Latest Thoughts
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Tic Tak Yo
To play the game, tap the text below that says Play Now, and enjoy!
Fully AI-generated MVP from this sketch I did of an MVP application.
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đź“ş Thoughts on Tech & Things New AI Album
Be sure to check out the full album on Soundcloud!
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🧠Anthropic Drops Claude 3
Anthropic has just released a set of improved AI models, the Claude 3 family. As a long-time fan of Claude, I couldn’t be more excited to kick the tires and see how it compares with OpenAI’s ChatGPT 4. Anthropic claims that Claude 3 is just as good as, if not better than, its rival ChatGPT 4. Of course, marketing speak is one thing, and the real proof is always in the pudding.
I’m eager to put the Claude 3 family through its paces and taste test this latest offering from Anthropic. Claude has been my favorite AI model for a while now, consistently impressing me with its performance and capabilities.
Introducing the next generation of ClaudeToday, we’re announcing the Claude 3 model family, which sets new industry benchmarks across a wide range of cognitive tasks. The family includes three state-of-the-art models in ascending order of capability: Claude 3 Haiku, Claude 3 Sonnet, and Claude 3 Opus. -
🧠Apple responds to the EU and Spotify
Apple’s pissed. The closest thing I can remember to this is Steve Jobs’ open letter “Thoughts on Music” in 2007 – but this, this is something very different. You can feel and hear the tone of Apple and tell how upset they are about not only the 2 billion euro fine but also their continued battle with regulators in the EU.
At the heart of their argument is that Apple provided the hardware, software, and services that helped companies like Spotify become what they are. Yet, Spotify does not pay Apple for the use of most of the services they use to deliver a product on their platform. It’s true and really leans into the larger question of how much Apple or any company can squeeze value from their platform.
I know it’s a different business, but lately, I’ve come to think of the App Store as similar to credit cards. Credit card companies charge a fee, ironically named a discount, to retailers per transaction. Still, to most customers, the privileges of using a card are not only free but sometimes rewarded with discounts, points, or other benefits. Similarly, developers pay Apple to be in the App Store and pay fees on their sales, which Apple uses to provide its customers with a growing set of subsidized services like free operating system upgrades to the latest version of the iPhone. For Apple, what’s at stake is how they monetize the App Store and the iPhone, iPad, and other devices to provide other services we as customers see as free – like points on a credit card.
Of course, what makes this tough is that Apple Music competes with Spotify, and for Spotify to pay its competitor a 30% cut of its subscription payments makes it hard to compete directly on price. I think the question is not just about how Apple makes money from the App Store but also how owning the App Store allows it to prop up its other business interests, like Apple TV+ and Apple Music that can compete in the same stores as its competitors but without the cost burden.
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🧠My Thoughts on Zuckerberg’s Apple Vision Pro Review
If you told me Meta, formally Facebook, would be a leader in pushing open standards for AI and Mixed Reality, I would have called you insane, but here we are. Mark Zuckerberg offered his review of Apple Vision Pro and made some excellent points. I also stated in my newsletter last year that Meta really needed a true competitor in the mixed reality space – the Android to Apple’s iPhone.
I own a Meta Quest 2, but have only trialed the Meta Quest 3, and I found both devices to be fantastic. Meta Quest was revolutionary as the first non-hobbyist portable headset that broke free from reliance on a gaming computer or console. I loved it initially and used it every day for maybe 2 weeks, but then it ended up in a drawer only to pop out occasionally as a party favor.
Looking back, the device itself was great, but the app ecosystem was lacking; most of the content felt like game demos rather than full experiences, lacking that killer app to make me want to keep using it.
Apple Vision Pro has taken a different approach from the start, promoting itself as a productivity device that can also do entertainment or gaming. Most of Apple’s ads and demos show people using it in work or home settings, compared to Meta’s vision of walking through a social media metaverse or battling blocks with lightsabers. Meta Quest felt like an extension of my game consoles, whereas Apple Vision Pro feels like an extension of the Mac.
This, for me, is the key difference: Apple Vision Pro, from day one, leveraged the mature iPad ecosystem with access to tons of apps like Slack. I could use my Mac and external keyboard seamlessly – it just worked. The Apple TV app surfaced shows I liked, and between apps like Disney Plus and Crunchyroll I could watch what I wanted. Apple scratched a productivity itch I didn’t know I had while leaning into their tightly integrated ecosystem.
Zuckerberg is right that Meta Quest has strengths, but the missions of the two companies have differed from the start. Now that each has a direct competitor, I’m excited to see the next generation of devices push the category forward.
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🧠Vision Pro Apps Lag at Launch
Apple’s Vision Pro has sold an estimated 180,000 pre-orders, but Techcrunch reported that developers have built only 150 native apps. This comes after news that major companies like Netflix, YouTube, and Spotify are not making apps available, pushing users to their websites. Across online developer forums, discontent is growing over Apple’s tighter control. Some claim the lower turnout of developer boycotts is underway.
At first, I assumed prior hardware launches like the Apple Watch and Apple TV probably had similarly low initial app numbers. But in fact, the Apple Watch debuted with 3,000 apps, and Apple TV had 500 at launch – far more than the Vision Pro.
That said, I’m still not convinced developers are outright boycotting the device. Many I’ve talked to assume initial Vision Pro sales volume likely only reaches the mid hundred thousands instead of the multi-millions Apple typically sees. That makes the return-on-investment for developing apps less straightforward. Developers also want to try the augmented reality headset firsthand before deciding whether specialized apps suit the user experience.
In the end, only time will tell if developers get behind the promising but untested Vision Pro platform. Apple getting devices out to early adopters could demonstrate possibilities and inspire developers to be creative. As an eager soon-to-be owner ready to explore this technological future, the potential can’t fully be judged until these revolutionary glasses are unleashed.
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🧠I think Meta might really get AI
If you missed it, Mark Zuckerberg dropped a few updates on AI to Instagram.
I must say, Meta has pleasantly surprised me in 2023. After years of feeling like an overbearing data collector leveraging questionable tactics with a cool but niche VR subsidiary, Meta’s pivot toward AI suddenly aligned perfectly with its strengths.
Meta’s LLaMA-2 ranks among the top LLMs and is accessible for custom deployment beyond competitors’ walled gardens. Intriguing research into video generation AI like Emu, text-to-speech tools, and its impressive image generator rival competitors. And Meta’s social data riches provide unmatched real-world training data to drive strikingly conversational bots — I interviewed its sports expert Bru modeled after Tom Brady.
Mark Zuckerberg’s latest open-access AI comments make promises that could cement Meta as a uniquely collaborative player compared to increasingly closed systems like OpenAI and Anthropic’s Claude. Combined with its research in personal assistants and the surprisingly great object-detecting Ray-Ban glasses rollout, Meta seems poised to lay an AI foundation leading the next computing era.
A new age of ambient computing is hatching with Meta an exciting contender. Its next chapter could bring encouraging surprises benefiting both consumers and company, even if warranted user data concerns remain.
Check out his post on Instagram.
Mark Zuckerberg on Instagram: “Some updates on our AI efforts. Our long term vision is to build general intelligence, open source it responsibly, and make it widely available so everyone can benefit. We’re bringing our two major AI research efforts (FAIR and GenAI) closer together to support this. We’re currently training our next-gen model Llama 3, and we’re building massive compute infrastructure to support our future roadmap, including 350k H100s by the end of this year — and overall almost 600k H100s equivalents of compute if you include other GPUs. Also really excited about our progress building new AI-centric computing devices like Ray Ban Meta smart glasses. Lots more to come soon.”61K likes, 4,899 comments – zuck on January 18, 2024: “Some updates on our AI efforts. Our long term vision is to build general intelligence, open sourc…” -
🧠Apple’s Vision Pro is available for preorder tomorrow morning!
The long wait is almost over. Tomorrow morning at 8 AM EST and 5 AM PST, the Vision Pro will be available for order, and it will hit stores on Feb 2nd. There’s still a metric ton we don’t know about these devices, but Apple invited a few folks such as The Verge, Engadget, and Daring Fireball, to preview the headset:
- It’s heavy. Thoughts varied on comfort after a 30-minute session, but all agreed you can feel the heft.
- The on-screen keyboard is usable in small doses.
- You can stand and move, but environments keep you from wandering too far.
- Spatial video recorded from an iPhone 15 looks amazing (best with limited motion).
- Disney has a day-one spatial app in beta with movie Easter eggs.
- No other VR/AR headset compares for seamlessly integrating real and virtual worlds – from camera lag to resolution.
These pre-reviews focus on entertainment so far. We’ll have to wait and see how well it handles productivity and tasks like Zoom calls with your digital persona. I’m sure more in-depth reviews are coming next week. I can’t wait to get my eyes inside these!
