✱ Credibility & Complacency

2025-03-13

John Gruber on the Apple Intelligence shambles and the undeniable fact that Something Is Rotten in the State of Cupertino:

In broad strokes, there are four stages of “doneness” or “realness” to features announced by any company:

1. Features that the company’s own product representatives will demo, themselves, in front of the media. Smaller, more personal demonstrations are more credible than on-stage demos. But the stakes for demo fail are higher in an auditorium full of observers.

2. Features that the company will allow members of the media (or other invited outside observers and experts) to try themselves, for a limited time, under the company’s supervision and guidance. Vision Pro demos were like this at WWDC 2023. A bunch of us got to use pre-release hardware and in-progress software for 30 minutes. It wasn’t like free range “Do whatever you want” — it was a guided tour. But we were the ones actually using the product. Apple allowed hands-on demos for a handful of media (not me) at Macworld Expo back in 2007 with prototype original iPhones — some of the “apps” were just screenshots, but most of the iPhone actually worked.

3. Features that are released as beta software for developers, enthusiasts, and the media to use on their own devices, without limitation or supervision.

4. Features that actually ship to regular users, and hardware that regular users can just go out and buy.

I began thinking about this as a conceptual model when it was discussed ahead of the article on Dithering:

1. They demo it live, but they don’t let you play with it. (It appears to work, but only in their hands.).
   Alert Level 1: Sceptical
2. They let the select individuals get hands-on, but only under supervision. (It’s real and demonstrable, but in a controlled setting or sandbox.).
   Alert Level 2: Circumspect
3. It launches in beta, you can use it freely, but it’s not final. (The feature is released into the wild, but it’s still evolving.).
   Alert Level 3: Curious
4. It has shipped, it’s in real users’ hands, and it’s the new normal. (No more speculation or beta-fuelled approximation — it’s fully rolled out and roaming wild.).
   Alert Level 4: Accepting

Of course, the Apple Intelligence FUBAR doesn't end there, as John Gruber highlights:

We didn’t get to try any of the Apple Intelligence features ourselves. There was no Apple Intelligence “hands on”. But we did see a bunch of features demoed, live, by Apple folks. In my above hierarchy of realness, they were all at level 1.

But we didn’t see all aspects of Apple Intelligence demoed. None of the “more personalized Siri” features, the ones that Apple, in its own statement announcing their postponement, described as having “more awareness of your personal context, as well as the ability to take action for you within and across your apps.”

[...]

There were no demonstrations of any of that. Those features were all at level 0 on my hierarchy. That level is called vaporware. They were features Apple said existed, which they claimed would be shipping in the next year, and which they portrayed, to great effect, in the signature “Siri, when is my mom’s flight landing?” segment of the WWDC keynote itself, starting around the 1h:22m mark. Apple was either unwilling or unable to demonstrate those features in action back in June, even with Apple product marketing reps performing the demos from a prepared script using prepared devices.

This shouldn’t have just raised a concern in my head. It should have set off blinding red flashing lights and deafening klaxon alarms.

This gives us Alert Level 0: Sceptical: They show a promo video for the feature. (Pure marketing fluff; no real proof it exists.).

How did Apple lose credibility? Gradually, then suddenly.

Apple needs to get out of its echo chamber. It takes real hubris and complacency to architect and engineer your own FUBAR. There seems to be a complete lack of disconnect, the announcement (and subsequent marketing blitz¹) meant that this was always high-risk Bezos Type 1 decision:

Some decisions are consequential and irreversible or nearly irreversible – one-way doors – and these decisions must be made methodically, carefully, slowly, with great deliberation and consultation. If you walk through and don’t like what you see on the other side, you can’t get back to where you were before. We can call these Type 1 decisions. But most decisions aren’t like that – they are changeable, reversible – they’re two-way doors. If you’ve made a suboptimal Type 2 decision, you don’t have to live with the consequences for that long. You can reopen the door and go back through. Type 2 decisions can and should be made quickly by high judgment individuals or small groups.

As organizations get larger, there seems to be a tendency to use the heavy-weight Type 1 decision-making process on most decisions, including many Type 2 decisions. The end result of this is slowness, unthoughtful risk aversion, failure to experiment sufficiently, and consequently diminished invention. We’ll have to figure out how to fight that tendency.

Like John Gruber, I feel dumb for not setting my Alert Level to Cynical from the outset.

#words