By John Moltz
February 10, 2023 2:00 PM PT
This Week in Apple: Pie in the Skynet
Apple looks to the future as two of its rivals make AI announcements, rumors swirl of an even more expensive iPhone, and the company would like some games for the Mac, please.
Bing, where can I dispose of a dead loveseat?
This was a big week for announcing your new AI strategy so if you didn’t have one ready to go, that’s on you.
Google announced that its AI service, Bard, is now in a private beta test and will be opened to the public “in the coming weeks”. No word on whether or not the number of those weeks is closer to 2 or 52, but if history is any guide, Google will lose interest in the project by about 260 weeks. In fact, it’s already having a bit of a rough start.
Meanwhile, Microsoft announced an AI-aided version of Bing, which the company says will let you ask real questions from how to attend your first EDM festival to whether or not a loveseat will fit in your 2019 Honda Odyssey. This is helpful because there is a direct path between EDM fandom and owning a minivan and I don’t think we talk about that enough.
These announcements leave many people wondering where Apple is in this space. Apple’s not really in the search business so it doesn’t seem like it really has to ship an AI chatbot, but if this technology can be used to make Siri better, that’d probably be a good thing. Anything that would make Siri better would be a good thing. The company is holding an AI summit for employees next week, so look for some leaks that will drive Tim Cook to fits of apoplexy.
While not a big fan of the technology in general, I have to admit that this use case, having a chatbot respond to spam texts for you, has me thinking maybe there is a good reason to have a system-wide chat AI on iOS.
The iPhone Thicc
Who’s looking forward to paying even more for an iPhone?! Many of you, apparently, because the iPhone 14 Pro line has largely sold better than the iPhone 14. Don’t think that Apple hasn’t noticed. If you keep buying the more expensive iPhones, you shouldn’t wonder why the price of iPhones keeps going up.
“They want expensive phones, eh? Then, by God, we will give them expensive phones! Ready for maximum chamfer!”
Now the company is reportedly considering:
…releasing a new top-of-the-line iPhone alongside future Pro and Pro Max models, tentatively referred to as “iPhone Ultra,”…
Mark Gurman indicates this high-end iPhone would be part of the iPhone 16 lineup in 2024, if it becomes a reality. Naturally, the device would come at a… well, what do call a price point that’s above the iPhone Pro Max’s already premium pricing? Premiumier? Premultimate?
A German designer has posted speculative renders of what the device might look like if it were based on the Apple Watch Ultra styling, resulting in an iPhone that looks thick enough to have great battery life—which is how we know for certain this is not a design that Apple will use.
Apple follows a strictly Buddhist approach to iPhone design, teaching the impermanence of battery life, suffering through repeated charging cycles, and non-self, when your iPhone goes dead and you may as well not exist anymore. Through this you will attain enlightenment.
Game on?
In an interview with TechCrunch’s Matthew Panzarino this week, Apple’s vice president of Platform Architecture and Hardware Technologies Tim Millet and VP of Worldwide Product Marketing Bob Borchers made the pitch for the Mac’s potential as a gaming machine.
Of course, you have to say “potential” because the Mac hasn’t been a serious contender in gaming since… let me just pretend to check the calendar here… forever.
Man, this calendar goes back really far. The Big Bang picture is cool.
Still, the company has high hopes for the future.
Millet has been building chips for 30 years and has been at Apple for nearly 17. He says that with M1, Apple saw an opportunity to “really hit it.”
Is Millet a Star Trek: Strange New Worlds fan? Does Craig Federighi’s hair make him wistfully think of Captain Pike? Sadly, Panzarino fails to ask these probing questions.
“Gamers are a serious bunch. And I don’t think we’re going to fool anybody by saying that overnight we’re going to make Mac a great gaming platform. We’re going to take a long view on this.”
That’s probably wise because, as Dan pointed out this week, Apple has a real chicken-and-egg problem—developers don’t make games for the Mac because there’s no audience, gamers don’t buy Macs because there are no games—that prevents this from getting solved in a fortnight. (Yes, the temptation to spell that differently was high, but I pushed through it.)
A lot of us would probably love it if the Mac had more games, but when the big Apple gaming news of the week is an iOS port of a 30-year-old game, you know the company’s got a long row to hoe.
Given the options of Apple building an AI system, shipping a more expensive iPhone, or making the Mac into a great gaming platform, I know which one I’d bet on. Start saving up for an iPhone Ultra.
[John Moltz is a Six Colors contributor. You can find him on Mastodon at Mastodon.social/@moltz and he sells items with references you might get on Cotton Bureau.]