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From: Alan <nuh-uh@nope.com>
Newsgroups: misc.phone.mobile.iphone
Subject: Re: vaporware
Date: Thu, 13 Mar 2025 11:42:50 -0700
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On 2025-03-13 08:21, badgolferman wrote:
> John Gruber is one of the more high-profile Apple commenters, and
> generally takes a pretty upbeat view of the company, so it was a big
> surprise to see him launch a blistering attack on the iPhone maker.
> 
> Referring to Apple advertising Siri features which don’t yet exist, he
> argues that the company is “in disarray if not crisis,” is making
> “bullshit” claims, and has “squandered” its reputation with “a fiasco” …
> 
> On Daring Fireball, Gruber says the reality of any product claims can
> be judged on a four-point scale:
> 
> - Demonstrated, but nobody allowed to try it for themselves
> - Hands-on demos for media in very controlled conditions
> - Beta versions anyone can try for themselves
> - Shipped features
> 
> He says the level below this – concept videos of features which cannot
> even be carefully demonstrated – is just BS. And that’s where Apple is
> with the above Siri features.
> 
> 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 […]
> 
> What Apple showed regarding the upcoming “personalized Siri” at WWDC
> was not a demo. It was a concept video. Concept videos are bullshit,
> and a sign of a company in disarray, if not crisis.
> 
> Gruber argues that if there was any level of reality at all to these
> features then the delay announcement would have been the perfect time
> to demo the current state of play to some tech writers, to show what is
> currently working and what isn’t yet.
> 
> That didn’t happen. If these features exist in any sort of working
> state at all, no one outside Apple has vouched for their existence, let
> alone for their quality […]
> 
> The fiasco is that Apple pitched a story that wasn’t true, one that
> some people within the company surely understood wasn’t true, and they
> set a course based on that.
> 
> There are a lot of companies who make obviously BS claims about AI
> products, and Gruber said he never expected Apple to be one of them.
> While there have been occasional disasters like AirPower, you could
> normally trust the company’s claims, he says. But no more.
> 
> But their credibility is now damaged […] Damaged is arguably too
> passive. It was squandered.
> 
> https://9to5mac.com/2025/03/13/apple-commenter-john-gruber-launches-blistering-attack-on-rotten-apple-over-siri-vaporware/

I normally like what Mr. Gruber writes very much...

....but this is more than a little bit hyperbolic.

Apple screwed up, sure.

He's reading far too much into it.