Content
@
0 reply
0 recast
0 reaction
nicholas 🧨
@nicholas
this year we find out if apple is organizationally capable of commoditizing ai chat bots inside their UI, or if their lack of focus on ai will leave enough space for openai and co to continue to grow as distinct personal computers. i suspect we’ll still be using claude and chatgpt for proper work like coding, and siri will be best for answering questions quickly and manipulating data inside apps, but not for achieving truly sophisticated cognitive tasks. siri will be like iphone automation + data retrieval without much setup, not a collaborative thinking partner for making software for example. apple can avoid this being their innovator’s dilemma so long as their stranglehold on software distribution doesn’t falter. if the store changes and the ai companies find new ways to deliver software interactions to users outside of ios and the app store…
2 replies
1 recast
5 reactions
richie is foraging
@richie
it's not clear they need to compete on higher-demand workflows to sell iphones & services siri will be most user's default ai assistant just like the camera app is most user's default camera. low friction + unmatched access to context for completing personal assistant tasks they can continue to edge out openai as their models become more capable because they own the hardware where requests originate.
1 reply
0 recast
1 reaction
nicholas 🧨
@nicholas
💯 assistants will be easy for them, and they’ll continue to put pressure on everyone else as their on device models improve, but ai for making software for example i don’t think they have the dna for. apple inc has never really wanted to empower regular people to make software. media yes, software no. if sama or someone else can figure out a new distribution mechanism that lives outside app store and can scale, they may end up in trouble as a lot of the empire depends on app store control
2 replies
0 recast
1 reaction
richie is foraging
@richie
> apple inc has never really wanted to empower regular people to make software not sure about this. they put a lot of resources into coding education programs and swift playgrounds to teach people swift. they also built shortcuts on ios/mac which is arguably a dev kit for regular people to program their devices. i think their ai will plug into these existing resources to help people make stuff. but i agree that i dont think they will compete on software dev flows that dont directly contribute to their device ecosystem. bc at the end of the day they want to sell more devices and services on top of those devices.
1 reply
0 recast
0 reaction
nicholas 🧨
@nicholas
apple achieved success when it traded human empowerment through personal computing (apple computers, mac) for personal entertainment (ipod, iphone) as its primary motivation. apple supports software development by maintaining device categories like the mac despite their financial irrelevance compared to consumer product lines, but the architecture of apps and app store distribution are hostile to the universal proliferation of software literacy and authorship skills. you can’t read the code, you can’t remix it. you can’t program and publish an iphone app on an iphone because you’re not supposed to make software with an iphone, you’re supposed to play your games, stream video, and generate dead fish social media objects like ig posts. this could change over time but educational programs pumping proprietary technology do not compensate for their profound commitment thus far to limiting software literacy and meaningful composability. could change over time but i doubt it
1 reply
0 recast
0 reaction
richie is foraging
@richie
hmm, idk. the iphone is a complete personal computer in addition to being an entertainment device. the fact that you cant build ios apps on an iphone is more likely a result of how abysmal that dev experience would be than intentional hamstringing of the device. macs are a minority of revenue but are critical to owning the full personal computing “job” in a user’s life. its also the development platform for iphone apps. hardly irrelevant to their ecosystem-based strategy. if you follow the ipad marketing throughout the years, you’ll see a company that is fighting tooth & nail to prove that the ipad is a computer for creatives and not just an entertainment device - as many early critics said. bc computing, not entertainment, is their dna. interesting topic! 😄
1 reply
0 recast
0 reaction
nicholas 🧨
@nicholas
crucial topic yes. the original design for the ipad was spelled out at xerox parc by alan kay and adele goldberg. they illustrated an ipad like device running an object oriented OS (the original definition of OOP) designed to make everyone a computational actor. we live in the alternate world. the consumer product world. programming remains difficult, slow, and a rarefied skill. software is rigid, becomes obsolete quickly, is dependent upon oodles of proprietary software to be distributed effectively. the web is a counterpoint to the locked down software distribution apple provides but react and similar frameworks have made compiled projects illegible to the end user. the dev stack is also arcane and inaccessible to casuals. apple is not in the business of making it easy for people to displace them. try accessing a user’s contact book in a PWA, or downloading an mp3 to the music app. we live in a beautiful walled garden, with its advantages and disadvantages
2 replies
0 recast
0 reaction
