Or everyone is starting to figure out that the garden looks just as good outside the fence as it does inside the fence. Technology has been converging for many years now to the point where most devices especially smart phones have reached a bottleneck and no one can make things go any faster and there is really no big need for even more massive storage space for the average person. So phones have hit a ceiling and the place that Apple once had where they were one of the few manufacturers that made good phones is now overshadowed by lots of other companies that are comparable or near comparable. Does the average person really care if they have a high definition 20MP camera or a 22 MP camera. All they care about is being able to scroll through Tik Tok, FB or Instagram and no one really seems to care what device they use to do that any more.
Apple still has a pretty solid ecosystem that makes it hard to break out of. For example:
airdrop and sharing in general - experience sucks pretty much anywhere else
watch, phone, and laptop all working together - iMessage, notifications, etc
iCloud - the experience is essentially seamless if you use all Apple products
I don’t think people will be leaving Apple anytime soon, and those who don’t use it probably don’t know what they’re missing.
I’m personally on Linux and it works well for me, but I recognize that people tend to stay where they’re at, and I think Apple is probably more attractive to people who decide to leave Windows than Linux is (unless they need games, and Linux still seems to have better compatibility).
From a technical point of view I agree … I have a few friends who work in music and visual arts and they swear by Apple products and software
But to average users and people who just want to go online with social media, snap a picture, share it, forget it and do it over and over and over again … they really don’t care if it’s an apple product or not. The family and friends I know that are not technically minded only understand one key technological specification when it comes to devices … PRICE and COST.
If they can’t afford a $1,000 apple phone … they’ll buy a $500 android phone … or just stick to their five year apple phone and won’t upgrade until they can buy a used $500 apple phone.
That’s not what I see. In my area, people buy Apple because it’s trendy. If they can’t afford the $1000 Apple phone, they’ll lease it and make payments. If they’re too young, they’ll convince their parents that they need it.
The ones with Android phones generally have a reason for it beyond cost. Once that reason is gone (e.g. Apple supports whatever the use case is), they may be swayed to get an iPhone. But once someone has an Apple device, they generally stick to it.
The Apple experience isn’t necessarily better, but it is sticky.
It’s already here. I run AI models via my GPU with training data from various sources for both searching/GPT-like chat and images. You can basically point-and-click and do this with GPT4All which integrates a chat client and let’s you just select some popular AI models without knowing how to really do anything or use the CLI. It basically gives you a ChatGPT experience offline using your GPU if it has enough VRAM or CPU if it doesn’t for whatever particular model you’re using. It doesn’t do images I don’t think but there are other projects out there that simplify doing it using your own stuff.
The m series Mac s with unified memory and ML cores are insanely powerful and much more flexible because your 32gb of system memory is now GPU vram etc
Or everyone is starting to figure out that the garden looks just as good outside the fence as it does inside the fence. Technology has been converging for many years now to the point where most devices especially smart phones have reached a bottleneck and no one can make things go any faster and there is really no big need for even more massive storage space for the average person. So phones have hit a ceiling and the place that Apple once had where they were one of the few manufacturers that made good phones is now overshadowed by lots of other companies that are comparable or near comparable. Does the average person really care if they have a high definition 20MP camera or a 22 MP camera. All they care about is being able to scroll through Tik Tok, FB or Instagram and no one really seems to care what device they use to do that any more.
Apple still has a pretty solid ecosystem that makes it hard to break out of. For example:
I don’t think people will be leaving Apple anytime soon, and those who don’t use it probably don’t know what they’re missing.
I’m personally on Linux and it works well for me, but I recognize that people tend to stay where they’re at, and I think Apple is probably more attractive to people who decide to leave Windows than Linux is (unless they need games, and Linux still seems to have better compatibility).
From a technical point of view I agree … I have a few friends who work in music and visual arts and they swear by Apple products and software
But to average users and people who just want to go online with social media, snap a picture, share it, forget it and do it over and over and over again … they really don’t care if it’s an apple product or not. The family and friends I know that are not technically minded only understand one key technological specification when it comes to devices … PRICE and COST.
If they can’t afford a $1,000 apple phone … they’ll buy a $500 android phone … or just stick to their five year apple phone and won’t upgrade until they can buy a used $500 apple phone.
That’s not what I see. In my area, people buy Apple because it’s trendy. If they can’t afford the $1000 Apple phone, they’ll lease it and make payments. If they’re too young, they’ll convince their parents that they need it.
The ones with Android phones generally have a reason for it beyond cost. Once that reason is gone (e.g. Apple supports whatever the use case is), they may be swayed to get an iPhone. But once someone has an Apple device, they generally stick to it.
The Apple experience isn’t necessarily better, but it is sticky.
People buy anything because of trends. Not just Apple products.
Next tech is probably going to be dedicated GPUs or similar to run personalized AI
It’s already here. I run AI models via my GPU with training data from various sources for both searching/GPT-like chat and images. You can basically point-and-click and do this with GPT4All which integrates a chat client and let’s you just select some popular AI models without knowing how to really do anything or use the CLI. It basically gives you a ChatGPT experience offline using your GPU if it has enough VRAM or CPU if it doesn’t for whatever particular model you’re using. It doesn’t do images I don’t think but there are other projects out there that simplify doing it using your own stuff.
The m series Mac s with unified memory and ML cores are insanely powerful and much more flexible because your 32gb of system memory is now GPU vram etc