Comment by jorvi
3 days ago
The only thing Apple is behind on in the AI race is LLMs.
They've been vastly ahead of everyone else with things like text OCR, image element recognition / extraction, microphone noise suppression, etc.
iPhones have had these features 2-5 years before Android did.
Apple’s AI powered image editor (like removing something from the background) is near unusable. Samsung’s is near magic, Google’s seems great. So there’s a big gap here.
That is rather funny because I think Google's and Samsung's AI image actions are completely garbage, butchering things to the point where I'd rather do it manually on my desktop or use prompt editing (which to Google's credit Gemini is fantastic at). Whereas Apple's is flawless in discerning everything within a scene or allowing me to extract single items from within a picture. For example say, a backpack in the background.
> unusable
apple is so hit or miss.
I think the image ocr is great and usable. I can take a picture of a phone number and dial it.
but trying to edit a text field is such a nightmare.
(try to change "this if good" to "this is good" on iphone with your fingers is non-apple cumbersome)
That is unrelated to and unmentioned in the post you are responding to.
Well if I ever used an slop-image-generator, that’d be an issue, but as I don’t, it’s a bit of a non-event!
> had these features 2-5 years before Android did.
"first" isn't always more important than "best". Apple has historically been ok with not being first, as long as it was either best or very obviously "much better". It always, well, USED TO focus on best. It has lost its way in that lately.
TTS is absolutely horrible on iOS. I have nearly driven into a wall when trying to use it whilst driving and it goofs up what I've said terribly. For the love of all things holy, will someone at Apple finally fix text to speech? It feels like they last touched it in 2016. My phone can run offline LLMs and generate images but it can't understand my words.
> I have nearly driven into a wall when trying to use it whilst driving and it goofs up what I've said terribly.
People should not be using their phones while driving anyways. My iPhone disables all notifications, except for Find My notifications, while driving. Bluetooth speaker calls are an exception.
It sounds like you mean STT not TTS there?
You're right, in my rage I typod, its really frustrating, even friends will text me and their text makes no sense, and 2 minutes later "STUPID VOICE TO TEXT" I have a few friends who drive trucks, so they need to be able to use their voice to communicate.
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Kind of a big "only" though. Siri is still shit and it's been 15 years since initial release.
When I'm driving and tell Siri, "Call <family member name>", sometimes instead of calling, it says, "To who?", and I can't get it to call no matter what I do.
Amazing how its been 15 years and it still can't discern 15 from 50 when you talk to it.