I was told that Apple was playing 4D chess when they introduced Liquid Glass which is the design language of Vision Pro, and they were priming everyone to be a world with only VR glasses.
I’ve always doubted this take, if you look at the history of Apple software design you will see that they regularly pull visual ideas across from one platform to another just because they’re fond of them at the time. I think that this is like that, they decided it was time for a refresh.
> hey are just focused on privacy and are likely waiting for the time when local models become efficient enough to run on iPhones (which is quickly becoming a reality).
This is such revisionist history. They were not strategicially waiting. They tried, really really hard. The entire iPhone 16 pro was built on AI. Heck, they even (re)named it as Apple Intelligence.
Remember, this is the same time when Microsoft launched Copilot (RIP), Google launched Gemini, OpenAI with ChatGPT etc.
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They had to walk back hard because it was a flop. They might be accidentally successful because they are a company with multiple strengths, but dont think of it as they were sitting AI out.
This is such a narrow take, and doesnt match human progress at all.
When cars were being built out, did we cry saying "Cars are flattening mobility. We could run, and jog and stroll and now with mechanized boxes, we have given our ways of the horse pulled carriage".
Or when digital music production, which might be a bit more relevant, came about. "We've lost the unique ability for a human hand to touch an instrument. Computer generated music is at its core, souless, and lacks emotion"
As you can probably tell, none of those things are true.
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Also, I find it fascinating how we endlessly glorify Steve Jobs and his musings. The man was a genius, but I have a sense that he'd have been a supreme asshole if he were still alive.
It wasnt clear from the blog so I'll ask here. Where does the money go? The post refers to providing tickets to underprivileged attendees, but is that 100% or ony some part of it? Where does the rest of the money go?
> Once your event outgrows academic spaces, donated conference rooms, or theatre spaces, working with the hotels is the industry’s standard way to pay for a professional convention center space. You commit to a certain number of hotel nights blocked off at nearby hotels, based on your event’s numbers from previous years, and in return, you get a reduced rental charge at the convention center. If you sell enough rooms, you additionally earn a small percentage of the revenue from those rooms, i.e. a commission. If, on the other hand, you don’t sell enough rooms, you owe damages to the hotels–essentially paying the full rate for the rooms they reserved for your event but didn’t sell.
Attendees pay the Hotel directly for their rooms. If the event does not book enough rooms to cover expenses then the organizer (PyCon) owes a minimum amount to the Hotel. If there are more rooms booked than expected the Organizer gets a check. This is a normal Hotel industry arrangement.
PyCon itself is run by the Python Software Foundation; according to publicly-available records they spent approximately US$2,491,000 on PyCon US expenses in 2024, including supporting 552 travel grant recipients: https://www.python.org/psf/records/
Apple have had Siri for decades without any meaningful movement. If you think Apple is suddenly going to get better, that's just wishful thinking. Apple neither has the expertise nor the capability to do any of that. They'd hvae demonstrated that with Siri long time back.
What Apple does it build beautiful hardware. The software has been shambles for a really long time.
Apple's reality distortion field is really really strong. People love to claim Apple is doing 4D chess, when in reality Apple has certain strengths but AI is anything but.
Which is why they were completely caught offguard with botched rollout of Apple Intelligence. Even when they were playing to their strengths, things have not gone for them (Apple Vision Pro). Liquid Glass has had mixed reception, and that's often explained away as "Apple is setting up a world for Spatial Computing by unifying design language" and when the lead designer was fired it was like "Thank God Alan Dye is gone, he was bad for Apple anyway".
> Won't be surprised for the re-introduction of Xserve again but for AI.
This means, Apple is gonna spend a lot of money standing up data centers (CapEx). And the article in question is essentially saying that Apple is smart not to spend any money.
It sounds like there's a bit of wishful thinking on - Whatever Apple is doing is 4D chess. Apple not spending any money - That's genuis. Apple re-introducing Xserve racks - genius.
How do you rate Vision Pro? It was not the first one, but it was certainly the best one. Total dud though, while Meta Ray Bans are selling like hot cakes (irrespective of what you think of the company)
This is very disappointing. People look upto Apple for standing up for what is right (the FBI incident) but then it is hard to ignore all the other ones (Gold plaque for Trump Government, Chinese shenanigans ..)
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