Bloomberg reports that Apple “doesn’t plan to immediately fire any top executives over the AI crisis.” It is, however, planning “management adjustments” in response to the problems, including “moving more senior executives under Giannandrea to assist with a turnaround effort.”
Walker also called out Apple’s marketing department’s decision to promote these features even though they weren’t ready. This decision “[made] matters worse,” according to Walker.
But when Apple demonstrated the features at WWDC using a video mock-up, it only had a barely working prototype, Bloomberg has reported. Walker told staff in the meeting that the delays were especially “ugly” because Apple had already showed off the features publicly. “This was not one of these situations where we get to show people our plan after it’s done,” he said. “We showed people before.”
This morning on CNBC they were discussing the delays and one of the reporters said he had watched the last WWDC again last night and he thought the new features demoed were “too complicated and not that cool.” And why doesn’t Apple make an effort to make (existing) Siri “work like we thought it did in the first place”.
All of the reporters said they were iPhone users, but one said he had been playing with Android and “Gemini with that kind of integration is like a different level situation”. I may be wrong but he seemed shocked with how far android is currently ahead.
When ordinary people start thinking Apple isn’t in control then, IMO, they need to take their time and get everything as perfect as humanly possible. Regardless of how long it takes.
Especially since that’s what they’ve done historically. Android has always been “ahead” on something or other. Bigger cameras, NFC, etc.
Android devices tend to launch features as soon as they exist. “Here are 7 cameras on the back of your phone.” “Here’s a 200 megapixel camera.” Apple releases features when they’re ready. “Here are 3 cameras at 48 megapixels that take better pictures than that 7-camera setup and that 200 megapixel camera.”
You may be correct. I may never purchase a self driving car, especially one from a first time manufacturer. And I have no interest in a Vision Pro and probably never will as long as it costs more than $1000.
Alan Kay once said, “The best way to predict the future is to invent it.” Apple may not be inventing it, but they have been doing a decent job of capitalizing on it. I remember August 6, 1997, when Steve Jobs announced that Microsoft was investing in Apple. At that time Apple had a market cap of around $2 Billion, and that deal probably saved Apple from going bankrupt.
By the end of 2000 Apple was worth around $4 Billion and released the iPod in 2001. They kept growing and ended 2006 being worth around $63 Billion. And then they announced the iPhone in June of 2007.
Someday the devices that we use will probably change and be replaced with something else. I think Apple wants to be ready when that happens.
Apple seem to struggle with software services, and AI implementation is particularly complex.
I’ve been waiting 30 minutes for a 320k PDF file to sync to iCloud from my iPad. Google Drive took less than a second on the same iPad. Apple Notes recently managed to corrupt a PDF attachment, rendering it useless on all devices, so I stopped using it.
For all of Apples obsessions of bringing thing in house. I think they would be a lot better if iCloud was brought in house on their own servers. I know they use Amazon and Azure as a part of iCloud.
Apple used to use Microsoft Azure, but for the past several years they’ve been using Amazon AWS and Google. Presumably because they do not have enough room on their own servers. Apple needs around 7 billion GB of storage to provide the 5GB of free storage for just iPhone users.
Apple is Google’s largest commercial customer and in 2021 it was reported that they were paying Google around $30 million/month for storage. I’ve never seen a report on what they pay Amazon.
I’ve used Google Drive since it was introduced and used Amazon S3 for several years. Neither has the delays/problems that are common with iCloud. Any problems, IMO, are Apple’s to fix.
I feel like the next big initiative would be to change that. With 250 Billion in just cash on hand alone I would say the next big investment would be to become a cloud provider with centers in house. It would take years to fully get themselves away from Google and Amazon but this seems like a glaring dependency as they race away from being reliant on third party vendors for hardware.
I’d agree, also having used both (S3 with huge amounts of data in a commercial environment). The culprit would seem to be the layer Apple adds between the iCloud client and the end cloud storage. It’s either grossly inefficient and/or isn’t given sufficient processing capacity to handle the traffic.
The scale of that traffic is massive but given Amazon also handle Netflix compute, networking and storage it’s unlikely to be them.
Maybe they will. Perhaps after they finish their Private Cloud Compute data centers and launch the new Siri. A lot of people might welcome that.
My main computer is an iPad and that only works, for me, because “everyone” wants to run on Apple hardware. So I can use Apple devices with mainly third party software and services.
I currently use iCloud for iPhone/iPad “backups”, storing one copy of my Photos, and syncing Safari, Apple Podcasts, and some third party apps. And if iCloud happens to run slow or be out of service for a while it usually doesn’t affect me.
Federrico had an article about how the best apps on iPad now are web apps. The web won the platform wars, and Apple ought to embrace it in some capacity.
I’m (was) due for Mac upgrade this year but because of all the disappointments that Apple Ai have been, I don’t see a point in getting a new Mac with Apple AI being in the state that it is. My M1 MBA runs ChatGPT just fine and will surely do so for another year.
I feel like my excitement for the new MBA has gotten a cold bath.
If Apple wants to be a great corporate citizen and put their money where their mouth is in terms of Environmental issues, creating “SafariOS” that could take over once iOS and iPadOS gives up the ghost to go head to head with ChromeBooks would be most welcome.
