Ah. #Apple not only is skipping #daringfireball’s invite to Gruber’s live show, they’ve scheduled their “F1 The Movie” against #Gruber’s time slot for media types.

Wonder if Apple is giving away free drinks as well, because otherwise, that may be an empty space at Steve Jobs Theater.

Keine Apple-Executive-Gäste beim WWDC-Talkshow-Live-Auftritt
Wenn Du wie viele andere treue Zuhörer:innen des Daring Fireball Podcasts bist, kennst Du wahrscheinlich die Tradition von John Gruber. Seit 2015 lädt er zu der jährlichen Spezialepisode von "T
https://www.apfeltalk.de/magazin/news/keine-apple-executive-gaeste-beim-wwdc-talkshow-live-auftritt/
#News #Tellerrand #Apple #AppleIntelligence #AppleExecutives #DaringFireball #JohnGruber #Kritik #Siri #Technologien #TheTalkShow #WWDC

Notes on LLMs

As the zeitgeist has moved on from the furore created by “Something is Rotten in the State of Cupertino,” there are some very interesting follow up posts that came through.

There was a great post by Mills Baker – “What Apple’s LLM Fumbles Say About LLMs (Rather Than About Apple)“. Mills is more optimistic than Ben because LLMs are likely overestimating their ability to solve the last mile problem. The summary of the argument goes:

• personal context is large and varied
• the surface for controlling apps is equally large
• LLMs are stochastic

This combination suggests there is a longer time horizon before a competitive platform might present itself. As a result, Apple was both right in removing claims that they have Apple Intelligence and what it could do and they can still win because they are still a super aggregator of personal context.

I think Apple will continue to be a super aggregator of personal information. However, the control surface of apps that the LLM needs to control feels like us thinking from the previous paradigm.

Ben Thompson’s latest addition is a place that resonates most with me:

So no, Apple is not doomed, at least not for now. There is, however, real cause for concern: just as tech success is built years in advance, so is failure, and there are three historical examples of once-great companies losing the future that Apple and its board ought to consider carefully.

Ben’s argument is that the future of these companies are written when they miss a generational event. The reason these groups of people often miss a generational event is because they might have been the architect of the current S-curve.

A summarized version goes: Apple reigned in the current smartphone era of computing. They have optimized themselves into a juggernaut of a business that has incredible margins by selling hardware running optimized, custom software that focuses on the whole widget + privacy. They charge a premium for this. However, this optimization of value generation might be the reason they miss the next generational leap around LLMs.

Specifically, Ben’s article highlights how the container “app” itself is probably not the right paradigm for this world of LLMs.

The new bridge is a user interface that gives you exactly what you need when you need it, and disappears otherwise; it is based on AI, not apps. The danger for Apple is that trying to keep AI in a box in its current paradigm will one day be seen like Microsoft trying to keep the Internet locked to its devices: fruitless to start, and fatal in the end.

There is a very interesting commentary related to this in the latest notes from Alex Komoroske. There were three takeaways:

• sandboxing – a thing that enabled the modern web and modern mobile experiences might be a “limiter” for the world of infinite software that needs access to the personal context. Put another way, if Apple and Google and Microsoft don’t solve for a different runtime security protection, prompt injection alone will be a large enough vector and will be a ceiling to how useful it can get.
• If we need a new runtime model (and we do), what’s the role of Apple, Google, and Microsoft? There might be a possibility they can come up with the new model where they can remain the personal information super aggregators. However, in this world they need to establish ways for infinite software to access this personal context in the local device / on the cloud.
• The new world will likely be worse but better in a unique way. In this case, it likely solves for integration – how might we run snippets of code that cannot be trusted to safely integrate and operate on personal data? Is that better done locally or on the cloud? What’s the business model in this case? One that solves this becomes the new platform for AI.

I don’t question the existing aggregators if asked the question if they want to solve for this future, will say yes and even start projects to find an answer. I doubt if they will be the courageous ones that will do what’s necessary to move us to this new world when they have the world’s best money printer.

#ai #amazon #anthropic #claude #daringfireball #google #komoroske #llm #mcp #openai #stratechery

I'm on a roll

I was quoted in Business of Fashion last month, after reading the newsletter every morning for years.

Now after reading @daringfireball since the early 2000s, a toot I wrote this morning got linked to.

And yes I do sometimes have a love-hate relationship with that website but I've been reading it since I was a teenager, it's been a part of me, somehow, very few blogs survived this era or my changes of interests in my RSS reader.

https://daringfireball.net/2025/03/the_website_hacker_news_is_afraid_to_discuss

#Bof #daringfireball

Wer sich näher mit dem #Apple-Universum beschäftigt hat, wird sicherlich auch schon von #JohnGruber gehört haben. Der #Tech-#Blogger schreibt für seine Website #DaringFireball schon seit mehr als zwei Jahrzehnten über viele Themen, die Apple betreffen. Nun hat sich Gruber mit sehr deutlichen Worten zu Apples verspäteten personalisierten #Siri-Funktionen geäußert.

Alle Infos: https://www.appgefahren.de/?p=375591

#appgefahren #AppleBlog #iPhone #iPad #Mac

I disagree with @gruber here. I think the internet is more like the sky than the Earth. The Earth is a singular thing, but the sky is defined by all of the elements in it. In that sense the internet is more like the sky than the Earth and therefore does not justify a capital I.

Thoughts?

https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/03/11/new-yorker-style-modernizations

#internet #spelling #daringfireball

Good point from @gruber: “It’s better to ship late, but ready, than to ship something unfinished or unreliable to hit a promised deadline. And with something like next-generation Siri, I’d say that’s downright essential. Apple can take the bad publicity today’s announcement is engendering; they cannot afford to squander the trust of their users.”

#Apple #AppleIntelligence #AI #LLMs #iOS #iOS19 #macOS #Siri #FeatureDelay #Technlogy #DaringFireball

https://daringfireball.net/2025/03/apple_is_delaying_the_more_personalized_siri_apple_intelligence_features

Sunday Paper

https://islandinthenet.com/sunday-paper-34/

Sunday Paper

https://islandinthenet.com/sunday-paper-33/

Hilariously predictable, how #DaringFireball has just completely ignored the »Siri “unintentionally” recorded private convos; Apple agrees to pay $95M« topic.
@thomholwerda

Good read at #daringfireball. Gruber nails it.

If Daniel Ellsberg had given the Pentagon Papers to a Jeff Bezos–owned Washington Post, Jeff would have turned him over to the FBI.

https://daringfireball.net/2024/12/journalism_requires_owners_committed_to_the_cause

Any other longtime #Macos users remember the "secret" slo-mo window minimize effect? It was done by shift-clicking the yellow (minimize) button. Apple disabled it many years ago, but as #daringfireball reveals, it's actually still there!

TLDR: `defaults write com.apple.dock slow-motion-allowed -bool YES; killall Dock`

https://daringfireball.net/linked/2024/09/28/hidden-pref-to-restore-slow-motion-dock-minimizing-on-macos

#partytricks

@cabel just watched your XOXO talk (via @gruber #daringfireball ). I own a playdate, luxuriate in Transmit and can say confidently - you are a kook. In the absolute greatest sense of the word. Bravo. The world is teensy weensy bit more of a tolerable place because you are in it. 🫶

"""
[Sun and Xue] defrauded Apple by submitting counterfeit iPhones for repair, to get Apple to exchange them with genuine replacement iPhones. [..]

They submitted the fake iPhones, with spoofed serial numbers and/or IMEI numbers, to Apple retail stores and Apple Authorized Service Providers, [..]

[They] submitted more than 6,000 inauthentic phones [..] causing an intended loss of $3.8 million [..]
"""

https://daringfireball.net/linked/2024/10/02/counterfeit-iphone-scam

via https://mastodon.social/@daringfireball/113240577305712623

#daringfireball #apple #scam

I had no idea Taylor Lorenz had done work on the Digital Markets Act #daringfireball

@treats I mean... I love markdown.... what the fuck would I have done without daring fireball? Decades of fuck knows what. TYSM xoxox
#markdown
#daringfireball
#gratitude

The recent macOS development is worrying. If Apple plans to lock down macOS the ipadOS way, I will definitely cry and then move on too Windowsland with a heavy heart after more then 20 years using macOS. As written by @gruber, there is a thin line which shouldn’t be crossed. https://daringfireball.net/2024/08/the_mac_is_a_power_tool #macos #Sequoia #daringfireball

Fast Crimes at Lambda School

Ben Sandofksy went deep on the history of Lambda School, a learn-to-code startup that aimed to disrupt computer science education, and its founder, Austen Allred.

#programming, #long-reads, #daringfireball

Justin Searls writes:

I’ve been pairing with ChatGPT (using GPT-4) every day for the last few months and it is demonstrably terrible 80% of the time, but 20% of the time it saves me an hour of headaches, so I put up with it anyway. Nevertheless, my experience with Llama 2 was so miserable, I figured Zuck’s claim about Llama 3 outperforming GPT-4 was bullshit, so I put it to the test this morning.

…

I agree with John Gruber that OpenAI lacks a moat, but what they still have is a pretty significant head start in the “server-side large-language model” market. Meta and Google are still clearly playing catch-up there. In the long-term, though, OpenAI really does need to figure out a way to avoid being outflanked by the larger platforms.

Gruber writes:

I keep circling back to the notion that OpenAI has no moat. ChatGPT is certainly the best-known LLM, and perhaps still the best, but I don’t think that’s any more of a long-term competitive advantage than some company in 1986 having “the best C compiler”. What’s needed are ways to bring LLMs to users. To give them purpose, in products. That’s what Meta is doing, by integrating their AI into all of their major products.

Daring Fireball: Meta Releases New AI Assistant Powered by Llama 3 Model

I think moats are too early to be commented on because nobody still really understands what parameters matter from a user perspective / business perspective. I think Justin’s considering this from a “help me code” / code productivity angle while Gruber’s looking at this from a has-this-hit-mainstream-yet angle?

In all these cases, early days is the answer.

That said, I still think that Gruber’s giving credit where due – at least Meta’s making a cohesive effort. Sure, they’ve just slapped on a text box to all their products at this point. However, anyone in a large company knows that coordinating all of this means that there’s cohesive push from the top. That suggests that there are clear owners and there’s execution. Personally, that’s a muscle that will help facebook execute fast. They’ve already shown they’ve the necessary muscle to learn from mistakes so, I’m bullish.

https://gurupanguji.com/2024/04/19/moats-in-ai-facebook-and-openai/

#ai #daringfireball #facebook #llama3 #llm #meta #openai #tech

Ist die Kommission auch dabei Microsoft vorzuschreiben Edge deinstallierbar zu gestalten? Safari in MacOS?

Sein Argument jedenfalls das die Fotos app ein Interface für Fotos ist und daher nicht deinstalliert werden kann, ist aber humbug. Die App greift ja auch nur auf eine Datenbank mit Datensätzen zu, die dann aus den Fotos und Zugriffsrechten (vielleicht noch ein wenig anderer Fancy stuff, der aber nichts am Argument ändert) besteht. Warum sollte das keine andere App können? #DaringFireball