What Apple Should Learn From Its Self-Driving Car Debacle
Apple’s Wrong Turn
Justin Sullivan/Getty Pics
The discouraging news about Apple’s self-driving car project, code-named Titan, continued this week. The Fresh York Times on Wednesday reported that the company has narrowed its concentrate from building an autonomous vehicle to building autonomous driving software for an employee shuttle. That shuttle won’t even be built by Apple, according to the Times’ anonymous sources: It will likely just be a commercial vehicle purchased from a major automaker.
Will Oremus is Slate’s senior technology writer. Email him at [email protected] or go after him on Twitter.
This development will not shock those who have been following the embarrassing saga of Silicon Valley’s worst-kept secret. Titan, launched three years ago, has been on a downhill trajectory for at least a year. In October, Bloomberg reported that an Apple-made iCar was no longer in the works, and in June, CEO Tim Cook basically admitted as much. What’s fresh this week are the details about the self-driving employee shuttle, which underscores just how far behind Apple indeed is, how confused the company has become, and how it might find its way.
Historically, Apple has defined its products around specific chunks of hardware. Its greatest hits—the Mac, the iPod, the iPhone—were all physical devices thoughtfully designed to create an intuitive practice for the user. Those devices, in turn, gave rise to Apple’s most successful software and services, including iTunes and the App Store. It wasn’t crazy, then, to think that the iCar could be the next iPhone: the blockbuster product that sells by the hundreds of millions and converts entire industries.
A driverless car, however, is about more than the car. It’s about artificial intelligence. And that’s where Apple ran into trouble.
Of all the fresh sectors Apple has entered under Cook’s leadership, A.I. software—the kind you need to build a self-driving vehicle—is the most significant. It is likely to take over not only our cars, but our homes, our gadgets, and increasingly our jobs. But Apple is poorly placed in the A.I. race. Whereas rival Google has always been about data and algorithms, Apple is a hardware company very first. In the software area, its strength lies in designing friendly user interfaces to go with its devices—not harvesting and processing the sort of gargantuan data sets that machine-learning algorithms rely on. It is further constrained in its A.I. efforts both by its strong stance on data privacy and its internal culture of secrecy, which is anathema to top researchers in the field.
Technology of the future will not revolve around gadgets. It will center on the ethereal intelligences that float from one device to the next.
That helps explain why Apple’s initial car plan involved designing and building a vehicle from the ground up. Google, Uber, and others have a long head begin when it comes to the software, but very little practice designing and manufacturing machines that people want to buy. Perhaps Apple could build up an edge by marrying the software to beautiful hardware. Alas, Apple quickly realized that building cars is fairly different from building computers, and it was at an insurmountable disadvantage in that area, too. (Ultimately, it seems likely that our self-driving cars will be built by the same companies that build our current cars.) This leaves Apple in the same position it has been in for the past decade: as a maker of sleek individual computing devices, with the venerable iPhone as its flagship.
But the technology of the future will not revolve around discrete, self-contained gadgets that each work in their own special, clever way. Rather, it will center on the ethereal intelligences that float from one device to the next, animating each chunk of hardware, and gathering data and refining understanding of you all the while. In the context of the car, the key to the future is not the machine itself—not the arrangement of the seats, the engine, and the wheels—but the machine-learning software that drives it.
What about in the context of private computing, where Apple still reigns? The iPhone shows no signs of going away, and it’s possible to imagine that we’ll still be carrying some form of computing device in our pockets for decades to come. But the way we interact with our phones is already switching. Touchscreens and buttons are providing way to voice assistants such as Siri, Google, Alexa, and Cortana. Manual typing is being substituted, in some settings, with predictive typing and even “clever reply” features that automatically compose messages on our behalf. Passive web portals and apps are being supplanted by shove notifications that make proactive suggestions.
All of these fresh features rely less on the sort of user interfaces that Apple is so good at building, and more on—you guessed it—machine-learning software. That offers an opening to just about every tech company that isn’t Apple to take over one element or another of our iPhones’ functionality.
Facebook’s main app already predominates much of the time we spend on our phones; its subsidiaries Instagram and WhatsApp are taking over the camera and messaging, respectively. Google hit Apple at maps, and its email, calendar, and browser are smarter, too. But the most existential threat to the iPhone’s central role in individual computing may have come from the unlikeliest of major Apple rivals: Amazon. Its Echo wise speakers, powered by Alexa, are showcasing the world that the phone may not be the ideal control center for the wise home after all. Why pull something out of your pocket and fiddle with buttons when you can just ask Alexa to turn on the lights, switch the channel, tell you the news, order groceries, play music, or even make coffee?
The Echo—or Google’s rival, Home—can’t literally substitute your iPhone, in the sense that you can’t carry it around in your pocket everywhere you go. But you can carry Alexa or Google Assistant anywhere: The software behind the Echo and the Home could theoretically serve as the brains behind any number of devices, including your phone. (Amazon is already suggesting Alexa on its Fire TV; Google is now suggesting its Assistant as a standalone app for the iPhone, as well as its own Android devices.) The more you interact with this software, the better it gets to know you, and the more incentive you have to use it as your primary portal to the digital world.
Apple can make its own version of the Echo, of course, and it announced on June five that it is doing just that. It will be called the HomePod, and it’s entirely possible that it will be a better chunk of hardware than either the Echo or Google Home. But as with the self-driving car, Apple won’t be able to win on hardware and user interface alone. The brainy speaker, like the vehicle, is just a dumb vessel for the artificially intelligent software that drives it.
Apple, of all companies, should have seen this coming. Siri was on the very leading edge of artificially intelligent assistants when Apple bought it back in 2010. But Apple didn’t realize what it had. The company eyed Siri as a nifty feature to improve its flagship device, the iPhone. As such, it never made the kind of investment in Siri that would have been needed to turn it into something much thicker. But other companies witnessed Siri and thought: We can do that. And so they did. Each of the big five tech companies now has its own A.I. shop and its own A.I. assistant, and some of them have arguably surpassed Siri in capabilities.
More importantly, Apple’s rivals—Amazon in particular—thought more creatively about the type of devices an A.I. assistant might lend itself to. That is, they thought of the software’s capabilities very first, then worked backward to the type of hardware that would be needed to maximize them. And so, while Apple was busy building tablets and witnesses that worked like iPhones, Amazon went out and built a brand-new type of device that worked very differently. Ironically, Amazon’s brainy speaker has a better chance of being the “next iPhone”—in the sense of a gadget that switches individual computing—than anything Apple has done.
There are signs that Apple is eventually kicking off to appreciate Siri’s true potential. Its AirPods, launched last year, represent a potentially transformative fresh interface, not only for the iPhone, but for any device that Siri can power. As I wrote when Apple announced them, everyone who dismissed the AirPods as Bluetooth headphones was missing the point: They’re actually a portable version of the Echo, a voice-powered clever speaker that you wear in your ear.
Apple has also given Siri a more central role on both the iPhone and the Mac. And, belatedly, it is getting serious about developing the world-class artificial intelligence needed for Siri to contest with Google, Alexa, Microsoft’s Cortana, and whatever it is Facebook’s A.I. wizards eventually cook up.
"Siri, how do I make an iPhone as good as an Android?" "Let me Google it." More.
Apple’s future, in brief, is not a device—not a puny one like a phone or a big one like a car. It’s Siri. And it needs to be brainy enough to go after you everywhere, just like your iPhone goes after you everywhere today. The fact that Siri already lives on the world’s most popular phone should give it an advantage that no other company’s virtual assistant can match. It should already know you—your habits, your preferences—better than any other.
Which brings us back to the car. Because Apple’s way into the self-driving business isn’t through the engine, the steering wheel, or the computer vision system. It’s through Siri.
Apple – s future isn – t a self-driving car
What Apple Should Learn From Its Self-Driving Car Debacle
Apple’s Wrong Turn
Justin Sullivan/Getty Pictures
The discouraging news about Apple’s self-driving car project, code-named Titan, continued this week. The Fresh York Times on Wednesday reported that the company has narrowed its concentrate from building an autonomous vehicle to building autonomous driving software for an employee shuttle. That shuttle won’t even be built by Apple, according to the Times’ anonymous sources: It will likely just be a commercial vehicle purchased from a major automaker.
Will Oremus is Slate’s senior technology writer. Email him at [email protected] or go after him on Twitter.
This development will not shock those who have been following the embarrassing saga of Silicon Valley’s worst-kept secret. Titan, launched three years ago, has been on a downhill trajectory for at least a year. In October, Bloomberg reported that an Apple-made iCar was no longer in the works, and in June, CEO Tim Cook basically admitted as much. What’s fresh this week are the details about the self-driving employee shuttle, which underscores just how far behind Apple truly is, how confused the company has become, and how it might find its way.
Historically, Apple has defined its products around specific lumps of hardware. Its greatest hits—the Mac, the iPod, the iPhone—were all physical devices thoughtfully designed to create an intuitive practice for the user. Those devices, in turn, gave rise to Apple’s most successful software and services, including iTunes and the App Store. It wasn’t crazy, then, to think that the iCar could be the next iPhone: the blockbuster product that sells by the hundreds of millions and converts entire industries.
A driverless car, tho’, is about more than the car. It’s about artificial intelligence. And that’s where Apple ran into trouble.
Of all the fresh sectors Apple has entered under Cook’s leadership, A.I. software—the kind you need to build a self-driving vehicle—is the most significant. It is likely to take over not only our cars, but our homes, our gadgets, and increasingly our jobs. But Apple is poorly placed in the A.I. race. Whereas rival Google has always been about data and algorithms, Apple is a hardware company very first. In the software sphere, its strength lies in designing friendly user interfaces to go with its devices—not harvesting and processing the sort of gargantuan data sets that machine-learning algorithms rely on. It is further constrained in its A.I. efforts both by its strong stance on data privacy and its internal culture of secrecy, which is anathema to top researchers in the field.
Technology of the future will not revolve around gadgets. It will center on the ethereal intelligences that float from one device to the next.
That helps explain why Apple’s initial car plan involved designing and building a vehicle from the ground up. Google, Uber, and others have a long head embark when it comes to the software, but very little practice designing and manufacturing machines that people want to buy. Perhaps Apple could build up an edge by marrying the software to beautiful hardware. Alas, Apple quickly realized that building cars is fairly different from building computers, and it was at an insurmountable disadvantage in that sphere, too. (Ultimately, it seems likely that our self-driving cars will be built by the same companies that build our current cars.) This leaves Apple in the same position it has been in for the past decade: as a maker of sleek individual computing devices, with the venerable iPhone as its flagship.
But the technology of the future will not revolve around discrete, self-contained gadgets that each work in their own special, clever way. Rather, it will center on the ethereal intelligences that float from one device to the next, animating each chunk of hardware, and gathering data and refining understanding of you all the while. In the context of the car, the key to the future is not the machine itself—not the arrangement of the seats, the engine, and the wheels—but the machine-learning software that drives it.
What about in the context of individual computing, where Apple still reigns? The iPhone shows no signs of going away, and it’s possible to imagine that we’ll still be carrying some form of computing device in our pockets for decades to come. But the way we interact with our phones is already switching. Touchscreens and buttons are providing way to voice assistants such as Siri, Google, Alexa, and Cortana. Manual typing is being substituted, in some settings, with predictive typing and even “clever reply” features that automatically compose messages on our behalf. Passive web portals and apps are being supplanted by shove notifications that make proactive suggestions.
All of these fresh features rely less on the sort of user interfaces that Apple is so good at building, and more on—you guessed it—machine-learning software. That offers an opening to just about every tech company that isn’t Apple to take over one element or another of our iPhones’ functionality.
Facebook’s main app already predominates much of the time we spend on our phones; its subsidiaries Instagram and WhatsApp are taking over the camera and messaging, respectively. Google hammer Apple at maps, and its email, calendar, and browser are smarter, too. But the most existential threat to the iPhone’s central role in individual computing may have come from the unlikeliest of major Apple rivals: Amazon. Its Echo brainy speakers, powered by Alexa, are demonstrating the world that the phone may not be the ideal control center for the wise home after all. Why pull something out of your pocket and fiddle with buttons when you can just ask Alexa to turn on the lights, switch the channel, tell you the news, order groceries, play music, or even make coffee?
The Echo—or Google’s rival, Home—can’t literally substitute your iPhone, in the sense that you can’t carry it around in your pocket everywhere you go. But you can carry Alexa or Google Assistant anywhere: The software behind the Echo and the Home could theoretically serve as the brains behind any number of devices, including your phone. (Amazon is already suggesting Alexa on its Fire TV; Google is now suggesting its Assistant as a standalone app for the iPhone, as well as its own Android devices.) The more you interact with this software, the better it gets to know you, and the more incentive you have to use it as your primary portal to the digital world.
Apple can make its own version of the Echo, of course, and it announced on June five that it is doing just that. It will be called the HomePod, and it’s entirely possible that it will be a better chunk of hardware than either the Echo or Google Home. But as with the self-driving car, Apple won’t be able to win on hardware and user interface alone. The brainy speaker, like the vehicle, is just a dumb vessel for the artificially intelligent software that drives it.
Apple, of all companies, should have seen this coming. Siri was on the very leading edge of artificially intelligent assistants when Apple bought it back in 2010. But Apple didn’t realize what it had. The company witnessed Siri as a nifty feature to improve its flagship device, the iPhone. As such, it never made the kind of investment in Siri that would have been needed to turn it into something much thicker. But other companies spotted Siri and thought: We can do that. And so they did. Each of the big five tech companies now has its own A.I. shop and its own A.I. assistant, and some of them have arguably surpassed Siri in capabilities.
More importantly, Apple’s rivals—Amazon in particular—thought more creatively about the type of devices an A.I. assistant might lend itself to. That is, they thought of the software’s capabilities very first, then worked backward to the type of hardware that would be needed to maximize them. And so, while Apple was busy building tablets and observes that worked like iPhones, Amazon went out and built a brand-new type of device that worked very differently. Ironically, Amazon’s brainy speaker has a better chance of being the “next iPhone”—in the sense of a gadget that switches individual computing—than anything Apple has done.
There are signs that Apple is ultimately beginning to appreciate Siri’s true potential. Its AirPods, launched last year, represent a potentially transformative fresh interface, not only for the iPhone, but for any device that Siri can power. As I wrote when Apple announced them, everyone who dismissed the AirPods as Bluetooth headphones was missing the point: They’re actually a portable version of the Echo, a voice-powered clever speaker that you wear in your ear.
Apple has also given Siri a more central role on both the iPhone and the Mac. And, belatedly, it is getting serious about developing the world-class artificial intelligence needed for Siri to challenge with Google, Alexa, Microsoft’s Cortana, and whatever it is Facebook’s A.I. wizards eventually cook up.
"Siri, how do I make an iPhone as good as an Android?" "Let me Google it." More.
Apple’s future, in brief, is not a device—not a petite one like a phone or a big one like a car. It’s Siri. And it needs to be brainy enough to go after you everywhere, just like your iPhone goes after you everywhere today. The fact that Siri already lives on the world’s most popular phone should give it an advantage that no other company’s virtual assistant can match. It should already know you—your habits, your preferences—better than any other.
Which brings us back to the car. Because Apple’s way into the self-driving business isn’t through the engine, the steering wheel, or the computer vision system. It’s through Siri.
Apple – s future isn – t a self-driving car
What Apple Should Learn From Its Self-Driving Car Debacle
Apple’s Wrong Turn
Justin Sullivan/Getty Photos
The discouraging news about Apple’s self-driving car project, code-named Titan, continued this week. The Fresh York Times on Wednesday reported that the company has narrowed its concentrate from building an autonomous vehicle to building autonomous driving software for an employee shuttle. That shuttle won’t even be built by Apple, according to the Times’ anonymous sources: It will likely just be a commercial vehicle purchased from a major automaker.
Will Oremus is Slate’s senior technology writer. Email him at [email protected] or go after him on Twitter.
This development will not shock those who have been following the embarrassing saga of Silicon Valley’s worst-kept secret. Titan, launched three years ago, has been on a downhill trajectory for at least a year. In October, Bloomberg reported that an Apple-made iCar was no longer in the works, and in June, CEO Tim Cook basically admitted as much. What’s fresh this week are the details about the self-driving employee shuttle, which underscores just how far behind Apple truly is, how confused the company has become, and how it might find its way.
Historically, Apple has defined its products around specific lumps of hardware. Its greatest hits—the Mac, the iPod, the iPhone—were all physical devices thoughtfully designed to create an intuitive practice for the user. Those devices, in turn, gave rise to Apple’s most successful software and services, including iTunes and the App Store. It wasn’t crazy, then, to think that the iCar could be the next iPhone: the blockbuster product that sells by the hundreds of millions and converts entire industries.
A driverless car, tho’, is about more than the car. It’s about artificial intelligence. And that’s where Apple ran into trouble.
Of all the fresh sectors Apple has entered under Cook’s leadership, A.I. software—the kind you need to build a self-driving vehicle—is the most significant. It is likely to take over not only our cars, but our homes, our gadgets, and increasingly our jobs. But Apple is poorly placed in the A.I. race. Whereas rival Google has always been about data and algorithms, Apple is a hardware company very first. In the software sphere, its strength lies in designing friendly user interfaces to go with its devices—not harvesting and processing the sort of gargantuan data sets that machine-learning algorithms rely on. It is further constrained in its A.I. efforts both by its strong stance on data privacy and its internal culture of secrecy, which is anathema to top researchers in the field.
Technology of the future will not revolve around gadgets. It will center on the ethereal intelligences that float from one device to the next.
That helps explain why Apple’s initial car plan involved designing and building a vehicle from the ground up. Google, Uber, and others have a long head embark when it comes to the software, but very little practice designing and manufacturing machines that people want to buy. Perhaps Apple could build up an edge by marrying the software to beautiful hardware. Alas, Apple quickly realized that building cars is fairly different from building computers, and it was at an insurmountable disadvantage in that field, too. (Ultimately, it seems likely that our self-driving cars will be built by the same companies that build our current cars.) This leaves Apple in the same position it has been in for the past decade: as a maker of sleek private computing devices, with the venerable iPhone as its flagship.
But the technology of the future will not revolve around discrete, self-contained gadgets that each work in their own special, clever way. Rather, it will center on the ethereal intelligences that float from one device to the next, animating each chunk of hardware, and gathering data and refining understanding of you all the while. In the context of the car, the key to the future is not the machine itself—not the arrangement of the seats, the engine, and the wheels—but the machine-learning software that drives it.
What about in the context of private computing, where Apple still reigns? The iPhone shows no signs of going away, and it’s possible to imagine that we’ll still be carrying some form of computing device in our pockets for decades to come. But the way we interact with our phones is already switching. Touchscreens and buttons are providing way to voice assistants such as Siri, Google, Alexa, and Cortana. Manual typing is being substituted, in some settings, with predictive typing and even “brainy reply” features that automatically compose messages on our behalf. Passive web portals and apps are being supplanted by thrust notifications that make proactive suggestions.
All of these fresh features rely less on the sort of user interfaces that Apple is so good at building, and more on—you guessed it—machine-learning software. That offers an opening to just about every tech company that isn’t Apple to take over one element or another of our iPhones’ functionality.
Facebook’s main app already predominates much of the time we spend on our phones; its subsidiaries Instagram and WhatsApp are taking over the camera and messaging, respectively. Google strike Apple at maps, and its email, calendar, and browser are smarter, too. But the most existential threat to the iPhone’s central role in individual computing may have come from the unlikeliest of major Apple rivals: Amazon. Its Echo wise speakers, powered by Alexa, are showcasing the world that the phone may not be the ideal control center for the brainy home after all. Why pull something out of your pocket and fiddle with buttons when you can just ask Alexa to turn on the lights, switch the channel, tell you the news, order groceries, play music, or even make coffee?
The Echo—or Google’s rival, Home—can’t literally substitute your iPhone, in the sense that you can’t carry it around in your pocket everywhere you go. But you can carry Alexa or Google Assistant anywhere: The software behind the Echo and the Home could theoretically serve as the brains behind any number of devices, including your phone. (Amazon is already suggesting Alexa on its Fire TV; Google is now suggesting its Assistant as a standalone app for the iPhone, as well as its own Android devices.) The more you interact with this software, the better it gets to know you, and the more incentive you have to use it as your primary portal to the digital world.
Apple can make its own version of the Echo, of course, and it announced on June five that it is doing just that. It will be called the HomePod, and it’s entirely possible that it will be a better chunk of hardware than either the Echo or Google Home. But as with the self-driving car, Apple won’t be able to win on hardware and user interface alone. The wise speaker, like the vehicle, is just a dumb vessel for the artificially intelligent software that drives it.
Apple, of all companies, should have seen this coming. Siri was on the very leading edge of artificially intelligent assistants when Apple bought it back in 2010. But Apple didn’t realize what it had. The company spotted Siri as a nifty feature to improve its flagship device, the iPhone. As such, it never made the kind of investment in Siri that would have been needed to turn it into something much fatter. But other companies spotted Siri and thought: We can do that. And so they did. Each of the big five tech companies now has its own A.I. shop and its own A.I. assistant, and some of them have arguably surpassed Siri in capabilities.
More importantly, Apple’s rivals—Amazon in particular—thought more creatively about the type of devices an A.I. assistant might lend itself to. That is, they thought of the software’s capabilities very first, then worked backward to the type of hardware that would be needed to maximize them. And so, while Apple was busy building tablets and observes that worked like iPhones, Amazon went out and built a brand-new type of device that worked very differently. Ironically, Amazon’s clever speaker has a better chance of being the “next iPhone”—in the sense of a gadget that switches private computing—than anything Apple has done.
There are signs that Apple is ultimately embarking to appreciate Siri’s true potential. Its AirPods, launched last year, represent a potentially transformative fresh interface, not only for the iPhone, but for any device that Siri can power. As I wrote when Apple announced them, everyone who dismissed the AirPods as Bluetooth headphones was missing the point: They’re actually a portable version of the Echo, a voice-powered brainy speaker that you wear in your ear.
Apple has also given Siri a more central role on both the iPhone and the Mac. And, belatedly, it is getting serious about developing the world-class artificial intelligence needed for Siri to contest with Google, Alexa, Microsoft’s Cortana, and whatever it is Facebook’s A.I. wizards eventually cook up.
"Siri, how do I make an iPhone as good as an Android?" "Let me Google it." More.
Apple’s future, in brief, is not a device—not a petite one like a phone or a big one like a car. It’s Siri. And it needs to be brainy enough to go after you everywhere, just like your iPhone goes after you everywhere today. The fact that Siri already lives on the world’s most popular phone should give it an advantage that no other company’s virtual assistant can match. It should already know you—your habits, your preferences—better than any other.
Which brings us back to the car. Because Apple’s way into the self-driving business isn’t through the engine, the steering wheel, or the computer vision system. It’s through Siri.
Apple – s future isn – t a self-driving car
What Apple Should Learn From Its Self-Driving Car Debacle
Apple’s Wrong Turn
Justin Sullivan/Getty Photos
The discouraging news about Apple’s self-driving car project, code-named Titan, continued this week. The Fresh York Times on Wednesday reported that the company has narrowed its concentrate from building an autonomous vehicle to building autonomous driving software for an employee shuttle. That shuttle won’t even be built by Apple, according to the Times’ anonymous sources: It will likely just be a commercial vehicle purchased from a major automaker.
Will Oremus is Slate’s senior technology writer. Email him at [email protected] or go after him on Twitter.
This development will not shock those who have been following the embarrassing saga of Silicon Valley’s worst-kept secret. Titan, launched three years ago, has been on a downhill trajectory for at least a year. In October, Bloomberg reported that an Apple-made iCar was no longer in the works, and in June, CEO Tim Cook basically admitted as much. What’s fresh this week are the details about the self-driving employee shuttle, which underscores just how far behind Apple truly is, how confused the company has become, and how it might find its way.
Historically, Apple has defined its products around specific lumps of hardware. Its greatest hits—the Mac, the iPod, the iPhone—were all physical devices thoughtfully designed to create an intuitive practice for the user. Those devices, in turn, gave rise to Apple’s most successful software and services, including iTunes and the App Store. It wasn’t crazy, then, to think that the iCar could be the next iPhone: the blockbuster product that sells by the hundreds of millions and converts entire industries.
A driverless car, tho’, is about more than the car. It’s about artificial intelligence. And that’s where Apple ran into trouble.
Of all the fresh sectors Apple has entered under Cook’s leadership, A.I. software—the kind you need to build a self-driving vehicle—is the most significant. It is likely to take over not only our cars, but our homes, our gadgets, and increasingly our jobs. But Apple is poorly placed in the A.I. race. Whereas rival Google has always been about data and algorithms, Apple is a hardware company very first. In the software field, its strength lies in designing friendly user interfaces to go with its devices—not harvesting and processing the sort of gargantuan data sets that machine-learning algorithms rely on. It is further constrained in its A.I. efforts both by its strong stance on data privacy and its internal culture of secrecy, which is anathema to top researchers in the field.
Technology of the future will not revolve around gadgets. It will center on the ethereal intelligences that float from one device to the next.
That helps explain why Apple’s initial car plan involved designing and building a vehicle from the ground up. Google, Uber, and others have a long head commence when it comes to the software, but very little practice designing and manufacturing machines that people want to buy. Perhaps Apple could build up an edge by marrying the software to beautiful hardware. Alas, Apple quickly realized that building cars is fairly different from building computers, and it was at an insurmountable disadvantage in that sphere, too. (Ultimately, it seems likely that our self-driving cars will be built by the same companies that build our current cars.) This leaves Apple in the same position it has been in for the past decade: as a maker of sleek private computing devices, with the venerable iPhone as its flagship.
But the technology of the future will not revolve around discrete, self-contained gadgets that each work in their own special, clever way. Rather, it will center on the ethereal intelligences that float from one device to the next, animating each lump of hardware, and gathering data and refining understanding of you all the while. In the context of the car, the key to the future is not the machine itself—not the arrangement of the seats, the engine, and the wheels—but the machine-learning software that drives it.
What about in the context of individual computing, where Apple still reigns? The iPhone shows no signs of going away, and it’s possible to imagine that we’ll still be carrying some form of computing device in our pockets for decades to come. But the way we interact with our phones is already switching. Touchscreens and buttons are providing way to voice assistants such as Siri, Google, Alexa, and Cortana. Manual typing is being substituted, in some settings, with predictive typing and even “brainy reply” features that automatically compose messages on our behalf. Passive web portals and apps are being supplanted by thrust notifications that make proactive suggestions.
All of these fresh features rely less on the sort of user interfaces that Apple is so good at building, and more on—you guessed it—machine-learning software. That offers an opening to just about every tech company that isn’t Apple to take over one element or another of our iPhones’ functionality.
Facebook’s main app already predominates much of the time we spend on our phones; its subsidiaries Instagram and WhatsApp are taking over the camera and messaging, respectively. Google hammer Apple at maps, and its email, calendar, and browser are smarter, too. But the most existential threat to the iPhone’s central role in private computing may have come from the unlikeliest of major Apple rivals: Amazon. Its Echo brainy speakers, powered by Alexa, are displaying the world that the phone may not be the ideal control center for the brainy home after all. Why pull something out of your pocket and fiddle with buttons when you can just ask Alexa to turn on the lights, switch the channel, tell you the news, order groceries, play music, or even make coffee?
The Echo—or Google’s rival, Home—can’t literally substitute your iPhone, in the sense that you can’t carry it around in your pocket everywhere you go. But you can carry Alexa or Google Assistant anywhere: The software behind the Echo and the Home could theoretically serve as the brains behind any number of devices, including your phone. (Amazon is already suggesting Alexa on its Fire TV; Google is now suggesting its Assistant as a standalone app for the iPhone, as well as its own Android devices.) The more you interact with this software, the better it gets to know you, and the more incentive you have to use it as your primary portal to the digital world.
Apple can make its own version of the Echo, of course, and it announced on June five that it is doing just that. It will be called the HomePod, and it’s entirely possible that it will be a better chunk of hardware than either the Echo or Google Home. But as with the self-driving car, Apple won’t be able to win on hardware and user interface alone. The clever speaker, like the vehicle, is just a dumb vessel for the artificially intelligent software that drives it.
Apple, of all companies, should have seen this coming. Siri was on the very leading edge of artificially intelligent assistants when Apple bought it back in 2010. But Apple didn’t realize what it had. The company spotted Siri as a nifty feature to improve its flagship device, the iPhone. As such, it never made the kind of investment in Siri that would have been needed to turn it into something much fatter. But other companies eyed Siri and thought: We can do that. And so they did. Each of the big five tech companies now has its own A.I. shop and its own A.I. assistant, and some of them have arguably surpassed Siri in capabilities.
More importantly, Apple’s rivals—Amazon in particular—thought more creatively about the type of devices an A.I. assistant might lend itself to. That is, they thought of the software’s capabilities very first, then worked backward to the type of hardware that would be needed to maximize them. And so, while Apple was busy building tablets and witnesses that worked like iPhones, Amazon went out and built a brand-new type of device that worked very differently. Ironically, Amazon’s brainy speaker has a better chance of being the “next iPhone”—in the sense of a gadget that switches private computing—than anything Apple has done.
There are signs that Apple is ultimately kicking off to appreciate Siri’s true potential. Its AirPods, launched last year, represent a potentially transformative fresh interface, not only for the iPhone, but for any device that Siri can power. As I wrote when Apple announced them, everyone who dismissed the AirPods as Bluetooth headphones was missing the point: They’re actually a portable version of the Echo, a voice-powered wise speaker that you wear in your ear.
Apple has also given Siri a more central role on both the iPhone and the Mac. And, belatedly, it is getting serious about developing the world-class artificial intelligence needed for Siri to rival with Google, Alexa, Microsoft’s Cortana, and whatever it is Facebook’s A.I. wizards eventually cook up.
"Siri, how do I make an iPhone as good as an Android?" "Let me Google it." More.
Apple’s future, in brief, is not a device—not a puny one like a phone or a big one like a car. It’s Siri. And it needs to be brainy enough to go after you everywhere, just like your iPhone goes after you everywhere today. The fact that Siri already lives on the world’s most popular phone should give it an advantage that no other company’s virtual assistant can match. It should already know you—your habits, your preferences—better than any other.
Which brings us back to the car. Because Apple’s way into the self-driving business isn’t through the engine, the steering wheel, or the computer vision system. It’s through Siri.