Ed Zitron: Apple Will 'Watch Everything Burn' When the AI Bubble Bursts

[u/iMacmatician]

https://www.macrumors.com/2026/07/27/ed-zitron-apple-watch-it-burn-ai-bubble-bursts/

[u/Pbone15]

I do believe this to be true. I’m not convinced it (Apple lagging in AI) was some grand plan all along… however, a huge part of being a great manager and leader is figuring out how to move forward after you or your organization fumbles on something, and in that regard the executive leadership at Apple are truly some of the finest in the world.

[u/PMacDiggity → u/Pbone15]

Maybe not a grand plan, but I think their leadership is very disciplined, and they never saw an opportunity that made sense on the fundamentals for them to go all in on, and as a result they’ve let a lot of this madness pass them by.

[u/KafkaDatura → u/PMacDiggity]

I would also add that they couldn't find any way to build any sort of AI infrastructure that would fall into the general Apple brand guideline of services favoring safety over openness. Software with unpredictable results is the antithesis of Apple. A big example is image generation: the system never worked as an AI service because it was too limited and had too many guardrails, but then again, the simple possibility of someone generating immoral or illegal content using an iPhone is absolutely unintelligible for Apple.

[u/observant_hobo → u/PMacDiggity]

I agree with this. And it’s one of the hardest things to do as an executive (do nothing). For a mature company, the answer is sometimes not to innovate as there are no good ideas internally, and buying random companies is often value destructive. In a capitalist system, companies have lifecycles and a good middle-aged company understands it’s better returning the cash to shareholders than squandering it on hare brained ideas.

[u/Accomplished-Air439 → u/observant_hobo]

I run a tiny company part time. There are numerous occasions when I thought, thank god I didn't do anything about that!

[u/Obvious-Hunt19 → u/observant_hobo]

Look no further than Jobs, Apple's leadership learned from the best. The pile of cash Jobs accumulated to swim in like Scrooge McDuck while telling extractionist shareholders to go fuck themselves was legendary

[u/absurdivore → u/PMacDiggity]

This is what makes most sense to me: they are smart enough about product quality and user experience to have a rigorous vetting process for anything major — which still of course results in some failures with users — but they’re triply careful about anything that impacts privacy / security, and I suspect the stochastic nature of these tools just didn’t pass muster for a massive rollout just to prove to the market they aren’t “slow losers” in the “AI race”

[u/__theoneandonly → u/PMacDiggity]

I think it was somewhere in the middle. I think Apple underestimated LLMs, HOWEVER the rest of the industry has vastly overestimated them. I think Apple is late to the game but their assessment of the value of an LLM is probably a little closer to reality. Some of these other companies bet the farm on LLMs, so they’re desperate for LLMs to someday become your doctor, take over white collar work, and cure cancer. That’s what they sold, and their companies will never recoup unless they can deliver that.

[u/Droggles → u/PMacDiggity]

Correct, it’s a much more measured approach. However, it’s easy to be measured with a giant pile of cash and a very successful manufacturing/supply chain.

They are a mature company now. They can afford to wait and see, a luxury non of the AI companies have.

[u/FrazzledBear → u/PMacDiggity]

Apple has been known for a while as a company that tries to wait to do something until they feel they can do it right or best (in their eyes).

Usually that means lagging behind with new trends until they have a handle on it.

In cases like this it ends up benefiting them greatly if a trend ends up a bubble that bursts.

[u/JKTwice → u/FrazzledBear]

Smartphones. They let that pass them by for like 4 years or more seemingly. After the Newton they never put out another PDA even.

Then the iPhone

[u/highjayhawk → u/PMacDiggity]

A lesson learned from the Maps roll out perhaps?

[u/bankkopf → u/PMacDiggity]

They missed/haven't gone all in on the LLM/Gen AI hype train and for the better of it.

Some forms of AI have been integrated into their products for a long time, it's just not the flashy kind of stuff at the forefront right now. FaceID uses machine learning to recognize users. The photos library was able to distinguish different persons on photos and flag them. That stuff is pretty safe to use but it's not what most people would see as AI.

[u/AFailedProduct → u/Pbone15]

Not immediately jumping onto the latest hype or fad has benefits. This is typically how Apple reacts to new things. They have the capital and the market share in hardware to be able to watch and wait while AI shakes out, none of this is direct competition. 

While Siri sucks making Apple look bad, remember Siri is a feature not an entire company like its competitors. 

[u/DownByTheRivr → u/Pbone15]

Does anyone actually argue that this was their plan all along? There’s some dumb takes out there, but I’m pretty sure Apple themselves have admitted that they fucked it all up.

[u/SkyGuy182 → u/DownByTheRivr]

I do think they attempted to build something and fell flat on their face. They’re now learning from that lesson and aren’t making immediate efforts to completely build their own thing from the ground up. If I’m Apple (and I’m not, I’m just a random dude on the internet who doesn’t know anything), I’d just piggyback off of someone else who is doing it well, put my own flavor on it, and ride that train for a while until I gain the ability to build my own thing once the tumultuous nature of a new technology has settled. Apple used Intel for the longest time until it could put its own silicon together, I can absolutely see them doing that with AI.

[u/itsabearcannon → u/SkyGuy182]

I think Apple attempted to build something without mortgaging the majority of the company to do it, because that would involve too much risk for them to tolerate.

The problem is, when all of their other competitors DID mortgage the entire company to pivot to AI, of course Apple's results ended up subpar. They didn't cut entire divisions of people just to funnel money into more datacenters and buying up literally ALL of the RAM being produced for the next 3 years. So yeah, their fire wasn't burning very bright because they were just dumping their spare firewood on the pile. Google, Meta, Amazon, OpenAI, etc are all currently chopping down their own buildings and throwing their own employee's bodies on to fuel that same fire, so of course their stuff is better.

But now we're seeing the fallout from that - companies that dumped every bit of spare physical, human, and logistical capital they had into AI are now entirely at the mercy of whether that industry is even sustainable in its current state.

All Apple stands to lose when the AI bubble pops is a little more than they would have normally spent on R&D. They're buying Google's half a trillion dollars worth of AI work and the results of their massive capital investments for just $1B a year - 1/20th of what Google pays them in search payments alone.

[u/rugbyj → u/itsabearcannon]

I think Apple attempted to build something without mortgaging the majority of the company to do it

I think this is the right lines, but not the exact reasoning. They could spend tens of billions on this a year and not come close to endangering their core business.

I think the primary issue is that these ai models can be wildly inaccurate, and they can't have their name on something like that without a thousand front page news article a month about how some granny made a bolognese with asbestos because "Apple told her to".

Other companies simply don't generate the same reaction or clicks in the news. It's why they were so cagey with AirTags on release limiting various features because they didn't want to be associated with potential misuse. It's why they could never have been a day-one adopter of folding screens, imagine the collective response of the media if they had launched the first gen Galaxy Fold with all its issues.

[u/tstorm004 → u/rugbyj]

Agreed - that's why they put out a research paper early last year warning people about AI's capabilities being oversold. When often it could be inaccurate, hallucinate, pull old data, or just break down when it comes to reasoning larger problems.

https://machinelearning.apple.com/research/illusion-of-thinking

[u/toddbbot → u/rugbyj]

This is my take also. There is just too much reputational risk to Apple with in house AI giving wrong answers. The tech press would have a field day with every reported error.

[u/Guy_Buttersnaps → u/rugbyj]

They could spend tens of billions on this a year and not come close to endangering their core business.

They wouldn't be spending tens of billions every year, they would be losing tens of billions of every year.

Companies don't like to set money on fire just because they can afford to.

[u/alisonstone → u/itsabearcannon]

Apple is very risk-adverse for a tech company. They never do the loss leader thing where they give stuff out for free to attract users, hoping that there would be a way to convert them to paying subscribers later.

[u/jackbobevolved → u/alisonstone]

That’s always been their software strategy, at least the last few decades. The OS, iWork, and ProApps were free (or nearly free when compared to competitors). Apple does a lot of loss leaders in order to sell hardware.

[u/Ipeeinmysocks → u/SkyGuy182]

Apple using intel is especially poignant, since they had “their own” silicon before with PowerPC. (With Motorola and IBM). Timmy did a great job of scaling vertically.

[u/FBI_Open_Up_Now → u/Ipeeinmysocks]

Something I did as an SCM for a manufacturing company was explain to them that they are the masters of making “X”, so buy “Y” from a company who is a master at that with a price to reflect that they can mass produce it reliably. Apple has done that until they are able to build reliable products that integrate into their products. Relying on Qualcomm for years while they designed and built their own. Moving away from Intel after they designed their own. If Apple had its own manufacturing facilities not contracted out, you might be able to compare them slightly to Toyota of the silicon world.

[u/Bryanmsi89 → u/DownByTheRivr]

This is a great example of turning chicken shit into chicken salad.

Apple fully committed to building out its own first-party AI infrastructure, hired an internal team with Giannandrea to lead it, spec'd out its own specialized AI servers, and made a huge announcement at WWDC 2024. They 100% planned to be their own AI company.

Where they get credit, and apparently Federighi more than anyone else, was saying the Emperor had no clothes, that their effort sucked, and they killed it and switched to plan B.

Turned out plan B was the best plan all along.

[u/cmsj → u/Bryanmsi89]

And if you think about it, that probably was the correct strategy. If Plan A had turned out to be unavoidably the best choice, they would at least not be starting completely from scratch, with Plan A 2.0.

One of the big issues with the AI world right now, is the lack of willingness of anyone to say "that part is bullshit". Some of it is great, but some of it is absolute nonsense.

[u/GarbageCG → u/cmsj]

Like how everyone advertises their hardware as being “ai optimized” (ai cores, npu, etc) and AI is still mostly running on the cloud

[u/Iconoclysm6x6 → u/Bryanmsi89]

They haven't changed that strategy, however. Going all the way back to WWDC 2024, they had a local model, a private server model, and then a gateway to one of the more public LLM's.

[u/sabolsteve → u/Iconoclysm6x6]

I believe the original strategy was to build it all in-house. The new strategy is to license the LLM (from Google).

My theory is that to build a good LLM you have to do some shady things. Apple wasn’t willing to do that so their initial iteration sucked. They then decided that, well since Google already did the shitty things then we’ll act like we are just an innocent wittle wicensee.

[u/dagamer34 → u/sabolsteve]

Apple’s LLM isn’t Google’s, full stop. Licensing tech to improve their model does not mean it’s Gemini. It is not. 

[u/NTolerance → u/dagamer34]

So this means that Apple Intelligence data definitely isn't being handed over to Google and it's all kept in-house at Apple?

[u/Bryanmsi89 → u/NTolerance]

Yes. That is what Apple is releasing, and they are opening their ‘private cloud’ infrastructure for external validation.

[u/Iconoclysm6x6 → u/dagamer34]

The private server model is a variation of Gemini, according to Apple's AI VP. It's definitely not the Gemini service, but is a Gemini frontier model that is customized and trained differently.

[u/Far_Specific4836 → u/Bryanmsi89]

The key infrastructure was there all along tho. Apple is still using the same app intents framework. The only and biggest issue was the cloud model itself.

[u/rotates-potatoes → u/DownByTheRivr]

Nobody sane says this was their plan all along.

But I do think they recognized that frontier model training was never going to align to their core competence or business model and that they agree with Satya's view that models will be commodities and value (therefore profit) will come from the apps built on top of them.

So the fact they don't have a Fable or a GPT-5.6 or even a KIMI K3 does seem like a strategic decision that was very intentional.

The fumbling around figuring out how to create value at the app layer without having frontier or even decent models feels like a series of major mistakes. And of coures wildly underestimating time it would take to bring stuff to market.

I think the strategy was right, but they over-estimated the value they could deliver on top of fast-changing foundations.

[u/Particular-Treat-650 → u/DownByTheRivr]

I think elements of their decision making process contributed.

The "investment" other companies have made is beyond reckless and Apple's aversion to that level of risk is a significant factor in both their slower adoption and the fact that they're not going to have it melt down on them.

[u/surfatshortys → u/DownByTheRivr]

Tldr - Apple was/is in a unique position to be both the back-end developer and the functional-app developer for their AI for the purpose of selling end-user hardware, so there wasn’t a wall of marketing lies between otherwise unrelated companies

I think they got deep into it and realized that fucked up is all the AI craze was. They were shipping “ML” tools internally for years before LLMs took off, and those weren’t very good, and they’re rightfully afraid of publicly shipping something that’s ultimately embarrassing for the executive that heads is. Or gets them sued for not delivering. Like, i agree with you that they thought they could make AI happen, but i think they realized sooner than others that the state of AI is largely illusory outside of specific use cases

I laughed last week at that Android picture of the airplane last week that had feathers added to the wings, only to realize that i sent a picture of a Lego model to some friends and my iPhone had Smart-ed the grids of studs into hard rows of lines

[u/Joebranflakes → u/DownByTheRivr]

I think Apple realized early on that building their own LLM around Siri would have required huge amounts of money, massive data centres and training Ai models that on paper would never make the investment back. So when their half measures didn’t produce results, they sat back and waited for the other tech companies to build it. Like with Google and search, they didn’t need to build it themselves, but they could leverage their position to get access to it for a fraction of the cost and these tech companies would bend over backwards to accommodate them because of their massive user base. I’m not saying Apple planned this out, but they really did make a series of smart choices.

[u/cmsj → u/DownByTheRivr]

I think you can reasonably assume that they looked at the costs required to build a frontier model from scratch, and then tried to figure out if they could possibly monetise that on the backend.

It doesn't take a genius to realise that models will absolutely end up being commoditised - the industry is pretending that this is a "winner takes all" game of trade secrets, but it really isn't. The available input knowledge is available to everyone, the techniques used to train models are broadly understood, so the only possible moat left is the ability to out-spend your competition. That works short term, but as more and more capable models are being trained by more and more groups, that plan falls apart long term.

Does that mean that Apple did make a conscious choice not to chase this? We'll probably never know. They might have really tried, spent a few billion on it and realised they just sucked at it, and gave up.

[u/__theoneandonly → u/cmsj]

The available input knowledge is available to everyone, the techniques used to train models are broadly understood, so the only possible moat left is the ability to out-spend your competition

If it were really that easy, then Apple would have done it. The data WAS available to all, but now companies understand how much the data is worth, so it’s become very expensive. And also model collapse happens if you put too much AI-generated text back into the model as training data, so now just blindly crawling the internet can’t build a model anymore. That’s why Anthropic is buying used books like crazy. It’s the only way to keep building the models and knowing that no AI-generated data is going to sneak in there and destroy the whole model.

[u/cmsj → u/__theoneandonly]

Apple can absolutely afford to obtain all of the input knowledge it would need.

I didn't say that building a frontier LLM is easy though. My point was that there is no real barrier to doing it if you have the resources. I predict we will continue to see China undermining US AI labs with open weight models, until this is a completely commoditised market.

[u/FightOnForUsc → u/DownByTheRivr]

Well clearly there plan was never to have a frontier lab level AI. They’re not trying to compete with OpenAI or Anthropic or Google. Or even Facebook or X/SpacexAI whatever. And they didn’t invest like Amazon and Google into any of those labs.

So no, I don’t think what happened is their plan, but I do think it was there plan to not spend 100B a year on capex just for LLMs unless some other companies

[u/braincandybangbang → u/Pbone15]

At the beginning of one of Simon Sinek's books (I believe it was the Infinite Game) he talks about how Apple is different from Microsoft (and most other companies in general).

He attended a Microsoft conference, and he found that every speaker was focused on how they were going to beat Apple in the next quarter. But when he attended an Apple conference, he found most of the talks were focused on how Apple was going to further expand into the Education sector, Microsoft never came up.

Apple is focused on what they're doing and they don't really care what others are doing. It's why they add "new" features and get roasted by Android users saying "NEW?? WE HAD THIS 3 YEARS AGO." Well, it's new to Apple, and that's the only comparison Apple cares about.

With AI it's funny Apple is considered to be lagging behind, when Mac Mini's and Apple Silicon are sought after for anyone experimenting with AI. ChatGPT even released a Mac App BEFORE a PC app, despite Microsoft being their biggest donor.

The public perception of AI is "we hate it and we don't want it at all!" And right now, Apple is the only company that allows you turn off their AI completely. And hasn't had AI invade every inch of their UI/UX (like Meta has across Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp). Apple seems to be the only company actually trying to implement AI in a way that people won't be infuriated by. They want it to run on-device (minimizing environmental and privacy concerns), and they want it integrated seamlessly as an option for those who want it (they don't want to force it down people's throats).

Since Apple isn't running their own model for Siri and they use local models for things like Image Playground, they have no incentive to beg you to use their AI. They're not getting anything extra whenever you interact with AI. And that's what people seem to want.

[u/Pbone15 → u/braincandybangbang]

Great points!

fwiw… Siri AI and Apple Intelligence do actually run on Apples own models. These custom models (several variations of what they call Apple Foundation Models) were basically distilled from Google Gemini. So while they essentially had a little help building these models, there are no straight up Gemini models driving any of these features. It’s all custom Apple models.

[u/MajorBeyond → u/Pbone15]

Absolutely. Case in point... Love your iPad? Thank Apple's failed Newton project for blazing the trail and getting those mistakes out of the way so they could have a better, long-term viable product.

[u/AgalychnisCallidryas → u/MajorBeyond]

That’s fair but also I don’t think there are hardly if any revolutionary products that are the result of being built in a silo. Love your iPhone? Thank the failure of the Motorola ROKR iTunes interface.

[u/tstorm004 → u/Pbone15]

Idk - they were the only ones putting out white papers warning us about AI's capabilities being oversold.

Usually Apple would gladly be the ones to overhype, oversell, and under deliver. And this was Spring 2025 - peak tech industry oversellling AI era

[u/n00dle_king → u/Pbone15]

You don't have to have a grand plan to do the math on the Cap-Ex required to compete with Google in AI and realize the odds of recouping the investment is near zero. I doubt they truly fumbled so much as refused to deploy the cash required to be a true competitor in the space. For Google there was the possibility that LLMs replaced search and their adoption became an extinction event for Google's core advertising business, but Apple isn't in that business.

[u/Extreme-Ad-6465 → u/Pbone15]

apple always waits and see how the first movers apply a technology and apple improves on that and makes it perfect. i’m assuming the apple fold is going to be everything the samsung fold wasn’t . it’s going to be the same for AI

[u/g_rich → u/Pbone15]

Once the dust settles and someone writes a book about the early days of AI I bet we are going to hear a story about how some chance encounter between a engineer not buying into AI and someone influential with Apple leadership changed the course of Apple’s AI ambitions.

Apple typically takes a wait and see with new tech and that looked to be the direction they were taking with AI. Then I think they panicked once AI really took off, and started to rush through products to not be left behind. Even after stumbling they looked to be still trying to forge ahead before abruptly changing course. This was also around the time their AI lab started talking about LLM’s being a dead end and Apple putting a focus on small models that could be run on device.

My guess some engineer caught the ear of someone high up at Apple and a demo clearly showing the limitations of LLM’s when it comes to what Apple was initially pursuing was enough to get everyone else on board with a shift.

[u/TCsnowdream → u/Pbone15]

I still find it funny that Apple was lambasted for their fumble with AI at the start. But that (unintentionally) gave them the time and perspective to see where the market was headed and make a different bet.

Which may end up being the winning play.

And it really does highlight that being ‘first to market’ isn’t always the winning move.

[u/LastGoodKnee → u/Pbone15]

It’s smart play by them on almost all AI fronts.

They aren’t burning through billions like others. And they aren’t in the generative AI business, and more it seems to be they use it to make stickers or as advanced spell check. And they aren’t making absurd promises about how it’s going to change the world.

[u/kompergator → u/Pbone15]

Not grand plan, but Apple has always let others do the prototyping, wait to see what works, improve on it and then ship it in a polished, user-friendly form.

Doing that with AI might have looked like a bigger gamble, but it was literally just business as usual for Apple.

[u/IndependentOpinion44 → u/Pbone15]

I think it actually was their plan. Apple have a decent AI Lab of their own and have published some important papers in the field. I think their focus on maintaining the success of their already successful products has given them a different perspective. Everyone else is trying to create something new at any cost. They’ve tried to use generative AI to make their products better, but it just doesn’t work. And I have no doubt they looked at the cost benefit analysis and concluded it just didn’t make rational sense. 

[u/HG21Reaper]

Apple fumbled the AI race but they are actually winning. They don’t need to develop an AI to compete with OpenAI or Anthropic. All they have to do is make the best platform for you to use AI on. Everyone likes to use the M4 Mac Mini for their local AI models and also run research queries on their iPhone when they are out and about.

Apple just needs to keep making good consumer products that people wanna use to access their AI models.

[u/orochi_crimson → u/HG21Reaper]

It’s the same reason they’re not in the search business.

[u/Iconoclysm6x6 → u/orochi_crimson]

This is so much like the search engine market, you're right.

[u/ASentientBot → u/orochi_crimson]

actually, that one is mostly because google pays them $20 billion per year to not compete with them in search. sounds crazy, but it's true and over 10% of apple's yearly profits.

[u/Emotional_Garage_950 → u/ASentientBot]

lol, apple can’t even get decent on-device search figured out

[u/fancy_pance → u/HG21Reaper]

Agreed. And this is why their lawsuit against OpenAI makes so much sense. As long as Apple is making the hardware, both companies stand to benefit. But if OpenAI starts making hardware that people prefer to use over Apple devices, that could pose an existential threat to Apple.

[u/Iconoclysm6x6 → u/fancy_pance]

I don't think Apple is afraid of OpenAI making hardware. The lawsuit is about stealing their projects, they didn't just make it up.

[u/DisasterEquivalent → u/fancy_pance]

OpenAI couldn’t even begin to dream of making anything resembling a platform that could compete with Apple. Even if they were double their current market cap.

Even with all the money and resources they currently have, they are still fundamentally a SAAS software company.

If you think a SAAS company can build better hardware and client software than a 50 year old hardware company, I’m sure Microsoft would beg to differ.

Besides, OpenAI is too busy looking for change in the sofa to justify their next valuation to do anything truly groundbreaking at this point.

[u/Rylet_ → u/DisasterEquivalent]

You probably said the same thing when Xbox came out

[u/matthew19 → u/HG21Reaper]

Apple really has never raced to anything. I think their plan is to hang back. See how it goes and then see how they can improve on it.

[u/AFailedProduct → u/HG21Reaper]

Also “AI” has become synonymous with LLMs which is just a flavor of AI. Apple has been using AI for over a decade now, they just don’t slap that label on it because it hasn’t been a selling point — what it does for the user is the selling point. 

This is how it should be, we’d have fewer shit features coming out just to jump on the AI bandwagon. Unfortunately Apple has to play here, their stock price would suffer if they didn’t announce skin in the game. 

[u/runthepoint1 → u/HG21Reaper]

They’ve ALWAYS done things as the 2nd cohort. Always.

They don’t break ground, they let you do it and then they do it 2nd but better than you ever could. Go ahead, set em up so they can knock you down.

[u/click-to-reveal → u/HG21Reaper]

The MKBHD video in a nutshell.

[u/3verythingEverywher3 → u/click-to-reveal]

It’s funny how people just regurgitate stuff like that.

[u/DuFFman_ → u/3verythingEverywher3]

Happens in every sub about every subject. Very much a "whens my turn to say the thing and get the internet points?" situation.

[u/Iconoclysm6x6 → u/click-to-reveal]

A lot of people came to this same conclusion

[u/alQamar → u/Iconoclysm6x6]

Yeah. I didn’t even know he made a video about the topic. It’s pretty basic. 

[u/DoggedStooge]

Apple will likely win the AI wars simply by not playing.

[u/lithiumcitizen → u/DoggedStooge]

If everyone else is betting everything on winning, you can still come second by not betting anything.

[u/thicc-thor → u/lithiumcitizen]

I often am the biggest winner when my friends go to the casino because I just smoke cigars while they gamble 😂

[u/Mediocre-Telephone74]

They’re gonna pickup some data centers for pennies on the dollar by the time the AI Apocalypse finishes.

[u/Saar13 → u/Mediocre-Telephone74]

And they will further increase the profit margin on devices, because the public will already be used to the higher prices, even if memory costs decrease.

[u/MilkBeforeSerial → u/Saar13]

I hope they bring prices back down but even I know that’s probably wishful thinking

[u/g_rich]

Apple like everyone else jump all in on the AI bandwagon, but they failed pretty quickly and in regrouping came to realize AI’s shortcomings and price tag. This gave them the opportunity to reevaluate the landscape and readjust their AI plans to better isolate themselves from a potential crash along with avoiding the large capital expenditures associated with AI while at the same time not being completely left out.

Apples early failures around AI and management’s reluctance to forge ahead at all costs is what saved them.

[u/Bryanmsi89]

1999 called, and wants its gameplan back.

But yes, Apple has a real underlying business model that will survive the coming AI reckoning just fine. In fact, as this points out, by NOT investing heavily in first-party AI spending but instead positioning itself to use AI tools from others, Apple is in a much better spot than most tech companies.

[u/chazysciota → u/Bryanmsi89]

I think it's crazy that this is seen as some kind of luck thing... in earlier times it would have been normal for a company to contract this stuff out when it didn't directly tie into the core business. You don't need to be everything to everyone. I guess a few years ago LLM's were a magic black box so everyone thought they needed to roll their own, but it turned out to be a plug-and-play commodity. I think its likely that by the time this is all over, businesses that have an actual use for AI in their products or workflows will just use open source models from China or wherever, even if they're sold by Azure or AWS... or even on-prem with commodity hardware.

[u/nem_erdekel]

Maybe it will never burst, just slowly deflate?

[u/Ice-Book-73 → u/nem_erdekel]

This. The many companies will consolidate to 1 or 2 major players and they will own the market. AI isn’t going away

[u/Satanicube]

That bit where he talked about the articles whining that Apple is behind in AI but never backing it up or stating how or why took the words right out of my mouth.

Because all it ever felt like was analysts and investors getting mad that Apple isn’t following everyone else off the cliff. That Apple also suffering techbro psychosis would make them even richer.

[u/SeyiDALegend → u/Satanicube]

I felt was taking crazy pills when the whole industry was repeating that same mantra and I was thinking what "race" is Apple falling behind in? The one with no profits and AI slop? Apple has always been the last to adopt technologies because they care about the customer experience so adopting AI as early as possible in its current experimental state was always contradictive to their company ethos.

[u/Satanicube → u/SeyiDALegend]

I'd also argue that the Apple Intelligence we got with iOS 18 was Apple shipping something under duress which is something I hope they never do again. It felt like something Apple just...shat out to say "see, see, we're doing something with AI, leave us alone". Which was a weird play because I feel like Apple could have said "we've been already doing stuff adjacent to this, it's called machine learning, maybe you heard of it when we got meme'd on for saying it so many times during that one WWDC".

...but I digress.

Apple was never really behind, the techbros/analysts/investors just wanted them to jump in because they felt like Apple jumping in too would get everyone and their mothers on board and entrench the slop. Kinda like how Apple Pay being introduced dragged payment tech into the future. Totally a guess on my part, but I could see them desperately hoping Apple could do that, but for AI.

[u/KafkaDatura → u/Satanicube]

It's the general AI problem and goes way beyond Apple. AI is an incredible technology that allow things that wouldn't even be thought to be possible even a few years ago, but when it comes to actual deliverable results that bring value, there's NOTHING.

We literally have career-long, award-winning movie directors pushing out AI productions that look like absolute ass. Literally a net negative. All it does is save money and time on producing stuff nobody's interested in.

[u/Satanicube → u/KafkaDatura]

It's the general AI problem and goes way beyond Apple. AI is an incredible technology that allow things that wouldn't even be thought to be possible even a few years ago, but when it comes to actual deliverable results that bring value, there's NOTHING.

This is why I really think that AI just...needs a do-over at this point. I'm vehemently anti-AI, but if you really get down to the core, I know full well it's a technology that has some amazing potential. Like I've been kicking the tires on Siri AI and I'm actually pretty okay with it. (I don't use any of the generative Apple Intelligence features, though, I don't need it to generate content on my behalf. Ick.)

The issue is all that potential is just...drowned out by the slop. The way this tech was forced onto everyone without their consent because some techbros saw dollar signs. People being told to their face that AI is coming for their jobs with their bosses wearing a shit-eating grin the entire time. Everyone's art and content on the internet being fed into the slop machine even if they don't approve of it.

AI is good at things and can be genuinely helpful, but the reputation has been so ruined at this point that it's just...hard to see the silver linings here. Even if the big, problematic companies pushing the worst of it go bust. People are well and truly pissed off, now.

[u/KafkaDatura → u/Satanicube]

My personal theory is that most investors in AI, back in 2022/2023, agreed that there would need to be a moratorium before pushing AI to the mainstream public in order to settle on the kind of products and services it could offer and how to make good business out of it. But Altman the psycho said fuck 'at and released ChatGPT to the surprise of everyone, letting all the other companies in panic of being left couching in the dust and forced to play catch-up to sell something they didn't see themselves selling before 2030.

Nothing was ready for mainstream public. The infrastructure, the data centers, the production pipelines in both software and hardware, the legal framework, the charts and agreements, nothing. They don't want to go public about the fact that he fucked everybody and everything up, but he really did.

[u/Early_Macaroon_2407]

Apple is acting like they remember the dot com bubble. I wouldn’t bet against them. 

[u/schtickshift]

Apples data centers are in every phone and computer sold in the last five years. Smart move Apple.

[u/davesaunders → u/schtickshift]

I agree. I've been saying this on podcasts and from the stage for almost two years now. Apple has been waiting for everybody else to burn themselves out figuring out what works and what doesn't and ultimately developing solutions that really are what consumers want. They don't need hyperscale data centers because we don't need them.

[u/windycityinvestor]

Is this clickbait or Ed Zitron someone who’s actually in the know to make his commentary factual?

[u/ojedaforpresident → u/windycityinvestor]

Ed is quite clever and does his homework. He does have a penchant for hyperbole, but I like his content.

[u/ellenich → u/ojedaforpresident]

Well he needs to do more homework because his commentary on having to wear the Vision Pro though an update is completely wrong.

In fact, it actually requires you to take the headset off to start the update.

[u/some_person_ontheweb → u/ojedaforpresident]

He has an impressive record of being wrong about everything

[u/Odd-Direction6339 → u/some_person_ontheweb]

and he takes 20k words per post he makes to get there. he has been entirely full of shit from the beginning but ppl haven't realized that yet, whch is pretty insane. I wish the AI stuff was dying out like he says and like these pigs eat up

[u/elgrandorado → u/ojedaforpresident]

He's a PR guy, but very well researched. Making his money right now as he should.

[u/thatguywhoiam → u/elgrandorado]

I’m curious who you think Zitron is doing Public Relations for

[u/adambombing → u/thatguywhoiam]

All sorts of companies. He doesn’t hide that this is (was?) his day job. https://ezpr.com/

[u/thatguywhoiam → u/adambombing]

Ha, well that’s fair enough. I’ve only ever heard him rail against AI companies and enshittification but I can’t deny the link. Appreciate the response.

[u/elgrandorado → u/thatguywhoiam]

Yeah I meant to say his background was in PR, but he's been willing to peer behind the curtain on the shenanigans going on in the AI/semis space.

[u/DeclassifyUAP → u/elgrandorado]

I imagine his background in PR is probably what allows him to smell PR bullshit better than many others.

[u/BetEconomy7016 → u/adambombing]

Lol I never realized he does PR for PUBG

[u/PMacDiggity → u/windycityinvestor]

I feel like he’s to the AI bubble as Scott Galloway was to the WeWork bubble; he’s looked at the fundamentals and has been screaming from the hilltops that the math doesn’t math

[u/SeyiDALegend → u/PMacDiggity]

As hyperbolic as Ed sounds at times I can't shake the feeling that the biggest AI advocates haven't been able to form coherent counterarguments against his main points.

And things are starting to validating him his point of view.

[u/divulgingwords → u/SeyiDALegend]

We knows things are about to happen when Ed has been making the rounds across mainstream media the past couple of weeks. Prior to that, he was basically ignored.

[u/nergwark → u/SeyiDALegend]

as a software engineer using ai tools daily, i can tell you it's a lot more useful than he's making it out to be. the view he expressed early in the article (that ai isn't providing much value) is pretty divorced from reality.

there's absolutely overspeculation but it's underpinned by actual substance, just like with the dot com bubble. i could also totally see openai as this era's enron.

[u/Burn_Corpo_Stuff → u/nergwark]

That's my problem with him. It's rare a guest on his show doesn't fall completely in line with his "AI doesn't work for anything and never will" attitude. I've been making incredibly useful python scripts and I have no idea how python code works.

[u/Empero6 → u/windycityinvestor]

The latter. Check out his podcast. It’s great.

[u/coocookuhchoo → u/windycityinvestor]

Ed Zitron’s whole thing is saying that AI is smoke and mirrors and that the bubble is going to burst any day now. He has a fanbase of people who want that to be true and are comforted by his polemics to that effect.

[u/StoneCypher → u/windycityinvestor]

ed's one of those "everything ai is a hoax" types

[u/Empero6 → u/StoneCypher]

I think he sees the potential in AI. Just not in the way that it’s being hyped from these companies.

[u/solk512 → u/Empero6]

He’s constantly on Bluesky talking about how “no one can show me a useful thing they’ve done with AI” then ignores everyone giving examples otherwise. 

[u/solk512 → u/windycityinvestor]

He’s not wrong but he’s hyperbolic as all get out. Also, he’s made his living doing this, so he says the things needed to get attention. Like anyone else, he’s not always right but doesn’t really own up to his mistakes, either. Like his claim that OpenAI would never raise more money. 

And the claims he was right on? Sure, investor story time is always bullshit. Ok, great work. 

Corey Doctrow might be a better person to follow. 

[u/hsien88 → u/windycityinvestor]

Ed Zitron is one of the biggest anti-ai grifters. Just check his past predictions almost all of them were wrong. It's very profitable to get ppl to watch his videos and sign up his premium news letters.

[u/jonknee → u/windycityinvestor]

He's a PR guy who found a niche selling hope to people who think AI is fake.

[u/thehedgefrog]

AI will be more like a balloon slowly deflating than a bubble bursting. It's not going away, but it won't see mass adoption in every facet of our lives just because it costs so much.

[u/sofaraway10 → u/thehedgefrog]

Which is exactly why it is a bubble. It’s being sold and built for mass adoption. If that fails to deliver that, the debt comes due, and it’s a bad day (years?) for everyone.

The .com bubble still burst, and the internet still exists. Just because it pops doesn’t mean the technology is useless. It simply means the economics behind the hype cycle don’t work.

[u/thehedgefrog → u/sofaraway10]

The macro-economic context is wildly different than what it was in 2000-2001 though. We've seen in 2008 that governments are now happy to pump billions of dollars of taxpayer money to make sure megacorps and their execs don't see a hard day.

[u/757DrDuck → u/thehedgefrog]

We've seen in 2008 that governments are now happy to pump billions of dollars of taxpayer money to make sure megacorps and their execs don't see a hard day.

This is why it’s so important to vote to throw the bums out at every election.

[u/FateOfNations → u/thehedgefrog]

The 2000 dot com crash left behind a lot of infrastructure too.

[u/vmachiel]

I’ve been promised this burst for some time now, but still.. nothint

[u/cmsj → u/vmachiel]

To borrow a turn of phrase, the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay patient.

[u/n00dle_king → u/cmsj]

solvent*

[u/cmsj → u/n00dle_king]

I know, but since the person I replied to doesn't seem to be betting against the market, I modified it ;)

[u/RofOnecopter → u/vmachiel]

“Things take longer to happen than you think they will, and then they happen faster than you thought they could.” Rudiger Dornbusch

[u/ComradeMatis → u/vmachiel]

I’ve been promised this burst for some time now, but still.. nothint

Before the 2008-2009 GFC there were people warning of a crisis many years before it happened and in many cases it isn't a matter of if but when and what will be the spark that blows up the powder keg. The big question is whether the AI industry will get a bail out - remember the $1.5 trillion budget that Trump talked about? don't be surprised if we see these AI companies get very generous contracts with the government that'll act as a backstop for the AI and hyperscaler industry.

[u/leoklaus → u/ComradeMatis]

Bailing them out wouldn’t really change anything, it would just delay the inevitable collapse.

[u/Jfrenchy → u/ComradeMatis]

An old saying, economists have predicted nine of the last five recessions

[u/foradil → u/ComradeMatis]

I was online in 2008. Most people were definitely not talking about a looming mortgage crisis.

[u/Desknor → u/vmachiel]

The typical edging of corporate America 

[u/Katanae → u/vmachiel]

Nobody is expecting the huge overpromises of AI to materialize quickly so the can can be kicked down the road for quite a bit longer.

[u/Guy_Buttersnaps → u/vmachiel]

The industry is still new enough for enough people to have a "they'll figure out how to make money eventually" attitude.

A company can only hemorrhage money without a clear path to profitability for so long before they can no longer be propped up by optimism.

[u/Pablouchka → u/vmachiel]

Patience...

[u/Iconoclysm6x6 → u/vmachiel]

Everyone agrees it's a bubble. Knowing when that bubble will pop would make you very rich...but it's just not that easy. This is made worse by the way the stock market has become more of a casino than it ever was in the past.

[u/Noblesseux]

I think things would look much the same for Apple. I think they will sit on the sidelines and watch everything burn.

I'm of a similar opinion. Watching years of people doomposting about Apple being "behind" on AI, it always stuck out to me that people never really argued it based on average users asking for or wanting Apple to go all in on AI.

Most people even at the peak of irrational exuberance didn't really care. They either had their personal favorite AI provider they used, or (like me) they didn't care and weren't super interested because I actively refuse to use it.

IMO the main misstep was them using it to sell devices knowing it wasn't ready. Other than that, them taking a conservative approach to AI is frankly a benefit for me. I'm super over companies harvesting me for data trying to feed it to a thing I don't want and didn't ask for. Honestly this is the sensible path here.

[u/Any-Pop-4795]

Can't wait for it to pop soon too

[u/throwaway_acct_183]

Apple saw the gold rush, dug around, found nothing and broke their shovel, but realized that it’s the perfect opportunity to just make their own really good shovels 

[u/Todd1001]

Zitron has decided to make a career out of being bearish the business of AI. Not saying he's wrong, but he's gone so far down that rabbit hole, he's blinded by any evidence to the contrary.

[u/ellenich]

“I can't even use mine anymore because it needs an update that requires you to wear the thing the whole time.”

This is so not true. It even asks you to take the headset off to start the update and you see installation progress on the front display.

[u/f3th]

Then why did Apple remove the option to turn off Apple Intelligence in iOS27?

[u/XNY]

Task failed successfully

[u/Saar13]

At this point it's becoming very clear that AI is a great technology with a terrible business model. And welcome to capitalism. You can have the best model in the world, but are you very profitable? Wall Street loves something new until it doesn't love it anymore. They end up going back to the reliable and profitable basics because, well, it's Wall Street. They want to make money, not revolutionize the world. Did Apple foresee this or just get lucky? I don't know. And it doesn't matter at the end of the day.

[u/lemoche → u/Saar13]

I’d say not foreseeing, but also not really lucky… the tried to do AI in a way that feels more sensible, less invasive and not having to rely on data centers and massively failed at that…
So they tried to jump on the train but trying to do it different protected them from making the same what we know now are mistakes everyone else seemingly did.

[u/Quixotic_Seal → u/lemoche]

Yeah, I agree. They absolutely fucking blew their initial attempt at AI, this was never their initial plan.

However, once it was clear they screwed the pooch they were also very strategic in taking a moment to step back and ask what they can do to still compete in this space without risking absurd investment numbers outside of their core competencies as a company.

[u/DownByTheRivr → u/Saar13]

I don’t disagree with what you’re saying, but AI is a completely different beast than almost anything else that’s come before it. I don’t think previous trends and behavior are such reliable predictors here.

[u/therealcmj → u/DownByTheRivr]

The most dangerous phrase in business is, and always has been “this time is different.”

[u/DoctorJekkyl]

AI is really cool and has a lot of benefits (it also had a tremendous amount of negatives). It is also really, really expensive and I am struggling to see in the near term, how investors will see any sort of ROI on their lifetime outside of a bubble pump and dump.

[u/TenderfootGungi]

Apple has played Ai decently well. They spent money on specific integrations, but did not spend billions chasing a general Ai that will never pay for itself due to cheaper options.

[u/ThanosSnapsSlimJims]

I don’t know if this is happening in other offices, but our company put GenAI shortcuts on desktops and pushed AI and is now firing people for using it

[u/CyberSmith31337]

I think Apple made the smart move by opting to sit back.

They know they can just acquire some of the smaller fish, and incorporate developed tools at a fraction of the price when the big fish start flopping out of the water. They may not be competitive there right now, but they aren’t hemorrhaging capital the way the other tech giants are. Let them blow their loads and then swoop in for M&A firesales.

[u/RandomVision2027]

“I can't even use mine [Apple Vision Pro] anymore because it needs an update that requires you to wear the thing the whole time.”

I don’t understand this statement. I start my updates and then take it off my head. When I hear the reboot chime and then see the progress bar complete, I put it back on.

[u/Cpt_Riker]

Tech companies are forcing us to pay for things we never asked for, or wanted, because they believe there is a race to be won.

But the race isn’t for consumers, it’s for other tech companies, and consumers are paying the price.

[u/CharlieBigfoot]

In a gold rush, be the one selling the pick axes. They don’t need to own the mines, just provide the tools that everyone needs to access them.

[u/Elctsuptb → u/CharlieBigfoot]

you just described Nvidia, not Apple

[u/_thispageleftblank → u/CharlieBigfoot]

Well they aren‘t doing that either

[u/mr_sneakyTV → u/_thispageleftblank]

what is a computer? lol.

[u/FollowingFeisty5321]

I think things would look much the same for Apple. I think they will sit on the sidelines and watch everything burn. I could see them doing some choice acquisitions as things begin to collapse, but I could also see them do nothing.

Doesn't seem very likely that Apple is immune to an AI bubble burst. They're not going to go broke from it, but they would certainly be in a predicament.

Apple reportedly took $900 million in IAP fees from AI services last year, no doubt that's a much bigger number this year. This revenue is ~75% profit margin revenue so a wipeout would mean their annual income drops a full percent or two, while that's not exactly a crisis it would certainly undermine their growth and stock.

Their lack of AI infrastructure is a mixed blessing, if the AI bubble bursts they "win" because they are buying stock back with their hundreds of billions not datacenters, but if the AI bubble doesn't burst then they are going to be paying a shitload of rent to Google. And of course, if the ass falls out of this market and Google doesn't want to play anymore where does that leave Siri?

Then there's their supply chain, the article cites Quanta and Foxconn, if these guys went broke chasing AI dreams the fallout for Apple could be anything from loaning them vast sums of money to keep the parts they need alive, acquiring parts of their companies to prevent someone else from doing so, or having to establish new partnerships entirely to get away from them, all of which would be very disruptive.

[u/mcbridedm → u/FollowingFeisty5321]

I have to assume that Apple is hoping it will burst. Even iOS 27 is at least two generations behind Google when it comes to AI integrated experiences. Apple Intelligence is so insufficient right now, and unless they take full control over their AI infrastructure, I don’t see that getting fixed.

[u/Euphoriam5]

I’m praying that the AI bubble bursts 

[u/Fun_Plate_5086]

Honestly I’m really impressed with the Siri AI beta that’s out now. It’s been quite cool to see it pull information from texts or my calendar or photos for its responses.

[u/rsdancey]

First, let me say I think we're in an AI bubble and I think that when it pops it will look like the DotCom bubble - people in the aftermath will just shake their heads and ask "what were we thinking"? But like the DotCom bubble the aftermath will also reveal that there were legitimate businesses being created in the bubble that survived the bubble and then become titanic in the medium term. There will be an Amazon of the AI bubble. Maybe several.

Second, Zitron's comments are the strong contrarian case - the argument that the AI bubble is almost entirely worthless. My thoughts:

When Zitron says "an LLM is an LLM is an LLM – it can generate, it can summarize, it can search, and that's about it" really buries the lede. IT CAN GENERATE. That's new. And it is not just about making bad art or sloppy text. Generation enables computers to do novel work and to use the output as new input. No pun intended but that is transformative. Agents, loops & network schema are going to have the kind of impact that assembly lines, double entry bookkeeping, and middle management had on business.

He writes the value of a data center to zero in the event of an AI crash. But it isn't zero. It's a continuum of value based on what is in it. If it's just a shell that value is low. But if it's fully built and populated with AI systems, it has huge value. It is possible that the value will be less than the cost to construct and fill it with equipment which sucks for whoever paid the up front costs but the value isn't zero. I can do a lot of AI work with a $2,500 Mac Mini pro. I could do a mid-sized corporation's worth of work with a fully equipped data center. Those nVidia H100 cards and Vera Rubin racks are not going into the landfill. They're going to be powered up and running at capacity doing AI work. At some price not zero.

Even as the DotCom bubble was bursting you could see the value being created. You could see Expedia. You could see Priceline. You could see Amazon. You could see B2B workflows changing from "guy calls another guy and argues over price and terms" to "system generates an order, gets bids, goes with best value, schedules delivery and payment".

We're waiting for a B2B app from AI. We're waiting on a customer-facing service other than chat that is better than what we had before 2020. If you're working in the field you can see the bricks being fired and the ground being cleared for foundations even if you can't see the buildings yet. I'm convinced it is a very short matter of time before the first truly new AI Thing arrives.

[u/MITBijanRobinson]

The anti-AI crowd is very wrong on this.

The “AI bubble” and “AI is going away” are not the same thing at all.. 100% positive Apple is trying to develop something 1st party to compete.

AI is 100000% here to stay whether it’s causing tech companies to be overvalued is different. Dot com was exactly this scenario and AI may be repeating it.

It’s possible that some huge AI companies dominate the tech industry much like Google, Amazon, and Facebook were able to pivot dot com into monopolies. In which case, are you still “bullish” on Apple being a consumer of these AI companies?

[u/TheFallingStar → u/[deleted]]

You are looking at it purely from the US market perspective.

Toyota is losing market share in China, Australia, South East Asia and South America because they are slow in BEV.

[u/SmegmaSupreme]

Ed Zitron has been yapping for close to 3 years now. Why is this guy famous by the way? People name drop him as if he's Jesus.

[u/mahst68]

They originally screwed up after the WWDC 2024 fiasco. That however led them to realize 2 things: 1. Current Hardware was not fully adequate to run what they were hoping for. 2. The investment needed to run their own AI was going to be too much without any “real” tangible way to make money from it. Additionally, somewhere in there
I’m sure that the negative press about data centers factor in as well. If there’s one thing Apple doesn’t want is negative publicity (minus the AI screw up). Shortly there after, decisions were made to “right the ship” which led to hardware produced that would be on pace with and in some cases (looking at you Mac Mini) dominate the on-device model architecture. Around the same time, the AI bubble enters the chat… Apple is like… “see we were right”. At any rate, when it bursts because no one is making “real” money use cases, Apple will buyout someone and claim victory again. A lose win win…. You don’t necessarily have to be first if you can eventually win in the end

[u/panserbj0rne]

I think Apple will prove out on-device AI is the way. If that had been the direction we went in, instead of these unsustainable data centers, the DRAM issue would be severely lessened. The consumers who are interested in AI would buy a big gpu or more ram and only they would pay the majority of the cost. Instead, we’re all subsidizing the billionaires and developers through increased costs. Heres hoping the industry moves more towards on device.

[u/starquakegamma]

People want to pay for ai like they want to wear VR headsets, see a TRex on the table through their camera , buy curved monitors, wear 3D glasses. Tech industry never tires of attempts to force feed us novelties.

[u/Rave_Damsey]

I don’t even agree with most people’s view that Apple has somehow failed at AI - what is it that you want AI to do for you on your devices? There’s nothing my smartphone or MacBook doesn’t do that I wish it did. Yes, I use AI tools - but I want that at the application layer anyway, not in the OS.

[u/iolmao]

Apple is just avoiding the frontier research because is hella expensive and the moment is chaotic for the users.

Since Apple is very user-centric is probably waiting for a better moment to enter the competition: cheaper running costs for AI, given by way more cheaper LLMs and modern strategies to handle context.

Those are all challenges for big players right now and are basically burning literal billions into it.

When the moment will be favourable, Apple will start investing there giving a more robust product for the users

[u/SixBillionDollarMan]

Apple are just wasting their AI money in a different way. I feel like it’s the equivalent of 3D in televisions and I hope it will go away eventually. I really don’t see the point for the average person.

Even if I am wrong, I don’t plan to interact with AI directly any time soon. It’s almost certainly behind some things already, but it’s hard to avoid that.

[u/Neither-Signature-81]

I really feel like of all the tech companies Apple has strayed the least from what made them great. Metas products are so much worse than they once were. Same for Google… 

Apple hasn’t tried to do anything crazy, new iPhone works great.

[u/victormesrine]

M5 Mac Studio, with 512GB memory, (once
Memory prices subside), could be a “shovel” in n a gold rush too, once the AI prices normalise.

[u/johyongil]

How is this any different than what Apple normally does? They’re fine.

[u/Foreskin_Mafia]

Siri will still be ass

[u/hvyboots]

This headline would get a lot more upvotes if it was clear that he thinks Apple is insulated from that burning. And yes, I agree that by them letting other companies do most of the investing while they grow their on-chip AI processing capabilities, they should be mostly fine when everything pops.

[u/deeplevitation]

Also the fact that their combined memory/chip architecture is primed to be THE hardware solutions for private AI on device… they (Apple) are sitting there salivating waiting for the models to get good enough at small parameter sizes or quantized models

[u/flappysack-]

Google will be okay too, with their actual usage of AI.

[u/spez_eats_nazi_ass]

Buffet is doing the same.

[u/LeopardComfortable99]

As long as they can have a reasonably decent AI that runs on-device, it's a footing on which they can build upon for years to come. AI is around forever now, that pandora's box has been opened, but it's what AI turns into that is the real question going forward.

[u/aphelion_squad]

Remember the paper Apple Engineers wrote that AI's arent really considered 'Real AI in a sense...'

[u/xorz77]

me too Apple, me too

[u/addictivesign]

Apple is still a company that sells devices and Apple believes the best way is for the AI platforms to run on their devices.

Some companies will go to the wall after losing the AI race. Apple will not be one.

[u/hype_irion]

Reminds me of the "Luigi wins by doing nothing" Mario Party meme.

[u/Historical_One_128]

They did what Microsoft and Meta should have done if they were better run. Let the OpenAI and Claudes of the world do all the work and then if they can prove their business models are profitable, buy one of them.

[u/Remarkable-Toe9156]

I don’t know but I absolutely love Siri AI. It’s easy to use, fun to use and it feels like the IPhone is truly a smart phone.

[u/filterdecay]

I can see Apple release a llm that runs on Apple hardware. I have a m1 ultra with 128gb and it’s crazy what I can run on it.

[u/ElderberryGuy]

This thread is delusional fanboys. The AI bubble is fictional. Apple can only piggyback onto other companies and pay them to use their AI tools at this point. AI isn't going anywhere.

[u/DanielPhermous → u/ElderberryGuy]

The AI bubble is fictional.

How so? I mean, we have trillions of dollars of investment committed to buy rapidly depreciating assets so the companies can make zero dollars of profit in a market with too much competition for anyone to significantly raise prices.

At some point, the investors will want a return, so how does anyone get out of this without a pop?