So far their approach has been different, but their last keynote mentioned ML countless times. We can only assume they have more in the pipeline, and it will run locally on-device, which seems preferable to all the data collection being done with most companies working on AI.
blah blah those who don't study history something whatever
I hope Apple does succeed though because I love their hardware and their silicon is great for AI applications.
The biggest question mark, like you mention, is how innovative can Apple be under Tim Cook? Are there systems and people in place to serve as those visionaries when the CEO is an operator at heart? I often wonder how much of what we’ve seen was in the pipeline when Jobs was still around, or is simply taken from what is popular in the moment vs having a vision for the future.
Surely you're not lauding a near-useless gimmick that inexplicably doesn't work on the (defectively) giant trackpads of Apple's own computers... or most of their iPads.
First gen still is no worse than first-gen Magic Mouse, which launched under jobs though. Which is my main point, I don’t think Jobs was solely responsible for apple’s focus on design
> Near-useless gimmick
Man, millions of procreate enthusiasts would beg to disagree
> doesn’t work on the giant trackpads
Does anyone who stops to think about this for more than 2 seconds actually want this? What would you use it for besides digital signatures? Writing-to-text is just barely usable on tablets, I can’t see it being viable when you can’t see what you’re writing.
"Does anyone who stops to think about this for more than 2 seconds actually want this?"
Really? Have you ever heard of Wacom? They built an entire company on people who want this, and it has been in business for decades. And of course you can see what you're writing, right there on the screen! The surface area of current Apple laptop trackpads is 33% larger than that of a Wacom Intuos tablet: https://i.imgur.com/D8pmsTC.jpeg
It has nothing to do with handwriting recognition, either. That's another area where Apple failed spectacularly to make the Pencil useful. All they had to do is add a single-character writing area to the standard keyboard on the iPad, as was nailed in the '90s by Palm. That way, ALL applications would have immediately have gotten handwriting-entry capability. Instead, Apple left it up to every application developer to implement it separately. Baffling.
All of that makes the trackpad a much better option.
The first-gen Magic Mouse used AA batteries and did not have the charging issue of the current Magic Mouse. The second-gen Magic Mouse, with an internal battery and the horribly designed charging port, was released in 2015, 4 years after Jobs died.
Jobs was largely responsible for Apple's obsessive focus on design, even if he didn't design everything himself. He positioned Jony Ive to be #2 at the top of the company, no other company (other than maybe a strict design firm) is going to have a design person be 2nd in command after the CEO. He also famously reviewed each thing that was going out the door and it had to meet his standard of design. This goes far back, here is a story from when they were designing the original Macintosh, they handed the design to Jobs, because he kept rejecting all their designs.
https://www.folklore.org/Calculator_Construction_Set.html
Of course there were misses under Jobs well, no one is perfect. The mouse the shipped with the G3 iMac, while it may have looked good in a press photo, was not great to use. That said, I have a hard time believing Jobs would have let the changing of the first Apple Pencil or the second-gen Magic Mouse out the door. They are so awkward. Even the newest pencil, plugging it in with a cord is weird compared the elegance of the second-gen Pencil.
(Along with just-about-good-enough speech-to-text, if I speak clearly, and checking on the weather outside.)
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But yes, totally agree with your underlying point about the huge opportunity that Apple is leaving on the table with their lackluster approach to Siri.
When you can state something concrete about Apple's products or services that can be improved with so-called "AI," let us know.
Apple is also mostly a consumer oriented business. I can’t see them selling AI as a stand alone service.