John Gruber Says 'Something is Rotten' at Apple
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I don’t share Gruber’s rather dramatic thoughts I must say, but Apple has been a joke in the marketplace when it comes to Ai or smart assistant for over a decade now, I think that’s how long Siri has existed for? They just bought Siri and never bothered to improve on it since. And are now chasing from far far far behind all the AI leaders, indeed breaking their own rules and using an outside source for it, being i Chat GPT, despite spending years shouting about how secure they were blah blah blah, yes and that is exactly what has held them and Siri back.
Apple needs to grow up a bit on Ai, it’s either in or out, it needs to decide what it wants to do and actually invest long term, and improve in it long term. Not show some promised coming soon features at the start and leave it at that.
Announcing on stage features that it cannot deliver, just like that charger, makes them look amateurish.
Apple needs to grow up a bit on Ai, it’s either in or out, it needs to decide what it wants to do and actually invest long term, and improve in it long term. Not show some promised coming soon features at the start and leave it at that.
Announcing on stage features that it cannot deliver, just like that charger, makes them look amateurish.
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There is a difference Apple showed stuff that wasn’t even functional & just showed a concept video & tried to pass that off as coming soon. Yet they had no reality that it would actually work
Well...
Forstall was "kicked out" because of his mishandling of the Apple Maps rollout.
This was actually a pretty similar case.
Apple for years overpromised that they will have a world-class Maps app, able to take on "the other guys" - only to fall flat on their face with a really laughable rollout, lacking most key features and still full of bugs.
Everyone on that team must have seen this coming. Including Forstall.
So why roll it out? Terrible misjudgment.
Yet if he learnt his lesson from this disaster, then maybe he is the right man to get Apple software development back on track.
Apple software has been getting buggier and buggier over the years, with more and more first day software updates, which still had big bugs, and more and more features being pushed back again and again, or even scrapped.
Instead of focussing on fixing these issues, Apple deludes themselves with constant UI overhauls, turning macOS more and more into a mobile device OS - that no one asked for - except for Apple, so that people forget about the core software feature disasters...
AndiG
macrumors 65816
"Something Is Rotten in the State of Cupertino," - oh really? Something is rotten at Apple, since it turned from a „one more thing“ into a „the best iPhone ever“ company.
And, Mr Gruber, this hasn‘t happened yesterday. It was obvious since Apple missed the Cloud and dropped the AppleCar. The AI miss was immanent since Apple banned NVidia/CUDA from its platforms - the leading AI company. And with the lack of products and their highway robbery 30% business model in danger, we saw strange „mother nature“ and fake Siri shows.
Finally it ends with „stop talking about AI (since we don‘t have it)“ and start talking about the new iOS design. If the new iOS design fails too, Android phones will look more Apple than iOS itself.
Nope, Tim failed. He should step back from leading the company to handling financial business, what should be his job. Also all the „Evangelists“ and leaders at Apple grew really old, some new people with fresh and young ideas would be welcome.
And, Mr Gruber, this hasn‘t happened yesterday. It was obvious since Apple missed the Cloud and dropped the AppleCar. The AI miss was immanent since Apple banned NVidia/CUDA from its platforms - the leading AI company. And with the lack of products and their highway robbery 30% business model in danger, we saw strange „mother nature“ and fake Siri shows.
Finally it ends with „stop talking about AI (since we don‘t have it)“ and start talking about the new iOS design. If the new iOS design fails too, Android phones will look more Apple than iOS itself.
Nope, Tim failed. He should step back from leading the company to handling financial business, what should be his job. Also all the „Evangelists“ and leaders at Apple grew really old, some new people with fresh and young ideas would be welcome.
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They do? How? I read it for free.His inability to score the juiciest leaks is what he’s really pissed about.People pay THOUSANDS a year to read his words, so he takes Apple more reliably firing his contacts personally.
And I’m not sure your last sentence is English.
The software is getting buggier & buggier because after they do it in house it then gets sent out to beta testers who either aren’t actually beta testing it & just using it as normal software or when people do report bugs it’s not getting investigated.
If there are going down the road of one big OS upgrade a year then what should happen is the full OS gets released in September & the rest of the year is for bug fixes & under the hood improvements.
The leading HARDWARE AI company. Lack of Nvidia chips didn’t make Apple promise software they couldn’t deliver.
Takeo Apple
macrumors regular
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.
Takeo Apple
macrumors regular
also, Apple is leading AI by a mile after NVidia and their extremely highly priced hardware. Nobody else comes close.
picpicmac
macrumors 68000
Or, Gruber is desperate for attention as the tech media is mostly AIAIAIAIAIAIAIAIAI these days ... and Gruber knows nothing about it and is left out of the conversation.
I could not care less whether Apple makes its schedule with the new-and-improved Siri.
In the big picture, it is unclear to me if in 10 years the global economy will be able to support all these toys for rich boys.
There are so many big things going bad in the world today, that to go drama-queen over Siri just seems silly.
What Gruber should really worry about is where his next computer is going to be manufactured.
Yeah, as we all know it is illegal to boycott X.
Let’s make no bones about this forstall got kicked out because according to reports they wanted rid of him & where just looking for an excuse to remove him.
The reason for the constant UI overhauls is to look as if they are constantly changing the OS because of the big yearly release.
eRondeau
macrumors 65816
Everyone knows Apple demands unprecedented control over their entire product stream. Siri’s pre-programmed responses tried to cover as many queries as possible with “canned" responses with strict guardrails for safety. But A.I. is freeform and inherently unpredictable. Apple knows Siri's first 100 million A.I. queries will be the most contrived and controversial questions imaginable. With any other company an incorrect, stupid, or contentious response to such a question would bring rolled eyes and shrugs; with Apple it would be headline news around the world. Apple can’t only get this *right*, Apple has to get this *perfect*. Every. Single. Time. And I’m guessing their technology isn’t quite ready yet. As Steve Jobs famously said, at Apple there are a thousand No’s for every Yes. For now, A.I. is still a No.
IMO another example where the company looks bad are its chips, they update the MacBook Pro every year, a computer that many real Pro’s use every day to earn their money. Yet as we have now found out, they won’t be doing the same thing with the Apple Studio and Mac Pro, now whilst these are expensive, it does again look a bit amateur when they use half of their flagship chip, upgrade the Max version yearly putting it into all their mobile Pro models, but they exclude it from the Studio, most likely to avoid embarrassing the Ultra chip models, and then don’t make the Ultra version for the flagship models.
The recent talk from Apple made no mention of any road map or timescales for the Ultra chip. But as we have seen nor will they place the latest Max version into the Studio every year either, despite it being the exact same chip as goes into their laptops?
Apple has deliberately made it’s desktop range very confusing, and with Apples silicon getting exponentially more powerful with each years release, it again looks amateur, and as we know they did nothing to the Mac Pro leading us all to wonder will it get an M5 Ultra? Be killed of? No one knows, but if you buy their most expensive flagship computer currently you may find it’s cheapest smallest new Mac Mini may out perform it in some cases!
Apple has innovated in two areas over recent years, it’s own silicon and the dual layer OLED screen in the iPad Pro, but one is a screen on one device, the other is the basis for it’s entire computer range and they really need to release a road map if the Studio and Pro will not be updated yearly.
The recent talk from Apple made no mention of any road map or timescales for the Ultra chip. But as we have seen nor will they place the latest Max version into the Studio every year either, despite it being the exact same chip as goes into their laptops?
Apple has deliberately made it’s desktop range very confusing, and with Apples silicon getting exponentially more powerful with each years release, it again looks amateur, and as we know they did nothing to the Mac Pro leading us all to wonder will it get an M5 Ultra? Be killed of? No one knows, but if you buy their most expensive flagship computer currently you may find it’s cheapest smallest new Mac Mini may out perform it in some cases!
Apple has innovated in two areas over recent years, it’s own silicon and the dual layer OLED screen in the iPad Pro, but one is a screen on one device, the other is the basis for it’s entire computer range and they really need to release a road map if the Studio and Pro will not be updated yearly.
I’m sorry, I don’t understand what you mean here. Please rephrase.
The things you list, while I agree with all of them (other than MacBooks with keyboards that "couldn't be typed on"), are fairly "business as usual", especially for a company as big as Apple. Abandoned products, buggy software, extracting "service" income are all pretty much business as usual for tech companies and Apple probably does better than its competitors in many of these.
I think the Gruber's point is that this was basically vaporware. It wasn't like the original iPhone that was real but barely hung together for a demo. It was a made up concept, put through the Apple marketing machine to look polished and real. I do think that is different and reflects badly on the company.
JapanApple
Suspended
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
Um. It's Siri in human form factor.................uck
TonyC28
macrumors 68030
Meaning the work was not actually in progress, or that it never existed in a real way? They rolled out a prominent feature in beta. If that’s not work-in-progress, I don’t know what is.
dmn11
macrumors newbie
I bought the iPhone 16 based on the promise that it will include the features that they have listed during the announcement. I trusted Apple to deliver everything said and was willing to wait for a small delay as they said - but now it seems that they have knowingly misled us all. Had I known in advance, I may have decided to skip this generation and wait for the next one. My older iPhone was still okay for my needs. I think that Apple should reimburse me for the lower product spec. I think at least 15% of the phone value should return to customers. AI today is a key product feature, and it was the main reason for me to get this phone.
RSB96
macrumors 6502
I think it's time to take out the trash, I've been saying it for a while, but the pro vision, the canceled car, the CarPlay 2, the non-existent and extremely iterative updates, the software less and less polished... the Siri LLM thing is another one of much behind it in recent years.
Little emotion, little innovation, pure profit. That's the Apple of the last 3/4 years.
Little emotion, little innovation, pure profit. That's the Apple of the last 3/4 years.
Upgrade to the iPhone17, where Apple will bring the new set of features definetly... later... maybe... hopefully... I guess?