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Comment by thelastgallon | Hacker News Reader

I'm surprised that Anthropic and OpenAI aren't going for the obvious win. Apple is the only company which is vulnerable to AI, it has never done AI (everyone hates Siri) and can never do AI.

Hardware or software exists to let people do things. Apple sells hardware so it can sell apps and content, and a slightly easier UI than Google. Google search was also famously just a UI, a search box that lets you get in and out very quickly (it is all garbage content now).

Anthropic/OpenAI don't need Apple's hardware, their stack (hardware+software) is all in DCs, just need a dumb fashionable device in phone form factor (and other form factors). Just need a very simple device which delivers what Google search box originally delivered (let you do things) and let their AI handle stuff.

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> and can never do AI.

How did you reach that conclusion? Apple has $62B just sitting around. They could hire as many AI people as they want and have Siri compete with the frontier models. They certainly can do AI.

I guess that are choosing not to do that because that's just not their business and they'd prefer to avoid the upcoming AI bloodbath. Why develop a search engine/social network/frontier AI when you can just use someone else's?

It is not about hiring people, it is culture and inertia. You can hire the most brilliant people, yet they can't accomplish much if the culture isn't right. Google probably has better talent density than Anthropic and OpenAI, yet it can't compete[1]. Companies can do amazing things when the founder is around and sets a vision and culture. After that, its downhill. Has happened to all companies. They all go down. Apple is going down, but it is hard to see because it still has momentum from the founders charisma. Steve Jobs wouldn't have approved most of the products that Apple is selling now and allowed ads and enshittification.

[1] https://pravse.medium.com/the-maze-is-in-the-mouse-980c57cfd...: The way I see it, Google has four core cultural problems. They are all the natural consequences of having a money-printing machine called “Ads” that has kept growing relentlessly every year, hiding all other sins.

(1) no mission, (2) no urgency, (3) delusions of exceptionalism, (4) mismanagement.

And now every Google search leads to AI Mode which, you guessed it, now has ads. The enshittification continues.

Agree with everything minus apple.

Steve knew Apple won’t be the same but he already hard coded the operating system so it’ll run predominantly without his oversight and most importantly be successful.

Go and watch his interviews - the one thing he cared about above all was that Apple succeeds and is healthy. He says it word for word.

So don’t push bull shit my friend.

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