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Dell admits consumers don't care about AI PCs

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Re: Dell admits consumers don't care about AI PCs

#41

Post by PunchyHamster »

ashleyn wrote: post #7
weird_trousers wrote: post #3

Finally companies understand that consumers do not want AI products, but just better, stronger, and cheaper products. Unfortunately investors are not ready to hear that yet...

If the AI-based product is suitable for purpose (whatever "for purpose" may mean), then it doesn't need to be marketed first and foremost as "AI". This strikes me as pandering more to investors than consumers, and even signaling that you don't value the consumers you sell to, or that you regard the company's stock as more of the product than the actual product. I can see a trend of companies continuing to use AI, but…

It's basically being used as "see, we keep up with the times" label, as there is plenty of propaganda that basically goes "move entirely to using AI for everything or you're obsolete"

Re: Dell admits consumers don't care about AI PCs

#42

Post by slg »

ericmcer wrote: post #25
FfejL wrote: post #10

> It's not that Dell doesn't care about AI or AI PCs anymore, it's just that over the past year or so it's come to realise that the consumer doesn't. I wish every consumer product leader would figure this out.

People will want what LLMs can do they just don't want "AI". I think having it pervade products in a much more subtle way is the future though. For example, if you close a youtube browser tab with a comment half written it will pop up an `alert("You will lose your comment if you close this window")`. It does this if the comment is a 2 page essay or "asdfasdf". Ideally the alert would only happen if the comment seemed…

>For example, if you close a youtube browser tab with a comment half written it will pop up an `alert("You will lose your comment if you close this window")`. It does this if the comment is a 2 page essay or "asdfasdf". Ideally the alert would only happen if the comment seemed important but it would readily discard short or nonsensical input. That is really difficult to do in traditional software but is something an LLM could do with low effort. The end result is I only have to deal with that annoying popup when I really am glad it is there.

The funny thing is that this exact example could also be used by AI skeptics. It's forcing an LLM into a product with questionable utility, causing it to cost more to develop, be more resource intensive to run, and behave in a manner that isn't consistent or reliable. Meanwhile, if there was an incentive to tweak that alert based off likelihood of its usefulness, there could have always just been a check on the length of the text. Suggesting this should be done with an LLM as your specific example is evidence that LLMs are solutions looking for problems.

Re: Dell admits consumers don't care about AI PCs

#43

Post by kingstnap »

NPUs are just kind of weird and difficult to develop for and integration is usually done poorly.

Some useful applications do exist. Particularly grammar checkers and I think windows recall could be useful. But we don't currently have these designed well such that it makes sense.

Re: Dell admits consumers don't care about AI PCs

#44

Post by wavemode »

ericmcer wrote: post #25
FfejL wrote: post #10

> It's not that Dell doesn't care about AI or AI PCs anymore, it's just that over the past year or so it's come to realise that the consumer doesn't. I wish every consumer product leader would figure this out.

People will want what LLMs can do they just don't want "AI". I think having it pervade products in a much more subtle way is the future though. For example, if you close a youtube browser tab with a comment half written it will pop up an `alert("You will lose your comment if you close this window")`. It does this if the comment is a 2 page essay or "asdfasdf". Ideally the alert would only happen if the comment seemed…

> Ideally the alert would only happen if the comment seemed important but it would readily discard short or nonsensical input.

That doesn't sound ideal at all. And in fact highlights what's wrong with AI product development nowadays.

AI as a tool is wildly popular. Almost everyone in the world uses ChatGPT or knows someone who does. Here's the thing about tools - you use them in a predictable way and they give you a predictable result. I ask a question, I get an answer. The thing doesn't randomly interject when I'm doing other things and I asked it nothing. I swing a hammer, it drives a nail. The hammer doesn't decide that the thing it's swinging at is vaguely thumb-shaped and self-destruct.

Too many product managers nowadays want AI to not just be a tool, they want it to be magic. But magic is distracting, and unpredictable, and frequently gets things wrong because it doesn't understand the human's intent. That's why people mostly find AI integrations confusing and aggravating, despite the popularity of AI-as-a-tool.

Re: Dell admits consumers don't care about AI PCs

#45

Post by microflash »

ishtanbul wrote: post #33
m348e912 wrote: post #9

Protip, if you are considering a dell xps laptop, consider the dell precision laptop workstation instead which is the business version of the consumer level xps. It also looks like names are being changed, and the business laptops are going with a dell pro (essential/premium/plus/max) naming convention.

I have the precision 5690 (the 16inch model) with a ultra 7 processor and 4k touchscreen (2025 model). It is very heavy, but its very powerful. My main gripe is that the battery life is very bad, and it has a 165 watt charger, which wont work on most planes. So if you fly a lot for work, this laptop will die on you unless you bring a lower wattage charger. It also doesn't sleep properly. I often find it in my bag hou…

After using several Precisions at work, I now firmly believe that Dell does not know how to cool their workstations properly. They are all heavy, pretty bad at energy efficiency and run extremely hot (I use my work machine laid belly up in summer since fans are always on). I’d take a ThinkPad or Mac any day over any Dell.

Re: Dell admits consumers don't care about AI PCs

#46

Post by soupfordummies »

tpurves wrote: post #11

Dell is cooked this year for reasons entirely outside their control. DRAM and storage/drive shortages are causing costs of those to go to the moon. And Dell's 'inventory' light supply chain and narrow margins puts them in a perfect storm of trouble.

So it was RAM a couple months ago and now storage/drives are going to the moon also?

Re: Dell admits consumers don't care about AI PCs

#47

Post by m000 »

weird_trousers wrote: post #3

Finally companies understand that consumers do not want AI products, but just better, stronger, and cheaper products. Unfortunately investors are not ready to hear that yet...

The problem is that there are virtually no off-the-shelf local AI applications. So they're trying to sell us expensive hardware with no software that takes advantage of it.

Re: Dell admits consumers don't care about AI PCs

#48

Post by nikanj »

FfejL wrote: post #10

> It's not that Dell doesn't care about AI or AI PCs anymore, it's just that over the past year or so it's come to realise that the consumer doesn't. I wish every consumer product leader would figure this out.

Companies don’t really exist to make products for consumers, they live to create stock value for investors. And the stock market loves AI

Re: Dell admits consumers don't care about AI PCs

#49

Post by MBCook »

pier25 wrote: post #38

Consumers are not idiots. We know all this AI PC crap is it's mostly a useless gimmick. One day it will be very cool to run something like ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini locally in our phones but we're still very, very far away from that.

It’s today’s 3D TVs. It’s something investors got all hyped up about that everybody “has to have“.

There is useful functionality there. Apple has had it for years, so have others. But at the time they weren’t calling it “AI“ because that wasn’t the cool word.

I also think most people associate AI with ChatGPT or other conversational things. And I’m not entirely sure I want that on my computer.

But some of the things Apple and others have done that aren’t conversational are very useful. Pervasive OCR on Windows and Mac is fantastic, for example. You could brand that as AI. But you don’t really need to no one cares if you do or not.

Re: Dell admits consumers don't care about AI PCs

#50

Post by bluGill »

wavemode wrote: post #44
ericmcer wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People will want what LLMs can do they just don't want "AI". I think having it pervade products in a much more subtle way is the future though. For example, if you close a youtube browser tab with a comment half written it will pop up an `alert("You will lose your comment if you close this window")`. It does this if the comment is a 2 page essay or "asdfasdf". Ideally the alert would only happen if the comment seemed…

> Ideally the alert would only happen if the comment seemed important but it would readily discard short or nonsensical input. That doesn't sound ideal at all. And in fact highlights what's wrong with AI product development nowadays. AI as a tool is wildly popular. Almost everyone in the world uses ChatGPT or knows someone who does. Here's the thing about tools - you use them in a predictable way and they give you a…

I want magic that works. Sometimes I want a tool to interrupt me! I know my route to work so I'm not going to ask how I should get there today - but 1% of the time there is something wrong with my plan (accident, construction...) and I want the tool to say something. I know I need to turn right to get someplace, but sometimes as a human I'll say left instead: confusing me and the driver where they don't turn right, and AI that realizes who made the mistake would help.

The hard part is the AI needs to be correct when it doesn't something unexpected. I don't know if this is a solvable problem, but it is what I want.

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