With its inability to address obvious Siri problems for the last 5+ years, or to even make basic features like autocorrect work in a way that doesn’t frustrate users, the world’s most valuable company is falling dangerously behind on the biggest technology trend in a generation.
Damn, that Macworld article is titled harshly lol.
Then, there is this take:
And this:
The tone of the first article is informed somewhat by this passage.
From this I take it that this author (and perhaps some people they know) are frustrated by it. It cannot possibly keep everyone happy!
I’m finding the tech press, in general, to be winding waaaaay back from the days of journalism. Now it’s just opinion, and not always that well thought out.
I’ve been wrangling computers for over 40 years and I frequently spot holes in published arguments. One of the biggest problems? An insular tech press community — very US-centric and only a handful of sources.
I was just thinking on my way home from work that I’d like to (but probably shouldn’t/won’t) start a podcast. My first working title was “Mr. Contrary” followed by “Well Actually”.
I saw someone complain that Siri responded “wrongly” to the question of which side of the road to drive on. I pointed out this is far less egregious than every single time I ask for a street in Apple Maps and it gives me answers in the USA. I don’t live there, I don’t have it set as a language, and the map view I have up is nowhere near there, but you bet if there’s a Stoatgobbler Road in Missouri, it’ll be one of the top few hits. That’s not even AI — just a heavily biased viewpoint.
This is worth a read.
The fiasco here is not that Apple is late on AI. It’s also not that they had to announce an embarrassing delay on promised features last week. Those are problems, not fiascos, and problems happen. They’re inevitable. Leaders prove their mettle and create their legacies not by how they deal with successes but by how they deal with — how they acknowledge, understand, adapt, and solve — problems. The fiasco is that Apple pitched a story that wasn’t true, one that some people within the company surely understood wasn’t true, and they set a course based on that.
Apple’s AI efforts sounds like the Windows Longhorn project, which was a database-driven filesystem and OS, based off of a PowerPoint with no real code, that lead to the panicked Vista project. OTOH, that led to Steven Sinovsky and the wonderful “Engineering Windows 7” blog and project, where they fixed all of the engineering problems that they didn’t have time to fix for Vista.
Siri is not as big an embarrassment as a website full of articles explaining why Apple, one of the most successful companies in the world, is managed by idiots who don’t have the deep business wisdom of people who write clickbait articles,
I wish Jason Snell and Glenn Fleishman would move to another site. Then I’d never open that site again.
I’ll listen if you do
You know the struggle.
AppleInsider said: “Apple could face a similar dilemma with Apple Intelligence as app intents and LLM Siri are finally rolled out. If users can get all of the information they need via voice interactions with Siri, there won’t be much point for opening the app itself.”
Why would a developer Sherlock himself by changing his app to conform to a new design then allow Apple to use it as a background process for Siri. Especially if, as ATP recently discussed, Apple’s OS makeover could result in a LOT of work for app developers.
Could this cause some developers to abandon native apps for a web based or cross-platform solution that would be immune, or much less affected, by these kind of changes?