Comment by manquer

> ChatGPT alone has hundreds of millions of active user that are clearly getting value from it

So does OG Siri or Alexa, Letdown does not mean completely useless, it just means what the users are getting is far less than what they were promised, not that they get nothing.

In this context AI will be a letdown regardless of improvements in offline or even cloud models. It is not only because of additional complexity of offline model Apple will not deliver, their product vision just does not look achievable in the current state of tech in LLMs [1].

Apple itself while more grounded compared to peers who regularly talk about building AGI, or God etc, has been still showing public concept demos akin to what gaming studios or early stage founders do. Reality usually fall short when you run ahead of product development in marketing, it will be no different for Apple.

This is a golden rule of brand and product development - never show what have not built fully to the public if you want them to trust your brand.

To be clear, it is not bad for the company per se to do this, top tier AAA gaming studios do just fine as businesses despite letting down fans game after game with oversell and under deliver, but suffer as brands nobody will have good thing to say about Blizzard or EA or any other major studio.

Apple monetizes its brand very well by being able to price their products at premium compared to peers that will be at risk if users feel letdown.

[1] Perhaps new innovations will make radical improvements even in the near future, regardless that will not change Apple can ship in 2025 or even 2026 so still a letdown for users being promised things for last 2 years already.