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Fascinating stuff. I could watch the super slo-mo footage of iPhones being dropped onto various surfaces for an hour. Also, an interesting brief interview with John Ternus on the tension between making devices more durable vs. making them more easily repairable.

 ★ 

Fascinating stuff. I could watch the super slo-mo footage of iPhones being dropped onto various surfaces for an hour. Also, an interesting brief interview with John Ternus on the tension between making devices more durable vs. making them more easily repairable.

Read More 

It’s astonishing how much of what we supposedly know about Apple’s WWDC keynote announcements is entirely from Gurman. If he switched to a different beat we’d be almost entirely in the dark; as it stands, he’s seemingly spoiled most of it.

More regarding Gurman’s Friday-before-WWDC report at Bloomberg. But before I start quoting, man, his report reads as though he’s gotten the notes from someone who’s already watched Monday’s keynote. I sort of think that’s what happened, given how much of this no one had reported before today. Bloomberg’s headline even boldly asserts “Here’s Everything Apple Plans to Show at Its AI-Focused WWDC Event”. I’m only aware of one feature for one platform that isn’t in his report, but it’s not a jaw-dropper so I wouldn’t be surprised if it was simply beneath his threshold for newsworthiness. Don’t follow the link to Bloomberg and don’t continue reading this post if you don’t want to see a bunch of spoilers, several of which weren’t even rumors until Gurman dropped this. It’s astonishing how much of what we supposedly know about Apple’s WWDC keynote announcements is entirely from Gurman. If he switched to a different beat we’d be almost entirely in the dark; as it stands, he’s seemingly spoiled most of it.

First, he says yes, Apple’s going to do a chatbot, powered by OpenAI:

The company’s new AI system will be called Apple Intelligence, and
it will come to new versions of the iPhone, iPad and Mac operating
systems, according to people familiar with the plans. There also
will be a partnership with OpenAI that powers a ChatGPT-like
chatbot. And the tech giant is preparing to show new software for
the Vision Pro headset, Apple Watch and TV platforms.

A question Gurman’s report doesn’t answer is where this chatbot will be. Is it going to be a new app — a dedicated AI chatbot app? What would that app be called? “Siri”? Or will it live within Spotlight, a system-level UI you dip in and out of temporarily, not an app? Spotlight works today because you more or less can only ask one thing at a time; a chat app is something with persistence, that you can Command-Tab to and from.

Or would Apple make Siri a persona you can chat with in Messages? I don’t think Apple would put it in Messages, but if they do, will we be able to include it in group chats? That seems like fun on the surface (and it is, in Wavelength) but a privacy problem on deeper thought. When I’m talking to Siri one-on-one I expect Siri to know about me. If Siri/Apple AI/whatever-it’s-going-to-be-called were in a group Messages chat it would have to be private, which would make it a different Siri/Apple AI/whatever than you get in a one-on-one context.

There are a lot of questions even if the answer is that it’s a new standalone app. Will the conversations sync between devices? If so, how does that jibe with on-device processing? If I start a chatbot conversation on my Mac can I continue it on my iPhone? How does that work if the conversation pertains to, say, files or data that’s only on my Mac? Or vice-versa, if it pertains to content in an app that’s only on my iPhone? On-device processing raises questions that don’t exist with cloud-only processing.

One feature that will likely get a lot of attention among Gen
Z — and perhaps the rest of the population — will be
AI-created emoji. This will use AI to create custom emoji
characters on the fly that represent phrases or words as
they’re being typed. That means there will be many more
options than the ones in the standardized emoji library that
has long been built into the iPhone.

This sounds like Memoji, but for anything? Will it be exclusive to Messages or something system-wide, in the emoji picker?

The Messages app is getting some non-AI tweaks, including a change
to the effects feature — the thing that lets you send fireworks
and other visual elements to the people you’re texting. Users will
now be able to trigger an effect with individual words, rather
than the entire message. There will be new colorful icons for
Tapbacks, which let you quickly respond to a message with a heart,
exclamation point or other character (they’re currently gray). And
users will have the ability to Tapback a message with any emoji.
There’s another frequently requested feature coming as well: the
ability to schedule a message to be sent later.

Not sure what the difference is between “colorful Tapbacks” and “Tapback a message with any emoji”, but this one gets a legit finally.

Safari in macOS 15, codenamed Glow, is getting some changes, but
it seems unlikely that Apple is going to unveil its own ad blocker — something that’s been reported as a possibility. Advertisers
already pushed back heavily against Apple’s App Tracking
Transparency, or ATT, in iOS 14 a few years ago, and the company
doesn’t need another privacy-related headache.

Built-in ad blocking in Safari wouldn’t be a privacy headache; blocking ads can only increase privacy. It would be an antitrust/regulatory headache. The argument from ATT opponents is that it steers advertisers toward purchasing ads in the App Store, where the ATT rules don’t apply. Apple doesn’t track what users do within apps, of course — which is the legitimate privacy issue ATT attempts to address — but as the operator of the App Store, it does know which apps a user owns and uses. So Apple can, say, recommend game C because you play games A and B, even if A, B, and C all come from different developers.

Read More 

More from Gurman’s Friday-before-WWDC report at Bloomberg. But before I start quoting, man, his report reads as though he’s gotten the notes from someone who’s already watched Monday’s keynote. I sort of think that’s what happened, given how much of this no one had reported before today. Bloomberg’s headline even boldly asserts “Here’s Everything Apple Plans to Show at Its AI-Focused WWDC Event”. Don’t follow the link and don’t continue reading this post if you don’t want to see a bunch of spoilers, several of which weren’t even rumors until Gurman dropped this. It’s astonishing how much of what we supposedly know about Apple’s WWDC keynote announcements is entirely from Gurman. If he switched to a different beat we’d be almost entirely in dark; as it stands, he’s seemingly spoiled most of it.

First, he says yes, Apple’s going to do a chatbot, powered by OpenAI:

The company’s new AI system will be called Apple Intelligence, and
it will come to new versions of the iPhone, iPad and Mac operating
systems, according to people familiar with the plans. There also
will be a partnership with OpenAI that powers a ChatGPT-like
chatbot. And the tech giant is preparing to show new software for
the Vision Pro headset, Apple Watch and TV platforms.

A question Gurman’s report doesn’t answer is where this chatbot will be. Is it going to be a new app — a dedicated AI chatbot app? What would that app be called? “Siri”? Or will it live within Spotlight, which a system-level UI you dip in and out of temporarily, not an app? Spotlight works today because you more or less can only ask one thing at a time; a chat app is something with persistence, that you can Command-Tab to and from.

Or would Apple make Siri a persona you can chat with in Messages? I don’t think Apple would put it in Messages, but if they do, will we be able to include it in group chats? That seems like fun on the surface (and it is, in Wavelength) but a privacy problem on deeper thought. When I’m talking to Siri one-on-one I expect Siri to know about me. If Siri were in a group Messages chat it would have be private.

There are a lot of questions even if the answer is that it’s a new standalone app. Will the conversations sync between devices? If so, how does that jibe with on-device processing? If I start a chatbot conversation on my Mac can I continue it on my iPhone? How does that work if the conversation on pertains to files or data that’s only on my Mac? On-device processing raises questions that don’t exist with cloud-only processing.

One feature that will likely get a lot of attention among Gen
Z — and perhaps the rest of the population — will be
AI-created emoji. This will use AI to create custom emoji
characters on the fly that represent phrases or words as
they’re being typed. That means there will be many more
options than the ones in the standardized emoji library that
has long been built into the iPhone.

Will this be like Memoji — a feature of Messages — not the OS? I’m guessing yes. So you won’t be able to send these emoji through, say, WhatsApp, Signal, or even email. It kind of makes sense. To be cross-platform it either needs to be part of the Unicode spec (which isn’t even possible for on-the-fly custom emoji) or would have be rendered as an image attachment. And we can paste whatever images we want anywhere we want already. What makes emoji (and Memoji) special is that you don’t treat them like images, you treat them like text.

The Messages app is getting some non-AI tweaks, including a change
to the effects feature — the thing that lets you send fireworks
and other visual elements to the people you’re texting. Users will
now be able to trigger an effect with individual words, rather
than the entire message. There will be new colorful icons for
Tapbacks, which let you quickly respond to a message with a heart,
exclamation point or other character (they’re currently gray). And
users will have the ability to Tapback a message with any emoji.
There’s another frequently requested feature coming as well: the
ability to schedule a message to be sent later.

Not sure what the difference is between “colorful Tapbacks” and “Tapback a message with any emoji”, but this one gets a legit finally.

Safari in macOS 15, codenamed Glow, is getting some changes, but
it seems unlikely that Apple is going to unveil its own ad blocker — something that’s been reported as a possibility. Advertisers
already pushed back heavily against Apple’s App Tracking
Transparency, or ATT, in iOS 14 a few years ago, and the company
doesn’t need another privacy-related headache.

Built-in ad blocking in Safari wouldn’t be a privacy headache; blocking ads can only increase privacy. It would be an antitrust/regulatory headache. The argument from ATT opponents is that it steers advertisers toward purchasing ads in the App Store, where the ATT rules don’t apply. Apple doesn’t track what users do within apps, of course — which is the legitimate privacy issue ATT attempts to address — but as the operator of the App Store, it does know which apps a user owns and uses. So Apple can, say, recommend game C because you play games A and B, even if A, B, and C all come from different developers.

 ★ 

More from Gurman’s Friday-before-WWDC report at Bloomberg. But before I start quoting, man, his report reads as though he’s gotten the notes from someone who’s already watched Monday’s keynote. I sort of think that’s what happened, given how much of this no one had reported before today. Bloomberg’s headline even boldly asserts “Here’s Everything Apple Plans to Show at Its AI-Focused WWDC Event”. Don’t follow the link and don’t continue reading this post if you don’t want to see a bunch of spoilers, several of which weren’t even rumors until Gurman dropped this. It’s astonishing how much of what we supposedly know about Apple’s WWDC keynote announcements is entirely from Gurman. If he switched to a different beat we’d be almost entirely in dark; as it stands, he’s seemingly spoiled most of it.

First, he says yes, Apple’s going to do a chatbot, powered by OpenAI:

The company’s new AI system will be called Apple Intelligence, and
it will come to new versions of the iPhone, iPad and Mac operating
systems, according to people familiar with the plans. There also
will be a partnership with OpenAI that powers a ChatGPT-like
chatbot. And the tech giant is preparing to show new software for
the Vision Pro headset, Apple Watch and TV platforms.

A question Gurman’s report doesn’t answer is where this chatbot will be. Is it going to be a new app — a dedicated AI chatbot app? What would that app be called? “Siri”? Or will it live within Spotlight, which a system-level UI you dip in and out of temporarily, not an app? Spotlight works today because you more or less can only ask one thing at a time; a chat app is something with persistence, that you can Command-Tab to and from.

Or would Apple make Siri a persona you can chat with in Messages? I don’t think Apple would put it in Messages, but if they do, will we be able to include it in group chats? That seems like fun on the surface (and it is, in Wavelength) but a privacy problem on deeper thought. When I’m talking to Siri one-on-one I expect Siri to know about me. If Siri were in a group Messages chat it would have be private.

There are a lot of questions even if the answer is that it’s a new standalone app. Will the conversations sync between devices? If so, how does that jibe with on-device processing? If I start a chatbot conversation on my Mac can I continue it on my iPhone? How does that work if the conversation on pertains to files or data that’s only on my Mac? On-device processing raises questions that don’t exist with cloud-only processing.

One feature that will likely get a lot of attention among Gen
Z — and perhaps the rest of the population — will be
AI-created emoji. This will use AI to create custom emoji
characters on the fly that represent phrases or words as
they’re being typed. That means there will be many more
options than the ones in the standardized emoji library that
has long been built into the iPhone.

Will this be like Memoji — a feature of Messages — not the OS? I’m guessing yes. So you won’t be able to send these emoji through, say, WhatsApp, Signal, or even email. It kind of makes sense. To be cross-platform it either needs to be part of the Unicode spec (which isn’t even possible for on-the-fly custom emoji) or would have be rendered as an image attachment. And we can paste whatever images we want anywhere we want already. What makes emoji (and Memoji) special is that you don’t treat them like images, you treat them like text.

The Messages app is getting some non-AI tweaks, including a change
to the effects feature — the thing that lets you send fireworks
and other visual elements to the people you’re texting. Users will
now be able to trigger an effect with individual words, rather
than the entire message. There will be new colorful icons for
Tapbacks, which let you quickly respond to a message with a heart,
exclamation point or other character (they’re currently gray). And
users will have the ability to Tapback a message with any emoji.
There’s another frequently requested feature coming as well: the
ability to schedule a message to be sent later.

Not sure what the difference is between “colorful Tapbacks” and “Tapback a message with any emoji”, but this one gets a legit finally.

Safari in macOS 15, codenamed Glow, is getting some changes, but
it seems unlikely that Apple is going to unveil its own ad blocker — something that’s been reported as a possibility. Advertisers
already pushed back heavily against Apple’s App Tracking
Transparency, or ATT, in iOS 14 a few years ago, and the company
doesn’t need another privacy-related headache.

Built-in ad blocking in Safari wouldn’t be a privacy headache; blocking ads can only increase privacy. It would be an antitrust/regulatory headache. The argument from ATT opponents is that it steers advertisers toward purchasing ads in the App Store, where the ATT rules don’t apply. Apple doesn’t track what users do within apps, of course — which is the legitimate privacy issue ATT attempts to address — but as the operator of the App Store, it does know which apps a user owns and uses. So Apple can, say, recommend game C because you play games A and B, even if A, B, and C all come from different developers.

Read More 

Daniel Jalkut, writing on his Bitsplitting blog one year ago:

Which leads me to my somewhat far-fetched prediction for WWDC:
Apple will talk about AI, but they won’t once utter the letters
“AI”. They will allude to a major new initiative, under way for
years within the company. The benefits of this project will make
it obvious that it is meant to serve as an answer comparable
efforts being made by OpenAI, Microsoft, Google, and Facebook.
During the crescendo to announcing its name, the letters “A” and
“I” will be on all of our lips, and then they’ll drop the
proverbial mic: “We’re calling it Apple Intelligence.” Get it?

Apple often follows the herd in terms of what they focus their
efforts on, but rarely fall into line using the same tired jargon
as the rest of the industry. Apple Intelligence will allow Apple
to make it crystal clear to the entire world that they’re taking
“AI” seriously, without stooping to the level of treating it as a
commodity technology. They do this kind of thing all the time with
names like Airport, Airplay, and Airtags. These marketing terms
represent underlying technologies that Apple embraces and
extends. Giving them unique names makes them easier to sell, but
also gives Apple freedom to blur the lines on exactly what the
technology should or shouldn’t be capable of.

Was a decent prediction a year ago, but looking even better now. Mark Gurman, today:

The company’s new AI system will be called Apple Intelligence, and
it will come to new versions of the iPhone, iPad and Mac operating
systems, according to people familiar with the plans. There also
will be a partnership with OpenAI that powers a ChatGPT-like
chatbot. And the tech giant is preparing to show new software for
the Vision Pro headset, Apple Watch and TV platforms.

While we are guessing names, my prediction is they call the new Siri “Siri AI”. I don’t think they’ll abandon the Siri brand, but I think they need a name to say “This is an all-new Siri that is way better and more useful and definitely not so frustratingly dumb.” And what Apple likes to do with names is append adjectives. MacBook Pro. M3 Max. AirPort Extreme (RIP). “Siri” = old Siri; “Siri AI” = new Siri, and when you’re talking to it, you still just address it as “Siri”. That’s my guess. Otherwise I think they just stick with no-adjective “Siri” and swear up and down that it’s actually going to be good this year.

 ★ 

Daniel Jalkut, writing on his Bitsplitting blog one year ago:

Which leads me to my somewhat far-fetched prediction for WWDC:
Apple will talk about AI, but they won’t once utter the letters
“AI”. They will allude to a major new initiative, under way for
years within the company. The benefits of this project will make
it obvious that it is meant to serve as an answer comparable
efforts being made by OpenAI, Microsoft, Google, and Facebook.
During the crescendo to announcing its name, the letters “A” and
“I” will be on all of our lips, and then they’ll drop the
proverbial mic: “We’re calling it Apple Intelligence.” Get it?

Apple often follows the herd in terms of what they focus their
efforts on, but rarely fall into line using the same tired jargon
as the rest of the industry. Apple Intelligence will allow Apple
to make it crystal clear to the entire world that they’re taking
“AI” seriously, without stooping to the level of treating it as a
commodity technology. They do this kind of thing all the time with
names like Airport, Airplay, and Airtags. These marketing terms
represent underlying technologies that Apple embraces and
extends. Giving them unique names makes them easier to sell, but
also gives Apple freedom to blur the lines on exactly what the
technology should or shouldn’t be capable of.

Was a decent prediction a year ago, but looking even better now. Mark Gurman, today:

The company’s new AI system will be called Apple Intelligence, and
it will come to new versions of the iPhone, iPad and Mac operating
systems, according to people familiar with the plans. There also
will be a partnership with OpenAI that powers a ChatGPT-like
chatbot. And the tech giant is preparing to show new software for
the Vision Pro headset, Apple Watch and TV platforms.

While we are guessing names, my prediction is they call the new Siri “Siri AI”. I don’t think they’ll abandon the Siri brand, but I think they need a name to say “This is an all-new Siri that is way better and more useful and definitely not so frustratingly dumb.” And what Apple likes to do with names is append adjectives. MacBook Pro. M3 Max. AirPort Extreme (RIP). “Siri” = old Siri; “Siri AI” = new Siri, and when you’re talking to it, you still just address it as “Siri”. That’s my guess. Otherwise I think they just stick with no-adjective “Siri” and swear up and down that it’s actually going to be good this year.

Read More 

Marco Hernandez, Jeffrey Gettleman, Finbarr O’Reilly, and Tim Wallace, with reporting and imagery for The New York Times:

Few countries since World War II have experienced this level of
devastation. But it’s been impossible for anybody to see more than
glimpses of it. It’s too vast. Every battle, every bombing, every
missile strike, every house burned down, has left its mark across
multiple front lines, back and forth over more than two years.

This is the first comprehensive picture of where the Ukraine war
has been fought and the totality of the destruction. Using
detailed analysis of years of satellite data, we developed a
record of each town, each street, each building that has been
blown apart.

The scale is hard to comprehend. More buildings have been
destroyed in Ukraine than if every building in Manhattan were to
be leveled four times over. Parts of Ukraine hundreds of miles
apart look like Dresden or London after World War II, or Gaza
after half a year of bombardment.

To produce these estimates, The New York Times worked with two
leading remote sensing scientists, Corey Scher of the City
University of New York Graduate Center and Jamon Van Den Hoek of
Oregon State University, to analyze data from radar
satellites that can detect small changes in the built
environment.

A staggering, sobering work of journalism and data visualization.

 ★ 

Marco Hernandez, Jeffrey Gettleman, Finbarr O’Reilly, and Tim Wallace, with reporting and imagery for The New York Times:

Few countries since World War II have experienced this level of
devastation. But it’s been impossible for anybody to see more than
glimpses of it. It’s too vast. Every battle, every bombing, every
missile strike, every house burned down, has left its mark across
multiple front lines, back and forth over more than two years.

This is the first comprehensive picture of where the Ukraine war
has been fought and the totality of the destruction. Using
detailed analysis of years of satellite data, we developed a
record of each town, each street, each building that has been
blown apart.

The scale is hard to comprehend. More buildings have been
destroyed in Ukraine than if every building in Manhattan were to
be leveled four times over. Parts of Ukraine hundreds of miles
apart look like Dresden or London after World War II, or Gaza
after half a year of bombardment.

To produce these estimates, The New York Times worked with two
leading remote sensing scientists, Corey Scher of the City
University of New York Graduate Center and Jamon Van Den Hoek of
Oregon State University, to analyze data from radar
satellites that can detect small changes in the built
environment.

A staggering, sobering work of journalism and data visualization.

Read More 

M.G. Siegler, writing at Spyglass yesterday:

Today, NVIDIA hit the $3T market cap mark and passed Apple in that
same metric. NVIDIA is now the second most valuable company in
the world, only behind Microsoft. At this rate, they’ll
catch them by Friday, just ahead of their 10-for-1 stock split.

The stock run-up has been totally and completely insane. The price
is up over 200% in the past year. Over 150% in the past six
months alone. Five years ago, NVIDIA’s stock was trading at
$36/share. Today it closed at $1,224/share.

Is this sustainable? I mean, no. And it’s not because NVIDIA
isn’t a great company. This run is just almost meme
stock-like in its frenzy, with shades of Tesla, of course. It has
just transformed into this sort of index bet on AI. And while AI
is also real, it also can’t sustain the current
investment hype surrounding it forever.

But for now, founder Jensen Huang should enjoy this moment.

He should, but one of these companies is not like the others:

’23 Revenue’23 Profit’22 Revenue’22 Profit

Microsoft$212 B$72 B$198 B$73 B

Apple$383 B$97 B$394 B$100 B

Nvidia$61 B$30 B$27 B$4 B

Ming-Chi Kuo on X, claiming some Being Right Points™ for predicting this three months ago:

The prediction from three months ago has come true. This is not
just a comparison of Nvidia and Apple’s stock prices but a
contrast between the strong growth trend of AI and the innovation
challenges faced by consumer electronics.

One man’s “strong growth trend” is another man’s “hype bubble”. And what exactly are the “challenges faced by consumer electronics”? Even with Nvidia’s exhilarating growth in the last two years, Apple generates over 6× Nvidia’s revenue. Apple’s numbers have not been growing, yes, and that’s a legitimate concern for investors. But Apple’s growth stopped not because interest in phones has slowed but because everyone in the world who can afford one has one. That’s a problem, but that’s a good problem.

(Apple and Nvidia both dipped back under $3T today, for what it’s worth.)

 ★ 

M.G. Siegler, writing at Spyglass yesterday:

Today, NVIDIA hit the $3T market cap mark and passed Apple in that
same metric. NVIDIA is now the second most valuable company in
the world, only behind Microsoft. At this rate, they’ll
catch them by Friday, just ahead of their 10-for-1 stock split.

The stock run-up has been totally and completely insane. The price
is up over 200% in the past year. Over 150% in the past six
months alone. Five years ago, NVIDIA’s stock was trading at
$36/share. Today it closed at $1,224/share.

Is this sustainable? I mean, no. And it’s not because NVIDIA
isn’t a great company. This run is just almost meme
stock-like in its frenzy, with shades of Tesla, of course. It has
just transformed into this sort of index bet on AI. And while AI
is also real, it also can’t sustain the current
investment hype surrounding it forever.

But for now, founder Jensen Huang should enjoy this moment.

He should, but one of these companies is not like the others:

’23 Revenue’23 Profit’22 Revenue’22 Profit

Microsoft$212 B$72 B$198 B$73 B

Apple$383 B$97 B$394 B$100 B

Nvidia$61 B$30 B$27 B$4 B

Ming-Chi Kuo on X, claiming some Being Right Points™ for predicting this three months ago:

The prediction from three months ago has come true. This is not
just a comparison of Nvidia and Apple’s stock prices but a
contrast between the strong growth trend of AI and the innovation
challenges faced by consumer electronics.

One man’s “strong growth trend” is another man’s “hype bubble”. And what exactly are the “challenges faced by consumer electronics”? Even with Nvidia’s exhilarating growth in the last two years, Apple generates over 6× Nvidia’s revenue. Apple’s numbers have not been growing, yes, and that’s a legitimate concern for investors. But Apple’s growth stopped not because interest in phones has slowed but because everyone in the world who can afford one has one. That’s a problem, but that’s a good problem.

(Apple and Nvidia both dipped back under $3T today, for what it’s worth.)

Read More 

Aaron Tilley, writing for The Wall Street Journal under the headline “How Apple Fell Behind in the AI Arms Race” (News+ link):

For those who saw them, the demonstrations inside Apple earlier
this decade of a revamped Siri offered a showcase of the amazing
capabilities a powerful AI voice assistant could have.

The famed assistant, one of the last projects Apple co-founder
Steve Jobs worked on before his death, had been given a total
overhaul. Capable of running on an iPhone and without an internet
connection, the new Siri impressed people with its improved speed,
conversational capabilities and the accuracy with which it
understood user commands. Code-named Project Blackbird, the effort
also imagined a Siri with capabilities built by third-party app
developers, according to people familiar with the work.

Yet a competing project won out in an internal contest ahead of
the 10-year anniversary of Siri’s launch. Known as Siri X, the
more-modest upgrade involved moving more existing Siri software
onto iPhones from remote servers to improve the voice assistant’s
speed and privacy. The Siri X enhancement was unveiled in 2021.

Tilley is the WSJ’s Apple beat reporter, and one gets the feeling he was tasked with filing a report with the above headline already written. These opening three paragraphs are the only interesting ones in the entire story. But there’s nothing actually new in them.

Here’s Wayne Ma, reporting for The Information in April 2023 under the headline “Apple’s AI Chief Struggles With Turf Wars as New Era Begins” (archive):

In some cases, Giannandrea’s new hires have run into seemingly
impenetrable bureaucratic obstacles. In one example, he in 2019
recruited another close friend, Arthur van Hoff, to explore a
project to rewrite Siri from the ground up. Code-named Blackbird,
the effort involved creating a lightweight version of Siri, which
would delegate the creation of more functions to app developers,
said five former Siri employees. The software would run on iPhones
instead of in the cloud, which would improve Siri’s speed and
performance while enhancing user privacy, they said. Demos of
Blackbird prompted excitement among employees on the Siri team
because of its responsiveness, they added.

But there was a problem. Blackbird competed with the work of two
longtime senior Siri leaders: Alex Acero and Robby Walker, who
were responsible for two important teams that helped Siri
understand and respond to queries. Acero and Walker pushed for
completion of their own project, code-named Siri X, for the 10th
anniversary of the voice assistant, which aimed to move the Siri
processing software onto the device for privacy reasons.

However, Siri X’s goal was simply to reproduce Siri’s existing
capabilities without the more ambitious targets of Blackbird, the
people said. Despite that, Acero and Walker won. They assigned
hundreds of people to their effort, which subsumed and killed
Blackbird. Most of their project was completed in 2021.

Same story, but Ma’s version from 13 months ago included the names of the engineers in charge of the dueling projects.

Back to Tilley’s report at the WSJ yesterday:

Apple has long prided itself on perfection in its product
rollouts, a near impossibility with emerging AI models. While
OpenAI systems have dazzled more than 180 million users with their
generation of writing, images and video, they are prone to
occasional errors, often called hallucinations. Apple has had
limited tolerance for such issues.

“There’s no such thing as 100% accuracy with AI, that’s the
fundamental reality,” said Pedro Domingos, a professor emeritus of
computer science and engineering at the University of Washington.
“Apple is not compatible with that. They won’t release something
until it’s perfect.”

How does this square with the state of Siri as it works today? Does Tilley think today’s Siri, though limited in scope, is “100 percent accurate” and “perfect”?

Don’t know about you, but that’s not my experience.

 ★ 

Aaron Tilley, writing for The Wall Street Journal under the headline “How Apple Fell Behind in the AI Arms Race” (News+ link):

For those who saw them, the demonstrations inside Apple earlier
this decade of a revamped Siri offered a showcase of the amazing
capabilities a powerful AI voice assistant could have.

The famed assistant, one of the last projects Apple co-founder
Steve Jobs worked on before his death, had been given a total
overhaul. Capable of running on an iPhone and without an internet
connection, the new Siri impressed people with its improved speed,
conversational capabilities and the accuracy with which it
understood user commands. Code-named Project Blackbird, the effort
also imagined a Siri with capabilities built by third-party app
developers, according to people familiar with the work.

Yet a competing project won out in an internal contest ahead of
the 10-year anniversary of Siri’s launch. Known as Siri X, the
more-modest upgrade involved moving more existing Siri software
onto iPhones from remote servers to improve the voice assistant’s
speed and privacy. The Siri X enhancement was unveiled in 2021.

Tilley is the WSJ’s Apple beat reporter, and one gets the feeling he was tasked with filing a report with the above headline already written. These opening three paragraphs are the only interesting ones in the entire story. But there’s nothing actually new in them.

Here’s Wayne Ma, reporting for The Information in April 2023 under the headline “Apple’s AI Chief Struggles With Turf Wars as New Era Begins” (archive):

In some cases, Giannandrea’s new hires have run into seemingly
impenetrable bureaucratic obstacles. In one example, he in 2019
recruited another close friend, Arthur van Hoff, to explore a
project to rewrite Siri from the ground up. Code-named Blackbird,
the effort involved creating a lightweight version of Siri, which
would delegate the creation of more functions to app developers,
said five former Siri employees. The software would run on iPhones
instead of in the cloud, which would improve Siri’s speed and
performance while enhancing user privacy, they said. Demos of
Blackbird prompted excitement among employees on the Siri team
because of its responsiveness, they added.

But there was a problem. Blackbird competed with the work of two
longtime senior Siri leaders: Alex Acero and Robby Walker, who
were responsible for two important teams that helped Siri
understand and respond to queries. Acero and Walker pushed for
completion of their own project, code-named Siri X, for the 10th
anniversary of the voice assistant, which aimed to move the Siri
processing software onto the device for privacy reasons.

However, Siri X’s goal was simply to reproduce Siri’s existing
capabilities without the more ambitious targets of Blackbird, the
people said. Despite that, Acero and Walker won. They assigned
hundreds of people to their effort, which subsumed and killed
Blackbird. Most of their project was completed in 2021.

Same story, but Ma’s version from 13 months ago included the names of the engineers in charge of the dueling projects.

Back to Tilley’s report at the WSJ yesterday:

Apple has long prided itself on perfection in its product
rollouts, a near impossibility with emerging AI models. While
OpenAI systems have dazzled more than 180 million users with their
generation of writing, images and video, they are prone to
occasional errors, often called hallucinations. Apple has had
limited tolerance for such issues.

“There’s no such thing as 100% accuracy with AI, that’s the
fundamental reality,” said Pedro Domingos, a professor emeritus of
computer science and engineering at the University of Washington.
“Apple is not compatible with that. They won’t release something
until it’s perfect.”

How does this square with the state of Siri as it works today? Does Tilley think today’s Siri, though limited in scope, is “100 percent accurate” and “perfect”?

Don’t know about you, but that’s not my experience.

Read More 

Speaking of password management and WWDC, Mitch Cohen, product manager of 1Password, wrote a nice thread a few days ago on Mastodon:

Next week is WWDC, so it’s a good time for a thread about the
1Password browser extension for Safari, its history, challenges,
and the future — both what we’re working on and what we’d like to
see from Apple, Safari and the web platform at large.

I don’t envy them. They need to deal with bugs, missing APIs, and other complicating factors, and all the while need to be extra careful due to the extraordinary sensitivity of the data users put in 1Password. But while I sympathize, many of the complaints levied against 1Password 8, especially on the Mac, are self-inflicted choices.

 ★ 

Speaking of password management and WWDC, Mitch Cohen, product manager of 1Password, wrote a nice thread a few days ago on Mastodon:

Next week is WWDC, so it’s a good time for a thread about the
1Password browser extension for Safari, its history, challenges,
and the future — both what we’re working on and what we’d like to
see from Apple, Safari and the web platform at large.

I don’t envy them. They need to deal with bugs, missing APIs, and other complicating factors, and all the while need to be extra careful due to the extraordinary sensitivity of the data users put in 1Password. But while I sympathize, many of the complaints levied against 1Password 8, especially on the Mac, are self-inflicted choices.

Read More 

Tripp Mickle and Erin Griffith, with a “not what Humane needed the day after announcing their charging case is a potential fire hazard” report for The New York Times:

Days before gadget reviewers weighed in on the Humane Ai Pin, a
futuristic wearable device powered by artificial intelligence,
the founders of the company gathered their employees and
encouraged them to brace themselves. The reviews might be
disappointing, they warned.

I realize this is only a passing summary of the meeting, but I would hope that everyone at the company was aware of the AI Pin’s shortcomings. They’re the ones who were most familiar with it! However much trouble Humane is in, they were comically doomed if their own employees needed to be told the AI Pin was not a good product just days before reviews dropped. One would think the real topic of this all-hands was to explain why they shipped what they shipped and what the plan was to make it good.

About a week after the reviews came out, Humane started talking to
HP, the computer and printer company, about selling itself for
more than $1 billion, three people with knowledge of the
conversations said. Other potential buyers have emerged, though
talks have been casual and no formal sales process has begun.

I’m going to be insufferable if they sell to HP.

Its setbacks are part of a pattern of stumbles across the world of
generative A.I., as companies release unpolished products. Over
the past two years, Google has introduced and pared back A.I.
search abilities that recommended people eat rocks,
Microsoft has trumpeted a Bing chatbot that hallucinated
and Samsung has added A.I. features to a smartphone that were
called “excellent at times and baffling at others.”

The above paragraph exemplifies the sort of catch-22 corner the media is trying to portray Apple as having been painted into regarding AI. It’s just stated as fact that Apple “has fallen behind in the AI arms race” (that’s from yesterday in the WSJ) but the companies Apple has supposedly fallen behind are, on their own, described with words like unpolished, embarrassing, hallucinating, untrustworthy, and even baffling. Like I wrote two weeks ago, isn’t “behind” where you want to be when those who are ahead are publishing nonsense?

Many current and former employees said Mr. Chaudhri and Ms.
Bongiorno preferred positivity over criticism, leading them to
disregard warnings about the Ai Pin’s poor battery life and power
consumption. A senior software engineer was dismissed after
raising questions about the product, they said, while others left
out of frustration.

Mr. Chaudhri said his company, which had 250 employees at its
peak, encouraged workers to offer feedback. The departures were a
natural consequence of transitioning from creating a new device to
sustaining it after its release, which he said appealed to “a
different type of person.”

It is the kiss of death for any endeavor, creative or technical, to have a culture where brutally honest internal criticism is not welcome, especially when it goes up the chain. In fact it needs to be the expectation, if you’re pursuing excellence. This is probably one of the reasons why Chaudhri, in particular, is not remembered fondly in Cupertino. The key is to always remember to critique the work, not the person. It’s never personal; it’s always about the work.

From the beginning, current and former employees said, the Ai Pin
had issues, which reviewers later picked apart. One was the
device’s laser display, which consumed tremendous power and would
cause the pin to overheat. Before showing the gadget to
prospective partners and investors, Humane executives often
chilled it on ice packs so it would last longer, three people
familiar with the demonstrations said. Those employees said such
measures could be common early in a product development cycle.

I’ll bet “Ice Ice Baby” is within Humane’s budget to license, even pre-acquisition.

 ★ 

Tripp Mickle and Erin Griffith, with a “not what Humane needed the day after announcing their charging case is a potential fire hazard” report for The New York Times:

Days before gadget reviewers weighed in on the Humane Ai Pin, a
futuristic wearable device powered by artificial intelligence,
the founders of the company gathered their employees and
encouraged them to brace themselves. The reviews might be
disappointing, they warned.

I realize this is only a passing summary of the meeting, but I would hope that everyone at the company was aware of the AI Pin’s shortcomings. They’re the ones who were most familiar with it! However much trouble Humane is in, they were comically doomed if their own employees needed to be told the AI Pin was not a good product just days before reviews dropped. One would think the real topic of this all-hands was to explain why they shipped what they shipped and what the plan was to make it good.

About a week after the reviews came out, Humane started talking to
HP, the computer and printer company, about selling itself for
more than $1 billion, three people with knowledge of the
conversations said. Other potential buyers have emerged, though
talks have been casual and no formal sales process has begun.

I’m going to be insufferable if they sell to HP.

Its setbacks are part of a pattern of stumbles across the world of
generative A.I., as companies release unpolished products. Over
the past two years, Google has introduced and pared back A.I.
search abilities that recommended people eat rocks,
Microsoft has trumpeted a Bing chatbot that hallucinated
and Samsung has added A.I. features to a smartphone that were
called “excellent at times and baffling at others.”

The above paragraph exemplifies the sort of catch-22 corner the media is trying to portray Apple as having been painted into regarding AI. It’s just stated as fact that Apple “has fallen behind in the AI arms race” (that’s from yesterday in the WSJ) but the companies Apple has supposedly fallen behind are, on their own, described with words like unpolished, embarrassing, hallucinating, untrustworthy, and even baffling. Like I wrote two weeks ago, isn’t “behind” where you want to be when those who are ahead are publishing nonsense?

Many current and former employees said Mr. Chaudhri and Ms.
Bongiorno preferred positivity over criticism, leading them to
disregard warnings about the Ai Pin’s poor battery life and power
consumption. A senior software engineer was dismissed after
raising questions about the product, they said, while others left
out of frustration.

Mr. Chaudhri said his company, which had 250 employees at its
peak, encouraged workers to offer feedback. The departures were a
natural consequence of transitioning from creating a new device to
sustaining it after its release, which he said appealed to “a
different type of person.”

It is the kiss of death for any endeavor, creative or technical, to have a culture where brutally honest internal criticism is not welcome, especially when it goes up the chain. In fact it needs to be the expectation, if you’re pursuing excellence. This is probably one of the reasons why Chaudhri, in particular, is not remembered fondly in Cupertino. The key is to always remember to critique the work, not the person. It’s never personal; it’s always about the work.

From the beginning, current and former employees said, the Ai Pin
had issues, which reviewers later picked apart. One was the
device’s laser display, which consumed tremendous power and would
cause the pin to overheat. Before showing the gadget to
prospective partners and investors, Humane executives often
chilled it on ice packs so it would last longer, three people
familiar with the demonstrations said. Those employees said such
measures could be common early in a product development cycle.

I’ll bet “Ice Ice Baby” is within Humane’s budget to license, even pre-acquisition.

Read More 

Mark Gurman:

Apple Inc. will introduce a new homegrown app next week called
Passwords, aiming to make it easier for customers to log in to
websites and software, according to people with knowledge of
the matter.

This isn’t an all-new app, but rather it’s breaking the Passwords panel out of the Settings app sidebar and into its own proper standalone app. I’ll bet Apple introduces new features, too, but Gurman doesn’t describe any. The Passwords panel in Settings, including the system-wide integrations with Safari and WebKit, already has the scope and breadth of an app. I’ve personally been all-in for many years on using iCloud for my own passwords, authentication codes, and now passkeys. For me it’s proven robust and trustworthy.

Making Passwords its own proper app is overdue, though. Apple tries to manage a good balance with how many standalone apps ships as part of the system on iOS. On the Mac, there’s an easier split: Apple puts a dozen or so of the system’s most-used apps in the Dock by default, and puts 46 apps in the Applications folder, and another 18 nerdier apps in the Utilities sub-folder within Applications. On iOS Apple puts some of its own apps within folders, but that still adds to the visual complexity of the default home screens. Password management is so important, and Apple’s own system is so good, that it deserves more prominence. Making Passwords its own app won’t just make it more discoverable, it will (correctly) set the perception that Apple Passwords is a serious personal security management tool that users should considering adopting.

 ★ 

Mark Gurman:

Apple Inc. will introduce a new homegrown app next week called
Passwords, aiming to make it easier for customers to log in to
websites and software, according to people with knowledge of
the matter.

This isn’t an all-new app, but rather it’s breaking the Passwords panel out of the Settings app sidebar and into its own proper standalone app. I’ll bet Apple introduces new features, too, but Gurman doesn’t describe any. The Passwords panel in Settings, including the system-wide integrations with Safari and WebKit, already has the scope and breadth of an app. I’ve personally been all-in for many years on using iCloud for my own passwords, authentication codes, and now passkeys. For me it’s proven robust and trustworthy.

Making Passwords its own proper app is overdue, though. Apple tries to manage a good balance with how many standalone apps ships as part of the system on iOS. On the Mac, there’s an easier split: Apple puts a dozen or so of the system’s most-used apps in the Dock by default, and puts 46 apps in the Applications folder, and another 18 nerdier apps in the Utilities sub-folder within Applications. On iOS Apple puts some of its own apps within folders, but that still adds to the visual complexity of the default home screens. Password management is so important, and Apple’s own system is so good, that it deserves more prominence. Making Passwords its own app won’t just make it more discoverable, it will (correctly) set the perception that Apple Passwords is a serious personal security management tool that users should considering adopting.

Read More