AI isn’t doing anything exciting on any platform…..yet. That’s a big yet. It’s a toy right now and we will wait to see if it grows up. Apple users are missing nothing. Anyone can use ChatGPT or other sources if they want. I’m not jumping in the pool until I’m sure there’s water in it.
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It's Just Me, Huh?
- Thread starter Highway61
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But I am referring to what excites people in general, not just you. Many people are excited about AI. Many people are using it as more than a toy. One of many examples: it has saved lives with medical diagnoses when doctors could not connect the dots. You can still see it as a toy, but my point is that many people are not seeing it as a toy. But toy or not, I am addressing the topic of the thread -- what excites people. If it seems a purple phone or a tamagotchi app excites people, that's what I would be saying.
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I work in the medical field, in a hospital. It is not being used in the medical field in any major way. It enhances slightly in certain cases but that is all. This is the false narrative people believe about AI.
It certainly excites people but Apple shouldn’t follow fads. They should, and do, remain focused on what actually works and the rest comes and goes without any significance.
Sorry, but that’s not true. Just because you are not using AI in any big exciting way doesn’t mean that nobody is. There are plenty of people doing lots of cool stuff with AI, they’re just not running all of their tasks past you for approval.
You are definitely not alone. As much as I love my iPhone 16 Pro Max (and the ones before it), I barely use it. I'm a desktop kind of guy - give me a desktop OS.
For me, excitement-wise, Apple peaked with the 2007 MacBook Pros, 2006 iMacs and 30" Cinema Displays, while Mac OS X Snow Leopard was king, and Mac OS X Tiger was the coolest. Everything after that was still somewhat exciting, but declining drastically.
I have learned to kinda accept this feeling of the current un-excitement, since the tech market is overflowing with new tech every year, instead of every few years (like it used to be and as it should be). Leave the past in the past, enjoy the current moment. The future holds crappy stuff anyway, let's enjoy what we have now
Also, don't forget Macs used to be cool once. Now they're just mainstream. Everyone has them - so they're not special anymore.
For me, excitement-wise, Apple peaked with the 2007 MacBook Pros, 2006 iMacs and 30" Cinema Displays, while Mac OS X Snow Leopard was king, and Mac OS X Tiger was the coolest. Everything after that was still somewhat exciting, but declining drastically.
I have learned to kinda accept this feeling of the current un-excitement, since the tech market is overflowing with new tech every year, instead of every few years (like it used to be and as it should be). Leave the past in the past, enjoy the current moment. The future holds crappy stuff anyway, let's enjoy what we have now
Also, don't forget Macs used to be cool once. Now they're just mainstream. Everyone has them - so they're not special anymore.
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Not just you.
Tech isn't exciting any more. And it's getting more and more frustrating as simple things just don't work. I feel that tech was hijacked from people who genuinely wanted to make a difference to the world by those who wanted to weaponise it and use it for pure greed and profit. And with that, the basics became neglected because they are always chasing the next fad and short term profits. These fads end up with things just getting left unfinished.
I still love my Mac and iPhone but what excites me is when things just work and my workflow isn't interrupted by silly bugs. What excites me is learning new skills, and not having computers do everything for me. Yes, I'm getting old.
Tech isn't exciting any more. And it's getting more and more frustrating as simple things just don't work. I feel that tech was hijacked from people who genuinely wanted to make a difference to the world by those who wanted to weaponise it and use it for pure greed and profit. And with that, the basics became neglected because they are always chasing the next fad and short term profits. These fads end up with things just getting left unfinished.
I still love my Mac and iPhone but what excites me is when things just work and my workflow isn't interrupted by silly bugs. What excites me is learning new skills, and not having computers do everything for me. Yes, I'm getting old.
AI has seemingly accelerated this trend ten-fold. Look at the current state of Microsoft Windows. And Apple is getting lambasted for their lackluster Apple Intelligence. Here I am going, that may be a bug to you, but what a feature to me, LOL!
“Cool” stuff to me is not exciting but I can see how it may be for others.Sorry, but that’s not true. Just because you are not using AI in any big exciting way doesn’t mean that nobody is. There are plenty of people doing lots of cool stuff with AI, they’re just not running all of their tasks past you for approval.
"In the end, it was the Sunday afternoons he couldn't cope with, and that terrible listlessness which starts to set in at about 2:55, when you know that you've had all the baths you can usefully have that day, that however hard you stare at any given paragraph in the papers you will never actually read it, or use the revolutionary new pruning technique it describes, and that as you stare at the clock the hands will move relentlessly on to four o'clock, and you will enter the long dark teatime of the soul."
It's called getting old.
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Confession time....I didn't know who Jobs was until he died. A few years later I read his book and have watched the movies. Quite the (true) story. Either way, Apple devices are nice, got my first iPhone about 10 years ago, but to this day they are just functional things, at least to me anyway. I dragged my wife into the Apple eco system at the same time, and she also likes her devices, but she is even less 'wow!' about it.
Ok, maybe I was a bit wowed! when I saw some guy watching snowboard movies on a MacBook Air on a train in Austria in 2011. Or maybe I was more wowed by the actual snowboarding. I got my first Apple device that same year, a MBP 2011. I still have it, and the damn thing still works, sort of, as a DVD player.
I might have actually been more wow! when I got my first Nokia cinder block in 1996. These days there's little that surprises me anymore. You can make phone calls with a watch? Whatever....
Ok, maybe I was a bit wowed! when I saw some guy watching snowboard movies on a MacBook Air on a train in Austria in 2011. Or maybe I was more wowed by the actual snowboarding. I got my first Apple device that same year, a MBP 2011. I still have it, and the damn thing still works, sort of, as a DVD player.
I might have actually been more wow! when I got my first Nokia cinder block in 1996. These days there's little that surprises me anymore. You can make phone calls with a watch? Whatever....
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In recent years Apple has been concentrating on Bells & Whistles a phenomenon not unique to the products Apple sells. In my mind I would love a streamlined OS version for the new M4 mini. A system kept as simple and bug free as say OS X Panther, but able to run on current Hardware. Make that available for us seniors and maybe for the younger set as well, make Sequoia and it's successors available for those who actually need or use the bells and whistles.
People often say "but you could never really customize the UI on Macs," which maybe to some extent is true when compared to something like KDE. But it's mostly not true, it's become way more locked down the last 7 years or so.
Also, there was much less of a desire to radically change the appearance when the appearance was already very good.
As the UI has become increasingly bland or just plain ugly, customization options have been taken away or made so cumbersome that it's hardly worth the headache.
There have been no big tech advancements in a long time. Some great improvements but nothing really revolutionary. I think AI will change that though and will be as big as the internet was when it came to house hold homes. It is in its infancy now, but I think it has the potential to revolutionize so many things
There were so many creatives making icon sets, and now that it is difficult to differentiate between the various system folders, one needs to create a shadow system or muck around. Disheartening and disruptive to workflow.
I’d like to believe this is true, but it’s not. The fact is, Tim Cook is doing to Apple exactly what John Scully did… he’s milking the existing product line for all it’s worth.
True innovation has stopped at Apple. It is horrifically bad. Apple didn’t just make the iPod, they took on the entire music industry. Then they took on the entire cell phone industry and they overwhelmingly won.
Now, they’re run by this nincompoop who wasted a billion dollars on a car project… because he couldn’t get his subordinates to agree on a plan. That would NEVER EVER have happened with Jobs in charge.
The boldest thing out of Apple now is Pride Wallpaper… which is Feature Number One…. TWO YEARS IN A ROW.
Apple is not on a positive trajectory.
Once Steve Jobs passed, the excitement for Apple product releases dwindled w/ him...
Under Scully, Apple released the PowerBook 100 series.(Plus, he was only around until 93, so you need to save some criticism for Amelio et. al. The biggest foul-up - the Copeland OS fiasco that left late-90s Macs encumbered with an out-of-date Mac OS - wasn't under Scully)
The PowerBook basically defined the modern laptop with the full-depth clamshell design, the screen occupying most of the top half, the set back keyboard and a large wrist-rest with a central pointing device. The top-end model had an active-matrix screen - now ubiquitous, but night-and-day better than the non-active screens that proceeded it. Yes, there were PC laptops before that, but the PowerBook design was quite distinct & very rapidly copied by the rest of the industry.
Today, it's the MacBooks that account for the bulk of Apple's Mac sales, and a lot of that is probably thanks to the PowerBooks keeping Mac relevant to the mainstream - outside a shrinking niche of graphics/video/publishing users - through the 90s.
Then, under Scully's reign, there's the Newton - may have been a flop product (way ahead of its time) but a consequence of that was Apple investing a shedload of money in an obscure British processor called ARM... without which the iPhone and Apple Silicon may well have never happened... Or, at the very least, Apple would have gone under at the point where they were forced to sell their share of ARM inc. to stay afloat.
Really it's an achievement that the was still an Apple for Jobs to come back to - every other non-PC platform was squashed by the rise of PC clones over the course of the 90s. Even IBM's PC division struggled against the clone-makers (and threw in the towel in the early 00s).
As for Tim Cook - yeah, he's no Jobs but Apple Silicon is a big deal: it may not be great for high-end workstations, but it's given Apple's main breadwinners - the MacBook range - a huge performance vs. power/battery boost, and done a lot to shake up the industry by showing that a powerful personal computer doesn't have to be x86.
The Watch seems to be a modest success - even though it wasn't particularly original.
Apple Vision looks like a flop in the short term - but I can see what they were aiming for in terms of finding business/professional applications for VR/AR rather than trying to compete with affordable gaming headsets. The car... when that started, by 2025, we were all going to be riding around in self-driving cars making shedloads of money for whoever owned the navigation system & got sponsored to recommend which bar we should visit. It was worth a punt, and even if we weren't driving around in Apple cars we could have been buying cars with Apple-branded electronics. Sure, these things failed - but Apple could afford the failures, and if they don't take risks they'll never have another big hit - and that means striking out sometimes. Not everything Jobs did turned to gold.
Also, who knows how many valuable patents Apple have stashed away as a result of the Car and Apple Vision...?
...and maybe in a year or so, when the AI bubble has finally burst (after the industry finally cottons on to the fact that it doesn't actually work reliably and could collapse entirely if it ends up training on its own output) we'll be congratulating Apple for not betting the farm on it (*cough* Copilot Plus *cough*).
The real question is - OK, genius, so what should Apple be making? I'd say that the Mac and iPhone are mature products reaching the "ain't broke - don't fix" stage of their lives, so they need to branch out somehow (as Jobs did with iPod and iPhone). Nothing Jobs launched was completely new - not the first digital music player, not the first smartphone, Mac/NeXT were basically implementing stuff from The Mother of All Demos in the 1960s - even the Apple II wasn't the first fully assembled personal computer with built in video - Jobs just had a knack for spotting tech that was "bubbling under" and needed some magic to turn it into an attractive product. So, the next iPod should be out there somewhere... any bright ideas?
iRobot has a better ring
(and the robot in the film-not-really-of-the-book was definitely an iRobot…)
I have one in my office! Well a Roomba actually.iRobot has a better ring