Comment by JumpCrisscross
7 months ago
> problem with Apple is that their corporate culture doesn't vibe well with a lot of new tech
Apple has never been the company that does it first. They're the company that does it right. Arguably, their fuckup with LLMs was rushing a garbage product to market instead of waiting and watching and perfecting in the background.
> Apple is being far too conservative with a far too fast a developing piece of technology
Strongly disagree. OpenAI and Anthropic are blowing billions on speculative attempts at advancing the frontier. They're advancing, but at great cost and uncertainty in respect of future returns.
The smart move would be to recapitulate the deal with Google, possibly being paid by these cash-burning companies for the default AI slot on the iPhone, all the while watching what Apple's users do. Then, when the technology stabilises and the best models are known, Sherlocking the whole thing.
My point is that some tech needs to be iterative. Apple Maps could have been a huge success at the same quality level if it was treated as a public beta. Map applications are never done, either. They require constant work anyways.
It doesn’t matter if you’re first or not, but even if the tech for AI stabilizes, it’s still going to need constant input for news, events, etc. It will never be static. Apple needs to form those data relationships asap if it wants to own the tech.
People love to parrot this, yet if you think for a second this isnt true at all in all the many ways.
1. Siri - not the first assistant, absolute garbage.
2. Apple Maps (original) - utter garbage at launch, slightly better today in US.
3. Vision Pro - Not the first VR headset. Massive failure.
If anything, Apple has been tremendously successful few times when they were not first (phones, tablets, silicon ..) but they have also been tremendously faltered when they were not first.
Non sequitur. Nobody argued everything Apple has ever launched has been a success. I'm just pushing back on the notion that the "problem with Apple is that their corporate culture doesn't vibe well with a lot of new tech." That's not a problem, that's the key to their success (where it's been found).
These first two bullets launched well over a decade ago.
The third bullet is soft because ALL vr headsets have been flops.
All told you are actually painting a pretty solid picture of apples track record. They’ve launched so many things in the past 20 years and expanded into new markets (wearables, headphones, streaming hardware and services) that it’s impressive there aren’t more flops
To be fair, Apple Maps is FAR better today than when it first launched.
Yup, but limited in scope. And occasionally fails spectacularly.