The other problem is that "Siri" is "Siri", and LLM's are, well, LLM's. While they can interact, one should not be the base for other. Siri is 100% factual. LLM's are not.
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John Gruber Says 'Something is Rotten' at Apple
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Could it be that the main difference between the hardware and software sides is that the former had to come into the office and the latter "worked" from home? Just like everywhere else, everyone must work in the office.
Unfortunately for Apple Inc. it seems they're about to have that ass handed to them…
Working in an office doesn't automatically turn the work into quality.
This. As a European I also feel doubly slighted, as the iPhone 17 will probably come out before I get any usable AI features on my iPhone 16, let alone useful. Coupled with the tariff nonsense on the horizon my iPhone might be the last iPhone for me... and I say this with pain in my heart.
Get it together Apple!! Make a comeback!
Why do you think they don't come in? I have a cousin that is a software developer at Apple (not with iOS), and he goes to the spaceship campus every day.
If the computer doesn't do what it was advertised to do, yeah, he should return it. Why are you blaming the customer? It is his right to return something he doesn't want or if it doesn't live up to his expectations. The fault lies solely on Apple and Tim Cook. Tim Cook needs to go. He has gotten too caught up in the "mystic" of Apple and forgot to do the hard work.
Daring Fireball's John Gruber today shared some strongly-worded comments about Apple's delayed personalized Siri features. Gruber is a well-known Apple pundit who has been writing about the company for more than two decades.
In a blog post titled "Something Is Rotten in the State of Cupertino," Gruber said Apple's credibility has been "damaged" by the delay:This obviously isn't the first time that Apple has failed to deliver. However, Gruber said other examples like the canceled AirPower charging mat "tended to be around the edges," whereas he believes that generative AI is going to be "big" and "important."
It's not the delay by itself that bothers Gruber. He said the true "fiasco" here is that Apple "pitched a story" last year "that wasn't true":Gruber said the personalized Siri features announced during the WWDC keynote last year were merely conceptual, and therefore "********":He was even more explicit here:Gruber said Apple's repeated unwillingness or inability to demo the personalized Siri features in action since WWDC last year "should have set off blinding red flashing lights and deafening klaxon alarms" in his head that something was wrong.
Gruber went as far as saying that Apple's culture of excellence could be at risk if this situation is not handled correctly within the company:The full post is worth a read.
Article Link: John Gruber Says 'Something is Rotten' at Apple
Love him or hate him, Steve Jobs would never have allowed this cluster**** of a launch
Apple watched the Amazon demo last month of new Alexa capabilities and realized they had nothing to compete with them in the pipeline. Actually Siri is a joke and Apple has lost or given up on many markets like home automation. Tim did a great job navigating covid and china but if he retires there seems to be nobody teed up to replace him (my vote is Craig).
100%. There will be a class action lawsuit against Apple with a large payout. I consider myself fairly "Apple informed", and I even bought into the vaporware of Apple Intelligence. For me, I wanted the smarter Siri, not the emoji or or picture generator. And, I feel like I was sold a bill of goods by Apple. I could have bought the iPhone 14 or 15 and have the same features that I currently use. I don't care about the camera button or the always on screen. How hard is it to wake the phone up or ask Siri for the time (when it works). Apple misrepresented the iPhone 16 for the sales, and it will have to face the music. Heads should roll for this, starting at the top.
My fear is that Apple realized that the current A series chips are barely able to run the new siri. So they take a year more, scrap it from the 15 Pro and only reserve it to the 16 Pro and subsequent models.
If Only Steve Jobs Were Still Here (OMG I can't believe I said that - I'll put a buck in the swear jar!) he might have held his ground and not got in to the "AI" snake oil business. Apple could always license ChatGPT or something if they got it wrong.
Don't get me wrong - the tech behind so-called "AI" (LLMs, diffusion, neural processing etc.) is important for the future but the current crop of consumer applications don't seem to be fit for anything more than a "bit of fun". It's like early attempts to play jerky, grainy video on 8-bit computers - definitely a sign of "things to come" but not, at the time, remotely useful. What's worrying is the current "Emperor's new clothes" syndrome where people are pushing ahead and using it anyway despite the fact that it is horribly unreliable and has the potential to cause all sorts of social problems.
It's telling that everybody - not just Apple - are playing the same game of rolling out AI "features" whether customers want them or not, making users jump through hoops to disable them, then stealthily re-enabling them with every update.
It also seems like current AI is a bit over-ambitious, and could be used better as "a second pair of eyes" rather than pretinding that it can do things that it can't.
I don't want AI to categorise mail if I can't rely on the result and might have an important personal message filed under "clutter" or something. Now, if AI could scan my existing *junk* folder and flag up any messages that might be false positives that would be something. Or, if I read a message, maybe AI could put a "Move to Invoices?" button to help me sort messages as I read them, that would be great... but, no, it has to pretend that it is clever enough to know better than me, because that looks more impressive.
I don't want AI to summarise email messages and tell me that my relative has been euthanised (when they actually had their dog put down). It's not worth the 10 seconds of stress. There have been some "summaries" of news stories (not for discussion in this thread) that had the potential to cause riots.
When I search, I want to find an original source, not a possibly-hallucinated AI summary. Now, if AI could help narrow down tricky searches when asked to, that would be grest - but understanding context isn't an LLM's strong suit...
If I write code then "dumb" templates and auto-complete are enough to cut down on typing boilerplate. The time-consuming part is not churning out code, but checking and testing it afterwards. Where's the point on getting AI to write code if you can't rely on it without painstakingly checking it line-by-line? Again - wake me up when AI can help with checking code that I write.
We've had automatic code-writing software and other "rapid application development" gimmicks since at least 1981 - but they fail to take account of the adage "the last 10% of the work takes 90% of the time" - they rip through the first 90% and leave you with something rough and inadequate which is a major pain to get finished - at worst needing to be re-written completely because the RAD system lacks support for some essential feature.
If I'm writing a document, banging words down is the easiest and quickest part - it's checking and refining that takes the time, which you have to do even more scrupulously with AI-written cobblers. Plus, of course, doing the research - where AI might be able to help with the seaching but can't be trusted to automate it. If you struggle with writing - well, heck, its the 2020s, record a podcast or a video of you presenting your ideas as interpretative dance or a rap number - that's what the media revolution was supposed to be about!
I think you underestimate the value of a really well written limerick. Don’t text and drive.
I sense lots of class action lawsuits.
Gruber lays out the facts and it's clear that Apple has been lying all along about how far behind that they are with GenAI.
It's probably time for Cook to go soon.
He's been an incredible steward of the Steve Jobs product strategy but GenAI hugely changes things and I'm not sure if Apple is ready for that future and TC is probably not the person to steer them through it, as we're entering a new era in tech (or maybe we already have with the advent of ChatGPT kicking off the race back in 2022).
If anything, Apple will need a huge reset with their developers, as good luck making all of this on device GenAI work with developers who are more or less hostile to Apple (I'm not even mentioning Vision Pro).
Else I sense that they'll end up being like Sony - they'll make very nice beautifully designed but inessential devices with which to experience someone else's AI stack on.
Gruber lays out the facts and it's clear that Apple has been lying all along about how far behind that they are with GenAI.
It's probably time for Cook to go soon.
He's been an incredible steward of the Steve Jobs product strategy but GenAI hugely changes things and I'm not sure if Apple is ready for that future and TC is probably not the person to steer them through it, as we're entering a new era in tech (or maybe we already have with the advent of ChatGPT kicking off the race back in 2022).
If anything, Apple will need a huge reset with their developers, as good luck making all of this on device GenAI work with developers who are more or less hostile to Apple (I'm not even mentioning Vision Pro).
Else I sense that they'll end up being like Sony - they'll make very nice beautifully designed but inessential devices with which to experience someone else's AI stack on.
I think the conversation is going a bit too gloomy. Today's time all these large corporations are sitting on pile of cash and can manouver the tide itself let alone the ship. So just relax.
Because we all see the significant bugs in iOS. When I purchased my 16 max pro, that stupid camera button didn't work and crashed the phone. Even as an Apple proponent, I literally told people not to buy the phone. Siri still stops responding even with the latest update. We all see the poor quality coming out of Apple.
Good for your cousin, but there was an article published a couple of months ago about people complaining about being encouraged to come into the office. Not sure if it was MacRumors or another similar site.
Great that this is out now.
The last ten years of Tim Cook have extinguished all excitement I once had for Apple. Love their devices, being somewhat locked in on software, but will only replace when absolutely necessary because broken or close to broken, fingers crossed for many years of not having to care about Apple with my M1 MBA and iPad Pro and iPhone 15 Pro.
It actually really feels good to not have to care. Apple have so much money, they will probably never go out of business, so there will always be replacements, that’s the only thing I want from them at this point…
The last ten years of Tim Cook have extinguished all excitement I once had for Apple. Love their devices, being somewhat locked in on software, but will only replace when absolutely necessary because broken or close to broken, fingers crossed for many years of not having to care about Apple with my M1 MBA and iPad Pro and iPhone 15 Pro.
It actually really feels good to not have to care. Apple have so much money, they will probably never go out of business, so there will always be replacements, that’s the only thing I want from them at this point…
I kick myself for falling for it and buying the 16PM with the majority reason being the AI promise.
No matter the future features, this phone will disintegrate in my hands before my next upgrade.
No matter the future features, this phone will disintegrate in my hands before my next upgrade.
Now, all this Apple is lagging behind in the AI game, just because they don't have an LLM on par with the best LLMs out there is a bit tiresome. 1) The LLMs are mostly a parlor trick at the moment, that can be both entertaining and useful, but are far from reliable, and 2) Apple have been in the AI game for a long, long time, but mostly focused on the Machine Learning aspect of it (and whatever they were doing in Project Titan).
Also, Apple under Tim Cook has risen to the top, being consistently the most valuable company in the world (or very close to the top), so they are doing most things right.
But...for all companies and others: "You're only as good as your last big hit."
Apple last BIG hit, IMHO, was the transition to M* chips for the Mac, and that's going on 5 years now, so they should be up for another soon...
I also agree with Gruber on one important point, it was a HUGE mistake of Apple to not only tease a better, more personalized, context-aware Siri now, which in itself would be bad, if they cannot deliver. But then to actively advertising it when they cannot show it working in any form, is a potential disaster.
I still think Apple can come back from this and turn it into a victory, long term. But if they cannot show off a personalized Siri, at least in the Level 1 one-on-one demo by Apple reps on Apple controlled hardware, during the coming WWDC, at the latest, they could face a long term loss of credibility and good-will.
Also, Apple under Tim Cook has risen to the top, being consistently the most valuable company in the world (or very close to the top), so they are doing most things right.
But...for all companies and others: "You're only as good as your last big hit."
Apple last BIG hit, IMHO, was the transition to M* chips for the Mac, and that's going on 5 years now, so they should be up for another soon...
I also agree with Gruber on one important point, it was a HUGE mistake of Apple to not only tease a better, more personalized, context-aware Siri now, which in itself would be bad, if they cannot deliver. But then to actively advertising it when they cannot show it working in any form, is a potential disaster.
I still think Apple can come back from this and turn it into a victory, long term. But if they cannot show off a personalized Siri, at least in the Level 1 one-on-one demo by Apple reps on Apple controlled hardware, during the coming WWDC, at the latest, they could face a long term loss of credibility and good-will.
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Have you used one of the "competing" AI's? (I put competing in quotes because Siri doesn't belong in the same category.) I personally use Grok3, and it is incredibly useful when I am trying to gather information. It is like talking to the Star Trek computer, and it explains the reason for its suggestions. It is really what Siri should have been 5 years ago if Apple had bothered to invest resources into it. Isn't it just dumbfounding that Apple sitting on that pile of cash doesn't have the resources (or it is poor management?) to invest in and continue development on every product at the same time. It is always hoping from one update to another. "Oh, it might be time to start developing a new Studio Display after 4 years." Given the pace of advancement of AI, Apple will not be able to catch up. Apple is still planning its AI server farm.
The so called "Apple Intelligence" should have been just highly optimized backends for open source platforms that run AI models locally, such as Comfy UI. But they decided to drop NVIDIA many years ago, and not only that, but they also dropped all standards (no Vulkan, OpenGL and OpenCL become deprecated, etc...), and they went 100% for the total custom Metal. Fine, now pay the price: you abandon the standards, therefore the researchers abandon you, and you cannot longer compete with other platforms (Oh, and yes, I'm a Mac developer, just very angry of how Apple turned the best commercial UNIX system into a big iPad with closed APIs).
What's rotten at Apple, is their discriminatory recruitment practices, they haven't recruited on meoitocricity, for at least the last 5 years, it's all about ticking box's, that's why excellence is a foreign word these days, to most employees at Apple 😡
Daring Fireball's John Gruber today shared some strongly-worded comments about Apple's delayed personalized Siri features. Gruber is a well-known Apple pundit who has been writing about the company for more than two decades.
In a blog post titled "Something Is Rotten in the State of Cupertino," Gruber said Apple's credibility has been "damaged" by the delay:This obviously isn't the first time that Apple has failed to deliver. However, Gruber said other examples like the canceled AirPower charging mat "tended to be around the edges," whereas he believes that generative AI is going to be "big" and "important."
It's not the delay by itself that bothers Gruber. He said the true "fiasco" here is that Apple "pitched a story" last year "that wasn't true":Gruber said the personalized Siri features announced during the WWDC keynote last year were merely conceptual, and therefore "********":He was even more explicit here:Gruber said Apple's repeated unwillingness or inability to demo the personalized Siri features in action since WWDC last year "should have set off blinding red flashing lights and deafening klaxon alarms" in his head that something was wrong.
Gruber went as far as saying that Apple's culture of excellence could be at risk if this situation is not handled correctly within the company:The full post is worth a read.
Article Link: John Gruber Says 'Something is Rotten' at Apple
All you have to do is look at their presentations, they're cringe worthy