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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

#391

Post by ToucanLoucan »

PaulHoule wrote: post #363
ToucanLoucan wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's constant change for the sake of change. This is far from isolated to Apple, too. It's a cancer that's infested virtually every single software company in the entire world at this point, and it's endlessly frustrating. If they don't have some New Shiny Version to show off to the tech media and blogosphere everyone starts acting like the software itself is a dead man walking. I also think it's partially down to…

I think of Microsoft’s bad habit of introducing meaningless superficial changes to the interface but they also keep legacy software working for a long long time. (Office ‘97 works fine on Win 11) The strangest thing about this is in the system configuration dialogs where they have a set of really gee whizzy modern configuration screens but you still have to go into 15 year old screens to do many common tasks —- they…

Oh my god, as a UI designer by trade, the sheer STATE of the Windows OS will send me into a rant far too long (and that I'm far too sober for right now) for a hacker news comment. It's a TRAVESTY. If you try and modify certain system settings you will see, in no particular order, the slightly cleaned up Metro ala Windows 11 (I honestly don't know if this got a name), remnants of the original Metro from 8/10, the modified refreshed control panel from windows 7/vista, and as you point out, dialogs that are seemingly ported directly from as old as Windows 98.

I don't know who if anyone really is heading the UX department at Microsoft, but they should either be empowered to their job properly or fucking fired, and I couldn't tell you which.

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

#392

Post by MPSFounder »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #386
MPSFounder wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disagree. This is a founder problem. Once founders go away, you are left with the MBAs and characters that are fit for business, but lack the umph you are describing.

Yeah, agree with your take. I think it's especially odd to describe Apple as suffering from this "big company problem" given that it seems like the execs there have tenures much longer than the norm. Cook has been at Apple since 1998, shortly after Jobs' return. Federighi originally worked at NeXT when it was acquired by Apple. Eddy Cue has been at Apple since 1989 and his Wikipedia page says he was instrumental in c…

Cook has been exceptional for the stock. But we would likely all agree that on the product end (take Siri for example), it is absolutely clear he and the leadership do not use the product. If they did, I do not believe they would be ok with it being horrendous for over 10 years. Also Apple has had a lot of mishaps under Cook (the wireless Air charger that never got made, butterfly keyboards, Vision Pro, Siri, an OS that is riddled with bugs, iPhone battery slowdown, touchbar on a pro device). I might be missing a few, but he is very clearly not a product guy

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

#393

Post by pesus »

quesera wrote: post #274
tiahura wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d be happy with just being able to accurately position the cursor.

Many people are unaware of the ability to precisely position the cursor with the iOS keyboard by long-pressing the spacebar.

It used to be much easier and more precise with 3D Touch, though. But probably even fewer people knew about that.

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

#394

Post by Dylan16807 »

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…

> Also consider the mouse that couldn’t charge while you use it

I've come around a lot on that design. Well, it's still an awful mouse shape as far as I'm concerned. But putting the port on the bottom gets people to unplug the mouse. I like that as a goal. And it can do a temporary charge pretty fast, so the downside isn't very big.

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

#395

Post by iamacyborg »

kjkjadksj wrote: post #387
musictubes wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The biggest thing that Ahrendts did was merge the online and physical stores. People forget that before she came around there was very little overlap. If you bought something online and you wanted to return it you had to ship it back instead of going to a store. It was one of the things that Cook wanted to get done by retail. Katie Cotton’s departure was in no doubt at least partly to do with her health. She died not…

Funny how that seemingly forgettable caveat is seen as a huge achievement for an executive. As a customer my biggest issue with the apple store is not the return process. It is the lack of them for the population of apple customers given how long it takes to get attended to and the difficulty of securing genius bar appointments. It worked alright 15 years ago but the stores needed to expand along with iPhone market s…

There’s probably some threshold they’ve reached at which just adding more stores doesn’t generate any incremental revenue. So you’ve got to wait a bit longer, well, where else are you going to go?

Maybe I’m just a bit too cynical

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

#396

Post by walterbell »

square_usual wrote: post #343
walterbell wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alexa sold 500 million devices. Before layoffs, they had 10K staff doing something. Their LLM product recently launched and is rolling out soon, lead by former head of MS Surface.

They sold 500 million really cheap speakers. The voice assistant is mostly doing the same thing Siri does, i.e. set timers.

For the elderly (TAM ~= 100% of US humans.. eventually) and disabled, Alexa is life changing. Sadly, Amazon has not invested in those use cases. It's an ideal market for Apple voice control + HomeKit privacy + local LLMs, if and when they get their act together.

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

#397

Post by SJC_Hacker »

42772827 wrote: post #133
__loam wrote: post #57

Hopefully the new guys take the existing GenAI bullshit and fuck off from turning it back on after every update despite me turning it off 3 times already.

When my phone downloaded Image Playground I legitimately thought my phone had been hacked.

I thought my iPad had been hacked when it was constantly started to play that crappy U2 song at random times for no reason.

I wonder how much U2 had to bribe someone at Apple for that

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

#398

Post by dylan604 »

mckn1ght wrote: post #348
dylan604 wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But how can you find out what time your mom texted you to meet? Surely, you don't mean open the text app, find the thread with your mom, and then scroll looking for it. Do you? Surely, the world couldn't function like that. We'd be staring at our screens all day doom scrolling in various apps looking for whatever info you needed. That's just not how the world works.

I think it is actually, because as everything transitions to apps and websites and smartphone, lately I feel like my phone is simply another organ located in my hands and I have to spend an unreasonable amount of time looking at it to get things done. I’d love to have something like Apple Glass powered by AI so I can get both hands freed up again.

It's only that way because you let it be. It is possible to operate in life without staring at a small screen all day. I hardly ever look at mine, and yet I'm a fully functioning person contributing to society in a positive manner. You just have to admit it is a problem, and take it from there

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

#399

Post by artimaeis »

PaulHoule wrote: post #363
ToucanLoucan wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's constant change for the sake of change. This is far from isolated to Apple, too. It's a cancer that's infested virtually every single software company in the entire world at this point, and it's endlessly frustrating. If they don't have some New Shiny Version to show off to the tech media and blogosphere everyone starts acting like the software itself is a dead man walking. I also think it's partially down to…

I think of Microsoft’s bad habit of introducing meaningless superficial changes to the interface but they also keep legacy software working for a long long time. (Office ‘97 works fine on Win 11) The strangest thing about this is in the system configuration dialogs where they have a set of really gee whizzy modern configuration screens but you still have to go into 15 year old screens to do many common tasks —- they…

Lots of people in this thread (correctly!) pointing out Apple's struggles with releasing high quality user software on MacOS. But at least when they changed the System Settings UI in MacOS Ventura (10.13) they managed to stick the landing. Not that I necessarily _like_ the new Settings UI, but there's no jumping into old UIs to configure things.

Microsoft released Windows 8 in 2012, and here we are 13 years later using interaction panels that have only gotten minor chrome updates since their original release in Windows 95 (looking at you, Advanced System Settings and Device Manager).

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