Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Apple lacks strategic vision

unherd.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 200 posts

Re: Apple lacks strategic vision

#191

Post by flohofwoe »

jajuuka wrote: post #179
flohofwoe wrote: post #147

Apple not hopping on the AI hype train might actually turn out to be an advantage when the next AI winter arrives ;)

This reminds me of the "well Blackberry doesn't need to worry. People in business will still prefer Blackberry after the smart phone hype dies down."

It all depends on if one believes whether the current one is the last AI hype cycle, or "just another" AI hype cycle. We might just be at the start of the peak of the current hype cycle, or maybe we're already slightly over it without knowing it yet... which would mean that in around 10 years we might know whether there will be another AI winter or not.

Until then I'll be happy to wait-and-see and use LLMs as a glorified StackOverflow / search-engine replacement - at least as long as they're still free to use, and it doesn't take too long to get an answer back ;)

Re: Apple lacks strategic vision

#192

Post by pjmlp »

linguae wrote: post #138
nine_k wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The right people bought NeXT though. Carmack and his team developed Doom on NeXT computers [1], and the result has profoundly changed the mass-market PC scene. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doom_(1993_video_game)#Engine

In addition, NeXT had a successful pivot to selling a web server framework named WebObjects, which had many big-name customers such as Dell (which infamously abandoned WebObjects once Apple purchased NeXT due to the optics of having an Apple competitor’s web store backed by an Apple product). It’s conceivable that had Apple not purchased NeXT, even though NeXT probably would’ve ended up getting purchased by another c…

You're missing OpenSTEP from that picture.

On which NeXT and Sun collaborated on, and thanks to that collaboration, and WebObjects (Java port), Java and Java EE came to be.

Patrick Naughton on what actually influenced Java's semantics and object model,

https://cs.gmu.edu/~sean/stuff/java-objc.html

Distributed Objects Everywhere genesis, and its evolution into Enterprise JavaBeans.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributed_Objects_Everywhere

While in parallel, NeXT refactored WebObjects into Java as well.

Re: Apple lacks strategic vision

#193

Post by djray »

troyvit wrote: post #166
ZeroConcerns wrote: post #5

Well, as we speak, Apple is still one of the most valuable companies in the world, shareholder-value-wise and (most importantly) consumer-preference-wise. So, being an absolute Apple-skeptic, I don't blame them for not having a crystal-clear future direction right now. VR/AR? Nah, probably not happening. AI? Probably huge, but in which direction? Who knows? And they've got products in all these markets, just not obvi…

> AI? Probably huge, but in which direction? Who knows? This is a really cool take that actually aligns with Apple's walled garden. They've built the garden wall (their hardware), they've prepped the soil (marketing, sometimes not great), and now it's time for them and their partners to start releasing local apps that take full advantage of the M2/M3's power to execute LLMs locally. Apple has made bets like this befo…

I think the key here is the ability to focus on the privacy-first nature of local LLMs. A cloud-based service will always be more powerful (and markedly so), but Apple is very cautious about pursuing cloud-based solutions when user data is involved - privacy is a selling point of their products, after all. This is a double-edged sword, as you get to sell your services as privacy-friendly, but your offerings can be significantly less capable than your competitors' (see the iOS messages summary debacle, for example). The advantage of waiting is that smaller AI models are becoming much more powerful all the time.

Of course, Microsoft is also at this with its Copilot programme for laptops, where an onboard Neural Processing Unit has to be a particular speed to qualify. This lets you do local AI things like content-aware image snipping, text summaries and...er, Recall.

As to whether Apple will come out of this looking good or not, I think they're currently regretting rolling out a shitty initial AI offering, and will get better with the next release. It'll be like Apple Maps. Or the butterfly keyboard. Or any number of other broken version 1 Apple things.

An interesting question is to whether Apple Intelligence can be cancelled or pared back now the landscape is so AI dominated, i.e. will the lack of AI offerings be seen as a competitive disadvantage, or are people so sick of AI by now that it isn't a factor.

Re: Apple lacks strategic vision

#194

Post by [deleted] »

v5v3 wrote: post #142
tracerbulletx wrote: post #10

There are a few hiccups, but everyone'e acting like Apple Silicon wasn't one of the most wildly successful overnight improvements in laptops in the last 50 years and that airpods aren't so popular that even Android phone users buy them.

Airpods were many years ago, as was the MacBook pro redesign. CEOs are judged on today. Past achievements are past achievements and he was paid handsomely for it. Tim Cook is a money guy. Saving money by reducing per device licensing costs via creating own chips and also now their own modems is a money guys domain. Hardware and software innovation is another skill. Tim Cook wasn't appointed on his ability to innovate…

[deleted]

Re: Apple lacks strategic vision

#195

Post by ASalazarMX »

physicsguy wrote: post #121
tracerbulletx wrote: post #10

There are a few hiccups, but everyone'e acting like Apple Silicon wasn't one of the most wildly successful overnight improvements in laptops in the last 50 years and that airpods aren't so popular that even Android phone users buy them.

Apple Silicon was definitely a massive leap forwards but I wouldn’t say the competition has stayed still either.

And the innovative part was basically going system-on-chip, as even Microsoft had tried to change to ARM architecture before. It was a natural consequence of designing for mobile devices, and a massive marketing campaign to sell it as something brand new.

Re: Apple lacks strategic vision

#196

Post by ASalazarMX »

nottorp wrote: post #28
bowsamic wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah everyone complains about how Apple don’t “innovate” but currently they are just focussing on making the best consumer hardware of all time. Don’t get me wrong I dislike them for other reasons but those reasons are mainly things Jobs pushed for decades ago. An Apple fan should love the current Apple

> focussing on making the best consumer hardware of all time Yes, but what use is the best consumer hardware when the software is degrading? Considering the liquid glass thing, there's no one at Apple left who understands and cares about usability, for example. Plus the iOSification of Mac OS for no good reason... maybe to make it less attractive to developers?

This. A good device is a combination of hardware and software. If one of those is lacking, the whole product is lacking.

I won't deny that Apple's hardware is great, but the software has been severely crippled by commercial rather than technical reasons. People have to go out of their way to glimpse outside the walled garden.

Re: Apple lacks strategic vision

#197

Post by rogerrogerr »

worthless-trash wrote: post #188
rogerrogerr wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’d take these very objective things: - 7+ hour battery life while running a bunch of Docker containers and IDEs, at the same screen brightness nits I run my MacBook at. - Those things run not-perceptively-slower than on my Apple hardware - No perceptible fan noise while doing the above - The chassis does not creak when I pick it up from one corner - Does not weigh more than double my MacBook I’ll even relax the tra…

This is a much more definable list, no feels there. (I don't know.. as am not hunting for a similar option, although I probably will be in the future). > - The chassis does not creak when I pick it up from one corner This would be an INSTANT 'nope' from me.

Every Fortune 500 company I’ve worked for (three so far) has sent me a Windows “dev machine” laptop with huge RAM and an i7-whatever processor… and they all creak if you pick them up from a corner. And the screen hinges all make weird sounds.

It’s not, like, a usability concern, but it’s something I’m definitely willing to fork over a couple hundred bucks to not feel every day.

Re: Apple lacks strategic vision

#198

Post by izacus »

mg74 wrote: post #53
izacus wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was 5 years ago and the chips themselves are much older than that. They can't skate on that forever, especially since the competition caught up.

Where has the competition caught up? Arent Apple's chips still by far best-in-class from the laptop down to the watch? Its an honest question, I would love an arm based laptop running NixOS that is competitive with the upcoming M5 Pro's but I dont see it anywhere. Case in point: Google's newest Google TV box (released this year) is an absolute turd when compared with an 8 year old 4k Apple TV box.

No, they're not. Competition has caught up.

And why are you bloviating about TV boxes in topic about laptop chips?

Re: Apple lacks strategic vision

#199

Post by izacus »

rogerrogerr wrote: post #49
izacus wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was 5 years ago and the chips themselves are much older than that. They can't skate on that forever, especially since the competition caught up.

Oh great, where can I buy a non-Mac with the same performance, battery life, thermals, weight, premium materials, and a trackpad that doesn’t feel like styrofoam coated in oil? Since you say the competition has caught up, I assume it’ll be easy to send an Amazon link to the evidence.

In the nearby store stocking latops, tablets and phones. Your ignorance is not reality and we're not here to feed you examples for you to move goalposts.

Re: Apple lacks strategic vision

#200

Post by rogerrogerr »

izacus wrote: post #199
rogerrogerr wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh great, where can I buy a non-Mac with the same performance, battery life, thermals, weight, premium materials, and a trackpad that doesn’t feel like styrofoam coated in oil? Since you say the competition has caught up, I assume it’ll be easy to send an Amazon link to the evidence.

In the nearby store stocking latops, tablets and phones. Your ignorance is not reality and we're not here to feed you examples for you to move goalposts.

_One_ example is too much to ask for? That's pretty telling. This entire thread has not one link to a competing product, just people insisting they exist.
Post reply on HN