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Apple confirms that Apple Intelligence Siri features are taking longer than expected
Scot1 said:I tried to use image playground again. It was working before but now I get an error message saying that Siri and my iPhone must use the same language. Currently your iPhone is English Canada and Siri is set for English Canada, lol
At the risk of bringing in a distraction to the topic, and coming from the other side if the pacific, what is the difference between Yankee English and Canadian English? Cause it sounds all the same to me. Does Siri put an “eh” at the end of each sentence?
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First Mac Studio M3 Ultra benchmarks significantly outpace the M2 Ultra
A strange choice to release an M3 ultra instead of an M4 ultra at this point. But , no doubt reasons that make sense to Apple.given it is modern Apple, I reckon prime reason is the profit margin. The M3 is still faster than an M4 max, but importantly parts bin and thus its margin is better than an M4 ultra would be.
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Apple confirms that Apple Intelligence Siri features are taking longer than expected
This is what happens when you have a supply chain expert in charge of an innovative company.- Want to make good computers so make some profit to do that; vs
- Want to make a profit so make some good computers to do that .
A subtle difference, but turns out it is everything. It takes time to be revealed, and then it is clear to see and difficult to fix.
Tim Apple is exposed as in the second category.This Siri debacle is a clear example of it. It has been poor for years, and nothing was done about it because software isn’t in the supply chain for hardware (thus low priority), and here we are.
and now Apple is so far behind it is becoming uncool. But hey, let’s get that geriatric pompous git King Charles (or more likely, an underling of his media manager) to do a playlist.
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CarPlay helps Australian police scan license plates automatically
I think that is the case with a lot of modern cars that can phone home, in effect. particularly EVs. I do not, however regard it as all glorious, because it requires a trust in government I do not have. I have over 40 years of public service, and I have been up close and seen how the sausage is made.dewme said:I've long wondered why all license (registration) plates or perhaps the vehicles themselves do not have a transponder so vehicles can be identified from a distance, like IFF transponders on aircraft and ships. The US should also consider having a country-wide vehicle identity system instead of every state having dozens of stupid vanity plates. Why do people have an emotional attachment to a license plate? The vehicle identity tag should be like a MAC ID on Ethernet or a GUID used in software. Build the identity tag into all vehicles, including buggies, bicycles, scooters, skate boards, etc. In other words, the 3rd Gen AirTags.
I know, boo hoo hoo on privacy, but public road space should be treated like airspace and access to it more tightly controlled. In today's highly connected environment the notion of privacy is largely an illusion. With improvements in AI and improvements in vision, voice, devices pinging connection points that have geo metadata, and other forms of surveillance, detection, and tracking systems including toll tag readers, the ability to move around the country anonymously is declining very rapidly. Hey, it's not like I'm advocating for a universal system to remotely disable vehicles, but that is probably not a bad idea now that I think about it.
This probably requires a bit more thought ...
as for the state vs federal. The state is the entity, the federal government is just an overarching entity with theoretically limited power over the states. Power devolved closer to the people. Nothing wrong with competitive federalism.It is not the founders’ fault in the USA that the federal government has become more powerful. It is the same in little old OZ as well by the way, the central federal government has expanded its powers well beyond that of the original intent of the Australian Constitution, which unlike the USA Consitution could be boiled down to a tedious contract between states that is essentially a unified approach to trade (including foreign affairs) and defence. Heck we didn’t even give it taxation powers, but it was taken on as a temporary measure in WW2, and well, it is still in place. And now we have a federal education department that doesn’t run schools, a federal health department that doesn’t run hospitals as two simple examples, and a relentless quest to duplicate development approvals and everything else states actually deliver. And all run from Canberra, a town with third generation public servants living in utopia with absolutely no idea how life is in the far flung parts of this wide brown land.
in summary, be very careful what you wish for. -
Apple's extortionate upgrade prices can't stop the MacBook Air being a bargain
Just bought an almost maxed out 15 inch MBA in sky blue (24GB, 2TB) because, well I could, delivery 12/3/25. But upgrade prices really stick in my craw and means I update only after five plus years. This in fact is replacing Mrs Entropy’s 2019 MBP.
DAalseth said:
Yes, I was always concerned the supply chain master would focus on margins above all else, thus keeping products at the same basic iteration for much longer than Jobs would, and relying on his lieutenants to do the innovation, but always fitting into margins.
I have increasingly been feeling that Apple under Tim Cook has forgotten this.If you keep your eye on the profit, you're going to skimp on the product. But if you focus on making really great products, then the profits will follow.
Yes, CharlesN, jobs did learn some hard lessons along the way, although I can clearly remember Apple fans incensed when John Scully engineered a coup. Aand how about this as a counterfactual to ponder: if Jobs had still been at the helm, instead of a corporate weenie, would Apple have been caught with its pants down with Windows 95?As for Next, yet another OS would always struggle to get traction beyond a niche. A key part of “beleaguered Apple Computer” resurrection was using NEXT as its new foundation.
Anyway, here is a more detailed quote of Jobs after he had learned his lesson, in a staff meeting with people upset with the cutting out of favourite projects to save Apple:.What happened at Apple, to be honest, over the years was the goal used to be to make the best computers in the world. And that was goal one. Goal two, we got from Hewlett-Packard actually which was "we have to make a profit". Because if we don't make a profit we can't do goal one. So, yeah, I mean we enjoyed making a profit, but the purpose of making a profit was so we can make the best computers in the world. Along the way somewhere those two got reversed. The goal is to make a lot of money and well, if we have to make some good computers well ok we'll do that... 'cause we can make a lot of money doing that. And, it's very subtle. It's very subtle at first, but it turns out it's everything. That one little subtle flip... takes 5 years to see it, but that one little subtle flip in 5 years means everything.
Indeed. These days it would be more like “Not all our friends are Elon Musk.”Lastly, we're really big on making computers our friends can afford, and not all our friends are Larry Ellison. So, we've got to make computers that are really affordable and I think that's another place that Apple got really off-track and we are just driving that really hard.
