Who says summer is slow for Apple news?!
Apple sues OpenAI for theft of trade secrets
[over-the-top very obviously fake gasp]
The most egregious of the allegations is against former Apple senior systems electrical engineer Chang Liu, who Apple says did almost everything short of stealing John Ternus’s Trapper Keeper marked “BIG SECRETS, DO NOT TAKE OUT OF APPLE PARK, EYES ONLY, THIS MEANS YOU!” under which there is a poorly drawn skull and crossbones, and personally delivering it while cackling to Sam Altman.
To be fair, Apple does say the current allegations are just “the tip of the iceberg” so maybe he did that, too.
The Wall Street Journal offered a take that one might be inclined to describe as “OpenAI-friendly,” assuming one is able to read and digest information and has a subscription to The Wall Street Journal: Apple’s ‘Thermonuclear’ Response to the OpenAI Threat
In one of his last acts as Apple’s chief executive before successor John Ternus takes over…
It’s July and he doesn’t step aside (up, over, around, whatever) until September, so it’s more realistically one of his last 10,000 acts but, okay, sure.
[OpenAI] has built powerful AI models and is working toward an unspecified “family of devices” to run them, devices that could supplant Apple’s.
That is a load-bearing “could” there and if you pull it out all the letters in the article come tumbling off of your screen and spill all over your desk and keyboard so be careful.
Apple’s innovation engine failed to develop hit AI products and features, leaving it vulnerable to new entrants.
The first half of that sentence is technically true, but when the most popular AI endeavors are all deep in the red, it’s not exactly clear why you’d want to have a hit AI product. Sure, things can change, but the Macalope will take the vulnerability exhibited by record quarter after record quarter any day. You could also note that no AI company has created a hit hardware product of any kind, period. Simply assuming they’re going to soon is some real magical thinking.
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Foundry
In discussing Apple’s rivals, WSJ brings up other ongoing litigation involving the company.
Elon Musk has also chafed at Apple’s control of the digital economy. A unit of SpaceX is suing Apple for disadvantaging its AI app…
Yes, let’s turn now to the feelings of a guy who, it has been charged, is responsible for the deaths of over 700,000 people because of his know-nothing involvement in international aid. Say, remember how Musk offered to end world hunger if someone would just show him how it’s possible, and several people did and Musk, a la Mr. Burns, said “Mmm, no, I’d still prefer not”? Here the Macalope would often quip “Good times.” but the times were not, in fact, good in any way. One wonders how much more horrible stuff Musk has to do to stop getting treated as just a standard businessman engaged in simple business things by the press.
Anyway, Musk is “chafed” because his porn machine isn’t higher in the App Store rankings.
Apple has said that its App Store relies on algorithms and expert curation and doesn’t suppress rivals…
Apple says it doesn’t suppress rivals but who knows, really? A rather telling detail left out of that anecdote is who Musk thinks Apple is in cahoots with in disadvantaging his AI app. That would be a little company called OpenAI. As John Gruber notes, it’s a little odd that Apple would still be deliberately favoring OpenAI given that it’s now suing the company.
The irony of Apple’s case against OpenAI is that Apple itself has so frequently been accused of stealing other companies’ ideas that it has spawned a new verb, “sherlocking,”…
Oh, yes, let’s conflate copying a feature someone else implemented by re-making it yourself from scratch with stealing the method someone else came up with in order to make something. There is a rather big difference between making your own spreadsheet software and stealing the source code to Excel, recompiling it and try to sell it as AAA Spreadsheet. You’d think a publication that purports to specialize in business would know that.
The stupid thing is there is a better example WSJ could have used here: the Apple Watch blood oxygen patent infringement suit. But it just couldn’t resist there being a nickname for Apple copying features.
WSJ concludes by saying Apple won’t be able to rely on legal means to beat AI hardware, that ultimately it…
…falls to product development, an area where Ternus will have to surpass his predecessor if he wants to maintain Jobs’s legacy.
It’s a shame he doesn’t have any expertise in product development.
Wait.
One word you won’t find in this article is “bubble.” WSJ simply takes it as writ that the AI revolution is real and spectacular, and Apple is desperate to prevent these companies from creating their iPhone-killing hardware. Which they’re going to do while hemorrhaging money and engaged in enough infighting to embarrass the Borgias. The recent backlash against AI and data centers does not merit a word.
Does Apple want to hamstring OpenAI’s hardware efforts? Sure. Even if it doesn’t think they’ll amount to much, why wouldn’t it? Does it want to simple dig through OpenAI’s emails and see what turns up? That sounds like fun! But does it also feel that it has a solid case against OpenAI, a company that already has a serious reputation as a bad actor for any number of reasons and for whom stealing things is simply second nature? Yeah, probably.
