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Comment by m463 | Hacker News Reader

Quietly they are doing things on-device. The OCR + copy/paste is genuine goodness - modestly functional.

This feature has been around since iOS 16 (2022) though - no relationship to Apple Intelligence (2024) or the current LLM hype (2023 onwards).

That's also literally years behind the competition. https://www.androidpolice.com/2018/05/09/android-ps-new-rece...

The competition has also attached it to a toxic brand and heavily integrated it with actively user-hostile applications. It doesn't matter if your tech is years ahead when people expect using it will mean your image content info will be sold to anyone willing to pay a cent for it.

It's more that nontechnical users prefer luxury brands over utility brands. A much smaller issue, which you alluded to, is that some technical users aren't technical enough to know real privacy vs. marketed privacy. This feature exists in base Android, which doesn't require any Google services.

does anyone else tire of hearing Apple referred to as a "luxury" brand? Sorry its more Honda than LVMH

You're right. I meant fashion brand.

LOL at the risk of sounding like a shill, I think Apple was right on time with these features. They added it after on-device CPU/neural engine was finally powerful and efficient enough. These features arrived at once on macs, iphones and ipads, and they arrived at the same time on your friends' devices.

IMO Android suffers from not controlling it's hardware. I can't ever be sure if the hyped new feature will come to my phone because I'm not using a Pixel or a Samsung.

But everyone talks about it like it was Apple, and isn’t that what matters (to Apple)?

I've never heard anybody (mis)attribute that to Apple.

I would have, and I work in tech. I'd guess that most people who use iOS have zero idea of what Android can and can't do, because they never use it and probably never will so what's the point of trying to find out.

Seconded. I never knew Android had this—but then again I couldn't care less about what Android can do. There is so much stuff fundamentally off-putting for me about the entire Google ecosystem that I'd never consider switching anyway.

The text from images feature launched as a Pixel 2 series-only feature.

There's a lot clearer message to consumers on iPhone, since so many features are available on "every phone made in the last five years, once you update the software."

On Android, that feature might be bound to an OS version, or might be rolled out in a Play Store update, it might be specific to just Google or Samsung, or even just to one of their phones. There's much less word of mouth "have you tried this new thing?"

Remember when Google added Car Crash Detection to Pixel in early 2020? Nobody does.

But when Apple added it in iPhone 14 (2022)...

In french we talk about "le savoir-faire" vs "le faire-savoir" (Know-how vs making it known") and the importance of good communication. Apple are the bestest at it. Remember the iPod shuffle and the lack of screen marketed as a feature to spice up your life.

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