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

Apple's latest attempt to launch the new Siri runs into snags

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 271 posts

Re: Apple's latest attempt to launch the new Siri runs into snags

#221

Post by runjake »

NetMageSCW wrote: post #218
runjake wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is why they're spending so much more on mixed reality than AI They aren’t. Mixed reality is getting little attention. It is in the “it remains a product in our line-up” phase. They are virtually all-in on AI. Their acquisitions have been AI-focused. It’s frustrating to see these delays because the issues they’re dealing with are the same issues their competitors are dealing with and is isn’t stopping them from…

>It’s frustrating to see these delays because the issues they’re dealing with aren’t stopping their competitors from releasing. No, it’s a good sign that Apple has re-learned the lessons they used to take to heart but sometimes forget when they panic and scramble. Apple used to always be late to most changes but when they arrived, if it was with a cohesive answer that worked well. They’ve been scrambling instead and…

Unfortunately, this does not reflect what’s going on inside the AI/ML+Siri groups. It’s missteps and internal wars and fumbles all the way down.

I’m fully expecting the stuff that was reported to supposed to show up in 26.4 being pushed to 27.4 or later. It’s that bad.

Re: Apple's latest attempt to launch the new Siri runs into snags

#222

Post by NetMageSCW »

lxgr wrote: post #131
mingus88 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The “failing hilariously” bit is critical for this road-tripping use case. It’s only going to take one bad suggestion that leaves someone in a dangerous situation to lose faith in simply handing over a whole day’s itinerary to an LLM. Honestly that can go so bad very easily. We are decades into the GPS navigation era and I still don’t trust the route my vehicle suggests. I have been burned so many times that we liter…

> It’s only going to take one bad suggestion that leaves someone in a dangerous situation I feel like if one bad suggestion can leave somebody in a dangerous situation, many other things must have failed before, such as informing oneself of the general condition of roads in a given place and the current season, having a fallback plan in case digital navigation fails or a road is unexpectedly closed etc.

If you are doing all that, why do you need an AI?

Re: Apple's latest attempt to launch the new Siri runs into snags

#223

Post by HarHarVeryFunny »

nilkn wrote: post #210
HarHarVeryFunny wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apple doesn't need to solve AI. It's not core to their business Perhaps, but it depends on what business they are really in... One classic business failure ("Marketing Myopia") is to define the business you are in as the product or service you sell, rather than the customer need that you fill. It's certainly been a long time since Apple was in the "phone business", and Nokia is an example of what happened to a comp…

My take is that the future will look something like this: - You pay for a personal AI assistant from a cloud vendor (most people) or you run it yourself on your own hardware (not yet common, likely somewhat common in the future as hardware becomes cheaper and open weight models keep getting better). This assistant won't be a chatbot but an autonomous agent (like OpenClaw today). Some of these will be free but heavily…

I'm personally not convinced about "next-gen form factors", although I know that's what many companies are focusing on - some type of smart glasses, or whatever kind of (screen-less?) device Jony Ive and OpenAI are working on.

Most people are too appearance and fashion-conscious to want to wear tech on their face, and I don't see many people wanting to carry TWO expensive tech gadgets (and worry about charging/losing/forgetting them), so, seeing as photos and video is core to what people want from their mobile device, it seems that the smartphone will continue to be the form-factor of the future, and I expect these other next-gen form factors to fail.

I think Apple's brand loyalty buys them some lead time in being a fast-follower, but the danger to them would be if things change so fast and profoundly that they get left behind a la Nokia. What if Google or someone else comes out with an AI-centric "personal assistant" device so compelling that it massively ups the bar as to what customers expect from a mobile device (in same way that iPhone did at launch)? I wouldn't expect it to kill Apple overnight, but it seems that they are in effect gambling that "we can always pay for AI if we have to", and "someone will always license it to run on-device if we need to".

Only the paranoid survive !

Re: Apple's latest attempt to launch the new Siri runs into snags

#224

Post by NetMageSCW »

vaxman wrote: post #154
nilkn wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just my opinion: Apple doesn't need to solve AI. It's not core to their business in the same way that search engines aren't core to their business. What Apple does best lies at the combination of hardware, software, physical materials, and human-computer interface design. This is why they're spending so much more on mixed reality than AI, even knowing that a product like the Vision Pro today isn't going to be a big s…

Maybe have a look at this video from 1987. After sidelining Steve, John Sculley came up with the term PDA and intended to evolve that vision as the mission of Apple, beginning with the breakthrough Apple Newton that ran on DEC's revolutionary StrongARM chip (that was based on ARM's IP that Apple co-developed). https://youtu.be/umJsITGzXd0 (I cannot find any of the old ATG videos featuring Agent Pierre online which wa…

Counterpoint the iPad has been brilliant with it’s software and implementation and that is the reason it essentially has the tablet market to itself, is the only tablet with a third-party ecosystem, and it continues to grow.

The original PDA wasn’t a mniaturized laptop or desktop, it was a new device category and the iPhone is the current flagship for that, not the iPad.

Re: Apple's latest attempt to launch the new Siri runs into snags

#225

Post by NetMageSCW »

neya wrote: post #51
dabinat wrote: post #14

I feel like the difference between Steve Jobs’ and Tim Cook’s leadership styles is that Cook is really good at optimizing existing processes, but does not have the vision to capitalize on what’s next. Apple got into the smartphone game at the right time with a lot of new ideas. But whatever the next big shift in technology is, they will be left behind. I don’t know if that is AI, but it’s clear that in AI they are al…

100% agreed. You speak the truth, but already the apologists are writing textbooks justifying Apple's failed strategy :)) and this is why the company thrives. Just blind loyalty to a company that couldn't care less about them.

That is a delusional take on why millions continue to purchase Apple products and services. They expect Apple to provide services that work well and are not willing to put up with the terrible products other companies produce.

Re: Apple's latest attempt to launch the new Siri runs into snags

#226

Post by myvoiceismypass »

PlunderBunny wrote: post #41

Given the way current LLMs hallucinate, and given that Apple (presumably) won’t accept this behaviour in Siri, I’m skeptical that existing technology (or existing technology scaled up) can ever create the Siri Apple and its customers want.

The Siri experience just really really really sucks for the year being 2026. So much more frustrating than the claude and chatgpt experiences I have had in recent months.

To my Apple Watch: "Hey Siri, tell me what the time is in the central time zone right now"

"I found this on the web", watch shows a link to time.gov

The only thing I find Siri useful for is: a voice-activated timer, handy in the kitchen when my hands are full and I am juggling multiple timed process. It does that well about 80% of the time.

Re: Apple's latest attempt to launch the new Siri runs into snags

#227

Post by alex43578 »

einr wrote: post #189
alex43578 wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With the rate of progress (and in the opposite direction, the physical limitations Intel/AMD/TSMC/ETC are bumping into), there's no guarantees about what a machine will look like a decade from now. But, simple logic applies: if the user's machine scales to X amounts of RAM, the hyperscaler's rack scales to X*Y RAM and assuming the performance/scaling relationship we've seen holds true, it will be correspondingly far…

This argument would sound nearly identical if you made it in the 70s or early 80s about mainframes and personal computers. It's not that mainframes (or supercomputers, or servers, or the cloud) stopped existing, it's that there was a "good enough" point where the personal computer was powerful enough to do all the things that people care about. Why would this be different?* And aren't we all paying for a bunch of sil…

It’s different because of the ubiquity of the internet and the financial incentives of the companies involved.

Right now you can get 20TB hard drives for cheap and setup your own NAS, but way more people spend money every month on Dropbox/iCloud/onedrive - people value convenience and accessibility over “owning” the product.

Companies also lean into this. Just consider Photoshop. It used to be a one-time purchase, then it became a cloud subscription, now virtually every new AI feature uses paid credits. Despite having that fast SoC, Photoshop will still throw your request to their cloud and charge you for it.

The big point still remains: by the time you can run that trillion parameter model at home, it’s old news. If the personal computer of the 80s was good enough, why’s nobody still using one? AI on edge devices will exist, but will forever remain behind data center AI.

Re: Apple's latest attempt to launch the new Siri runs into snags

#228

Post by wolvoleo »

g947o wrote: post #139
maest wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know about you, but manually trawling trip advisor and comparing hotel pricing and quality doesn't constitute "living life" for me.

It doesn't, but I'd rather book a hotel with full confidence and go to a restaurant that will be actually open, given all the information that is available to me at the time of planning, than having my trip ruined by a dumb bot because it cannot tell imagination from reality. All you get is "you're absolutely right".

Yeah what I do when I'm on a holiday is just walk out and see what's around, what places look good and have a good vibe. Maybe then check their rating but usually I don't bother do do even that. I'm not a minmaxer, I care more about living in the moment.

I do have pretty bad ADHD though and as such I thrive on chaos and hate planning so there's that...

Re: Apple's latest attempt to launch the new Siri runs into snags

#229

Post by myvoiceismypass »

pndy wrote: post #19
cantalopes wrote: post #16

Not sure whether it's a language/pronounciation issue but for 15 years since siri was released i have not seen a single person using it successfully without having to yell at it for not waking up or not understanding the request correctly

I was cleaning up room today and while wiping dust from bookshelf homepod sits on, siri out of blue goes with "I thought so". It'll be 15 years this October and I can't still use siri with my language.

I listen to Sirius XM in my car a lot and when there are ad bumpers or hosts that say "Sirius XM", it triggers siri on my watch about 10% of the time. Fun.

Re: Apple's latest attempt to launch the new Siri runs into snags

#230

Post by einr »

alex43578 wrote: post #227
einr wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This argument would sound nearly identical if you made it in the 70s or early 80s about mainframes and personal computers. It's not that mainframes (or supercomputers, or servers, or the cloud) stopped existing, it's that there was a "good enough" point where the personal computer was powerful enough to do all the things that people care about. Why would this be different?* And aren't we all paying for a bunch of sil…

It’s different because of the ubiquity of the internet and the financial incentives of the companies involved. Right now you can get 20TB hard drives for cheap and setup your own NAS, but way more people spend money every month on Dropbox/iCloud/onedrive - people value convenience and accessibility over “owning” the product. Companies also lean into this. Just consider Photoshop. It used to be a one-time purchase, th…

Right now you can get 20TB hard drives for cheap and setup your own NAS, but way more people spend money every month on Dropbox/iCloud/onedrive - people value convenience and accessibility over “owning” the product.

Yes, this is a convenience argument, not a technical one. It's not that your PC doesn't have or could have more than enough storage -- it likely does -- it's that there are other factors that make you use Dropbox.

So now the question becomes: do we not believe that personal devices will ever become good enough to run a "good enough" LLM (technical barrier), or do we believe that other factors will make it seem less desirable to do so (social/financial/legal barrier)?

I think there's a very decent chance that the latter will be true, but the original argument was a technical one -- that good-enough LLMs will always require so much compute that you wouldn't want to run one locally even if you could.

If the personal computer of the 80s was good enough, why’s nobody still using one?

What people want to do changes with time, and therefore your PC XT will no longer hack it in the modern workplace, but the point is that from the point that a personal computer of any kind was good enough, people kept using personal computers. The parallel argument here would be that if there is a plateau where LLM improvement slows and converges with ability to run something good enough on consumer hardware, why would people not then just keep running those good enough models on their hardware? The models would get better with time, sure, but so would the hardware running them.

Post reply on HN