@david_chisnall @sysadmin1138 @kaasbaas What I would like to believe is that LLMs are generally a solved problem so if you had the resources, throwing money at it would make them more competent. So it would follow that Apple has to be deliberately choosing to play it this way. I don't know that I fully believe this, though. Cockup before conspiracy and all that.

But it is interesting that companies who are the most gung-ho about LLMs are the ones that have no real, tangible product.

@dawngreeter @sysadmin1138 @kaasbaas

Some of the things Apple has done for AI are actually useful. To support devices without AI accelerators, they've build the best confidential cloud computing implementation in the industry. This lets you offload some compute to Apple's cloud without Apple being able to see (or tamper with) your data.

The justification for building this is AI, but it's actually a really nice system that could finally deliver the things that grid and cloud computing promised: my little computer can borrow time on a massive computer when it needs it.

When the AI bubble bursts, they'll have all of that hardware still and be in a position to offer some really valuable services to consumers.

Based on the end of their self driving car project as well as some of the recent papers from researchers working at/for Apple about the fundamental problems of today’s „AI“ I‘d lean towards the „deliberately“ argument. But no one can say for sure.

Also: Beside the inherent problems with „Kreminology“, most if not all those with enough of an understanding of Apple to do „Apple Kreminology“ are part of the „behind“ crowd and biased.
@dawngreeter @david_chisnall @sysadmin1138 @kaasbaas

Not sure about the „also heavily into NVIDIA“ part, but shareholder lawsuits: yes indeed!

What‘s also interesting IMHO is how much pundits in the Apple News sphere, from bloggers and podcasters down to well known developers have been hammering the „apple is behind on AI“ drum for years as well.

What I also noticed: there‘s a noticeable difference where those people live: North America vs Europe for example.

@dawngreeter @david_chisnall @sysadmin1138 @kaasbaas

Not being in the Apple News-sphere, could you explain the difference? I would guess that Europeans are more skeptical about LLMs/GenAI

Edit: I am not an Apple user, and do not keep track of the Apple News Sphere

@EFreethought distributed, but even there it seems US based people are more positive towards or even gung ho about "AI". The whole "Apple is behind on AI" mantra seems to be more a thing of pundits. Not only those in the "Apples News" sphere but also the financial/business analysts. Not sure who is the chicken and who is the egg there.

The most outspoken 3rd party devs I notice often seem to be those with an audience due to their popular podcasts and/or blogs.

@EFreethought That probably means that they should be counted as pundits as well.

There are other "fault lines". For example, I notice less outspoken "AI" enthusiasm in the (non-Apple) open source communities I've been following.

Of course the sample size of my observations is too small to derive more than hints from them, but they might indicate something.

@RecoveredExpert

Thanks for the info

@8r3n7 @david_chisnall @sysadmin1138 @kaasbaas The iPod/iPhone "missing link" was the iPod Touch—essentially an iPhone minus the phone. Did music, but also ran apps, had a camera, etc. When the original iPhone came out I bought an iPod Touch—only switched to the actual iPhone when it acquired 3G capabilities. But from then on, no more iPods.

I think Apple's next move will be to kill the iPad Mini when it launches the iPhone Fold next year—which will cost as much as an iPhone and an iPad Mini.

@8r3n7 @sysadmin1138 @kaasbaas

My first Mac was a G4 PowerBook. At the time, they had an educational discount plus six months of interest-free finance and a massive discount on iPods if you bought one at the same time (it was almost free), so I got a third-generation iPod (20 GB!) at the same time.

I think it was the first version to work with non-Mac computers, because Apple was seeing a market that was much bigger than the Mac market. Apple sold around 100M iPods in 2007, around 8M Macs, so iPods were outselling Macs more than 10:1 the year that the iPhone launched.

The iPods were weird things. On the one hand, they were very much consumer devices. On the other hand, you could plug one into the FireWire port on a crashed XServe and get a crash dump for offline debugging.

Wow, same here. Except I didn't buy one—we had one at the student paper, along with a LaserWriter and Aldus PageMaker. Big upgrade from my Amiga 500!

@david_chisnall @sysadmin1138 @kaasbaas

@8r3n7 @david_chisnall @sysadmin1138@ngmx.com @kaasbaas

Mine was a Macintosh 512, 1985. Sold my Apple II+ to pay for it. Bought the 300K external floppy drive before the Mac was even available at the local shop. Plus an ImageWriter.