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Apple shuffles AI executive ranks in bid to turn around Siri

finance.yahoo.com

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Re: Apple shuffles AI executive ranks in bid to turn around Siri

#351

Post by caycep »

kstrauser wrote: post #291
ksec wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plenty of examples. The problem isn't JG. It is Tim Cook. He is exceptionally poor at judging character. And I have been saying this for 10+ years. John Browett, CEO of Dixons. Anyone from UK have said WTF at the time. Angela Ahrendts, CEO of Burberry, the two together Apple has literally stopped expanding their Retail store despite having 10x as much customers. Rolled out many "changes" to Apple store when nearly ev…

To be fair, I’d counter with Jobs picking Jony Ive. Ive made gorgeous, lustworthy art objects that sucked as computers. The nadirs for me were iPhone 6’s bendgate and the 2015 MBP. Damn the functionality, we’ll make these suckers so slim you can shave with them! No one was begging for a MBP so thin it had to have compromised keyboard switches. Also consider the mouse that couldn’t charge while you use it, and the tra…

that being said, Ive was important in asking why physical form factors should make sense in human terms. Big computers w/ a lot of ports make sense to comp sci/ee ppl in the lab but people in the real world have priorities more in line with Ive. Without Ive challenging the design, Apple wouldn't have even tried.

Re: Apple shuffles AI executive ranks in bid to turn around Siri

#353

Post by flakiness »

hi_hi wrote: post #110

Does Google have an LLM based AI experience for Android? What are they doing differently to avoid the problems plaguing Apple. The core technology in both can't be that different. Or is it an expectation thing? I feel like they may be experiencing that issue where the product is quite good within some core set of features, but the edge cases are where all the paper cuts happen. And when its a singular product on a si…

- They don't insist on being on-device although they seem to have on-device route.

- Their promise isn't as ambitious as Apples. It's basically Gemini + pre-existing Assistant features as plugins. Not trying to be the privacy-touching agent at least at the first cut. (Or they promised big, but they have trained the audience not take it as a fade value haha.)

- They ship the Gemini version as an opt-in for the Assistant replacement so that they can learn "iterate" on the adventurous enthusiast while leaving larger user base as is.

Re: Apple shuffles AI executive ranks in bid to turn around Siri

#354

Post by caycep »

ksec wrote: post #237
ddp26 wrote: post #180

John Giannandrea (JG) was running the Google Assistant when I was there. That didn't go so well. (Pre-LLM assistants as a category have done badly - Alexa/Siri did _ok_ but presumably everyone working on them had higher hopes.) I remember being surprised when JG seemingly "failed up" to become head of Apple AI. It's been many years and it's hard to point to anything that's gone well in that category. Seems like there…

Plenty of examples. The problem isn't JG. It is Tim Cook. He is exceptionally poor at judging character. And I have been saying this for 10+ years. John Browett, CEO of Dixons. Anyone from UK have said WTF at the time. Angela Ahrendts, CEO of Burberry, the two together Apple has literally stopped expanding their Retail store despite having 10x as much customers. Rolled out many "changes" to Apple store when nearly ev…

aren't a lot of App Store/dev relations critics frustrated with/ Schiller though?

Re: Apple shuffles AI executive ranks in bid to turn around Siri

#355

Post by yandie »

thebytefairy wrote: post #331
dmix wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because there was no competition. Alexa similarly gave up trying to improve theirs after it launched. I've never tried Google's voice assistant but I assume it wasn't very interesting before GPT either. I'm not convinced it was a technical limitation, even stuff like voice parsing was not improved or basic functionality expanded horizontally.

As a user of all, Google Assistant and Alexa are miles ahead of Siri. Initially I just had Siri, and like you assumed they were all like that. Not the case. No more 'here's what I found on the web' or just not being able to help. Are they integral to my daily life, no, but definitely save time. Siri is just for timers and reminders for me.

I've been a long term Alexa user and kinda hard to get out of the ecosystem, but it's gone downhill fast in the last few years in terms of the UX.

* It forgets about my configured routine ("good night" -> "turn off all lights", now it would randomly reply "good night" and does nothing).

* It keeps trying to push down other services/products on top with long winded follow up question. There's no way to turn this off

* Keep asking if it's answering from the correct room

* Its ability to understand my command has gone downhill - and I'm just ordering it to turn the lights on and off in certain rooms. Now it keeps saying "cannot find bedroom" for example even though there's clearly a group called "Bedroom" set up in Alexa

Re: Apple shuffles AI executive ranks in bid to turn around Siri

#356

Post by PaulHoule »

subsubzero wrote: post #294
ksec wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plenty of examples. The problem isn't JG. It is Tim Cook. He is exceptionally poor at judging character. And I have been saying this for 10+ years. John Browett, CEO of Dixons. Anyone from UK have said WTF at the time. Angela Ahrendts, CEO of Burberry, the two together Apple has literally stopped expanding their Retail store despite having 10x as much customers. Rolled out many "changes" to Apple store when nearly ev…

This is a fantastic comment, I wholeheartedly agree with your assessment on Angela Ahrendts. What was once a magical experience going to a apple store has devolved into a nightmare. A few reasons why: - The complete removal of spontaneity of the shopping experience. You wander over to look at a laptop and decide you want to buy it. Asking a employee is disagreeable as most have a ear bud in their ear receiving instru…

It does not bother me I’m hundreds of miles from an Apple Store because every time I look into one it is so crowded. Shopping online feels like a luxury experience in comparison (so blown away my M4 mini came in a tiny box!)

Re: Apple shuffles AI executive ranks in bid to turn around Siri

#357

Post by caycep »

ksec wrote: post #237
ddp26 wrote: post #180

John Giannandrea (JG) was running the Google Assistant when I was there. That didn't go so well. (Pre-LLM assistants as a category have done badly - Alexa/Siri did _ok_ but presumably everyone working on them had higher hopes.) I remember being surprised when JG seemingly "failed up" to become head of Apple AI. It's been many years and it's hard to point to anything that's gone well in that category. Seems like there…

Plenty of examples. The problem isn't JG. It is Tim Cook. He is exceptionally poor at judging character. And I have been saying this for 10+ years. John Browett, CEO of Dixons. Anyone from UK have said WTF at the time. Angela Ahrendts, CEO of Burberry, the two together Apple has literally stopped expanding their Retail store despite having 10x as much customers. Rolled out many "changes" to Apple store when nearly ev…

granted, this is me just speculating, but personality type of Tim Cook dreaming up highly precise supply chains and generating precise business numbers quarter to quarter might make him vulnerable in terms of the character judging side of things...

Re: Apple shuffles AI executive ranks in bid to turn around Siri

#358

Post by ein0p »

cadamsdotcom wrote: post #342

Tim Cook loves that sweet services revenue. Maybe non-terrible Siri needs to be a subscription service, instead of a phone-selling feature.

I feel like service revenue is going to be Apple's "oil curse". I get why they need it in the short to medium term, but in the long term it removes the fear of death that used to originate from having to release groundbreaking (and successful!) hardware products every few years. And as they grow the service revenue, the fear of death will wane even further.

Re: Apple shuffles AI executive ranks in bid to turn around Siri

#359

Post by scarface_74 »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #252
scarface_74 wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well I feel dumb for asking him :) Yeah I had that game on my Mac LCII back in 1992 and Parena was great too. The point still stands though. The operating systems were horrible back in the mid 90s and both Macs I had back then - the Mac LCII and PowerMac 6100 - were cripple by being a half speed bus. Back before it was necessary.

You're objectively right. I have been running emulators recently with System 6.0 and was surprised at how much crashing I must have just tolerated. I shouldn't have made it appear that I was defending the quality of pre-OSX Mac OS. (Although we were talking about how quality has come down of late.) As an engineer before Jobs came back — and for a few years too after he was back — there was still a sense that engineer…

> As an engineer before Jobs came back — and for a few years too after he was back — there was still a sense that engineers could call the shots with their own frameworks/apps

That’s a bug not a feature. Engineering led companies rarely ship good consumer products. What happened to Apple before there was a product guy at the top is a prime example.

Another recent example is Google. Google has the best technology in the industry but can’t ship and sustain a good product to save its life.

Re: Apple shuffles AI executive ranks in bid to turn around Siri

#360

Post by rowanG077 »

kstrauser wrote: post #291
ksec wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plenty of examples. The problem isn't JG. It is Tim Cook. He is exceptionally poor at judging character. And I have been saying this for 10+ years. John Browett, CEO of Dixons. Anyone from UK have said WTF at the time. Angela Ahrendts, CEO of Burberry, the two together Apple has literally stopped expanding their Retail store despite having 10x as much customers. Rolled out many "changes" to Apple store when nearly ev…

To be fair, I’d counter with Jobs picking Jony Ive. Ive made gorgeous, lustworthy art objects that sucked as computers. The nadirs for me were iPhone 6’s bendgate and the 2015 MBP. Damn the functionality, we’ll make these suckers so slim you can shave with them! No one was begging for a MBP so thin it had to have compromised keyboard switches. Also consider the mouse that couldn’t charge while you use it, and the tra…

Iphone 6, 2015 MBP, thrashcan where all under Cook. To me this precisely shows Cook did not have Ive under control.
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