Apple does it the Apple Way
Insanely Wild and Different, again.
What an Apple day!
Three takeaways:
Apple talked about AI without saying “AI”. It was Everywhere.
They had a “One More Thing”. The screens get close and personal. Insanely Wild and Different again.
An iPhone style starting gun for the Tech Industry. Again.
ONE: AI was there. Everywhere.
It started out like any other Apple WWDC (Developer Conference). They announced a lot of new hardware and software.
Apple didn’t say “AI”. Apple folks just used the term “Machine Learning” (ML), peppered through almost every hardware and software discussion.
When you add up all the small bits of ML in the over two hour plus Keynote, it all adds up to a big bucket of AI.
Just as impressive as the AI promised by the other guys. From Microsoft’s promises of AI in everything Windows, to OpenAI’s GPU Constrained ChatGPT and GPT4 promises, to Google’s. Generative AI powered Search and more.
Apple didn’t get around saying an AI related word (Transformer, the ‘T’ in ‘GPT’), until the 28 minute mark. And it was Craig Federeghi, Apple head of software, not CEO Tim Cook who mentioned it describing upcoming Apple software in the Fall.
Big contrast with Google CEO Sundar Pichai & Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella at their respective Developer Conferences just a few days ago. Where each said “AI” a few dozen times each.
As CNBC tells it, it was “Apple's practical approach to AI”, what I would emphasize is Apple bringing “AI to the Edge”:
“Unlike its rivals, who are building bigger models with server farms, supercomputers, and terabytes of data, Apple wants AI models on its devices. The new autocorrect feature is particularly impressive because it's running on the iPhone, while models like ChatGPT require hundreds of expensive GPUs working in tandem.”
For Apple, it’s a Rose by any name:
“Apple doesn't like to talk about "artificial intelligence" — it prefers the more academic phrase "machine learning" or simply talks about the features the technology enables.
Apple is a product company, and has been intensively secretive for decades. Instead of talking about the specific AI model, or the training data, or how it might improve in the future, Apple simply mentions the feature and says that there is cool technology working behind the scenes.”
Just Apple’s iOS 17, coming this Fall, gives a glimpse of the wide array of machine learning to come across apple’s iPhones and iPads:
“Apple’s iOS 17 is official, making its debut on WWDC 2023’s keynote stage. Highlights include new safety features, a built-in journaling app, a new nightstand mode, redesigned contact cards, better auto-correct and voice transcription, and live voicemail. And you’ll be able to drop the “hey” from “Hey Siri.”
Now that’s speaking softly, and carrying a Big AI Stick.
TWO: “One More Thing”.
When we look back in five years or more, this WWDC 2023 will likely be remembered in the same vein as 2007, when Steve Jobs introduced the world to the insanely wild and different iPhone.
On June 5, 2023, the world got to see the insanely wild and different Vision Pro, available early next year for $3.499.
OK, let’s get the timing and starting price out of the way. It’s not what’s important. It will be here soon enough, and the prices will get more manageable soon enough (Moore’s Law and all that).
Pulling back the curtain, it’s Apple’s grand experiment to get us all into what they call “spatial computing”, A fancy term for wearing computers on our faces. And look less of a dork doing it. Maybe.
A bunch of Tech reviewers got to try it for half an hour each, behind closed doors. The impressions are impressive and worth reviewing:
Nilay Patel, @reckless, Editor of The Verge, had this to say:
“It’s the best headset demo ever.”
Something else he said hit home in particular:
“Our lives increasingly are “mediated by screens”.
He is right. One could even say screens have intermediated everything in our lives.
The screens have gotten ever closer to us over the decades as technology progressed.
From our Movies to our TVs to our PCs to our Tablets to our Phones to our Watches and now onto our Faces.
And as Washington Post’s Geoffrey Fowler reminds us again:
“Rivals Google, Microsoft, Meta and others have all tried — and failed — to sufficiently answer that question with their own VR and AR devices. This technology, so far, has been a solution in search of a problem.”
So there’s that Product Market Fit (PMF) thing again.
THREE: The next iPhone moment?
As impressive the technologies behind the VisionPro are (and they’re very impressive. Over 5,000 patents over years of deep technical investment by Apple by thousands of specialists),
Nilay of The Verge emphasizes:
“It has emphatically not really answered the question of what these things are really for yet: the main interface is very much a grid of icons, and most of the demos were basically projections of giant screens with very familiar apps on them. Safari. Photos. Movies.”
More of the same. Just a lot closer. Until we figure out what it’s good for.
Work, Play, maybe all of the above and more.
On the Play front, Apple announced a partnership with game engine company Unity, sending their shares soaring. Even Disney is involved from the outset).
Since we’ve talked a lot about AI and Apple’s product take on it and this new One Thing, it may be useful to end with this:
“In one of the most audacious features announced on Monday, Apple's new Digital Persona feature makes a 3D scan of the user's face and body and then can recreate what they look like virtually while videoconferencing with other people while wearing the Vision Pro headset.”
Google has been working on the same idea from an entirely different angle for a few years now: a high tech video conferencing system called Project Starline . Prominent tech blogger MKBHD got special access to the latest version a few days ago.
Apple’s version seems a lot more up close and personal.
Whatever happens with Vision Pro, success or failure, the fact that Apple has launched it as a platform for Developers around the world to dream about.
And it’s not just about AR/VR glasses. This rethinks how many industry players have been thinking about the Metaverse. And Gaming. And of course so many industries.
Just as the iPhone reshaped our computers to Mobile Computers, this likely reshapes computers into something much more close and personal. Perhaps it even helps us connect with others better, as it seems to disconnect us from reality even more.
And it’s going to use AI, as defined by terms like LLM AI, Generative AI, and Machine Learning et al, in so many more and different ways than as a Chat Bot client.
It’s likely to be as loud a Starting Gun for another round of deep innovation, as the iPhone in 2007.
The Technology industry the world over will respond, and try to catch-up.
Insanely Wild and Different, Again.
Our next iPhone moment is here.