Is artificial intelligence a wakeup call for Apple?

[satchmo]

Forget the fact that they may have been slow off the blocks. AI has taken the entire industry by surprise, some more than others.

Perhaps the move to 16gb RAM on Macs and 8gb on iPhones was planned years ago. Without the introduction of Apple Intelligence, would they have continued to stagnate with the meagre amount of base RAM?

Was Apple Intelligence something born from years of development, or a hasty reaction to the emergence of OpenAI?

Perhaps this was a wake up call and the beginning of a more nimble Apple?

 

[coffeemilktea]

Was Apple Intelligence something born from years of development, or a hasty reaction to the emergence of OpenAI?

They were 100% caught off-guard. Not only are we waiting for a future update for Siri to get better, but Apple's main plan to "improve" Siri boils down to "make it rely on ChatGPT" really shows just how off the ball they were and how they're scrambling to keep up.

I don't think this will lead to a more "nimble" Apple. They're a massive corporation, and while that means they have a lot of money and manpower to throw at problems, they're also going to be very slow to adapt. Which is good news for any tech startups out there... the tech company circle of life continues. 🦁

 

[thejadedmonkey]

If anything, this speaks to how few R&D projects they have inside Apple corporate.

I previously worked for a nimble R&D shop, for a large company. They would create and destroy projects on the fly, and we could spin up projects very fast.

The fact that Apple needed to scramble, and didn't have an ability in the pipeline to promote a R&D project to production, is the problem.

IMO, the AI and lack of RAM is more a marketing issue determined by board meetings and expectations.

 

[Ctrlos]

Despite it taking them by surprise, I think they've gone the right way with an on-device LLM rather than a server-side one. Their series of white papers on the whole thing made for fascinating reading. In essence they've made the AI feel like a core part of the OS rather than being just another web app wrapper.

What I am not yet convinced about it consumer demand for it. Based on sheer ability and because they do everything on the server side, Google are years ahead of Apple in terms of AI generative abilities. Samsung debuted all sorts of abilities back in January. Yet we haven't seen it light a spark under sales of their devices. The Pixel 9 took off because it looks pretty cool, not because it can generate cartoons.

By taking things slow Apple may yet win the war. On-device AI does not require server costs nor a network connection. The fact that the rewrite function works 100% offline is very impressive. Where OpenAI and Google are burning money to run these models, your iPhone can do so directly in your pocket.

 

[The_Interloper]

The fact the base iPhone 15/Plus don't have enough RAM to run Apple Intelligence is a disgrace. That's one model back! Something feels like this was meant for the 17 or even 18. Apple's glacial pace has definitely sent them scrambling...all the AI ads for features still not fully available is a joke.

 

[XboxEvolved]

Naw Apple is taking a conservative approach on purpose because they know that consumers are (rightfully) untrusting of AI and it's implications. Besides that the AI bubble essentially hit it's peak a few months ago, and it is just gradually deflating now until it settles as just another thing tech does.

 

[Jorda D]

Was Apple Intelligence something born from years of development, or a hasty reaction to the emergence of OpenAI?

Well. It was definitely not something born from years of development I think that's pretty obvious. They're just kinda hasty clunked it together to sort of be able to say that they have an ai and called it Apple intelligence, which is actually kind of ridiculous at this point

 

[AlaskaMoose]

Naw Apple is taking a conservative approach on purpose because they know that consumers are (rightfully) untrusting of AI and it's implications. Besides that the AI bubble essentially hit it's peak a few months ago, and it is just gradually deflating now until it settles as just another thing tech does.

Apple is far behind. That's all there is to it. Take a look:

 

[Abazigal]

Forget the fact that they may have been slow off the blocks. AI has taken the entire industry by surprise, some more than others.

Perhaps the move to 16gb RAM on Macs and 8gb on iPhones was planned years ago. Without the introduction of Apple Intelligence, would they have continued to stagnate with the meagre amount of base RAM?

Was Apple Intelligence something born from years of development, or a hasty reaction to the emergence of OpenAI?

Perhaps this was a wake up call and the beginning of a more nimble Apple?

Personally, I wish Apple could show the same courage back when they denounced flash, and come out and say “we are not entering the AI race because we view it as a bubble and don’t think this represents the future of technology. Then hold out, watch the field implode and come out better for it.

IMO, Apple doesn’t need to jump on every bandwagon or have an answer to everything.

 

[Pakaku]

AI has ruined more things and is hurting society a lot more than it has helped, so perhaps Apple being "behind" isn't such a bad thing

 

[AlaskaMoose]

AI has ruined more things and is hurting society a lot more than it has helped, so perhaps Apple being "behind" isn't such a bad thing

While AI sounds scary (it sounds troublesome to me), it won't be possible for any governments around the world to stop it, since it represents a technological advancement into the future. What will speed it up to a great degree is the development of Quantum chips.

 

[shadowboi]

Another way to milk more money from investors. Sort of a bubble and faux-innovation. Like a cryptocoin but at least it can make complex computations, but the main question is “can’t you really live without it?”