I think generally speaking, people don't have a lot of practical uses for AI yet - not saying they don't exist, but other than writing your term papers and making funny pictures, the "real" uses are known to the common user.
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Kuo: Apple Knows Apple Intelligence is 'Underwhelming' and Won't Drive iPhone Upgrades
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They might be hitting a wall. Hardware purchases are down 9% month over month for Jan-February. Typically they see a 3% decline the past few years.
The above is us supported by the large number of people here do not want Apple AI on their phone and will turn it off when its released.
Tim: I have come to the decision that we need to fire someone.
Board: Oh sir I'm so sorry. I promise to do it next time.
Board 2: Sack him. He put the power button on the bottom of the Mac mini. Also Air power.
Board: I also suggested we remove MagSafe on the iPhone 16e.
Tim: Hey great idea!
Board 2: He also designed the audio system on the AirPods Max.
Tim: Get out! My solution is to fire Scott Forstall...again!
Board: Oh sir I'm so sorry. I promise to do it next time.
Board 2: Sack him. He put the power button on the bottom of the Mac mini. Also Air power.
Board: I also suggested we remove MagSafe on the iPhone 16e.
Tim: Hey great idea!
Board 2: He also designed the audio system on the AirPods Max.
Tim: Get out! My solution is to fire Scott Forstall...again!
LLMs are useful for code help, specifically for language that have an enormous corpus of data out there such as Python.
You can treat them like a rubber duck for brainstorming which can be useful on occasion.
You can use them as a kind of terrible “fuzzy search” over an enormous corpus of knowledge, albeit requiring extensive understanding of the subject matter yourself because of inaccuracies in output and incorrect sourcing (and sometimes those sources themselves being incorrect which no one keeps in mind).
You can use them as a novelty, like a fancy modern version of ELIZA.
You can dump a bunch of data into them and fine-tune things to help synthesize insights you may have missed, but this also has the same accuracy problems as the “fuzzy search” I mentioned and your prompting and follow-up needs to be extremely specific and thorough to derive benefit.
Otherwise, yeah not so much.
Does any of this sound like an “internet” level of breakthrough to you? Not to me. It’s interesting, but if anything the proliferation of the technology will do a lot of harm because most users don’t understand the technical underpinnings, and it’s not something you can teach in a short explainer text or even a 10-minute video. You need to understand the mechanisms themselves which requires a lot of skill and expertise.
The general public should never have been given these models, unless there was some way to gate the use of them with confirming you understood how they operate.
Other technology, such as world models, may behave differently but we are a few years (at the earliest) away from those being previewed outside of a lab setting.
…
AI does not exist, yet. One of the biggest markers of intelligence is being able to confidently say, "I don't know." Instead, current AI will make up a bunch of BS and be very persuasive about it.
“Hey, no one cares about AI, how can we make sure people buy our phones?”
“I dunno, make the camera tumor bigger?”
“Brilliant! Should we slightly alter the design to better integrate the new camera module?”
“Nah, just stretch the old one.”
“I dunno, make the camera tumor bigger?”
“Brilliant! Should we slightly alter the design to better integrate the new camera module?”
“Nah, just stretch the old one.”
That’s where I am. Even if everything Apple promised for Siri and AI was delivered on time and worked perfectly, there’s nothing that I would be interested in. I would continue to turn off AI and Siri. Neither influences my Apple purchases now - nor will they going forward.
No one is clamoring for AI from Apple. Likewise, dedicated AI companies that are creating amazing cutting-edge AI technology themselves are not quite there with AI for the masses.
And when it's ready, the same will be true. People will not be clamoring for AI from Apple.
We will, on the other hand be clamoring for Apple to keep us and our iPhones and Macs safe from Ai. If they can focus and do that one thing, all is good with Apple and AI.
And when it's ready, the same will be true. People will not be clamoring for AI from Apple.
We will, on the other hand be clamoring for Apple to keep us and our iPhones and Macs safe from Ai. If they can focus and do that one thing, all is good with Apple and AI.
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I largely agree. Any answers I get from these AI agents I take with a grain of. salt until I read up some more. Still useful as a starting point, but not as the final point. I also hate how much resources their servers use. But you need to let these animals into the wild to learn what is possible and let them evolve so I'm glad they are out. But I do hope many others know their current limitations.
Ultimately, Tim Cook retires to avoid being fired in scandal by the board.
I sometimes use the Writing Tools to see what it “generates” out of interest or, if what I’ve written fares better.
Image Playground has been a toy to use when I’m killing a few minutes.
If one were only using this message board to know the state of AI for users they sure would get a mixed message. Combining all posts I get "I have little use for most of this AI stuff and I'm sure mad at Apple for not having it running well now". Most people wouldn't mind if a feature they never would use didn't work so well.
And the Vision Pro is a very close second.
Something gave Tim Cook tunnel vision that Vision Pro / Vision OS was the next big thing, which blinded him to the reality of AI becoming the true next big thing.
Even though AI does almost nothing of value, but I digress.
Quite true. AI is something the financial markets have been excited about - not most consumers. People are finally realizing that the emperor wears no clothes. Apple - and most of the tech companies - had better get back to looking closely at the product.
This is not surprising given that Microsoft has recently publicly dialed back their AI Copilot push. Nadella basically admitted they haven't seen true value being added by AI. "The real benchmark is: the world growing at 10 percent."
I know this is a bad look for Apple and makes me worry about their future, but I would say it's much better to clawback a marketing claim rather than investing billions very publicly and basically rebranding your product offerings around AI and then trying to walk it back like Microsoft is now doing.
I know this is a bad look for Apple and makes me worry about their future, but I would say it's much better to clawback a marketing claim rather than investing billions very publicly and basically rebranding your product offerings around AI and then trying to walk it back like Microsoft is now doing.
At this point, the only thing that could get me to upgrade is a new iPhone mini. But that's not going to happen.
I mean if I could ask it to turn off my Phillips hue lights, and it work better than Siri that would be nice.
Otherwise I don’t really care about it tbh.
Unfortunately for us, and fortunately for Apple… Theirs no true competitor or any other company that is doing it better in the right package.
Switching from Apple means losing the Apple Watch if you have one.. or iPad… Syncing between devices becomes harder… Apple as a whole makes it harder to leave
Switching from Apple means losing the Apple Watch if you have one.. or iPad… Syncing between devices becomes harder… Apple as a whole makes it harder to leave
That’s why you shouldn’t combine all posts. That’s what AI might do. The truth is, some people are interested in AI but want it to work well. That’s why they are upset at Apple. But many others aren’t interested in AI at all. Two different groups with two different points of view.