We all fell for it. We all thought it would be beneficial to us as users. I don’t want to say we were all suckers, so I’ll just say we were naive. But in the end we were all suckers. Targeted advertising was supposed to cater to our needs, desires, and wishes. Surfacing what we were interested in out of the clutter was a hope and a promise that died in colliding avalanches of greed and gluttony.
To be fair some ad targeting actually works. To also be fair, even a broken clock is right twice a day. But the money came rolling in and the temptation to grab it all became far too much and made it far too easy to let slip those early promises.
Now the brains behind Artificial Intelligence are doing what many suspected from the get go and edging their way into the browser wars. TechCrunch has an interesting post talking about Perplexity’s plans to get to know us better by building a better browser.
Here’s the money quote:
“That’s kind of one of the other reasons we wanted to build a browser, is we want to get data even outside the app to better understand you,” Srinivas said. “Because some of the prompts that people do in these AIs is purely work-related. It’s not like that’s personal.”
Focus on the “personal” part.
Both Perplexity and OpenAI have made statements they would be interested in buying Google’s Chrome browser should Google be forced into a breakup for anti-trust reasons. But that’s years away. So why wait? Better to get in the game now before the regulators catch up. Or before all the data that’s good to grab gets grabbed and starts feeding on itself.
There’s irony in all of this that underlies and underlines the dissembling behind it that might just be seeping into the open. One of the promises of this new technology is that it will free us from drudgery, giving us all more time for creative pursuits and more balanced lifestyles. But the underlying goal is the same. Grab as much data as possible, especially “personal” data. That’s the currency. That will always be the currency.
Here’s the second money quote from Perplexity’s Aarvind Srinivasa:
“On the other hand, what are the things you’re buying; which hotels are you going [to]; which restaurants are you going to; what are you spending time browsing, tells us so much more about you.”
AI might continue its move into the enterprise, but that’s not enough. And if the corporate mindset of using AI to replace workers continues, that equation points to diminishing returns eventually, even if the advertisers never catch on.
We all know how this story plays out. Because it’s a rerun. And too often a plagiarized one as well.
You can find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome.I can also be found on social media under my name as above.
William Shakespeare is the playwright and poet that described us all. He did so with intelligence and wit. Today, April 23, is the day most mark as his birthday. The record of his baptism is April 26th, so it’s a decent bet the date is close enough.
There really is nothing new in human behavior under the sun. In his plays and poems I don’t think he missed much in describing every thing good, bad, noble, and foolish about how we operate with each other and within the world. In my view, it’s a shame more of us don’t pay enough attention to his cataloging of humanity. But then he predicted that as well.
Here’s an intriguing side note on this very intelligent man’s celebrated birth date. I asked several AI engines on what day was he born. Gemini, ChatGPT, Perplexity, and DeepSeek returned April 23rd as the likely date with the typical (and mostly accepted) disclaimers that we celebrate that day, but there’s no definitive proof it was the actual date. I asked Siri and Alexa, both returned April 23 as the definitive date. Intriguing that Siri didn’t try to pass that off to ChatGPT. I’m sure Amazon will now offer me all kind of suggestions to purchase anything Shakespeare.
So, I’ll amend slightly my statement about the Bard describing us all and there being nothing new under the sun. He’s correct in that we’re both smart and too often not smart enough to understand what we do and do not know, but he might have missed the mark when it comes to artificial intelligence. Or did he did he?
I’m reasonably certain his works have been fed into AI engines and Chatbot training given that they are long in the public domain. I’m also reasonably certain they ignore his nothing new under the sun descriptions of human interactions in the same way those of us still walking around do.
“Lord, what fools we mortals be!”
You can find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome.I can also be found on social media under my name as above.
This post is linking to her farewell column in The Observer, the Sunday sister paper to The Guardian and The Guardian Weekly papers in Britain. Like all media outlets it’s been through some things in recent years. The Observer was purchased late in 2024 and like all such transactions that prompted staff layoffs and terminations, including Carole Cadwalladr and a number of her colleagues. You can read all about that on in her post Fuckty bye in How To Survive The Broligarchy. I suggest you do that as well as read her final Observer column It’s Not Too Late To Stop Trump and The Tech Broligarchy From Controlling Our Lives, But We Must Act Now.
I happen to believe she’s fighting the good fight. That last column provides some excellent behind the scenes during her preparation and anxiety leading up to that recent TED speech, as well as some reactions she received while at the conference, including an interchange between her and OpenAI’s Sam Altman, in addition to making the important case she continues to make.
She’s paying attention and raising alarm bells. We should too. She’s standing in the way. We should too.
You can find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome.I can also be found on social media under my name as above.
In a typically thorough article on Ars Technica about Microsoft preparing to reintroduce the Recall feature to Windows 11, Andrew Cunningham sums up his, and I think many of our, queasy feelings about these kind of feature and marketing failures we’ve recently seen from the likes of Microsoft, Apple and others, using the phrase distrust-by-default.
Here’s the quote in context:
This was a problem that Microsoft made exponentially worse by screwing up the Recall rollout so badly in the first place. Recall made the kind of ugly first impression that it’s hard to dig out from under, no matter how thoroughly you fix the underlying problems. It’s Windows Vista. It’s Apple Maps. It’s the Android tablet.
And in doing that kind of damage to Recall (and possibly also to the broader Copilot+ branding project), Microsoft has practically guaranteed that many users will refuse to turn it on or uninstall it entirely, no matter how it actually works or how well the initial problems have been addressed.
Unfortunately, those people probably have it right. I can see no signs that Recall data is as easily accessed or compromised as before or that Microsoft is sending any Recall data from my PC to anywhere else. But today’s Microsoft has earned itself distrust-by-default from many users, thanks not just to the sloppy Recall rollout but also to the endless ads and aggressive cross-promotion of its own products that dominate modern Windows versions. That’s the kind of problem you can’t patch your way out of.
Briefly, Recall is the Windows 11 feature that was built to capture and recall almost all of what you do on your PC via snapshots, making it available for recall later. After substantial promotion, Microsoft pulled and delayed the rollout last year after security concerns were raised. Skepticism was high even before the security issues were raised that caused the delay. Cunningham’s article provides an excellent rundown on that and I encourage you to read the full thing.
I think Andrew is spot on calling the uneasy feeling many of us have distrust-by-default. Certainly when it comes to this specific Microsoft moment and other tech companies. Zooming out, I think it also describes well the armor we’re all adopting on any number of issues in these moments of mistrust we seem to be facing on so many fronts in our lives.
You can find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome.I can also be found on social media under my name as above.
You can fool some of the people all of the time…or maybe not.
It might be easier to resurrect the dead than it is to restore trust. One way or the other, we move on from death, but moving on from any relationship once trust is busted is a tough slog for those still among the living. I’m not just talking about politics. I’m referring to the relationships we have in most of the spheres of life we interact with each and every day.
Certainly that’s true in politics and governing. Those currently in charge of sinking the ship of state want you to think the water inching over your shoe tops isn’t a problem. And if we go under, well that’s the last guy’s fault. So is the fact that we don’t have enough lifeboats. Sorry. Hope you can swim.
The same is true in technology, entertainment, business, religion, and the list goes on and on. Superhero comic book creators would call this world of competing realities a multi-verse, but even that concept doesn’t really hold enough water to drink, fantasy that it may be.
If you feel like you’re wading through swamps of bullshit trying to find morsels of truth it is because you are. The powers that be have realized (again) they can get away with calling day night if they say it often and loud enough with enough assists from a cowering media that loves its microphones more than its freedom to exist. And when some bit of truth pokes its head above the surface it’s quickly washed over and submerged by another pounding wave of new stories or new product updates. Think waterboarding with quicksand.
This distortion swamp is full of mirages reflected back into our eyeballs like a thousand suns reflecting off an endless body of water. There’s nothing to anchor to.
Set the politics aside and focus for the moment on the ongoing saga about Apple’s delaying of Apple Intelligence features it unveiled almost a year ago at WWDC. A recent NY Times column by Tripp Mickle dropped two new grains of salt into the still open wounds of that debate. First up, Mickle seems to want to lay the blame on former Apple CFO Luca Maestri for changing up a plan to increase Apple’s budget for purchasing the chips apparently needed to ramp up for the Apple Intelligence push.
Here’s the quote:
Mr. Cook approved a plan to double the team’s chip budget, but Apple’s finance chief, Luca Maestri, reduced the increase to less than half that, the people said. Mr. Maestri encouraged the team to make the chips they had more efficient.
The lack of GPUs meant the team developing A.I. systems had to negotiate for data center computing power from its providers like Google and Amazon, two of the people said. The leading chips made by Nvidia were in such demand that Apple used alternative chips made by Google for some of its A.I. development.
The next grain of sand has launched a thousand blog posts (including this one) by saying that the previously delayed Apple Intelligence features will now launch this fall. Mickel says that’s according to three sources. Regardless of the quantity of sources, that report has generated more use of the words “may” and “possibly” in following headlines than I’ve seen in some time.
The tech press has either caught on and is choosing to not grant Apple the usual slack after feeling more than a bit betrayed. Or it’s pretending to hide beyond an endless streak of optimism. Either way Apple is currently mired in a trust swamp of its own making. Tangentially, and for what’s it’s worth, the same could be said of The NY Times.
My point here, isn’t to debate the sourcing, the reporting, or even the timing of when Apple may or may not launch new features. The long preamble to get to this Apple “news” should have been your first clue to that. My point is that once any authority fractures trust whether it be a company, a government, an official, a teacher, a parent, or a news organization, all sides lose. You can work to regain trust over time, but the stain will always remain and there’s very little anyone can do to remove it. You can learn to live with it, but you can’t erase it.
Or as Lady Gaga says, “Trust is like a mirror, you can fix it if it’s broken, but you can still see the crack in that mother fucker’s reflection.”
There’s an entire industry full of PR professionals and crisis managers lurking, just waiting to make bank on these kind of mistakes, anxious to be called in to try and resurrect a brand or a reputation. But they are really just good makeup artists capable of masking scars. If the art of “spin” was ever a currency, it is has more than lost any value it may have once had.
In an attempt to steer this full circle, if there’s a silver lining in all of this, the raging egos we’ve put in charge of things bigger than consumer electronics can’t keep their mouths shut to their own detriment and perhaps the benefit of those of us on the ground. Their continual yapping and yipping is exposing not just their own ineptitude in governing, but the entire rigged game that everyone in these industries of make believe rely on, whether it be politics, iPhones or punditry.
I’m beginning to hope the immediate damage from these flapping maws will have more impact than any tariff upheaval, leading us all to a healthier and more skeptical view of the world we live in. The world they are tearing to shreds is beginning to feel like one that might not deserve to be saved any longer.
You can find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome.I can also be found on social media under my name as above.
The subhead above says you need to watch this. I’m repeating that here. You do.
Carole Cadwalladr tells it like she sees it. More importantly how many of us see it. But she is brave enough to speak it.
In her post announcing the release of this video of her TED Talk this year, she recounts how she knocked the Silicon Valley World off its axis with her 2019 TED Talk implicating Facebook, and Silicon Valley as a whole, for their role in Brexit. She’s back and talking about the ever increasing dangerous threats we’re facing today given how much we’ve already surrendered and those in control of our digital lives have capitulated to those in control of our politics. Or is it the other way around? As she puts it “a digital coup.”
Of course, I think she’s spot on.
I could go on and on, with words describing her thoughts, but your time would be better spent watching and listening.
A big hat tip to Ian Robinson for sharing these links on Mastodon.
You can find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome.I can also be found on social media under my name as above.
A bit of politics, a bit of tech, and a bit of hope and coping. All tariff free.
This week’s Sunday Morning Reading is tariff free. As usual, even in unusual times there’s some politics, some tech, and things pulled from the cultural file. Enjoy.
For some good context that gets lost in all of what’s washing over us, Jill Lapore takes a look at The Failed Ideas That Drive Elon Musk. Everything old is new again is the saying, even bad things.
Trying to pin down any real coherent details or point of view about what’s happening in the economy is a fool’s game played by the foolish at this point. But context does help. Hamilton Nolan thinks the recent foolish moves will eventually make the rich poorer. I agree. Take a look at what he calls “a deep, dark ocean of harm” in Divergence From The Interests of Capital.
Like the political world, the tech world is seeing its myths and myth makers exposed for the frauds they often are with new layers of the onion peeled back daily. Joanna Stern in the Wall Street Journal takes a look the erosion of trust in her piece, Apple and Amazon Promised Us Revolutionary AI. We’re Still Waiting. It’s a soft headline. Here closing line hits harder, “Where’s the trust?”
Lest we forget that our culture and society is one weird, yet overly predictable wrestling match over how to, or not to control our animal impulses, comes word that Hooters is filing for bankruptcy. Annie Joy Williams takes a look at The End of Hooters.
We’re all staring at everything we’re facing hoping, perhaps against hope, that none of it will lead to any permanent damage, yet teetering on the verge of grief because we recognize our personal impermanence means it might be permanent enough in our short respective lifetimes. That strikes home when someone brave talks about a moment of personal grief. Check out Death Comes Gently Into The Night by NatashaMH.
If you’re interested in just what the heck Sunday Morning Reading is all about you can read more about the origins of Sunday Morning Reading here. You can also find more of my writings on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome.
We’re all circling. We’re not listening. We should be reading.
Everything changes. Everything remains the same. Damnit. With that said, here is this week’s Sunday Morning Reading with links to articles worth sharing and perhaps pondering over. There’s a bit of satire, a golden toilet heist, and the evolving nature of a piece from draft to final polish. And, yes, there is politics. Everything changes. Everything remains the same. Damnit.
Let’s kick off with Tina He and The Last Human Choice. That link is to the final version of the story. I also strongly encourage you to check out the draft version she shared here.
Mark Jacob always has a great look at the media, especially in this moment, In this one he examines When The Media Take MAGA Liars At Their Word. I mentioned to Mark that what infuriates me is not just the media taking him at his word–ignorance and stupidity know no bounds–but that they know better and report it out as if they don’t.
Bringing my words at the topfull circle, NatashaMH once again delves deep into the personal past through a contemporary moment (her reaction to the streaming hit Adolescence) in A Requiem For My Dreams. I’ll close with a quote from her piece about the series that applies to everything, everywhere all at once:
People say the series is about a new world that’s happening. Fuck that, ignoramuses. It’s about a world that has always been out there behind closed doors when ears weren’t listening
If you’re interested in just what the heck Sunday Morning Reading is all about you can read more about the origins of Sunday Morning Reading here. You can also find more of my writings on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome.
Trust is not an easy thing to earn. It’s far easier to burn. When it catches fire, it quickly consumes whatever is in its path. Such a conflagration is made worse when it singes those who have long cozied up, supported, and promulgated that trust as their own. Apple and those who make a living covering the company are both fighting a fire neither can put out without the other, regardless of what caused Apple’s rush to market whatever Apple Intelligence and the new personalized Siri was supposed to be.
The fiasco is that Apple pitched a story that wasn’t true, one that some people within the company surely understood wasn’t true, and they set a course based on that.
You could say it starts and stops there. You wouldn’t be wrong.
WWDC 2024 changed all that and gave me hope that Apple was in the AI race, but there were worrisome signs even back then that because, well, it was Apple, I chose to ignore or forgive.
It’s clear Apple must radically rethink its reason for being.
The heat on Apple has been smoldering for some time now with smoke in the air, wafting on a number of fronts. While I’m not pointing fingers and criticizing Apple pundits directly, (they were misled in my view), they’ve carried a lot of water for Apple, keeping these other recent flare-ups from burning too hot.
I’ve written about this Apple Intelligence episode previously, but to recap the particulars: Apple announced its flavor of Artificial Intelligence at last year’s World Wide Developers Conference (WWDC), carving out a fire line to slow down the burning narrative that it was behind and possibly missing the moment with AI. Boldly branding it as Apple Intelligence, the key reveal was unveiling a more personalized Siri, that unlike all of the other AI efforts on the market, would give users “AI For The Rest Of Us,” that would retain the firewall of Apple’s marketing mantra of being more secure and private.
Turns out it was a reveal that wasn’t really a reveal, but has now proven all too revealing.
As has been typical with new operating system features the last few years, Apple was clear at WWDC that some of this newness would roll out over the course of the year, so there was no surprise there. Also typical since COVID is that Apple’s announcement was a canned commercial.
Atypical, however, none of the flashier features were ever shown to pundits and journalists, even under cover of an NDA. As Gruber and others are now saying, that smoky smell reeks of vaporware.
Each year Apple faces some degree of heat as it heads into WWDC. I think things will be hotter than most this year with a higher degree of skepticism. What we’re witnessing is a landscape built by years of trust, earning the benefit of doubt, turned to ashes. They say that hell has no fury like a woman scorned, but I’m here to tell you that might take second place when it comes to torching the trust relationship between a company’s PR reps and those who cover them.
Let’s talk about that trust.
Back in my gadget blogging days for GottaBeMobile.com the first rule of thumb was always be skeptical of PR. I’ve been on both sides of that fence, pushing out PR for my own projects and covering it for others. A PR pro tells you the story they want you to cover. Covering that story, you look for the holes in addition to covering it. By and large most of the well know Apple pundits have done a reasonably good job of revealing those holes in my opinion.
Apple was different in that for the most part if they made a claim it usually held up. I remember distinctly when the first iPad was released with a claimed battery life of 10 hours. Those of us at GBM were surprised when those claims proved accurate once we had the devices in our hands. Promise made. Promise fulfilled. Trust earned.
No company is perfect, certainly not Apple. But Apple has been reasonably consistent for most of the time I’ve been covering or using their hardware and software. There have been lapses — Siri being a prime example — but nothing that wasn’t overcome and perhaps, now in retrospect, wrongly overlooked because of the trust Apple built with the media and enthusiasts who covered the company. As most now realize, the smoke and mirror show of last year’s WWDC Apple Intelligence announcement was a red flag warning that needed more scrutiny than relying on trust banked through good will and follow through.
It’s currently being endlessly debated whether or not this failure was caused by a rush to satisfy Wall Street deep in its AI bubble, poor leadership, or just trying to climb too high a mountain too fast in an attempt to create a technical solution that, as announced, would one up those already on the market. In the end I don’t think it matters much what exactly sparked this blaze. I do think it matters how Apple chooses to put out the fire. Those who cover Apple, and more importantly users, feel scorched. I’m guessing there are some in Cupertino feeling that as well.
Burn scars don’t heal well or quickly.
You can find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome.I can also be found on social media under my name as above.
It has been inevitable for some time that Apple was going to delay launching whatever the new personalized Siri with Apple Intelligence was supposed to be. To expect otherwise was as foolish as hoping the new American government wasn’t going to wreak havoc on its own citizenry and the rest of the world after the most recent election.
Now Apple has owned up to the inevitable. In a statement to Daring Fireball’s John Gruber announced the delay and a new set of expectations:
“Siri helps our users find what they need and get things done quickly, and in just the past six months, we’ve made Siri more conversational, introduced new features like type to Siri and product knowledge, and added an integration with ChatGPT. We’ve also been working on a more personalized Siri, giving it more awareness of your personal context, as well as the ability to take action for you within and across your apps. It’s going to take us longer than we thought to deliver on these features and we anticipate rolling them out in the coming year.”
Note that last sentence includes “we anticipate.” I anticipate dying at some point. I also anticipate warmer days this summer, rain occasionally, and eating pizza on some day in the future. So, the message is stay tuned.
I have several thoughts on this and I’ll lay them out below, along with links to some interesting hot takes following the announcement, some of which have already cooled off a bit.
First, I think Apple was smart to make this announcement even if everyone paying attention already knew this was going to be the case. This delay wasn’t and isn’t news. That said, the announcement comes after Apple, generally perceived as rushing to catch up in the push for Artificial Intelligence, has made what can only be called a poor first impression. Sure, you can call Apple Intelligence a beta if you want. Apple does. But advertising a flawed beta as the tent pole to push new iPhones can’t be called anything but a marketing misfire, if not malpractice.
First impressions of shipping products matter more than clever shiny announcements of things yet to come.
Apple should know this because they are no strangers to bad first impressions. MobileMe left a bad stain that iCloud still has difficulty erasing. The VisionPro continues struggling with poor perception and reception. Yes, Apple also does have a history of turning some poorly received rollouts around. The best examples of that are Apple Maps and the Apple Watch. Even so, once a product launched becomes a product laughed at, it’s difficult to erase the echos of that laughter.
But perhaps the product ridiculed crucially here is the one that Apple married to this all out AI effort: Siri. Purchased, proudly launched, and then allowed to wallow — like too many other of Apple’s efforts (*cough* iPadOS *cough*), Siri has become not just a joke, but one that keeps on giving. Some say it has improved. I’ll agree with that to a point but that depends on the day.
Siri has never fulfilled Apple’s bold promises with any consistent value beyond setting a timer or adding a reminder. Even that fails enough of the time to earn users’ distrust and provide late night comedians with jokes so easy to make that the shrewder jokesters have moved on.
The debate following this recent Apple announcement in pundit circles seems to be on whether or not Apple should jettison Siri and start from scratch. I’m sure that debate has gone round and round in the circular halls of the Apple campus. I doubt that happens, given that the marketing mavens in Cupertino seem to be erratically driving the bus these days. There’s been a huge investment in Siri branding, problematic as it has always been. Unfortunately salvaging a brand is also expensive.
Apple’s Long Game Mindset Might Just Be Short Sighted
The success of the iPhone has given Apple the benefit of playing a long game, plotting product and growth strategy with a large enough cushion to weather the occasional storm. It’s certainly easier to sail through rough seas in a large ship, but the bigger the boat, the more maintenance is required to keep the hull from rusting and the engines running smoothly. The nuts and bolts matter.
Artificial Intelligence, regardless of what company is pushing it, is nuts and bolts, bits and bytes, ones and zeros. Everyone scanning the horizon thinks this is the future we’re sailing towards, full steam ahead. But nothing that’s been released or demonstrated yet has really proven that anyone can chart a correct course. The current moment resembles that scene in Jaws when all the ships set out in an armada to chase a bounty, not knowing really what they’re up against.
Don’t get me wrong. I think Artificial Intelligence may indeed prove useful. Someday. On an enterprise level. I’m just not so sure if it will ever be as big a deal on the consumer front as the marketers want us to believe it is or will be.
I also doubt Apple Intelligence will end up being another Butterfly Keyboard, MobileMe, or Siri, but at the moment there’s as good a shot of it joining the ranks of those jokes in Apple lore as there is for it becoming a success, much less useful.
Ian Betteridge in this piece, lays out what I think the AI true believer vision is in this excerpt:
But AI presents a fundamentally different challenge. This isn’t merely a new product category to be perfected – it’s a paradigm shift in how humans interact with technology. Unlike hardware innovations where Apple could polish existing concepts, AI is redefining the entire computing experience, from point-click or touch-tap to conversations. The interface layer between humans and devices is transforming in ways that might render Apple’s traditional advantages increasingly irrelevant.
He also captures the key context that reveals the tension between the long and short game as Apple has historically played it in this excerpt from earlier in that post:
Apple has long been characterised as a “fast follower” rather than a pioneering innovator. It wasn’t the first to make an MP3 player, smartphone, or even a personal computer. This strategy served Apple brilliantly in the past – observing others’ mistakes, then delivering exquisitely refined products with unmatched attention to design, usability, and integration. The first iPhone wasn’t novel in concept, but revolutionary in execution because it had a unique interface: multitouch. In fact, I would argue this was the last time Apple’s user interfaces went in a bold direction.
What is obvious in this frenzied sea of Artificial Intelligence is that Apple did a quick course correction and tried to “fast follow” before the mistakes of others could be identified well enough to refine and/or correct the way Apple has historically been successful in the past. In the case of Siri, the fact that Apple has let it languish for so long more than hints that it just doesn’t see enough value in the voice assistant proposition.
Were those bad moves? Who can really say at present. It is true that Apple had to react. OpenAI’s release of ChatGPT upset a lot of apple carts and not just those in Cupertino. But Apple’s quick course correction, coupled with a less than enthusiastic response in the same year of its other attempt at a computer interaction paradigm shift–spatial computing with the Vision Pro–has cut down the chances for any short term smooth sailing.
Some are positioning this moment Apple has created for itself as a necessary gamble Apple had to make. Here’s an excerpt from Jason Snell at Six Colors:
And if you asked those same Apple executives if they were aware that the cost of underdelivering those features in the spring of 2025 would be getting beaten up in the press a little bit for delaying features, perhaps even back to iOS 19? I’m pretty sure they’d say that a little bit of negative press today, when the world isn’t really paying that close attention to Apple and AI, would totally be worth it.
That may indeed be true in and of itself. I have no way of knowing. What I do know is that this gamble might have had better odds if Siri, prior to all of this, hadn’t been such a historical and neglected mess for far too long.
Security and Privacy
This delay announcement has also opened wider the door for criticism that might shatter another of Apple’s tent pole marketing strengths: security and privacy. Here’s a post from Simon Willison, who has a hunch that the delay might be related to those issues. It’s also worth taking a look at Willison’s earlier post on prompt injection. John Gruber of Daring Fireball takes Willison’s point further in this post. Here’s the key excerpt:
Prompt injection seems to be a problem that LLM providers can mitigate, but cannot completely solve. They can tighten the lid, but they can’t completely seal it. But with your private information, the lid needs to be provably sealed — an airtight seal, not a “well, don’t turn it upside down or shake it” seal. So a pessimistic way to look at this personalized Siri imbroglio is that Apple cannot afford to get this wrong, but the nature of LLMs’ susceptibility to prompt injection might mean it’s impossible to ever get right. And if it is possible, it will require groundbreaking achievements. It’s not enough for Apple to “catch up”. They have to solve a vexing problem — as yet unsolved by OpenAI, Google, or any other leading AI lab — to deliver what they’ve already promised.
‘Ay there’s the rub,” as Hamlet would say. No one has those solutions, yet it’s full speed ahead as the selling and hype continues. There may be a dream in there somewhere, but as for now, whether sleeping, sleepwalking, or blindly chasing bounties, all the consumer is left with at the moment is “stay tuned.”
For better or worse, we are not going to return to our regularly scheduled programming.
(I note that I was putting the final touches on this piece Bloomberg is reporting that Apple plans the biggest user interface design overhaul in quite some time with this year’s new operating system releases that will be unveiled at WWDC. Apple is under pressure from not only this Apple Intelligence, but other issues that concern developers as well. Shiny distractions generally win when it comes to taking the heat off of failures and problems.)
You can find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome.I can also be found on social media under my name as above.
Life on the Wicked Stage: Act 3 