One day the Vision Pro could exploit the technology to the full

有一天，Vision Pro可能会充分利用这项技术

image: brett ryder 图片：布雷特·赖德

Mar 3rd 2024 2024年3月3日

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If you think Tim Cook has always led a charmed life at the helm of Apple, think again. The years straight after the death of Steve Jobs in 2011 were a trial by fire. First there was antitrust: America’s Department of Justice (doj) sued Apple for conspiring to fix e-book prices. Then there was competition: Samsung, a South Korean rival, went to war with the iPhone with bigger, sleeker models. Then came broader concerns. Apple’s new voice assistant, Siri, made rookie errors. Ditto Apple Maps, which went as far as relocating the Washington Monument to the Potomac river. At the time, the question hanging over the company was existential: could Apple’s creative spark survive the death of its founder? One of Mr Cook’s lieutenants was so miffed at the criticisms that he publicly retorted in 2013: “Can’t innovate any more, my ass!”
如果你认为蒂姆·库克一直在苹果的掌舵下过着幸运的生活，那就错了。史蒂夫·乔布斯去世后的几年是一次严峻的考验。首先是反垄断：美国司法部起诉苹果串通固定电子书价格。然后是竞争：韩国竞争对手三星推出了更大、更时尚的手机与iPhone竞争。接着出现了更广泛的问题。苹果的新语音助手Siri犯了新手错误。苹果地图也是如此，甚至将华盛顿纪念碑搬到了波托马克河。当时，困扰着公司的问题是生存问题：苹果的创造力能否在创始人去世后继续存在？库克先生的一位副手对这些批评感到非常生气，于2013年公开回应说：“再也不能创新了，我的屁股！”

A decade or so later, Mr Cook may be feeling déjà vu. On all three counts—antitrust, Asian competition, the existential question of innovation and growth—there are parallels between then and now. Competition watchdogs in the eu are demanding compliance from March 7th with rules that for the first time breach the “walled garden” which keeps users and developers bound within Apple’s playpen. On March 4th they fined the company €1.8bn ($2bn) for allegedly stifling competition in music streaming. In America the doj may soon launch a case against Apple. In China, Huawei, a domestic mastodon, is seizing market share. Hanging over everything is the nagging concern, amid a levelling off in iPhone sales, that Mr Cook is missing the chance to pull another rabbit out of the hat with generative artificial intelligence (gen ai).
十年左右过去了，库克先生可能会感到似曾相识。在反垄断、亚洲竞争、创新和增长的生存问题上，现在和当时存在着相似之处。欧盟的竞争监管机构要求从3月7日起遵守规定，这是首次突破了将用户和开发者限制在苹果园区内的“围墙”。3月4日，他们对该公司处以18亿欧元（20亿美元）的罚款，指控其压制音乐流媒体竞争。在美国，司法部可能很快对苹果提起诉讼。在中国，国内巨头华为正在夺取市场份额。在一切之上，令人担忧的是，在iPhone销售趋于平稳的情况下，库克先生是否错过了利用生成式人工智能（gen ai）再次创造奇迹的机会。

In short, with its market value down by 10% since mid-December, and Microsoft, thanks to gen ai, vaulting past it to become the world’s most valuable company, sceptics wonder if Apple is now so dominant it has lost its mojo. So jaded is the narrative that many pay little heed to the buzz about the Vision Pro, Apple’s snazzy—though lavishly priced—mixed-reality headset. What hopes they have are pinned on the company’s annual developer conference in June, when they want Mr Cook to announce whizzy gen-ai upgrades proving that Apple can join the chatbot hypefest. That, though, is not how the company does things. Nor should it be.
简而言之，自去年12月中旬以来，苹果的市值下跌了10%，而得益于生成式人工智能，微软已超过苹果成为全球市值最高的公司，怀疑者们想知道苹果是否现在如此占主导地位以至于失去了魔力。对于苹果的Vision Pro，一款时髦但价格昂贵的混合现实头戴设备，他们寄予了希望。他们希望在公司每年的开发者大会上，库克先生能宣布令人兴奋的生成式人工智能升级，证明苹果能够加入聊天机器人的炒作。然而，公司并不是这样做事的。也不应该如此。

Go back to the threat from Samsung in Mr Cook’s early days. Back then investors pestered Apple to come up with a bigger phone, just as now they want it to match Samsung’s models with gen-ai bells and whistles. But Apple doesn’t rush things. It wasn’t until the launch of the iPhone 6 in 2014 that it produced a large-screen device. When it came, it was a smash hit. Its modus operandi remains the same. It is rarely first with a product. It seeks to improve what is already out there, learning from others’ mistakes and eventually trouncing the competition. Of course, that poses a risk. In theory, a scrappy upstart may produce new technology products cheaper and faster, pulling the rug from under the market leader. Perhaps a young company building a killer gadget for the gen-ai era already has Apple in its sights.
回到库克先生早期面临的来自三星的威胁。当时，投资者纷纷要求苹果推出更大的手机，就像现在他们希望苹果能够与三星的生成式人工智能手机相媲美。但苹果不急于行动。直到2014年iPhone 6的推出，它才生产了一款大屏幕设备。一经推出，便大获成功。它的工作方式仍然如此。它很少是第一个推出产品的公司。它寻求改进已经存在的产品，从别人的错误中学习，并最终击败竞争对手。当然，这也带来了风险。理论上，一个不起眼的新创公司可能会以更便宜、更快的速度推出新的技术产品，从而让市场领导者失去立足之地。也许一个年轻的公司正在为生成式人工智能时代打造一款杀手级的设备，并已将苹果视为目标。

Yet you do not have to be a true believer to see why Apple may be right to take its time. First, there will be more to gen ai than chatbots. They appear revolutionary. But so far they are just a better (and accident-prone) way of putting in a query and getting an answer. That is not Apple’s forte. “They are features, not products,” as Horace Dediu, an expert on Apple, puts it. Nor does Apple compete with other tech giants, such as Microsoft, Amazon and Alphabet, to run cloud-computing platforms with ai models on which customers can build gen-ai apps. Instead of relying on the cloud, it seems to be working on ways to embed gen ai in its own devices, bolstering its ecosystem. Since 2017 it has been using homemade chip technology called neural engines to handle machine-learning and ai functions its gadgets use behind the scenes.
然而，你不必是一个真正的信徒才能看出为什么苹果可能是正确的，需要花费时间。首先，gen ai将不仅仅是聊天机器人。它们似乎是革命性的。但到目前为止，它们只是一种更好（但容易出错）的方式来提出问题并得到答案。这不是苹果的长处。正如苹果专家Horace Dediu所说：“它们是功能，而不是产品。”苹果也不与微软、亚马逊和谷歌等科技巨头竞争，以运行云计算平台，为客户构建gen ai应用程序。它似乎正在努力寻找将gen ai嵌入自己设备的方法，以增强其生态系统。自2017年以来，它一直在使用自制的芯片技术，称为神经引擎，来处理其设备在幕后使用的机器学习和ai功能。

In late February it emerged that it was scrapping its ten-year project to build an Apple car and redirecting the engineers towards gen ai. No doubt it is moving up a gear—though not from an idle start. Apple will reveal nothing about its intentions. But one of the options it has is hiding in plain sight: the Vision Pro. The most recent gen-ai launches, such as Openai’s Sora, which converts text to video, and Groq, which speaks at humanlike speed in response to questions, suggests that eventually something other than written words could be the main gateway to gen ai. The Vision Pro is all about sounds and images.
今年2月底，有消息称苹果放弃了其为期十年的苹果汽车项目，并将工程师们转向gen ai。毫无疑问，它正在加速发展，尽管并非从零开始。苹果对其意图一概不透露。但其中一个选择就在明处：Vision Pro。最近的gen ai推出，如Openai的Sora（将文本转换为视频）和Groq（以类似人类的速度回答问题），表明最终除了书面文字外，其他形式可能成为gen ai的主要入口。Vision Pro专注于声音和图像。

Known unknowns 已知未知

In the short term none of this will resolve the growth question. In fact, the regulatory onslaught in the eu via the Digital Markets Act, which will henceforth apply to big-tech “gatekeepers” including Apple, could potentially crimp its biggest growth engine, services. For the first time Apple will be forced to allow third-party app marketplaces and alternative payment systems outside its App Store on devices in Europe. It has made no secret of its disdain for the rules. It calls them a threat to safety and privacy, and has introduced complex new fees for those who dare bypass its protective walls. Some developers have slammed its compliance measures, but they are likely to work: inertia means that many will probably stick with the status quo. As for a possible doj antitrust case, it would be a headache. But its scope is not yet clear.
短期内，这一切都无法解决增长问题。事实上，欧盟通过数字市场法案对大型科技公司“门户”（包括苹果）的监管压力可能会对其最大的增长引擎服务造成潜在压制。苹果将首次被迫在欧洲设备上允许第三方应用市场和替代支付系统进入其App Store之外。它对这些规定的厌恶毫不掩饰。它称这些规定对安全和隐私构成威胁，并对那些敢于绕过其保护墙的人引入了复杂的新费用。一些开发者对其合规措施表示不满，但它们可能会起作用：惯性意味着许多人可能会坚持现状。至于可能的美国司法部反垄断案件，那将是一个头疼的问题。但其范围尚不清楚。

China is a bigger problem with no clear solution. Huawei has become a formidable competitor, though in the long run it may be constrained by an America-led ban on sales to it of high-end chips. However big the geopolitical risks, Apple and China are so co-dependent that they may be stuck with one another.
中国是一个更大的问题，没有明确的解决方案。华为已成为一个强大的竞争对手，尽管从长远来看，它可能会受到美国领导的禁止向其销售高端芯片的限制。无论地缘政治风险有多大，苹果和中国之间的相互依赖可能使它们无法摆脱对方。

Still, don’t give up on Mr Cook yet. Apple is bound to be working on gen-ai products that do not leave egg on its face—just, as is its way, not in the open. At this stage, the vast sums needed to train ai models favour deep-pocketed incumbents over scrappy upstarts, which will work to Apple’s advantage. You can almost hear Cupertino muttering, “Can’t innovate anymore, my ass!” ■
不过，还不要放弃库克先生。苹果肯定正在开发不会让自己丢脸的通用人工智能产品，只是按照它的方式，不会公开展示。在这个阶段，训练人工智能模型所需的巨额资金更有利于资金雄厚的老牌企业，而不是那些刚起步的新秀，这将对苹果有利。你几乎可以听到库比蒂诺低声嘟囔着：“不能再创新了，我才不信呢！”■