They’re in the business of consumer hardware. Consumers want iPhones and (if Apple are right) some form of AR glasses in the next decade. That’s their focus. There’s a huge amount of machine learning and inference that’s required to get those to work. But it’s under the ho…

Consumers don't necessarily want iPhone. They don't want to be excluded from iMessage, which is a completely different motivation.

Yeah, that just doesn't pass the simplest sniff tests. I barely use iMessage, and yet I'm an iPhone user. Basically everyone around me is the same.

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

#79

Post by adrithmetiqa »

smt88 wrote: post #55
eastbound wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> wait to understand what the thing is capable of doing My parents use Android to ask “What are the 5 biggest towers in Chicago” or “Remove the people on my picture” while apparently iPhone is only capable of doing “Hey Siri start the Chronometer / There is no contact named Chronometer in your phone”. My iPhone is lagging a ridiculous 10 years behind. It’s just that I don’t trust Google with my credit card.

"10 years behind" would be an improvement for Siri. It's actively broken much of the time in a way that Google Assistant or Alexa never has been.

I would argue that they are as bad as each other. I have to repeat most voice commands to Siri and Alexa than getting it right first time. No experience with Google.

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

#80

Post by colechristensen »

mh- wrote: post #64
Gigachad wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We still aren't going to be putting 200gb ram on a phone in a couple years to run those local models.

A lot of people are making the mistake of noticing that local models have been 12-24 months behind SotA ones for a good portion of the last couple years, and then drawing a dotted line assuming that continues to hold. It simply.. doesn't. The SotA models are enormous now, and there's no free lunch on compression/quantization here. Opus 4.6 capabilities are not coming to your (even 64-128gb) laptop or phone in the pop…

There's been plenty of free lunch shrinking models thus far with regards to capability vs parameter count.

Contradicting that trend takes more than "It simply.. doesn't."

There's plenty of room for RAM sizes to double along with bus speed. It idled for a long time as a result of limited need for more.

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