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Apple's Real AI Crisis Isn't Siri, But the Talent It's Losing to Rivals
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It is mind boggling how Apple “appears” to be far behind - years maybe. Why hasn’t anyone on these earning calls ever question why or how that happened?
How did they let Siri linger for so long when on its release it was groundbreaking for a phone.
Did Tim toss too many resources into AR, the headset and car projects and no one bothered to watch what others were doing? How did so many at Apple miss the AI movement?
How did they let Siri linger for so long when on its release it was groundbreaking for a phone.
Did Tim toss too many resources into AR, the headset and car projects and no one bothered to watch what others were doing? How did so many at Apple miss the AI movement?
Yeah, if these folks were being held back from doing the questionable things every other company is doing in this space, Apple doesn’t have to pay to severance them if they quit!
And yet, every one of these people will be working on a product that their company will make sure runs on Apple’s primitive products.
What hype? It is indispensable for me. It’s not hype anymore.
The tired take is people who are still living under a rock.
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Software engineer. It writes most of my code. Tests the code. Analyzes old code. Writes tests for me.
Yup that is another field. Although the quality of LLM generated code in large scale project is still an issue it seems.
imo it's like any tool - it can be used for good or evil, like an axe can be used to chop wood or kill people
usually when a ship is leaking, it's the most capable ones that leave for safer shores while the mediocre hang on in the fear of losing their jobs
Big tech is hiring top rated AI talent for $200 million a year. Few years back, you could acquire entire companies for that cost.
Paying such amounts in new-issue stock-options to a CEO based on achieving targets is one thing. Paying hard cash to a new employee even before they have contributed anything to the company yet is something else.
I hope Apple keeps its head levelled.
Paying such amounts in new-issue stock-options to a CEO based on achieving targets is one thing. Paying hard cash to a new employee even before they have contributed anything to the company yet is something else.
I hope Apple keeps its head levelled.
At least the axe isn't capable of deciding that trees are better than humans for the planet, and only do the latter 😁
GPT5's release today makes that less of an issue.
It's really freaking good in Agent mode in CoPilot. Claude Code is another one that is amazing.
This will be my last post on this retched website. Since Tim Cook has "bent the knee" to Donald Trump, there has been no mention of it on this site. I can only surmise that the moderators are fans of Trump and don't think that this is actually news. It is. It is huge news for Apple. I am now in the process of switching complete ecosystems from Apple to Google. I just hope that someone on this website grows a pair of balls and says something about this travesty!
And Google doesn't bent the knee? The whole of USA has... no wait, let's not get too political 😅
The only real crisis is that Apple feels the need to have their own virtual dumbass that's wrong all the time, just because the rest of the industry does.
Think of all the bugs they could have fixed if Tim Apple cared about their products instead of the stock market.
Think of all the bugs they could have fixed if Tim Apple cared about their products instead of the stock market.
A few of these folks with depth of experience, Apple 'stole' from Google/Microsoft/AWS/etc in the first place over the last 2-6 years. Zuckerberg goes off the deep end and offers folks two orders of magnitude more money and is it really surprising they leave?
a few in that list don't have long track records ( left school in last 4-5 years). (e.g., Ruoming Peng's 15 years at Google versus Fisn Ang Yap who spent 3 years on 'Apple Car' AI plus 2 years on foundation model related stuff. )
Shuang Ma had only been at Apple for about 1.5 years. ( was a Microsoft twice as long. Which in itself isn't all that long either)
There are 2-3 on here that Apple groomed into full-time. ( Interns while in school and evetually came in for full time jobs). But it is extremely doubtful that over the last 2-6 years that Apple has only have 3-6 interns in this area. The aggregating AI/ML teams Apple has is likely a decent multiple of 9. ( loose 9 out of 30 is 'bad'. Loose 9 out of 200 is an entirely different status. )
This hype-train is very similar to the trend of. 'colossal', 'very damaging' brain drain in the chip unit and how A18 and M4 chips were going to be lacking because a major chunk of all the talent left.
What evidence that these triple digit million compensation offers are for cash only (and fully guaranteed)? Pretty likely a sizable. chunk of that is 'golden handcuff' stock grants that only come if stick around x amount of time and produce y results.
There is probably a sizable amount of cash upfront, but all of it? Probably not as the numbers grow more fantastical.
there is a point at which can pay people "too much" compensation and work delivered goes flat ( or down ). If had someone a lifetime income in cash they can always just quit and walk away. ( Or do no work ... so fire them and they get two more weeks pay .. and still set for life).
In part, Meta/Facebook is paying at least as much to slow the other players down as much as it is to get something out the door. ( similar to the mega-companies just throwing money at Nvidia ... if 10-12 companies buy up most of the supply that keeps smaller players out. )