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John Ternus Era at Apple Kicks Off With the Changing of Lake Ontario to 'Lake America' (gizmodo.com)
submitted 2 months ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] 31 points 2 months ago (12 children)

The thing is, Apple was the exception in terms of the “AI” circlejerkery. Not trying to fanboi for them - simply pointing out that they are nowhere near the proportional outlay that the kool-aid drinkers are, in terms of ML spend.

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  • [–] 18 points 2 months ago (10 children)

    That's probably about to change with their new CEO too:

    "It's becoming clear that AI is not a fad, is not something that will go away in the next two or three years," said Jeronimo. "It's something that will dictate the future of most tech companies and indeed all companies."

    He reckons AI could be "the most consequential technology" for Apple because it could either help it maintain its lofty position or create a set of daunting challenges.

    https://www.dw.com/en/can-new-apple-ceo-john-ternus-fix-the-tech-giants-ai-woes/a-78575898

    It's pretty likely that AI was the reason why Apple is changing CEOs in the first place, because they have been getting criticized for not being as hopelessly stupid about it as other tech companies are.

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  • [–] 17 points 2 months ago (9 children)

    Nah, I don’t think that’s it. Cook is 65, and retirement (or semi-retirement) is appropriate for his age.

    Termus is a hardware guy, and if AI is going to play a part in Apple’s long-term plan (and I agree that it will,) it’s going to skew heavily on-device. I don’t think we see any big AI changes from Apple just because Ternus is now CEO.

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  • [–] 14 points 2 months ago (2 children)

    Also, Apple was kinda dull under Cook.

    Which is a weird thing to say when you have big swings like the Vision Pro. But the phones pads and watches really played it safe.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 months ago

    Dull but extremely profitable and successful as a company. Maybe their products are boring and there were a few flops along the way (HomePod, Vision Pro) but the transition to the M chips seems to have been successful and iPhone is still 21% of market share of the smart phone market.

    Let’s see how the floppy phone is received when it comes out in a few days.

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  • [–] 5 points 2 months ago

    Yeah exactly, local AI is the long term future. Open weight models running on your desk are already good enough for a lot of tasks, and quickly getting better.

    Apple are in a very good position here and don’t really need to do all that much other than continue to iterate on their existing hardware.

    Compare that to Anthropic, OpenAI who must spend insane amounts to host their closed weight models, which seem to be unprofitable at any prices people are actually prepared to pay. As local AI improves these companies have no other business to fall back on. I know which company I’d rather be CEO of right now.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 months ago

    Fair, he was due to retire.

    But at the very least, there's a good chance that Apple will start trying to shoehorn integrate AI in a lot of places. How much and where remains to be seen. Especially as a new CEO, there will be a lot of pressure to respond to all the criticism they've been receiving about their approach to AI.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 months ago (3 children)

    BS is all that is driving hardware sales at the moment. Computers have been fit-for-purpose for the last 10 years.

    If people don’t submit to the AI BS, they won’t need to upgrade their computers.

    The only way to force people to upgrade their computers is forced obsolescence; which requires the hardware to have some sort of remote kill switch, like a TPM.

    This is also why open source OSs are being criminalised; if you can run Linux on an old MacBook or Surface Pro 4, there is no incentive to buy a new computer.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 months ago (1 child)

    which requires the hardware to have some sort of remote kill switch, like a TPM.

    Okay I'm curious now, what's the mechanism of killing hardware via TPM?

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  • [–] 0 points 2 months ago

    They couldn't figure it out and their AI dep has been in shambles. Apple is/were not 'good' in any sense of the word. There are docs that describes why apple didn't get on the AI train, and they were NOT trying deliberately to fight back against AI - in any way..

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