Because it’s not the time to fully monetise on it yet.
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Head of Apple's AI Search Project Leaves to Join Meta
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It's like "this is the year of Linux!" or "Apple finally gets gaming!"
(it never actually is true)
Not really.
Most startups operate for years at a loss.
They try to gain monopoly/duopoly, basically capture the market and then monetise.
i.e. Antitrust enforcement is so pathetic and poorly implemented, the system is actually broken here completely.
I agree.
I didn't know about that. It would be interesting to learn about the company's current new research in connection with the departure of its head and possible strategic changes on this website.
Doomsayers gotta doom, but I'm just not sure this is the terrible news the more negative types are so giddy with excitement to claim it is... I mean, sure, there will be SOME talent lost that Apple would have preferred to keep, but people come and go, that's nothing unusual.
But aren't MOST of these people the very same ones that were directly involved in the borked original plans for the revamped SIRI?
Maybe Apple, not being an idiot, knows perfectly well who they wouldn't loose sleep over loosing, and by letting them leave, or even incentivizing them to leave, they don't have to pay or do anything for them in terms of severance.
This particular individual may not fit that mold, as they just promoted him a few weeks ago, but I suspect a fair number of these recent departures are the very same individuals who weren't pulling their weight anyway.
I may be extrapolating too far, sure, but this is so, so far from an "Apple is doomed!" situation. Even if it IS a speed bump, they're not a 50 employee startup that can't just be like, "Ok, crap, well, let's move on."
Edit: I mean, seriously... If Apple really wanted them to stay, if they were desperate to keep these people, you think they COULDN'T match and beat what Meta is paying them? If Meta can pay it, obviously Apple can pay it as well, and if Apple was desperate, they would pay it! But they have more intimate knowledge of how these employees have been performing.
But aren't MOST of these people the very same ones that were directly involved in the borked original plans for the revamped SIRI?
Maybe Apple, not being an idiot, knows perfectly well who they wouldn't loose sleep over loosing, and by letting them leave, or even incentivizing them to leave, they don't have to pay or do anything for them in terms of severance.
This particular individual may not fit that mold, as they just promoted him a few weeks ago, but I suspect a fair number of these recent departures are the very same individuals who weren't pulling their weight anyway.
I may be extrapolating too far, sure, but this is so, so far from an "Apple is doomed!" situation. Even if it IS a speed bump, they're not a 50 employee startup that can't just be like, "Ok, crap, well, let's move on."
Edit: I mean, seriously... If Apple really wanted them to stay, if they were desperate to keep these people, you think they COULDN'T match and beat what Meta is paying them? If Meta can pay it, obviously Apple can pay it as well, and if Apple was desperate, they would pay it! But they have more intimate knowledge of how these employees have been performing.
So, I guess they should just fire everybody at Apple already on these teams since they were all "involved in the borked plans for the revamped Siri"?
If that's your conclusion on why none of this matters, Apple should clean house all at once and move on ASAP.
I’m referring to the larger picture of millions/billions of dollars being thrown around for AI.
Taking a thought to the absolute extreme ("fire everybody") will make any thought sound stupid. And it isn't at all what I said.
And doing it a second time ("none of this matters") is just more of the same. I didn't say that. In fact, I said they probably HAVE lost some talent they wish they hadn't.
My point was that this is very unlikely to be as big of a deal as it will be portrayed here.
Cook barely wanted to spend $1 billion to buy Intel’s modem division, so don’t think Apple would pay $20 Billion for perplexity unless they significantly lowered the price.
Apple will be using Google Gemini as their AI LLM initially.
Apple is being sued for using copyrighted content in their LLM so we will see what Apple brings to the AI table in 2026.
Exactly this. It’s the height of insanity to believe an organization of Apple’s size can’t manage unexpected and key departures. It may impact timelines and output, but these people lead teams of people, all of whom will clamor to fill that opening internally.
Yes, it's possible that this deluge of news skews perception and limits the understanding of what's happening on a larger level.
Still in the past if there were constant exits on other units/projects there would have been a similar array of news.
Well Perplexity is valued at 20 billion so he'd have to actually pay more than that to buy them.
It might be as simple as these reasons:
Take the highest paying job you can in a very expensive area of the world and pay off your mortgage, sort out your retirement and any college funds etc.
Apple will never pay you what meta et al will, as the their salaries are still pre the AI boom and they expect people to stay there ‘for the mission’ (so I have read).
Apple is seen as a backwater for AI and there’s no point being there.
If I’m right and if I were any one senior at Apple, I’d be very worried about the latter reason. And the second.
The guy that left, had himself just been elevated to the "internal opening".
Guys, this much turnover IS a problem, no matter how or why it's happening.
The thing I don’t understand, is that I read that the LLM’s that Apple has developed sometimes don’t get things right and they are worried about reputational risks if they deployed any of them.
If this is true, I would ask the senior executives to stop using their personal assistants and chief of staffs etc for a week and to instead use Siri.
They will find that it’s a miracle if current Siri does something correctly without making a ridiculous mistake.
And they might want to know that current Siri’s reputation is a punchline to a (frustrated) joke.
I would rather use Google services and devices than anything from creepy Meta if it comes to that (closed my FB account long time ago btw)
Yep since Google is known for their amazing privacy
This is like avoiding going in the water as the Titanic sinks by moving from the port side to the starboard side of the ship.
Beats online music service.
I never used it but apparently Apple thought it was terrible and built their own.
There is one problem. Apple Music was never any good.
It seems to have been stagnating now for years. Ok it does have auto mix this time round. But it seems curiously neglected, especially on the Mac.
Long gone are the days when it was a good local only music player on the iPhone.
In that regard it seems to have echoed the trajectory of iTunes, which started off as an incredible piece of software - which was a joy to use - and gradually had so much bolted onto it over the years, that by 10 or so years ago, became the app I hated to open.
Zuck is just a d**k is what.
He’s always hated Apple and got the money to buy off 2300+ acres in Hawaii. He’s doing both just because he could.
He’s like Gavin Belson but uglier with hideous haircuts.