I replied to you you elsewhere in this thread, but they never claimed to be getting 28% CTR. They only claimed that this format performs 28% better than alternatives.
If a different ad format was getting 1% CTR, then a 28% improvement is still only a total 1.28% CTR.
Careful, they didn’t claim to be getting 28% engagement from users… Just that this ad format performs 28% better than other ad types. We have no idea (from this article, at least) what the comparison actually means in real world usage.
I think a key difference is that Apple had a very clear target demographic for the iPad in mind (lightweight laptop / heavy phone users), and then were prepared to see how it evolved on top of that premise.
With the Vision Pro, they haven’t been able to articulate their target userbase at all, and are pretty much relying on the early adopters to help define it for them.
Which isn’t to say it can’t find its place and be successful. But I don’t think it’s anything like Apple’s other product releases at all…
While it would be nice to imagine this, the reality is that anyone who is part of the Apple walled-garden isn’t going to suddenly abandon it because of hypothetical functionality they never had previously anyway. And anyone who has resisted Apple this long… Well, there were probably other reasons driving that long before this.
I can’t imagine this having any material impact on marketshare or profit. It will take harsher regulatory action for anything to happen.
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That’s an appealing ‘conspiracy’ angle, and I understand why it might seem juicy and tantalising to onlookers, but that idea doesn’t hold up to any real scrutiny whatsoever.
Why would the Board willingly trash their reputation? Why would they drag the former Twitch CEO through the mud and make him look weak and powerless? Why would they not warn Microsoft and risk damaging that relationship? Why would they let MS strike a tentative agreement with the OpenAI employees that upsets their own staff, only to then undo it?
None of that makes any sense whatsoever from a strategic, corporate “planned” perspective. They are all actions of people who are reacting to things in the heat of the moment and are panicking because they don’t know how it will end.
That doesn’t make very much sense.
Yes, the board members who are into Effective Altruism are undoubtedly a piece of the puzzle. But everything you outline isn’t just common corporate knowledge, it’s basically well-documented public record.
And remember that this is a Board that Altman effectively hand-picked. He did not appoint a host of dum-dums to oversee him.
Whatever happened, there is waaaay more to this than anyone has been told. At this point it’s all speculation, but I think it’s pretty safe to assume it’s not just a case of “we didn’t know it was expensive” or “we didn’t know how popular Sam was”.
In defence of the author, there is absolutely nothing about the term “AI” that just means “LLM” in an informed context (which is what Wired portends to be). And then the words “machine learning” are literally front and centre in the subtitle.
I don’t see how anyone could misunderstand this unless it was a deliberate misreading… Or else just not attempting to read it at all…
(That said, yes, I do hate the fact that product managers now love to talk about how every single feature is “AI” regardless of what it actually is/does)