Apple No Longer in Talks to Join OpenAI Investment Round
wsj.com
wsj.com
Yes, there is Apple Intelligence but it is mostly writing tools, Xcode code completion, an emoji generator and so on. Nothing like something that is going to replace jobs, AGI and so on how OpenAI is marketing their products.
What do you mean by "avoid ..metaverse"? They released a premium headset for AR/VR.
No dancing Zucks.
“Killer app” (as far as there is one) is focus. Being able to surround yourself with a large Mac screen & several Safari & iOS-type app screens, in a beautiful natural environment, and get real work done.
There is only one display for apps. It’s not large. Rather tiny compared to your field of view. The features are restricted around what an iPhone can do: View photos, view movies, view your browser one tab at a time.
Immersively, yes, but anything actually productive is excluded from the Vision Pro. There is no killer app in the Vision Pro.
My 32” screen can display more windows than the Vision Pro.
Yes they are.
Source: I develop for the device.
But in any case: Several browsers isn’t several apps. It’s really not like having several computers screens around you.
Their stock crashed hard after they pivoted to focus on the metaverse. It has since more then recovered - but saying that Meta marketed their VR to please investors is kinda silly considering how Mark Zuckerberg keeps doubling down on this investment to date - despite how massively the stock crashed.
Apple hasn't just not implemented this they've made it impossible for developers to as well. Because only Apple can access the sensors needed to create the 3D avatar and only Apple is allowed access to this avatar i.e. it is restricted to SharePlay with your friends.
But seriously now, you can bet your left kidney that if Apple ever manages to make AR/VR work they will try to milk every penny and dime from the gullible while pretending that "it's good for you" like they do with their broken walled gardens. /rant
So far, it looks like Meta changed its view from VR-only and got into AR (with the new glasses). Apple is still pushing AR (with some VR).
Will Apple change its mind? Perhaps. That’s a good thing for companies to do in the face of new evidence/reception from the market.
The metaverse , in most common definitions, refers to a virtual world and ecosystem as an alternate for the real one. See Ready Player One.
Second life is a metaverse platform in essence. But isn’t VR.
Fortnite is a metaverse but isn’t VR. Their programming language is even called Verse.
The Quest itself isn’t a metaverse product BUT Horizon Worlds (not The confusingly named HorizonOS) is. You can participate in Horizon without a headset.
Apple has no metaverse product. There might be metaverse products on Apple devices but that’s no different than an iPhone or Mac playing the things I mentioned above.
There is almost no definition of metaverse that includes augmented reality.
Second Life can and has been used with a VR headset, so yeah, it is in essence VR. Whether or not it's a good experience doesn't matter, Second Life certainly can meet the requirement for "virtual reality", depending on your definition of "VR".
What about the Apple Vision Pro?
(FWIW I think both are way overhyped)
If not (which I think is the way to go, a functional purpose-built accessible UI is always better than a chatbot, and generative fluff is best left to apps) then they will go for swappable LLM backends, bypassing any legal/geopolitical restrictions. Keeps eggs diversified in multiple baskets and offers negotiation leverage (and that if Apple doesn’t find a no-frills way to pass system-integrated LLM use costs onto end users).
If yes, they will probably go full in-house. They can afford it.
at this phase, it would be disastrous for apple to bank their reputation on sam.
So it's not just gig workers who get offered exposure to pay the bills.
Google was default search engine in Safari, but I changed that to DDG.
Gig workers are paid in peanuts and dreams.
If a system exists that enables (distributed) collaboration on files, the appeal of cloud-based software vanishes. Remote compute becomes possible as well.
At least, that’s the bet we are taking with lix https://lix.opral.com/
I'm not an expert on anything, though.
I was part of a few due diligence teams and the things we found sometimes broke the potential investment in less than a day in...
Nobody's perfect - but I think it's safe to say Apple makes a significant effort when it comes to privacy.
Who is the other game in town for them?... Meta? Google?
I don't use OpenAI's products. Is there an area where they are clearly ahead? I thought it was at least a tie in all categories.
I put sources in another sibling comment, and as I said in both comments, I think that gap will close. I don't expect OAI to keep their moat much longer, especially with the people they've lost.
PS: I say all of this as a constant critic of OAI: both how they behave and their offerings. But credit where credit is due, I don't see out-of-the-box alternatives to OAI's rlhf'd CoT at any price point right now.
The third party providers is smart imho. Apple take on little risk, and it allows them to avoid being reliant on any one provider.
Musk is too much of a loose cannon for Apple so Grok is out.
Mistral is in the EU which doesn't have a stable regulatory regime.
Leaving OpenAI which at least has the full support of Microsoft i.e. it will always have access to the best compute resources and endless money.
I guess the US's "no regulations ever" can be considered a stable regulatory regime.
And Microsoft is an even bigger investor in OpenAI. Why couldn't Apple join Google in this?
There's also Meta, whose money is as endless as Microsoft's.
Sometimes, FOMOing into a pump and dump is not worth it and they were just too late.
I’ve used generative AI to help with writing documents and code. I think it’s fun for creating and modifying images. As someone with no creative talent, Photoshop has been quite fun to use.
But frankly, AI is completely useless in almost every way I see it implemented. I cannot see my grandparents, my mom, or my brother use it for anything practical. Everyone’s rushing to flesh out an investor slide deck without taking a moment to think: “but how can this actually be used in someone’s day-to-day”
I’ve enjoyed Apple’s extremely conservative approach so far — they’ve kept it mostly practical.
For example, let’s take the photos app. Just being able to search for “(dogs name) lake” and having images of my dog near a lake is day-to-day useful.
Another example is their introduction of writing tools to proofread blocks of text. My parents already use Spellcheck and Grammar check, this feels like the next step up.
Compare this to Samsung who took the SV Venture-Fund-appeal-style route and blasted “AI” everywhere they can call a function or put a button. Or Microsoft, who’s Copilot story is focused on imprinting keys on keyboards without answering “how does this help the end user”
This hype around AI is gaudy. Nearly every implementation feels cheap, half-baked, and obnoxious. If Apple’s skepticism of implementing AI so far is “late”, late is not a bad thing at all as an end user.
(All that said, Genmoji looks incredibly stupid and I’m wondering what they were thinking with this…)
It seems to excel at helping people do their jobs, double checking their work, etc. It's maddening since it makes constant mistakes. But Apple should be utilizing this to make HomeKit as magical as promised -- rather than automating email, which is basically the lowest hanging copy and paste able fruit available
> This hype around AI is gaudy. Nearly every implementation feels cheap, half-baked, and obnoxious.
is true but does not imply:
> AI is completely useless in almost every way I see it implemented
which is not true. It's just harder to get real value out of it than junk. And it's a completely new "skill" to get value out of LLMs which most of us aren't learning.
Let’s look at real-world usage. Two of the most grueling tasks most people encounter in a year are filing taxes and understanding contracts. LLMs can ingest a lot of data to help in both scenarios, but whatever it advises is useless until a company accepts liability for it’s output.
Now all that is a long way away from creating an AI god which is what the peak hypers are selling.
Sci fi writers just assumed that emotions would be hard for computers but apparently it isn't that hard at all compared to rational thinking.
Sure the bubble will pop with the hundreds of nonsense startups going on at the moment, but OpenAI will be fine.
So Apple withdrawing would seem to be bad news for OA, even if the rationale was something like "the valuation is now too high for our taste" rather than "we are losing faith in them as an organization" or "we think they are completely replaceable".
What Apple needs more than anything else is market differentiation. They need products, patents, ideas, etc that set their products apart from their competitors. Buying into OpenAI doesn't get them that (unless they outbid everyone else). Apple will be better off using their capital to invent AI of their own, or buying/investing in an OpenAI alternative.
Apple can use their market leverage to get OpenAI integration. They don't need to spend money.