After Apple’s Q325 earnings report, CEO Tim Cook held an unusual all-hands meeting, giving a pep talk to employees about the company’s promising artificial intelligence outlook and an “exciting” product pipeline.
Mark Gurman for Bloomberg News:
The executive gathered staff at Apple’s on-campus auditorium Friday in Cupertino, California, telling them that the AI revolution is “as big or bigger” as the internet, smartphones, cloud computing and apps. “Apple must do this. Apple will do this. This is sort of ours to grab,” Cook told employees, according to people aware of the meeting. “We will make the investment to do it.”
The iPhone maker has been late to AI, debuting Apple Intelligence months after OpenAI, Alphabet Inc.’s Google, Microsoft Corp. and others flooded the market with products like ChatGPT. And when Apple finally released its AI tools, they fell flat.
But Cook struck an optimistic tone, noting that Apple is typically late to promising new technologies.
“We’ve rarely been first,” the executive told staffers. “There was a PC before the Mac; there was a smartphone before the iPhone; there were many tablets before the iPad; there was an MP3 player before iPod.” But Apple invented the “modern” versions of those product categories, he said. “This is how I feel about AI.”
The meeting included Craig Federighi, senior vice president of software engineering, who discussed the future of Apple’s Siri voice assistant… “The work we’ve done on this end-to-end revamp of Siri has given us the results we needed,” the engineering executive told employees. “This has put us in a position to not just deliver what we announced, but to deliver a much bigger upgrade than we envisioned. There is no project people are taking more seriously.”
“The product pipeline, which I can’t talk about: It’s amazing, guys. It’s amazing,” Cook said. “Some of it you’ll see soon, some of it will come later, but there’s a lot to see.”
MacDailyNews Take: Really, after finally waking up, what else are Cook and Federighi going to say?
But, after WWDC24’s embarrassing vaporware video charade and the middling “Apple Intelligence” stuff that has shipped to date, at this point we’ll believe it when we see it.
Real artists ship. – Steve Jobs
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That wasn’t for employees, that was for investors. Nothing official they could get sued about, but that information gets out quickly – that’s the point of the meeting.
But what is it? It’s pure vaporware until it ships – and ships successfully.
If there is one area Apple could clean up on with AI, it’s monetization. If they can create a Search Engine, and is a mix of Google Search and ChatGPT all-in-one, and make it the default search/LLM AI engine on their devices. Oh my goodness! If done amazingly well…
They’ll sell a TON of Apple devices as a result – Again, it’s gotta be that merge of search and LLM AI balanced solution that works right when searching or asking. There is a difference and Siri and AI need to have it worked out. That’s where Apple’s Engineering is going to prove their value or prove to all it’s just really a HW company with a nice iOS interface and the rest of the crew is largely skating on said successes (AKA Apple Music anyone?)….
Integration across OS’s, could also be huge. Depending on depth of services, Apple could add a $4.99 a month to Apple One packages, such as images, charts, much deeper level AI. Or, Apple would simply provide it at no-charge, thus working to sell a slug of Apple HW as a result.
I would lean on the latter model of free. Everyone else and their dog will absolutely need to monetize it, and companies like FaceBook, Chat, Google, they really don’t sell hardware, and they will need to start selling tiered smarts as a result.
Apple? Apple can just include it at no charge as part of their product offering. Buy a Mac and you just simply have AI – all of it. Powerful chips, Powerful Mac, Powerful AI.
Corporations could save billions using Apple products and moving to their HW as a result.
Apple is in the best position to monetize the emerging AI landscape via amazing HW that takes advantage of a great AI solution all in-house.
Will their software team be able to pull this off? I give them a 30% chance of doing so… Is that work the investment gamble? Maybe… Maybe…
Let’s hope Apple engineers reading your post so they would get the ideas.💡
Apple engineers should accelerate the AI or it has been lagging so slowly compared to its peers.
“The work we’ve done on this end-to-end revamp of Siri has given us the results we needed,”… So why is it going to take another 6+ months (being very optimistic) to see anything? Apple is in a unique position to deliver very personal AI that makes the most of their ecosystem, but there isn’t the faintest hint of it so far. I just asked Siri to create a calendar event that I’ve created before with a 30 minute alert. It created the event misspelling the person’s name (Claudia) with a K instead of a C and didn’t add the alert.
Assuming this meeting was meant to leak for public consumption more than as a pep talk for staff it doesn’t inspire confidence. Say what you will about Musk at least he’s willing to sleep at work when it’s grind time, has Tim Cook done that once in 30 years?
“This is sort of ours to grab,”
Confidence exuded from the CEO and the room was silenced (and befuddled).
Tim is happy about the Emmy nominations. It’s more important than the car project, or AI, or any new device.
He wants to be a Hollywood player, funding everyone’s projects.
One has to be almost blind to NOT see Apple’s passion is the screen (motion).
The frequency of notable/positive press (and the dearth of almost everything else) makes it a simple/easy determination.
It’s exciting to hear Tim Cook’s vision for AI at Apple. His comparison of the AI revolution to the internet and smartphones really puts its potential into perspective. Can’t wait to see what Apple has in store with their investment in AI and the new product pipeline!
Tim Apple will announce the AI when he’s ready, let’s hope it is in the near future. 🙏
Real products ship.
Never doubt a company with $166 billion in cash to invest.
I can’t wait for Tim Apple announcement what AI company/companies Apple has bought. It’s time for Wall Street rallies AAPL shares to $300/share.