"remember when Apple and Microsoft were the mortalist of enemies?" Oh yeah, biggest memory around that is when Apple were in somewhat dire straits (late 90s), Steve Jobs was presenting at Macworld and Bill Gates came up on the big screen behind him to announce a partnership with Microsoft and a $150 million investment in Apple - and the crowd booed heavily. Apple is way behind on AI. Leveling up Siri is such a very very low bar. I think their best shot at the moment of getting 'back in the game' is if they make a real on-device model (not one that has to go out to the web via ChatGPT for anything not 100% basic) and make it smart enough to take the onus off users to know which app, or set of apps, to use to carry out common tasks - and then less common tasks etc.
Trying an open source model is a great idea. Just my 02, I don't want Llama anything because it's part of Meta and not fully open source, Qwen 3 is China made so ... I would use Gemma or a Mistral model or even one of Microsoft's PHI models
"Apple has always been home for creatives, so are they being super cautious integrating AI because it’s anathema to many? Is their security first stance dumbing down what raw AI can do on other platforms?"
I think this is it. Killer company and very profitable, now kinda afraid to take bold steps. I get it.
"Will Siri be mind-blowing amazing when they finally ship it?"
I very much doubt it, but still believe Apple can deliver great hardware - maybe VR stuff in the not terribly distant future now that they've learned some tough lessons, or maybe something new. It's really compelling to wonder about Ive/Open AI's new thingy, whatever that is.
yes, but you can’t be too cautious in tech, lot more at risk here then FOMO. Apple has got such a huge distribution that they can afford a little time by seeding on-device AI ready hardware out there and then having the new Siri magically show up via OS update. So we’ll see. For posterity, here is something I learned after publishing and shared in a note: Siri was the 1st to market, the OG (and unexpectedly funded by DoD) - now they are going to be the last to market:
——
Siri was born from CALO (Cognitive Assistant the Learns and Organizes); AI funded by the Department of Defense (!) SRI, a Stanford R&D non-profit built it. When they commericalized it, releasing the Siri App, Apple bought them up lickety split and we got our first digital assistant.
Then came Alexa and Cortana and Google Assistant and more. They each had discrete ‘skills.’ Cortana for example originally shipped with around a dozen native skills. At its peak, Alexa had tens of thousand of third party skills.
Now it’s a lift-and-shift replatforming race to transition the original skills-based architectures into LLM centric ones running locally. Google is in the lead now with Android, and CoPilot is good on Windows. Siri is behind — playing catchup as they work on their local model.
That is a really cool anecdote about Siri's origin. I mean, the very internet was funded by the US gov't, and AI was really, really important to national security beginning in the late 50s - so the government's fingerprints are all over today's tech landscape, just as the Roman empire's signature is all over Europe today.
I might overdo it, but every time I dive really deep and think about it, I think the comparison is more and more apt. There's never been a more Roman Empire nation since the actual Roman Empire, and even that is up for debate.
You bring the Roman Empire side; I’ll bring the tech building side. I don’t much about the Romans, but — like the Siri story — the federal government built the internet by federally funding university research.
do you use a Wacom tablet or something else to draw? The new iPad doesn't support the old Apple pencil, so if I want to keep doodling in Procreate I'll have to spend more :/
Oh no bro!! Pencil maybe but I agonized over specs long enough - skipped the paper screen/skin whatnot. They hide some stuff though; like the 512 has 2x storage perf
I’m totally meh on Apple Intelligence as well. I’ve been an iPad guy from the start … and it remains great for reading and writing, but for me not a whole lot more
Looking into this a little more, I learned the new chip will let you run models locally (that's the 'neural engine' stuff) and it's meant to make Siri amazing sometime next year. Maybe I'll play around with it - supposed to be super fast and super secure - no internet required.
"remember when Apple and Microsoft were the mortalist of enemies?" Oh yeah, biggest memory around that is when Apple were in somewhat dire straits (late 90s), Steve Jobs was presenting at Macworld and Bill Gates came up on the big screen behind him to announce a partnership with Microsoft and a $150 million investment in Apple - and the crowd booed heavily. Apple is way behind on AI. Leveling up Siri is such a very very low bar. I think their best shot at the moment of getting 'back in the game' is if they make a real on-device model (not one that has to go out to the web via ChatGPT for anything not 100% basic) and make it smart enough to take the onus off users to know which app, or set of apps, to use to carry out common tasks - and then less common tasks etc.
I was there for that :) on this new hardware I can run Llama 3, Gemma 2 or Qwen 3 locally. Should I try it 🫣
Trying an open source model is a great idea. Just my 02, I don't want Llama anything because it's part of Meta and not fully open source, Qwen 3 is China made so ... I would use Gemma or a Mistral model or even one of Microsoft's PHI models
def
"Apple has always been home for creatives, so are they being super cautious integrating AI because it’s anathema to many? Is their security first stance dumbing down what raw AI can do on other platforms?"
I think this is it. Killer company and very profitable, now kinda afraid to take bold steps. I get it.
"Will Siri be mind-blowing amazing when they finally ship it?"
I very much doubt it, but still believe Apple can deliver great hardware - maybe VR stuff in the not terribly distant future now that they've learned some tough lessons, or maybe something new. It's really compelling to wonder about Ive/Open AI's new thingy, whatever that is.
yes, but you can’t be too cautious in tech, lot more at risk here then FOMO. Apple has got such a huge distribution that they can afford a little time by seeding on-device AI ready hardware out there and then having the new Siri magically show up via OS update. So we’ll see. For posterity, here is something I learned after publishing and shared in a note: Siri was the 1st to market, the OG (and unexpectedly funded by DoD) - now they are going to be the last to market:
——
Siri was born from CALO (Cognitive Assistant the Learns and Organizes); AI funded by the Department of Defense (!) SRI, a Stanford R&D non-profit built it. When they commericalized it, releasing the Siri App, Apple bought them up lickety split and we got our first digital assistant.
Then came Alexa and Cortana and Google Assistant and more. They each had discrete ‘skills.’ Cortana for example originally shipped with around a dozen native skills. At its peak, Alexa had tens of thousand of third party skills.
Now it’s a lift-and-shift replatforming race to transition the original skills-based architectures into LLM centric ones running locally. Google is in the lead now with Android, and CoPilot is good on Windows. Siri is behind — playing catchup as they work on their local model.
That is a really cool anecdote about Siri's origin. I mean, the very internet was funded by the US gov't, and AI was really, really important to national security beginning in the late 50s - so the government's fingerprints are all over today's tech landscape, just as the Roman empire's signature is all over Europe today.
Oooh I love that parallel
I might overdo it, but every time I dive really deep and think about it, I think the comparison is more and more apt. There's never been a more Roman Empire nation since the actual Roman Empire, and even that is up for debate.
You bring the Roman Empire side; I’ll bring the tech building side. I don’t much about the Romans, but — like the Siri story — the federal government built the internet by federally funding university research.
I'm still "nursing" a 10+year-old Dell Precision T3600 workstation running WIN10. Her time will come, but the old workhorse is still doing OK for me.
do you use a Wacom tablet or something else to draw? The new iPad doesn't support the old Apple pencil, so if I want to keep doodling in Procreate I'll have to spend more :/
I’ve been using Wacom tablets since the late 1990s. I have a post where I talk about my love affair with the Wacom pen. I use it for many hours at a time and never have hand fatigue. https://open.substack.com/pub/frankmarianidesign/p/a-hand-held-wonder?r=22dz3t&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false
Wacoms has an interesting product line. I may purchase one of the lightweight portables to complement my desktop setup. https://www.wacom.com/en-us
spend more, jeez
The iPad with Procreate, and a Paperlike skin and a new pencil is the way to go...
Oh no bro!! Pencil maybe but I agonized over specs long enough - skipped the paper screen/skin whatnot. They hide some stuff though; like the 512 has 2x storage perf
I’m totally meh on Apple Intelligence as well. I’ve been an iPad guy from the start … and it remains great for reading and writing, but for me not a whole lot more
Looking into this a little more, I learned the new chip will let you run models locally (that's the 'neural engine' stuff) and it's meant to make Siri amazing sometime next year. Maybe I'll play around with it - supposed to be super fast and super secure - no internet required.
Your old employer def won the ai game! It will be fun to see how/when Apple AIs up..