It’s hilarious. Apple has Ben at the forefront of ai for a long time already.
Being a platform, it makes more sense for them to host generative ai apps.
But nobody gets that. They actually think small companies like ChatGPT are competitors.
Yet apple recognizes the future isn’t the status quo. So ChatGPT could make a hardware and platform run if it’s own. So apple heads them off.
Mits all constant win for apple. Foolish to fault them for building something and only launching when it’s thoroughly ready.
Apple is historically not first to most technologies after all, just the best.
Considering that MS is backing up OpenAI and investing billions in them, I wouldn't say that OpenAI is a small competitor.
Also, I would agree that Apple is not the first and in some cases it's the best. The problem is that Apple don't have a good record in cloud services. MS and Google are miles ahead of Apple in this market, even more when you consider the datacenters and infrastructure both companies have. We'll see what happens in the next few months / years.
It’s hilarious. Apple has Ben at the forefront of ai for a long time already.
Being a platform, it makes more sense for them to host generative ai apps.
But nobody gets that. They actually think small companies like ChatGPT are competitors.
Yet apple recognizes the future isn’t the status quo. So ChatGPT could make a hardware and platform run if it’s own. So apple heads them off.
Mits all constant win for apple. Foolish to fault them for building something and only launching when it’s thoroughly ready.
Apple is historically not first to most technologies after all, just the best.
Considering that MS is backing up OpenAI and investing billions in them, I wouldn't say that OpenAI is a small competitor.
Also, I would agree that Apple is not the first and in some cases it's the best. The problem is that Apple don't have a good record in cloud services. MS and Google are miles ahead of Apple in this market, even more when you consider the datacenters and infrastructure both companies have. We'll see what happens in the next few months / years.
I agree that Apple doesn't have a "great record in cloud services", especially compared to Amazon, Google, and MS, yet it does have a wide range of cloud services (other than enterprise), including music and video streaming. Vision Pro may end up driving a decent revenue stream on its own, including media.
Apple's focus currently seems to be on edge computing, in which it may do very well. Of course, Google and MS are keen to continue providing many of those services to Apple users, so it isn't like Apple won't have these services, just that it won't generate a lot of revenue for Apple.
Did I leave Meta out? They seem to have an interest in AI as well, but not using any of their services, they wouldn't interest me.
The problem with everything market related is the lack of patience. As Buffett often said “no one wants get rich slowly”. Lack of patience causes irrational wild stock price fluctuations. Lack of patience causes crazy headlines. “Apple is falling behind in AI!” What the heck does that even mean? How does Wall Street even know lol?. It’s like they are saying last weekend was AI and Apple missed it! AI like internet will take decades to mature. Calm down Wall Street/financial media just relax and have some patience….please.
You are missing an important point.
The product isn't the end of the value chain. The consumer is.
Consumers are impatient and often fickle.
If analysts think consumers will put off purchases or switch to other brands because they believe Apple isn't offering enough value for their needs (be it in hardware, software or price) it will logically have a negative impact on the stock price.
If Apple weren't currently behind we wouldn't be seeing and endless line of rumours concerning what is supposedly coming. We wouldn't be seeing Apple itself making such a big deal about what is coming.
No. They would be pushing solutions which already exist.
The fact that they aren't doing that at all says a lot.
WWDC will be vital in terms of taking a gulp of air but the most logical scenario is that whatever gets announced won't actually ship until very late this year or next year.
That's definitely a Yikes! moment if ever there is one.
What are the odds that they try what they did last year? Deliberately refuse to mention AI and try to sell ML instead.
Absolutely zero because what is currently shipping from multiple vendors are the kind of solutions that consumers have been convinced they need and it is the consumers that drive sales.
Beyond that, and something many here simply refuse to acknowledge, there are literally hundreds of AI solutions being shipped across every industry you can think off which will also impact consumers' lives.
Well, considering most current "AI" is just a form of machine learning - no actual understanding or intelligence in your Large Language Models or Image Generators.
If that were truly the case Apple wouldn't be in the prickly situation it currently is.
It would be announcing all the things that can be done right now with its current devices and ignoring what other players are offering.
Like I said, that isn't happening because it is behind current shipping solutions.
If you want to call it all ML that is fine but reality is right there if we want to see it.
Apple isn't offering equivalent solutions and recently the rumours have tended to lean towards them licencing solutions from others.
It isn't simply LLM's. It's now tiny LLMs. Multi-modal AI. AI on IoT. AI describing images and video as opposed to just identifying them.
For better or worse there has been an avalanche of progress over the last two years and it's now front and centre while Apple hasn't offered anything similar to the products which are generating all the buzz.
No one doubts that all those shortcomings will be dealt with at WWDC although there is doubt about if they will be dealt with through 'announcements' for future solutions or if they will feel the need to release something for the user base immediately.
Hardly a "prickly" situation.
What the iPhone 16 customer is assured of, is that the iPhone will have the leading edge hardware in place at iPhone 16's arrival, and at least some AI apps will be available at the time of delivery.
Do you really believe that developers are going to ignore the most profitable App market, in the iPhone?
Quite prickly actually.
Apple caught skating to a puckless place.
Your entire post completely sidesteps what is being said (Apple being behind right now) and points the finger at some unknown future scenario.
That doesn't cut it. We're talking about now, not the future.
Do you think everyone else will slow down while Apple gets something cooking?
Seems to me that you were vociferous that Apple was late to 5G, and yet, nothing negative happened for that, and in fact, there was an noticeable surge in sales when Apple did deliver 5G. Thereafter, Apple completed a full transition to 5G before any other manufacturer.
AI will be another case where Apple trailing the "hype" in the marketplace, will have no negative impact on iPhone sales. Consumers, especially Apple users, aren't as "fickle" as you posit, and in fact, not even demanding AI at this time.
Aren't you following the news? Sales are reportedly down in China and one of the reasons being given is that Apple isn't offering a sufficiently compelling product.
Apple has also guided down for this quarter.
On 5G, again, Apple was behind. That was the point.
When they finally released an older, bolted on (Qualcomm!) 5G modem they basically turned the entire keynote into a 5G lovefest. Obviously Apple considered that to be a pivotal hardware announcement and just as well. Another full year without 5G would have been a disaster. Shudder the thought.
This year it looks like they will follow the same tactics for AI. At least with announcements. Actual products remain a mystery. Expect an AI lovefest.
Perhaps they will still try to avoid saying the term and brand it as Apple Intelligence!
They might even try to spin the abandoned car project as providing some groundwork for what they plan to announce. That would be logical from a marketing perspective.
I certainly do follow the news on China, but mostly wrt to China's economy, which is in dire straits.
If Apple is not providing a "sufficiently compelling product", which isn't in my opinion what is happening, it is also the case that the PRC has encouraged nationalistic support of Huawei. That is certainly a fair assessment on my part, especially given the lack of a competitive SOC, and the PRC attempting to shore up its economy in the face of loss of much of the foreign investment that it depended on.
More so, and this is absolutely current events, China is a slowing economy, and of course, Apple's iPhone is a pricey purchase; money is tight.
Yet Apple is still in China, still selling, even in a slowdown. It may be that this is the future of Apple in China, or not, and at the same time, Apple continues to expand in the largest country by population, India.
You seem to base your assumptions on your personal likes and desires, but I don't believe those reflect the general consumer. I expect that I will continue to be correct, and you will, again, be seen to be incorrect.
My assumptions are based on the here and now. Apple guided for a difficult quarter. Apple in China is down.
The car project was dropped. The homebrew 5G modem hasn't dropped. It is behind on AI. It's got a whole bunch of problems in the EU. Those problems could be repeated in the US and in other jurisdictions.
Speculation is fine and fun but reality today is what it is and there is no getting away from that.
It's not the end of the world but things aren't going great right now.
Apple dropped the car project due to the conclusion that Level 5 was too far out, (no one has been successful to date) and that the business wouldn't be a profitable addition to Apple's revenue. Apple's investment was something on the order of $10B, and some of that investment will work its way into other hardware and services. Pretty much the entire EV industry is low margin today, so I'm happy that Apple exited.
The only impact to Apple from the "home-brew 5G modem" that hasn't dropped, is that Apple hasn't added Cellular to its other product lines, and it surely won't use Qualcomm modems' in the interim due to licensing costs. This would be a nice feature to the Mac line when it arrives, but otherwise, the lack of cellular Mac's doesn't seem to be an issue.
As far as the EU is concerned, Apple may have problems "today", which will continue for a while as they sort through the EU's regulations, but doesn't actually inhibit Apple sales, as much as potentially reducing Apple's services revenue, likely by some small amount. Given that there are only two OS players today, and the possibility of Huawei's OS as the third, I don't see that Apple is in any real trouble. Apple still makes "compelling" products.
It's interesting to me that the EU is trailing the U.S. in economic growth, by quite a bit, while China's economic growth is on the skids. Both the EU and China have demographic issues, compounded in China by the PRC's authoritarian governance, and its open hostility to other countries in its sphere of influence. Personally, I wish that Apple was in a better position to exit most of its manufacturing from China, sooner than later.
In fairness, the EU seems to be interested in supporting investment in AI, though they will have a difficult time competing against the established players. Good luck on that.
It’s hilarious. Apple has Ben at the forefront of ai for a long time already.
Being a platform, it makes more sense for them to host generative ai apps.
But nobody gets that. They actually think small companies like ChatGPT are competitors.
Yet apple recognizes the future isn’t the status quo. So ChatGPT could make a hardware and platform run if it’s own. So apple heads them off.
Mits all constant win for apple. Foolish to fault them for building something and only launching when it’s thoroughly ready.
Apple is historically not first to most technologies after all, just the best.
Considering that MS is backing up OpenAI and investing billions in them, I wouldn't say that OpenAI is a small competitor.
Also, I would agree that Apple is not the first and in some cases it's the best. The problem is that Apple don't have a good record in cloud services. MS and Google are miles ahead of Apple in this market, even more when you consider the datacenters and infrastructure both companies have. We'll see what happens in the next few months / years.
Microsoft payed 69 billion dollars for Blizzard, Apple bought for Next Computer for $400 million dollars (which came with Steve Jobs), Apple also spend 750 million dollars for PA Semi, Intrinsity, and Anobit, which led to the A, M, R1 series Apple Silicon SOC's, Apple is not playing catch-up to Microsoft or Google in AI Apple has been extremely efficient in finance and tech execution in comparison to their competition over the years.
Apples pathway is on the edge (vertical computer companies can do that) while Microsoft, Google, Meta are designing for the nebulous cloud. Apple has been designing NPUs into their SOCs, to use actual AI-driven features for sometime, in addition Apple has included LiDAR in the Apple Vision which has also been in their iPhones/iPads for the last four years and plays a big part in supplying data for so-called AI functions at the edge.
So Intel and AMD are going to offer CPU based AI/ML acceleration just like the M1, M2 and M3 Macs, iPads, iPhones and even Apple Watches all of which are currently in the hands of the public I hope Intel and AMD and Nvidia can keep the wattage down (doubtful) in their quest to keep up with Apple.
It’s hilarious. Apple has Ben at the forefront of ai for a long time already.
Being a platform, it makes more sense for them to host generative ai apps.
But nobody gets that. They actually think small companies like ChatGPT are competitors.
Yet apple recognizes the future isn’t the status quo. So ChatGPT could make a hardware and platform run if it’s own. So apple heads them off.
Mits all constant win for apple. Foolish to fault them for building something and only launching when it’s thoroughly ready.
Apple is historically not first to most technologies after all, just the best.
Considering that MS is backing up OpenAI and investing billions in them, I wouldn't say that OpenAI is a small competitor.
Also, I would agree that Apple is not the first and in some cases it's the best. The problem is that Apple don't have a good record in cloud services. MS and Google are miles ahead of Apple in this market, even more when you consider the datacenters and infrastructure both companies have. We'll see what happens in the next few months / years.
Microsoft payed 69 billion dollars for Blizzard, Apple bought for Next Computer for $400 million dollars (which came with Steve Jobs), Apple also spend 750 million dollars for PA Semi, Intrinsity, and Anobit, which led to the A, M, R1 series Apple Silicon SOC's, Apple is not playing catch-up to Microsoft or Google in AI Apple has been extremely efficient in finance and tech execution in comparison to their competition over the years.
I don't understand how the acquisition of Activision / Blizzard or NeXT Computer has any relation with the discussion about AI.
Apples pathway is on the edge (vertical computer companies can do that) while Microsoft, Google, Meta are designing for the nebulous cloud. Apple has been designing NPUs into their SOCs, to use actual AI-driven features for sometime, in addition Apple has included LiDAR in the Apple Vision which has also been in their iPhones/iPads for the last four years and plays a big part in supplying data for so-called AI functions at the edge.
So Intel and AMD are going to offer CPU based AI/ML acceleration just like the M1, M2 and M3 Macs, iPads, iPhones and even Apple Watches all of which are currently in the hands of the public I hope Intel and AMD and Nvidia can keep the wattage down (doubtful) in their quest to keep up with Apple.
Apple working AI on the edge is not only because they are a vertical company, but also because they don't have an infrastructure to run AI / LMM to the level of Microsoft, Google or Amazon. And remember that Microsoft is also working in AI on the edge.
And you are right that Apple have CPU's with neural engines now, but it's possible that the 11 TOPS - 18 TOPS of current Apple M-processors is not enough for what we are seeing today with AI / LMM. For example, MS will require 40 TOPS to run Copilot locally. That could be the reason there are rumors Apple M4 processors will have a greater focus in AI. If the rumors are true, at the end of this year Apple will have competition from Intel Meteor Lake, AMD Strix Point and Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite. I don't think Intel and AMD will match Apple efficiency, but Qualcomm is a different story, considering they have an ARM CPU, their experience with mobile devices and there is a group of people that worked with Apple M processors. We'll have to wait and see how it goes. Nvidia is a different story, considering they are focused on datacenters.
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Also, I would agree that Apple is not the first and in some cases it's the best. The problem is that Apple don't have a good record in cloud services. MS and Google are miles ahead of Apple in this market, even more when you consider the datacenters and infrastructure both companies have. We'll see what happens in the next few months / years.
The only impact to Apple from the "home-brew 5G modem" that hasn't dropped, is that Apple hasn't added Cellular to its other product lines, and it surely won't use Qualcomm modems' in the interim due to licensing costs. This would be a nice feature to the Mac line when it arrives, but otherwise, the lack of cellular Mac's doesn't seem to be an issue.
As far as the EU is concerned, Apple may have problems "today", which will continue for a while as they sort through the EU's regulations, but doesn't actually inhibit Apple sales, as much as potentially reducing Apple's services revenue, likely by some small amount. Given that there are only two OS players today, and the possibility of Huawei's OS as the third, I don't see that Apple is in any real trouble. Apple still makes "compelling" products.
It's interesting to me that the EU is trailing the U.S. in economic growth, by quite a bit, while China's economic growth is on the skids. Both the EU and China have demographic issues, compounded in China by the PRC's authoritarian governance, and its open hostility to other countries in its sphere of influence. Personally, I wish that Apple was in a better position to exit most of its manufacturing from China, sooner than later.
In fairness, the EU seems to be interested in supporting investment in AI, though they will have a difficult time competing against the established players. Good luck on that.
Microsoft payed 69 billion dollars for Blizzard, Apple bought for Next Computer for $400 million dollars (which came with Steve Jobs), Apple also spend 750 million dollars for PA Semi, Intrinsity, and Anobit, which led to the A, M, R1 series Apple Silicon SOC's, Apple is not playing catch-up to Microsoft or Google in AI Apple has been extremely efficient in finance and tech execution in comparison to their competition over the years.
Apples pathway is on the edge (vertical computer companies can do that) while Microsoft, Google, Meta are designing for the nebulous cloud. Apple has been designing NPUs into their SOCs, to use actual AI-driven features for sometime, in addition Apple has included LiDAR in the Apple Vision which has also been in their iPhones/iPads for the last four years and plays a big part in supplying data for so-called AI functions at the edge.
So Intel and AMD are going to offer CPU based AI/ML acceleration just like the M1, M2 and M3 Macs, iPads, iPhones and even Apple Watches all of which are currently in the hands of the public I hope Intel and AMD and Nvidia can keep the wattage down (doubtful) in their quest to keep up with Apple.
Apple working AI on the edge is not only because they are a vertical company, but also because they don't have an infrastructure to run AI / LMM to the level of Microsoft, Google or Amazon. And remember that Microsoft is also working in AI on the edge.
And you are right that Apple have CPU's with neural engines now, but it's possible that the 11 TOPS - 18 TOPS of current Apple M-processors is not enough for what we are seeing today with AI / LMM. For example, MS will require 40 TOPS to run Copilot locally. That could be the reason there are rumors Apple M4 processors will have a greater focus in AI. If the rumors are true, at the end of this year Apple will have competition from Intel Meteor Lake, AMD Strix Point and Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite. I don't think Intel and AMD will match Apple efficiency, but Qualcomm is a different story, considering they have an ARM CPU, their experience with mobile devices and there is a group of people that worked with Apple M processors. We'll have to wait and see how it goes. Nvidia is a different story, considering they are focused on datacenters.