I can’t agree at all. Apple’s design has grown remarkably in the last twenty years. They make the best general-purpose computer chips - better than companies like Intel and AMD, which is their only business. Mac’s, iPhones, ipads, Apple Watches are amazingly reliable, far better than the laptops and phones of twenty years ago.
And while I realize that many people don’t like the new Liquid Glass interface, I think it’s just fine, in some ways better than what came before. And Apple has ways to reduce the transparency and animations that so many people seem to dislike.
It’s simply amazing that I never need to plug my phone or iPad or watch into anything in order to sync data between them - as long as I have a good internet or Bluetooth connection, it’s extremely rare when my devices don’t contain up-to-date data. I can open a web page on my phone, then open my Mac or iPad, and see an icon that will quickly open that page there. Or open an email on a device and switch to another to pick up that email. My photo library remains synced between my devices. My music library as well.
If Apple’s internal apps don’t work the way I need them, I can almost always find a well-designed third party app that does. This year I’ve dropped a few Mac apps that I was using (Alfred and Ice, a Bartender replacement) because the stock MacOS behavior no longer requires them.
if one of my Apple devices breaks, I can get a replacement up and running with all of my data intact in practically no time, particularly compared with even ten years ago.
I support clients that use Windows computers and, boy, I am so glad that I switched to using Apple’s devices. And I occasionally run Linux OSes and I still prefer MacOS to them.
For everything everyone gripes about Apple OSes, I think nobody else even comes close. Maybe Android and ChromeOS, but that’s about as close as it comes. And Apple is not trying to monetize my internet activity anywhere near as badly as Google does.
Exactly. I don’t want an Apple AI that isn’t markedly more accurate than the others. The last thing I want is for my phone to be hallucinatory. I am perfectly fine with incremental improvements to Siri and other tools as long as they actually work.
One reason—I’m not saying if I agree or don’t agree that Apple is striving for “AI supremacy”—is that unless Apple wants its customer base to begin shrinking and to be limited to users who are reactionaries or nostalgists (and are unlikely to upgrade or replace hardware frequently), it needs to make its products fit into how people use their devices today and in the near future.
I will say that I wouldn’t like Apple to become even more of a premium-priced brand than it already is. In car terms, I’m fine with Apple being a BMW or Mercedes but not a Lamborghini or McLaren.
The iPhone doesn’t have to be a full-blown AI agent to give users access to AI-enhanced activities by using iOS apps as well as the internet. Ditto for the iPad and the Mac. Personally, I am very far from being a gung-ho AI freak, but I’m using AI-powered search every time I use Google and I have three different AI apps on my iPhone. Anyone who is interested in this stuff can play.
I don’t know that Apple needs to be at the bleeding edge when it comes to AI, but they definitely need to be in the conversation in order to retain talent. Part of the reason some of these employees are leaving is because they want to do cutting edge work and if Apple is years behind in AI research, then top people will go to companies being more innovative in AI.
Apple’s AI status also has ramifications to their stock price and Apple needs their stock high in order to attract talent and retain existing talent.
So while Apple AI isn’t the most important thing for Apple, it is important.
It seems possible that falling too far behind could open the way for others to create hardware devices that can do things people really value which Apple’s own products can’t match.
That’s at the cost of user privacy. One reason I am very interested in Apple’s AI strategy is Apple goes with a privacy-first approach. With other AI companies, I don’t know what they are doing with my information.
I don’t want other companies having access to my contacts, emails, and other personal data on my phone. For AI to be truly useful, it needs to know a lot about me – and I want that info to stay private and not shared with advertisers.
Also, I like Apple’s approach of doing as much AI on-device as possible (which will only increase as AI chips get better). This keeps my data private, works off-line, and is faster that cloud-based AI.
My original comment was focussed on human interface failures: just look at the MacOS Tahoe interface nonsense that proves my point. But you have taken a wider scope.
The Apple phone and tablet hardware is ok, but not outstandingly better when compared to offerings from Samsung, Xiaomi, Oppo and others. Take Apple’s wasted obsession with thinness of devices. As thin as they are, you still have to buy a case so you have something large enough to hang on to. The thinness obsession has meant small batteries and the need for constant recharging.
Apple apps are generally second rate (take Files as an example) and Apple seems reluctant to make any improvements, but then Apple is renowned for not taking any suggestions from users. Just have a look through the posts on Apple support to see what is wrong with Apple applications. Apple managers and employees obviously don’t bother looking through the problems listed to avoid being embarrassed by the convoluted hacks needed to bypass such problems.
Machine learning and neural processing is a critical part of any computing infrastructure, whether or not you want to call it “AI” (I don’t), and whether or not you care about chatbots (I don’t).
Look, for example, at some of the “Apple Intelligence” features that have nothing to do with chatbots. Like summarizing text documents, or editing photos. These involve just as much ML/NN skills as chatbot development, so Apple needs to retain skilled talent.
If it’s necessary to integrate with commercial chatbots or add similar functionality to Siri in order to hire and retain that talent, then I completely understand, even though those are features I will rarely, if ever, be interested in using.
You could ask the same question about any of the companies investing in AI. The NY Times podcast The Daily covered this topic recently. It boils down to an expectation that AI will pay off tremendously in the future and the fear that it will be a winner-takes-all situation. If the expectations are right, it would be best if Apple didn’t have to rely on another company, like Google or Meta, for what turns out to be a core technology.
Two things can be true at the same time. MacOS may be generally superior to the other desktop OS’s, and macOS could be a lot better than it is now. I don’t think users are wrong about the general decline in Apple software quality, in respect to bugginess and in respect to the UI.
We’re back to form and function. What the product looks like versus what it does….
To what extent does the hardware actually do something better or something new? In some areas there is clear progress. I believe the iPhone camera/image processing represents a hardware-software duet that is hard to beat. Macs, well, what do they do now that they could not do a few years ago? That question takes more thought and requires more nuanced interpretation, in my opinion. One thing that the newer Macs can’t do anymore is let the user add in more RAM or storage, which is a major turnoff to many. Sadly, many PCs are also going the LPDDR route for RAM, too.
But most of this discussion has been about what it all looks like. Design has fads and trends. If you like the way it is going, it’s a trend. If you don’t, it’s a fad, I suppose. But once the designing community began to believe that digital interfaces needed to look more “digital” somehow, then interfaces that resembled the analog world were clearly too retro for polite designer company, and here we are. It reminds me of trying to adjust controls on a new car, or a rental, and trying to move about on a touch-screen while driving. Not a safety improvement!
As for AI, I like the way Apple has taken small steps to make app functionality and inter-app communication smarter with the machine-learning approach. But it’s not as flashy. But in another area, Apple made the pointed decision not to build its own search engine. So its systems allow the user to choose a preferred search engine. They could do the same with “AI” – let the user choose, according to his or her own priorities or concerns about privacy, ethics, and so on.
As a “design” side note, I spend more time online pursuing my Linux education than anything related to Mac these days. I’ve noticed that as much as some Linux people like to disparage anything Apple, others are proud of how they are able to make their favorite Desktop Environment (GNOME, KDE, etc.) “look just like a Mac!” I’ll take my humor where I can best find it.
As others have said, it’s not about supremacy; it’s about relevance. AI will be a very large part of the future of computing in every imaginable way. If Apple wants to influence that future, it needs to step up soon.
What apple wants is for people to be able to give more flexible instructions. For maps it could be find me a route from Sydney to Melbourne but by the coast road, and find me a place to stop about halfway there. Or I need to schedule a meeting with Bob next week, find me a day and check with Bob.
Apple wants that?! I wanted that in 2013 and I still don’t know how to do it on the phone! All my mapping is done either on my computer for familiar routes (then I tell the phone landmarks in stages) or AAA triptik.
They haven’t said it, but it is likely that it is part of the plan. If I ask Siri for directions from A to B it will do it, but if I want to add C as part of the route then I haven’t been able to work out how to do it. On a Mac you can add waypoints but it is a bit fiddly. Their aim will be to allow as much as possible to work with a more conversational method.