Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
I think that you're right.

Incredibly useful, but it pushes into a Black Mirror type dystopia where at all times, you are being recorded (video and audio) and you never know if someone else is recording you.

And this might as well be DOA in Europe because privacy is still a thing here. And do you remember the Google Glass incidents in San Francisco circa 10 years ago? I mean, who wants to be recorded at all times?
 
Last edited:
I feel this will be too unambitious as usual. Far cooler would be a computer without a traditional OS GUI and only a genAI interface. A really powerful one: "I need to write a document" and it on it self create a word processor that you can further design just by talking to the device. No need to buy Word! More ambitiously "I need an economy system following the laws of the CA". Or, "based on book X (say Lord of the Rings), make an animated movie or a video game". Or "Draw a (3D) CAD drawing for a modern house based on New Hampshire wooden houses from 1850-1860". Same genAI would work as a thinking (IT) security system. I think we need some more compute power...
And that is all based on human knowledge and products, including word and other processors. Including fonts.

I sure hope those people will get paid for that.

AI as it is, is a system built by and trained on human data. Intellectual property. Without it, it’s a big nothingness.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Bungaree.Chubbins
It will be interesting to see what Ive and Altman have come up with. Is it revolutionary? Evolutionary? Will it hamper the business models of existing players in tech? Will the anti-screen movement finally have their device? And what will the reaction of Apple, Google, Meta, Microsoft, and Amazon be?

Sadly, there's innovation in tech, and Apple seems to be behind the curve. They probably will be until Tim Cook is gone. Perhaps he needs a new CEO role somewhere? There's one happening at Disney soon.
AI is on it’s way to becoming a commodity. And with that open ai will be just another ai provider. apples’ foundation to the core is not built in ai, it’s built in finding new and unique ways to provide innovation.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Bungaree.Chubbins
Well they are saying it's not a Laptop or Phone... it's something else you'd carry with you.
While hopeful, I am very skeptical this extra thing to carry will be all that uniquely useful and not easily replaced by an iPhone.

It certainly has less powerful computational ability than an iPhone, so it’s internet-connected. An iPhone has that. So what could it do that an iPhone couldn’t be made to do?
 
My guess: Some kind of device similar in size to an iPod Nano (The clip style one.) The clip doubles as a stand to put it on your desk. Probably a small display, but it's primary purpose is "memory" - recording everything and extracting relevant details locally. The clip is the important piece, because the microphone lives on the clip, which you don't want in your pocket. Most likely bluetooth only, and requires a phone connection.

Essentially, an AI pin but not as goofy. Maybe also a camera? Probably not, I'm not sure ergonomically how you solve the positioning problem.

Apple really needs to step up. They already have a captive audience of Apple Watch users - it is the absolute ideal AI device. It has health metrics, people alredy always wear it, it already justified a microphone and has a small screen & speaker for interactions/responses, and can easily connect to airpods.
The article says it won’t have a screen and won’t be a wearable.
 
It’s a device that would give Stalin or any other totalitarian Wackjob a boner. Yaay another device to spy on you.

“you used to hate us now you want to be like us”
 
  • Like
Reactions: gusmula
I am imagining...
Small OpenAI powerd device with a 360 camera on the top and a speaker. You could set it down or wear it.

It knows where you are and what you are doing, it could interact with you as you doing something.

It could forward images and videos to your other devices / cast them to any screen.
So basically Jony is copying the device from the movie “Her” is what you are describing.
 
In the video, he says something along the lines of “to see where a company is going, don’t look at the tech but rather at the people making the decisions and their motivations.”

I felt that was a clear f-you to Tim Cook and modern Apple as a whole.
 
Yes, it will become intertwined with the OS

And then there will be companies offering OS without any AI incorporation at all as a big selling point.

What are the chances, even if you disable AI, that some aspect of it still runs or accesses things you don’t want it to.
Our OSes are already full of AI features not labelled as such. Consider Apple's rather clever object lift feature from Photos or a Google Pixel's image processing capabilities.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Fuzzball84
"able to rest in one's pocket" ? that would a a strange situation.

I'm pretty confident it is going to be a device like in the movie "her".

Wear an earbud and have a small device with a camera. It will have a screen, but the goal with be to let you use it hands free and actually work.
 
I feel this will be too unambitious as usual. Far cooler would be a computer without a traditional OS GUI and only a genAI interface. A really powerful one: "I need to write a document" and it on it self create a word processor that you can further design just by talking to the device. No need to buy Word! More ambitiously "I need an economy system following the laws of the CA". Or, "based on book X (say Lord of the Rings), make an animated movie or a video game". Or "Draw a (3D) CAD drawing for a modern house based on New Hampshire wooden houses from 1850-1860". Same genAI would work as a thinking (IT) security system. I think we need some more compute power...
An entire operating system that works like Zork! doesn't exactly fill me with confidence.

But this is where we currently are: command line AI. It is when the AI reacts directly to us, invisibly in the background that it gets really exciting.
 
A puck with a screen that has the ChatGPT voice circle, you talk to it, link your calendars etc. maybe integration with other services? Pico projector? For it to truly work would require integration with iOS and android, macOS and windows, matter and Bluetooth devices and the rest. Core system level commands. Unlikely either side would open up that functionality. Seems like a stretch.
 
  • Like
Reactions: utsava
I'm excited to see what they come up with as well, but in reality, Jony Ive and a team of 50 engineers aren't going to come up with some revolutionary new interaction paradigm in a small device that's sellable in the "100 million" range. From the rumors, if it isn't a wearable, it's just going to be some always-on ChatGPT voice interface in a sleek, round AirTag looking thing. Cynically, I think this is just OpenAI's play to try to circumvent reliance on other companies ecosystems. They'll probably try to integrate your personal feeds directly into ChatGPT and/or create their own versions of calendar, messaging, mail, etc. because a personal assistant is useless without all your personal information. At the end of the day, the real question is, what will this third device allow/provide that a smartphone and/or watch couldn't? The form factor has to offer a novel use case. This is a fundamental question that if cannot be clearly conveyed, will doom their device to the pile of the Humane AI Pin and Rabbit R1 failures. A ChatGPT interface can be put in anything. It cannot just be ChatGPT in a pebble.
 
I think it’s like a small magic 8 ball, with Alexa/chatGPT/voice assistant capabilities on steroids. Connected to all online devices in your home at all times.

Might have touch interface, and before you use it you tell it what device you want to use it for.
 
They said it will be what you use "after your MacBook Pro and iPhone." So, it will rely on the many inputs you've already been using to teach their apps they will have on your other devices, and then use that data in a very small form factor to be your always present access to whatever kind of information you might want at any given moment, communicating either on its own to AI servers or with your phone or MacBook. I watched an interview with Altman from the TED series in Vancouver about a month ago. He was touting a constantly listening, learning, evolving and increasingly useful actual "personal" (to you) AI assistant. It will be an extension of this idea, which is going to revolutionize the way we interact with technology, but it won't be revolutionary itself in any way. Maybe the form factor will set it apart (Ive is good at that), but the technology itself is where we are headed anyway. Google talked about this with all the new ways Gemini is going to be learning about you specifically (assuming you want it to) to be increasingly helpful and on the spot specific to you.

The problem with most AI assistants right now is that they give you generic information, that is not in any way tied to you. That's going to change, a lot, and fast. Imagine what your search queries would look like if your own specific version of ChatGPT had been tracking all of your searches, hell, all of your keystrokes, and everything you've said and done for the past 25 years? Yes, privacy nightmare, and also potentially incredibly powerful. Since Agentix is coming as well, it won't be just queries. the new Chatbots will have the information it thinks you want readily available before you even ask.

One of the most frustrating and stupid things about Siri (and ChatGPT for that matter) is that they provide information and suggestions that are totally context independent (because they don't "know" you or any of the other things you've been doing adjacent to the search or command request). I remember how thrilled I was when Google started finishing your search queries before you completed them, but even that was dumb because it was based on what everybody had searched (still useful, but nowhere near as useful as it would be if it were doing that, and also "knew" what you yourself are likely looking for).

As others have said here though, if this is what it is, it's hard to see how this could compete with an Apple Watch that has the same capabilities (plus all its other capabilities). Of course, Apple doesn't get AI and seems structurally paralyzed with AI development, so maybe a lot of this will come in the form of third party apps on all your devices.
 
Last edited:
Seems like the sentiment ivy needed someone to rain them in. And jobs then cook was that person.

Will be interesting to see what they have. I would like to have a smart assistant in a small form factor that interacts with my iPhone . But no from open AI.

Apple are you listening. Hint Apple Watch.
 


Details have leaked about the device that OpenAI is developing with former Apple designer Jony Ive. OpenAI is acquiring io, the hardware-based AI startup co-created by Jony Ive, and the first product is one of a family of devices the company intends to launch.

open-ai-new-typeface.jpg

Ive and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman revealed details about the project in an internal staff call reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. According to the report, the device isn't a pair of glasses, given that Ive has been skeptical about building something you have to wear. It's not a phone either, since Ive and Altman want to help wean people off of screens.

Rather, it's described as a "third core device" after a MacBook Pro and an iPhone. From the report:
According to the WSJ report, Altman told OpenAI staff that stealth will be important for their ultimate success to avoid competitors copying the product before it's ready. Ive's team is said to have been in touch with suppliers who will be able to ship the device at scale.

According to Altman, OpenAI is "not going to ship 100 million devices literally on day one." But he believes the company will ship that amount of high-quality devices "faster than any company has ever shipped 100 million of something new before." The goal is to release the first device by late next year.

Ive gave Altman a prototype of the first device to take home to test, said the OpenAI CEO. "I've been able to live with it, and I think it is the coolest piece of technology that the world will have ever seen," he said.

OpenAI's acquisition of io is subject to regulatory approval and is expected to be completed this summer. It is OpenAI's biggest acquisition to date, with the ChatGPT-maker reportedly paying $6.5 billion for io.

Article Link: Jony Ive's AI Product 'Third Core Device' After MacBook and iPhone
This I like that Angel and Devil on the shoulder meme, on my right I have Jony which I do fully believe in the guy as he is a exceptional visionary and a wild design guy but… the other should Altman… man I don’t wanna go to hell
 
The idea that they think they’re going to sell 100 million units that quickly is hilarious to me.
The iPad took two years to reach 100 million units, and it was the fastest selling tech product at the time.
Nintendo doesn’t even intend to sell 100 million Switch 2’s this year.

And we are talking about a brand new company, they don’t have customers to retain yet, they have no brand recognition.
With this level of hype they are giving this thing, it pretty much has no choice but to disappoint.
There is also the fact that it’s designed by Johnny, meaning that it probably won’t be cheap.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Bungaree.Chubbins
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.