Apple Acquires Machine Learning and AI Startup Turi

[thermodynamic]

Good to read Apple is buying some innovation. Hope this will flood as soon as possible through its vines.

Yep, if one can't create then litigate or purchase. I mean, if we valued competition and "competition is good" then the big companies wouldn't buy all the little ones out.
[doublepost=1470490182][/doublepost]

Only way I care about making Siri smarter is to give it an offline mode, surely can't be that hard?

Who says Siri was made for you to profit with? The processing could be done on the phone. It's not. Whether or not the cell phone tower companies reap revenue from added bandwidth use is probably secondary, Apple doesn't exist to support them either.

 

[merkinmuffley]

Maybe they can teach this thing to build some new Macbooks.

 

[Fishticks]

Just another innovation company that is bought and will be killed, just in case it might be bought and used by competition...

 

[entropys]

The people complaining in thread after thread aren't Apple haters. They are Apple lovers.

There was a time when Apple was surfing near the top of the early adoption curve: not the first attempts of a new device class that dwell at the bottom of the upward point of the curve; Apple surfed up near the crest. In fact, Apple would make the curve accelerate upward, building the height of the curve in any product class it entered. Apple at its best. These 'Apple haters' loved that Apple.

More recently under Cook it has become a mature company, selling mature products. Its product curve is flat. The focus is on all on the supply chain and margins. The aim of upgrades is iterative, designed to keep the product bumping along the flat top of the curve just that little bit longer, the aim of updates is to stave off decline at the far right of the curve just that little bit longer, and the aim of introducing upsell features to maintain margins just that little bit longer. It allows the Board and executives to enjoy the good life without too much pressure, and indulge in activities not related to the purpose of the company. In short, Apple has lost focus. These 'Apple haters' hate that Apple.

The make or break will be the next version of the MacBookPro when they finally, at long last, arrive. If these disillusioned Apple lovers don't like them, if they aren't insanely great, the company will be dropped with all the extreme prejudice former lovers are wont. It won't be pleasant. Sure, these days Apple is an iPhone company, but it's evangelists, its true believers, aren't purely iPhone users. They are Mac users looking over the fence at HP Spectres et al.

 

[Soccertess]

This is great news! Tim finally found a replacement CEO for him. He hasn't done anything so Turi surely will do a better job than him

Or he can just continue dancing and focusing on political events instead of actually running a company.

 

[dk001]

My head hurts.

Did Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak parter up in 76 to sell pre-bitten fruit?

Not really. Woz got a bit upset and grabbed a bite. SJ took a look and said "we can sell that!".
[doublepost=1470587418][/doublepost]Another innovative company that has just been dust-binned.

 

[truthertech]

Wow so much negativity under each and every post, even this one (and I really don't know what there is to say about Apple buying startups that is negative...) I can't andre it anymore, macrumors really is a place for apple haters. There are better alternatives out there

Maybe it's time to start boycott of comments section until MR does something about it, ala Ars Technica, other than to advocate boycott of comments section. It has become a swamp of trolls. I get that MR is desperate for the clicks that comments generates, but don't understand the mindset of trolls and other Apple haters that they would spend their time on enthusiast site. No different than Twitter cesspool I guess, where much of Twitter has become outlet for sad and angry people who feel powerless. Anyway, henceforth I post only to advocate boycott of comments section until MR tries to fix problem.

 

[jamisonbaines]

Maybe it's time to start boycott of comments section until MR does something about it, ala Ars Technica, other than to advocate boycott of comments section. It has become a swamp of trolls. I get that MR is desperate for the clicks that comments generates, but don't understand the mindset of trolls and other Apple haters that they would spend their time on enthusiast site. No different than Twitter cesspool I guess, where much of Twitter has become outlet for sad and angry people who feel powerless. Anyway, henceforth I post only to advocate boycott of comments section until MR tries to fix problem.

i tend to agree with this. i used to feel message boards elevated my understanding of things but in recent years reading them has become a time waster full of bickering with little upside.

this acquisition is interesting news and i'm curious to see how this company's ip will trickle down into apple's products.

 

[hiddenmarkov]

No "where's the new MBP's Apple?!?" posts? Gosh people are slipping.

Actually, for some of us its a 2 war front. We complain about lack of pushing on the software front as well. Apple seeming to care in the software realm with this...kind of nice.

they have the IP, now lets see what they do with it. this is what competitors like M$ have been doing. They make things interesting. Saw M$ buy out a firm about 2-3 years ago. I predicted M$ would have something analytics related since its what this company did for a living. They proved me right.

Just hoping from this it won't be something "I device use" only in the backend. Assuming they keep it as is, python related, it be nice if apple gave a nice injection to the development side on mbp. Could be a nice niche to mbp if it pans out. A niche for people who like developing on mac os...but we don't make iOS applications or code in swift/obj-c/cocoa. An area lacking since well...we can do this stuff on just about anything.

 

[hiddenmarkov]

Not really. Woz got a bit upset and grabbed a bite. SJ took a look and said "we can sell that!".
[doublepost=1470587418][/doublepost]Another innovative company that has just been dust-binned.

Not seeing that dust bin angle.

few reasons why.

this company was not a threat to apple. they don't even have a functioning business division in this regards to threaten. If say oracle..I'd say yeah. They buy up competitors to make more roads lead to them. This I see apple maybe looking to expand.

hey guys we lack a real deal business service/software division...big data, data science, analytics...I keep hearing these buzzwords said a decision maker. Maybe we could look into this. I see this as the case. And a wise move to buy into it. data science/analytics is complex...cold start from 0 not a good call really. can be done...but they'd have lots of ground to cover, just to catch up.

And its not taking them away from a competitor. apple's biggest threat would be M$. Or SAS..maybe. But that a fight that would make no sense...apple is not head to head with SAS in anyway. M$ years ago already made their move. they acquired Revolution R.

it was a company that made their own tweaked version of R (a known and respected open source statistics package). Also did R consulting. So they offered a wealth of analysis background from many fields as well. Years later...M$ is rolling out their business and data analytics division. using a R variant at the core of that.

Microsoft already picked their pony for this. Apple is not cutting them off. This is a split field really. R users picked a side, python users picked theirs. We have geek wars in this realm about this stuff tbh. Other langauges pop in to. Its just python and R get top billing. SAS as commercial product says hi ofc. But python and R say we can be free to use..so they poach some of SAS' business.

 

[Crzyrio]

The thing is, machine learning is not exactly secret wisdom and it is also not really hard to implement. Some of the most frequently used algorithms are actually rather simple to implement and easily explained. There are tons of frameworks for that available freely (for example Google's tensorflow) which are also extremely easy to use. So really, they haven't bought tori for the GraphLab package, they bought it for the guys working there.

I completely understand but Apple has it's way of making things easy to use. The average programmer wont necessarily have the background to understand how to implement machine learning on their own nor be able to know what is going on.

Graphlab Create is open sources. So I doubt it will disappear completely. But Carlos and company have not issued any statement on the package's future.
[doublepost=1470450641][/doublepost]

What do you mean? I am sitting here writing tons of machine learning based code on my Mac.

Yes but you are using your own code or library. But it would be nice for Apple to provide a straightforward interface to train models and implement them as part of your app.

 

[dk001]

Not seeing that dust bin angle.

...

I said "dust bin" as many of the Apple acquisitions seem to fade into obscurity. Other than fading away, we really don't see any observable benefit from a consumer point of view. I could have also said "moth-balled" or "disassembled" or even "assimilated".
The only question is will this be the abby-normal buy?

 

[hiddenmarkov]

I said "dust bin" as many of the Apple acquisitions seem to fade into obscurity. Other than fading away, we really don't see any observable benefit from a consumer point of view. I could have also said "moth-balled" or "disassembled" or even "assimilated".
The only question is will this be the abby-normal buy?

Ahh...gotchya.

I am just being optimistic for a change. apple has me grasping at straws of late and see this a maybe a ray of light.

Save the e-stalk, I am in the apple is neglecting more professional areas for overt consumer market cash money grabs. I'll take what I can get at this point with them sadly. TBH...I am maybe overly optimistic. Acquisition like this not even sure why they made it.

M$ entering the realm made sense. they have interests here. Apple...not seeing any angle based on current way they run. I like siri, just not seeing me ask her for k means cluster analysis of data from years 2011-2015 from these data files lol.

Hoping this a sign of a new apple...and they found something better to work on than watch bands and apps to tell to me breath lol. Time will tell I suppose

 

[djlythium]

Basically he's saying that human progress is exponential and always gets better. And that AI will cause human progress to shoot up almost in a vertical line if you're drawing it as a graph. He says that if you take a person from 1750 and show him the technology we have today, basically his head would explode (figuratively)

I think he's completely wrong though. If you take a person at the height of the Roman Empire and transport them into the future in the Dark Ages, they would be pretty horrified.

Everybody has their own definition of what AI is. Trying to create a humanoid robot that acts like a human I think is completely pointless.

I hope that the acquisition of Turi will finally allow Apple to improve auto-correct.

Thank you!