John Gruber Says 'Something is Rotten' at Apple

[Mrkevinfinnerty]

The lack of standards has been obvious for years.

How many of Apple's services are a market leader or considered 'best in class'?

 

[Javert24601]

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 are a bit tiresome. 1) The LLM 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 mot 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. 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, on the coming WWDC, they could face a long term loss of credibility and good-will.

Sorry, I respectfully and completely disagree with you on the AI part. I was just like you and thought AI was a parlor trick. However, this past weekend I used Grok3 to provide recommendations for ground cover in part of my yard. It provided options, pros, and cons. I added several parameters and asked Grok3 to incorporate them. I then challenged those recommendations with other options, and it provided a reasoned comparison as to why those options may or may not work. The best analogy I can make is the Star Trek computer when you are making inquiries and asking it to hypothesize. Was it useful? 100% Was it perfect? 90% because there was some things it is not capable of right now, such as seed availability, which did affect which option I picked.

I hope that I am wrong, but I do not believe Apple can come back from this. AI evolution is proceeding just that fast. And, Apple is still at the planning stage for an AI server farm.....

 

[urtules]

So many comments! John has very high standards that's why I like him.

 

[harmonthe3rd]

It is time that I voice my strong opinion in relation to all the dismay. Let's start with the simple "failed to deliver." The AI bandwagon is getting ridiculously out of hand. Nvidia the so-called leader in AI is down $600 billion dollars from its high at the time of writing this. What exactly has Apple failed to deliver on the AI front? Since when is it a problem to slow the release of features that aren't working or simply aren't ready. Either way people seem to complain. Grubers complete arrogance in the field of AI is remarkable. We are talking about generative AI and LLM. The term AI is being throwing around at an alarming rate, by people that couldn't explain the first thing about what AI is or what those in the field are trying to achieve. The hate with Tim is concerning on many levels. He took Apple from a $40b a year company to just shy of $400b. If you're a shareholder you are not complaining. He's kept product prices at constant levels. An iPad that cost you $499 when released in 2010 is $349 now. A Mac mini that cost $499 in 2005 cost $599 now. MacBook Pro 17in in 2006 $2799. MacBook Pro 16in cost $2499. I can go on. Steve and Tim both charged heavy increases on memory and hard drives. I don't see anyone recalling that? All I see is "I miss Steve" post. If you don't like the price don't buy it, easiest thing in the world. Do I want the Mac Studio M3 Ultra? Yes. Is it overkill for what I need? Yes. Did I buy it? No. I bought the Mac Studio M4 Max instead. Does everything I need and want, at half the cost. If I didn't want it, like it, or thought it was too expensive I wouldn't buy it. I personally feel MacRumors should add verified purchases to anyone complaining about Apple products, because I feel many don't use the products they complain about. My apologies for the long winded opinion, however I needed to say something about all this negativity. Last thing, please stop complaining about what AI isn't doing or what Apple isn't doing with AI. AI as of now is a buzzword. Clickbait. Please use the phrase generative AI or LLM.

 

[Javert24601]

Working in an office doesn't automatically turn the work into quality.

I don't disagree, but it would increase employee productivity and certainly increase collaboration and accountability, so it is more likely to deliver better quality (no software or hardware is bug free).

 

[urtules]

Are we witnessing the end of the years-long tradition of Gruber interviewing Apple executives at WWDC?

Is this first time Gruber critical to Apple?

 

[urtules]

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.

That's an interesting thought, I certainly think working from home is good for employee but it puts certain constraints and makes achieving great results more difficult.

 

[Mrkevinfinnerty]

Jason Snell and Myke Hurley have been critical of Apple Intelligence for a long time. Glad John Gruber is finally joining the party. We know Apple employees read his blog.

Honestly this isn’t even about AI. It’s about Apple announcing and marketing something that they had to know was nowhere near close to being ready to ship. And the stuff that they did ship is nowhere good enough. And this isn’t some charging accessory; this is a major OS feature that is being marketed with all their new hardware (“Built For Apple Intelligence”).

For sure. The marketing around the new devices makes this much worse.

 

[Etc_]

It is time that I voice my strong opinion in relation to all the dismay. Let's start with the simple "failed to deliver." The AI bandwagon is getting ridiculously out of hand. Nvidia the so-called leader in AI is down $600 billion dollars from its high at the time of writing this. What exactly has Apple failed to deliver on the AI front? Since when is it a problem to slow the release of features that aren't working or simply aren't ready. Either way people seem to complain. Grubers complete arrogance in the field of AI is remarkable. We are talking about generative AI and LLM. The term AI is being throwing around at an alarming rate, by people that couldn't explain the first thing about what AI is or what those in the field are trying to achieve. The hate with Tim is concerning on many levels. He took Apple from a $40b a year company to just shy of $400b. If you're a shareholder you are not complaining. He's kept product prices at constant levels. An iPad that cost you $499 when released in 2010 is $349 now. A Mac mini that cost $499 in 2005 cost $599 now. MacBook Pro 17in in 2006 $2799. MacBook Pro 16in cost $2499. I can go on. Steve and Tim both charged heavy increases on memory and hard drives. I don't see anyone recalling that? All I see is "I miss Steve" post. If you don't like the price don't buy it, easiest thing in the world. Do I want the Mac Studio M3 Ultra? Yes. Is it overkill for what I need? Yes. Did I buy it? No. I bought the Mac Studio M4 Max instead. Does everything I need and want, at half the cost. If I didn't want it, like it, or thought it was too expensive I wouldn't buy it. I personally feel MacRumors should add verified purchases to anyone complaining about Apple products, because I feel many don't use the products they complain about. My apologies for the long winded opinion, however I needed to say something about all this negativity. Last thing, please stop complaining about what AI isn't doing or what Apple isn't doing with AI. AI as of now is a buzzword. Clickbait. Please use the phrase generative AI or LLM.

You and many others in this thread either didn’t read or didn’t understand the point of the criticism. It’s not (primarily) about Apple’s AI capabilities; it’s about showcasing something that clearly doesn’t work the way they presented it.


Also, please use paragraphs in your post for better readability.

 

[clg82]

He’s right. Apple’s been killing it at hardware, but there are some major changes that need to be made on the software side of the company.

Killing it in hardware lol? It's the same phone every iteration!

 

[kamyk35]

They sold the iPhone 16 Pro based on AI and sod all has really materialised so far, nothing really dedicated for the 16 Pro when even the 15 Pro gets pretty much every feature now.

They sold the 16 Pro on a lie and delays. Hell, the 16 Pro isn't even finished yet software wise, and we are already halfway through this phone's life cycle!

Tim needs to go along with all the bean counters.

You're not entirely accurate and the 15 Pro was always supposed to give you all the AI features.
However, Gruber is right, they did lie about this part of Siri capabilities, to sell more phones,

 

[xmarcuswildx]

Yeah, it’s Tim Cook.

 

[kamyk35]

My pure guess/speculation: Apple was following what other companies were doing with AI, and suddenly realized that AI wasn't nearly as advanced as everyone was touting. Many companies straight up got caught faking their AI results (Devon anyone?) and many other companies AI results are so bad they're unusable (Gemini anyone? Has anyone actually gotten accurate information from Gemini?)

Consumers realize the ruse is up and just aren't interested anymore.

Doesn't change the fact that Apple lied and they are getting further and further behind generally, the cutting edge excellence culture, is long dead at Apple 😏

 

[attila]

That's an interesting thought, I certainly think working from home is good for employee but it puts certain constraints and makes achieving great results more difficult.

Working with hardware is difficult, or almost impossible from home since you need the right tools, but software development is mostly about focusing on tasks for hours on end and only needs a computer and screen. Where you work on software doesn't affect the quality.

Some would argue that if you don't commute to a buzzy office for two hours every day, you get more time to focus on software

 

[Mitthrawnuruodo]

Sorry, I respectfully and completely disagree with you on the AI part. I was just like you and thought AI was a parlor trick. However, this past weekend I used Grok3 to provide recommendations for ground cover in part of my yard. It provided options, pros, and cons. I added several parameters and asked Grok3 to incorporate them. I then challenged those recommendations with other options, and it provided a reasoned comparison as to why those options may or may not work. The best analogy I can make is the Star Trek computer when you are making inquiries and asking it to hypothesize. Was it useful? 100% Was it perfect? 90% because there was some things it is not capable of right now, such as seed availability, which did affect which option I picked.

I hope that I am wrong, but I do not believe Apple can come back from this. AI evolution is proceeding just that fast. And, Apple is still at the planning stage for an AI server farm.....

I did say it could be both entertaining and useful.

I've been using LLMs extensively in making lecture content for my students for the last year or so. It's been helpful, especially condensing stuff into bullet-points, and making (the 1. version) of code examples. And it has been VERY useful for that. I think I - on average - have used about half the time I'd have to use without the LLMs help, for each lecture. However, it's not like the LLMs have done my work for me. Most of the time the code examples (in particular) are riddled with errors and inconsistencies, and I've spend a lot of time correcting that to get good examples for my students.

For this I've (mostly) used Chat-GPT, the $20/month paid version, and briefly Deepseek (before it got it's breakthrough and was plagued with "server busy" messages), and also occasionally tried Claude and Gemini. I've also tried Copilot in VSCode (with Chat-GPT). All of them have their strength and weaknesses, but - IMHO - neither is close to 100% "useful" at the moment... maybe 50%?

 

[xmarcuswildx]

The Apple of the past would have held people accountable like with the iOS 6 maps debacle.

I’ve said it many times before but I’ll say it again: they just wanted the stock bump from last year that all companies were getting when mentioning “AI” in their stockholder meetings.

The last few years have been just carrot and stick type stuff for shareholders. Year of year yeah they continue to sell devices we get, but this years 16 pro max (yeah I bought one lol) wasn’t worth the upgrade. I was *almost* going to get a p9pXL but didn’t feel like doing an ecosystem switch.

Now with the big lie of Siri, that of which I called on Reddit and was downvoted into oblivion by the fan boy club.

Face it. Tim Cook as ceo is no longer useful. The “we think you’re gonna love it” has to go.

New vision, new phrases.

 

[kamyk35]

They put that PM person in charge of Siri a month or 2 ago. What has been transpiring over the past couple weeks is the outcome of the work of that person, they have known about it for a while, hence the change back then.
Grubers “PhD knowledge of Apple” (that is his claim) should have highlighted this months ago, he’s just riding the wave now.

Federichi is in charge of software, he should be the first to go, he's way past his sell by date!

 

[XboxEvolved]

I remember it took Tim Cook all but 2 weeks to fire HUGE superstars in the company for missteps in retail but above all Apple Maps.

Apple needs to make a big stink about firing people and replacing them with better. It’s also probably time to give John Ternus a bigger role as they begin to transition him into the CEO role eventually.

I don’t particularly see the slow of AI to to the masses as a bad thing at all, but if AI is your thing yeah Apple’s is pretty embarrassing.

 

[goshya]

Yes, thank you. Good man. Great article. Finally someone addressing what desperately needed to be said.

 

[Mr_Ed]

Exactly if you're so desperate for the wonders of AI just install the chatGPT app. So sick of the AI hype. I work in IT, and we have so many clients asking us to implement AI, when I ask them what they are trying to achieve or solve, they can't answer the question. Bloody hype train.

Apple were too ambitious to try to get this rolled out in such a short amount of time. So many people complaining on the forums that Apple release half baked software, now Apple say we need time to get it right, people aren't happy with that either.

I saw a guy say he was going to return a MacBook Air the other day after this announcement because Siri won't be that good. You're going to return one of the best computers you can get with a killer OS because Siri doesn't do what you want it to do?

I feel like comments along these lines really miss the reasons behind a lot of the criticism. I have no great desire to engage with any of the AI features they have promised, though I would certainly love to have a Siri that is capable of useful actions within my device instead of the glorified “Eliza” knock-off we’ve had all these years.

To my eyes, Apple was a company that prioritized my day-to-day and minute-to-minute user experience in their decision-making across all software and hardware layers. This is how they turned out products that felt, and really were objectively superior to their competition. I also saw them as acting with integrity. Their track record was not perfect (no one’s is) but I at least felt like they did not set out to deliberately deceive me.

Here we are now, thirty-something years after I bought my first Apple product, and their mobile devices feel like they are constantly fighting me. So many little things on a regular basis. And to top it off, they have been announcing features that not everyone in the company believes they can even deliver, and using those features as marketing tools to sell devices. And they are going as far as to force your hand by disregarding your choice to turn the features off. These actions are just plain sleazy, and some of us are very disappointed that Apple is the company engaging in this behavior.

So saying “Apple takes longer to make sure is right” is OK, and they did jot have to announce the feature when they did. But announcing the feature is imminent, selling devices “built for” the feature, THEN saying, “just kidding!” is not the same thing, and it is really not OK. The criticism is absolutely warranted.

 

[RSB96]

the Vision Pro is technicall absolutely amazing.
Apple never promised a car.
CarPlay 2 is delayed, I suspect mostly because of the car manufacturers, not Apple.

Apple didn't promise a car, but millions have been spent developing it... to discard it.

Vision Pros are impressive at the hardware level, but I've never seen them as a "wow" factor of utility. A XXL display on the Mac? A cinema at home? For $3500, you can set up a cinema literally at home, with a big projector and a huge screen and good audio equipment, which you can enjoy with your loved ones. Relax in a lake? Relaxing with a big, heavy and warming thing is not very pleasant for me to relax for a while.

CarPlay 2 every day that passes seems more like an AirPower 2.0. Whose fault is it, the manufacturers? or knowing Apple, doesn't it have such a set of conditions and demands that manufacturers refuse to accept? Why not adopt the design seen in CarPlay 2 and the window management form in CarPlay 1, which is totally abandoned? Android Auto today looks fresher, is more customizable and works well in general terms.

In recent years, Apple's "peak" moment was 2020, with Apple Silicon. In fact, Macs are the only devices that are "exciting." Seeing that Mac mini, the super-thin iMac, the MacBooks that went back to what they should have always been and the Mac Studio... are amazing devices. The rest? They have been with minimal iterations for years.

For Apple to "excite" again, it needs:

1- Focus on software. What made it special is gone. It's getting more complex, it has quite a few inconsistencies at the design and UI level, the animations are not as perfect and fluid as before... it needs a design-level review (we'll see if it's true that it comes this year, they've been saying it for several years and nothing), that really unifies the UI in the different systems and looks more homogeneous and clean. It adds absurd features that I don't know why they aren't, like an Android-style clipboard, improves the functionality of windows on iPadOS... give the iPad freedom to fly, without putting macOS in, it doesn't need it, but it needs to get rid of certain iOS shackles...

2- Focus on design. Apple has always been a benchmark in design, and they're still attractive, but the longer and longer product iterations make it go 5/6 years without seeing anything new... and itˋs a lot of time. Do consistent things again. An iPad Air can't be fatter and heavier than an iPad Pro. Make a 4.5mm iPad (we've seen foldable with that thickness), and super lightweight, with a solid-state battery, which is really worthy of the word "Air." It doesn't make sense to call it Air now. That's one of the examples I can think of, but there are many more.

3- Take out some AR glasses. I think the way forward is the RayBan Meta and not the VR headsets.

4- Stop selling false hopes for future updates. It is not something new from Apple and it can be understood that certain functions do not arrive on day 1 (and that it is better that they arrive well and not badly), but the problem is that lately Apple abuses that and - spoiler - does not always go well, since as in this case, Siri LLM has exploded in its face, causing the company to lose credibility and seriousness. Be more transparent and more honest and less arrogant.

 

[skit911]

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

He’s right, they Lied to their customers about AI to sell the 16 series. It is ****ing ********.

I’ve been a staunch supporter of Apple for a very long time, but if they hold any AI features behind the new iPhone this year, I’ll be switching to Android, Windows and Google Home on my next upgrade.

 

[kamyk35]

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.

Hmmmm, and yet it's a proven fact that the information you gather is less than 40% reliable and Grok 3 is the least reliable out of the top AI chat bots.
So in reality not so useful.

 

[MacAttack2024]

Lolz forgot about this example. Steve Jobs would never!

And everyone always says that and it’s not just about Steve Jobs. It’s about having someone at the top that doesn’t allow excuses for not having the best product for the customers.


And it’s not really about the AI. We know everyone is overselling and it needs a lot of work. It was Apple blatantly advertising a product that was just a fever dream in a development PowerPoint presentation to sell product. That’s false advertising. Which would be expected from Xfinity or Geico. But very gross coming from Apple.

 

[DrJR]

This is what I was saying about Apple making its own customers feel like suckers.

We know what they think of their customers based on AI commercials.