Submitted 2 months ago by simplejack@lemmy.world to technology@lemmy.world
Mike Rockwell, the Apple Vision Pro chief, has replaced John Giannandrea as the executive in charge of Siri, in an executive shakeup to try and rescue Apple’s flailing AI efforts.
The glacial rollout of Apple Intelligence and the lack of progress on Siri has not been a good look for Apple over the last year. Now, Apple is making a big change to get things back on track.
The glacial rollout is because it doesn’t work, and it can’t work. Stop trying so hard to jump in the shit puddle, apple.
Why can’t it work?
I work on AI systems that integrate into other apps and make contextual requests. That’s the big feature that Apple hasn’t launched, and it’s very much a problem that others have solved before.
I’d have to know more specifics to really answer but the gist is that it will cost an exorbitant amount fir very little gain. There’s no magic to be had and every single honest survey shows people overwhelmingly don’t want it.
The problem is that Apple’s extensive marketing of Apple Intelligence has led to expectations that far surpass what the final product is likely to be.
Most people think generative AI is magic coming out of a hat, so even if Apple delivers at the same level as other companies, people will feel like they’ve been misled.
Does that mean Vision Pro is officially dead?
Starting to sound like a new season of Silicon Valley.
I don’t know if this counts as a conspiracy theory but I kind of suspect the story of the Vision Pro was that it was originally a real project focused as much on patents as anything. If they wanted a viable consumer product line, they’d have sold the 1st generation(s) at a loss to help an app ecosystem flourish and compete with other XR products (even if an Apple’s XR headset would still cost $500 more because Apple).
The US military was calling for XR headsets and even evaluated HoloLens. Companies were obviously exploring too. That’s when Vision Pro was under development. Apple isn’t really a military contractor — I’m not sure if they do any — but having patents to license to future XR headsets could potentially be very valuable and subsidize Vision Pro consumer pricing until the component prices fell.
Then, HoloLens shit the bed. It made soldiers nauseous and the military (and companies) pretty much lost interest in XR. The entire HoloLens team got laid off. By then, the Vision Pro was probably in early production but the potential revenue from having the most advanced XR’s patents became essentially nil. So, they just sold them at the actual cost and gave up on the product line.
In that scenario, the Vision Pro lead (and team) delivered exactly what Tim Apple wanted but the revenue potential disappeared. Meanwhile, “A.I. Siri” continued to suck (except the new animation; props to that team). So, the Vision Pro management was rewarded even if the Vision Pro failed in the market.
Or it’s just the classic Apple “launch some weird shit with a cool interaction model or form factor, but we don’t really know how people will -actually- use this.”
AppleTV, AppleWatch, Firewire iPod, HomePod, etc. They kick it out, people complain about it, Apple learns the users who adopted it, then they focus the feature set when they better understand the market fit.
IMHO, it seems like that’s the play here. Heck, they even started with the “pro” during the initial launch, which gives them a very obvious off ramp for a cheaper / more focused non-pro product.
That’s probably the Occam’s razor explanation. I obviously have no proof for my little pet theory.
RizzRustbolt@lemmy.world 2 months ago
“Surely the lead on a failed pie-in-the-sky project will be able to turn around this entirely separate and currently failing pie-in-the-sky project!”
acosmichippo@lemmy.world 2 months ago
the execution and delivery of Vision Pro was not the problem, that’s where Siri is struggling now.
simplejack@lemmy.world 2 months ago
At least one of those guys is able to ship a product that does what it was advertised to do.
The problem with the Vision Pro is that no one wants to pay $4000 for what it does.
scarabic@lemmy.world 2 months ago
At least there’s a market for Siri.
I don’t think anyone believes the Vision Pro sucks as much as Siri.
simplejack@lemmy.world 2 months ago
The Vision Pro is a cool solution in search of a user need.
Voice control is a user need that Apple struggles to deliver solutions for.