> see Siri, Apple photos, predictive text etc)... we only have evidence that they suck at ML
…or that they only deal with mature tech and not the shiny new thing. Makes sense to me. I don’t doubt everyone will have a personal LLM-based assistant in their phones soon, but with the current rate of improvements to LLMs and AI in general, I’d wait for at least a year more while doing R&D in-house if I were Apple.
You could use that apologist language for any company. If they suck at something just say they are “biding their time” No. Apple is just demonstrably behind.
Having terrible predictive text, voice to text, image classification etc isn’t just a quark of the way they do business. Those are problems with years of established work put into them and they just flat out aren’t keeping up.
“Apologists” … this is the domain of strategic analysis, business and products. Apple, Google, et al are not feudal lords or entities owed personal allegiance, nor sporting teams for fans to rally around, nor are we talking about morality and ethics where Apple did something wrong and apologists are justifying it.
As far as whether they are keeping up or not, I disagree, but neither of our opinions really matter unless we’re betting — that is, taking actions based on calculated risks we perceive.
…or that they only deal with mature tech and not the shiny new thing. Makes sense to me. I don’t doubt everyone will have a personal LLM-based assistant in their phones soon, but with the current rate of improvements to LLMs and AI in general, I’d wait for at least a year more while doing R&D in-house if I were Apple.