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The iPhone's Last Stand?

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Re: The iPhone's Last Stand?

#121

Post by layer8 »

analogpixel wrote: post #80

Who is paying for all of this AI usage on the Iphone? I didn't see anything about a new AI subscription (maybe I missed it?), and I doubt Apple will want to pay million/billions a year to do it indefinitely.

From Apple's press release: "Some features, including image generation, have daily usage limits because they rely on powerful server models. Increased access is available with most iCloud+ subscription plans, which also include Apple Intelligence support for compatible Home cameras." (https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2026/06/apple-intelligence-br...)

Re: The iPhone's Last Stand?

#122

Post by raincole »

analogpixel wrote: post #80

Who is paying for all of this AI usage on the Iphone? I didn't see anything about a new AI subscription (maybe I missed it?), and I doubt Apple will want to pay million/billions a year to do it indefinitely.

Isn't it obvious? They bet on the same level of intelligence will get cheaper and cheaper and it'll be a smaller and smaller fraction of iPhone's profit.

And even if the assumption turns out to be wrong, they can just scale down and serve dumber and cheaper models. Shrinkflation is not a novel idea.

Re: The iPhone's Last Stand?

#123

Post by layer8 »

infecto wrote: post #49
sigzero wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then you haven't been paying attention.

Maybe you are in bubble? Looks like it’s really old slang and I have not heard that word in the last decade in Silicon Valley or elsewhere.

It has had a revival with the Ray-Ban Meta AI glasses. I don't know about Silicon Valley, but you frequently see it in tech-oriented forums when the topic comes up.

Re: The iPhone's Last Stand?

#124

Post by jubilanti »

zombot wrote: post #62
economistbob wrote: post #38

They see "thin is in" and I see remote servers now watching everything on your screen or within audio visual range. Eventually the only jobs will be at the intel agencies watching the data feeds from all the rabble so they can ascertain who is mouthy enough to whack and charge the others by the word for what used to be processed locally for free. Of all the things they could build, why must they pick this future...

Seen from this perspective, the GDR was prescient: They had more than half of their population engaged in spying on all the rest. We can now take our cues from them an reshape our economies in their image.

> the GDR was prescient: They had more than half of their population engaged in spying on all the rest.

Wrong. It definitely wasn't 50%. This number seems to grow each time I see it referenced. The Stasi directly or indirectly employed about 2% of the population, which is still huge. But /The Lives of Others/ takes a lot of artistic license. The true levels will never be known, but the largest and most widely quoted figure is 1 in 6.5 or about 15%. That derives from one historian's estimate, which was that at the upper bound, 1 in 6.5 people had in some way made a report to the government that in some way made it to the Stasi. I'm sure 15% of the people in any developed country have called the police at some point in their life.

This is also assuming no duplicates, you really think the Stasi could uniquely identify and disambiguate informants at this scale? And that every Stasi low level officer tasked with recruiting new informants or else actually recruited new informants instead of making them up and keeping the payouts for themselves?

And because I have to say it: authoritarian surveillance is bad, the Stasi was bad, this is not an apology or minimization, but a correction of historical facts.

Re: The iPhone's Last Stand?

#125

Post by iamnothere »

flohofwoe wrote: post #100
iamnothere wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let’s be real, some people are going to believe absurd things even if you strap them in a chair Clockwork Orange style and force them to consume your favorite propaganda 24/7. There is no way to “align” human brains to your preferences. The Soviets tried it, the Chinese tried it, the Americans tried it. Nobody succeeded. The best you can do is attempt to sway the masses, but you’d better rely on positive messaging, b…

Say about the Eastern side of the iron curtain what you will, but we didn't have flat earthers or a chemtrail conspiracy - teaching rational thinking is the very least requirement for an education system, but even this seems to fail in the 'free world'. Okay, okay, that whole idea of 'communism' is just as silly, but nobody believed in communism either, everybody knew it was just a carrot dangling in front of the peo…

True, the USSR just had Lysenkoism (quite mainstream!), abiotic oil, deep research into psychics and telepathy, ufology, and Pamyat.

You can’t escape fringe beliefs, but admittedly it seems like there were fewer of them in the USSR. Or maybe they were just ignored, poorly documented, or still untranslated.

Re: The iPhone's Last Stand?

#126

Post by Forgeties79 »

hnfong wrote: post #107
technothrasher wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think you've thought through what you're trying to assert. A god could make you believe anything they wanted to about the earth. So if you cannot disprove a god, then you cannot disprove the theory that the earth is flat.

Don't know why you're downvoted so much, but your observation is spot on. This is essentially Descartes evil demon issue. If you can't disprove that an evil demon (with god-level powers) is deceiving you at everything you perceive, then how are you going to be sure about anything? (including that the Earth is not flat?) It has always been a difficult philosophical issue about how much we can trust reality itself.

That’s an interesting big picture philosophical question with big picture implications, but it’s not really what we are talking about here. We are confirming the things we can about our shared reality, not questioning its very nature.

Re: The iPhone's Last Stand?

#127

Post by matwood »

saberience wrote: post #9

Last Stand? This is rather strong language and overselling the situation, for clicks I guess. You might re-title the article instead, "The iPhone holds its ground", and it would be a more realistic title. But perhaps garnering less clicks. I've always thought Ben Thompson is strong on enterprise and b2b topics but super weak on everything consumer related, he simply doesn't seem to understand consumer behavior (he ha…

> E.g. Ben was sure iPhone air would be a massive hit because he himself loved it.

The Air was interesting because everyone I've seen hold it, loves it. But, everyone also loves battery life and the best camera more. The Air is proof of that (similar with the mini lovers).

Re: The iPhone's Last Stand?

#128

Post by mg »

jazzypants wrote: post #115
mg wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would you detect the presence of bugs in this scenario? I would ask AI. "Did the last commit introduce any bugs or unintended consequences?". In fact I already use this prompt after every change I make manually. How would you make sure the LLM isn't adding yet another useless, redundant function to the code base? By asking AI. In fact, I already run a long "Can you refactor anything in this codebase to reduce red…

Are you ever reading the code? What do you do when the LLM can't fix a bug? Do you not wish you had a more intimate first-hand knowledge of the code when fixing things yourself? Please don't tell me that never happens-- I've had one just in the last week and I use both OpenAI and Anthropic foundation models.

In my current workflow, yes, I read all code.

In fact, I usually let multiple LLMs implement the same feature, and then I compare them. I even run my own arena in which I calculate Elo scores for LLMs from my perspective of which one implemented features better.

Having the ability to control code agents via voice would not take away my ability to do that. But I think in the future, that will become less and less necessary. If we look back at this conversation in five years, it will look very archaic, and we will be used to having superhuman AI do everything for us. In 10 years, it will sound like a strange idea that humans were once fiddling with code to improve the quality.

Re: The iPhone's Last Stand?

#129

Post by irieie »

kilroy123 wrote: post #17

I am still convinced that Apple is slowly working its way to smart glasses. And that *this* is the Next Big Thing . Frankly, the future is very good AR glasses that just work. - iPhone Air to cram everything into a small space - Vision pro - a new OS for looking at things and interacting - Better Siri and AI that works with voice - Smart local model / routing to big models in the cloud - integration with wearables (a…

It’s amazing how people post with such confidence - exhibiting the behaviour that they just posted something of immense value.

lol no you did not. A whole lot of nothing.

Re: The iPhone's Last Stand?

#130

Post by jollyllama »

cultofmetatron wrote: post #11
wiseowise wrote: post #2

iPhone's last stand? More like Microsoft's last stand. Nobody wants their garbage hardware and software outside of enterprise shmucks more interested in filling their pockets with fat contract money than delivering value. > The reason is obvious when you think about it: enterprises are paying for their employees’ time, so of course they are willing to pay for tools that make those employees more productive Is that wh…

> What a callous view of people. Who's your benchmark? TikTok addicted kids? brother, we are all walking around with a supercomputer in our pocket thats capable of accessing the sum total of human knowledge and yet we're still stuck with people who think the earth is flat.

Nice snark, but they're not all convinced of that via short form video. You can reach the same conclusion from 4-hour podcasts. Your point is kind of irrelevant.
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