It would need a path to a $2,500 machine. But this is a niche I don’t think another consumer-facing brand could do like Apple.
Like, take out the price sheets for the Apple Car. Then sell me an AI tower at those price points.
Apps like LMStudio, Ollama, Draw Things, etc do a great job of simplifying it but it's still a pain.
I don't think I'm taking this out of context when I say this is unintentionally correct. Apple still doesn't know what to do about AI.
Luckily, it doesn't matter because it's a solution in search of a problem. Most consumers aren't using AI apart from google search.
Everyone else is using it as a content scraper and praying nobody will step in to end the piracy/fraud.
This is... a view.
Maybe I live in a strange sphere of strange ("normie"-ish) people, but the people around me are for sure using AI. Mostly chatgpt to be fair. They use it to compare products that they intend to buy, identify plants in nature, create travel plans, find interesting places to visit nearby, give movie suggestions based on what they have previously enjoyed and so on and so forth. AI is becoming a very integrated part of their reality. To "google" something and digging through the search results manually is very rapidly being replaced by asking chatgpt, for better or worse.
Others running the beta now on newer iPhones and enjoying it more so?
On my Pro 16 it has its ups and downs - I still can't get it to "play my running playlist on shuffle" whilst running (this is the only thing I used Siri for before the beta and it would improve my life immeasurably if it worked). But it responds to things like "how long will it take to drive to the AirBnb booking in my inbox", and "when is X playing a concert in Y - add a calendar entry with details" perfectly.
This is a beta and I have hopes, but I can imagine it will run better on a 17 and later
Although given how effed up the voice for chatgpt is now with the latest updates I might talk with siri more.
Because I use carplay in tandem with my phone where the map is on the carplay screen and turn by turn directions are on my phone, it's always unlocked so I haven't run into whatever lock screen issue you brought up.
> “He also described a shift toward running AI locally rather than in the cloud – a move motivated by privacy, security, and the rising cost of inference as agents consume more tokens.”
Classic Apple. No more just beating the “security and privacy” drum, now its “tokens are expensive!”
<neanderthal voice/> Cloud scary. Cloud expensive. Mac good. Buy Mac!
> “He also singled out what he calls ‘transparent AI’ on iPhone and iPad, referring to features scattered throughout the operating system and third-party apps that work quietly without announcing themselves as AI.”
<neanderthal voice/> Apple use AI, Apple just not say it. Apple smart, not lagging behind industry! Buy iPhone!
How about you invest in developing your own models, correctly? And provide a secure and private inference cloud service on your fancy Apple silicon? And integrate that into your platform so Siri gets smarter without you farming queries out to Google Gemini? Bill me for it in iCloud+ I’ll probably pay for those tokens.
Was that so hard?
Or phrase it in a very similar ask, why don't they invest in power plants? The model space is truly crowded, what do they gain or recover suppose they are SOTA? Across the Pacific they are pumping out free models that are only 6-12 months behind. What business sense does it make for Apple to develop their own models?
No peripherals except Ethernet, integrated compute (cpu+gpu+mem) and secondary storage (+mobo, psu). No accoutrements, just the minimum amount of hardware to run a model as a utility.
Even the appliance faceplate would be a display showing stats like an old HiFi stereo.