Item — HN Reader

Apple's pattern has always been to enter markets later but with more refined, integrated solutions.

They weren't first with MP3 players, smartphones, tablets, or smartwatches - but when they entered, they often redefined those categories. The current AI situation likely follows this same playbook.

Apple's culture of secrecy means we only see what they choose to release.

What's often overlooked is that Apple might be playing a different game entirely.

Tim Cook's measured approach and the company's $100B+ R&D budget suggest they're building something substantial, not scrambling to catch up.

They may be betting that the current LLM race will commoditize, and the real value will come from integration and user experience - areas where Apple traditionally excels.

2 comments

"Apple's pattern has always been to enter markets later but with more refined, integrated solutions."

Err, no it isn't. It would be more accurate to state "the only thing that apple has recently been successful at is entering markets later with more refined, integrated solutions".

But it's definitely not the pattern of what they've tried.

The 100 billion also includes tons of expensive failures, like self-driving cars, etc. Those are not cheap, and they were definitely playing catch-up.

Here's an alternate take - apple fails at things sometimes, and has historically been able to get people to ignore and minimize the failure. Leading to folks saying things like "Apple's pattern has always been to enter markets later ...." because they just ignore the failures that contradict this. In this case, they are not just failing at AI, but are failing to get people to ignore the failure.

Why isn't that a better explanation than "apple never fails, they secretly were not trying to succeed at AI, they aren't spending billions trying to catch up, they are spending billions on a secret knockout blow that nobody knows about"

> Tim Cook's measured approach and the company's $100B+ R&D budget suggest they're building something substantial, not scrambling to catch up.

It could also be that Tim Cook is just an ops guy who only knows how to hill climb graphs up and to the right and Apple is running out of the innovation momentum it had when Jobs died.

Well it even if he’s only that it seems to work pretty well regarding sales over the last +10 years. Cash is the blood of companies so even if that’s not the best decisions ever regarding pure/first player innovations, as long as the company last more years alive in a competitive market it’s a win for him/them

Coca-Cola has made a ton of money over the years too, but they're still just selling sugar water, not "making something substantial".

That’s exactly my point, maybe for Tim Cook in the end what matters most is just to find a way to make the company money and lasts longer. Innovation might happen along the way or not, in the end money is what matters for him. I don’t say if it’s good or bad, it just is.