This is what I like about Apple. They just use technology judiciously without making a big deal about it, and talk up the product instead. As it should be.
Apple barely talked about AI at its big iPhone 17 event
41–50 of 89 posts
Re: Apple barely talked about AI at its big iPhone 17 event
#42Apple needs on-device AI to do chores for me with the apps I have installed. Apple has everything it needs: * Apps are already logged in, so no extra friction to grant access. * Apps mostly use Apple-developed UI frameworks, so Apple could turn them into AI-readable representations, instead of raw pixels. In the same way a browser can give the AI the accessibility DOM, Apple could give AIs an easier representation to…
> iPhones already have specialized hardware for AI acceleration.
This really is the problem. Why do I spend hundreds of dollars more for specialized hardware that’s better than last years specialized hardware if all the AI features are going to be an API call to chatGPT? I am pretty sure I don’t need all of that hardware to watch YouTube videos or scroll Instagram/web, which is what 95% of the users do.
Re: Apple barely talked about AI at its big iPhone 17 event
#43That's because people don't trust AI that much... and most people don't differentiate between a really cool feature and AI so it's more confusing marketing than anything.
> That's because people don't trust AI that much ChatGPT being the number one app is a weird way for people to express they don't trust AI: https://apps.apple.com/us/charts/iphone
And with Gemini being the 2nd.
Re: Apple barely talked about AI at its big iPhone 17 event
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
Actually if Siri ever worked when I really need it, they could finally catch up with their promises made in 2011.
Right? Siri lets me down on a regular basis - and has for years.
Apple has so hardwired my neurons to expect "It just won't work" when it comes to Siri that if I cannot physically reach my device, I just don't bother anymore.
Re: Apple barely talked about AI at its big iPhone 17 event
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
And I want it turned the fuck off, quietly not doing anything with my personal shit. I want to reach for my tools when I want to use them.
Yeah, the annonying movies IPhone does from my photo library is something I'd love to opt out of. I get that some people love this feature but I don't. And as you say, I could ask the phone to do that for me on request.
Disable “show featured content” in Photos.
Re: Apple barely talked about AI at its big iPhone 17 event
#46That's because people don't trust AI that much... and most people don't differentiate between a really cool feature and AI so it's more confusing marketing than anything.
I think it's more because they're way behind on AI and they literally have nothing to actually tell us.
How are they behind, in terms of things normal people actually use? Apps like ChatGPT work just fine, and I have literally never heard an Android user I know personally talk about something they can do which isn’t available on iOS.
Re: Apple barely talked about AI at its big iPhone 17 event
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're letting the hype men set the goalposts for you, then, as every ML thing has been retroactively rebranded as "AI." Remember the term "smart" as applied to any device or software mode that made ~any assumptions beyond "stay on while trigger is held"? "AI" is the new "smart." Even expert systems, decision trees, and fulltext search are "AI" now.
> You're letting the hype men set the goalposts for you, then Not really, I'm taking the hint. If they call a feature "AI", there's a 99% chance it's empty hype. If they call a feature "machine learning", there may be something useful in there. Notice how Apple, in this event even, uses the term "machine learning" for some features (like some of their image processing stuff) and "AI" for other features. Their usage o…
Well, yeah, Apple is being reasonable now because Apple just got through a big bad PR thing with their recent failed attempt at "AI". Apple are currently trying, as much as possible, to avoid applying the term "AI" to anything.
But that's not true of any other actor in the market. Everyone else — but especially venture-backed companies trying to get/retain investor interest — are still trying to find a justification for calling every single thing they're selling "AI".
(And it's also not even true of Apple themselves as recently as six months ago. They were approaching their marketing this way too, right up until their whole "AI" team crashed and burned.)
Apple-of-H2-2025 is literally the only company your heuristic will actually spit out any useful information for. For everything else, you'll just end up with 100% false positives.
Re: Apple barely talked about AI at its big iPhone 17 event
#48I think this is the correct approach on a phone. I don't want AI front-and-center. I want it in the background quietly making everything better. To me, that's a much more useful form of AI.
Indeed, a good AI Snitch runs in background on your phone. The era of intelligent spyware.
Re: Apple barely talked about AI at its big iPhone 17 event
#49Apple needs on-device AI to do chores for me with the apps I have installed. Apple has everything it needs: * Apps are already logged in, so no extra friction to grant access. * Apps mostly use Apple-developed UI frameworks, so Apple could turn them into AI-readable representations, instead of raw pixels. In the same way a browser can give the AI the accessibility DOM, Apple could give AIs an easier representation to…
I think on-device AI will show up more front and center but in a few more years.
A big issue to solve is battery life. Right now there's already a lot that goes on at night while the user sleeps with their phone plugged in. This helps to preserve battery life because you can run intensive tasks while hooked up to a power source.
If apps are doing a lot of AI stuff in the course of regular interaction, that could drain the battery fairly quickly.
Amazingly, I think the memory footprint of the phones will also need to get quite a bit larger to really support the big uses cases and workflows. (I do feel somewhat crazy that it is already possible to purchase an iPhone with 1TB of storage and 8GB of RAM).
Re: Apple barely talked about AI at its big iPhone 17 event
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
And I want it turned the fuck off, quietly not doing anything with my personal shit. I want to reach for my tools when I want to use them.
Yeah, the annonying movies IPhone does from my photo library is something I'd love to opt out of. I get that some people love this feature but I don't. And as you say, I could ask the phone to do that for me on request.
I love this feature on both Photos and Google Photos