Comment by cush a day ago
> Gemini is objectively a good model (whether it's #1 or #5 in ranking aside) so Apple can confidently deliver a good (enough) product
Definitely. At at this point, Apple just needs to get anything out the door. It was nearly two years ago they sold a phone with features that still haven't shipped and the promise that Apple Intelligence would come in two months.
Yes but they also haven’t generated spicy deep fakes and talked kids into suicide with their products.
It’s just how Apple does things: They still have no folding phone, under-screen finger print scanner, under-screen front-cam, etc.
Apple is always behind on industry trends, but when they adopt them eventually, they become mainstream and cool. This is what will happen with the folding phones this year, if rumors are true.
> Apple is always behind on industry trends
Huh, I always thought it was the other way around (whether people liked it or not): ditching floppy disks, ditching cdroms, prioritizing BT over wired earphones, etc. I am glad, though, that they were forced to stick with USB-C if I'm not mistaken.
> prioritizing BT over wired earphones
Bluetooth sucks, needing to charge headphones sucks. I'm still bitter :p
> I am glad, though, that they were forced to stick with USB-C if I'm not mistaken.
Now I have a boatload of apple chargers which will all be made into landfill for the good of the planet when i next upgrade my phone. Thank you so much.
> but when they adopt them eventually, they become mainstream and cool
When was this part last true?
Tablets; Soldering SSD's and ram to the motherboard.
Microsoft had tablets for a decade before the iPad came out. You rarely ever saw them in the wild. In fact, you still rarely see a Surface tablet. At least, I don't.
“Cool” is subjective, so you can use that to dismiss any example, but you know exactly what is being referenced.
To be fair, all tech companies do this. Sell first, implement later, hype hype hype. Of course we’d like to think Apple was better, but well.. it isn’t.
Google certainly shipped Magic Cue as their tentpole new AI feature on the Pixel 10 despite it not working.
> “The right info, right when you need it.” That’s how Google describes Magic Cue, one of the most prominent new AI features on the Pixel 10 series. Using the power of artificial intelligence, Magic Cue is supposed to automatically suggest helpful info in phone calls, text messages, and other apps without you having to lift a finger.
However, the keyword there is “supposed” to... even when going out of my way to prompt Magic Cue, it either doesn’t work or does so little that I’m amazed Google made as big a deal about the feature as it did.
https://www.androidauthority.com/google-pixel-10-magic-cue-o...
Apple is better though. Hence the only examples being Apple Intelligence and AirPower
> At at this point, Apple just needs to get anything out the door
To the extent Cupertino fucked up, it's in having had this attitude when they rolled out Apple Intelligence.
There isn't currently a forcing function. Apple owns the iPhone, and that makes it an emperor among kings. Its wealth is also built on starting with user problems and then working backwards to the technology, versus embracing whatever's hot and trying to shove it down our throats.
Lately, they've arguably been starting from their own priorities (i.e. pushing and protecting their "services" revenue at all cost) and working backwards to an acceptable user experience from there.
> Its wealth is also built on starting with user problems and then working backwards to the technology, versus embracing whatever's hot and trying to shove it down our throats.
Then again, remember millimeterwave? But yes, as a general rule I think your point still stands.
> if there wasn’t a forcing function then “Apple Picks Gemini to Power Siri” wouldn’t be the headline
A pair four-trillion dollar companies striking a deal in the hottest technology space since the internet getting headline treatment is not evidence of a forcing function.
I mean, maybe if the headline was “For no particular reason whatsoever, under absolutely no pressure from their millions of customers to deliver on the promises they paid for nearly two years ago, Apple picks Gemini to Power Siri”
Or maybe you’re arguing that Apple never did intend to commit to those promises and it was all intentional and part of a well orchestrated plan from the outset? Seems like an odd strategy
> Its wealth is also built on starting with user problems and then working backwards to the technology
Since when?
> versus embracing whatever's hot and trying to shove it down our throats
I agree here, to a degree. It's just that Apple tells its customers what's hot and then shoves it down their throats.
> Apple tells its customers what's hot and then shoves it down their throats
I don't really understand this. Is it shoving when something is actually popular? The iPod was legitimately extremely popular. Did Apple decide it was hot and then somehow force people to buy 450 million of them?
I mean I'm just curious what products you're thinking of when you say "shoves it down their throats"
> Definitely. At at this point, Apple just needs to get anything out the door
They don't though, Android is clearly ahead in AI integration (even Samsung are running TV ads mocking iPhones AI capability) yet still iPhones sales are breaking records - the majority of their phone buyers still prefer an iPhone over an AI capable other phone.
They can take their time to develop AI integration that others can't deploy - 'secure/private', deep integration with iCloud, location services, processing on device etc. that will provide the product moat to increase sales.
I think this is the wrong framing. Nobody cares whether there's an LLM in their phone. What people do want is features like improved Siri (still, debatable beyond setting timers) or other improvements, that could potentially come from LLMs.... if they actually work. So far other providers (such as Amazon Alexa) have struggled to deliver a reliable voice assistant powered by LLMs.
> The reality is that almost nobody actually wants LLMs in their phones.
I don’t think that’s true. People just use the LLM apps. What people don’t feel like they need right now is deep LLM integration across the whole OS. IMO, that’s more of just not showing people the killer product yet.
Live translation? Circle to search? All the magic reframing and relighting stuff in the camera app? I don't know how good the Apple equivalents are, but those are all deeply integrated into Android and are used pretty heavily as far as I can see.
I don't often use voice assistants myself, but they're fully conversational these days and several billion times more useful than the old-school Alexa-style stuff with a limited set of integrations.
I strongly agree with this. Frankly even ChatGPT 3.5 could do better. I am baffled that Apple has stuck so stubbornly to whatever insane architecture they have that results in my daily cornucopia of "I'm sorry, I didn't understand" as well as own goals like it forgetting that Apple Music is the only music service I have, or calling a girl I haven't seen in 20 years instead of my wife who has the same first name.
I am also baffled that how common I do something never updates the model. I often use Siri to start a playlist while running but had to rename them because Siri would play some unknown to me public playlist instead of what would seem to me be the highest likelihood target - my own
The iPhone 16 was released 16 months ago, not “nearly” 24 months.
I consider Apple to be practical, Also Apple will be running Gemini on its own hardware. This is better than Buying perplexity and running chinese model on which Perplexity runs. Training Models is a money on game, Its better to rent models than training your own. If everyone is training models they are going to be come commodity, also this is not the final architecture.
I'll bite
1. Have a user interface. Sometimes I'll ask a question and Siri actually provides a good enough answer, and while I'm reading it, the Siri response window just disappears. Siri is this modal popup with no history, no App, and no UI at all really. Siri doesn't have a user interface, and it should have one so that I can go back to sessions and resume them or reference them later and interact with Siri in more meaningful ways.
2. Answer questions like a modern LLM does. Siri often responds with very terse web links. I find this useful when I'm sitting with friends and we don't remember if Lliam Neeson is alive or not - for basic fact-checking. This is the only use case where it's useful I've found, when I want to peel my attention away for the shortest period of time. If ChatGPT could be bound to a power button long-press, then I'd cease to use Siri for this use case. Otherwise Siri isn't good for long questions because it doesn't have the intelligence, and as mentioned before, has no user interface.
3. Be able to do things conversationally, based on my context. Today, when I "Add to my calendar Games at Dave's house" it creates a calendar entry called "Games" and sets the location to a restaurant called "Dave's House" in a different country. My baseline expectation is that I should be able to work with Siri, build its memory and my context, and over time it becomes smarter about the things I like to do. The day Siri responds with "Do you mean Dave's House the restaurant in another country, or Dave, from your contacts?" I'll be happy.
Burnie Burns of Rooster Teeth made a massage appointment with the head of Xbox programming (luckily Siri was not that competent that it said "Mr. Appointment" in the invite)
Isn’t its voice the ui? It should respond using the same context of the request. Voice and natural language.
If you ask for a website it should open a browser.
Edit: everything else spot on
> Isn’t its voice the ui? It should respond using the same context of the request. Voice and natural language.
Yeah it’s an interesting idea, but visuals are required sometimes. Even the simple task of “List the highest rated Mexican restaurants near me” works perfectly well enough with old crappy Siri. You’ll get a list of the highest rated Mexican restaurants near you. But as soon as you open the first restaurant, Siri closes and the list is gone. You can’t view the second restaurant. To get the list back you need to ask Siri again.
There’s no world in which that user experience makes a viable product. It’s a completely broken user experience no matter how smart the Gemini model is.
I'm sorry, I can't answer that right now.
Would you like to click this button which takes what you said and executes it as a Google search in Safari?
Siri to function above the level of Dragon NaturallySpeaking '95
Fantastic reference. I remember pirating this from microcrap.com in about 1996.
ANY ability to answer simple questions without telling me to open Safari and read a webpage for myself...?
I should be able to completely control my phone with voice and ask it to do anything it is capable of and it should just work:
"Hi Siri, can you message Katrina on WhatsApp that Judy is staying 11-15th Feb and add it to the shared Calendar, confirm with me the message to Kat and the Calendar start and end times and message."
Judging by another comment, it probably turned the lights on in a restaurant in a different country.
I still think Apple should, at least to Apple One customers, offer small, private models, trained on your personal imessage, image and video archives in icloud. With easy-to-use, granular controls for content inclusion/exclusion.
Will make it much easier to find those missing pictures from a few years ago...