FileMakerFeller

coolfactor said:

I just want a MacBook Air with a cellular modem built in. Is that so hard to do, Apple? Maybe they don't think enough customers will use it. So add an extra USB port and provide a dongle.

I understand the desire, but there are a number of things that are acting against Apple doing this:

1. How many new sales will this drive?
2. How many people already have a smartphone that the laptop can be "tethered" to for a network connection?
3. How many iPhones are used for tethering an Apple laptop?
4. What are the engineering and design decisions required to include the modem?

Apple will make more money by selling an iPhone to go with the laptop (which, let's be honest, most people are going to do anyway), they won't have to measure the impact on battery life or obtain a different wireless chipset that includes cellular functionality, and there is very little demand from their customer base for this option.

hexclock said:

I read a couple of articles about AJAX. The first one said it is run on Google cloud and built with Google’s JAX frame work. 

The other said that AJAX is Apple proprietary. Which is correct? Or can they both be correct at the same time? 

Also, does this mean if this is ever implemented into Siri or other Apple software, iPhone users will have their data routed through Google whether we like it or not? 

And why would Google let Apple develop a competing technology on their own servers? Unless that’s where the millions of dollars are going. 

Apple rents compute and storage capacity from multiple cloud vendors including Google, Amazon (AWS) and Microsoft (Azure). That's where the overwhelming majority of the project's money is being spent - building a large language model based on data from a billion+ devices does not come cheap.

But that doesn't mean the data is being "routed through Google" - it's a private cloud with built-in encryption; the cloud vendor does not have access to the encryption keys and cannot access the plaintext version of the data.

JAX is an open source framework, I would guess that "Apple JAX" involves some extension code that is customised based on observations and analysis of the existing data set and perhaps knowledge of the devices on which (portions of) the code will be run in the future.

AppleInsider said:

Surprisingly, the climbdown does indicate a greater degree of listening to technology firms than before. Previously, for example, the UK has said that it was in deep discussions with Apple over gaining access to iOS for its COVID app -- and Apple says it wasn't even contacted.

Oh my goodness. If you can't trust the government to tell the truth, who can you trust?

Every time I hear the theme music I'm reminded of the Mission: Impossible theme. There's some tempo variation but a lot of the phrasing is very similar.

mike snoow said:

i think most ppl ignoring is just how popular  google pixels have become here in nyc i see them everywhere i turn its gonna effect sales of everyone as they have become more mainstream in the last 2 months everyone is gonna be effected samsung appl its not an andriod or ios thing when it  comes to pixel sales and this is gonna be a problem which wont just go away

Google Pixel sales prior to the release of the Pixel 7 are estimated to be a cumulative 30 million devices (https://9to5google.com/2022/10/05/google-pixel-sales-2022/).

Apple iPhone sales in Q3 2022 were reported as ~US$40.7 billion (https://sixcolors.com/post/2023/08/charts-apple-q3-2023-results/) and if we assume the average selling price was US$1000 that equates to roughly 40 million devices. In a single quarter.

No offence, but regardless of the purported superiority of the Google device their sales don't seem to be enough to be worrying any of the large manufacturers. There's nothing in the latest filings from Alphabet to show a significant increase in "Other Bets" revenue that would be driven by the Pixel.