By John Moltz
May 3, 2024 2:00 PM PT
This Week in Apple: Event horizon
Oh, you like bizarre Apple rumors? Name M4. Apple is “behind” on AI and will probably still be after next week’s iPad event, something the EU must have just heard about.
Putting the cart M4 the horse
New iPads will be announced next week and Mark Gurman slid in just before the wacky rumor deadline.
“Gurman: New iPad Pro may actually be powered by the M4 chip, touting AI features”
An M4? In this economy?
This caused a great frenzy of speculation about how this might possibly come to pass. Would the new iPads be AI powerhouses, fueled by an all-new chip secretly made in an heretofore unknown orbital TSMC fabrication plant? Would this “M4” really be an “M3” with “4” written over the “3” with a Sharpie? Or was Gurman all hopped up on goofballs? Tune in Tuesday morning to find out.
Apple will surely make some references to AI next week, but as we will see in the next section, it seems it will just be a soupçon rather than the firehose of repetition that “5G” got at 2020’s iPhone 12 event.
Just a hint of AI
The Washington Post asks:
“Apple is behind in AI and killed its self-driving car project. What’s next?”
Uh, well, excuse me, but how can Apple be “behind” when it is conducting double secret advanced AI in an international lab?
“Apple has ‘secretive’ advanced AI lab in Europe; poached specialists from Google”
The Financial Times apparently only identifies the lab as being in Zurich but it seems pretty safe to describe it as a mountaintop lair. Feel free to make your own dioramas of what it looks like, but just know that mine has no fewer than 14 machine-gun-wielding guards on skis. I’d have added more but this shoe box just isn’t that big.
Also, I ran out of army men.
One of them is actually a cowboy.
Again, I feel like I have to point out that a lot of the AI that is currently being pushed out is 10 lbs. of hot garbage stuffed into a small device that should more rightly have just been an app, except for the fact that VC funding is the zombie virus that will destroy us all.
AI startup: “We have half an idea. But we worked someplace famous.”
VC community: [fires millions of dollars at them out of a t-shirt cannon]
And what do you get for all that money?
“The Worst Product I’ve Ever Reviewed… For Now”
“Rabbit R1 review: nothing to see here”
(The latter is so advanced, so ahead of Apple, that you apparently type in your passwords for services via VNC. Enjoy the security!)
If you’re going to be behind on something, this seems like a better thing to be behind on than, say, a wheat thresher.
Despite Apple being so dreadfully behind, the company will reportedly only offer a “hint” at its AI ambitions next week.
…Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook is expected to hint at new artificial intelligence features next week and unveil them at the company’s World Wide Developers Conference in June.
Where have you gone, Trip Chowdhry? A nation turns its lonely eyes to you. Whoo whoo whoo.
Gotta catch ‘em all
The EU apparently woke up one day a few weeks ago and remembered that Apple also sells iPads.
“EU will force Apple to add app sideloading, alternative browser engine support to iPad”
Apple might not be happy about it, but it seemed relatively prepared, subsequently sighing heavily and stating that iPadOS would be getting all the same changes that were made to iOS for the EU. While it might make even less sense from a monopoly standpoint, it just makes sense from an operational standpoint. Who wants to have third-party store software they can use on their iPhone but not on their iPad?
Next, the EU will build a time machine and go back to demand sideloading on the iPod shuffle.
[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.]