I often hear rants in Apple communities that each year Apple is failing to ‘innovate’ in the software space with their annual MacOS / IOS / everything elseOS updates, and that phrases such as ‘Peak Smartphone’ are consistently thrown around online.
My question is this - what change or development are people really expecting with each subsequent software cycle? For all the posts about how Apple “isn’t doing enough” each year, there’s 2-3x that amount complaining that updates are causing too many bugs and lamenting the “lack of polish”.
Generative AI is being thrown around as the next big leap in consumer electronics, but outside of a vastly-improved Siri I’m at a loss as to what it is exactly consumers are wanting in this space.
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Let us fucking customize the UI and give us the ability to set ALL notification sounds as we see fit. Cut the BS and stop limiting features that are standard on basically every other device/software available. It’s 2023, Jesus Christ.
For all the copying Apple does, the fact that they can’t even get close to Android notifications is a problem. I really hope they fix this.
That’s the point of innovation isn’t it? To invent something we don’t currently have. If we can make a list of things, that isn’t innovative, it’s just features we’d like to see.
Apple doesn’t push the boundaries anymore. They don’t even try really. Their game now is to put time and effort into the silicon. In that department they are making really good progress, and deserve a ton of credit for pushing the industry forward. Otherwise, they are just collecting money every year with minimal itiritave updates.
We need breakthroughs in battery technology. Imagine an iPhone battery that lasts a full week. An Apple watch that you don’t have to charge for 2 weeks…
Maybe the Vision pro will deliver some of that innovation. Spatial video has real potential to be a bonkers feature. Reliving a memory through a video as if you were there is mind blowing type of stuff.
Watching an NFL game as if you were on the field, or basketball, etc is the kind of “pushing” the limits thing that I could see apple being able to do.
If you’re looking for innovation out of the current products, you’ll be severely disappointed. That’s the cash cow, they aren’t messing with that.
Reliving a memory through a video as if you were there is mind blowing type of stuff.
Watching an NFL game as if you were on the field
When I first started messing around with VR devices, I thought these types of experiences would be game changing. But honestly after the initial “wow” wears off, a lot of these types of things just aren’t that pleasant in VR. Maybe Apple can find a way to make them so much better than the devices I’ve got now, I don’t know.
IMHO smartphones already reached where they needed to be 5 years ago. Everything now is entirely iterative, and you’re probably not going to see a paradigm shift in smartphones. The real paradigm shift will come from wearables, which is where we see Apple focusing its efforts on now (wearables including smartwatches and AR/VR).
Why is it on Apple to revolutionize battery technology? They are not a battery company. If someone can actually come up with a battery that lasts 5 times longer than what’s currently possible, we’re looking at EV with 1500 mile range. We’re looking at real chances of reversing climate change.
It would have global implications across all industries, political lines, and change human trajectories. I don’t think it is fair to put such a responsibility on Apple, when the brightest minds all across the world are not able to figure out (yet).
Write bug free software
For all the copying Apple does, the fact that they can’t even get close to Android notifications is a problem. I really hope they fix this.
That’s the point of innovation isn’t it? To invent something we don’t currently have. If we can make a list of things, that isn’t innovative, it’s just features we’d like to see.
Apple doesn’t push the boundaries anymore. They don’t even try really. Their game now is to put time and effort into the silicon. In that department they are making really good progress, and deserve a ton of credit for pushing the industry forward. Otherwise, they are just collecting money every year with minimal itiritave updates.
We need breakthroughs in battery technology. Imagine an iPhone battery that lasts a full week. An Apple watch that you don’t have to charge for 2 weeks…
Maybe the Vision pro will deliver some of that innovation. Spatial video has real potential to be a bonkers feature. Reliving a memory through a video as if you were there is mind blowing type of stuff.
Watching an NFL game as if you were on the field, or basketball, etc is the kind of “pushing” the limits thing that I could see apple being able to do.
If you’re looking for innovation out of the current products, you’ll be severely disappointed. That’s the cash cow, they aren’t messing with that.
Generative AI is being thrown around as the next big leap in consumer electronics, but outside of a vastly-improved Siri I’m at a loss as to what it is exactly consumers are wanting in this space.
It is the next big leap, and companies will be seen by consumers as failing if they don’t have gen AI tools/apps in the next 1-2 years (tops).
Apple knows Siri sucks. Gen AI is a good way of improving it, but they’ll naturally want to control output so Siri isn’t saying embarrassing or misleading things that hurts Apple’s reputation.
Google’s doing an okay job at this with Bard. It’ll be built into Assistant soon if they manage to get their act together. Apple will want to get in on that for sure - and honestly, if they can’t do that by iOS 18, it’ll be a bit embarrassing for them and a bad look for stockholders.
Beyond that, they’ll probably keep building on gen AI for a while. There are lots of applications for that.
Generative AI is being thrown around as the next big leap in consumer electronics, but outside of a vastly-improved Siri I’m at a loss as to what it is exactly consumers are wanting in this space.
It is the next big leap, and companies will be seen by consumers as failing if they don’t have gen AI tools/apps in the next 1-2 years (tops).
Apple knows Siri sucks. Gen AI is a good way of improving it, but they’ll naturally want to control output so Siri isn’t saying embarrassing or misleading things that hurts Apple’s reputation.
Google’s doing an okay job at this with Bard. It’ll be built into Assistant soon if they manage to get their act together. Apple will want to get in on that for sure - and honestly, if they can’t do that by iOS 18, it’ll be a bit embarrassing for them and a bad look for stockholders.
Beyond that, they’ll probably keep building on gen AI for a while. There are lots of applications for that.
Gen ai. Basically what the pixel is doing now with images. I think we’ll see apple copy that, better Siri, and apply it to the health app.
Centralized wearable iProcessor with wifi bubble and encrypted communication with accessory devices. Phone becomes a bunch of sensors with a foldable touchscreen and a big battery, watch gets dumber and cheaper with a bigger battery, both of these communicate wirelessly with a thing you wear on your torso that has an all-week battery and does all the computing.
Write bug free software
I mainly just want Siri improvements and further developments to their stock applications. I love Notes, Reminders, Calendar etc. Having a new OS to toy with is fun but fundamentally those are the only things that I care about
Oh and let me archive my iMessages please 😂
I just want Airpods as Fitness Trackers.
I think that what people think they want from GenAI and what GenAI will be reasonably able to do in a repeatable way are still quite distant.
The results are probabilistic (as in: there is no comprehension) and very confident and that’s enough to misinform very badly.
I think the performance of the computing is still on the up: these new chips are incredible, and although faster hardware generally breeds slower software (so it always feels the same) there is potential for amazing speed.
But at this point we have so much: instant writing, audio and video calls; a much-modernised browser, payments, fitness and health (I just got an Apple Watch S8 after 6 years without one and it does so much more), maps, cameras… I’m not sure the next Big Thing is something we can see from this side of it being announced, from anyone. Google isn’t exactly in the ring either, and Microsoft on the software side seems to be going for GenAI.
I think we are on a plateau, everywhere. Maybe there’ll be a few years where the same stuff just gets faster and cheaper.
I don’t think many people are seeing the big picture here, and that’s Apple design direction is moving in a very coherent direction.
Take for example the Vision Pro. This is going to be a small corollary, but hard to miss if you’ve used the feature: Presenter View. They’re trying to get you used to the notion that you can share a screen at the same time someone is looking at your entire camera feed. Now add Continuity Camera, and you’ve got LIDAR that allows you to make sharp defined border cuts between you and the floating screen behind you. This is a very small example.
But it’s obvious the direction they’re going. They’re aiming to mesh ordinary waking reality with a computerized one, aka augmented reality.
People put a lot of stops on this idea, but it is peak smartphone times, and the obvious next step is a movement from the phone to making their forms of AR more usable and commonplace. If Jobs were still here, they’d probably have done privacy-respecting lightweight AR glasses with full day batteries already.