Apple's Culture of Secrecy Slowing its Artificial Intelligence Development

[nick42983]

The conflation of "secrecy" and "privacy" in this article are pretty disturbing. The implication is that if you're keeping "secrets" you're impeding progress. I love the fact that Apple respects user privacy, if it means less invasive BS with less accurate results but not quite the same Big Brother level of privacy invasion, so be it. I'm confident Apple can make up whatever the gaps are through ethical R&D and they'll continue to be rewarded for it by loyal users.

 

[CE3]

Apple's stance on secrecy and privacy is currently running parallel with their stance on protecting the privacy of their consumers, so I'm not complaining. They've had no problems revolutionizing the mobile tech industry over the past 15 years with their walled garden approach.

If it ain't broke...

In September, Amazon.com, one of the few corporations that rivals Apple’s extreme secrecy...

So two of the most profitable (and loved) tech companies in the world shroud themselves in secrecy. Maybe they're onto something.

 

[scoobydoo99]

just Wow. this article is all over the place. is it "secrecy" or "privacy" that you claim is Apple's undoing? Its sounds as though Apple's competitors are unhappy that Apple doesn't share more about their research in AI because that makes it harder for them to conduct corporate espionage. The idea that secrecy somehow poses a threat to Apple is ludicrous. Just sour grapes because these corporate shill professors can't steal what Apple is doing.

If "privacy" is the supposed downfall, that is even more silly. It's quite easy to implement AI algorithms while still maintaining privacy. This angle seems to again be advanced by Apple's adversarys. These entities (Google, Microsoft, etc) would prefer that EVERYONE violate customers' privacy so that it becomes the de facto industry standard. This way, customers concerned about privacy won't graviate to Apple, costing them revenue.

Total bunch of bunk.

 

[diegogaja]

Actually, I find the Apple Siri much more useful than the Pre-Apple Siri. Use it all that time for everything.

I guess I'm the only person old enough to remember how much more useful Siri was before Apple purchased it.

 

[curtisjacob]

Just ridin' the wave until the day comes that I can have a real conversation with my iphone.. Hey, Barbie can do it. http://www.cnet.com/news/barbie-breaks-her-silence-after-more-than-half-a-century-hello-barbie/

 

[diegogaja]

Microsoft and Google have very similar practices for dismissal, as do many other businesses. That is nothing new. You describe this as if it's the work environment of EVERY employee, which is not the case.

Siri is awesome. I use it for everything. and I get directions from the today screen on my ipad every morning and afternoon telling me about traffic.

Maybe an Apple employee can chime in (anonymously of course), but since I doubt they'll be honest, I'll go ahead and say it:
Apple operates at an almost isolated like environment for development and engineering, due to independent non-disclosure agreements. You can't have an employee working on the iPhone, talking to someone who works on the iMac at lunch about design aspects. Because how does the iMac employee know what he can or can't talk to his wife about?
So they all get separated.
I met an Apple software engineer. He said he worked in a small office, by himself, and only usually saw other engineers when he either needed guidance or a meeting about specs. But 95% of the time he's actually writing code, he's alone in an office.

This type of environment is due to Apple's very secretive operating policy for shareholders. Their stakeholders have a strong belief that keeping customers and public in the dark until announcements has a direct correlation on sales efforts.

While this might be true, the disconnection between their engineers and developers is a reason why iOS is starting to fall behind Android in a lot of major ways.

The other aspect of this that you don't realize is how terrible their separation policy is. Let me describe to you what happens if you're "fired" from Apple. Now, keep in mind, I'm not saying that someone who gets fired doesn't deserve to get fired. But you shouldn't just throw that blanket generalization around because not everyone gets let go for the same reasons, but NO one deserves to be let go like this. And if you think that this is okay, you're honestly a very inhumane person and I think the world is better off without anyone agreeing with you. Even Apple employees think this is harsh and cruel:
You'll be at work, and at a certain time, someone will knock on your door. There will be a security guard, your network will shut down and you'll have no intranet or outside web access. You'll be escorted away from your desk to be given separation papers and within minutes, you're outside of the building and that's the last you'll ever step foot on Apple campus.
You have no idea this was about to happen. Because if any of your superiors or coworkers "warn" you, they could have the same visit waiting for them (secrecy, NDA, etc). You might have an idea about it because of performance issues or other things, but your boss won't even warn you that you're on thin ice because of secrecy/NDA/etc. They don't want to risk you leaking information out of anger.
I've sworn never to work at Apple due to that, in an engineering capacity. I'll work for Google or even Microsoft, but Apple to me is very intimidating in that regard.

Sure, they are and will probably continue to be the #1 used device from a singular company but there's no denying that Android as an OS is starting to really make miles of progress ahead of iOS. It takes far too long to implement new features into their IDE. We still don't have a very good table/list design flow and Siri is pretty much garbage compared to Now and Cortana.

Siri is very very gimicky and most of all, she has no widely used predictive modeling. If you always ask her at 9:00 am every morning what the traffic is like between your home and office, there should be a very simple threshold to start giving you that information in the morning. And an easy opt out in case you don't want that. I could write the code for that in less than 20 lines. Why doesn't Siri have it?

 

[chromite]

Apple already got majorly burned by Google from having Eric Schmidt on their board. So Bloomberg is just going to have to forgive them for wanting to keep most things under wraps and rely on the brilliant AI and voice recognition companies they've been acquiring to get things up to snuff.

What happened with Eric Schmidt and Google?

 

[diegogaja]

No need to hope...you are wrong...at least based on your examples.

Apple Maps was rushed to market due to the loss of Google Maps and did have a poor showing out of the gate. It's on par with Google at this point.
Ping was Apple's Google+...
Facetime: huge hit. everyone I know uses it constantly.
Apple Music: Once again, millions are using. Is the only way some will call it a success is if it destroys Spotify or other players?
Siri: Hobble compared to it's pre-Apple predecessor but has much deeper integration. I use Siri constantly so it boggles my mind when people say it's worthless.

Also, what do any of these, besides Siri, have to do with AI and therefore relevant?

Based on their recent historical endeavors... I'm not buying that Apple is ahead of the AI game.

• Apple Maps - oops
• Ping - oops
• Facetime - limited
• Apple Music - oops
• Siri - oops

All had great potential but have been limited to Apple only or turned out to be far less than what they should have been. Based on this, I wouldn't trust anything AI Apple came up with.

One of the "dreads" in new technology is the thought that a company, military, or government is going to "black box" your idea and hide it from the light of day. No external collaberation. Limited validation. The exclusion of name or achievement recognition.

I wish Apple all the luck. I just don't think they can pull this off in any successful meaningful way. I hope I am wrong.

 

[diegogaja]

So your point is that it's ok to take from others as long as you are exposing yourself so others can take from you...?

Apple is unique amongst them in not sharing, while still showing up to take ideas from others.

 

[Lankyman]

The problem is that Apple has largely always been an engineering company, taking the best existing technologies and expertly using them to create a product. Not a research company, and certaintly not a science-based company. It's hard to recruit the top researchers and scientists if they think they'll be cut off from publishing papers and maintaining their place in the academic community. And therefore it's hard to make actual technology advancements.

At last someone I find another like mind who is on the same page. I thought for one horrible moment I was on a pre-school forum.

 

[freepomme]

Siri is an artificial intelligence? Not right now...

 

[Manderby]

People read "Aritificial Intelligence" and "Neural Information Processing Systems conference" and immediately think this has to do with creating human-like brains in a computer.

Wake-up-call: It does not.

It is all just a mathematical theory to analyze and process mostly non-structured data without clear indication of what the data could mean. Such theories have already some decades on its buckle and they are a pain to work with, as it is unclear, what to get out of it. There are other methods in replicating "intelligent" behaviour which do not have to do with "neural information processing". And some of them do not require to attend to a conference.

 

[PhotodudeCA]

Well, this is a fanboy site, but even by the fanboy site standards, this thread displays significant levels of myopia. Google Now app essentially duplicates Siri functionality. The only reason people keep it on their iPhones is that it is better than Siri. Much better. The quality of the answers you get through Google Now and the quality of its speech recognition engine is materially better than Apple's (or Nuance's) product. I am not saying Siri is bad or useless, far from it, but Google Now is measurably better and keeps getting better. I would replace Siri with GoggleNow as an integrated assistant in a heartbeat. The main reason for that performance gap is Google's early and relentless investment in capturing and retaining top tier AI and machine learning talent. Unfortunately, at this point this gap is probably impossible to close (Apple can pay top $ for AI startups, but that's essentially leftovers or inexperienced graduate student teams). The confounding problem still is that the aforementioned top AI talent does not want to work at Apple due to, well, you guessed it, corporate culture. Scientists are different from engineers and Jobs' Apple got ahead by creating a top-notch engineering culture. The same recipe does not work for research-intensive products such as AI and machine learning based interfaces.

 

[dk001]

No need to hope...you are wrong...at least based on your examples.

Apple Maps was rushed to market due to the loss of Google Maps and did have a poor showing out of the gate. It's on par with Google at this point.
Ping was Apple's Google+...
Facetime: huge hit. everyone I know uses it constantly.
Apple Music: Once again, millions are using. Is the only way some will call it a success is if it destroys Spotify or other players?
Siri: Hobble compared to it's pre-Apple predecessor but has much deeper integration. I use Siri constantly so it boggles my mind when people say it's worthless.

Also, what do any of these, besides Siri, have to do with AI and therefore relevant?

Wow. Rewrite history much? You did a good job there. Nicely done.

 

[Sill]

Siri is awesome. I use it for everything. and I get directions from the today screen on my ipad every morning and afternoon telling me about traffic.

I tried Siri a couple of times back when the iPhone 4s first came out, and never used it again. I keep reading posts like yours, where people talk about how useful it is and I just can't see it. What is so great about it - or any other one of these voice assistants - that makes it so useful?

 

[Essenar]

No need to hope...you are wrong...at least based on your examples.

Apple Maps was rushed to market due to the loss of Google Maps and did have a poor showing out of the gate. It's on par with Google at this point.
Ping was Apple's Google+...
Facetime: huge hit. everyone I know uses it constantly.
Apple Music: Once again, millions are using. Is the only way some will call it a success is if it destroys Spotify or other players?
Siri: Hobble compared to it's pre-Apple predecessor but has much deeper integration. I use Siri constantly so it boggles my mind when people say it's worthless.

Also, what do any of these, besides Siri, have to do with AI and therefore relevant?

1. No... No it's not. You're completely wrong. On Google, one tap and I can reroute based on traffic conditions. I don't get routed to make illegal U-Turns and the route is based on live road information. Search results are completely accurate, based even on partial strings of business names, business types, names, phone numbers. If you miss the letter "s" on a business name in Apple maps, you'll get some weird business hundreds of miles away. I searched for McDonalds without the apostrophe and it showed me some weird Irish bar thousands of miles away.
Stop fabricating facts just to suit your argument. I work in development and we use the latest SDK and the rule of thumb is, if they pay enough, use Google because it's 100% better.

2. What?

3. That's out of necessity and convenience. Everyone has an iPhone and FaceTime is built into them, so don't tell me that people do this because they've used Skype and other video services and found them to be inferior. FaceTime has major issues with low bandwidth video quality allocation. If your connection slows down, it basically just shuts video down and there's a small window of opportunity to get a "low quality" video, but its video-to-image-frame rendering is poor. (Slow connection? Keep audio, take incremented screenshots and send those while the connection issues pass) Skype isn't MUCH better, but let's not act like cross platform is something you wave in front of peoples' faces and go "You should buy an iPhone! HMPH sucks to be you!" Having cross platform support is better for EVERYONE.
Every major company I've worked with uses Skype, Google Hangouts and even WeChat for video conferences because A) They're better, B) They're cross platform and C) They're consistent. If FaceTime is so great, go ahead and four way call your boss, your PM and your overseas supplier. Right now, do it.

4. Millions own iPhones. Integrating streaming enabled by default is a spam way of bothering your users. iPhones have the best audio engines in the industry, literally miles ahead of every other hardware manufacturer on the planet, and they waste it with this atrocious Music application, no equalizer settings, no way to set it to local only so you're never bothered about streaming and iTunes integration is horrid. Why does it have to recreate your library from local files? And the filing system? Don't even get me started. Individual folders for each track is a nightmare. But I'll give you this: listening to music on iOS devices is #1 in the industry, there's no exceptions. Listening to music on an Android device made me want to never listen to music again. But it could clearly be better.

5. Siri is "acceptable". But make no mistake: Cortana is better. So is Google Now. Siri is a gimmick and don't tell me it isn't. They spend all this time giving Siri the ability to answer such stupid questions as part of a running gag. Oh let's give her some Back to the Future jokes so people can post it on Facebook and Instagram. Navigation commands are super hit or miss, Google Now fires off not only specifically correct directions but even pulls the business or contact name. You can even navigate to a contact, saved location or "nearest *business name*". You can ask for song lyrics, set calendar reminders for specific times for specific things.
Relevant: http://allaboutwindowsphone.com/features/item/20697_Cortana_vs_Siri_vs_Google_Now-.php

Again, Siri is "good enough to get basics down", but let's not act like it's as industry leading as the devices it's installed on. Apple Maps and Siri get their usage because they have millions of users cooked with the applications by default. But Google Now, Google Maps and Cortana are ages ahead and the gap gets worse every release. Google isn't sitting around thinking of clever ways to make pop culture references.

 

[inkswamp]

You lost credibility in this when you even said yourself "I have no background in science".

Let's be clear about one thing and until you are able to internalize this, you should cease giving your opinion "as factual" on this subject -

I made it very clear that I had no background in that area and was completely giving my opinion based on what I knew. I know people who work in fields of research science so I understand this better than I let on.

Your blind loyalty to Apple as a fan ....

Give me a break. I'm not blindly loyal to any company. Do these posts sound like blind loyalty to you?

https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...tan-beta-to-developers.1932648/#post-22153449

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/im-totally-screwed-by-el-capitan.1925557/page-3#post-22112637

 

[Tech198]

Its probably a bit one sided but that's the trade u made.

If u want secrecy, the rest also know noting, which begs the questions,, some real, some not so sure if success if Apple won't disclose...

Then again they could just just surprising all of us with AI and what how they implement it..

To even pass info in class though it pretty bad...... That's how i think of it.. It's kind of. "....BUT, its a class-room, u'r suppose to interact..."

 

[diegogaja]

It's hilarious how you present your opinion as fact. I never said that any of those apps were "best in class". I was just making the case that they are generally on par with their competitors.

1. Not wrong. Once again...just your opinion. I travel a lot for work so I usually use a mix of Google Apple maps and waze. Each has its strong points and weaknesses. But since I'm not here to do a comparative review i'll just point out that Apple maps routinely notifies me of alternate routes based on traffic data. I never had an issue with searches but I don't use it a lot since I just use Siri for 90% of my navigation. I used google maps for about a month after I moved and it kept taking me this circuitous route to get in a freeway through a cloverleaf that was always congested with traffic and construction. Tried Apple maps one day and I was sure it was broken because it took me another way. After reviewing the Apple maps route closely I realized there was a small side road to an on ramp to the freeway that Google never suggested. And itcut down my time by 1/2 going that way. Does that mean Google sucks? Nope. Just means that they both have issues. Not sure why it's not working for you. Maybe it's an operator headspace issue. I do it my examples are largely anecdotal...as are your but I'm fabricating nothing. Apples maps has come a long way, and as a I said is on par with google maps for the most part. Do they each have their weaknesses? Yes.

2. Ping is like Google+. As in they were both failures...please try to keep up...

3. Once again...never said it was levels above anything else. Just pointing out that it's not some huge failure as the original OP alluded. I've used Skype, wechat among others. They are all pretty good and relatively on par with each other. You know why? Ease of use. They steps involved in opening skype is much more involved than say "FaceTime mom". I never said it was the "best in class"...once again. Those others are great for conference calling/ conference video. But my work doesn't use those. We have VTC suites due to security concerns. I'm starting to wonder if it might be a reading comprehension issue with you....

4. Apple Music. Once again...never said it was perfect. Just made the case that it wasn't a failure as the OP STATED. your personal preference to backend files aside, Apple Music is a great service. Oh...and you can also choose to only play local files with a button in settings. I do that when traveling overseas. I like he service personally and have discovered tons of great music. Also, most people don't care enough to need an equalizer. Would it be nice? Sure? But most people play music on crappy headphones or car speakers anyway so it's not a necessity.

5. Gonna have to disagree with you on the whole "Siri is a gimmick". I literally use Siri for everything and it's rare that it makes mistakes? Is it better than Cortana or the like? Never said that but it is on par. I have zero issues navigating with Siri and she's never been off. Many people I know have similar success. I haven't manually typed in an appointment in my calendar in months. To do list, adding notes, reminders with geofencing, you name it. Works on my iPad, watch, and phone. And Siri on the new Apple TV is working well also. Siri is well beyond the basics and other services are far from being ages ahead. As to the "pop references". It's not like Siri is alone in that regard, and as someone who works "in development" I'm sure you understand that those references take minimal time aren't sucking up resources for product development. To suggest otherwise with your background is hypocritical.

Once again, reading compression could have saved you a lot of typing. I never made any of the claims you state. Just saying why those services aren't failures in the context of the original post.

1. No... No it's not. You're completely wrong. On Google, one tap and I can reroute based on traffic conditions. I don't get routed to make illegal U-Turns and the route is based on live road information. Search results are completely accurate, based even on partial strings of business names, business types, names, phone numbers. If you miss the letter "s" on a business name in Apple maps, you'll get some weird business hundreds of miles away. I searched for McDonalds without the apostrophe and it showed me some weird Irish bar thousands of miles away.
Stop fabricating facts just to suit your argument. I work in development and we use the latest SDK and the rule of thumb is, if they pay enough, use Google because it's 100% better.

2. What?

3. That's out of necessity and convenience. Everyone has an iPhone and FaceTime is built into them, so don't tell me that people do this because they've used Skype and other video services and found them to be inferior. FaceTime has major issues with low bandwidth video quality allocation. If your connection slows down, it basically just shuts video down and there's a small window of opportunity to get a "low quality" video, but its video-to-image-frame rendering is poor. (Slow connection? Keep audio, take incremented screenshots and send those while the connection issues pass) Skype isn't MUCH better, but let's not act like cross platform is something you wave in front of peoples' faces and go "You should buy an iPhone! HMPH sucks to be you!" Having cross platform support is better for EVERYONE.
Every major company I've worked with uses Skype, Google Hangouts and even WeChat for video conferences because A) They're better, B) They're cross platform and C) They're consistent. If FaceTime is so great, go ahead and four way call your boss, your PM and your overseas supplier. Right now, do it.

4. Millions own iPhones. Integrating streaming enabled by default is a spam way of bothering your users. iPhones have the best audio engines in the industry, literally miles ahead of every other hardware manufacturer on the planet, and they waste it with this atrocious Music application, no equalizer settings, no way to set it to local only so you're never bothered about streaming and iTunes integration is horrid. Why does it have to recreate your library from local files? And the filing system? Don't even get me started. Individual folders for each track is a nightmare. But I'll give you this: listening to music on iOS devices is #1 in the industry, there's no exceptions. Listening to music on an Android device made me want to never listen to music again. But it could clearly be better.

5. Siri is "acceptable". But make no mistake: Cortana is better. So is Google Now. Siri is a gimmick and don't tell me it isn't. They spend all this time giving Siri the ability to answer such stupid questions as part of a running gag. Oh let's give her some Back to the Future jokes so people can post it on Facebook and Instagram. Navigation commands are super hit or miss, Google Now fires off not only specifically correct directions but even pulls the business or contact name. You can even navigate to a contact, saved location or "nearest *business name*". You can ask for song lyrics, set calendar reminders for specific times for specific things.
Relevant: http://allaboutwindowsphone.com/features/item/20697_Cortana_vs_Siri_vs_Google_Now-.php

Again, Siri is "good enough to get basics down", but let's not act like it's as industry leading as the devices it's installed on. Apple Maps and Siri get their usage because they have millions of users cooked with the applications by default. But Google Now, Google Maps and Cortana are ages ahead and the gap gets worse every release. Google isn't sitting around thinking of clever ways to make pop culture references.

 

[Doc C]

I have no stake in the game. I will use the best tool for the job, based on my perception - others may disagree with my choices; their opinion is no more or less valid than mine. Having said that, this is what I perceive regarding the secrecy:

Maybe an Apple employee can chime in (anonymously of course), but since I doubt they'll be honest, I'll go ahead and say it:
Apple operates at an almost isolated like environment for development and engineering, due to independent non-disclosure agreements. You can't have an employee working on the iPhone, talking to someone who works on the iMac at lunch about design aspects. Because how does the iMac employee know what he can or can't talk to his wife about?
So they all get separated.
I met an Apple software engineer. He said he worked in a small office, by himself, and only usually saw other engineers when he either needed guidance or a meeting about specs. But 95% of the time he's actually writing code, he's alone in an office.

This type of environment is due to Apple's very secretive operating policy for shareholders. Their stakeholders have a strong belief that keeping customers and public in the dark until announcements has a direct correlation on sales efforts.

This is a remnant of the Steve Jobs mentality. From what I understand, he was a strong believer of separation and secrecy. He believed that teams function best when they are small and focused, with the overall direction being left to those at the top. From what I have been told, and have read, he set hard limits on team sizes, and would actually fire a person, if the addition of one person took the team above that magic number. A majority of these approaches seem to stem from his earlier experiences with Eastern Philosophies, religion, and his non-traditional educational path. One can argue as to whether these are ideal approaches, however they did seem to work for Apple at the time. It is less clear whether they are appropriate for Apple at its current size though.

While this might be true, the disconnection between their engineers and developers is a reason why iOS is starting to fall behind Android in a lot of major ways.

It's interesting that you say this. I have spoken to a former Google engineer (left the company under happy circumstances so no axe to grind). He made what I thought was an interesting observation. He suggested that Google operates by focusing on the engineering, then creating an interface to allow the user to access the feature. Apple designs by conceptualizing a feature then engineering it in such that it is (in theory) easily accessed by the user. These are two quite different approaches, however they ultimately give the consumer the best of both worlds - one company focused on making the UX better (in theory; Apple has been a little lax in this lately, admittedly) and the other coming up with more advanced features and pushing the envelope from a technical standpoint.

The other aspect of this that you don't realize is how terrible their separation policy is. Let me describe to you what happens if you're "fired" from Apple. Now, keep in mind, I'm not saying that someone who gets fired doesn't deserve to get fired. But you shouldn't just throw that blanket generalization around because not everyone gets let go for the same reasons, but NO one deserves to be let go like this. And if you think that this is okay, you're honestly a very inhumane person and I think the world is better off without anyone agreeing with you. Even Apple employees think this is harsh and cruel:
You'll be at work, and at a certain time, someone will knock on your door. There will be a security guard, your network will shut down and you'll have no intranet or outside web access. You'll be escorted away from your desk to be given separation papers and within minutes, you're outside of the building and that's the last you'll ever step foot on Apple campus.
You have no idea this was about to happen. Because if any of your superiors or coworkers "warn" you, they could have the same visit waiting for them (secrecy, NDA, etc). You might have an idea about it because of performance issues or other things, but your boss won't even warn you that you're on thin ice because of secrecy/NDA/etc. They don't want to risk you leaking information out of anger.
I've sworn never to work at Apple due to that, in an engineering capacity. I'll work for Google or even Microsoft, but Apple to me is very intimidating in that regard.

To be fair, this is not unlike many government agencies. I have worked in situations where I have required high-level security clearance, and have witnessed this occurring. As an outside observer, you just keep your head down, say nothing, and carry on.

Sure, they are and will probably continue to be the #1 used device from a singular company but there's no denying that Android as an OS is starting to really make miles of progress ahead of iOS. It takes far too long to implement new features into their IDE. We still don't have a very good table/list design flow and Siri is pretty much garbage compared to Now and Cortana.

Siri is very very gimicky and most of all, she has no widely used predictive modeling. If you always ask her at 9:00 am every morning what the traffic is like between your home and office, there should be a very simple threshold to start giving you that information in the morning. And an easy opt out in case you don't want that. I could write the code for that in less than 20 lines. Why doesn't Siri have it?

This is interesting - I suppose our experiences differ. I work in a few different places (a couple of different hospitals, etc), so I keep everything listed on my calendar. I don't even have to ask Siri about traffic, I will automatically get a notification on my phone stating something along the lines of "Traffic is heavy today. You need to leave by 7:05 to get to ****** Hospital on time." (I don't recall the exact words, but it is something like that)

When I hop in the car to leave, the lower left corner of the phone will show the podcast app, as I tend to listen to either medical or tech podcasts when driving to work. I know it isn't a huge deal, but again, just an example to demonstrate that our experiences differ. I do find that the phone is learning my routine and is adapting.

tl;dr

Our perceptions and experiences will colour how we see things.

Apple is still run based upon the policies implemented by Jobs, who believed in small, secretive and controlled. It worked for a small Apple; perhaps it should change now that Apple is bigger, however those at the helm are best positioned to make that decision.

Apple and Google are taking different paths to try to get to the same place. As long as the consumer wins, the user should choose the tool that serves them best, and not be blindly beholden to a specific company because of the logo.

My experience (and each of our experiences will differ) is that the predictive modelling works as well as it is advertised to, and as well as I need it to. Perhaps it is location dependent, or user dependent, or something else, or perhaps I'm just lucky or blind to the shortcomings.

 

[SteveJobs2.0]

I've talked to other professors who suggest the same. Or even think that Apple does no pure research.

The problem here isn't about product secrecy. The problem with Apple is about all the research that doesn't make it directly into a product. IBM (TJ Watson Labs), AT&T (Bell Labs), and Xerox (PARC) used to publish (either in patents or in popular research journals) a ton of stuff that wasn't going into products as trade secrets. These companies became national assets due to their lab publications. Only a percentage of research findings were kept as trade secrets for competitive reasons.

If Bell Labs didn't publish their discovery of the transistor, license out the technology, and make William Shockley famous, Silicon Valley, and thus Intel and Apple might have never come into existence. Think about what the world would be like if only telephones were transistorized, with no transistor radio or televisions (etc.) until after AT&T's patents expired. If Bell Labs didn't publish how long distance telephone calls worked, then Woz and Jobs might never have designed and sold their first product ... again leading to no Apple.

Apple rarely ever publishes research findings. There is no published Apple Labs technical journal. Apple keeps way too much as trade secret in the eyes of many researcher scientists and engineers. Top researchers want to publish their discoveries. What's the value to them of a great discovery if Apple sticks in on the shelf as an unused trade secret?

This is the very definition of the positives associate with the open innovation paradigm.

 

[smoledman]

What will the nay-sayers do when Apple comes out with something like Samantha from the film "Her" in 2017? People will literally lose their minds. There will be mass suicides of college professors and Google Now/Cortana fanboys....

 

[freepomme]

Siri doesn't even have the appearance that it's smart. I don't think it's fair that they call Siri an assistant or artificial intelligence.

 

[inkswamp]

Siri doesn't even have the appearance that it's smart.

Not unlike your post.

 

[Lankyman]

I really don't understand Apple fanboys at all. The way to make a company sit up take notice and do things better is to offer constructive criticism not suck up everything you are given in glee.

As others have said Google Now and Cortana are genuinely way ahead of anything Siri is capable off. The way to change that is not to trade insults with posters i.e. don't shoot the messenger, try to persuade Apple to raise their game. That way everyone wins.