Thoughts on the Tim Cook Profile in WSJ Magazine
Yesterday, WSJ Magazine published a Tim Cook profile (the piece is available via Apple News+ here) for its annual Innovators issue. Cook, along with a few other recipients, will be recognized at the WSJ's 14th Annual Innovator Awards next week.
Apple smartly used the profile to put the spotlight back on its products.
In today’s update, we go over my thoughts on the profile. In addition to the broader themes found in the profile, we go over a few areas where the WSJ profile was lacking.
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How Apple Intelligence Was Developed, Ranking Apple Intelligence Features, AAPL’s Wacky Price Action
There is value found in spending time on the details regarding how Apple Intelligence was developed and functions. We will then go over my thoughts on the various Apple Intelligence features, ranking the features from most impressive to most concerning. We will then address AAPL price action.
Happy Thursday. It’s been a very busy week. As a reminder, we still have some WWDC news to go over early next week.
There’s a lot to cover today, so let’s jump right in.
How Apple Intelligence Was Developed
During Apple’s Platforms State of the Union presentation (available to view here), which is aimed at developers, the company went into detail regarding how Apple Intelligence was developed.
Apple Intelligence began with an on-device large language model that Apple built to achieve a certain power/size balance that allowed it run on device yet power the experiences Apple wanted to offer. Apple relied on fine-tuning to “teach” the model certain tasks such as text summarization, proofreading etc. Instead of producing different models with different expertise objectives, Apple relied on adapters which basically gave the foundation model specialization capabilities.
Apple then compressed the model (16-bit per parameter down to 4-bit) with on-device being the goal.
An Above Avalon membership is required to continue reading this update. Members can read the full update here. (Members: Daily Updates are accessible via the archive. If you haven’t logged into the archive before, fill out this form to receive an invite.)
Choose either a monthly or annual membership. Payment is hosted by MoonClerk and secured by Stripe. Apple Pay and other mobile payment options are accepted. After signup, use this link to update your payment information and membership status at any time. Contact me with any questions.
Contact me directly if you would like to purchase multiple subscriptions (five or more) for your team or company.
An audio version of the newsletter is available to members who have the podcast add-on attached to their membership. More information about the podcast add-on is found here. Special Inside Orchard bundle pricing is available for Above Avalon members. Additional membership customization is available via the Financial Models add-ons.