Apple picks Gemini to power Siri • Hacker News Board

Re: Apple picks Gemini to power Siri

#71

Post by tempodox » Mon, Jan 12, 2026, 4:34 PM UTC

ysnp wrote: post #52

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…

Could you elaborate a bit on why you've judged it as privacy theatre? I'm skeptical but uninformed, and I believe Mullvad are taking a similar approach.

The gov’t can force them to reveal any user’s data and slap them with a gag order so no one will ever know this happened.

Re: Apple picks Gemini to power Siri

#72

Post by _joel » Mon, Jan 12, 2026, 4:35 PM 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…

> without burning 10 years of cash flow.

Don't they have the highest market cap of any company in existence?

Re: Apple picks Gemini to power Siri

#73

Post by spinningarrow » Mon, Jan 12, 2026, 4:36 PM UTC

moi2388 wrote: post #44

manuelmoreale wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My exact reaction every time I hear people discuss Siri. I don’t think I used it once in my life and it’s one of the first thing I turn off every time I have a new device. So interesting to see how different people use the same devices in completely different ways.

Siri is extremely useful. That is, if your use cases are limited to: - setting a timer - dictating a title to search on Apple TV

Creating calendar events and reminders too!

A feature set that has remained unchanged since Siri’s launch…

Re: Apple picks Gemini to power Siri

#74

Post by manuelmoreale » Mon, Jan 12, 2026, 4:38 PM UTC

moi2388 wrote: post #44

manuelmoreale wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My exact reaction every time I hear people discuss Siri. I don’t think I used it once in my life and it’s one of the first thing I turn off every time I have a new device. So interesting to see how different people use the same devices in completely different ways.

Siri is extremely useful. That is, if your use cases are limited to: - setting a timer - dictating a title to search on Apple TV

Makes sense then, considering timers I set them on my watch and I don’t watch tv.

Re: Apple picks Gemini to power Siri

#75

Post by fumblebee » Mon, Jan 12, 2026, 4:38 PM UTC

_joel wrote: post #72

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…

> without burning 10 years of cash flow. Don't they have the highest market cap of any company in existence?

I believe both Nvidia and Google have higher market caps

Re: Apple picks Gemini to power Siri

#76

Post by drob518 » Mon, Jan 12, 2026, 4:39 PM UTC

Fiveplus wrote: post #57

drob518 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea, I think it’s smart, too. There are multiple companies who have spent a fortune on training and are going to be increasingly interested in (desperate to?) see a return from it. Apple can choose the best of the bunch, pay less than they would have to to build it themselves, and swap to a new one if someone produces another breakthrough.

100%. It feels like Apple is perfectly happy letting the AI labs fight a race to the bottom on pricing while they keep the high-margin user relationship. I'm curious if this officially turns the foundation model providers into the new "dumb pipes" of the tech stack?

It’ll be interesting to see how it plays out. The question is, what’s the moat? If all they have is scaling to drive better model performance, then the winner is just whoever has the lowest cost of capital.

Re: Apple picks Gemini to power Siri

#77

Post by internetter » Mon, Jan 12, 2026, 4:40 PM UTC

scotty79 wrote: post #70

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…

> without burning 10 years of cash flow. Wasn't Apple sitting on a pile of cash and having no good ideas what to spend it on?

Perhaps spending it on inference that will be obsoleted in 6 months by the next model is not a good idea either.

Edit: especially given that Apple doesn’t do b2b so all the spend would be just to make consumer products

Re: Apple picks Gemini to power Siri

#78

Post by raw_anon_1111 » Mon, Jan 12, 2026, 4:40 PM UTC

drob518 wrote: post #76

Fiveplus wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100%. It feels like Apple is perfectly happy letting the AI labs fight a race to the bottom on pricing while they keep the high-margin user relationship. I'm curious if this officially turns the foundation model providers into the new "dumb pipes" of the tech stack?

It’ll be interesting to see how it plays out. The question is, what’s the moat? If all they have is scaling to drive better model performance, then the winner is just whoever has the lowest cost of capital.

This isn’t a mystery - it’s Google

Re: Apple picks Gemini to power Siri

#79

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Jan 12, 2026, 4:40 PM 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…

[deleted]

Re: Apple picks Gemini to power Siri

#80

Post by mbirth » Mon, Jan 12, 2026, 4:41 PM 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…

I was more thinking about this being driven by the fact that Google pays Apple $20B a year for being the pre-selected search engine and this way, Apple still gets $19B and a free AI engine on top.