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OpenClaw is what Apple intelligence should have been

jakequist.com

71–80 of 440 posts

Re: OpenClaw is what Apple intelligence should have been

#71
> ten years from now, people will look back at 2024-2025 as the moment Apple had a clear shot at owning the agent layer and chose not to take it

I don't pretend to know the future (nor do I believe anyone else who claims to be able to), but I think the opposite has a good chance of happening too, and hype would die down over "AI" and the bubble bursts, and the current overvaluation (imo at least. I still think it is useful as a tool, but overhyped by many who don't understand it.) will be corrected by the market; and people will look back and see it as the moment that Apple dodged a bullet. (Or more realistically, won't think about it at all).

I know you can't directly compare different situations, but I wonder if comparisons can be made with dot-com bubble. There was such hype some 20-30 years ago, with claims of just being a year or two away from, "being able to watch TV over the internet" or "do your shopping on the web" or "have real-time video calls online", which did eventually come true, but only much, much, later, after a crash from inflated expectations and a slower steady growth.*

* Not that I think some claims about "AI" will ever come true though, especially the more outlandish ones such as full-length movies made by a prompt of the same quality made by a Hollywood director.

I don't know what a potential "breaking point" would be for "AI". Perhaps a major security breach, even _worse_ prices for computer hardware than it is now, politics, a major international incident, environmental impact being made more apparent, companies starting to more aggressively monetize their "AI", consumers realising the limits of "AI", I have no idea. And perhaps I'm just wrong, and this is the age we live in now for the foreseeable future. After all, more than one of the things I have listed have already happened, and nothing happened.

Re: OpenClaw is what Apple intelligence should have been

#72
post #11

> I suspect ten years from now, people will look back at 2024-2025 as the moment Apple had a clear shot at owning the agent layer and chose not to take it Ten years from now, there will be no ‘agent layer’. This is like predicting Microsoft failed to capitalize on bulletin boards social media.

If you're arguing that in 10 years we won't have fully automated systems where we interact more with the automation than the functionality, I've got news for you...

I’m saying we won’t call it agents and it will involve substantially different technology compared to what we mean by agents today.

Of course AI will keep improving and more automation is a given.

Re: OpenClaw is what Apple intelligence should have been

#73

> This is exactly what Apple Intelligence should have been... They could have shipped an agentic AI that actually automated your computer instead of summarizing your notifications. Imagine if Siri could genuinely file your taxes, respond to emails, or manage your calendar by actually using your apps, not through some brittle API layer that breaks every update. And this is probably coming, a few years from now. Becaus…

Apple literally lives on the "Cutting Edge" a-la XKCD [1]. My wife is an iPerson and she always tells me about these new features (my phone has had them since $today-5 years). But for her, these are brand new exciting things! https://xkcd.com/606/

A very tired “red versus blue” take here.

There are plenty of Android/Windows things that Apple has had for $today-5 years that work the exact same way.

One side isn’t better than the other, it’s really just that they copy each other doing various things at a different pace or arrive at that point in different ways.

Some examples:

- Android is/was years behind on granular permissions, e.g. ability to grant limited photo library access to apps

- Android has no platform-wide equivalent to AirTags

- Hardware-backed key storage (Secure Enclave about 5 years ahead of StrongBox)

- system-wide screen recording

Re: OpenClaw is what Apple intelligence should have been

#74

> If you browse Reddit or HN, you’ll see the same pattern: people are buying Mac Minis specifically to run AI agents with computer use. Saved you a click. This is the premise of the article.

Why specifically mac mini? There are cheaper NUCs and it's not like they're running a local model on the mac mini are they?

I believe it’s to integrate with iMessage, Calendar, Reminders etc.

Re: OpenClaw is what Apple intelligence should have been

#75
post #69
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are you referring to?

Probably the Mac Mini. A few OpenClaw users are buying the agent a dedicated device so that it can integrate with their Apple account. For example: https://x.com/michael_chomsky/status/2017686846910959668 .

[deleted]

Re: OpenClaw is what Apple intelligence should have been

#76
post #56

Apparently APIs are now a brittle way for software to use other software and interpreting and manipulating human GUIs with emulated mouse clicks and keypresses is a much better and perfectly reasonable way to do it. We’re truly living in a bizarro timeline.

As someone who has spent a good portion of my career in the RPA/intelligent automation field this take was a spit-coffee-close-laptop moment.

Re: OpenClaw is what Apple intelligence should have been

#77
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are you referring to?

[flagged]

   (Yes android users are discriminated against in the dating market, tons of op eds are written about this, just google it before you knee jerk downvote the truth)
If someone is shallow enough to write you off for that, is that someone you want as your partner?

Re: OpenClaw is what Apple intelligence should have been

#78

           people are buying Mac Minis specifically to run AI agents with computer use. They’re setting up headless machines whose sole job is to automate their workflows. OpenClaw—the open-source framework that lets you run Claude, GPT-4, or whatever model you want to actually control your computer—has become the killer app for Mac hardware
That makes little sense. Buying mac mini would imply for the fused v-ram with the gpu capabilities, but then they're saying Claude/GPT-4 which don't have any gpu requirements.

Is the author implying mac minis for the low power consumption?

Re: OpenClaw is what Apple intelligence should have been

#79

> This is exactly what Apple Intelligence should have been... They could have shipped an agentic AI that actually automated your computer instead of summarizing your notifications. Imagine if Siri could genuinely file your taxes, respond to emails, or manage your calendar by actually using your apps, not through some brittle API layer that breaks every update. And this is probably coming, a few years from now. Becaus…

> And this is probably coming, a few years from now. Because remember, Apple doesn't usually invent new products. It takes proven ones and then makes its own much nicer version. Except this doesn't stand up to scrutiny, when you look at Siri. FOURTEEN years and it is still spectacularly useless. I have no idea what Siri is a "much nicer version" of. > Apple can integrate it with hardware and software in a way no othe…

Remember the time when the former members of the Siri team demoed a prototype for a more capable version of Siri and Apple didn't even use it

Re: OpenClaw is what Apple intelligence should have been

#80

According to https://1password.com/blog/from-magic-to-malware-how-opencla... , The top skill is/was malware. It's obviously broken, so no, Apple Intelligence should not have been this.

I had a dark thought today, that AI agents are going to make scam factory jobs obsolete. I don’t think this will decrease the number of forced labor kidnappings though, since there are many things AI agents will not be good at.
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