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convenwisyesterday at 3:42 PM9 repliesview on HN

This is the thing I've found amazing about people's complaints about Apple and AI.

Historically the strength of Apple was that they didn't ship things until they actually worked. Meaning that the technology was there and ready to make an experience that was truly excellent.

People have been complaining for years that Apple isn't shipping fast enough in this area. But if anything I think that they have been shipping (or trying to ship) too fast. There are a lot of scenarios that AI is actually great at but the ones that move the needle for Apple just aren't there yet in terms of quality.

The stuff that is at a scale that it matters to them are integrations that just magically do what you want with iMessage/calendars/photos/etc. There are potentially interesting scenarios there but the fact is that any time you touch my intimate personal (and work) data and do something meaningful I want it to work pretty much all the time. And current models aren't really there yet in my view. There are lots of scenarios that do work incredibly well right now (coding most obviously). But I don't think the Apple mainline ones do yet.


Replies

burningChromeyesterday at 8:20 PM

>> Historically the strength of Apple was that they didn't ship things until they actually worked. Meaning that the technology was there and ready to make an experience that was truly excellent.

They dragged their feet on a host of technologies that other handset makers adopted, released and subsequently improved.

- USB C charging

- 90hz, 120Hz refresh rates

- wireless charging

- larger batteries (the iPhone 17 still lags behind Samsung and Google)

I'm not sure what happened, but the iPhone used to have the most fluid, responsive experience compared to Android. Now, both Google and Samsung have surpassed them in that regard.

I've used both Android and have owned several iPhones and it just seems like its not an issue of releasing something that isn't ready, but more about them not being capable enough to release phones to compete with other phones that are regularly beating them in the specs race.

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nik736yesterday at 3:45 PM

> Meaning that the technology was there and ready to make an experience that was truly excellent

In general I would agree, but Siri is honestly still so bad.

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anonyfoxyesterday at 7:30 PM

this night I got accidentially the update to the latest iOS with this liquid glass stuff - and its schockingly bad in any dimension. keyboard input lags, many thing ned MORE clicks/touches then before, weird contenxt menu popovers that don't even register taps 50% of the time, general lags and sluggishness and UI artifacts everywhere. Its really really a degradiation of UI/UX even though I personally am a fan of that glass-style design in itself

some_randomyesterday at 3:48 PM

I really wish I lived in the world where Apple didn't ship things until they actually worked, that would be so cool.

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awestrokeyesterday at 3:43 PM

My complaint is that they overpromised and then didn't deliver anything at all. They should have just kept their mouth shut

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ghustoyesterday at 4:26 PM

> Historically the strength of Apple was that they didn't ship things until they actually worked. Meaning that the technology was there and ready to make an experience that was truly excellent.

Tell that to almost anything they've shipped in the last 5-10 years. It's gotten so bad that I wait halfway through entire major OS version before upgrading. Every new thing they ship is almost guaranteed to be broken in some way, ranging from minor annoyance to fully unusable.

I buy Apple-everything, but I sure wish there were better options.

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hinkleytoday at 12:08 AM

What people hate about Apple is that they ship things other people couldn't get to capital-W Work, and they're seen as 'stealing' the idea instead of perfecting them.

Great artists steal.

esafakyesterday at 3:46 PM

When it came out in 2016 Google Assistant was delivering value while Siri was not.

lowbloodsugaryesterday at 8:15 PM

iOS26 is a shit show. Glass looks terrible on my old 12 Pro Max, and just recently it has started trying to connect phone calls to my child's iPad Pro. That is, the speaker button, which previously I pushed to enable the speaker, now pops up a menu with other nearby devices listed in an annoyingly small font. My wife finally asked me for an Android because all her friends get far better pictures. Something isn't right over there, and a lot of people are leaving.