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Tom's Guide
19-05-2025
- Business
- Tom's Guide
Apple's AI rollout has not gone very smoothly — and this report details what's happened
The subject of Siri, and the upgrades Apple promised back at WWDC 2024, has been pretty hot the past few months. Ever since Apple had to delay the rollout of Siri's AI-infused upgrades, on account of it taking "longer than [Apple] thought." Well, it sounds like this might be a learning experience for Apple. Bloomberg's Mark Gurman and Drake Bennett have a mammoth report on Apple's Siri fiasco, and the rollout of what is apparently internally known as "LLM Siri." In fact, due to all the high-profile delays, both reporters say that Apple isn't going to be announcing new features so far in advance from now on. It sounds like this is the same lesson Apple should have learned with the AirPower charger, which was announced back in 2017 and then never got released. All because Apple announced the charger too early, before it realized it wasn't actually able to make it. The report goes into a lot of detail, but I will try to explain the situation behind Apple's AI blunders as simply as possible. One key problem is that Apple started off late and, as previous leaks have claimed, the sudden popularity of services like ChatGPT caught the company by surprise. In fact, despite having an AI department for many years previously, Apple hadn't even considered the concept of Apple Intelligence before the release of ChatGPT in 2022. Following that, it seemed Apple had to scramble to catch up — all while the rest of the tech industry was doing the same. Before the launch of ChatGPT, Apple's software head Craig Federighi was reluctant to invest in what was needed to improve Apple's AI capabilities — especially since there was no end goal. According to sources, it wasn't until after ChatGPT was released and Federighi used generative AI in one of his projects that the benefits became clear to him. That led to a sudden pivot towards generative-AI features for the then-upcoming iOS 18. Despite the pivot to LLMs, it became clear that Apple wasn't going to be able to catch up — and Apple's chatbot was lagging behind the likes of ChatGPT and Gemini. Get instant access to breaking news, the hottest reviews, great deals and helpful tips. One way Apple attempted to catch up was to bolt the new LLM Siri onto the Old Siri, which is the biggest problem with rolling out the new feature to iOS. It was described by sources as "whack-a-mole", with three bugs popping up every time an old problem was fixed. Apparently, individual features look good, but integrating them as a whole "Siri" assistant causes everything to fall apart. So it's no surprise that the new LLM Siri has been delayed as much as it has. Apple's AI chief, John Giannandrea, has taken much of the blame for Apple's AI faults since he isn't a "forceful" personality like other executives. Not only does this mean he's alleged to have not fought hard enough for funding for the AI department, but employees also claim that he isn't actually pushing the team hard enough. This is partly because he doesn't see rival chatbot makers as serious threats to Apple, but also potentially because he doesn't believe chatbots are the kind of features consumers actually want. However, Giannandrea has claimed that Siri's failure is not on him — and should be placed on Apple's marketing teams for overhyping and focusing on features that weren't finished. Apparently, this is something product managers are responsible for finalizing, which in this case would be Federighi. And the final insult is that Apple was a little too conservative in buying the GPUs necessary for AI processing. Apparently, this led to Apple's rivals buying up all the supply, and the lack of GPUs meant Apple's models were trained a lot more slowly as a result. The one thing the report makes clear is that Apple is "unlikely" to spend much time talking about Siri at WWDC 2025. Even the features that have already been announced, but have yet to materialize, are still "months away" from shipping. If there's anything Apple's good at, it's brushing its defeats under the rug and ploughing forward. So expect WWDC to focus on iOS 19, which is expected to get a major redesign, and other features ready to go when the update arrives this fall. We may even hear more about changes coming to Apple Intelligence, but if this report is accurate, we shouldn't expect a repeat of last year. Which we can all agree is a good thing. The promise of Apple Intelligence is all well and good, but people don't really like buying promises, especially when those promises can be broken. You can check out our WWDC 2025 hub for all the latest news and predictions about the upcoming show.
Yahoo
31-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Former Air Force secretary said he doubts US allies would be willing to buy an export version of the F-47
Former Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall discussed the coming F-47. President Donald Trump announced this month that Boeing won the contract to build the next-gen fighter. Kendall said he doubted US allies would want to buy it. President Donald Trump said he would offer US allies a less-capable export version of a coming sixth-gen fighter, but a former top Air Force official says he doubts they'll want it. Former Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall said in a podcast interview that he doubted US allies would be willing to buy the coming F-47 stealth fighter because of the high expected cost and concerns over the US's commitments to its longtime alliances. Speaking on Defense & Aerospace Report's Air Power podcast late last week, Kendall, who left office in January, said the jet's price, which the former Air Force secretary said could be up to $180 million each, roughly twice as much as the F-35, could put off US allies. "I would be very surprised if our, any of our partners, were prepared to pay that unit cost for a new aircraft," he said. President Donald Trump announced this month that Boeing had been selected to build the new F-47, winning the $20 billion contract over rival Lockheed Martin. Boeing's share price rose after the announcement, adding $4 billion in market value. The F-47 Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) fighter is expected to be ready for combat by the end of the decade. The aim is to develop a new sixth-gen fighter aircraft with unmatched stealth and air-to-air combat capabilities, including the ability to fly with uncrewed loyal wingmen drones, to give the US Air Force a technological edge to defeat new threats. The US has been flying X-plane prototypes in pursuit of this effort. It's poised to replace the F-22 Raptor, a fifth-generation air dominance/air superiority fighter that has been in service since 2005. The US, despite pressure, has never exported the F-22, which was built by Lockheed Martin and Boeing. The other US fifth-generation fighter is the Lockheed F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter, which was developed as part of a multinational program. Numerous allies now fly the jet. Kendall said that the Trump administration's attitude toward longtime allies like Canada and dozens of countries in Europe may lead some to question the wisdom of investing further in really expensive US weapon systems like the coming F-47. "Another factor right now, of course, is that the attitude we've taken towards our allies is driving a lot of them to rethink their degree of cooperation and commitment and reliance on US sources for equipment," he said. Kendall also highlighted Trump's claim that the export version of the F-47 sold to US allies could have downgraded capabilities, the reasoning being that allies today might not be allies in the future. "We basically have very close allies traditionally, and we share some of the best of our capabilities with them because we have a lot of trust in them," Kendall said. "This administration doesn't seem to be taking that point of view." The F-47 is being designed to fly alongside autonomous drones, known as Collaborative Combat Aircraft. But Kendall said there were questions about how these drones will work with future crewed fighters. "There isn't a readiness at this point, a confidence in the uncrewed aircraft to bet entirely on them, right? And I tend to share that view," he said. Drone technology is being deployed across the US military, but autonomous drone technology is still in a heavily experimental phase. Even so, Kendall said there was an urgent need for the US to upgrade its Air Force, where the average aircraft is about 30 years old. The planned upgrades come as rivals like China appear to be investing in the development of new stealth fighters. Read the original article on Business Insider
Yahoo
19-03-2025
- Yahoo
Apple 官網上架，Zens 雙層無線充電板可充 4 部 iPhone！能讓你忘記 AirPower 嗎？
幾年前 AirPower 胎死腹中，讓多少全面擁抱 Apple 生態的用家倍感失望。時至今日，荷蘭公司 Zens 在 Apple Store 上架了一款 Quattro 無線充電器 Pro 4。它標配 65W 轉換器，一次最多能為 4 部 Qi2 裝置充電，如此強大的輸出能力或許能彌補一些 AirPower 造成的遺憾。 不過，盡管 Zens 的這款配件能充的裝置比 AirPower 多一部，但它並不具備自動對位的能力。話雖如此，其每個充電位都支援 MagSafe，在磁吸的幫助下使用起來估計也不會太麻煩。至於雙層結構，外觀肯定是不如 AirPower 的一個平面來得簡潔。但這樣顯然更利於降低充電時的溫度，而 AirPower 遲遲不發的根本原因，據稱就是因為 Apple 搞不定多線圈的過熱問題呢。 Zens Quattro 無線充電器 Pro 4 售價 HK$1,198，目前已在 Apple 官網有售。 Apple 香港售價 HK$1,198 立即購買 緊貼最新科技資訊、網購優惠，追隨 Yahoo Tech 各大社交平台！ 🎉📱 Tech Facebook： 🎉📱 Tech Instagram： 🎉📱 Tech WhatsApp 社群： 🎉📱 Tech WhatsApp 頻道： 🎉📱 Tech Telegram 頻道：
Yahoo
07-03-2025
- Yahoo
Apple just made an extremely rare move
Apple said it's delaying its AI-powered Siri overhaul, which is now expected in the coming year. The Siri upgrade was announced in 2024 and promised a more personalized and capable virtual assistant. It's rare for Apple to delay a product once it's already been announced. You can probably count on one hand the number of times Apple has publicly announced a product delay. But Apple did just that on Friday, announcing that its plan for an AI overhaul to its virtual assistant, Siri, is taking longer than expected. "It's going to take us longer than we thought to deliver on these features and we anticipate rolling them out in the coming year," Jacqueline Roy, a company spokesperson, told the unaffiliated Apple blog Daring Fireball about the "more personalized" Siri. It's not the first time Apple has delayed a product after announcing it, but it's a rare occurrence. In 2016, AirPods were expected to go on sale in October, but Apple delayed the release until December. Before that, in 2011, the white iPhone 4 was released 10 months after the black model, as Daring Fireball author John Gruber wrote in his blog post about the delay. And on one extremely rare occasion, Apple outright canceled a product after showing it off. After its AirPower wireless charging mat was announced in 2017 with an expected 2018 launch, Apple confirmed that it was no longer in the works, apologizing to customers and saying that it had determined that the product would "not achieve our high standards." When Apple Intelligence was first announced at the Worldwide Developers Conference 2024, the tech giant highlighted an AI-powered Siri that could answer users' more complex questions using personal context. As AI features came to iOS 18 beginning in October, Apple said to expect new languages this spring, but it didn't specify exactly when the new Siri would be ready. There have been some smaller tweaks to Siri since 2024, including ChatGPT integration, the ability to type out questions to Siri, and a more conversational assistant. In September — ahead of the iPhone 16 release — Apple published an ad featuring the actor Bella Ramsey to demonstrate the "more personal" Siri's ability to pull information from the Calendar app to help Ramsey remember someone's name. Now, it looks as if the highly anticipated upgrade won't arrive on iPhones until 2026 or the next generation of its iOS operating system. Read the original article on Business Insider
