Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Sometimes this strategy has worked out well for Apple. Notably the iPod, and iPhone where they added and improved upon the original MP3 player and smartphone.

But lately, it feels like Apple has been simply chasing and just catching up to what's already been done. I'm thinking AppleTV, VisionPro, Maps, and of course Siri.

When ChatGPT, Bard and others are already in the mainstream, I do wonder what's Apple's AI assistant will bring to the table. Hopefully something amazing, but maybe nothing special. And just being on the millions of iPhones and iOS devices is good enough for Apple.
AppleTV is quite popular, and Vision Pro is unlike anything I've seen from anyone. The existing AR/VR headsets are not smashing successes. People walk out Vision Pro demos quite stunned/shaken from what they've experienced.

Bard is kinda dumb in my experience, ChatGPT is very cool, but I agree with another poster that "conversational AI" is not the same as "execute a task." Multi-step task execution isn't really the domain of LLMs so much as just improving how requests are handled at intake.

BTW, you can already get Siri to answer via ChatGPT with the Shortcuts app, but ChatGPT cannot turn on the lights or unlock the door because it doesn't understand your specific setup.
 
Apple has the resources to catch up but as I’ve been saying for years, Tim Cook is an excellent CEO but he lacks the visionary capabilities Steve had and that was inevitably going to catch up to Apple.
A CEO lacking visionary capabilities to the extent Cook does, can in no way, shape or form be considered an excellent CEO. He has made shareholders happy but likely has greatly diminished the future of the company. He has been harvesting the crops without planting and nurturing what is required down the road.
 
do you think they codenamed it Ajax because of the Ajax web dev technique of the early 2000s which, like GPT, sort of came out of nowhere?
 
Hopefully part of that "millions" budget is a rebrand and an entirely new replacement. Millions may not be enough.

"HEY SIRI, get me directions to _______"
...
"Hold on."
"Just a second."
"Sorry, didn't quite get that."

/fp
 
Millions of Trekkies just want to change Siri's action name to "Computer" with Majel Barrett's voice. :p
I would use this! I would also use "Jarvis" from the first Iron Man movies, and his later replacement, "Friday" (as in "Girl Friday", I suppose?). And then there's HAL, Arnold Schwarzennegger as the first Terminator, "Johnny 5", the voice of KITT in the first Knight Rider television series, the voice of a Cylon in the first Battlestar Galactica series, and the voice of C3PO, Darth Vader, Darth Sidious, and that robot in Rogue-1.

And i'm not saying just use a voice. It would be GREAT if C3PO could be an efficient servant, but with occasional bouts of panic and doubt. "C3PO, please preheat the oven to 425 degrees on "Bake". "The oven is set and on. Oh dear, I hope we don't burn down the house!"

I would also love to be able to configure the voice and personality of my own assistant "in the style of". So if I wanted Alfred Pennyworth from the 1990s "Batman: The Animated Series", I could just ask for that. Or if I wanted Sophia Vergara "in the style of" Mr. Ed, I'd get an interesting assistant who wise cracks back at me with the occasional horse sound! Or a Donald Trump from his "Apprentice" days. Or any other US President or well-known leader from another country.

I could make Vladimir Putin keep track of my laundry, and have Margaret Thatcher track my appointments with important dignitaries! As a bonus, maybe have her also refer to me as "Prime Minister", hehe!
Apple has the resources to catch up but as I’ve been saying for years, Tim Cook is an excellent CEO but he lacks the visionary capabilities Steve had and that was inevitably going to catch up to Apple.

Steve knew what he was doing when he acquired Siri and embedded it into iPhone years before Amazon had Alexa and Google did the same with Android. Tim didn’t see what Steve did and neglected Siri for over a decade. I’m glad to see Apple finally paying attention to this space.
For sure. Everybody, including you and I, come up a distant 2nd place compared to Steve Jobs in the vision department.
Have you tried saying the number more slowly

I have found that if I enunciate troublesome words more slowly, and as clearly as possible, Siri picks up on it. Not optimal behavior for the immense compute power available on iPhone nowadays, agreed.
If I dictate too slowly to Siri, she times out and wastes my time by answering a whole different question.

"Hey Siri, please define D...N...A..."

"The letter 'D' is the fourth letter in the English alphabet."
 
  • Like
Reactions: JosephAW
Whatever they are spending, they need to quadruple it.
look at it from another angle -
 burns 1000 iPhone pro units a day to make Siri work...
...not even a third of a Billion a year makes Siri work
a million in 2023 currency is about $186K the year Apple was established - not necessarily saying Siri like tech was or was not possible then ( imho - definitely not) and that such a financing source was easy then - still it gives a perspective
 revenue in 2022 was about 394 billion ( or so they say ;) - so they are spending about 0.1% of revenue

( edited cause I could not type - spelling errors )
 
Last edited:
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.