I can see why he might be unhappy in his role at Apple, but why join the sinking ship that is OpenAI? Google and Anthropic are eating their lunch. By the way, I love my Apple Vision Pro. I have used it long enough to solve the comfort issue, and it is the price that has mainly held it back from being more successful. Now, the price of most of Apples products will be a barrier, so we will see what the next "flops" will be.
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Apple Loses Another Top Executive to OpenAI
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AppleTO
macrumors 68000
Exactly. Crazy that employees are leaving Apple for such unproven companies.
Piggie
macrumors G3
IMHO it's far to soon to label any ships as sinking.
In One, Three or Five years we may know and the landscape may look very different, but right now everything balances on the latest announcement and what set the market on fire yesterday may be totally different tomorow.
Right now, any and every new version/announcement of a new product could and does violently swing a company between out of date and lacking, to the latest cutting edge must have product.
Everything and anything is to play for right now, and it's way too early to start predicting the long term winner and losers.
We are only 1 breakthrough from anyone to totally change everything right now.
This one employee I can’t blame leaving for a different company and probably a bigger paycheck. Vision Pro is pretty much dead at this point and who knows what else he’s been given to work on, or even if there’s another project in the works for him/team. I can’t stand Scam Altman but I wouldn’t object to taking his money if he paid me enough and gave me a project to work on that furthers my career.
He could be a stalled boat in the water at Apple. Vision Pro is pretty much a failure and he might not like his current project, or maybe he doesn’t even have a project coming up that works for him. People
Like him keep constantly moving forwards in their field and don’t like staying stagnant, that’s how you become irrelevant in the tech field. OpenAI probably offered him a huge paycheck and a project to work on. Even if OpenAI is a sinking ship at this point, it’s best to collect a big paycheck and work on something instead of staying stagnant at Apple.
It has been a few years since Apple’s AI announcement and promises, and they’ve only just now managed to release a mediocre product lol.
It seems like Apple is putting a lot of effort into the AR glasses, from other rumors, so I don't think that would necessarily be a stagnant position at Apple. And, Apple's efforts at running AI on the personal device is the play that will do well long term. The current LLMs are more than good enough for my needs, don't see the utility of an ever larger models.
Also looking like a jackass wearing it, and having to waive your hands around snapping to operate the thing. And that external battery that needs it's own fanny pack.
It's not meant to be worn in public, I mean who wears a VR headset in public anyways? It's meant to be used at home.
HiRez
macrumors 603
I mean it's a failure because it's way out of the price range of the mass market and has some too-early technology issues like weight and the short-life, tethered battery, and chicken-and-egg dearth of content/apps problem, but there's a lot of good tech in there. Research and implementation which will, I assume, be useful in the near future for things like glasses, and maybe in 10 years when they can realistically make a VP with 8K resolution, on-board 8-hour battery, at half the weight, and a 30% lower price. So yeah, you can call it a failure, call it a flop, but I suspect Apple sees it as R&D dollars well spent.
The Vision Pro IS the development platform for AR Glasses. It should have been pitched as that form day one. Industry and enterprise... not the crazy family oriented stuff.
They have been aiming at that since all the AR stuff and Time of flight sensors in the iPhone 6 years ago. It's all building.
It's the same reason the Mac Pro and Studio exist... to most people it's what the... how much!? but it nothing for a development tool. The didn't remotely pitch that as home machine!
And then a cheaper AIR one could come later on.
At some point there will be 130 degrees full screen 3d Waveguide lenses AR glasses and Vision Pro is the Development platform to create the killer app for that. I have one I think, no one else is doing it as far as I can tell and I am developing it on Vision, but I am not remotely launching it ( or posting about it ) until they have their proper AR glasses and I have a proper market.
boswald
macrumors 68030
That's part of the problem with the tech industry today, in my view. There's no passion. It's all about chasing the money. What happened to making things simply because it was fun?
boswald
macrumors 68030
They keep poaching executives but have nothing to show for it. They have a chatbot AI "modal" people use, for sure, but is that really revolutionary? Where's the new AI product that's supposed to "compete with iPhone"? Where's all the investor money going? I have a suspicion that these AI companies who are swimming in money are panicking to release anything the consumer would want to keep the money flowing in (to pay back investors). But by the same token, perhaps it never was about the consumer. Sure, we have "Image Playground" to make cat memes and other crap, but is the real goal here something bigger? Government funding? Military adoption?
Well, seeing the state of Open AI's finances (It's a money furnace with no profitability path), he might be out of a job very soon.
ikramerica
macrumors 68020
My wife worked for 7, most of them household names.
Never laid off, rode some of them right to the near end before they collapsed. It’s just how it is.
ikramerica
macrumors 68020
Backend and middle functionality. Complete reworking of how the UI works and how we interact with technology.
A sort of return to the command prompt days, which powerusers never left, but the average person has little familiarity with beyond entering text in a search.
ikramerica
macrumors 68020
Deliro
macrumors 65816
As someone who has worked in the VR/MR/AR (whatever flavor or how you describe it) the tech is not ready for prime time or mass appeal. Just ask Meta who poured nearly 80b into it. AI is the safer bet, career wise.
The glasses are getting some traction, mainly due to the form factor. and relatively acceptable pricing. If Apple prices their glasses right, I'm talking under 1K, then it'll do well.
Vision priced itself out of the conversion. Yes it has some impressive tech but it is in no way a mass market product and I feel Apple is treating it that way and not necessarily with less enthusiasm.
Flight Plan
macrumors 65816
Any company's 1st or 2nd biggest expense is salaries. Airlines? Gas is the biggest, labor is second, and I'm thinking the cost of planes and renting spots at airports 3rd.
Apple? People cost more than anything else. Then maybe memory. 😉
But yeah, go ahead, give everybody a 25% raise. That won't make anybody angry when you raise the price of products. Again. Still.
Before I became a manager, I always thought that companies would never hire back somebody who had left years ago.
But I was wrong. We would hire people back a lot, especially if they left 3 or 4 years ago, went and got some great experience at another company, and then decided to bring their skills back to us and apply for a new role.
You can't hold grudges in business. Not when the other guy has something you want or need; such as skills that you don't have on your current team. That's part of the "art of the deal".
People keep calling VP a flop, but there's always something useful even in your failed attempts. First off, we learned what doesn't work. Second, maybe something good came out of that effort. Like a new chip design. Or a new way to look at transparent displays. Or we learned something about how to fit things on people's heads.
There's always something to learn. No, we can't have a successful business if EVERYTHING flops. But at the same time, we have to encourage people to get their hands dirty and take some risks. Otherwise, we might as well just go make rice cakes. There will always be people who eat rice cakes...
This would probably be illegal. OpenAI wants to go public later this year or in 2027. And anybody going to work for them would likely NOT violate any sensitive information agreements they had with a former company.
Company I worked for (a very famous manufacturing company) even had training to help employees avoid giving out company (or country) sensitive information, either from former employees to us...or from us to a future employee.
And the managers were also trained to not put employees into such situations.
Plus! If you are a technician who has a clearance, such as "Secret" or "Top Secret", giving away sensitive information (even if it's not classified), is one sure way to lose your clearance.
This is serious business, and while I'm sure there are a lot of people who DO disclose information in violation, it probably happens a lot less than you think.
You keep repeating yourself about "cashing in". High-performing people don't usually think of that as the first thing to do when they are met with challenges, either in their company or in their career.
Again, cashing in.
First off, even "giant bubbles" will not destroy an entire industry when they "pop".
Oil, Housing, Banking, and dot-coms all had bubbles that popped at various points in history. And we still use oil. We still live in houses, and we build new ones. And the internet is loaded with small tech companies that are publicly traded.
Hell, even OpenAI is going to be one of those small tech companies when it goes public later this year or sometime in 2027!
For really good leaders, technicians, designers, engineers, and more, this is NOT the time to be thinking about "cashing in." That's just silly.
Open AI is going to have an IPO sometime in the next year or so. We'll see how it goes. Me, I'm looking forward to having them publicly traded, not so I can buy it, but so I can have more reliable fundamentals to look at. Companies have more stringent reporting requirements when they're traded on one of the stock exchanges, and that makes it easier for people to assess their success or failure.
It's "pervy" only because you think it is. It's easy to see only the "bad" when you don't understand something. Especially when you don't have the vision to recognize how powerful it could be.
But that doesn't mean there isn't good reason for having cameras on my glasses. Here are some great reasons:
- Hands free, allowing me to use 2 hands to do something or demonstrate something.
- Would be amazing for making photo or video content for learning.
- Would be amazing for taking photos FAST. I can't get a good hummingbird photo to save my life, usually because the li'l bugger are gone by the time I get my phone out of my pocket.
- Would be amazing for navigating my way through a conference, strange city, library, or store.
- Would be amazing for somebody performing surgery. Or performing vehicle maintenance, aircraft maintenance, or machinery work. Looking for a small part in an engine bay? Oh man, that would be awesome if my glasses could see it and highlight it right on the screen/lenses for me!
- Could help me in my art, for anything from composing photos (either with a different device or with the glasses), painting (color matching), drawing (representing clear shapes, lighting, or shadows), and much more.
That's because pessimism sells. That's why the media is so pessimistic. A couple times a year, I go on a "media strike", where I just turn it all off for a week. Shutting off all the whining (or "whinging", if you're in the UK, lol!) for a week usually restores my clear thinking. I highly recommend it!
If you had read any of the other articles just here on MacRumors in the last week, you'd think that all the readership here hates Apple and doesn't buy anything from them because Apple is greedy and evil.
But to your comment. People join "failing companies" all the time! High-producers, highly motivated, and high-level leaders join companies that are new, just starting out, or maybe even in trouble...and they do it all the time!
Even Steve Jobs did that.. He joined NeXT, then a few years later, he rejoined Apple!
Hey, if you're not motivated or daring enough to take on the risk of joining a company that's digging hard and trying to make something out of nothing but an idea and some machine shop tools in the back shed, well that's okay. It's not for everybody.
Bingo! You hit the nail on the head. It's the challenge for some people. It's the freedom to be able to be self-motivating in the new job for others. And still others just like taking their laptop to the employee cafeteria because there's a gorgeous garden in there and it's a way to get peace while getting some work done.
People have all different reasons for going to work someplace. Only some of those reasons have to do with money.
Right again. For some people, making a difference and being allowed to forge ahead with new ideas is all they need.
"Sinking ship". That's pretty bold of you. And pretty pessimistic.
I don't know if Open AI will ultimately be a success or fail. But I don't think it has hit any icebergs just yet.
On these points, I do agree with you.
19callum93
macrumors 6502a
Seems like some of you wondering why people are leaving for OpenAI etc have not seen the silly salaries and bonuses OpenAI, Meta etc. are paying.
It's astronomical.
Some people getting pay packages upwards of $100M.
That's why they're leaving.
Any more questions?
(is there anyone here not willing to join a "sinking ship" for $100M?)
It's astronomical.
Some people getting pay packages upwards of $100M.
That's why they're leaving.
Any more questions?
(is there anyone here not willing to join a "sinking ship" for $100M?)