John Giannandrea named to Apple’s executive team • Hacker News Board

Re: John Giannandrea named to Apple’s executive team

#71

Post by scarface74 » Thu, Dec 20, 2018, 7:55 PM UTC

threatofrain wrote: post #58

scarface74 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just tried “take me to the nearest McDonalds” and it replied “which local business, tap the one you want” with a list from nearest to farthest and when I click on it, it gives me directions to the one I choose. As far as the second question - yeah that one was weird. It said that the population was 69 but the text summary that it displayed was 269,000. It’s the only city that displayed that bug.

Did you see how Google Assistant handles the nearest McDonald’s request? Google doesn’t ask you which McDonald’s is the closest one, tap the one you want.

But that’s more of an interface choice than a technical limitation. Siri both understood the question and had the ability to navigate to it.

In my case, there were 9 McDonalds within a 10 mile radius.

In cases where there was only one location nearby, it took me right to it.

Re: John Giannandrea named to Apple’s executive team

#72

Post by hn_throwaway_99 » Thu, Dec 20, 2018, 7:56 PM UTC

m0zg wrote: post #21

dboreham wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Um...you know JG was formerly at Google doing all that magic you love and is now at Apple, right?

JG was _managing people_ doing the magic. There's a difference. By himself, he can't really do much. He's not even a ML/DL guy per se.

Don't you think it's likely that JG will convince other top AI/ML talent to join Apple? That's usually a senior exec's main job, to recruit, retain and grow people who are building the products.

Re: John Giannandrea named to Apple’s executive team

#73

Post by dhruvarora013 » Thu, Dec 20, 2018, 7:56 PM UTC

scrollaway wrote: post #59

m0zg wrote: post #16

It's just unbelievable to me that the company sitting on a quarter trillion dollars is unwilling to spend a small fraction of that hoard to hire the best of the best in order to fix the very thing that will kill their cash cow in the next 5 years. I'm on iOS myself (and have been faithful since the first iPhone), but $30 Google Home puck feels like it's from the future. Understands me perfectly, comes up with decent…

> $30 Google Home puck feels like it's from the future Is it ? Is the $30 puck better than the Home assistant or does it just suck that much more in French than it does in English? (Not being snarky, genuinely asking) It doesn't understand followup commands, the Hue integration is rotten bad, and the commands definitely have to be rigid. Things like "What were my meetings on the 12th of December" aren't understood. A…

Can't you say Hey Google now?

Re: John Giannandrea named to Apple’s executive team

#74

Post by hellofunk » Thu, Dec 20, 2018, 7:56 PM UTC

m0zg wrote: post #21

dboreham wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Um...you know JG was formerly at Google doing all that magic you love and is now at Apple, right?

JG was _managing people_ doing the magic. There's a difference. By himself, he can't really do much. He's not even a ML/DL guy per se.

Uh, Jobs was not an engineer either, just a simple ol' manager, right? Managers don't have any power and capabilities, right?

Re: John Giannandrea named to Apple’s executive team

#75

Post by bagacrap » Thu, Dec 20, 2018, 7:57 PM UTC

scrollaway wrote: post #59

m0zg wrote: post #16

It's just unbelievable to me that the company sitting on a quarter trillion dollars is unwilling to spend a small fraction of that hoard to hire the best of the best in order to fix the very thing that will kill their cash cow in the next 5 years. I'm on iOS myself (and have been faithful since the first iPhone), but $30 Google Home puck feels like it's from the future. Understands me perfectly, comes up with decent…

> $30 Google Home puck feels like it's from the future Is it ? Is the $30 puck better than the Home assistant or does it just suck that much more in French than it does in English? (Not being snarky, genuinely asking) It doesn't understand followup commands, the Hue integration is rotten bad, and the commands definitely have to be rigid. Things like "What were my meetings on the 12th of December" aren't understood. A…

It's exceptionally good in my experience in English. It helps when you train it on your voice. Also, it wants me to say "hey Google" these days, if you like that any better than ok Google.

Re: John Giannandrea named to Apple’s executive team

#76

Post by tshannon » Thu, Dec 20, 2018, 7:57 PM UTC

scrollaway wrote: post #59

m0zg wrote: post #16

It's just unbelievable to me that the company sitting on a quarter trillion dollars is unwilling to spend a small fraction of that hoard to hire the best of the best in order to fix the very thing that will kill their cash cow in the next 5 years. I'm on iOS myself (and have been faithful since the first iPhone), but $30 Google Home puck feels like it's from the future. Understands me perfectly, comes up with decent…

> $30 Google Home puck feels like it's from the future Is it ? Is the $30 puck better than the Home assistant or does it just suck that much more in French than it does in English? (Not being snarky, genuinely asking) It doesn't understand followup commands, the Hue integration is rotten bad, and the commands definitely have to be rigid. Things like "What were my meetings on the 12th of December" aren't understood. A…

I'm pretty sure you can say "Hey Google" as well.

Re: John Giannandrea named to Apple’s executive team

#77

Post by madlynormal » Thu, Dec 20, 2018, 7:58 PM UTC

scrollaway wrote: post #59

m0zg wrote: post #16

It's just unbelievable to me that the company sitting on a quarter trillion dollars is unwilling to spend a small fraction of that hoard to hire the best of the best in order to fix the very thing that will kill their cash cow in the next 5 years. I'm on iOS myself (and have been faithful since the first iPhone), but $30 Google Home puck feels like it's from the future. Understands me perfectly, comes up with decent…

> $30 Google Home puck feels like it's from the future Is it ? Is the $30 puck better than the Home assistant or does it just suck that much more in French than it does in English? (Not being snarky, genuinely asking) It doesn't understand followup commands, the Hue integration is rotten bad, and the commands definitely have to be rigid. Things like "What were my meetings on the 12th of December" aren't understood. A…

> Is it? Is the $30 puck better than the Home assistant or does it just suck that much more in French than it does in English? (Not being snarky, genuinely asking)

Absolutely it is. In general, my Siri usage is limited to opening Google Assistant, that's how bad it is. Also, "Hey Google" works as a command on most devices.

Re: John Giannandrea named to Apple’s executive team

#78

Post by Q6T46nT668w6i3m » Thu, Dec 20, 2018, 7:59 PM UTC

m0zg wrote: post #45

rrdharan wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually they fixed that 2 years ago: https://www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2016/12/6/13858354/app... https://machinelearning.apple.com/

But... they didn't. In the very page you linked, try to find a single name of a concrete researcher who wrote/contributed to the article. If there's no name on the paper it's not "publishing".

They won the Best Paper CVPR prize in 2017.

Learning from Simulated and Unsupervised Images through Adversarial Training by Ashish Shrivastava, Tomas Pfister, Oncel Tuzel, Joshua Susskind, Wenda Wang, & Russell Webb.

Re: John Giannandrea named to Apple’s executive team

#79

Post by symfoniq » Thu, Dec 20, 2018, 8:04 PM UTC

jen20 wrote: post #67

seunosewa wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The iPhone is going to keep printing money for the next 15-20 years at least. How? The improvements to the iPhone are less compelling every year, while the prices are going up. The company recently stopped reporting iPhone sales numbers. > Apple is a 40 year old company, and they're still raking in the dough from their original product category. Are they, though? Aren't Mac sales insignificant compared to iPhone sa…

> improvements to the iPhone are less compelling every year [citation needed] > Haven't the latest Macbooks suffered from significant feature regressions? No.

I beg to differ.

Unreliable keyboards and security chips that frequently crash the computer are feature regressions.

Re: John Giannandrea named to Apple’s executive team

#80

Post by samatman » Thu, Dec 20, 2018, 8:10 PM UTC

rabidrat wrote: post #57

Despegar wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shifts in computing paradigms are incredibly rare. The smartphone is unlikely to be replaced for a long time to come. There will be plenty of head fakes along the way no doubt (smart speakers and voice bots come to mind), but the smartphone is simply too good and has too much utility to be easily challenged. And you also have to make a bet that Apple won't come to dominate that area as well (even if they aren't first…

> Shifts in computing paradigms are incredibly rare. They've only happened every decade so far: 1960 (IC), 1970 (DARPA), 1980 (PC), 1990 (GUI), 2000 (Internet), 2010 (smartphone).

and Apple is still profitable on a product line they introduced in 1984.