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Tim Cook's Impeccable Timing

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Re: Tim Cook's Impeccable Timing

#261

Post by ryandrake »

sowbug wrote: post #229
ryandrake wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LLMs are just so antithetical to the way Apple works and makes products. They are first and foremost control freaks over the content they present as "From iPhone" or "From Apple". I would be absolutely shocked if they ever one day took content from a non-deterministic black box and presented it directly to the user. They have always human-curated nearly everything user-facing that comes from their products, and enter…

An older Stratechery article discusses the black-box point: https://stratechery.com/2018/techs-two-philosophies/ Apple and Microsoft want to be your robot exoskeleton, helping you do whatever you were going to do, but better. Google and Facebook want to do things for you and hand you the results.

Cool article! I never saw that one, even though I do read that blog.

I'd argue that it was from 2018, and it's a different world today. Since then, Microsoft has made a pretty extreme pivot towards the "do things for you" camp and they seem to have become absolutely convinced that "AI" was vaguely the thing they wanted to do for you.

Re: Tim Cook's Impeccable Timing

#262

Post by shimman »

pjc50 wrote: post #206
shimman wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, but it's kind of pathetic that the elites in America hallowed out our manufacturing capabilities and condemning tens of millions to abject poverty so their shares can be worth slightly more as a sign of societal sickness.

> condemning tens of millions to abject poverty I think you're overstating your point a bit; I'm not convinced that the tens of millions are that much worse off than their counterparts in poorer parts of China. Was there ever a massive assembly plant for iPhones in the US? (also, everyone in this subthread seems to be arguing that the US should be at least in part a planned economy with state-directed industry?)

Go visit something called "the rustbelt" (not a term of endearment) and get back to me.

One thing you can always count on about HN are extremely out of touched tech workers that ignore poverty in their country that they helped propagate because "fuck you, I've got mine."

Hopefully it doesn't come back to bite you in the next decade.

Re: Tim Cook's Impeccable Timing

#263

Post by thewebguyd »

HarHarVeryFunny wrote: post #73
havaloc wrote: post #9

Cook seems to be dragged for some of his decisions ( like China ), but he was the right CEO for the time. Ternus in turn seems to be the right CEO for this phase of Apple. I'm excited to see what Ternus does in the role! It's a homecoming of sorts having a product person and there has already been chatter he'll be more like Jobs in the role. If they can maintain their hardware lead and tighten up the software a bit,…

I don't know anything about Ternus other than WikiPedia saying he was VP of hardware engineering. Jobs of course (in addition to being an asshole) really was a product guy - he wanted to build seamless appliances that just worked, blending hardware, software and design into a beautiful thing that just did what you wanted (or what Jobs thought you wanted, which he was well attuned to). I think Apple took some missteps…

> It certainly wouldn't be a bad thing to put more focus back on functionality if that ends up to be the case.

As long as they can go back to simplicity in the process. Apple has been shoving functionality into iOS for a long time now, but it's a haphazard mess. The settings app is a disaster of clutter, and searching for settings doesn't work half the time. It needs a complete rearchitecting before they start shoving more functionality into the phone.

Did you know that iPhones have tap, double tap, and triple tap (on the back of the phone) functionality that can be set to custom actions? I didn't until recently, its buried deep in the Accessibility options for...reasons? This could be promoted to a core feature, with a dedicated space in settings instead of buried.

I'm sure there's other useful functionality hidden behind the settings mess too.

Re: Tim Cook's Impeccable Timing

#264

Post by steveBK123 »

twoodfin wrote: post #162
steveBK123 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The car always made the least sense to me in that its the polar opposite of what Apple had evolved to. High-capex in-house manufacturing onshore in a highly regulated space vs capital-light outsourced contract manufacturing offshore of discretionary purchase consumer goods. There are no successful car makers that outsource production, and even foreign car makers generally make cars onshore in US for tariff/political/…

If Apple had gotten to the point of making a real product with “Titan”, all the signs were they would be engaging with a manufacturing partner in the US. Hyundai, most likely. As for why they did it: Apple makes computers. If what you’re interacting with benefits from being a general purpose computer (under the covers or otherwise) Apple thinks they can deliver a superior experience and the margins that come with it.…

Maybe, but Hyundai would be antithesis of the Apple experience. Cars, even EVs.. and especially new products from new brands require a lot of after care.

Recalls, warranty items, maintenance, accident repairs, etc.

Hyundai still can't sort out a decent experience for their in-house luxury brand Genesis all these years later.

Re: Tim Cook's Impeccable Timing

#265

Post by tacker2000 »

jmyeet wrote: post #172
havaloc wrote: post #9

Cook seems to be dragged for some of his decisions ( like China ), but he was the right CEO for the time. Ternus in turn seems to be the right CEO for this phase of Apple. I'm excited to see what Ternus does in the role! It's a homecoming of sorts having a product person and there has already been chatter he'll be more like Jobs in the role. If they can maintain their hardware lead and tighten up the software a bit,…

I think Tim Apple [sic] has made 3 major errors, 2 of which got corrected: 1. The mid-to-late 2010s Cult of Thinness as the last gasp of Johnny Ive was terrible for the Macbook range. Butterly keyboard, 12" Macbook, no Macbook Air, Touch bar... ugh. I personally believe Johnny Ive got gently shown the door over all that so was corrected; 2. The Apple Watch didn't know what it was at launch. Remember the $10,000 Apple…

Agree with you, but when was Siri ever “well-regarded”?

Its been trash since day 1.

Re: Tim Cook's Impeccable Timing

#266

Post by grey-area »

ryandrake wrote: post #105
JKCalhoun wrote: post #77

Cook Doctrine : "We believe that we need to own and control the primary technologies behind the products we make, and participate only in markets where we can make a significant contribution." And later: "I strongly suspect that Apple, whether it has admitted it to itself or not, has just committed itself to depending on 3rd-parties for AI for the long run." Clearly those two quotes are in contradiction (not that Tim…

LLMs are just so antithetical to the way Apple works and makes products. They are first and foremost control freaks over the content they present as "From iPhone" or "From Apple". I would be absolutely shocked if they ever one day took content from a non-deterministic black box and presented it directly to the user. They have always human-curated nearly everything user-facing that comes from their products, and enter…

I suspect they're already doing that for text autocomplete, which has degraded really badly over the last couple of years.

Re: Tim Cook's Impeccable Timing

#267

Post by jordanb »

tsunamifury wrote: post #212
iwontberude wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love that he instantly flopped repeatedly and showed it was actually Apple that was great all along.

This is, by far, the most insane take i've ever heard. The guy litterally built modern apple from the ground up in equal with Jobs.

Ive got way more credit than he deserved. And he had to run all his ideas by Jobs. Once Jobs was gone we got to see Ive's true colors (it was garish pastels and a butterfly keyboard).

https://jonyiveredesignsthings.tumblr.com/

Re: Tim Cook's Impeccable Timing

#268

Post by philistine »

tsunamifury wrote: post #212
iwontberude wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love that he instantly flopped repeatedly and showed it was actually Apple that was great all along.

This is, by far, the most insane take i've ever heard. The guy litterally built modern apple from the ground up in equal with Jobs.

People age and change; Jony Ive overstayed his tenure at Apple, through no fault of his own. Cook, not being a product guy, kept Ive with massive incentives. Build Apple Park, take care of software, here's a bunch more stock. That led to very misguided products. Laptops without MagSafe. Ever so thin phones for no benefit. A pen that charges in the most insane way.

Ive should have left shortly after the death of Steve. He was creatively spent at Apple.

Re: Tim Cook's Impeccable Timing

#269

Post by SSLy »

pohl wrote: post #217
a012 wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And dont forget the scissor keyboard and the fucking touchbar

I suspect that the touch bar served its likely real purpose: to ship an ARM CPU with a secure enclave in the machines so that we could have Touch ID without needing to wait for Apple Silicon. Everything other than that was gravy, an interesting experiment.

T2 or a successor could theoretically do all of that too.

Re: Tim Cook's Impeccable Timing

#270

Post by butlike »

mring33621 wrote: post #61
raw_anon_1111 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would hope that Apple doesn’t follow Google’s lead. Google has the attention span of a crack addled flea and struggles to make great products

Gemini is a great product

I don't like the name. Makes it sound two faced.

Yes, I get it's a marrying of DeepMind and Google Brain teams or whatever. Still think it sounds duplicitous.

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