npunt

My medium-long term view on Apple is their entire future business model relies on them making the best personal robots. Robots are the single best physical embodiment of the value of technology to everyday people, and there's always decades of refinements possible whenever a new hardware platform of that versatility arrives.

Sure in the medium-long run they'll still make computer-like experiences that let people learn, create, and work, and those will be enabled by increasing investment in AI infra, but at their heart Apple is a hardware company and must rely on that incredible strength to be the physical embodiment of technology. Robots will be part of the mix of hardware that will do those things, as well as act as an omni-appliance that does all of the other home things (dishwashing, cooking, washing clothes, cleaning, massages, diy crafts, play, walking the dog, etc) as well as entire categories of need like social work, light industrial work, etc. Those are all new markets that Apple could have an incredibly significant role in.

This is why I'm not super bummed that Apple isn't a meaningful AI datacenter hardware player. I think that's just the enabling technology for the markets that Apple really would be the single best company in the world to handle, specifically all of those addressed by the personal robot.

I think Apple will naturally find its way to the personal robot in the next decade. The issue I think they'll struggle more with a cultural one. I think the biggest shift that needs to take place at Apple is an increasing focus on whole-life use cases enabled by AI, rather than hiding behind the idea that third parties are the ones to deliver those use cases. Apps are done, they present walls between use cases where none should exist. And because apps are run by companies that want things that may come at the expense of users, apps also add a great deal of cognitive overhead in terms of dealing with third party brands and motivations, and all the subtle things that the buttons on screen actually mean to the user beyond their immediate function (can i trust pressing this? what does the system behind this button do and does that align with what I want?). Life is a holistic and integrated experience, but the way computers present life, in terms of the many domains various apps occupy, is siloed and untrustworthy. This is the business tension and power struggle I see arising most in the next decades in the consumer software industry.

I agree the Nvidia developer play was something they could have done, and it definitely would have increased shareholder value if they'd had any passion for that kind of work. I don't think it would have cost them too much in terms of who they are either, at least at first. My sense is the personal & small cluster market is an inconsequential market, even though their entrance would have undoubtedly enlarged it. Local models are just a very niche thing, and that has to do with the state of technology not any particular hardware availability. The majority of the effort would have had to been at the datacenter side to capture any significant value, and that's where it would have been a pretty big change in company culture.

Anyway its fun to speculate which paths get them where. I'm swayed by the implicit part your argument which is that the Nvidia play was knowable in advance had they just been engaged with the (mac) pro market more, which is where they would have gotten the signal earlier on AI's growing opportunity.

Every once in a while when I'm not in my right mind I reach out to my MBP screen and almost begin to pinch zoom something until I notice and recoil at the horror of potential fingerprints. This tells me that 1) we're all now smartphone-brained and this is the new default and 2) there's no fucking way I'm going to consciously want this.

Non-touchscreen laptops are an elegant weapon for a more civilized age.

But once you add the price of cargo pants it's a wash tho.

It's a tick tock cycle between weight and power, always will be

These are considerably lighter as well. 3.5lb -> 3lb and 4.7lb -> 4lb are a meaningful difference. That's worth $$ too

Yeah quadrants are just a first level sorting mechanism to get people in the door and focused on something. The real genius of Apple's segmentation is that there's always a next step up just $100-300 away. So you might start in the consumer side, but then walk your way up to pro because your consumer laptop is now optioned out enough to be within spitting distance, so may as well make the jump.

Macbook Pros have had at least two segments in them for a very long time: the base level smallest pro and the 'real' MBP.

The base level has fewer ports / less beefy cpu / less features; right now the 14" M6, but previously dual core, two thunderbolt 13" intel MBPs without touchbar. These are popular with corporate fleets.

The 'real' MBPs have all the ports / beefy cpu / best features / optional bigger screens.

Apple likes its market segmentation but it's not precious about it in the face of big technology shifts. If there's hardware they love and want, they'll try to ship it and sort out the segmentation after.

It seems to me like a transition year. Apple occasionally has these where the lineup doesn't make sense until they phase out the old and bring in the new. iPads in 2016, iMacs in 2021, iPads in 2022, Macbooks in 2011, etc.

It's really hard to maintain a perfectly positioned product lineup while managing underlying shifts in technologies. It's usually the availability and price of new components that cause this, along with needing to iron out issues before bringing a technology fully mainstream. Here the touchscreen is new, the hinge is new, and the screen tech is new to the platform. You can't always just drop something that on the mass market.

I don't think Apple has ever officially said Max = Maximum. Could be someone's name :) The bigger confusion to me is it's pronounced Macs!

Yeah I miss the old Apple ethos, I hope some whimsy comes back now that Ternus is here.

Agree, a good teaching tool is one that understands the scaffolds are only temporary and is constantly seeking ways to reduce the presence of scaffolds as learners increase in skill. Most tools don't take on a pedagogical lens so essentially view the user's skill as static, and thus seek to maximally reduce friction because that is what is assumed to add value. This often comes at the expense of the learner.

A more generalized view is that the design of software should aim for some optimal level of friction between the person and the task (a two-way optimization), rather than simply try to diminish it (one-way).

Also, this is a neat product :)