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Maybe even I don't think there will be much new in the follow-up products, and Tang Tan, the current vice president of product design at Apple and the leader of the iPhone and Apple Watch, is leaving.
At that time, iPhone's head of product design will be promoted to the new leader of iPhone. Even more surprisingly, Mac's vice president of hardware engineering will be transferred to lead the design of the Apple Watch.
Switching from a "behemoth" Mac to a small and delicate wrist terminal has to make us laymen sigh: "The span is really big enough".
But what does it matter? These personnel changes will most likely not have a major change in the product's inherent image, and consumers have reached a consensus on the appearance of Apple products in recent years: "Anyone is the same, and Jonathan is no exception." ”
On the one hand, these designs are already Apple's language, and the image is deeply ingrained. On the other hand, Apple is very cautious about making changes to its products, and Apple has passed the era of rapid growth, and now aims to maintain a steady upward trend, not "disruptive innovation".
In short, mature hardware such as iPhone, iPad, and Mac should be guarded.
Since you can't count on "old hardware" to open up new markets, Apple has long been prepared for cutting-edge technologies such as automobiles and AI. It's just that in terms of effect, I got up early in the morning and rushed to the evening set. Apple is facing unprecedented challenges in a completely new field.
Many consumers will be surprised why Apple, the vane of technology, has failed in the recent big wave and can't even bubble up? Can Apple still come from behind and experience is king as before? Today, let's talk about these topics.
Apple car first learn to run, then learn to walk?
Unlike those who have made mobile phones in the past two years, they have to plug in to build cars, and those who build cars have to build mobile phones.
Apple launched the "Titan Project" as early as 2014, aiming to independently develop the electric car Apple Car, and this year is also the year when new energy vehicle companies are born, such as NIO and Xpeng. It can be seen that the start of the Apple car is not late at all.
Nine years have passed, domestic new energy vehicles have innovated, and charging piles have spread like a weaving net.
Huawei, which is also a mobile phone manufacturer, although it does not make cars, has already entered the automobile market in the form of cooperation with other car companies, and has gained its own one-third of an acre of land in high-end assisted driving, car machine experience, automobile business and terminal mobile phones.
Accountant Jia, who is also on the other side of the Atlantic, also ushered in the first mass-produced FF91 after nine years of sharpening a sword and "suffocating for dreams".
Apple, on the other hand, has been facing various challenges and difficulties in the project. From technology research and development to market positioning to autonomous driving technology, Apple's road to car manufacturing is full of bumps.
Three years later, three years later, three years later, Wei Xiaoli told us that three years is enough to build new energy vehicles, and Apple seems to say that ten years is not enough.
The reason for this is that Apple stands too high and looks too far away, and wants to make a blockbuster.
Apple wants to make an electric car that can fully drive itself, without a steering wheel and brake pedals.
Let's not talk about cars that are not equipped with steering wheels and brake pedals, and the market supervision department will not let them go?
The fact that it is fully self-driving alone is a bit far from Apple at this stage, and it is no exception for all car manufacturers.
First of all, autonomous driving is divided into five levels: L1, L2, L3, L4, and L5.
Level 0 to Level 2 driving, which can be understood as assisted driving, requires the driver to monitor the surrounding situation at all times and complete most of the operations.
In L3 and L4 autonomous driving, the vehicle itself can supervise the surrounding environment and complete driving operations.
As for the L5, there are more relaxed restrictions on speed, road sections, and the car has full control over all operations, not so much the driver as the passenger, and sleeping in the car.
Currently, Tesla has achieved Level 2 autonomous driving.
Google's Waymo, one of the leaders in autonomous driving technology, has already achieved Level 4 autonomous driving, but please note that it is in a limited area.
So it is conceivable that Apple, as a newcomer in the automotive field, is extremely difficult to achieve L5 self-driving.
When will it happen? We don't know. But Apple's internal automotive team overturned the decision, and the news of personnel reshuffling is common. When the shipments and market share of new energy vehicles are soaring, it is an established fact that Apple cars have not yet entered the game.
Not even talking about autonomous driving, Apple doesn't even have a shadow of car intelligence, seat comfort, chassis handling, etc. Competitors will not wait for you, the market struggle is destined to be fierce, and Apple is facing the surviving king when it re-enters the game.
At the moment, Apple has three more ways to go.
One is to reduce their high requirements for cars, but is such an apple still an apple?
The second is to buy a company as a ticket, and the best time should be when Tesla CEO Elon Musk approached Apple, but there is no regret medicine in the world.
The third is to work hard to bring out high-level autonomous driving and redefine the car.
Of course, no matter which one you choose, you need the most precious time. Other manufacturers will only get stronger and stronger, and after one or the other, Apple's re-entry will have less and less impact on the automotive industry.
No, Apple likes the pragmatic name: machine learning Xi
As ill-fated as the Apple car is, there is also AI.
Most people's impression of Apple's AI comes from Siri, as one of the earliest voice intelligent assistants, if you now compare it with the assistants released by vivo, Xiaomi, OPPO, and Huawei, it is the "dumbest" one.
Siri doesn't seem to have evolved by leaps and bounds over the years, and it will answer you accurately if you ask simple questions and don't be too picky about your words.
According to a former Apple employee involved in the Siri project, the Siri team has been in turmoil since 2018.
Another worker said that in the seven years he was in charge of Apple's Siri project, he had experienced four bosses, and sometimes he didn't know what he was doing.
It is reported that there are two main problems with Siri.
The first is that leadership is reluctant to invest more money in analyzing Siri usage, so engineers can't know how many users use Siri, how often, what Xi they are used to, and whether the results are satisfactory.
Apple's design team refused to allow users to respond to Siri's answers, leaving the development team unable to understand the model's limitations. On the other hand, ChatGP allows users to rate whether each answer is good or bad.
The second is that Apple doesn't want Siri to talk nonsense, and it has extremely high requirements for correct answers. As a result, Apple doesn't let Siri have long conversations and writes multiple replies beforehand, which makes Siri's code cumbersome and difficult to change.
According to the engineers responsible for improving Siri, the Siri database contains a huge list of words in 24 languages for various music artists, restaurants, and other places, which is like a "big snowball" that would be crammed into a whole bunch of content if you wanted to add a word to the database.
This results in simple phrase updates that require a rebuild of the entire database, as short as six weeks, or up to a year for complications.
What's more, OpenAI collects user chats to train models to improve performance, and Apple doesn't allow any privacy challenges, so Siri can't be a creative AI assistant like ChatGPT.
Siri's approach to AI isn't working, so Apple is hiring more researchers for large models. According to Apple's official website, there are more than 600 related positions.
Apple is also said to have built its own large language model framework "Ajax" and applied it to functions such as Maps and Siri. At the same time, Apple is also secretly developing Apple GPT, which is being used in a small and medium-sized area among internal employees.
Apple has also recently negotiated multi-year agreements worth at least $50 million with major news and publishing organizations to access their materials to help train generative AI.
Through these bits and pieces, you can see that Apple is doing things in a hurry, but as Cook said at the earnings conference, "the potential of certain technologies is obviously very interesting, but the addition and use of certain technologies should be done in a very cautious way." ”
At the same time, don't forget to be cautious, it makes sense, but it's also a bit contradictory.
So, even with Siri's first-mover advantage, we haven't seen Apple's AI and large models come out yet.
At the same time that Apple realized it later, vivo, Xiaomi, OPPO, and Huawei have already used the "Super Assistant" + N mode of multiple apps that have applied AI large model technology, allowing users to experience the joy of AI first.
Large models ranging from one billion to 175 billion parameters have also been released and open-sourced, and are equipped with corresponding development kits.
Although Apple has also made some progress in text recognition, subject cutout, and more, the innovation and application of its AI technology is still relatively lagging behind compared to other tech giants.
Will Apple's AI be able to catch up and stir up the industry?
Apple's future
As the saying goes, there are no more than three things. Neither automotive nor AI have taken the lead, and it's not too late for the headset market to get in.
Originally, I wrote a lot of words, and I wanted to summarize the hardware capabilities and market share of Meta, PICO, and Valve, so as to see whether Apple's Vision Pro can drive a new round of craze and future development potential. However, the Vision Pro is targeted to be launched around February, and I believe that the purchase intent and user reputation at that time are the best conclusions.
Can virtual reality lead Apple to the next decade?
We don't know, but what we do know is that virtual reality, AI, and new energy are all right. These are all new tracks, which is a good thing for Apple, because it doesn't have to be killed in the old track like he did to beat Nokia.
Therefore, Apple can still make a lot of money by relying on its soft and hard business, and live well with its system ecological moat.
Apple doesn't have to worry too much about failure like other companies, because it's too big and too profitable, and the profit of one AirPods business alone is worth one Xiaomi, and the annual revenue is as rich as the country.
It has money to smash, time to lose, and at least several chances to fail, coupled with the company's cultural beliefs and the ultimate pursuit of user experience, which makes it seem to be slow to respond to all cutting-edge technologies.
From a small ship that changed the world to a giant ship that carries thousands of employees. There are many people and many opinions, and the progress of some projects will indeed be blocked, as the old saying goes: the ship is difficult to turn around.
Fortunately, Apple still has a strong brand presence and user loyalty, which is the foundation for its future growth. Second, Apple has rich experience and technology accumulation in hardware design, operating system research and development, and ecosystem construction, and these advantages are expected to be further exerted in future development.
Finally, as the global technology industry continues to change and upgrade, Apple also needs to continue to innovate and adapt to the changing market environment. After all, a small butterfly flapping its wings can cause a huge storm from a distance.
Although Apple has suffered some setbacks and failures in the field of AI and automobiles, the future development prospects are still full of opportunities and challenges. By constantly innovating and improving its own technology and strategic layout, Apple is expected to achieve greater success in the future competition and change the world as a giant.