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The iPhone's Last Stand?

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Re: The iPhone's Last Stand?

#201

Post by rezonant »

shimman wrote: post #194
recursive wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Yeah that comment is making it seem like people don't care if they are using AI only the results, but they not only do care they actively hate AI and tech companies associated with it too. There is a reason why there is a massive backlash against data center buildouts across the US.

While I agree with your assessment, these data centers cause substantial noise and water pollution-- even if people didn't have a problem with AI the data centers would be a problem for people.

Re: The iPhone's Last Stand?

#202

Post by manquer »

billdybas wrote: post #185

What I don't see anyone talking about is how Private Cloud Compute is behind an iCloud subscription. From what I can tell, this means any app that is using their foundation model is sharing against a user's pooled usage quota & Apple takes all the revenue upside if a user chooses to upgrade their plan. Why would an app developer choose their model which has a minuscule 32K context window, might get throttled because…

Apple will deploy the same security/ privacy / ease of use /packaging strategy they have done for every other product.

Same reason developers continue to use Apple payments even when they have to shell out 30% of the revenue.

I can see Apple, setting App store rules around declaring AI usage, or could start labeling apps not using their models with strong language designed to amplify the increasing user concerns around AI and so on.

The product strategy has to be better the product itself does not have to be objectively better for the developer for them to have to choose it.

Re: The iPhone's Last Stand?

#203

Post by sroussey »

827a wrote: post #193
billdybas wrote: post #185

What I don't see anyone talking about is how Private Cloud Compute is behind an iCloud subscription. From what I can tell, this means any app that is using their foundation model is sharing against a user's pooled usage quota & Apple takes all the revenue upside if a user chooses to upgrade their plan. Why would an app developer choose their model which has a minuscule 32K context window, might get throttled because…

I have consumed a decent amount of literature coming out of WWDC and I do not understand how the billing and model availability side of things will work. Its definitely the case that Apple said that some AI capabilities will rely on cloud hosted models; and that some of these capabilities will be metered; and that "some paid iCloud+ plans" include increased usage. Its unclear what the full extent of capabilities that…

Motra, my workout app on iPhone (with great Apple Watch support, including counting reps), uses Apple foundation models to build a workout.

Not all use cases will be big agentic coding things that will use millions of tokens.

Some on device (or on server) stuff might be small one shot calls that just use what’s the OS provides.

Re: The iPhone's Last Stand?

#204

Post by qmr »

> The concept — which isn’t entirely clear from that video, but was more fully explained on stage — is that in the future you will be surrounded by an ecosystem of devices, none of which stand alone, but are more like portals to interact with your agents, which live in the cloud.

The fuck I will.

There is no cloud, only other people's hard drives.

-- your increasingly crusty and curmudgeonly old Unix admin who is not paranoid because they are out to get you

Re: The iPhone's Last Stand?

#205

Post by bjustin »

bigyabai wrote: post #171
Aperocky wrote: post #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.

> Sometimes the lack of certain feature is the feature. Sometimes it's a curse. Apple might be a 2-3 trillion dollar business right now, if they didn't refuse to sign CUDA drivers for their ARM servers.

Apple's market cap would have dropped by 30-50% if they had signed CUDA drivers? How would that have played out?

Re: The iPhone's Last Stand?

#206

Post by bjustin »

acdha wrote: post #160
daft_pink wrote: post #144

It kind of reminds me of Windows mobile and blackberry and palm os where apple was clearly behind but they eventually caught up. The first iPhone didn’t even have apps! I think agents are scary and complicated and dangerous enough that it is genuinely scary to give an agent an instruction like go buy this ticket. It’s okay and apple can easily simplify and eventually win. The mainstream hasn’t really started using ag…

> I think agents are scary and complicated and dangerous enough that it is genuinely scary to give an agent an instruction like go buy this ticket These ones also seem really weird because the baseline is most often someone using the iOS app to do the same thing, and the agent demos are usually slower in addition to being riskier. One of the Chrome demos had someone buying groceries at pretty hefty markup, which seem…

I agree but I also think this end up a case of "worse is better". Sure it sucks that doing things with AI is slower and more prone to issues, but now you can be more lazy and still mostly accomplish the same things.

I don't expect to go for that, but other people might. Especially if AI stuff continues to improve.

Re: The iPhone's Last Stand?

#207

Post by ryukoposting »

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

Is it impressive though?

I wrote this in another thread recently: AI is a technology, not a product. Consumers don't care about technologies, they care about products.

This is pretty elementary stuff. SV has a propensity for conflating technology and products, I'll give you that, but Apple's product management has always been relatively good about this kind of thing.

Re: The iPhone's Last Stand?

#208

Post by kbelder »

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…

I'm not sure Apple will provide it or not, but I don't see a future that doesn't have nearly ubiquitous smart glasses. The potential usefulness is too great.

Obviously it'll be a big cultural conflict for a while. But again... the usefulness is too great for it not to happen. Cultural objections will give way, I think. Maybe it'll have to wait for a generation to die off.

Re: The iPhone's Last Stand?

#209

Post by tessierashpool »

ryukoposting wrote: post #207
simonh wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Is it impressive though? I wrote this in another thread recently: AI is a technology, not a product. Consumers don't care about technologies, they care about products. This is pretty elementary stuff. SV has a propensity for conflating technology and products, I'll give you that, but Apple's product management has always been relatively good about this kind of thing.

AI's not a technology, though. LLMs are a technology. AI is a marketing term.

Re: The iPhone's Last Stand?

#210

Post by fundad »

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…

Avie Tevanian told the parable of not needing to outrun the bear if you can outrun your friend. These companies aren’t competing to be perfect, they’re competing for our money.

If Apple had to be the best at AI, it would be out of business already. But it just has to make things people want and the customers will use them to run local or remote LLMs.

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