alt Hacker NewsEverybody wants a platform but nobody wants to spend what it takes to make a platform. That includes things like Windows Phone, Fire Phone, all the glasses, Humane, etc.
As much as everybody hates on OpenAI for chaotic management, they did buy Jony Ive and are presumably giving him everything he wants to build a platform for them. Even though it probably only buys them a 20% chance of success, they haven't doomed the project by underestimating what it takes budget-wise.
And they blew it. Maybe they blew it by not realizing that even long time Apple employees could get arrogant about security. Or maybe it was a loose ethical environment in general. Whatever is it the root or the problem, they set billions of dollars on fire maybe tens of billions, by being unnecessarily cute about Apple proprietary information when they could've been above reproach. They had the resources to hire all the right people with the right knowledge and probably already had them on board.
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At this point in his career, Jony Ive is best suited for doing deep dive studies on the corner-radius of new products. And even then, you might as well just default it to that of an ipad, because that seems to be his preference for all things, including $650k Ferraris.
As far as I can tell Ive's expertise isn't "build a platform".
All they seem to have gotten out of it is some creepy blogpost:
AI model providers have zero "moat", clients change them as they see fit. This week ChatGPT, next week Claude. The real value is and going to be in hardware - as long as China doesn't enter the GPU/RAM race.
I increasingly see AI investment, generally speaking, as a lost cause. It has very little chance to pay off.
> they could've been above reproach.
This is hilarious. The company run by sama? The company that started as the largest copyright violation ever? How can you be above reproach when you start with such disregard like that?
The Fire Phone did exactly what it was designed to do. It contained technologies that Apple fans were crowing about a decade later! Its major problems were the braindead carrier lock-in and the moronic pricing.
Forgive me, but what does Jony Ive know about building platforms?
Small nit.
> they did buy Jony Ive and are presumably giving him everything he wants to build a platform for them
If they hired Jony Ive to build a "platform" they will be very disappointed. He has no experience in doing that. They hired him to design a device, probably comment on the UI (if there is any, though I don't think he is qualified to direct either UI personally).
Aside from that, yeah, they royally screwed up here. Either by hiring unsavory people who think this acceptable behavior and/or by not managing/supervising them.
I've said it before on this topic: this goes _way_ past non-competes and the like. If you learn a novel method for doing something you are free (in my book) to recreate it at another company. You are not free to steal code/designs/etc verbatim and you are absolutely not ok to encourage people you are poaching (poaching is fine itself) to steal secrets/ideas on their way out. Also the whole "lying to a manufacturer to say Apple gave OpenAI permission to use the same proprietary technique" is really gross.
I maintain that if Humane wasn’t arrogant as hell and had just put a screen on their device, theyd have been PERFECTLY placed to become the open-platform AI Phone
Hell they might’ve been bought by OpenAI for billions instead of… HP lol
the rot starts from the top.
sama plays loose with the truth. so likely the employees are gonna follow their boss in cutting corners.
you see it everywhere in gvt/large organizations - if you come from a poor country - if the president is corrupt - the whole gvt gets corrupted.
> Everybody wants a platform but nobody wants to spend what it takes to make a platform.
That's why Apple used open-source software to build a kernel.
And why they used third party developers to develop the ecosystem of applications.
I don't think Jony Ive has this skillset either. They might make a very nice device (I'd expect it to be polarising).
> And they blew it
This could be a blessing in disguise for OpenAI. This mess was conducted under Altman’s watch—it could be an opportunity to Kalanick him.
The Board could elevate Altman to Chairman emeritus or something, choose a new CEO and settle with Apple. That will probably involve shutting down the hardware project and clawing back comp from its employees who helped make this mess.
[Citation Needed]. Demand letters are one thing. Proof is another. And California laws are, to my understanding, pretty employee friendly as a matter of policy. We'll see where this ends, but I wouldn't assume right now this is anything but typical corporate engagement.
> Everybody wants a platform but nobody wants to spend what it takes to make a platform.
Ahistoric jibber jabber. Microsoft gave it their very best shot with Windows Phone. Facebook renamed the entire company to make VR happen. These companies have shoved everything they got into making these platforms, and their fate would not have been different if they had been given another billion.
Platforms are hard to make, and wanting it bad enough is not enough to make one.
Stealing from the one company that has managed to court success makes a lot of sense. They are the only company with any successful experience.
While I agree that OpenAI is run by thieves, you can't tell me that Apple wouldn't have tried the same shit on a more scrupulous attempt at building a platform competitor?
Like, this is the same Apple that tried to tell a judge "a touch is a zero-length swipe" when suing the shit out of Android vendors, right? In their eyes, all the competition was supposed to stick with styluses and Windows Mobile 6.x.
Why are we taking Apple’s side here? They made accusations, nothing had been proven yet.
Who is to say Apple employees (at Apple) haven’t been vibe coding or asking gpt for technical topics? Also, funny timing from Apple - there is a lot of PR and optics riding on this lawsuit.
Unnecessarily cute? It's a documented campaign of industrial-scale theft...
What does that have to do with employees stealing documents?
A decade ago Uber seemed poised to be the big tech powerhouse. Maybe not a platform per se (certainly not an ecosystem as other companies had it) but a major provider of software for all kinds of verticals beyond their core business. What happened to that?
Yes, but how do we know specific manufacturing processes weren’t in employee contracts like, “If you leave Apple you can’t utilize the invisible weld process invented here for the iMac.”
I mean regardless of whether it’s a trade secret, you’re going to know how to do specific things that can’t be protected against copying.
There are no practical laws against understanding the laws of physics, chemistry, and metallurgy when it comes to anodizing.
Your comment assumes they have stolen some propietary info or trade secrets but it hasn't been determined yet that they have, no?
“ Or maybe it was a loose ethical environment in general”
Altman doesn’t appear to be a beacon of corporate ethics.
There has to be a reason why almost every single important partnership OpenAI had, abruptly ended, except for maybe Nvidia.
Just recently Satya Nadella publicly implied that OpenAI should not be trusted.
They are slowly becoming the STD of the AI industry, it’s like they think they are too big and awesome to need friends.
Maybe pissing Apple off will teach them a lesson?