Good morning. Hello. How are you? #1191
Apple keynote thoughts: Siri is still gonna suck, Nvidia is going down, first do now harm. Happy 25th, Freezepop
Good morning. Hello. Still getting used to this summer thing. Jane wanted me to come wake her up today. She woke up at 7:40 it was lovely. She played in the playroom while I made breakfast so the eggs wouldn’t be too hot. She is now coloring behind me in my office. It is quite nice. Camps start next week.
I have a doctor visit today. The subject: pain, pain, pain. Pain in my fingers and elbow and shoulder and foot and neck and head just so may spots of pain. I know this means the beginning of a journey of a million specialists because, I guess, all this pain is a coincidence, right? And the fact that it’s happening everywhere is not some holistic failing and not a thing. I have to go to individual specialists, who act like my elbow or foot exists in a vacuum. I understand it is probably (maybe!) correct, but also a) it seems weird and unlikely and counterintuitive, and b) it is not definitely correct, and it feels like modern medicine should maybe definitively ascertain the absence of a common cause before moving on to the micro view. But I suspect that is a bridge too far for modern capitalism.
There exists, somewhere within 30 miles of me, I am sure of it, some brilliant holistic pain doctor that could well help me. But good luck finding them and distinguishing them from the quacks. What am I going to do? Use Yelp? Lol. The internet is useless.
Let’s talk about Apple today. I am now caught up. I was dreading the WWDC keynote so much. I was worried Tim was about to make a career-ending mistake. He did not do that. And, dare I say it, he may have actually materially, inalterably improved the privacy hell-world that is “artificial intelligence”.
To be clear, I still don’t want any of it.
To be clear, I have zero expectation that the new, revamped Siri will be any better than the current one. Okay maybe marginally, incrementally better in an absolutely useless way. I have zero expectation it will now be able to answer questions like “what is this song that you are playing” or “can you write my wife back?” I have zero expectation that it will now magically, finally, be able to, oh, I don’t know, play the music already playing in the house in one more room.
I have zero expectation of any of this because the Siri portion of the Keynote made it very clear that Apple is building on Siri the way it always has: by adding one new command and functionality at a time. It seems like Apple is going to use LLMs to, I guess, parse the various different ways a human can ask a question and then map that to a set of pre-built Siri functions. Which would be super useful if the problem with my question “what’s this song playing” was that Siri didn’t understand the question. But it does. It just doesn’t have the ability to answer it because it has not yet occurred to Apple engineers that someone would want to ask this question. I see no evidence that this has changed.
But maybe I am wrong. Because Apple is going to great lengths to make an LLM, a “generative AI,” whatever you want to call this thing, in a new, private way. Apple Private Cloud Compute is amazing. Apple Private Cloud Compute is revolutionary. Apple Private Cloud Compute is a thing of beauty. Apple Private Cloud Compute is a transformative step in protecting user privacy. I am so freakin excited about Apple Private Cloud Compute. I hope it embarrasses the rest of the industry to death. N.B. I do not think that will happen.
(Still hate the word “Compute” as a noun, though.)
BUT a robust, ultra-secure, auditable cloud architecture that does not, can not leak data, share data, mine data is huge. The blog post for Apple Private Cloud Compute is revelatory. It’s focus on ultra-sophisticated threat actors (read: China) and the entire supply chain is magnificent. It’s use of keys and certificates and audit trails and the ability for public security researchers to inspect all this is great. It’s jettisoning of the normal “admin” tools that are a vector for mass data theft is amazing: just don’t build them! just don’t use them. Brilliant. Doing it all on Apple Silicon allowing for additional security and difficulty of threat actors compiling malware is great. The whole thing is just spiffying.
Apple tried something sort-of similar, except diametrically opposed, with its CSAM detection tools and I ribbed them to death, it was a privacy catastrophe. This is the opposite. Apple has clearly learned from its mistakes, and clearly realized that the world we live in is untenable from a security point of view. Apple seems to have learned from its Faustian bargain with China and, at the very least, clearly shows it doesn’t want the bargain to get any worse.
Really just A+ all around, Apple Private Cloud Compute.
Now, I am not excited about the OpenAI partnership but it wasn’t as bad as I feared. I can completely opt out of it. OpenAI isn’t getting paid, apparently, which is hilarious and great and fine, sure, bleed more money out of Altman’s hubristic empire of hell. Apparently it will open up to other partners, meaning it won’t be exclusive to OpenAI, which is just great.
Now, I for one am not dying to get back to a world where every startup in Silicon Valley is valued by how likely it is they can get sweet-ass placement in the Apple App Store (no siree, those days sucked even if you did have an inside advantage, which totally existed despite all the doe eyed denials). It was not a pleasant time. But it is kinda funny that, in the end, that might be all of this is: another App Store race.
I’m very into them using Apple Silicon for all of this and I don’t think the ramifications for Nvidia have been fully explored. Big Nvidia rant coming in the coming days, I’m sure you’re excited, but if I were financially sophisticated enough to short a stock, I’d be shorting Nvidia now. Writing seems on the wall. Sure, there are a lot of details missing about which parts are happening on Apple Silicon and if Apple is an Nvidia customer and if iOS-based ChatGPT requests will be partially handled on Apple Silicon before being passed to OpenAI, etc. etc.
But still, it is clear: Apple is coming for Nvidia.
Sure, Nvidia’s chips are probably “better” still, but.. are they better enough? People-in-the-know say that Google’s TPU chip is “good enough” for AI research, and I’d be shocked if Apple’s massive chip design capability couldn’t match Google at this point. Furthermore, Apple Silicon doesn’t need to be “better” than Nvidia. It just needs to be “better when factoring in our cost and power savings.” Apple will be getting these chips in as many quantities as they want — they have completely sidestepped the “value our company based on our Nvidia order receipts” joke, and they will always have a larger scale than Nvidia thanks to the volume of iOS devices they ship. They will always be a better customer to TSMC, they’ll always get preferred manufacturing placement and they’ll get better volume pricing.
And there’s no reason Apple couldn’t, eventually, offer this to other AI research parties.
And Apple has legendarily long-held grudges.
Other thoughts about WWDC:
Craig Federighi is hilarious and that bouffant-shaped helmet was the greatest thing ever. Apple Keynotes have moved from slightly cheese and uncomfortable to full-on, knowing parodies of themselves and I am here for it. Convinced that at this point they view it is hilarious that they make all the speakers stand the same way and move their hands at the same way. Maybe the whole thing is a joke. Also really appreciated the joke about getting high.
Math Notes looks amazing and I will never use it.
BUT the handwriting stuff is amazing – a font out of your handwriting, editing things in your handwriting, making your handwriting better. I mean, I don’t handwrite notes, but this could change my mind? I am in awe of this tech even though it seems mostly gimmicky.
iPhone Mirroring on your Apple Silicon Mac is huge and I am going to use it every day and I cannot convey my excitement for not having to pick up my phone when I’m in front of my computer which always feels stupid.
Apple Vision Pro improvements were incremental but useful and the 2x5k display mirroring is an improvement. Not quite there yet, but better! Still considering buying one. The B2B and enterprise demos looked solid and I am mentally placing AVP in the Apple Watch category for now: a slow boiler that could, ultimately, be a huge success. TBD, but I’m not as bearish as the rest of the world and I still want one.
It is utter BS that the Journal App has not been ported to Mac and it is such a low-hanging fruit of a failure it really does make me resent the entire company for how much it slacks on the Mac, constantly. No one accuses Volvo of slacking on its trucks. If Steve’s “Macs are trucks” metaphor is to be believed, you still have to make good trucks. Be a Honda or a Volvo here, Apple, not a Tesla. Jesus.
Comments about Apple Intelligence accessing your “files,” “documents” and “notes” I see no evidence that the new Siri will be able to build an LLM out of my own documents and let me chat with it, which is the only thing that I want out of this technology. Luckily I got a few friends who are working on it a bit for me.
I do, however, love that you’ll be able to type to Siri because I often find myself wishing I could do that instead of speaking. Not that that either ever leads to a satisfying result, except “mute” and “next track.”
In short, I don’t really expect anything transformative out of Apple Intelligence. Siri will go from 99% useless to 95% useless.
BUT, Apple, thus far, is the only company that seems to have taken the first do no harm diktum to heart, and for that they deserve applause.
Before I go, I would like to belatedly wish Freezepop a happy 25th anniversary. Just a huge accomplishment for a band, and incredibly mind-blowing from a personal perspective. Can’t believe it’s been this long. I am so proud of them. Never saw this as a possibility 25 years ago, at Castle Von Buhler, shooting their first show ever. And who could have ever imagined the journey that would take them and us to so many different towns and countries and all the amazing people we met along the way. Phenomenal. Grand.
Happy birthday, Sean, Jussi, Seth, Kasson, Ashley, god, Pete, who else? Al! Happy birthday to all of you.
And keeping with that, here is the underrated video for the Bunnyung remix of Super Sprode that Phil Stockton and I made:
Bye!