Hacker News Reader

Comment by elfbargpt | Hacker News Reader

I think one of Apple's strengths since Tim Cook took over is their ability to avoid "gimmicks". As much criticism as people have of apple for not innovating on the iPhone, I appreciate their ability to not screw products up.

I'm not saying AI is a gimmick, but the caution they show is a good quality I think

View on HN

They're being sued over an Apple Intelligence gimmick in an ad campaign that turned out to be vaporware at this very moment!

https://www.axios.com/2025/03/20/apple-suit-false-advertisin...

Apple could have avoid that by released it half arsed like all the AI stuff, claim that it does all those things and write somewhere "AI may make mistakes".

Their latest OS design shows they are quite capable of falling for gimmicks

The guy responsible is fortunately out of Apple

That would be fine if he was a lone wolf and nobody supported his vision, or if his whole org moved out with him.

I have no idea what's going on but Apple is an extremely top down place. Its entirely possible that Apple pivots on a dime after the departure of the baffoon.

Several of his “lieutenants” are following, actually.

His successor Stephen Lemay has exactly the kind of pedigree a person who cares about UI could ask for. There's a lot to be optimistic about. https://daringfireball.net/2025/12/bad_dye_job

I work in UI in enterprise, where slight color shade differences between releases can cause uproar. I cannot imagine the thought process behind liquid glass in any sense.

OSX's Aqua was also an insanely bold UI with a lot of gimmicks, but was still usable for the most part. I'm so very curious about the internal discussions around this.

It was a different time, too. I remember being starstruck after seeing the UI. Windows looked overwhelmingly grey in comparison.

If its a gimmick to have a functioning Siri, please give me gimmicks. Siri is a generation behind Alexa and Hey Google. Siri is next to worthless.

I have some good news: I use both Apple and Amazon products, and both voice assistants are equally useless.

Gemini, grok, etc all have 100x better experiences with voice. Apple is bad at this.

I’m an hour from Cambridge, MA. Ask the weather? I always get Cambridge, UK. Siri is terrible.

They can’t even make a functional keyboard anymore. The text prediction and autocorrect is worse now than it was in 2010!

These are all solved problems in 2025.

Why would it not assume you meant the best Cambridge?

They haven't really updated Siri though? That's still in the pipeline. So not a very fair comparison. The article states that they are behind and I think everyone knows that

They have though, they added the "ask ChatGPT" thing which is friggin useless

The AI "features" Apple advertise are largely gimmicky. The Apple Vision Pro is a gimmicky product. The MacBook touchbar was gimmicky.

Cook might be less susceptible to gimmickery than some of his peers. But he's definitely got an imperfect batting average, here.

It was disappointing to see one of the most advertised Apple “AI” features was “Genmoji”, which falls squarely in the “gimmick” category for me.

AI isn't a gimmick, but a huge portion of the way it's presented to consumers is, especially given the fact that it never really was meant for consumers. As an Apple user, I'm thrilled at how "behind" they are.

But also, their tendency to "not fall from gimmicks" sometimes makes it so we didn't get a 2nd mouse button for decades. Ultimately, the way they implemented this was super cool, but still.

The balancing act of figuring out what you can reasonably rely on from an LLM and what you need to be skeptical or dismissive of is not the type of experience an iPhone user should be expected to navigate.

ChatGPT or Gemini or Claude are gimmicks?

Having to license Gemini from Google and Qwen from Alibaba for Siri isn’t Apple falling severely behind?

I was going to link you the Apple Vision Pro as a counterpoint, but after clicking the link and being reminded of what that product actually looks like, I really don't know what to say any more. I'm literally dumbfounded anyone could make your comment at all

I ran into an AVP recently and it actually is a great piece of hardware. It only has two issues: price and software. The former is forgivable because it really is an amazing piece of hardware and the price is justified. The latter is not and is the original sin that has killed it.

There's an unfulfilled promise of spatial computing. I wish I could load up my preferred CAD program and have wide and deep menus quickly traversable with hand gestures. Barring that the least it could do is support games. Maybe if some combination of miracle shims (fex emu, asahi, w/e) were able to get onto the platform it might be savable. The input drivers alone would be a herculean task.

To their credit, they specifically decided not to make a big deal out of AR like Meta did and keep production small and expensive. They realized the tech wasn't ready for a mass adoption campaign. I'd say Apple, overall, has been pretty cautious with AR. I wouldn't be surprised if they even have the guts to cancel that project entirely like they did with self-driving cars

That's not credit at all. If your strongest defense of AVP is "at least they're not Meta" then you've stopped making grounded observations and gone straight to ad-hominem.

I'd also go as far as to say that Apple knew they could have made the Vision Pro better. It should be running a real computer operating system like the headset Valve is making, and Apple knows that. The arbitrary insistence on iPad-tier software in a $3,500 headset guaranteed it was unlovable and dead-on-arrival.

gimmicks like a sock for your phone?

Coincidentally, in macOS and iOS design and functionality - especially since Tahoe and 26 - it rather feels like the slop has taken over.

quality sacrificed for speed, resulting in mediocre, buggy software.

The classic AI business manager formula.

I have been needing to hard restart my fully juiced up mac mini more often than ever.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com