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The iPhone's Last Stand?

stratechery.com

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Re: The iPhone's Last Stand?

#211

Post by MoonWalk »

827a wrote: post #187
MoonWalk wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Based on Microsoft's ever-more-fetid output over the last two decades, they can't sell self-respecting people jack squat.

IMO there's an even more real story at the heart of this idea than stratechery's predictable, banal attempt to compare Microsoft and Apple's competing visions of the future, and its part of why I've become so bored of stratechery's articles lately. He glances against that Microsoft video, recognizes that the video does a horrible job of communicating their vision, and then carries water for Microsoft by working overt…

Nice analysis.

Re: The iPhone's Last Stand?

#212

Post by preg_match »

usrnm wrote: post #199
solid_fuel wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google doesn't care about reputation the way Apple does. People are used to Google shipping broken features and shutting down products when they don't immediately sell. Apple is a premium brand and it's expected to be more stable, and to deliver solutions that actually work.

Yeah, that's exactly why Apple is paying money to Google now to fix the shitshow that is Siri

Well they're paying Google for access to their model, which I think makes sense. I've been saying for a while that models are commodities, the integration or harness is what really matters. There's a lot of good models available, many open weight these days!

What took Anthropic to the top wasn't their models, which are good. It's Claude Code, everything around the model that delivers value for their customers. Gone are the days of slapping a model behind a chatbox and hoping for the best. We need, like, actual software, that does actual things. Siri could be that... maybe. Apple has a lot going for them in regards to how much of their consumer base's software experience they control.

Re: The iPhone's Last Stand?

#213

Post by magarnicle »

Gigachad wrote: post #14
threetonesun wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

At least for consumer software, AI is synonymous with annoying nagware forcing itself in your way.

I keep hearing that "the average person hates AI", but their revealed preference is different. Any time they need to make anything that takes effort a lot of people immediately turn to ChatGPT.

People don't like to consume AI-made things but they sure like to use it.

Re: The iPhone's Last Stand?

#214

Post by lambdaone »

threetonesun wrote: post #10
QuadmasterXLII wrote: post #7

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.

Exactly this. I want a system that can understand basic instructions like this, in context, with all the necessary unspoken assumptions implicit in natural language and the problem domain, and get it right _every single time without fail_. A bit like AppleScript, but in natural language and smarter.

Most definitely _not_ a cleverer system that sometimes hallucinates or goes off on tangents, or sends my personal information to parties unknown.

Re: The iPhone's Last Stand?

#215

Post by lambdaone »

simonh wrote: post #52
threetonesun wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yep, by using the terms intelligence, and occasionally Apple Intelligence and not AI[1], they get to talk about these features in a way that don't trigger an automatic mental gag reflex. The fact they cottoned on to this 2 years ago is actually pretty impressive. [1] https://x.com/ArtemR/status/2056961743142957143

"Mental gag reflex" is exactly right. I'm running two different instances of Claude Opus 4.8 on xhigh right now, and I'm absolutely fine with it because that's what _I_ want to do.

AI features on my toothbrush, toaster, refrigerator, doorbell, washing machine, word processing software, TV, whatever, without my actually asking for them first are THINGS I DO NOT WANT, and adding those features to those devices will cause me either to have go to great lengths not to use them, or - much more likely - just not to buy them at all if I can.

Re: The iPhone's Last Stand?

#216

Post by lambdaone »

magarnicle wrote: post #213
Gigachad wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least for consumer software, AI is synonymous with annoying nagware forcing itself in your way.

I keep hearing that "the average person hates AI", but their revealed preference is different. Any time they need to make anything that takes effort a lot of people immediately turn to ChatGPT. People don't like to consume AI-made things but they sure like to use it.

Deep, deep down, the average person wants to be controlled and told what to do, just so long as they don't have to acknowledge it to themselves. Clinging to the garment of a Daddy or a Mommy or a god or priest or a Great Leader is the usual way to do this.

Buying brands that advertising has told us will make the anxiety go away, or equivalently believing ideologies that propaganda has told us the same, is another.

Note that I count myself among this number - I'm not holding myself out as a superior free-thinker, I think it's likely that I'm just as unaware of my personal flavour of self-deception as anyone else.

Clinging to chatbots is just a new version of the same thing.

Re: The iPhone's Last Stand?

#217

Post by w10-1 »

What does it mean to say Apple is behind in AI or back in 2024, when Apple is not trying to build AI models, and no one else is nearly as evolved as their local architecture?

Is Microsoft's device "vaporware" even comparable to a live demo?

iPhone AI comes via AI-safe pipes: private by design, on device or not, accelerated via MLX. Given that vectoring an AI request to GPU/NPU/CPU/private cloud takes non-trivial engineering, is anyone else as advanced as Apple? It seems wishful to believe interactive UI's will be superseded by untethered, non-interactive (pay by the token) workflows.

iPhone AI is last-mile; the value depends entirely on what you're trying to do. Apple can demo features for their own apps (esp. with personal knowledge), but the real question is what independent developers can do with Apple pipes.

He can say enterprise (not consumers) is the only way to recoup the Nvidia capex, but free local coding models run well enough now on mid-range Apple Macs to make me doubt the business model of Anthropic, OpenAI, and Microsoft, and the upside for Nvidia.

I'm glad Apple will be investing that capex into their own chips.

Re: The iPhone's Last Stand?

#218

Post by fundad »

mohsen1 wrote: post #56
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…

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…

That would be a huge deal. I’m wondering how current android is being received because as far as the reporting goes it has already delivered LLM voice assistant with personal context. But I haven’t seen any reporting about the consumer market reaction. Android phones already sell better so are thry just miles ahead now?

Re: The iPhone's Last Stand?

#219

Post by mrtesthah »

lambdaone wrote: post #216
magarnicle wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I keep hearing that "the average person hates AI", but their revealed preference is different. Any time they need to make anything that takes effort a lot of people immediately turn to ChatGPT. People don't like to consume AI-made things but they sure like to use it.

Deep, deep down, the average person wants to be controlled and told what to do, just so long as they don't have to acknowledge it to themselves. Clinging to the garment of a Daddy or a Mommy or a god or priest or a Great Leader is the usual way to do this. Buying brands that advertising has told us will make the anxiety go away, or equivalently believing ideologies that propaganda has told us the same, is another. No…

That sounds like an untestable hypothesis, aka conspiracy theory.

Re: The iPhone's Last Stand?

#220

Post by g42gregory »

827a wrote: post #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…

There is a presupposition in this statement, that someone in these companies even cares about being unbiased. I don't think this is true.
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