John Gruber Says 'Something is Rotten' at Apple

[itsluke]

All I see here are a bunch of people that don’t know what AI means for them complaining about the absence of something completely nebulous. And when Apple delivers it, they’ll go crazy. What? You’re going to leave the Apple ecosystem so you can have a different AI assistant make up a limerick about frottage and text it to your buddies while you drive? Get real.

The argument here is not about leaving the ecosystem, but on the fact that this is a spectacular failure from them, and such situation is unseen and misplacing

 

[Dave245]

To be honest I don’t really care about AI and I don’t think most average users do, however the credibility is an issue. Don’t promise something and not deliver, especially when it’s marketed as a feature for devices that people will buy.

 

[Kiwamu]

This just shows. Don't buy a product what the devs promise to deliver, but what actually is available on day one.

 

[Godspeed8230]

The only good thing about Apple intelligence is Apple is putting better hardware in devices than they probably want to to support AI.

I don't think this is necessarily a good thing. First of all, they cost more, which is OK I guess for the premium line up but I do not need my iPhone SE to run Apple "Intelligence". It could have had a reasonable price tag without the bells and whistles of Apple AI and I would have paid the price but right now the price of the 16E is just too high and I will not buy it, especially since those features are delayed indefinitely.

 

[Moukee]

I think they've realized that the hardware is not nearly capable and this will be a HUGE problem. They have promised it to work on iPhone 15 Pro and newer. 16 is sold with it as a main feature. So, if it never materializes and people feel like they've been tricked, that will hurt Apple a lot.

It didn't help that they gimped on RAM (and to a certain extent storage) again. Google played it relatively safe and put 16 GB of RAM in the Pixel 9 Pro. That makes so much more sense as no one really knows which features require how much RAM in iteration X.

But no, Apple had to stick to the bare minimum of 8 GB again, killing background apps when generating a tiny Emoji in a messaging app with Apple Intelligence. My 16 Pro chokes so hard sometimes just creating an Emoji ("Genmoji") that it feels like a dirt cheap ($100) Android phone at that moment.

 

[Stuwil]

Yeah that is right.
The next question would be: why did he play along?

He must have realized that Apple Maps was not ready for rollout - so why did he agree to roll it out?

Yet if it was clear that this would only be used as a pretense to get rid of him, there must have been other things he could have done to prevent this? Or - if truly unavoidable - leave before the brouhaha erupts.

Did he not see it coming? Then maybe he was not as smart as people think.

Did he underestimate the issue and flak he would receive? Then maybe he has no people smarts.

Either way you look at it, something is not adding up.

Because ultimately these decisions are taking from above.
So for example maybe collectively the senior board members decided they no longer wanted to rely on google maps as the default option & wanted less google integration.
So they decided to build Apple Maps but when things went sour they put out an apology.
However what has since came to light is the disagreements between Jony Ive & Scot forstall so where probably looking for a way to remove said issue

 

[Stuwil]

It didn't help that they gimped on RAM (and to a certain extent storage) again. Google played it relatively safe and put 16 GB of RAM in the Pixel 9 Pro. That makes so much more sense as no one really knows which features require how much RAM in iteration X.

But no, Apple had to stick to the bare minimum of 8 GB again, killing background apps when generating a tiny Emoji in a messaging app with Apple Intelligence. My 16 Pro chokes so hard sometimes just creating an Emoji ("Genmoji") that it feels like a dirt cheap ($100) Android phone at that moment.

They also gimped out on ram as a sort of way to force you to upgrade.
Because if they put 16gb ram into their phones right now then it’s very unlikely that most would feel the need to upgrade them because Apple could not use the ram excuse as to why your phone can’t run certain software

 

[Jensend]

of course I did. But what you said goes back to what I said: the author does not understand LLMs. What I mean with that is that you do not show work-in-progress. And Apple has, by most accounts, not done that. They usually polish to almost an extreme where others would not go. With LLMs still hallucinating and eating resources on mobiles, e.g. battery, optimization and other tweaks are very necessary.
The whole "they prooooomised" BS does not fly in my opinion, as other companies do not only much worse, they do not care how polished the product is, how long it lives and how the data is used (in terms of safety aspects). I take all of that polishment over "delivering immediately". And it does not do Apple any harm if it takes a little longer. The average consumer (which we are not here, sitting and discussing this) does not give a damn about any of this - and therefore it will not harm Apple. I look forward to the launch of something much better than anticipated over something bad and rushed.

Nope, you still aren’t getting it. Gruber has called out other companies many times for posting aspirational videos and proof of concepts, and praised Apple for not doing the same. Gruber is not complaining because the feature is late. He’s not saying that Apple should rush the features out. He is just saying that they shouldn’t have announced the features in the first place. Apple should have waited until the features were nearly ready before announcing them.
GRUBER AGREES WITH YOU.

 

[Lioness~]

I think the article puts a perspective on the way Apple has been run for many years now.

Steve had a vision and a culture that was very successful given the circumstances. In the early 2000s before the iPod, nobody gave a damn about Apple and their products, except maybe their 0.001% market share of users. Then suddenly the iPod comes out, then the iPod touch, and then the iPhone, iPad, and finally MacBook Air. He had the confidence and personality to not only introduce these in front of a live audience on stage, but to go in depth about how they’re going to change your life for the better.

Now we have Tim. Tim came from the financial operations part of the company. Tim only cares about numbers and maximizing profits. Not only that, but Tim doesn’t know anything about technology, which is where the “bull ****” comes from. If you don’t know anything about technology or innovation, then why are you leading a tech company? Go back to the bean counting office where you came from and stay there. Steve Ballmer barely knew tech too, and look where he ended up — Gates was the one that put Microsoft over the top.

Tim is a fool if he doesn’t resign from this; and Apple’s board of directors are fools if they don’t sack the guy before the next WWDC event. Enough is enough of this bean counting first, “milking the cow” culture at Apple. Perhaps after Tim is sacked, he can buy a team in LA like Ballmer did… Perhaps the Lakers or the Angels.

Seeing Tim doing his things since Steve died, and shareholders loving him and the cash he brought to them, made me feel sicker and disgusting the company more and more.
I have just been waiting for this, when it will bite back on them. Apple-karma to pay out.

While Tim have run the company, he lost the best designers too. I bet that was not Steve's intention.
Design is a lot more then the look of things - it's the very form that things can grow in - the actual foundation.

So today Apple is a lifeless greedy compamy without soul, and without vision.

Personally I'm not gonna buy something new Apple for awhile, avoiding investing more in the company.
Might go for a refurb iPad maybe next year, and see how it goes with the company.
If it's wise to invest any further in their products down the line, or seriously check out what else there's on the market - on what was the before 'dark' side - that might become the light side in a few years and Apple the rotten greedy company.

And then Siri, the dum#bhead to handle AI 😱

 

[JoeSilver]

LOL, John Gruber, whoever you are, relax. Nobody cares of this mistake of yours. And you shouldn't attach your sense of self worth to this, anyway.

 

[AndiG]

OK, so my point is valid. AFTER NVidia, Apple is the ONLY AI competition. Yes, no?
Digits of course I know, looks promising - not launched, not seen, not anything. We will see.

Don‘t know - what your point is. Apple is last century. It was the leader in smartphones and Safari changed the whole Html world, but it missed all the following disrupting changes. Cloud and AI. That it also missed the whole automotive thing is just another miss where Android kicked in heavily. And while it was the leader in Smartphones, the lead in all other key areas was taken by Microsoft and Google - and the AI thing could make Android finally take the lead also in the smartphone business.

Refining Jobs products just isn‘t enough.

 

[Takeo Apple]

Don‘t know - what you point is. Apple is last century. It was the leader in smartphones and Safari changed the while Html world, but it missed all the following disrupting changes. Cloud and AI. That it also missed the whole automotive thing is just another miss where Android kicked in heavily. And while it was the leader in Smartphones, the lead in all other key areas was taken by Microsoft and Google - and the AI thing could make Android finally take the lead also in the smartphone business.

Refining Jobs products just isn‘t enough.

wow you are so far awar from reality it is difficult to have a conversation with someone that misinformed. Maybe check who the only AI competitor is VS NVidia - you will see only Apple has the hardware and the potential.
Apple did not "miss" on anything, they are not a B2B company.

 

[thadoggfather]

It is not Tim that needs to go, it is Craig Federighi. He is the one in charge of software.

And Tim is in charge of Craig. He fired Forstall for less.

 

[Expos of 1969]

This is a marketing department fail, not a fail by Craig's team. I've worked in big tech and marketing departments always want to pull crap like this whilst the actual developers are screaming "no, it's not ready!". If heads roll over this, it shouldn't be on the development side.

If I was the CEO, I would certainly want to review the marketing campaign of what they feel is a very important product launch prior to it going public. Yet another example of Cook not having a grip on what is actually happening or even more damning, seemingly not caring.

 

[Pezimak]

Dude. I work with LLM. I watched the video when it came out. It is a networked cluster over Thunderbolt which is a damn needle hole. Mac Studio M3 Ultra does not have that. Some people already deployed DeepSeek on it and it works 10x faster than in the video by default. So? What is the point you are making?
Show me a PC or ANY other hardware that you could use today to do this. Even Nvidia, show me - how much would it cost to deploy DeepSeek at Q4 at least?

So you are still going to suggest people replace NVIDIA AI specific hardware and OS with the Apple Studio for 15k which they’ll have to install Linux on? You think Microsoft is going to run ChatGPT on it? It may well run faster then the M2 Ultra chip, but it’s hardly a replacement for NVIDIA AI server clusters is it. That seemed to be the point you were making and I questioned it.

Also as someone else has already posted, this exists:

NVIDIA DGX Spark

A Grace Blackwell AI supercomputer on your desk.

www.nvidia.com

Also Thunderbolt 5 caps out at 120GBP/s, currently NVIDIA ConnectX can go up to 200GBP/s. And whilst NVIDIA is constantly updating it’s AI platforms, why would you as a large operator purchase batches of the Apple Studio that you do not know when it’ll be updated again as you have no roadmap?

So in what way do you see the Apple M3 Ultra Studio replacing NVIDIA dedicated AI hardware? In what environment is it applicable?

 

[attila]

I don't believe that Tim Cook alone is the problem here. I believe that what's truly rotten are the shareholders.

 

[attila]

Yes, quite misleading. They seem so far behind everyone else. They tried too hard with smoke and mirrors to convince everyone they were catching up, but now it seems they’re falling flat on their face.

There's no catching up with the slop that's AI. Apple could have won the race by just not competing.

 

[Velli]

Nvidia doesn‘t deliver LLMs, if that is what you‘re associating with AI. But have a deeper look into e.g. „physical AI“ and robotics. Take a dive into NVidia „Cosmos“ which is OSS by the way https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/ai/cosmos/

Have a look at the role of CUDA when developing AI and MLP.

Yes it is foremost hardware you need to train and run AI solutions, but by banning NVIDIA from its platforms, it also banned AI development. Only one reason why I switched a lot of my workload to Linux. By the way as a Mac user, you‘ll loce the native Gnome experience on Linux.

And if we talk about the future and the Mac Studio with 512GB for $15K, do yourself a favor and look at NVidia Digits. An AI supercomputer with 128GB RAM for $3K. All workflows in the future will replaced by AI agents, AI in video and photo editing. One may say the Mac Studio is targeted at a different audience, but in terms of AI capabilities it is dust.

Btw. It is smaller compared to the Mac Mini - and stackable …

https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/project-digits/

I get your point. It’s still detached from making a promise they can’t keep, which is the real issue.

 

[antonrg]

By the time they get these features properly functioning, the 16 will be too slow to chew through them. I see it at the very earliest being ready at the end fo 17 year cycle. iPhone 18 will probably be the device to actually do what they've advertised for 16.

 

[Pezimak]

I get your point. It’s still detached from making a promise they can’t keep, which is the real issue.

Yes that is the issue at the end of the day, discussing the hardware merely proves that capable AI hardware exists for the current models, and Apple can utilise them, which leads to even less of an excuse for them to promise features on stage and then don’t deliver them. Thank goodness they never publicly announced a car or whatever it is they were working on for cars!

 

[attila]

Tell that to Boeing.

Fun fact: bad management can exist anywhere, regardless of their hiring process.

 

[LittleChief]

He's not wrong. This is a Maps+ levels of debacle. They've sold an entire generation of iPhones on a feature set that won't exist until 2026. Attention to detail and actually shipping (excellent) product have always been the core anchors. Don't lose them.

 

[lysingur]

wow you are so far awar from reality it is difficult to have a conversation with someone that misinformed. Maybe check who the only AI competitor is VS NVidia - you will see only Apple has the hardware and the potential.
Apple did not "miss" on anything, they are not a B2B company.

They're a B2C company all right and they failed to deliver to the C too.

 

[Dave245]

And Tim is in charge of Craig. He fired Forstall for less.

Craig isn’t in charge of AI

 

[Ctrlos]

Ultimately this is just delayed or cancelled software, announced ahead of time. This happens very frequently, especially in the games industry. It took them 18 years to finally make a sequel to Shenmue 2 and when Okami 2 finally comes out next year it will have been 20 years since the cliffhanger ending to the first game!

These were just games. Developing an LLM without compromising a privacy-centric business model is a lot more difficult. If its 2044 and Apple still haven't released Siri 2 then people will have something to complain about. In the meantime go find a Blizzard forum and ask about Starcraft: Ghost.