By John Moltz

March 17, 2023 2:00 PM PT

This Week in Apple: The Lasso Cinematic Universe

AI continues to be a lot more A than I this week as Apple expands its manufacturing outside of China, and we enjoy the return of everyone’s favorite mustachioed man, Ted Lasso.

An AI walks into a bar…

AI is all the rage these days, despite it kinda not working all that great.

For my money, none of these technologies will be ready to ship until they pass the Friedman/Fridman test. You may be familiar with Lex Friedman, the co-host of The Rebound, host of Your Daily Lex, former writer for Macworld, and, most importantly, author of The Snuggie Sutra. He’s quite famous, very handsome, and has not one but two custom-made suits. Lex Fridman is some other guy.

But every AI in the world insists Lex is Lex, probably because enough people on the internet have misspelled “Fridman” as “Friedman,” and this is “artificial” intelligence, after all. Of course the answers are going to be made up. It’s right there in the name.

Microsoft’s Bing AI is no exception. When I asked it “Who is Lex Friedman?” it replied with Fridman’s details. When I told it they were two separate people, it admitted its mistake but told me Lex Friedman was a former editor at large for Wired (he is not) and the host of the “Lex Fridman Podcast.”

Wha? Huh? I just told you that wasn’t… arrgh. It’s like you’re not even listening, Bing.

All this wrongness, of course, has not stopped Microsoft from putting its AI into more products.

“Microsoft announces Copilot: the AI-powered future of Office documents”

It also hasn’t stopped the company from laying off its ethics and society team for AI. Very cool. Your AI so far has been belligerent, creepy, and flat-out wrong on any number of fairly obvious details. Anyone looking at the ethical and social impacts of continuing to roll this out would probably only tell you “OH, GOD, STOP!” And that would prevent you from being able to say “First!”

Total buzzkill.

Meanwhile, Apple is reportedly now also experimenting with AI-related features, but at a level that is more appropriate for a technology that continues to not be able to determine who is dead and who is alive. The company has rolled new natural language generating features into the latest tvOS beta, but only for one particular purpose.

As it currently stands, Apple is only using natural language generation for telling jokes with Siri on Apple TV.

Based on my experience with AI, that sounds about perfect. Because almost every time I do a query to an AI, the results make me laugh.

Navigating around troubled waters

As part of the company’s ongoing effort to reduce its sometimes problematic dependence on China, Apple is again expanding its presence in India. For the first time, AirPods will be manufactured in India at a new $200 million Foxconn factory. Just last year, Apple’s usually well-oiled pipeline was disrupted by riots in Zhengzhou after authorities placed workers under an extreme lockdown due to COVID concerns. It’s like having a tanker stuck in a canal, if the tanker was overworked and angry iPhone assemblers and the canal was a Chinese town that was being lit on fire.

Hey, if you think that analogy is tortured, you should see the working conditions.

Of course, this is not an easy transition. Apple currently produces more than 90 percent of iPhones in China and this is only expected to fall to 75 percent by 2025. As someone who has tried unsuccessfully to wean himself off of using Amazon as his default shopping destination, I can’t really blame Apple.

Let he who is without sin cast the first stone. Or let it be a worker who’s been locked in a company dorm for too long. Because, ugh.

Spoiler alert

Saved this story for last because, SPOILER ALERT, we’re going to talk about the new season of Ted Lasso.

Yes, the hit Apple TV+ show—the most popular on the streaming service—returned for its third season this week, and fans of the show (and just any confused football fans) can score the new Nike-branded gear worn by the Richmond Greyhounds this year. The real-world Nike logo takes the spot previously occupied by the fictional Lasso Cinematic Universe (LCU) company Verani Sports.

It seems only fair that reality should invade the LCU as the LCU previously invaded reality back in October of 2022.

“‘Ted Lasso’ Fictional Dating App Bantr Comes to Life on Bumble”

The real brain twister is FIFA Sports, which exists in both our universe and the LCU. But in our universe, you can play the fictional Greyhounds players in the console game.

“Ted Lasso, AFC Richmond are making their debut in EA Sports FIFA 23”

In the first episode this season, Ted states that he and his son have been playing FIFA to learn more about football. Which makes one wonder, are the Richmond players in LCU FIFA and do they have the same fairly high ratings as they do in our universe’s game?

This is indeed a multiversal question that could drive you to madness.¹

Still, Apple might want to think about creating its own expanded universe beyond Ted Lasso—an Apple Cinematic Universe, if you will. The crossover marketing potential is enormous.

[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.]

By John Moltz

March 10, 2023 2:00 PM PT

This Week in Apple: Stumbling into the future

Technology marches ever forward, even if it does stumble drunkenly from side to side, as it sometimes does. This week Apple contemplates its AI strategy, sets a ship date for its classical music app, and makes plans for new Macs. Reportedly.

Begun, the AI war has

Look out, Siri, because according to DigiTimes, Apple is going to re-examine its AI strategy.

It’s fine to reexamine your strategies at any time, and there are certainly some effective applications for AI, but given the current state of “AI” (which is really more machine learning than true “artificial intelligence”), this is an area where Apple should feel free to take its time.

Why? Well, let’s just pull a quote from thatMacRumors piece:

…companies like Apple, Meta, and Amazon… are purportedly making efforts to ensure Microsoft does not maintain its lead in AI.

Its what with the whatnow? Are we talking about the same AI?

“Microsoft says talking to Bing for too long can cause it to go off the rails”

“Microsoft limits Bing chat to five replies to stop the AI from getting real weird”

“Microsoft’s Bing AI plotted its revenge and offered me furry porn”

Is it this the AI we’re talking about? This is the one that’s supposedly ahead?

If I ship a personal jetpack that’s 15 liter-sized Diet Coke bottles, each hooked up to my own patented Mentos injection system, and all duct taped upside down to a backpack, does that put me in the lead in jetpack technology?

If so, forget I said that until I secure some VC funding.

As fun as these systems are to play with right now (mostly for the laughably incorrect answers they give to simple questions like “What year is it?”), this isn’t a kiddie pool Apple needs to play in yet.

Classic Apple

While Apple missed its deadline of the end of 2022 to ship a classical music app, the company announced this week that classical music stans can expect it to hit the App Store on March 28th. You can even pre-order it now and it’ll download automatically when it’s available.

But cue up Beethoven’s 5th, because there’s a catch.

Update: I’ve confirmed with Apple that Apple Music Classical will be iOS-only when it launches. No iPad app.

You people finally got a Weather app for the iPad and now you want a classical music app, too?! Unbelievable! Next you’ll want a Mac app. And four of you will want an Apple TV app. Where does it end?

Yeah, OK, probably right there. But, still.

Given how much Apple pushes developers to ship apps for all of its platforms, “ironic” seems too casual a word to describe the company shipping this app for just the iPhone. Let’s go with “cosmironic” or “ironimitastic”. Apple likes to make it seem easy to ship apps that work on all of its platforms, but it’s still work—work that it clearly doesn’t even want to do itself, sometimes.

And it doesn’t even have to go through the app approval process, which is still like having to run an obstacle course built on an ever-changing Rube Goldberg machine. Even a classic like Untitled Goose Game was, as Cabel Sasser details, rejected twice before Panic simply gave up.

It’s nice that Apple still ships some products that are just for a segment of its customers. It’s too bad this one’s just on a segment of its platforms.

Skip counting new Macs

The Mac rumors will continue until… well, long past when morale improves. And then degrades again. Possibly until the heat death of the universe, it seems.

A 15-inch Air could arrive as soon as April, according to display analyst Ross Young. But what’s it going to run on? Is Apple really going to ship an M3-based Air less than a year after it shipped the M2-based Air? I’m not privy to Apple’s processor release schedule—despite all the flowers and chocolates I’ve sent to Johny Srouji—but that seems quick.

You’re already crushing the competition in performance per watt, Apple. Slow down. Where’s the fire?

Inside Intel-based laptops! Zing.

An M3-based iMac is also reportedly in the works, per Mark Gurman. If this is the next iMac to ship, that would mean the iMac line would completely skip the M2. And then would Apple ship a Mac Pro based on an M2 Ultra?

Of course, that would be fine, it’s just something about the numbering of Apple silicon that makes these updates seem stranger than when Macs ran on Intel’s chips with their unintelligible cacophony of lake-based names. Was Lake Wobegon faster than Crystal Lake? Who knew?

Anyway, enjoy the fruit basket, Johny.

And call me.

[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.]