I was wondering how Apple was going to react to all the negative publicity on so many fronts. They are in hunker down mode.
How? Talking to Gruber is not in any way shape or form technically necessary for Apple to react/attractp a large audience. The "WWDC talk show" edition piggybacks on WWDC ( Apple's event) ; not the other way around. Not talking to Gruber does not 'restrict' Apple in any way from talking with someone else instead.
As Grubers message about getting dropped by Apple , they have been attending since 2015. Does Apple still support 32-bit Arm apps? Nope. dropped it. At WWDC 2014 Apple introduced iOS 8 ( sure iOS 8 had some arm64 elements) . in iOS In the proscess of dropping x86 macOS (recent leaks more systems disappearing off the supported list). WWDC 2015 was in San Fransciso. ... when has WWDC been in SF in the last 6 years? Again Dropped. "Hunker down" would be squatting on doing the same thing they have been doing. Apple regularly makes products drift of into retirement after 10 years. (if the product category remains the product itself has a deep reboot/refresh/reimagining. )
Secondly, it is really an odd from of hiding when Apple was the ones in the first place who sent Gruber the 'exclusive' that features were sliding into the next releases. It is more likely Apple is going to stop talking about products that have less deep into the release cycle. ( not worrying as much as about catching some hype train meme. ) . Extremely, good chance Apple will have more to say at WWDC. Their activities around WWDC going to be about lowering their profile file. Perhaps a shift to more "under promise and over deliver" , but retreating from interactions? Probably not.
They probably won't do it , but dropping Gruber means if they really didn't like him they could Steamroll his event with counter programming. That wouldn't be 'hunkering down' at all.
Big picture Apple participating in events wrapped around WWDC is to further ehance the reach and depth of WWDC. Not a complete universal viewership metric. (doesn't do live and only one, although large dominating platform) but two videos from WWDC 2024 time frame.
Replay of Talk Show ( 116K views )
MBKHD interview of Tim Cook ( 3M views )
Brownlee talks about stuff non Apple ( substantially more so than Gruber). In 2014 probably a higher priority on 'boosting' an ecosystem advocate. Also more so on the local folks gathered in the relatively small venue near WWDC. But if the primary objective is to get incrementally more depth to your message out to more folks, would Gruber the optimal pick in 2025 for the "Joswiak , Federighi , plus guest" group?
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The Gruber question asking and general formal was basically the same back in 2014 ...
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"Hunker down" is also a path to doing thing the same ways as the 'old days' in a dogma fashion. Hunker down could also easily be a trap that they fall into the "We are Apple ... we are smarter and richer than those other folks ... we'll just inertia our way through this" is actually part of the problem. That is a lack of adaption to change.
Glad I don't have to be responsible for defending all the chickens who have come home to roost this year.
The AI products sliding is likely primarily not a "chickens come home to roost" problem. A major factor is likely dealing with a more unpredictable 'product'. A hardware circuit is defective , fixing it tends to get a new system that behaves closer to the original specification. Likewise, a software bug usually tracks down to some 'bone head' code mistake hat was either off specs or misaligned with the specs. The systems trend to being deterministic in that once the bug is fixed it stays that way.
Pegging mostly deterministic systems into a rigid 12 month release schedule is difficult , but reasonably tractable. Rigid dogma lines up with 'rigid properties' systems.
These "piled higher and deeper" LLMs tend to be far more opaque black boxes and have extensive 'guard rails' to keep them corralled into an 'acceptable zone' . The system will 'make stuff up" so refinement proces is relaxed toward acceptable enough errant behavior.
Pegging substantially less deterministic system into a rigid 12 month release schedule isn't particularly reasonable.
Apple's penchant of 'painting themselves into a corner' is a bit of a "chickens coming home to roost' problem . Apple also outlined some conflicting goals . They want a LLM agent that will help creative writers some questionable stuff ( like "Tim Cook sucks various Trump body parts) in the spirit of helping 'creators create'. Meanwhile also want a system with some wisdom encodes to not write things that probably will get the user in trouble ( i.e., are unwise).
Ultra-privacy policy , but also have need to get to better training data. ( Siri generally has no 'hey you screwed up that last interaction' mechanism. If Siri is obivlious that it got something wrong , it very likely isn't going to get any better. Voicemail transcription has a feedback 'button' . It can get better. )
When Apple would run into a "form over function" conflict Jobs would sometimes say they like to "have their cake and it it too". Apple is always going to have chickens coming to roost problems; it is somewhat built into the DNA of the company. The additional self imposed constraints to make things and an even harder challenge tend to spawn about as many problems as they 'solve'.
