Apple picks Gemini to power Siri • Hacker News Board

Re: Apple picks Gemini to power Siri

#411

Post by krferriter » Tue, Jan 13, 2026, 3:26 AM UTC

baxtr wrote: post #289

cush wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Gemini is objectively a good model (whether it's #1 or #5 in ranking aside) so Apple can confidently deliver a good (enough) product Definitely. At at this point, Apple just needs to get anything out the door. It was nearly two years ago they sold a phone with features that still haven't shipped and the promise that Apple Intelligence would come in two months.

What are the top 3 features you’re missing right now?

I'm sorry, I can't answer that right now.

Would you like to click this button which takes what you said and executes it as a Google search in Safari?

Re: Apple picks Gemini to power Siri

#412

Post by freakynit » Tue, Jan 13, 2026, 3:32 AM UTC

a_paddy wrote: post #50

mdasen wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where does it say that it won't be white-labeled? Yes, Apple is acknowledging that Google's Gemini will be powering Siri and that is a big deal, but are they going to be acknowledging it in the product or is this just an acknowledgment to investors? Apple doesn't hide where many of their components come from, but that doesn't mean that those brands are credited in the product. There's no "fab by TSMC" or "camera sens…

Apple won't take the risk of being blamed for AI answers being incorrect. They will attribute Google/Gemini so users know how to be mad at if it doesn't work as expected.

This is a double-edged sword. Apple would love any failure to be blamed on Google, but not the branding to go with it.

Apple's brand is so dominant that even if they say Siri is "powered by Google", most users will still perceive it as an Apple service. The only way that changes is if Apple consistently and prominently surfaces the Google name on Siri — which seems unlikely (but who knows when the stakes are so high).

Re: Apple picks Gemini to power Siri

#413

Post by Kristopher1337 » Tue, Jan 13, 2026, 3:33 AM UTC

Feel like this is a huge whiff. At best your implementation is as good as what you can get with Google's own offerings and Pixel. Most likely Apple's offerings will always be just a bit behind. Im probably a bit biased as Ive preferred Anthropic but it seems like those two companies also align more with other outward policies like privacy.

Re: Apple picks Gemini to power Siri

#414

Post by sitzkrieg » Tue, Jan 13, 2026, 3:38 AM UTC

Fiveplus wrote: post #42

The writing was on the wall the moment Apple stopped trying to buy their way into the server-side training game like what three years ago? Apple has the best edge inference silicon in the world (neural engine), but they have effectively zero presence in a training datacenter. They simply do not have the TPU pods or the H100 clusters to train a frontier model like Gemini 2.5 or 3.0 from scratch without burning 10 year…

the year is 2026, the top advertising company is in bed with the walled garden device specialists and the decision is celebrated

Re: Apple picks Gemini to power Siri

#415

Post by raw_anon_1111 » Tue, Jan 13, 2026, 3:39 AM UTC

mschuster91 wrote: post #391

JSR_FDED wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s absolutely a commodity. The exact reason IBM sold their server division to Lenovo in 2014.

I'd rather say IBM got cannibalized by "financial engineers", this wasn't a decision made because of "it's a commodity". There used to be a time when IBM actually meant quality (that's where "no one ever got fired for buying IBM" came from, after all), but nowadays? A loooot of stuff is either sold (Thinkpad went to Lenovo, Lotus Notes to HCL), faded into irrelevancy outside of extremely few niche markets (anything m…

The no one ever got fired for buying IBM wasn’t about quality. It’s always safe to buy the default choice that everyone else uses. Especially when things go wrong.

Many want to be founders here on HN don’t get that. Even if your product is better and cheaper, there is too much of a reputational risk signing a contract for a B2B SaaS product with an unknown vendor.

On a completely unrelated note, for the love of all that is holy don’t try to do B2B SaaS without SSO support.

Re: Apple picks Gemini to power Siri

#416

Post by raw_anon_1111 » Tue, Jan 13, 2026, 3:41 AM UTC

pstuart wrote: post #308

ghaff wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Xserve was always kind of a loss. Wrote a piece about it a number of years back. It became pretty much a commodity business--which isn't Apple.

With Thunderbolt 5 and M5 Ultras, Apple could be building lower cost clusters that could possibly scale enough while keeping a lower power budget. Obviously that can't compete with NVIDIA racks, but for mobile consumer inference maybe that would be enough?

Apple just announced it

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46248644

Re: Apple picks Gemini to power Siri

#417

Post by qcnguy » Tue, Jan 13, 2026, 3:41 AM UTC

aurareturn wrote: post #409

elzbardico wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is more like Apple have no need to spend billions on training with questionable ROI when it can just rent from one of the commodity foundation model labs.

It’s such a commodity that there are only 3 SOTA labs left and no one can catch them. I’m sure it’ll be consolidated further in the future and you’re going to be left with a natural monopoly or duopoly. Apple has no control over the most important change to tech. They have control to Google.

Four. You forgot xAI. And that's ignoring the Chinese labs.

Re: Apple picks Gemini to power Siri

#418

Post by foobarian » Tue, Jan 13, 2026, 3:41 AM UTC

Workaccount2 wrote: post #58

If nothing else, this was likely driven by Google being the most stable of the AI labs. Gemini is objectively a good model (whether it's #1 or #5 in ranking aside) so Apple can confidently deliver a good (enough) product. Also for Apple, they know their provider has ridiculously deep pockets, a good understanding and infrastructure in place for large enterprises, and a fairly diversified revenue stream. Going with An…

Aren't both of those companies also both at the whims of Microsoft for the actual compute hardware? I'm not good at keeping track of who has actual hardware vs. who runs in one of the big clouds

Re: Apple picks Gemini to power Siri

#419

Post by ada0000 » Tue, Jan 13, 2026, 3:43 AM UTC

foobarian wrote: post #418

Workaccount2 wrote: post #58

If nothing else, this was likely driven by Google being the most stable of the AI labs. Gemini is objectively a good model (whether it's #1 or #5 in ranking aside) so Apple can confidently deliver a good (enough) product. Also for Apple, they know their provider has ridiculously deep pockets, a good understanding and infrastructure in place for large enterprises, and a fairly diversified revenue stream. Going with An…

Aren't both of those companies also both at the whims of Microsoft for the actual compute hardware? I'm not good at keeping track of who has actual hardware vs. who runs in one of the big clouds

don’t forget oracle!

Re: Apple picks Gemini to power Siri

#420

Post by schrodinger » Tue, Jan 13, 2026, 3:46 AM UTC

AuthAuth wrote: post #345

LeoPanthera wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google says: "Apple Intelligence will continue to run on Apple devices and Private Cloud Compute, while maintaining Apple's industry-leading privacy standards." So what does it take? How many actual commitments to privacy does Apple have to make before the HN crowd stops crowing about "theater"?

Apple uses user data to target ads

What ads?