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Apple's accidental moat: How the "AI Loser" may end up winning

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Re: Apple's accidental moat: How the "AI Loser" may end up winning

#271

Post by KaiserPro »

smt88 wrote: post #57
hapticmonkey wrote: post #13

Apple aren’t in the business of building chatbots to impress investors (other than some WWDC2024 vaporware they’d rather not talk about any more). They’re in the business of consumer hardware. Consumers want iPhones and (if Apple are right) some form of AR glasses in the next decade. That’s their focus. There’s a huge amount of machine learning and inference that’s required to get those to work. But it’s under the ho…

Consumers don't necessarily want iPhone. They don't want to be excluded from iMessage, which is a completely different motivation.

I doubt 80% of iphone users would be able to tell you if imessage was on or not.

they might say that some people's messages are green, but not much more.

Re: Apple's accidental moat: How the "AI Loser" may end up winning

#272

Post by KaiserPro »

pjmlp wrote: post #108

What I don't get about Apple is when everyone else was giving up on yet another VR attempt, moving into AI, they decide AI isn't worth it, and it was the right time for a me too VR headset. So no VR, given the price and lack of developer support, and late arrival into AI.

> it was the right time for a me too VR headset.

I think it was more that the experience was pretty much there. Hardware takes a loooong time to mature, even more if its a new style or package. I'm assuming that they were prototyping this in 2015-18.

Also, Apple knows that AR glasses, if done right, and not turned into a cesspool of perverts (ie google glasses) will be a massive platform. However its going to take at least another 5 years to get something usable. So if its possible, I expect apple to come out with something just after Meta either gives up or has a string of failures.

Re: Apple's accidental moat: How the "AI Loser" may end up winning

#273

Post by acidtechno303 »

mewpmewp2 wrote: post #257
acidtechno303 wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're quick to say "to me" in your comparison. My experience is very different than yours. Codex and CC yield very differenty result both because of the harness differencess and the model differences, but niether is noticeably better than the other. Personally, I like Codex better just because I don't have to mess with any sort of planning mode. If I imply that it shouldn't change code yet, it doesn't. CC is too imp…

I guess yes, that's a harness difference, and you can also configure CC as a harness to behave very differently, but still with same harness and guidance, "to me" there's still a difference in terms of Opus 4.6 and e.g. GPT 5.4 or which GPT model do you use? I've been using Claude Code, Codex and OpenCode as harnesses presently, but for serious long running implementation I feel like I can only really rely on CC + Op…

Yes 5.4

Perhaps Opus is superior and I'm just jaded.

I come from Cursor before having adopted the TUI tools. Opus was nothing short of pathetic in their environment compared to the -codex models. I would only use it for investigations and planning because it was faster.

Like you've said, though, that could just be a harness issue.

Re: Apple's accidental moat: How the "AI Loser" may end up winning

#274

Post by swiftcoder »

maplethorpe wrote: post #181
grtteee wrote: post #2

This is the classic apple approach - wait to understand what the thing is capable of doing (aka let others make sunk investments), envision a solution that is way better than the competition and then architect a path to building a leapfrog product that builds a large lead.

Didn't they rush to integrate ChatGPT into their OS back in 2024? Reality doesn't seem to align with your description.

They certainly announced they were going to. I've yet to meet someone who actually used that integration. Like many of these things, it seems to have been a sop to the investors who were accusing apple of ignoring the AI wave

Re: Apple's accidental moat: How the "AI Loser" may end up winning

#275

Post by KaiserPro »

int32_64 wrote: post #28

Nvidia restricts gamer cards in data centers through licensing, eventually they will probably release a cheaper consumer AI card to corner the local AI market that can't be used in data centers if they feel too much of a threat from Apple. Imagine a future where Nvidia sells the exact same product at completely different prices, cheap for those using local models, and expensive for those deploying proprietary models…

> Nvidia restricts gamer cards in data centers through licensing

So does intel, so do a lot of companies.

but

The processor is only half of the equation, memory volume, type and bandwidth as also a big factor in cost. Sure consumer GPUs are cheaper, but they have less memory and (often) less bandwidth. The proc might be the same, or binned, but thats only part of the price.

Re: Apple's accidental moat: How the "AI Loser" may end up winning

#276

Post by dns_snek »

jstummbillig wrote: post #264
TeMPOraL wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These bytes are human lives. The bytes and the CPU cycles translate to software that takes longer to run, that is more frustrating, that makes people accomplish less in longer time than they could, or should. Take too much, and you prevent them from using other software in parallel, compounding the problem. Or you're forcing them to upgrade hardware early, taking away money they could better spend in different areas…

Creating people able to do these optimizations costs human life, which is not spend on other things, like building the unoptimized version of another product.

We're not talking about writing assembly by hand here. If your software has a million daily users and wastes a minute of their day, that's about 9 work-years of labour wasted every single day.

In a 5-year lifecycle that's about 10,000 years of human labour wasted. Yes, I had to quadruple-check this myself.

Does it take 10,000 work-years of effort, per project, to train its developers to write reasonably performant code?

Of course not all of this would translate into actual productivity gains but it doesn't have to.

Re: Apple's accidental moat: How the "AI Loser" may end up winning

#278

Post by docstryder »

amazingamazing wrote: post #22

Gemma4 in my view is good enough to do things similar to Gemini 2.5 flash, meaning if I point it code and ask for help and there is a problem with the code it’ll answer correctly in terms of suggestions but it’s not great at using all tools or one shooting things that require a lot of context or “expert knowledge” If a couple more iterations of this, say gemma6 is as good as current opus and runs completely locally o…

The economy is, more or less, a competition.

If someone gets a really great axe and are happy with it, that’s great for them.

But then, other people will be on bulldozers.

They can say they are happy with the axe, but then they are not in the competition at that point.

Re: Apple's accidental moat: How the "AI Loser" may end up winning

#279

Post by charcircuit »

acidtechno303 wrote: post #221
mewpmewp2 wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean to me even difference between Opus and Sonnet is as clear as day and night, and even Opus and the best GPT model. Opus 4.6 just seems much more reliable in terms of me asking it to do something, and that to actually happen.

You're quick to say "to me" in your comparison. My experience is very different than yours. Codex and CC yield very differenty result both because of the harness differencess and the model differences, but niether is noticeably better than the other. Personally, I like Codex better just because I don't have to mess with any sort of planning mode. If I imply that it shouldn't change code yet, it doesn't. CC is too imp…

I have the opposite experience. Codex gets to work much faster than Claude Code. Also I've never seen the need to use planning mode for Claude. If it thinks it needs a plan it will make one automatically.

Re: Apple's accidental moat: How the "AI Loser" may end up winning

#280

Post by charcircuit »

dns_snek wrote: post #276
jstummbillig wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Creating people able to do these optimizations costs human life, which is not spend on other things, like building the unoptimized version of another product.

We're not talking about writing assembly by hand here. If your software has a million daily users and wastes a minute of their day, that's about 9 work-years of labour wasted every single day. In a 5-year lifecycle that's about 10,000 years of human labour wasted. Yes, I had to quadruple-check this myself. Does it take 10,000 work-years of effort, per project, to train its developers to write reasonably performant co…

You are failing to consider the opportunity cost of how much more work-years can be saved by making a new feature.
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