nubus said:

Kierkegaarden said:

canukstorm said:

Competent management would have also invested whatever it takes to have their own in-house LLM to power Siri and have their own AI datacenter infrastructure ready to go by now. 

And this “AI data center infrastructure” you speak of — what would this power, and what income would this generate? 

With Apple paying OpenAI - 49% owned by MS and hosted on Azure we see Apple making Microsoft stronger. Actively funding your competitors, having no control over core tech, and fumbling around copying products from Zuckerberg and Musk - that is Team Cook.

You mean the MS that has no mobile presence vs Apple with 1.46 B iPhone users?

Who do you think gains the most fainancially from OpenAI on iOS; Apple or MS?

blastdoor said:

gatorguy said:

radarthekat said:

kkqd1337 said:

Hey Siri, delete the words 'altruistic' and 'privacy' from company mission statement. 

But keep the phrase ‘engage to influence .’ 

How has Apple positively influenced China's policies so far? They've had a decade or three to do so.

Exactly. In the fifty years or so after the end of WW2, there was a belief in the West that democracy inevitably followed capitalism. The experiences of Japan and Germany were the primary evidence in support of this argument. But with Russia and China, it flat out hasn't worked -- not even close. Why? Well... maybe it's because something else happened to Germany and Japan beyond adopting a Western economic model. Maybe it's because they were both totally defeated in a war that cost millions of lives and left them at the mercy of the victors, under occupation (however gentle) for decades. Funny how that little detail is omitted from the 'engage to influence' fantasy. 

Due to their nukes, it's highly unlikely that China and Russia will ever be beaten as thoroughly as Germany and Japan, which means any real changes will have to be the result of internal processes that outsiders likely cannot influence. The Cold War is back -- maybe it was an illusion to think that it ever went away -- and it's going to take decades, maybe a century or more, for the West to win it (if winning is even possible... which I think it is, but we can't take that for granted). 

Good points.

Russia, sans Nuclear weapons, and a couple of cities, is a third world country, and if the West wasn't so timid, the war in Ukraine would have taken a more advantageous path.  That it isn't too late to allow Russia to lose its "special military operation" is true, though I'm aghast at the actions of some of the countries, and some of the companies, in the EU that are still "connected" to Russia.

As for China, Xi is the notable change that occurred in 2012, and it has been all downhill to authoritarianism in China since then. The difference in China is that they have built up a large, and notably, untested military, that threatens Taiwan, and others in the South China Sea. It should be a given that Apple extricates itself from China prior to that happening, but given the slow pace of "friend shoring" Apple's manufacturing operation out of China, I'm not confident that Apple will be able to accomplish that.

Should an invasion of China occur, and Apple's manufacturing operations are not, for the most part, withdrawn from China, I would expect that Apple would suffer losing half of its value overnight, just from sanctions imposed on China.

Still, China has settled into a bit of a chaotic economy, and its demographics will have a massive effect on its standing in the world, even without an invasion of Taiwan. All of that is on Xi.

twolf2919 said:

Opt-in would make sense since agreeing to it will likely mean giving up some privacy to ChatGPT servers in the cloud.

If I had guts, I'd short AAPL stock - it's been rising for the past few months simply on analysts' expectation that Apple will make big announcements regarding AI.  I.e. letting the world know that it isn't behind in AI, after all.  But if, instead, we find out that they are indeed hopelessly behind - by essentially offering us another company's AI on their devices - the stock will go down, for sure.

And this sounds about right - Apple hasn't managed to improve Siri in 10+ years.  There's no reason to believe Apple could inject a massive improvement into it in the 1-2 years that AI has become a hot topic.

You seem to discount that fact that Apple has something on the order of 1.45 B iPhone users, and it those users haven't abandoned Apple from the lack of noticeable Siri improvements, then likely, there isn't any impact to Apple from "leading from the back" in AI. 

gatorguy said:

radarthekat said:

kkqd1337 said:

Hey Siri, delete the words 'altruistic' and 'privacy' from company mission statement. 

But keep the phrase ‘engage to influence .’ 

How has Apple positively influenced China's policies so far? They've had a decade or three to do so.

Outside of China, they make a lot of noise about privacy and "protecting the user." Not a peep IN China or directed to China's leadership. Is there anything specific you can think of? Understanding the word "heel" is all the Apple engagement that's been obvious. Or even hinted at.

 So no, It's always about the money IMHO.

Anyway, AppleTV+ cannot be a streaming service in China despite the way this has been framed. Under Chinese law, Apple isn't allowed to operate their own video-streaming services in China. 

The best they can do is license some content, obviously very limited and select programming. China Mobile would never chance upsetting any Chinese authorities, nor would Apple (even in their US programming) so it would never be the "full Apple TV+ service" would it?

Quite tone-deaf on Apple's part.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/04/business/china-internet-censorship.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare&u2g=c&pvid=EF187633-9AE0-4EE4-8F87-8143A4D0361E&sgrp=c-cb

As China’s Internet Disappears, ‘We Lose Parts of Our Collective Memory’

The number of Chinese websites is shrinking and posts are being removed and censored, stoking fears about what happens when history is erased.

For anyone interested, here'a a link to a recent Stanford University AI report;

https://aiindex.stanford.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/HAI_AI-Index-Report-2024.pdf

It's on the order of 500 pages, for those that are into a deep dive...