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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

#301

Post by alex1138 »

Traster wrote: post #287

People can correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the core logic behind OpenAI's valuation was essentially that AI would work like search. Google had the best search engine, it became a centre of gravity that sucked everything in and suddenly network effects meant it was the centre of the universe. There seem to be 2 big problems with that though. The first is that for search, queries are both demand for the product an…

I'm just sad Google was intent on ruining their own product, whether removing + operator (seriously - Google+ is not an excuse, I don't care if it conflicts with search, don't do that) or some of their political censorship

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

#302

Post by satvikpendem »

decimalenough wrote: post #262
contagiousflow wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you think "creatives" have a "seething hatred of AI"?

Have you talked to an artist like a musician, an illustrator or a web designer about AI? It's ripping off their work without credit and making them unemployable.

A lot of them already use AI already, such as for example Photoshop AI features. It also seems to be a bimodal distribution, there are those who use it without caring what anyone else says about it, especially the loud minority, and there are those who don't use it.

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

#303

Post by dimmke »

Philip-J-Fry wrote: post #186
swazzy wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

similar vibes as "640k ought to be enough for anybody"

I think the difference is that with LLMs, in a lot of cases you do see some diminishing returns. I won't deny that the latest Claude models are fantastic at just one shotting loads of problems. But we have an internal proxy to a load of models running on Vertex AI and I accidentally started using Opus/Sonnet 4 instead of 4.6. I genuinely didn't know until I checked my configuration. AI models will get to this point w…

100% agree here. The actual practical bottleneck is harness and agentic abilities for most tasks.

It's the biggest thing that stuck out to me using local AI with open source projects vs Claude's client. The model itself is good enough I think - Gemma 4 would be fine if it could be used with something as capable as Claude.

And that's gonna stay locked down unfortunately especially on mobile and cars - it needs access to APIs to do that stuff - and not just regular APIs that were built for traditional invoking.

The same way that websites are getting llm.txts I think APIs will also evolve.

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

#304

Post by Tianning »

Philip-J-Fry wrote: post #186
swazzy wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

similar vibes as "640k ought to be enough for anybody"

I think the difference is that with LLMs, in a lot of cases you do see some diminishing returns. I won't deny that the latest Claude models are fantastic at just one shotting loads of problems. But we have an internal proxy to a load of models running on Vertex AI and I accidentally started using Opus/Sonnet 4 instead of 4.6. I genuinely didn't know until I checked my configuration. AI models will get to this point w…

Agree on the diminishing returns,the Opus 4.6 anecdote is a good signal

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

#305

Post by TheDong »

Someone wrote: post #222
TheDong wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think paid advertising may even help improve discoverability on the App Store So my grandmother searching "Powerpoint" and getting malware instead of the microsoft app is good actually? Let me compare some search terms and see if ads are giving me "better" results: * ublock - surfshark vpn * wordle - spammy adware word game * slack - spammy adware game * microsoft word - spammy spyware office app (not the one mad…

> So my grandmother searching "Powerpoint" and getting malware instead of the microsoft app is good actually? Where do I claim that? My argument is that, with paid advertising, the store may show fewer items, making it easier to find the right thing. And no, I’m not claiming that’s ideal; only that it c/would be an improvement.

So you're saying a hypothetically well implemented advertisement service could be better than a hypothetical poorly implemented ranking service.

The reality is right now we have a poorly implemented advertisement service that shows malware, and if you ignore the ads and look at the search results based on relevance, they're clearly better.

The claim "A good ad service would be good" is a truism, but that's not the reality we live in.

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

#306

Post by lern_too_spel »

crote wrote: post #114
lern_too_spel wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's also literally years behind the competition. https://www.androidpolice.com/2018/05/09/android-ps-new-rece...

The competition has also attached it to a toxic brand and heavily integrated it with actively user-hostile applications. It doesn't matter if your tech is years ahead when people expect using it will mean your image content info will be sold to anyone willing to pay a cent for it.

It's more that nontechnical users prefer luxury brands over utility brands. A much smaller issue, which you alluded to, is that some technical users aren't technical enough to know real privacy vs. marketed privacy. This feature exists in base Android, which doesn't require any Google services.

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

#307

Post by loloquwowndueo »

appreciatorBus wrote: post #290
stavros wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still cheaper, since it amortizes over all the software.

Some software has millions or even billions of users. The cost of 16 GB multiplied by million millions or billions would pay for a lot of refactoring. That said, I think it’s more of a collective action problem. The person who could pay for the refactor to operate in 640 K is not the same person who has to pay for the 16 GB. And yes, the 16 GB is cheap enough in comparison to other costs that the latter group doesn’t…

I think stavros means amortization on an individual level - if all software is bloated and requires 16GB to run then my expense for a 16GB stick is not caused by a single piece of software, but everything I use.

Not that I agree of course :) I’m talking more of the net negative of everyone needing to buy 16gb sticks so developers can YOLO vibe-coded unoptimized garbage. But at least I think the former explanation is what stavros meant :)

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

#308

Post by hoytschermerhrn »

SirMaster wrote: post #289
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.

Apple waited on smartphones? I thought the original iPhone was basically first. Do you count blackberry and palm pilot as Apple waiting to see?

Yes

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

#309

Post by Maticslot »

TheDong wrote: post #18
pram wrote: post #12

I've had it turned off since Sequoia, and this I truly appreciate. It hasn't nagged me once to turn it or Siri on, and it isn't mandatory. When I open up JIRA or Slack I am always greeted with multiple new dialogues pointing at some new AI bullshit, in comparison. We hates it precious

I don't like companies forcing their newest features on me noisily and constantly trying to ship new features and see what sticks so you can't trust whether a feature advertised one week will even be there the next. However, I have even less patience for companies forcing paid-for third-party ads down my throat on a paid product. Slack at least doesn't sell my eyeballs. Facebook, Twitter, Google's ads are worse to me…

[dead]

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

#310

Post by lern_too_spel »

crote wrote: post #118
moondev wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is changing the architecture of a platform that only you make hardware for doing the impossible? They could change the architecture again tonight, and start releasing new machines with it. The users will adopt because there is literally no other choice. Every machine they release will be fastest and most capable on the platform, because there is no other option

The hard part is doing so without completely ruining the existing app ecosystem. Rosetta 2 is genuinely impressive.

Vs. FEX and Prism?
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