I doubt Jobs would ever have imagined Cook would stay beyond 10 years.
Literally any competent CEO could have done what Cook has done with what he was given - Apple had already swapped positions with Exxon Mobile at the time with Jobs was still alive for the most valuable company in the world.
Yet all these years later, Apple still relies heavily on the cash cows that Jobs left behind in the iPhone, iPad, Mac - these still account for 60% of Apple’s revenue. Then you add the other big Job’s era cash cow, Service. This includes the App Store/iTunes, which laid the basis for Apple Music and Apple TV+. People erroneously credit Cook for Apple Silicon, which was also a Jobs sera initiative with the first Apple Silicon MacBook prototyped running an A5 chip back in 2011 when Jobs was still alive.
‘Cook has had two massive cracks at things that were supposed to secure Apple’s growth for the future - the failed $10 billion plus Apple Car project and the effectively failed Visonless Pro, which also cost billions and looks to be going nowhere fast. He also cost the company $500 million for misleading investors on China.
And now, we have the monumental mission on AI with the hugely embarrassing new Siri fail, which could well have tarnished the “Apple Intelligence” brand for good. There was a lot of hubris in calling AI “Apple Intelligence” and this comes on top of the abysmal launch of AI for the iPhone 16 - al the marketing was around Apple Intelligence and the features weren’t ready at launch. And now the Siri fail caps it off. And let’s not forget the other less well-known embarrassment - the failure to launch next-generation Apple CarPlay last year. Yet another promise made and broken - the top tier car brands Apple lined up for the launch who even went as far to announce their launches early last year would be fuming.
The only person that can Apple back on track to achieving the greatness that Jobs envisioned for the company is someone who understands Apple inside out and who was there during the Jobs era and was the man behind the iPod, iPhone and iPad - Tony Fadell. He left at Apple to found Nest, which he sold to Google, and has since become an angel investor, backing numerous companies including Nothing (phone company). And he is still only in his early 50s. He would whip Apple into shape the same way Jobs did when he famously came back and rescued Apple.
Not only is Cook not a product guy, he’s not a technology guy full stop. He is a very good accountant and great with supply chains (or so they say). The miss on AI, chasing the Apple Car and the Visionless Pro all smack of someone who just doesn’t get it. He does get making money hand over fist, which is why hew still has the job. But if people are watching closely at what has been going on, there is no way he should be given the luxury of picking his time to leave. He should have been ditched three years ago.
Amazing how Apple / Tim Cook is pilloried over the Apple Car - a product that Apple never even acknowledged. It really is quite an amazing apportioning of criticism. The AI functionality that has been advertised, but not been delivered is very fair game for criticism.
But if the car, then why not blame Apple for their failures over their delayed TV set, the hot mess of the folding iPad, Macs still without a cellular connection, their flawed electric motorcycle, Apple ring, washing machine, solar powered router, 8” iPhone and all those other products Apple have never even announced. We know they were junk and were quietly shelved ….
How much money did he spend on the development of the car?
Has Tim Cook ever used LSD-25 like Steve Jobs? That's essential for Apple Intelligence.
Nope: Macs market share of new PCs has never been higher, as is its revenues. No matter what your web site visits counter says, if it’s even a representative sample.
“Cook is only keeping the big ship steady. I get why Warren Buffett sold $80B of Apple shares in 2024 after Car and AVP.”
Cook has quadrupled revenues and profits, and provided returns of 20x in 14 years. One of greatest performances in corporate history.
Under Cook, Apple has added Apple Watch, AirPods, AirTags, HomePods, and Vision Pro to the product roster. Apple Watch outsells all other watches in the world. AirPods is premier earbuds in world. HomePods is well, available, and Vision Pro redefined the AR/VR market and laid open a great path for Apple to make its better tech much cheaper and grab dominant market share without giving away headsets like Meta.
And Apple Silicon has given apple a huge competitive advantage. Fastest phone CPUs, fastest and most efficient laptop CPUs, and huge GPU and CPU performance cheaply in desktops. And now he’ has his own 5G chip, which means soon he’ll be able to make it a standard feature on all iPhones, iPads, Mac’s and watches simply by rolling their 5G designs into their Apple Silicon SOCs. Apple has never been so dominant and secure in its position in its history.
and finally, Buffett sold because Apples PE ratio hit 36, which is ridiculously high. Warren bought when it was at 11 and was as low as 9 at end of Jobs reign. Cooks shareholder focused returns of capital in dividends and buybacks led the market to more than triple Apple’s PE during his tenure. He’s one if the slltine great CEOs.
Oh, my! He posted a link so it must be true, right? Did you bother to look at the methodology used to arrive at these so-called "statisitcs?" Of course not! It's on the internet so it must be true! So here, let me help you with that, as explained by Global Stats:
"In other words we calculate our Global Stats on the basis of more than 5 billion page views per month, by people from all over the world onto our 1.5 million+ member sites."
Oh, this sounds like a very reliable way of calculating market share! Page views to "member sites" with zero knowledge of how/why they were chosen or how representative they are or not of the overall PC/mobile phone market. Excellent source! Maybe pull stats out of a hat next time and post those--I'm sure they'd be equally reliable.
Amazing how Apple / Tim Cook is pilloried over the Apple Car - a product that Apple never even acknowledged. It really is quite an amazing apportioning of criticism. The AI functionality that has been advertised, but not been delivered is very fair game for criticism.
But if the car, then why not blame Apple for their failures over their delayed TV set, the hot mess of the folding iPad, Macs still without a cellular connection, their flawed electric motorcycle, Apple ring, washing machine, solar powered router, 8” iPhone and all those other products Apple have never even announced. We know they were junk and were quietly shelved ….
How much money did he spend on the development of the car?
Has Tim Cook ever used LSD-25 like Steve Jobs? That's essential for Apple Intelligence.
He takes his acid trips vicariously on the Vision Pro.
All the hand-wringing about Apple being late to the AI party is predictably nonsensical.
The key premise at the root of this lament is that the competition is delivering world changing AI products and features while Apple flounders. Poppycock. The reality is that, across the board, AI is a half-baked, overhyped hot mess.
To the extent that it could be unusual that Apple’s marketing folks were allowed to rebrand the existing machine learning pipeline as Apple Intelligence, the rest of the story is following a familiar pattern. Others hit the market first with a New Big Thing that’s hyped to be great, but is, in reality, unfinished and poorly implemented. Meanwhile, Apple hangs back and really works on it. Pundits declare Apple to be doomed and call for Tim Cook’s resignation, because, you know, he’s no Steve Jobs.
Eventually, if the New Big Thing was even a thing, Apple rolls out with an implementation that comes with a twist that makes it somehow… different. Apple makes a big introduction, and the pundits receive it skeptically. It’s too little, too late, they say, and Apple will never catch up.
But then there’s a slow burn. The twist that made it different turns out to be the thing that consumers find indispensable. Then while the pundits aren’t looking, Apple’s take becomes the obvious implementation that everybody wants, and the competition has to try to replicate it.
Finally, the Apple version retroactively becomes an instant success, and there was actually no party before Apple showed up. The pundits pretend this was always a foregone conclusion and forget what they said before. They’ve moved on anyway.
The pundits are now focused on decrying Apple’s annual updates to the instant success as too-slow incrementalism. Tim Cook is no Steve Jobs, after all. Didn’t Jobs launch a new, instantly successful category killer product like every six months? Also, there’s this new New Big Thing that the other companies are doing, and Apple is lagging so far behind that they’re doomed. Tim Cook should resign. He’s no Steve Jobs.
If that were the case, Apple would have sat back and continued its refusal to even pronounce the letters 'AI'.
It didn't and for good reason. Not only did it not do that, but it chose to 'talk it up', promise features, but 'later' and then not hit the mark with what it managed to ship.
You are free to describe the current state of AI how you please but one thing is unquestionable: the buzz around AI hasn't died down. The opposite is true.
That means, whatever its state, people are using it and getting results. Results they are perfectly happy with. Drawbacks included.
That is why Apple couldn't wait a few years to deliver its own take.
There are hundreds of LLMs out there doing amazing things.
I'm very happy with Perplexity Pro and get results I could never get from something like Siri.
Now 'Manus' is getting all the news and proving useful:
You seem to be unwittingly reinforcing my point. First, I didn’t suggest that buzz around AI was dying down. I said it’s a hot mess. You say people are using AI and getting results “they are perfectly happy with. Drawbacks included.” That is no doubt a true statement. You also mention the “hundreds of LLMs out there,” and name a few as examples. That’s exactly the hot mess I’m referring to. There are lots of not ready for prime time examples out there, none of which are poised to individually alter the landscape and set a new paradigm. This is the pattern that repeats. There are lots of unripe examples of a thing in the marketplace. Apple hangs back and figures out an implementation that isn’t just novel, interesting, or innovative, but is actually indispensable.
Microsoft made a smartwatch in 2004, and they weren’t even the first. A decade later, Samsung had one, and Fitbits were well known. More commonly, though, people had mostly quit wearing watches, because they all had a phone in their pocket that would show them the time. Then Apple introduced their watch, to much skepticism. A few years later, it was an “instant success,” and nobody remembers how Apple was hopelessly late to the smart watch party. Now, everywhere you go, people wearing Apple Watches, not because they’re a fashion statement or status symbol, but because (unlike what their competition was making before the Apple Watch) they are useful.
That’s why all your examples of “many [AI models] popping up all over the place” should tell you to wait and see what Apple actually does. If the pattern repeats again, all those other examples will become Wikipedia footnotes as Apple’s competitors are forced to react to and replicate Apple’s approach that actually makes AI into something indispensable.
Cook was an outstanding COO. He became CEO of the most valuable company and kept it like that for the most. Car, AVP, TV+ expenses, panic move away from China, and AI… he is no product or project person. He won’t push Apple forward.
But Tim Cook has pushed Apple further ahead, of it’s competition in comparison to the others.
Cook is only keeping the big ship steady. I get why Warren Buffett sold $80B of Apple shares in 2024 after Car and AVP.
Apple doesn’t measure their success by market share. Market share generally belongs to makers of lower quality, high-volume, low (or no) profit devices. This is undeniably the case in both the smart phone and personal computer markets.
How’s the Metaverse doing? Facebook renamed their company because they thought the Metaverse was the next great thing. Missteps happen, but cook has been tremendous for Apple. I will say that Apple has shown signs of slipping and Apple Intelligence is the latest. I would even say that Vision Pro was rushed and he is spinning it as a product for early adopters. He deserves some grace but should be criticized when deserved.
Both the OG iPhone and Apple Watch 0 were limited implementations produced for early adopters. Heck, iPhone had no App Store yet, depended on a Mac or pc to do software updates, the camera was a low resolution afterthought, and Cingular (AT&T) was the only phone company they’d work with.
I’m beginning to think that part of Apple’s mojo is that, despite operating in a way that’s plainly visible to everyone, they’re continually underestimated because people just refuse to see the obvious and keep measuring them based on the rules of a game they are not playing.
All the hand-wringing about Apple being late to the AI party is predictably nonsensical.
The key premise at the root of this lament is that the competition is delivering world changing AI products and features while Apple flounders. Poppycock. The reality is that, across the board, AI is a half-baked, overhyped hot mess.
To the extent that it could be unusual that Apple’s marketing folks were allowed to rebrand the existing machine learning pipeline as Apple Intelligence, the rest of the story is following a familiar pattern. Others hit the market first with a New Big Thing that’s hyped to be great, but is, in reality, unfinished and poorly implemented. Meanwhile, Apple hangs back and really works on it. Pundits declare Apple to be doomed and call for Tim Cook’s resignation, because, you know, he’s no Steve Jobs.
Eventually, if the New Big Thing was even a thing, Apple rolls out with an implementation that comes with a twist that makes it somehow… different. Apple makes a big introduction, and the pundits receive it skeptically. It’s too little, too late, they say, and Apple will never catch up.
But then there’s a slow burn. The twist that made it different turns out to be the thing that consumers find indispensable. Then while the pundits aren’t looking, Apple’s take becomes the obvious implementation that everybody wants, and the competition has to try to replicate it.
Finally, the Apple version retroactively becomes an instant success, and there was actually no party before Apple showed up. The pundits pretend this was always a foregone conclusion and forget what they said before. They’ve moved on anyway.
The pundits are now focused on decrying Apple’s annual updates to the instant success as too-slow incrementalism. Tim Cook is no Steve Jobs, after all. Didn’t Jobs launch a new, instantly successful category killer product like every six months? Also, there’s this new New Big Thing that the other companies are doing, and Apple is lagging so far behind that they’re doomed. Tim Cook should resign. He’s no Steve Jobs.
If that were the case, Apple would have sat back and continued its refusal to even pronounce the letters 'AI'.
It didn't and for good reason. Not only did it not do that, but it chose to 'talk it up', promise features, but 'later' and then not hit the mark with what it managed to ship.
You are free to describe the current state of AI how you please but one thing is unquestionable: the buzz around AI hasn't died down. The opposite is true.
That means, whatever its state, people are using it and getting results. Results they are perfectly happy with. Drawbacks included.
That is why Apple couldn't wait a few years to deliver its own take.
There are hundreds of LLMs out there doing amazing things.
I'm very happy with Perplexity Pro and get results I could never get from something like Siri.
Now 'Manus' is getting all the news and proving useful:
You seem to be unwittingly reinforcing my point. First, I didn’t suggest that buzz around AI was dying down. I said it’s a hot mess. You say people are using AI and getting results “they are perfectly happy with. Drawbacks included.” That is no doubt a true statement. You also mention the “hundreds of LLMs out there,” and name a few as examples. That’s exactly the hot mess I’m referring to. There are lots of not ready for prime time examples out there, none of which are poised to individually alter the landscape and set a new paradigm. This is the pattern that repeats. There are lots of unripe examples of a thing in the marketplace. Apple hangs back and figures out an implementation that isn’t just novel, interesting, or innovative, but is actually indispensable.
Microsoft made a smartwatch in 2004, and they weren’t even the first. A decade later, Samsung had one, and Fitbits were well known. More commonly, though, people had mostly quit wearing watches, because they all had a phone in their pocket that would show them the time. Then Apple introduced their watch, to much skepticism. A few years later, it was an “instant success,” and nobody remembers how Apple was hopelessly late to the smart watch party. Now, everywhere you go, people wearing Apple Watches, not because they’re a fashion statement or status symbol, but because (unlike what their competition was making before the Apple Watch) they are useful.
That’s why all your examples of “many [AI models] popping up all over the place” should tell you to wait and see what Apple actually does. If the pattern repeats again, all those other examples will become Wikipedia footnotes as Apple’s competitors are forced to react to and replicate Apple’s approach that actually makes AI into something indispensable.
Re-read my reply, especially the first two paragraphs.
You made a blanket statement that AI was a 'hot mess'. It actually isn't but, like I said, you are free to your opinion.
AI is enabling advancements all over the place and a lot of that is as far removed from a hot mess as you can get.
You didn't mention that some solutions were providing solutions whereas others weren't and as a result that was a hot mess. This is what you said:
"The key premise at the root of this lament is that the competition is delivering world changing AI products and features while Apple flounders. Poppycock. The reality is that, across the board, AI is a half-baked, overhyped hot mess."
That ("across the board") is a blanket statement and is incorrect. Apple is floundering because it has promised a lot (and made those promises late), and delivered very little (and to limited audiences) and is delaying a tent pole feature (the Siri improvements).
Nothing Siri can currently achieve is anywhere near what some solutions can achieve. That has led my wife and I to simply not use it all.
'Waiting and seeing' what Apple does won't change anything. It will still be late and in any case the competition might still be ahead when it does deliver. Right now, that's simply wishful thinking. The whole point is that it's not here now, and pointing to some uncertain future point in time doesn't cut it. They played that card at WWDC 2024 and said to look out for the next iOS release. Well, that release came without a single Apple Intelligence feature. Not good.
As for being indispensable, that is already the case for many users who use AI solutions and, far from 'hanging back', Apple has done the opposite (see my first paragraph).
Apple will never reach the 'world changing' solutions because it is a CE company. You need to look outside that bubble to see true world changing AI based results.
Yes, there are moral and ethical issues facing some branches, and depending on what you are trying to achieve, YMMV, but clearly for a lot of people the results are what they are looking for or close to it. That is reality today and with each new day those solutions are advancing.
Absolutely ridiculous. As a Mac customer since the 1990s it's clear to me the Mac has never been in a better place. Steve Jobs would have been delighted with what they have been able to achieve with Apple Silicon for the Mac and they make "the whole widget" now just as he always wanted. On top of that Tim Cook is an absolute logistics and supply genius and people underestimate how much this has meant to Apple becoming what it is today. As an Apple shareholder I would like to see Tim stay on for a long while yet.
Actually Jobs made a comment that he learned that it wasn’t a good idea for a company to make every part themselves.
To be fair Steve Jobs (Apple) did try to work with Motorola, IBM, Intel, and even Nvidia in the end Apple had to roll up its sleeves and do most of the heavy lifting themselves with Apple Silicon being a prime example.
I might add Apple has had many pieces of software/hardware over the years that they had to support or create because the Wintel market wasn’t bothered to support Apple products, Apple retail store, iPod, iTunes, Apple Maps, Apple Watch, iMessage, Apple Pay, Final Cut Pro, Safari, and there are many others…
Absolutely ridiculous. As a Mac customer since the 1990s it's clear to me the Mac has never been in a better place. Steve Jobs would have been delighted with what they have been able to achieve with Apple Silicon for the Mac and they make "the whole widget" now just as he always wanted. On top of that Tim Cook is an absolute logistics and supply genius and people underestimate how much this has meant to Apple becoming what it is today. As an Apple shareholder I would like to see Tim stay on for a long while yet.
Actually Jobs made a comment that he learned that it wasn’t a good idea for a company to make every part themselves.
To be fair Steve Jobs (Apple) did try to work with Motorola, IBM, Intel, and even Nvidia in the end Apple had to roll up its sleeves and do most of the heavy lifting themselves with Apple Silicon being a prime example.
I might add Apple has had many pieces of software/hardware over the years that they had to support or create because the Wintel market wasn’t bothered to support Apple products, Apple retail store, iPod, iTunes, Apple Maps, Apple Watch, iMessage, Apple Pay, Final Cut Pro, Safari, And there are many others…
You focus on your core competencies. Otherwise you are not taking advantage of economies of scale.
All the hand-wringing about Apple being late to the AI party is predictably nonsensical.
The key premise at the root of this lament is that the competition is delivering world changing AI products and features while Apple flounders. Poppycock. The reality is that, across the board, AI is a half-baked, overhyped hot mess.
To the extent that it could be unusual that Apple’s marketing folks were allowed to rebrand the existing machine learning pipeline as Apple Intelligence, the rest of the story is following a familiar pattern. Others hit the market first with a New Big Thing that’s hyped to be great, but is, in reality, unfinished and poorly implemented. Meanwhile, Apple hangs back and really works on it. Pundits declare Apple to be doomed and call for Tim Cook’s resignation, because, you know, he’s no Steve Jobs.
Eventually, if the New Big Thing was even a thing, Apple rolls out with an implementation that comes with a twist that makes it somehow… different. Apple makes a big introduction, and the pundits receive it skeptically. It’s too little, too late, they say, and Apple will never catch up.
But then there’s a slow burn. The twist that made it different turns out to be the thing that consumers find indispensable. Then while the pundits aren’t looking, Apple’s take becomes the obvious implementation that everybody wants, and the competition has to try to replicate it.
Finally, the Apple version retroactively becomes an instant success, and there was actually no party before Apple showed up. The pundits pretend this was always a foregone conclusion and forget what they said before. They’ve moved on anyway.
The pundits are now focused on decrying Apple’s annual updates to the instant success as too-slow incrementalism. Tim Cook is no Steve Jobs, after all. Didn’t Jobs launch a new, instantly successful category killer product like every six months? Also, there’s this new New Big Thing that the other companies are doing, and Apple is lagging so far behind that they’re doomed. Tim Cook should resign. He’s no Steve Jobs.
If that were the case, Apple would have sat back and continued its refusal to even pronounce the letters 'AI'.
It didn't and for good reason. Not only did it not do that, but it chose to 'talk it up', promise features, but 'later' and then not hit the mark with what it managed to ship.
You are free to describe the current state of AI how you please but one thing is unquestionable: the buzz around AI hasn't died down. The opposite is true.
That means, whatever its state, people are using it and getting results. Results they are perfectly happy with. Drawbacks included.
That is why Apple couldn't wait a few years to deliver its own take.
There are hundreds of LLMs out there doing amazing things.
I'm very happy with Perplexity Pro and get results I could never get from something like Siri.
Now 'Manus' is getting all the news and proving useful:
You seem to be unwittingly reinforcing my point. First, I didn’t suggest that buzz around AI was dying down. I said it’s a hot mess. You say people are using AI and getting results “they are perfectly happy with. Drawbacks included.” That is no doubt a true statement. You also mention the “hundreds of LLMs out there,” and name a few as examples. That’s exactly the hot mess I’m referring to. There are lots of not ready for prime time examples out there, none of which are poised to individually alter the landscape and set a new paradigm. This is the pattern that repeats. There are lots of unripe examples of a thing in the marketplace. Apple hangs back and figures out an implementation that isn’t just novel, interesting, or innovative, but is actually indispensable.
Microsoft made a smartwatch in 2004, and they weren’t even the first. A decade later, Samsung had one, and Fitbits were well known. More commonly, though, people had mostly quit wearing watches, because they all had a phone in their pocket that would show them the time. Then Apple introduced their watch, to much skepticism. A few years later, it was an “instant success,” and nobody remembers how Apple was hopelessly late to the smart watch party. Now, everywhere you go, people wearing Apple Watches, not because they’re a fashion statement or status symbol, but because (unlike what their competition was making before the Apple Watch) they are useful.
That’s why all your examples of “many [AI models] popping up all over the place” should tell you to wait and see what Apple actually does. If the pattern repeats again, all those other examples will become Wikipedia footnotes as Apple’s competitors are forced to react to and replicate Apple’s approach that actually makes AI into something indispensable.
Re-read my reply, especially the first two paragraphs.
You made a blanket statement that AI was a 'hot mess'. It actually isn't but, like I said, you are free to your opinion.
AI is enabling advancements all over the place and a lot of that is as far removed from a hot mess as you can get.
You didn't mention that some solutions were providing solutions whereas others weren't and as a result that was a hot mess. This is what you said:
"The key premise at the root of this lament is that the competition is delivering world changing AI products and features while Apple flounders. Poppycock. The reality is that, across the board, AI is a half-baked, overhyped hot mess."
That ("across the board") is a blanket statement and is incorrect. Apple is floundering because it has promised a lot (and made those promises late), and delivered very little (and to limited audiences) and is delaying a tent pole feature (the Siri improvements).
Nothing Siri can currently achieve is anywhere near what some solutions can achieve. That has led my wife and I to simply not use it all.
'Waiting and seeing' what Apple does won't change anything. It will still be late and in any case the competition might still be ahead when it does deliver. Right now, that's simply wishful thinking. The whole point is that it's not here now, and pointing to some uncertain future point in time doesn't cut it. They played that card at WWDC 2024 and said to look out for the next iOS release. Well, that release came without a single Apple Intelligence feature. Not good.
As for being indispensable, that is already the case for many users who use AI solutions and, far from 'hanging back', Apple has done the opposite (see my first paragraph).
Apple will never reach the 'world changing' solutions because it is a CE company. You need to look outside that bubble to see true world changing AI based results.
Yes, there are moral and ethical issues facing some branches, and depending on what you are trying to achieve, YMMV, but clearly for a lot of people the results are what they are looking for or close to it. That is reality today and with each new day those solutions are advancing.
Yes, I understand that AI is apparently more useful in researching folding proteins and such things, but you’re just trying to change the subject. Apple is indeed a consumer electronics company, and this site and accompanying forum are about that consumer electronics company. The artificial intelligence being discussed here is AI for consumer electronics. That stuff is a hot mess.
Cook was an outstanding COO. He became CEO of the most valuable company and kept it like that for the most. Car, AVP, TV+ expenses, panic move away from China, and AI… he is no product or project person. He won’t push Apple forward.
That is a misleading statement. Cook did not "....... became CEO of the most valuable company". When Cook took over as CEO (after Jobs passing in 2011), Apple, Inc. only had a market cap of about $375B. Apple Inc. did not become the most valuable company until over 7 years later, with Cook as CEO. Apple became the first $1T US company (by market cap) in 2018. The first $2T in 2020 and the first $3T in 2024. Not bad by any metric, for a CEO that bungled its EV venture.
Not all that misleading. Apple briefly became the worlds most valuable company in 2011, and vied for the top spot with Exxon for the following few years. The $1tn market cap milestone was a different matter.
Maybe check these things out before rushing to correct someone with your half-rememberings?
But Jobs named Cook as interim CEO of Apple in 2009. Cook was doing most of the heavy lifting in running Apple because of Jobs failing health. Apple became the most valuable US company under Cook's watch. Cook didn't just inherit Apple being the most valuable US company (by market cap), he was running the company well before Apple earned that title around 2011, even if only off and on for the next few years. Which may have been one of the main reason why Jobs officially named him CEO in 2011. It wasn't until Apple market cap hit about $1T in (2018) that Apple has become known as the most valuable company in the World and not just based on market cap, like it was in 2011. Apple has been the most profitable company in the US since around 2015 and second most profitable company in the World today.
You make it seem as though Cook was just lucky to be in the right place, at the right time and played no role in Apple becoming the most valuable company in the US and then the World. All of those happened when Apple was under his watch.
I don’t think he needs to resign as from a financial standpoint, he’s handled the company brilliantly. But maybe he needs to bring in a new senior executive with more product orientation.
It seems to me that the car and A.I. failures are primarily the responsibility of the executives in charge of those efforts. Maybe THEY need to be replaced.
Years ago, I predicted that Apple would have primarily been a robotics and AI company by now. But it sure seems like Boston Dynamics (now owned by Hyundai), maybe Tesla )depending upon how fake Musk’s demos have been) and a number of Japanese and Chinese companies are way ahead of them.
IMO, Apple does have to find a new big business because phones and services are not going to sustain them in the long run. Macs and iPads are already a relatively small part of the business.
The Vision product lineup is the next big thing. We haven't seen anything yet, pun intended. Apple has a much bigger vision than we've seen!
Tim has done well, including passing product announcements off to a broader range of folks lately.
Apple Intelligence feels like a me too product designed to appeal to investors rather than consumers. Almost every iPhone user I know hates it and asks me how you can switch it off.
I don’t blame Tim Cook though as every tech company is expected to bet the farm on gen AI. Cook would be eviscerated by the markets if Apple didn’t have a gen AI strategy. There’s a lot of hype but no-one has a product that works as promised.
I think Apple users are a lot more savvy than the average consumer. I think the AI “revolution” is a mix of lies, misunderstanding, and intentional false hype. The large language models (LLMs) create the impression of intelligence but possess none. But that’s enough to fool huge swaths of the human population. One of Apple’s internal communications was, “The last thing the world needs is another chatbot.” And Apple was right. But it was forced to do something by the - let’s just say it - gullible masses who bought the AI lies. Maybe that’s the one thing I can say it did wrong - jump on the bandwagon instead of exposing it for the lie it is?
I think a lot of Apple users know this and are simply not interested in AI - even if it’s Apple’s version. I get it. The last thing I want is some LLM making nonsensical statements in my e-mail messages to other people. I don’t need help writing. Get the heck out of my way. That’s why lots of Apple users are turning it off.
The only thing that worries me now is that if Apple relies too heavily on LLMs it can never have a reliable Apple Intelligence product. Why? Because LLMs hallucinate shockingly high percentages of the time. LLMs are just plain wrong - a LOT. I know Apple knows this. I know Apple has been developing neural processors for a long, long time. I know Apple has the best and brightest people. I know they are amazing managers - honest, caring, really great corporate citizens. So I trust they are doing the wise thing with Apple Intelligence, even if it takes longer. Doing things well takes longer. And I’m sick of those who can’t criticizing those who can.
AI is not a lie. LLMs are just one piece of the tech. It's not just an impression of intelligence, but the closest thing to real intelligence that we've had. You're right that we still have a long way to go, and one of Apple's research projects demonstrated how current logic processing could be done much better.
AI will improve drastically –because– of Apple's involvement, as do many aspects of technology that we now take for granted.
Amazing how Apple / Tim Cook is pilloried over the Apple Car - a product that Apple never even acknowledged. It really is quite an amazing apportioning of criticism. The AI functionality that has been advertised, but not been delivered is very fair game for criticism.
But if the car, then why not blame Apple for their failures over their delayed TV set, the hot mess of the folding iPad, Macs still without a cellular connection, their flawed electric motorcycle, Apple ring, washing machine, solar powered router, 8” iPhone and all those other products Apple have never even announced. We know they were junk and were quietly shelved ….
How much money did he spend on the development of the car?
The car that Apple never announced but was endlessly analysed by tech pundits? The car whose existence Apple never acknowledged? The car that may have been a project but after lengthy feasibility studies, never made it out of mockup proposals or was cancelled as not worth pursuing? That car? Apple of course, would would know exactly how much they spent on it. Do I know? No. Do you know? No.
Do you really think that the only things that Apple ever proposes, tests and develops are the products that actually end up on sale for you to buy? Do you really think that they have never taken 50 other products to a feasibility/test stage before deciding that, all things considered, they do not wish to pursue it any further? How much money did they spend on those? Do you know?
Cook was an outstanding COO. He became CEO of the most valuable company and kept it like that for the most. Car, AVP, TV+ expenses, panic move away from China, and AI… he is no product or project person. He won’t push Apple forward.
That is a misleading statement. Cook did not "....... became CEO of the most valuable company". When Cook took over as CEO (after Jobs passing in 2011), Apple, Inc. only had a market cap of about $375B. Apple Inc. did not become the most valuable company until over 7 years later, with Cook as CEO. Apple became the first $1T US company (by market cap) in 2018. The first $2T in 2020 and the first $3T in 2024. Not bad by any metric, for a CEO that bungled its EV venture.
Not all that misleading. Apple briefly became the worlds most valuable company in 2011, and vied for the top spot with Exxon for the following few years. The $1tn market cap milestone was a different matter.
Maybe check these things out before rushing to correct someone with your half-rememberings?
But Jobs named Cook as interim CEO of Apple in 2009. Cook was doing most of the heavy lifting in running Apple because of Jobs failing health. Apple became the most valuable US company under Cook's watch. Cook didn't just inherit Apple being the most valuable US company (by market cap), he was running the company well before Apple earned that title around 2011, even if only off and on for the next few years. Which may have been one of the main reason why Jobs officially named him CEO in 2011. It wasn't until Apple market cap hit about $1T in (2018) that Apple has become known as the most valuable company in the World and not just based on market cap, like it was in 2011. Apple has been the most profitable company in the US since around 2015 and second most profitable company in the World today.
You make it seem as though Cook was just lucky to be in the right place, at the right time and played no role in Apple becoming the most valuable company in the US and then the World. All of those happened when Apple was under his watch.
How do I make it seem that? You're making stuff up there, and rather changing your argument. The OP was explicit in saying that Cook was an outstanding COO, and no one has said anything to suggest that he wasn't integral to Apple becoming the most valuable public company.
You are literally tilting at windmills while waving your internet dick around. Stop making pointless arguments.
All the hand-wringing about Apple being late to the AI party is predictably nonsensical.
The key premise at the root of this lament is that the competition is delivering world changing AI products and features while Apple flounders. Poppycock. The reality is that, across the board, AI is a half-baked, overhyped hot mess.
To the extent that it could be unusual that Apple’s marketing folks were allowed to rebrand the existing machine learning pipeline as Apple Intelligence, the rest of the story is following a familiar pattern. Others hit the market first with a New Big Thing that’s hyped to be great, but is, in reality, unfinished and poorly implemented. Meanwhile, Apple hangs back and really works on it. Pundits declare Apple to be doomed and call for Tim Cook’s resignation, because, you know, he’s no Steve Jobs.
Eventually, if the New Big Thing was even a thing, Apple rolls out with an implementation that comes with a twist that makes it somehow… different. Apple makes a big introduction, and the pundits receive it skeptically. It’s too little, too late, they say, and Apple will never catch up.
But then there’s a slow burn. The twist that made it different turns out to be the thing that consumers find indispensable. Then while the pundits aren’t looking, Apple’s take becomes the obvious implementation that everybody wants, and the competition has to try to replicate it.
Finally, the Apple version retroactively becomes an instant success, and there was actually no party before Apple showed up. The pundits pretend this was always a foregone conclusion and forget what they said before. They’ve moved on anyway.
The pundits are now focused on decrying Apple’s annual updates to the instant success as too-slow incrementalism. Tim Cook is no Steve Jobs, after all. Didn’t Jobs launch a new, instantly successful category killer product like every six months? Also, there’s this new New Big Thing that the other companies are doing, and Apple is lagging so far behind that they’re doomed. Tim Cook should resign. He’s no Steve Jobs.
If that were the case, Apple would have sat back and continued its refusal to even pronounce the letters 'AI'.
It didn't and for good reason. Not only did it not do that, but it chose to 'talk it up', promise features, but 'later' and then not hit the mark with what it managed to ship.
You are free to describe the current state of AI how you please but one thing is unquestionable: the buzz around AI hasn't died down. The opposite is true.
That means, whatever its state, people are using it and getting results. Results they are perfectly happy with. Drawbacks included.
That is why Apple couldn't wait a few years to deliver its own take.
There are hundreds of LLMs out there doing amazing things.
I'm very happy with Perplexity Pro and get results I could never get from something like Siri.
Now 'Manus' is getting all the news and proving useful:
You seem to be unwittingly reinforcing my point. First, I didn’t suggest that buzz around AI was dying down. I said it’s a hot mess. You say people are using AI and getting results “they are perfectly happy with. Drawbacks included.” That is no doubt a true statement. You also mention the “hundreds of LLMs out there,” and name a few as examples. That’s exactly the hot mess I’m referring to. There are lots of not ready for prime time examples out there, none of which are poised to individually alter the landscape and set a new paradigm. This is the pattern that repeats. There are lots of unripe examples of a thing in the marketplace. Apple hangs back and figures out an implementation that isn’t just novel, interesting, or innovative, but is actually indispensable.
Microsoft made a smartwatch in 2004, and they weren’t even the first. A decade later, Samsung had one, and Fitbits were well known. More commonly, though, people had mostly quit wearing watches, because they all had a phone in their pocket that would show them the time. Then Apple introduced their watch, to much skepticism. A few years later, it was an “instant success,” and nobody remembers how Apple was hopelessly late to the smart watch party. Now, everywhere you go, people wearing Apple Watches, not because they’re a fashion statement or status symbol, but because (unlike what their competition was making before the Apple Watch) they are useful.
That’s why all your examples of “many [AI models] popping up all over the place” should tell you to wait and see what Apple actually does. If the pattern repeats again, all those other examples will become Wikipedia footnotes as Apple’s competitors are forced to react to and replicate Apple’s approach that actually makes AI into something indispensable.
Re-read my reply, especially the first two paragraphs.
You made a blanket statement that AI was a 'hot mess'. It actually isn't but, like I said, you are free to your opinion.
AI is enabling advancements all over the place and a lot of that is as far removed from a hot mess as you can get.
You didn't mention that some solutions were providing solutions whereas others weren't and as a result that was a hot mess. This is what you said:
"The key premise at the root of this lament is that the competition is delivering world changing AI products and features while Apple flounders. Poppycock. The reality is that, across the board, AI is a half-baked, overhyped hot mess."
That ("across the board") is a blanket statement and is incorrect. Apple is floundering because it has promised a lot (and made those promises late), and delivered very little (and to limited audiences) and is delaying a tent pole feature (the Siri improvements).
Nothing Siri can currently achieve is anywhere near what some solutions can achieve. That has led my wife and I to simply not use it all.
'Waiting and seeing' what Apple does won't change anything. It will still be late and in any case the competition might still be ahead when it does deliver. Right now, that's simply wishful thinking. The whole point is that it's not here now, and pointing to some uncertain future point in time doesn't cut it. They played that card at WWDC 2024 and said to look out for the next iOS release. Well, that release came without a single Apple Intelligence feature. Not good.
As for being indispensable, that is already the case for many users who use AI solutions and, far from 'hanging back', Apple has done the opposite (see my first paragraph).
Apple will never reach the 'world changing' solutions because it is a CE company. You need to look outside that bubble to see true world changing AI based results.
Yes, there are moral and ethical issues facing some branches, and depending on what you are trying to achieve, YMMV, but clearly for a lot of people the results are what they are looking for or close to it. That is reality today and with each new day those solutions are advancing.
Yes, I understand that AI is apparently more useful in researching folding proteins and such things, but you’re just trying to change the subject. Apple is indeed a consumer electronics company, and this site and accompanying forum are about that consumer electronics company. The artificial intelligence being discussed here is AI for consumer electronics. That stuff is a hot mess.
I'm not changing the subject. AI is AI but if you want to limit things to a purely consumer sphere we are back to square one. Consumer AI isn't a 'hot mess across the board'.
Like I said, YMMV, from problematic areas like Apple's attempts to summarise news or image generation of people with six fingers, to amazing results in multi modal AI.
Google's AI Studio is a perfect example. No one who has used it would walk away calling it a hot mess even if the results weren't perfect.
The same can be said of most of the tools available at the moment. For general information I use Perplexity Pro and haven't had a single incorrect result.
I've given you some examples of solutions in previous posts.
Let's go back a few years ago to a scientific text I had to review. It was originally planned for inclusion in a Spanish language scientific journal as the original text was in Spanish.
It was later rewritten and adapted for inclusion in some English speaking journals so I stepped in to review the English language side. Months of work back and forth adapting different areas to cater to the reviewers' comments in terms of content.
As the deadlines for official presentations neared, we were running out of time and decided to pump some sections into ChatGPT to give the English a bit more polish.
Remember this is a couple of years ago (not current versions). The results blew me away. We reviewed everything and all we had to do was change the 'tone' because it was too 'effusive' in parts. That was it. We would never have met the deadline without it.
The content was scientific but we are talking about the English language generation here.
Then there is the blurry line between industrial and consumer AI.
A car is a perfect example. Self driving cars can't operate safely without GOD networks but object detection isn't limited to cars. Nor is the Natural Language Processing/Generation for the driver and passengers.
Using an mmWave detector in a consumer setting is used for object detection, fall detection and breathing detection. Examples have been shipping for a while now but improvements are coming. For example, pet detection but if you have no roaming pets that is a non-issue. These are examples of where and industrial use-case is perfectly adaptable to a consumer use case.
In 2030 we will have 6G network sensing (mmWave detection is basically a precursor to this). The entire network will be able to 'sense' what is within its bounds. Obviously, for things like ZE-IoT in an industrial setting it will be a boon but in a consumer setting it will be equally useful and probably be used to substitute current active devices.
With AI moving forward in leaps and bounds and providing real-world solutions, Apple wasn't in a position to sit back and wait. What we are witnessing is its attempts to get on the train. There will be pain points along the way.
Apple Intelligence feels like a me too product designed to appeal to investors rather than consumers. Almost every iPhone user I know hates it and asks me how you can switch it off.
I don’t blame Tim Cook though as every tech company is expected to bet the farm on gen AI. Cook would be eviscerated by the markets if Apple didn’t have a gen AI strategy. There’s a lot of hype but no-one has a product that works as promised.
I think Apple users are a lot more savvy than the average consumer. I think the AI “revolution” is a mix of lies, misunderstanding, and intentional false hype. The large language models (LLMs) create the impression of intelligence but possess none. But that’s enough to fool huge swaths of the human population. One of Apple’s internal communications was, “The last thing the world needs is another chatbot.” And Apple was right. But it was forced to do something by the - let’s just say it - gullible masses who bought the AI lies. Maybe that’s the one thing I can say it did wrong - jump on the bandwagon instead of exposing it for the lie it is?
I think a lot of Apple users know this and are simply not interested in AI - even if it’s Apple’s version. I get it. The last thing I want is some LLM making nonsensical statements in my e-mail messages to other people. I don’t need help writing. Get the heck out of my way. That’s why lots of Apple users are turning it off.
The only thing that worries me now is that if Apple relies too heavily on LLMs it can never have a reliable Apple Intelligence product. Why? Because LLMs hallucinate shockingly high percentages of the time. LLMs are just plain wrong - a LOT. I know Apple knows this. I know Apple has been developing neural processors for a long, long time. I know Apple has the best and brightest people. I know they are amazing managers - honest, caring, really great corporate citizens. So I trust they are doing the wise thing with Apple Intelligence, even if it takes longer. Doing things well takes longer. And I’m sick of those who can’t criticizing those who can.
AI is not a lie. LLMs are just one piece of the tech. It's not just an impression of intelligence, but the closest thing to real intelligence that we've had. You're right that we still have a long way to go, and one of Apple's research projects demonstrated how current logic processing could be done much better.
AI will improve drastically –because– of Apple's involvement, as do many aspects of technology that we now take for granted.
The AI we’re talking about here is a hot mess and is a lot further from being “real intelligence” than the hype would have you believe. We’re only two years out from the inflection point regarding AI in popular culture where Kevin Roose in The NY Times reported breathlessly on the AI program that creepily declared its love for him and told him to leave his wife. He also reported that it told him the evil things it would do if it could. ‘Oh no, everyone said. Our evil robot overlords are almost ready to take over!’
Back in reality, it wasn’t to hard to see that Roose was just intentionally pushing an AI chatbot to its operational limits and getting predictably weird results. He was literally trying multiple ways to ask it to reveal what its programming instructed it not to say in query responses, and when it did, published the answers as creepy evil robot stuff. Some of us could recognize this as not being borderline ‘real intelligence,’ but instead as shockingly not being that much more advanced than the 1960s Eliza chatbot.
More recently, I asked one of the popular AI programs to write a story about green eggs and ham in the style of Dr. Seuss and got back a nearly verbatim recitation from the copyrighted book. A later attempt yielded an ‘I can’t do that; try a different request.’
This stuff has a much larger collection of source data than Eliza had, but it’s still just chopping it into pieces and reassembling a montage to reflect back content as cued by user queries.
Much of what’s out there is just further refinement of the same, trying harder to obfuscate theft of copyrighted material and other IP with more nuance in its regurgitation. The hype of course continues unabated as the current zeitgeist widely demonstrates (well beyond just AI interactions) humans’ willful gullibility when being told lies they want to hear.
So it’s not surprising that Apple’s foray would be delayed as they pursue a stated course that relies less on stolen IP and less on deception and manipulation of their customers. I have posited in other threads on this subject some possible ways Apple could produce truly useful AI interactions while operating within a more ethical framework that respects IP and user privacy and security.
Of course, it’s a lot easier to float ideas on a chat board than it is to create a thing that functions seamlessly in the wild. Also, because this is Apple, the expectations are much higher than for any other company. When any of the others’ AI spits out stolen IP or a hallucination or something that seems creepy, it’s shrugged off as expected. If Apple AI makes a similar mistake, it’s a scandal and probably a class action lawsuit.
Apple’s AI is coming, but only when it’s actually ready.
Comments
I doubt Jobs would ever have imagined Cook would stay beyond 10 years.
Literally any competent CEO could have done what Cook has done with what he was given - Apple had already swapped positions with Exxon Mobile at the time with Jobs was still alive for the most valuable company in the world.
Yet all these years later, Apple still relies heavily on the cash cows that Jobs left behind in the iPhone, iPad, Mac - these still account for 60% of Apple’s revenue. Then you add the other big Job’s era cash cow, Service. This includes the App Store/iTunes, which laid the basis for Apple Music and Apple TV+. People erroneously credit Cook for Apple Silicon, which was also a Jobs sera initiative with the first Apple Silicon MacBook prototyped running an A5 chip back in 2011 when Jobs was still alive.
‘Cook has had two massive cracks at things that were supposed to secure Apple’s growth for the future - the failed $10 billion plus Apple Car project and the effectively failed Visonless Pro, which also cost billions and looks to be going nowhere fast. He also cost the company $500 million for misleading investors on China.
And now, we have the monumental mission on AI with the hugely embarrassing new Siri fail, which could well have tarnished the “Apple Intelligence” brand for good. There was a lot of hubris in calling AI “Apple Intelligence” and this comes on top of the abysmal launch of AI for the iPhone 16 - al the marketing was around Apple Intelligence and the features weren’t ready at launch. And now the Siri fail caps it off. And let’s not forget the other less well-known embarrassment - the failure to launch next-generation Apple CarPlay last year. Yet another promise made and broken - the top tier car brands Apple lined up for the launch who even went as far to announce their launches early last year would be fuming.
The only person that can Apple back on track to achieving the greatness that Jobs envisioned for the company is someone who understands Apple inside out and who was there during the Jobs era and was the man behind the iPod, iPhone and iPad - Tony Fadell. He left at Apple to found Nest, which he sold to Google, and has since become an angel investor, backing numerous companies including Nothing (phone company). And he is still only in his early 50s. He would whip Apple into shape the same way Jobs did when he famously came back and rescued Apple.
Not only is Cook not a product guy, he’s not a technology guy full stop. He is a very good accountant and great with supply chains (or so they say). The miss on AI, chasing the Apple Car and the Visionless Pro all smack of someone who just doesn’t get it. He does get making money hand over fist, which is why hew still has the job. But if people are watching closely at what has been going on, there is no way he should be given the luxury of picking his time to leave. He should have been ditched three years ago.
"In other words we calculate our Global Stats on the basis of more than 5 billion page views per month, by people from all over the world onto our 1.5 million+ member sites."
Oh, this sounds like a very reliable way of calculating market share! Page views to "member sites" with zero knowledge of how/why they were chosen or how representative they are or not of the overall PC/mobile phone market. Excellent source! Maybe pull stats out of a hat next time and post those--I'm sure they'd be equally reliable.
Apple doesn’t measure their success by market share. Market share generally belongs to makers of lower quality, high-volume, low (or no) profit devices. This is undeniably the case in both the smart phone and personal computer markets.
Both the OG iPhone and Apple Watch 0 were limited implementations produced for early adopters. Heck, iPhone had no App Store yet, depended on a Mac or pc to do software updates, the camera was a low resolution afterthought, and Cingular (AT&T) was the only phone company they’d work with.
You made a blanket statement that AI was a 'hot mess'. It actually isn't but, like I said, you are free to your opinion.
AI is enabling advancements all over the place and a lot of that is as far removed from a hot mess as you can get.
You didn't mention that some solutions were providing solutions whereas others weren't and as a result that was a hot mess. This is what you said:
"The key premise at the root of this lament is that the competition is delivering world changing AI products and features while Apple flounders. Poppycock. The reality is that, across the board, AI is a half-baked, overhyped hot mess."
That ("across the board") is a blanket statement and is incorrect. Apple is floundering because it has promised a lot (and made those promises late), and delivered very little (and to limited audiences) and is delaying a tent pole feature (the Siri improvements).
Nothing Siri can currently achieve is anywhere near what some solutions can achieve. That has led my wife and I to simply not use it all.
'Waiting and seeing' what Apple does won't change anything. It will still be late and in any case the competition might still be ahead when it does deliver. Right now, that's simply wishful thinking. The whole point is that it's not here now, and pointing to some uncertain future point in time doesn't cut it. They played that card at WWDC 2024 and said to look out for the next iOS release. Well, that release came without a single Apple Intelligence feature. Not good.
As for being indispensable, that is already the case for many users who use AI solutions and, far from 'hanging back', Apple has done the opposite (see my first paragraph).
Apple will never reach the 'world changing' solutions because it is a CE company. You need to look outside that bubble to see true world changing AI based results.
https://www.huaweicloud.com/intl/en-us/cases/pgywdf.html
https://technative.io/can-ai-assisted-drug-design-make-antibiotic-breakthroughs/
Yes, there are moral and ethical issues facing some branches, and depending on what you are trying to achieve, YMMV, but clearly for a lot of people the results are what they are looking for or close to it. That is reality today and with each new day those solutions are advancing.
I might add Apple has had many pieces of software/hardware over the years that they had to support or create because the Wintel market wasn’t bothered to support Apple products, Apple retail store, iPod, iTunes, Apple Maps, Apple Watch, iMessage, Apple Pay, Final Cut Pro, Safari, and there are many others…
The Vision product lineup is the next big thing. We haven't seen anything yet, pun intended. Apple has a much bigger vision than we've seen!
Tim has done well, including passing product announcements off to a broader range of folks lately.
AI is not a lie. LLMs are just one piece of the tech. It's not just an impression of intelligence, but the closest thing to real intelligence that we've had. You're right that we still have a long way to go, and one of Apple's research projects demonstrated how current logic processing could be done much better.
AI will improve drastically –because– of Apple's involvement, as do many aspects of technology that we now take for granted.
Do you really think that the only things that Apple ever proposes, tests and develops are the products that actually end up on sale for you to buy? Do you really think that they have never taken 50 other products to a feasibility/test stage before deciding that, all things considered, they do not wish to pursue it any further? How much money did they spend on those? Do you know?
You are literally tilting at windmills while waving your internet dick around. Stop making pointless arguments.
Like I said, YMMV, from problematic areas like Apple's attempts to summarise news or image generation of people with six fingers, to amazing results in multi modal AI.
Google's AI Studio is a perfect example. No one who has used it would walk away calling it a hot mess even if the results weren't perfect.
The same can be said of most of the tools available at the moment. For general information I use Perplexity Pro and haven't had a single incorrect result.
I've given you some examples of solutions in previous posts.
Let's go back a few years ago to a scientific text I had to review. It was originally planned for inclusion in a Spanish language scientific journal as the original text was in Spanish.
It was later rewritten and adapted for inclusion in some English speaking journals so I stepped in to review the English language side. Months of work back and forth adapting different areas to cater to the reviewers' comments in terms of content.
As the deadlines for official presentations neared, we were running out of time and decided to pump some sections into ChatGPT to give the English a bit more polish.
Remember this is a couple of years ago (not current versions). The results blew me away. We reviewed everything and all we had to do was change the 'tone' because it was too 'effusive' in parts. That was it. We would never have met the deadline without it.
The content was scientific but we are talking about the English language generation here.
Then there is the blurry line between industrial and consumer AI.
A car is a perfect example. Self driving cars can't operate safely without GOD networks but object detection isn't limited to cars. Nor is the Natural Language Processing/Generation for the driver and passengers.
Using an mmWave detector in a consumer setting is used for object detection, fall detection and breathing detection. Examples have been shipping for a while now but improvements are coming. For example, pet detection but if you have no roaming pets that is a non-issue. These are examples of where and industrial use-case is perfectly adaptable to a consumer use case.
In 2030 we will have 6G network sensing (mmWave detection is basically a precursor to this). The entire network will be able to 'sense' what is within its bounds. Obviously, for things like ZE-IoT in an industrial setting it will be a boon but in a consumer setting it will be equally useful and probably be used to substitute current active devices.
With AI moving forward in leaps and bounds and providing real-world solutions, Apple wasn't in a position to sit back and wait. What we are witnessing is its attempts to get on the train. There will be pain points along the way.
Back in reality, it wasn’t to hard to see that Roose was just intentionally pushing an AI chatbot to its operational limits and getting predictably weird results. He was literally trying multiple ways to ask it to reveal what its programming instructed it not to say in query responses, and when it did, published the answers as creepy evil robot stuff. Some of us could recognize this as not being borderline ‘real intelligence,’ but instead as shockingly not being that much more advanced than the 1960s Eliza chatbot.
More recently, I asked one of the popular AI programs to write a story about green eggs and ham in the style of Dr. Seuss and got back a nearly verbatim recitation from the copyrighted book. A later attempt yielded an ‘I can’t do that; try a different request.’