1) the overall status of Apple, as laid out by Prof DeLong. There is serious concern about Apple's future due to their seeming inability to find any significant new technology or market since the Watch, itself only a perfection of technologies pioneered by others. (*)
2) that fear that "Apple Intelligence" aka Apple AI aka {Apple LLM +hype} is a 'failure' as described by John Gruber. The thing is, the current generation of "AI" - the sixth since 1945 by my counting, although it could be more - isn't even close to proving that it isn't pure fraud. Even setting aside the massive theft of intellectual property that "AI" firms have engaged in their products are so far showing that garbage-in/garbage-out holds true on a massive scale as well as local, and that pumping meme stonks is the real road to riches. Not much there there.
And I suspect with respect to (2) the real problem with Apple Intelligence is that the Apple researchers and employees assigned to work on it have too much integrity and respect for their employer's brand to pump out nonsense and call it polished, or even working, product.
(*) the M-series and current A-series CPUs are incredible feats of engineering and beat the pants off anything close to level playing field competition, but Apple doesn't sell them to anyone outside Apple AFAIK. The fate of the Lightning connector, superior to anything else for eight years but never licensed outside Apple and therefore with no tech industry or political support, should be instructive on this point but probably isn't.
The only Apple product I own is an iPad Pro that I use for choral singing. There is nothing that comes close to FourScore on Android. I build my own PC workstation for half the cost that I would pay for an Apple Mac. My phone is a Google Pixel which is also cheaper than an iPhone with similar specs. Apple is 'maybe' great if you buy into their OS but this entails added cost. Whether Apple is on the downward slope, I don't know.
There has been a massive build out of computer technology since-World War II. The program was more or less defined by some point in the 1970s. Elsewhere, I commented on my 1977 trip to see the ARPANET. By then, everyone was with the program: workstations, desktops, laptops, handhelds, wired and wireless connectivity, capability oriented security, mathematical cryptography, object oriented programming and so on. It took a while for the Dynabook prototype to turn into an iPad or the ARPANET to build out to 5G, but, so far, it has played out like Seldon's plan in Foundation.
Apple has been one of the big drivers for the past 30 years or so. For a while, it seemed Apple was the only innovator. Everyone in the industry copied their designs even though the company itself was often on the verge of bankruptcy. Meanwhile, the build out continued turning ideas and prototypes from the past into every day reality. It may have looked like pure innovation to the rest of the world, but for those with perspective, it was just checking off deliverables in a long term contract.
The current stagnation flows from otherwise successful corporate business models. Ever since Von Neumann refused to patent the modern CPU, progress has involved breaking down or ignoring barriers. There were the IBM and Microsoft antitrust cases that opened the industry. There was Al Gore's push to open the internet to commercial enterprise. There was Apple's deal with AT&T that opened the cellular networks to computing. Much modern computing technology was based on work arounds, jail breaking, unauthorized API use and the like.
This kind of innovation has been increasingly stifled by the DMCA, walled gardens, refusal to interoperate, felony violation of terms of service and other legal apparatus. The radio industry knew better, so it relied on patent pools and tolerating bootleg jalopy radios to advance the technology and grow the market. In many industries, restrictions on users have slowed or stopped innovation even as it helped the bottom line, at least for a while.
Apple is now part of the problem. The Europeans know something is broken, but they aren't sure of how to fix it. Has Apple peaked? Possibly. They might just be at a local maximum, but getting past that point will require more antitrust enforcement and more openness to user directed innovation.
Here is a link to a useful independent daily newsletter about Apple: https://www.aboveavalon.com/membership. I’ve subscribed to this newsletter, Above Avalon, for many years and found it to be generally quite accurate in describing Apple’s management, culture, dynamics, etc. based on my own professional dealings with the company. A recent issue (March 14) focused on John Gruber and his “something is rotten” thesis. In a nutshell, it concludes that “legitimate criticism regarding the approach Apple used to announce advanced Siri features was overshadowed by attacks on Cook that went too far.“ It dismisses Gruber’s argument that Cook “looks to Wall Street to figure out how to lead Apple” and highlights the increased pace of innovations released over the past year. My point is simply to voice a word of caution about relying to exclusively or heavily on any single public business commentator.
I only recognize the phrase "catastrophic success" because Bret Devereaux employed it during his recent appearance on the Prancing Pony podcast. But it is a useful concept and I wish I had encountered it earlier.
It is a podcast run by people who take Tolkien too seriously. A couple of times they've had Devereaux on specifically to take military actions in Tolkien too seriously. He has many interesting things to say about ancient and medieval warfare, cavalry, chariots, sieges, fodder, and so on. This is the episode I was referring to: https://theprancingponypodcast.com/2025/03/16/363-til-you-find-your-ancient-military-historian/
Back when the Stanford AI Lab was out in the hills west of Palo Alto and not on the main campus, the Prancing Pony was what they called the AI lab vending machine. It was hooked up to their PDP-10 and sold the usual snacks and soft drinks as well as beer and Peking ravioli. It took coins and bills but also let you charge things to your PDP-10 account. You could only buy beer if your account noted that you were of age, 18 back then. There was a Chinese restaurant in the area that supplied the ravioli. It was like living in the future without the ads.
Back in 1977, I and some friends took an internet tour that included the Stanford AI Lab, SRI, Rand, ISI, PARC and a good number of other nodes. The internet back then had eight bit network addresses, so it could support only a modest number of hosts. Jake Feinler ran the NIC at SRI and was in charge of coordinating everything. Even at the time, it was obvious that we were visiting the future. In retrospect, I'm extremely glad to have taken the tour.
I see two distinct issues here:
1) the overall status of Apple, as laid out by Prof DeLong. There is serious concern about Apple's future due to their seeming inability to find any significant new technology or market since the Watch, itself only a perfection of technologies pioneered by others. (*)
2) that fear that "Apple Intelligence" aka Apple AI aka {Apple LLM +hype} is a 'failure' as described by John Gruber. The thing is, the current generation of "AI" - the sixth since 1945 by my counting, although it could be more - isn't even close to proving that it isn't pure fraud. Even setting aside the massive theft of intellectual property that "AI" firms have engaged in their products are so far showing that garbage-in/garbage-out holds true on a massive scale as well as local, and that pumping meme stonks is the real road to riches. Not much there there.
And I suspect with respect to (2) the real problem with Apple Intelligence is that the Apple researchers and employees assigned to work on it have too much integrity and respect for their employer's brand to pump out nonsense and call it polished, or even working, product.
(*) the M-series and current A-series CPUs are incredible feats of engineering and beat the pants off anything close to level playing field competition, but Apple doesn't sell them to anyone outside Apple AFAIK. The fate of the Lightning connector, superior to anything else for eight years but never licensed outside Apple and therefore with no tech industry or political support, should be instructive on this point but probably isn't.
The only Apple product I own is an iPad Pro that I use for choral singing. There is nothing that comes close to FourScore on Android. I build my own PC workstation for half the cost that I would pay for an Apple Mac. My phone is a Google Pixel which is also cheaper than an iPhone with similar specs. Apple is 'maybe' great if you buy into their OS but this entails added cost. Whether Apple is on the downward slope, I don't know.
Copied and sent to my son in law who works at Apple Cupertino. He will survive no matter what fate awaits Apple.
There has been a massive build out of computer technology since-World War II. The program was more or less defined by some point in the 1970s. Elsewhere, I commented on my 1977 trip to see the ARPANET. By then, everyone was with the program: workstations, desktops, laptops, handhelds, wired and wireless connectivity, capability oriented security, mathematical cryptography, object oriented programming and so on. It took a while for the Dynabook prototype to turn into an iPad or the ARPANET to build out to 5G, but, so far, it has played out like Seldon's plan in Foundation.
Apple has been one of the big drivers for the past 30 years or so. For a while, it seemed Apple was the only innovator. Everyone in the industry copied their designs even though the company itself was often on the verge of bankruptcy. Meanwhile, the build out continued turning ideas and prototypes from the past into every day reality. It may have looked like pure innovation to the rest of the world, but for those with perspective, it was just checking off deliverables in a long term contract.
The current stagnation flows from otherwise successful corporate business models. Ever since Von Neumann refused to patent the modern CPU, progress has involved breaking down or ignoring barriers. There were the IBM and Microsoft antitrust cases that opened the industry. There was Al Gore's push to open the internet to commercial enterprise. There was Apple's deal with AT&T that opened the cellular networks to computing. Much modern computing technology was based on work arounds, jail breaking, unauthorized API use and the like.
This kind of innovation has been increasingly stifled by the DMCA, walled gardens, refusal to interoperate, felony violation of terms of service and other legal apparatus. The radio industry knew better, so it relied on patent pools and tolerating bootleg jalopy radios to advance the technology and grow the market. In many industries, restrictions on users have slowed or stopped innovation even as it helped the bottom line, at least for a while.
Apple is now part of the problem. The Europeans know something is broken, but they aren't sure of how to fix it. Has Apple peaked? Possibly. They might just be at a local maximum, but getting past that point will require more antitrust enforcement and more openness to user directed innovation.
Here is a link to a useful independent daily newsletter about Apple: https://www.aboveavalon.com/membership. I’ve subscribed to this newsletter, Above Avalon, for many years and found it to be generally quite accurate in describing Apple’s management, culture, dynamics, etc. based on my own professional dealings with the company. A recent issue (March 14) focused on John Gruber and his “something is rotten” thesis. In a nutshell, it concludes that “legitimate criticism regarding the approach Apple used to announce advanced Siri features was overshadowed by attacks on Cook that went too far.“ It dismisses Gruber’s argument that Cook “looks to Wall Street to figure out how to lead Apple” and highlights the increased pace of innovations released over the past year. My point is simply to voice a word of caution about relying to exclusively or heavily on any single public business commentator.
I only recognize the phrase "catastrophic success" because Bret Devereaux employed it during his recent appearance on the Prancing Pony podcast. But it is a useful concept and I wish I had encountered it earlier.
What is the "Prancing Pony" podcast?
It is a podcast run by people who take Tolkien too seriously. A couple of times they've had Devereaux on specifically to take military actions in Tolkien too seriously. He has many interesting things to say about ancient and medieval warfare, cavalry, chariots, sieges, fodder, and so on. This is the episode I was referring to: https://theprancingponypodcast.com/2025/03/16/363-til-you-find-your-ancient-military-historian/
Back when the Stanford AI Lab was out in the hills west of Palo Alto and not on the main campus, the Prancing Pony was what they called the AI lab vending machine. It was hooked up to their PDP-10 and sold the usual snacks and soft drinks as well as beer and Peking ravioli. It took coins and bills but also let you charge things to your PDP-10 account. You could only buy beer if your account noted that you were of age, 18 back then. There was a Chinese restaurant in the area that supplied the ravioli. It was like living in the future without the ads.
Back in 1977, I and some friends took an internet tour that included the Stanford AI Lab, SRI, Rand, ISI, PARC and a good number of other nodes. The internet back then had eight bit network addresses, so it could support only a modest number of hosts. Jake Feinler ran the NIC at SRI and was in charge of coordinating everything. Even at the time, it was obvious that we were visiting the future. In retrospect, I'm extremely glad to have taken the tour.