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The iPhone's Last Stand?

stratechery.com

161–170 of 245 posts

Re: The iPhone's Last Stand?

#161
post #99
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get the criticism and all your previous judgments samples are valid. I also agree that title is click-bait BUT: I know people are desperate for a Siri that works. The convince of just talking to your phone is priceless. If Apple gets this right, this is a huge deal – which it seems they are on the right track. People are still talking to Siri for basic stuff like timers and alarms because it works, doesn't need an…

Personally I hope you can also type to Siri, which is what I'll use WAY more than voice. I work from home and live alone, but even then I don't want to basically be talking to myself all day. I also live in a major urban city and while random people talking to themselves on the sidewalks certainly isn't unheard of it's not a great look, much less on a subway or cafe.

[dead]

Re: The iPhone's Last Stand?

#162

i was under the impression that the 2024 apple intelligence rollout was something of a victory: Apple realized that the majority of people don't actually want this stuff forced on them at the os level, and the ai maximalists all used apple anyways via clawbot (including purchasing an additional apple device, the mini!) because of apples non-ai-specific commitment to phone computer interop. Certainly the copilot butto…

I say this every time: the average person never wants to hear the letters A and I. Not because it has a negative connotation, but because they don’t care how their phone gets them an answer to “when is my dentist appointment” they just want it to do it.

But also because it has a negative connotation. Not with everyone, but with a lot of people. If someone says "That looks like AI", do you think they are intending to make a compliment?

Re: The iPhone's Last Stand?

#163

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.

They briefly mentioned getting more access to some AI feature with an iCloud subscription so it isn't completely unlimited. Sorry I don't remember exactly what it is.

Re: The iPhone's Last Stand?

#164
You cannot trust companies to communicate an unbiased vision of the future, because they will always build what they're capable of selling. Microsoft and Meta are incapable of selling phones and laptops; they're certainly capable of building them, but few people will buy them. So instead Meta builds smart-glasses and Microsoft presents this weird vision of "connected thin devices" by keeping the hardware itself very abstract and unknowable. The hardware doesn't matter to Microsoft, not because the hardware doesn't actually matter, but because it cannot matter, because Microsoft cannot win in hardware. Its not a vision of the future; its a vision of what Microsoft can meaningfully sell. Microsoft can meaningfully sell their weird constellation of 365 subscriptions that no one knows what they do or if they remotely do what you buy them for; thus their marketing now wears that idea of "unknowable capability" like a mask.

Re: The iPhone's Last Stand?

#165
> Microsoft put forth a vision for a new ecosystem of hardware devices under the banner of Project Solara

While I don't necessarily disagree with their vision but if implemented like "Copilot for Windows" I don't see me or anyone wanting to go anywhere near it.

Apple being slow is just fine, at least they didn't launch "Copilot for Mac".

Sometimes the lack of certain feature is the feature.

Re: The iPhone's Last Stand?

#166

I stopped reading when he mentioned "..beyond the fact that billions.." I looked it up and iphone users are much less than two billions. I can't expect much axcuracy from this opinion.

I noticed the same thing. "The fact that billions of consumers already have iPhones" is a hallucination, not a fact. Billions of consumers have Android phones, but that's not the case for iPhones. (Billions of iPhones have been sold, though.)

Re: The iPhone's Last Stand?

#167
post #131

This Microsoft notion of “devices that don’t stand alone but surround you” sounds an awful lot like Google’s “ambient computing” of yonder.

"The network is the computer." - Sun Microsystems, 1984

"Everything's computer" - Trump, 2025

Re: The iPhone's Last Stand?

#168

> Microsoft put forth a vision for a new ecosystem of hardware devices under the banner of Project Solara While I don't necessarily disagree with their vision but if implemented like "Copilot for Windows" I don't see me or anyone wanting to go anywhere near it. Apple being slow is just fine, at least they didn't launch "Copilot for Mac". Sometimes the lack of certain feature is the feature.

> Apple being slow is just fine, at least they didn't launch "Copilot for Mac".

Is this not what Apple Intelligence is?

Re: The iPhone's Last Stand?

#169

> Microsoft put forth a vision for a new ecosystem of hardware devices under the banner of Project Solara While I don't necessarily disagree with their vision but if implemented like "Copilot for Windows" I don't see me or anyone wanting to go anywhere near it. Apple being slow is just fine, at least they didn't launch "Copilot for Mac". Sometimes the lack of certain feature is the feature.

> Apple being slow is just fine, at least they didn't launch "Copilot for Mac". Is this not what Apple Intelligence is?

Maybe, but I've never interacted with it on my 5+ apple devices, so I'm blissfully unaware.

Re: The iPhone's Last Stand?

#170

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…

I have 0 interest in wearing glasses on my head all the time though.

People spend several thousand on Lasik so they don't have to wear glasses all the time.

I don't see glasses as the ultimate form factor that everyone uses.

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