Apple Intelligence, Apple Intelligence, Apple Intelligzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

[dal20402]

Bur that didn’t matter. Apple was seen as being behind on AI, Wall Street demanded they play their hand, and Cook simply didn’t have the necessary gravitas to push back. And because of they had a weak hand but needed to impress Wall Street, they were forced to bluff and hope by the time they had to show they’d be able to hold serve. And then they couldn’t.

Gravitas, or willingness?

It seems very unlikely to me that there's an activist investor out there who has the juice to force the ouster of Tim Cook or a significant portion of the Apple board. Tim Cook, very much unlike Steve Jobs, is not the sort of person who likes to manage by telling constituents to go themselves. So he doesn't. But on this occasion he very much should have.

 

[iPilot05]

One thing that Jobs never had to deal with was Apple being the largest market cap, most profitable company in the world. Steve worked best when Apple was a pirate ship and could afford to kiss off their doubters on and off Wall Street (helped that early Apple had a true cult following that kept the place afloat at it's darkest hour).

Tim just doesn't have that. If he stood tall and said "we think all this AI stuff is stupid and we simply aren't going to stand for it" hundreds of billions of dollars would have vanished when the Reality Distortion Field turns into a black hole. Yes, CEOs should be in it for the long haul and not beholden to Wall Street but those are real dollars in real people's retirement and investment accounts. Apple needs to be rock steady and seen as an innovative player in Silicon Valley.

I'm not really sure where the issues with Apple Intelligence leaves Apple at the moment. I suppose the closest disaster was Apple Maps. While Maps is really quite good today the reputational damage is still felt today. However, with the creepiness and privacy issues surrounding AI at the moment, Apple has very solid grounds to simply declare the tech not quite ready and unwilling to go further until they get it right. Perhaps sunlight is the best disinfectant and Tim Cook addresses the issues soon.

Or he's going to sit back, let the whole AI hype machine implode with the stock market's current gyrations and get to say "we told you so" in the end...

 

[byrningman]

The challenge for big tech incumbents is to not miss out on the next big thing, which can eventually prove fatal, but also not squander energies chasing after every little fad. I think the key is not to miss out on “next big things” that have the potential to bypass and devalue your platform, especially if those next big things have a major first mover lock-in advantage. So Apple missed out on social media, and that’s fine, because Facebook and twitter don’t bypass the platform, even if they do have major first-mover advantage. You can’t do everything, and I don’t many Apple users even want Apple to get into social. Apple also missed out on search, but that’s fine, it doesn’t bypass the platform. In fact, because search doesn’t bypass the platform, Apple has been one of search’s biggest winners, because of the Google tithe. In contrast, MS screwed up by not remaining competitive in smartphones (though to be fair they did recognize the merit of the platform). Obviously MS survived that one, but it was a big miss. Intel perhaps might survive that same miss (which from Intel’s perspective, was not getting into ARM and making iPhone chips for Apple).

With AI, I think I it’s ok if Apple is a little late to the party. It doesn’t seem like AI bypasses your platform. The business model is also rather unproven right now, so AI could end up paying out for Apple in the same way Gougle search did. And also, there doesn’t seem to be any first-mover advantage, or networking effects in AI. People jump between models on a daily basis. It’s actually companies like Apple, with their confidential user data, that have the best chance of creating lock-in with AI.

It seems like the worse scenario is that platforms like Windows and Android boast AI assistants using user data for a while, so Apple could lose a few sales, until they implement the same. But even that might not happen, because Windows AI efforts seem like more of a sales deterrent so far. The stories of Windows AI privacy violation are terrible PR. That shows how AI has the potential to be a Newton instead of an iPhone.

 

[iPilot05]

I think what keeps Apple execs and engineers up at night is if they somehow miss the boat with AI and it ends up replacing conventional computing. Essentially Apple's entire current product line is at risk of becoming obsolete.

After all, the hype promise of all this LLM stuff is a Star Trek style computer you can simply converse with and have it magically configure itself to whatever problem you assign it. "Siri, I'd like to do a dinner party tonight. See if any of my friends are available and make a 3 course menu based on their preferences." Doing all that with today's MacOS/iOS UI would be a lot, but what if that simple sentence put the device to work on everything all at once?

The fear here is that OpenAI, Google, etc. crack that nut and suddenly the whole concept of computing changes out from under Apple. Especially if the tech is just not something Apple can acquire or develop easily after the first movers work out all the kinks. Building an iPod after Creative and Sony fumble around until the hardware is matured is one thing. LLMs apparently (pre DeepSeek, at least) need a lot of effort to develop and essentially require a ton of users to effectively beta test on the fly. So in that context, I can see why Apple panicked a little. Apple Intelligence needed to be shoved out the door before they became woefully behind, even if the product was barely passable to start.

 

[hal_incandenza]

One thing that Jobs never had to deal with was Apple being the largest market cap, most profitable company in the world. Steve worked best when Apple was a pirate ship and could afford to kiss off their doubters on and off Wall Street (helped that early Apple had a true cult following that kept the place afloat at it's darkest hour).

Tim just doesn't have that. If he stood tall and said "we think all this AI stuff is stupid and we simply aren't going to stand for it" hundreds of billions of dollars would have vanished when the Reality Distortion Field turns into a black hole. Yes, CEOs should be in it for the long haul and not beholden to Wall Street but those are real dollars in real people's retirement and investment accounts. Apple needs to be rock steady and seen as an innovative player in Silicon Valley.

I'm not really sure where the issues with Apple Intelligence leaves Apple at the moment. I suppose the closest disaster was Apple Maps. While Maps is really quite good today the reputational damage is still felt today. However, with the creepiness and privacy issues surrounding AI at the moment, Apple has very solid grounds to simply declare the tech not quite ready and unwilling to go further until they get it right. Perhaps sunlight is the best disinfectant and Tim Cook addresses the issues soon.

Or he's going to sit back, let the whole AI hype machine implode with the stock market's current gyrations and get to say "we told you so" in the end...

This has increasingly become my theory. They can't just swear it off completely because the market is demanding every tech company have an AI product, so they are half-assing it and pretending they are while not putting in the kind of company-dominating/destroying investment that others are. Enough to keep the irrational bubble market at bay, not enough to consume all of their resources and attention.

Requires a short-term reputational hit from rolling out a product that doesn't work and constant delays, but long-term is likely to be the right play. Let everyone else shoot themselves in the foot chasing hype, let the bubble burst, come out the other side just fine

 

[cateye]

Let everyone else shoot themselves in the foot chasing hype, let the bubble burst, come out the other side just fine

What if it isn't a bubble? Then what? I don't think a company the size of Apple ever purposefully does something half-assed because they believe it won't be necessary at some point down the line. How would that even work—let's create some middling features and market them heavily, all while knowing they're shit because we expect to drop the whole thing at some indeterminate point in the future? This goes back to Gruber's argument: If that's actually what's going on, then there genuinely is something wrong at Apple.

Apple has shown a willingness to avoid or ignore trends, then suddenly coming up from behind with an offering that meets or exceeds all expectations. They take their seat at the table when they're good and ready and the rest of the market reacts to them. For whatever reason, they didn't do that this time. Either out of Wall Street-driven fear, or marketing run amok getting out ahead of engineering, or both. But I find it difficult to believe they did a shitty job with the intent to do a shitty job.

 

[hal_incandenza]

OpenAI is setting hundreds of billions of dollars on fire and has nothing even close to a viable product that can make money. Same with Google and Microsoft. Companies are forcing this stuff on people that doesn't work well and that people don't want. It's a bubble.

The theory is not that it's intentionally shitty, it's shitty because they are not putting the resources into it to make it better. Like someone said above if they ignored it completely the market would hammer them. A token effort to hold that off is sensible, imo.

If it's the case it was probably a dumb idea to roll it out too early when it was really bad

 

[wrylachlan]

I think what keeps Apple execs and engineers up at night is if they somehow miss the boat with AI and it ends up replacing conventional computing. Essentially Apple's entire current product line is at risk of becoming obsolete.

After all, the hype promise of all this LLM stuff is a Star Trek style computer you can simply converse with and have it magically configure itself to whatever problem you assign it. "Siri, I'd like to do a dinner party tonight. See if any of my friends are available and make a 3 course menu based on their preferences." Doing all that with today's MacOS/iOS UI would be a lot, but what if that simple sentence put the device to work on everything all at once?

Totally agree here. The other aspect of this is that Google does a lot of things. It does search, but it also does maps and invites and even self driving cars. Imagine a scenario like this:

“Show me 4 great dog-friendly restaurants.”
“Send them to Joe on a map and see if he likes one.”
“Ok, Joe likes Restaurant A - get us a reservation and send the details to Joe.”
“Send a car to pick me up.”

You could imagine 100% of that happening within Google’s first party services. On some level that’s a huge advantage for Google. In contrast, to achieve the same thing, Apple’s AI agent will need to speak Yelp. It will need to speak Rezzy. It will need to speak Uber.

And to be sure, Apple wants it that way. They don’t want to be a massive conglomerate with a reservation-taking service and a restaurant review service and etc.etc. They need to find a way to BOTH do the Star Trek interface AND have that Star Trek interface catalyze a third party ecosystem from which they can benefit. I’d argue that’s a harder lift.

 

[gabemaroz]

I think what keeps Apple execs and engineers up at night is if they somehow miss the boat with AI and it ends up replacing conventional computing. Essentially Apple's entire current product line is at risk of becoming obsolete.

If the market is actually, truly viable in the way some of the CEOs have hyped (Altman, Amodei) we are talking about most white collar jobs becoming obsolete, never mind product lines.

The theory is not that it's intentionally shitty, it's shitty because they are not putting the resources into it to make it better.

Or maybe because they aren't willing to put the resources in, but not in the monetary sense. Meta paid certain third-party 'illicit libraries' big bucks for copies of copyrighted materials to train on.

If Apple didn't go that route, maybe they (erroneously) supposed they could achieve the same results with less data and just couldn't.

The Verge has an article up now about a leaked Apple meeting about the Siri situation.

Bloomberg has the full scoop on what happened at a Siri team meeting led by senior director Robby Walker, who oversees the division. He called the delay an “ugly” situation and sympathized with employees who might be feeling burned out or frustrated by Apple’s decisions and Siri’s still-lackluster reputation. He also said it’s not a given that the missing Siri features will make it into iOS 19 this year; that’s the company’s current target, but “doesn’t mean that we’re shipping then,” he told employees.

“We have other commitments across Apple to other projects,” Walker said, according to Bloomberg’s report. “We want to keep our commitments to those, and we understand those are now potentially more timeline-urgent than the features that have been deferred.”

 

[Gandhim3]

I am more excited about the C1 modem then I am over Apple Intelligence. At least over the next two years, the former has much greater potential then the latter. It remains to be see whether AI will be game changing like Touch Computing, or another fad like smart home speakers.

 

[wco81]

So some speculate that they’re struggling to have a conversational Siri because they’re trying to limit it to on-device LLM, to lean into their privacy branding.

That would be ironic because their original/current Siri does send anonymized data to the cloud doesn’t it? As well as do the speech recognition in the cloud?

And what is the goal. Just a conversational Siri like the other chat bots but will hallucinate just as much and return unreliable information in response to queries?

Or actually try to perform useful tasks like use the information on the device screen to ‘guess’ or understand the context of your query or input without you having to spell it all out? That was one example cited in The Verge article.

But it sounds like Apple is struggling just to reach parity with other LLMs — maybe because of a self-imposed restriction to execute only on device.

So maybe being “better” or just less shitty than other chat bots is not even on the table right now.

 

[gregatron5]

As the founder and with his reputation as a visionary, Jobs had the credibility and clout to resist Wall Street and let Apple make their AI play how they wanted when they were ready to do it. Cook simply doesn’t have the ability to do that. Cook knew Apple Intelligence wasn’t ready, and I’m sure nobody at Apple wanted to reveal it last year. Despite enabling itself with every update (even if the user has previously turned it off) it’s still labeled as being in beta.

Bur that didn’t matter. Apple was seen as being behind on AI, Wall Street demanded they play their hand, and Cook simply didn’t have the necessary gravitas to push back. And because of they had a weak hand but needed to impress Wall Street, they were forced to bluff and hope by the time they had to show they’d be able to hold serve. And then they couldn’t.

I disagree. Tim has the clout. I think one of the primary differences is Jobs would withstand a 3-year U-curve of stock prices knowing that Apple would come late to the game but with an outstanding product, and it doesn't seem like Cook would.

One thing that Jobs never had to deal with was Apple being the largest market cap, most profitable company in the world. Steve worked best when Apple was a pirate ship and could afford to kiss off their doubters on and off Wall Street (helped that early Apple had a true cult following that kept the place afloat at it's darkest hour).

Tim just doesn't have that. If he stood tall and said "we think all this AI stuff is stupid and we simply aren't going to stand for it" hundreds of billions of dollars would have vanished when the Reality Distortion Field turns into a black hole. Yes, CEOs should be in it for the long haul and not beholden to Wall Street but those are real dollars in real people's retirement and investment accounts. Apple needs to be rock steady and seen as an innovative player in Silicon Valley.

Why, though? If Apple dips below $200 for a few years is that really ruinous for people with diversified investments? Should a company do stupid things for (arguably) stupid investors who have 100% in one company? And even if the latter were the case, is a few years down $20-$50 or even $150 really ruinous? Pension funds might divest to reduce exposure, but ruinous?

 

[ham bulu]

This just happened.

So my wife was over in the kitchen cutting herbs while singing along to Whitney Houstons „I will always love you“ which in itself was as daring as it was funny.

30 secs later my iPhone triggered a system warning there‘s a „crying baby“ around .

 

[JimCampbell]

Every single LLM is just "confident idiot spouts meaning-adjacent information".

This is my favourite illustration of this. Here is Google’s AI summary of a search on “Loch Ness tunnel”:

You’ll probably be unsurprised to learn that there is no tunnel under Loch Ness, particularly not one running its length (considerable) rather than its width (rather less so).

Google’s “AI” has scraped the entire thing verbatim from a humour/parody page on Facebook and presented the entire thing as fact, despite it being obviously (and intentionally) ludicrous.

 

[jacs]

They must have fixed that.

For "Loch Ness Tunnel" I get something about some roller coaster.

For "Loch Ness Tunnel History" I get:

There's no actual "Loch Ness Tunnel" in the sense of a transportation tunnel built beneath Loch Ness. However, there is a Loch Ness Monster roller coaster at Busch Gardens that features a long, dark tunnel with mist, lights, and a drawing of the monster.

And also a link to that Facebook page

 

[almostinsane]

I am more excited about the C1 modem then I am over Apple Intelligence. At least over the next two years, the former has much greater potential then the latter. It remains to be see whether AI will be game changing like Touch Computing, or another fad like smart home speakers.

What is the potential of an Apple modem? It saves the company money in Qualcomm licensing costs? Anything else?

 

[gabemaroz]

Cellular modems in laptops.

 

[almostinsane]

Apple has never included these in laptops. It is yet another SKU that sells at the bottom of the chain. No reason to make them.

Use your phone or iPad for cellular connectivity.

 

[wco81]

They would integrate the baseband into the other SOC package, potentially producing cost savings and energy efficiency.


Remember when the Internet took off, Intel tried to have software modems. I don't recall if they were going to integrate them to Pentium CPUs or whatever their chips were at the time.

 

[gabemaroz]

Apple has never included these in laptops.

Qualcomm bases their royalties off of the retail cost of the device.

However, this is the wrong thread to continue this discussion in.

 

[cateye]

Apple Modem discussion goes elsewhere, please; the March 2025 Updates thread is fine if in the context of the 16e, or feel free to start a new thread to discuss the technology in general or Apple's possible future moves.

 

[gregatron5]

For "Loch Ness Tunnel" I get something about some roller coaster.

Not just some roller coaster. A classic, and the first with interlocking loops. I cut my teeth on that coaster. It's literally the center point of Busch Gardens Williamsburg. Definitely worth a visit if you're in the area. Consistently ranked high among the best theme parks, and some of the new coasters are awesome. RIP Big Bad Wolf and Drachen Fire.

 

[iPilot05]

I just find it hard to believe Apple is keeping the Mac Pro around just for the handful of users that still use PCI for...things. Makes more sense that the current M2 version is a placeholder until they get Apple Silicon to a spot where they can realize it's full potential. Personally I go with the Studio-on-a-Card idea at least in principle. Especially with Apple investing in personal cloud compute the business model makes more sense. Might as well sell that tech to power users instead of reserving it only for the datacenter.

 

[gabemaroz]

@iPilot05 Wrong thread. I think you wanted this over in ARMageddon.

 

[cateye]

Maybe Apple Intelligence told them to post it here?

 

[iPilot05]

d'oh!

 

[ProMacUser]

So some speculate that they’re struggling to have a conversational Siri because they’re trying to limit it to on-device LLM, to lean into their privacy branding.

I think some are wrong, though, because Apple does use cloud-based systems for more difficult tasks:

When a user makes a request, Apple Intelligence analyzes whether it can be processed on device. For more complex requests, it can draw on Private Cloud Compute, which extends the privacy and security of your iPhone into the cloud. With Private Cloud Compute, only the data that is relevant to your request is processed on Apple silicon servers, before being removed. When requests are routed to Private Cloud Compute, data is not stored or made accessible to Apple, and is only used to fulfill the user’s requests. Independent privacy and security researchers can inspect the code that runs on Apple silicon servers that enable Private Cloud Compute to verify this privacy promise at any time.

If I recall correctly, the on-device stuff is for things like the image playground and the emjoi thing, and those are seriously underwhelming.

 

[cateye]

Heads beginning to roll:

Apple puts Vision Pro creator in charge of Siri as Apple Intelligence rollout falters (This is 9to5Mac's reporting of a Gurman article. Including a link to it here in case anyone has a subscription and wants to read the original.)

Apple is shaking up its executive team in light of ongoing struggles to roll out advanced Apple Intelligence features for Siri. Bloomberg reports that Apple CEO Tim Cook “has lost confidence in the ability of AI head John Giannandrea to execute on product development.”

As such, Mike Rockwell, current vice president of the Vision Products Group and creator of Apple Vision Pro, is taking the reigns of the Siri team.

Giannanndrea is not leaving Apple, but Siri is being completely removed from his responsibilities. He will continue to oversee research, testing, and other AI-related technologies. Rockwell will report to Apple’s software boss, Craig Fderighi. According to the report, Giannanndrea “long considered Rockwell a potential successor.”

One wonders how long Giannanndrea will stick around. I don't really see how they can evolve Siri in the direction they intended without the tight integration of other AI R&D. I assume if Rockwell is successful, they'll transition more and more of Giannanndrea's responsibilities to him until there's no point for him to be there.

 

[Chris FOM]

Wonder if this will rise to the level of John Giannandrea (head of AI/machine learning) deciding to "leave Apple to spend more time with his family"?

Hasn’t happened yet, but this prediction is looking pretty good. My main question is how does this align with the recent assignment of Kim Vorrath to oversee Siri/AI? Did she get sidelined as well or are she and Rockwell complementary?

 

[Bonusround]

Hasn’t happened yet, but this prediction is looking pretty good. My main question is how does this align with the recent assignment of Kim Vorrath to oversee Siri/AI? Did she get sidelined as well or are she and Rockwell complementary?

Complementary.

 

[Dano40]

The challenge for big tech incumbents is to not miss out on the next big thing, which can eventually prove fatal, but also not squander energies chasing after every little fad. I think the key is not to miss out on “next big things” that have the potential to bypass and devalue your platform, especially if those next big things have a major first mover lock-in advantage. So Apple missed out on social media, and that’s fine, because Facebook and twitter don’t bypass the platform, even if they do have major first-mover advantage. You can’t do everything, and I don’t many Apple users even want Apple to get into social. Apple also missed out on search, but that’s fine, it doesn’t bypass the platform. In fact, because search doesn’t bypass the platform, Apple has been one of search’s biggest winners, because of the Google tithe. In contrast, MS screwed up by not remaining competitive in smartphones (though to be fair they did recognize the merit of the platform). Obviously MS survived that one, but it was a big miss. Intel perhaps might survive that same miss (which from Intel’s perspective, was not getting into ARM and making iPhone chips for Apple).

With AI, I think I it’s ok if Apple is a little late to the party. It doesn’t seem like AI bypasses your platform. The business model is also rather unproven right now, so AI could end up paying out for Apple in the same way Gougle search did. And also, there doesn’t seem to be any first-mover advantage, or networking effects in AI. People jump between models on a daily basis. It’s actually companies like Apple, with their confidential user data, that have the best chance of creating lock-in with AI.

It seems like the worse scenario is that platforms like Windows and Android boast AI assistants using user data for a while, so Apple could lose a few sales, until they implement the same. But even that might not happen, because Windows AI efforts seem like more of a sales deterrent so far. The stories of Windows AI privacy violation are terrible PR. That shows how AI has the potential to be a Newton instead of an iPhone.

Apple can afford to be late (if they are late at all?) when you have the M series and A series chips, the H1, R1, and C1 chips in the house with future variants coming up like clock work to go along with MacOS, iOS, iPadOS, VisionOS, and Apple Watch OS, in addition to a mountain of support software like Metal behind the scenes.

The in-house software and hardware combined as one under one roof is very disruptive to the other eight companies and some won’t be catching up anytime soon particularly the hardware only companies.

Both hardware and software take constant iteration it’s ready when it’s ready and across the board I don’t think any of the other companies are any closer because they don’t do both hardware and software very well in comparison to Apple.

The in-house software and hardware combined as one under one roof is very disruptive to the other eight companies and some won’t be catching up anytime soon particularly the hardware only companies.

https://apple.fandom.com/wiki/List_of_Apple_processors. (Combined with front end software) The last major vertical computer company from the 1980s golden Age.

 

[gregatron5]

A friend of mine was telling me about how at the convent she went to school a nun would slap her desk with a ruler when she forgot some point of grammar. I asked Image Playground to create a nun holding a ruler and it gave me nothing. Tried today (after updating) and the results are pretty garbage. I take back my earlier "It's good enough for a group chat" comment.

 

[singebob]

It's definitely one case where 'must offend no-one' ties one hand behind Apple's back. With the lightweight models now things could be so much better and actually usable for simple but effective drawings on the fly on modern baseline mobile and desktop Apple hardware.