Most iPhone owners see little to no value in Apple Intelligence so far • Hacker News Board

Re: Most iPhone owners see little to no value in Apple Intelligence so far

#111

Post by pid-1 » Mon, Dec 16, 2024, 3:15 PM UTC

syntaxing wrote: post #31

pid-1 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've brought MS Copilot licenses for my company in ~ February 2023. They were sold in a yearly commitment and offered no trials. A bad deal, but I was afraid of missing out AI productivity gains. I'm definitely not renewing those. Times are hard and the value provided does not justify the cost. I wonder how many companies will do the same.

I recently personally resubscribed to copilot after cancelling my subscription a couple months ago since it was not providing value. But now with the new/beta “Edit” mode and being able to specify to use o1, o1 mini, and sonnet 3.5, the $10 a month feels a lot more worth it. The edit mode has outperformed aider for me.

Sorry, I think we are talking about different stuff.

I was referring to Copilot for M365, which costs 30 USD / month and targets biz users.

Github Copilot is definitely worth it.

Re: Most iPhone owners see little to no value in Apple Intelligence so far

#112

Post by browningstreet » Mon, Dec 16, 2024, 3:16 PM UTC

everdrive wrote: post #4

This is emblematic of the LLM race in general. We’re actively pressured to use co-pilot at work, and it’s crammed into every Microsoft product. I’m thankful that my iPhone is old enough not to use LLMs. Companies are afraid of being left behind in the new arms race, but that doesn’t actually mean that the technology actually present use-cases which most people need. (Worse are the meeting summaries or emails which ar…

I think LLMs work best when you go to them and know what you’re getting and how hard you’re going to work to get something good.

When it’s just there… you expect something better than that and you can’t quite “work it” the same as when you’re iterating through the native interface, or API.

I use LLMs a lot, all day long, but I’ve disabled Apple Intelligence.

[I’m also salty how bad typing still is on an iPhone and they’re messing with this stuff.]

Re: Most iPhone owners see little to no value in Apple Intelligence so far

#113

Post by JKCalhoun » Mon, Dec 16, 2024, 3:16 PM UTC

londons_explore wrote: post #44

taylodl wrote: post #2

Apple has tons of user engagement data. You would think they would have a heatmap showing them where their customers are spending a lot of time trying to accomplish a task. I would focus Apple Intelligence, amongst other tools, to reduce the time needed to accomplish that task. If I were the PO, that's how I'd proceed. I'd want my customers to be able to reduce the time they're spending using the phone and yet gettin…

> Apple has tons of user engagement data. I suspect they don't have as much as you'd imagine. Stronger privacy means they have less data, and the data they have is less useful, and their legal teams will restrict things the data can be used for. I think that's why Apple Intelligence is bad. They built it on mostly synthetic data.

That's not my experience.

You are correct about the culture of privacy at Apple and that is the awesome thing about Apple. The big "Allow Apple to collect anonymous data to help improve..." screen you get when setting up your device is the master opt-out switch where you can turn all data collection off.

For those that leave it on I think Apple have become very good about finding means to acquire user engagement data in a privacy-compliant way. For starters, by identifying user data with a cohort identifier when they can (which will cluster hundreds or thousands of user's data into arbitrary groups). Or if specific user engagement is wanted in order to see if usage patterns change they might create a rotating random identifier (that is regenerated to a new random identifier every 11 months so as to not build up an identifying profile).

I think the bigger question for me is if they have the tools and teams in place that can take full advantage of that data to improve user experience. Or if it is just a firehose of data points that are left instead to just curdle in a large vat.

Re: Most iPhone owners see little to no value in Apple Intelligence so far

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Post by nerdjon » Mon, Dec 16, 2024, 3:16 PM UTC

TheJoeMan wrote: post #62

nerdjon wrote: post #22

I disagree, I think the problem with surveys like this is the focus on billing everything as "AI" instead of just what it used to be as a nice feature. A lot of the small things that Apple has introduced, are things that blend in and are not screaming "AI" at you. Which is a good thing. So many of the things that are being pushed by other companies are AI crap that is flashy to show off but either the utility of it i…

I think you are downplaying just how many eggs Tim Cook has put in this basket to pitch to shareholders vs. the perceived low % of apple engineering staff that seems to have been involved in its creation. ATT has been advertising "get the new iPhone with Apple Intelligence" before it was even available for sale! And now it's here, and it's a tiny bump in feature set. A super missed opportunity to rebrand/completely r…

Apple has to balance it, clearly investors want to shove AI into everything but most users simply don't care or want to be reminded its "AI" every moment. Apple has to walk the line between both of these groups.

You are right about investors, but how many of those investors have also funded and continue to push for vaporware products and features? We have seen this many many times over the last couple of years. So I do think their importance needs to be downplayed since they are clearly making bad decisions.

Also, this article was about customers not investors.

Apple for years has been marking "Siri" as far more than just the voice assistant and instead encompassing many of their ML systems. For example the "Siri App Suggestions". I don't think that rebranding it would make any sense.

Re: Most iPhone owners see little to no value in Apple Intelligence so far

#115

Post by unethical_ban » Mon, Dec 16, 2024, 3:16 PM UTC

jprete wrote: post #93

kemiller2002 wrote: post #15

We have a family friend who is blind and a programmer. It's interesting to hear his perspective. His hope and expectation are that it will greatly increase usability. I've been thrown into the usability deep end due to my wife also losing her sight due to an autoimmune disorder, and my dad losing his sight due to Macular Degeneration. Honestly, it sucks, and I mean like rage quitting, phone throwing sucks. (Try it. T…

I don't have experience with this kind of problem. But I don't think GenAI is the best tool for this, at least not until it's so rock-solid trustworthy that everyone uses such an interface. Even leaving aside AI questions, if I'm looking for a human personal assistant for someone who's blind, and that person will have unlimited access to their electronic life, I'm going to vet that person very, very carefully.

I don't understand the point.

Apple users already let apple (or at least their device) know everything about them.

If a person is blind and can't read or type onto their phone, a tool that can reliably pull up messages app and send Dad a letter is a godsend.

Re: Most iPhone owners see little to no value in Apple Intelligence so far

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Post by mukunda_johnson » Mon, Dec 16, 2024, 3:17 PM UTC

ARandumGuy wrote: post #23

everdrive wrote: post #4

This is emblematic of the LLM race in general. We’re actively pressured to use co-pilot at work, and it’s crammed into every Microsoft product. I’m thankful that my iPhone is old enough not to use LLMs. Companies are afraid of being left behind in the new arms race, but that doesn’t actually mean that the technology actually present use-cases which most people need. (Worse are the meeting summaries or emails which ar…

What I don't understand is, what benefit is there for 99% of companies to get in on the ground floor of LLMs? If you're not developing your own model, you're effectively just beta testing someone else's model. And if the sales pitch of LLMs being able to do basically anything comes true, wouldn't most companies still get the same benefit if they just wait? It seems like a lot of companies are so terrified of missing…

I said the same thing to a previous company before I was let go. Confused why they were butchering their business strategy in favor of a gold rush.

The main benefit of LLMs was already abundantly clear: literally just chat with it in day to day work when you can. Ask it questions about accounting, other domains it knows, etc. That's like up to 10-20% performance increase on tasks if you align OK.

Still, they were in search of a unicorn, and it was really tiring to be asked regularly how AI could help my workflows. They were not even spending a real budget on discovering "groundbreaking" use cases, meanwhile hounding us to shove a RAG-bot into every product they owned.

The only thing that made sense was that it was a marketing strategy to promote visibility, but they would not acknowledge that or tell us that directly (but still--it was not their business strategy to get NEW customers).

Re: Most iPhone owners see little to no value in Apple Intelligence so far

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Post by teamonkey » Mon, Dec 16, 2024, 3:17 PM UTC

omcnoe wrote: post #25

Biggest disappointment with Apple Intelligence is that it doesn't seem to be able to do anything with the apps I actually use. Can't say "find this email" because I am using the gmail app instead of Apple's inbuilt email app. Can't say "send blah blah blah to Bob Smith on Teams" because Teams doesn't integrate at all. Without integrations into any apps smart assistant isn't very smart.

Different assistant, but I'm still astounded that my Fire TV can't understand the words "play"/"pause"/"unpause"/"continue" consistently across all apps despite having a dedicated button on the remote for doing just that. The bar is low.

Re: Most iPhone owners see little to no value in Apple Intelligence so far

#118

Post by dylan604 » Mon, Dec 16, 2024, 3:17 PM UTC

falcor84 wrote: post #77

> the survey recorded 73% of Apple Intelligence users ... stating the new features to be either ‘not very valuable’ or they ‘add little to no value’ to their smartphone experience. They make it sound negative, but I'm lacking context on how it compares to other recent features. I actually would assume that with 27% of users finding a feature to be somewhat valuable, it's a relatively successful launch.

someone else made a similar comment already, and I just don't understand why you default to 27% liking it. Of those responding, less than half said that AI was even a consideration in their new phone purchase. So we already see more people do not care about AI from the off. Of those reporting using the feature, it says 73% state they don't care about it after using. That does not mean the other 27% said they did like it. It is not a binary option of Yes/No. The numbers are just not there in TFA, and you're jumping to conclusions

Re: Most iPhone owners see little to no value in Apple Intelligence so far

#119

Post by ToucanLoucan » Mon, Dec 16, 2024, 3:17 PM UTC

llm_nerd wrote: post #65

ARandumGuy wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I don't understand is, what benefit is there for 99% of companies to get in on the ground floor of LLMs? If you're not developing your own model, you're effectively just beta testing someone else's model. And if the sales pitch of LLMs being able to do basically anything comes true, wouldn't most companies still get the same benefit if they just wait? It seems like a lot of companies are so terrified of missing…

I assume they believe in the advantages, to the company, of using these AI tools. Of adding them to the workflow, training their employees, and understanding quickly how it impacts their space. If you just wait and all of your competitors have a workforce enabled and equipped with the best tools, you are at a disadvantage. It's being the company that put off computerization or automation when everyone else went wild.…

> And FWIW, I cannot imagine a programmer, in 2024, that remains dismissive of LLMs or the related tooling.

Hi.

> While they are grossly oversold by the LinkedIn crowd,

That is true.

> and are still a far ways from so-called "prompt engineers" replacing devs,

Also true.

> they're a massive accelerator and "second set of eyes", especially if you're doing varied, novel work.

That is not even remotely my experience.

Like I can envision a programmer who would get benefits from it, but bluntly put, the code I work on day to day is far, far too interesting to be handled by copilot, simply because there aren't nearly enough stackoverflow pages about it to be scraped. Honestly if you found yourself able to automate most of your job with copilot, if anything, you have my sincerest condolences. I can't imagine how utterly bored you are in your day-to-day.

IF copilot could get to a place where it could understand, comprehend, and weigh-in on code, that would be incredibly useful. But that's not what Copilot is because that's not what transformers are. They are fancy word probability calculators. And don't get me wrong, that has uses, but it is nothing I'd be comfortable calling a second set of eyes for for anything, save for maybe writing.

Re: Most iPhone owners see little to no value in Apple Intelligence so far

#120

Post by jjice » Mon, Dec 16, 2024, 3:17 PM UTC

criddell wrote: post #83

jjice wrote: post #45

I'm new to iOS - just switched from Android about 10 days ago. I didn't move for Apple Intelligence, but it's a feature I've played with. - Writing tools are neat, but I don't have much use for them. They worked pretty alright. - Image playground is neat, but I haven't and probably won't use it outside of goofing around and showing a buddy. - The new Siri is awful. I don't know the old Siri very well, but it's just n…

Have you played with Shortcuts yet? That's the one iOS (and I suposed iPadOS and macOS) feature that simultaneously makes me very happy and infuriates me. It's so satisfying to get something working, but it's usually a pretty frustrating experience getting there.

I'm so interesting in Shortcuts and I love the idea of them, but I haven't found much of a personal use for them yet outside of a shortcut to a specific Google Sheet.

That said, I love that Apple has made this a first party thing. Tasker on Android was a bit finicky (not a knock - it's gotta be hard not being the platform owner and dealing with so much different hardware).

I want to have a use for them so badly! Everything I would've made a shortcut for back in my original iOS days (ended in 2014) are things they've added to the OS directly, so I really can't complain too much.