Siri's lackluster performance for over a decade is reframed not as a failure, but as a vision that was 15 years ahead of its time. The initial 2011 launch was an ambitious bet on a future where the underlying AI technology would eventually catch up, which is only happening now.
Tim Cook's operationally brilliant tenure (2011-2024) is framed as coinciding with a period of technological stagnation in AI. His leadership is bookended by Siri's ambitious launch and the recent LLM boom, suggesting Apple's perceived slowness in AI was a feature of the era, not just a corporate failure.
Instead of engaging in public discourse about the dangers of phone addiction, Apple employs a "solution-only" marketing strategy. They quietly develop features like advanced parental controls and then dedicate significant keynote time to them, addressing the problem by showcasing a solution rather than provoking fear.
Apple's new "spatial reframing" feature signals a major philosophical shift for its camera. The tool, which uses AI to alter a photo's angle, moves the native camera from a device that captures reality to one that actively generates it, creating a new debate around authenticity directly within the OS.
The pace of AI development is so rapid that a complex inference task assigned to a model could take longer to complete than the time it takes to train and release the next, more powerful version of that same model. This highlights an emerging paradox in the deployment of large-scale AI.
Meta is launching a free academy to train data center builders, guaranteeing jobs after layoffs of 8,000 tech workers. This is a real-world manifestation of the "learn to weld" meme, showcasing a tangible shift in labor demand from software development to the physical infrastructure required to power AI.
In a bizarre form of social proof, admitted criminals are appearing on podcasts to explain how Flock Safety's surveillance network has made their activities, like car theft, impossible. This provides a powerful, if unconventional, testament to the technology's effectiveness and serves as a unique form of product marketing.