The Game of Development Paths Between Apple and OpenAI

In the past one or two years, we have seen core members of Apple's team such as Tang Tan join OpenAI via IO Inc., to develop smart hardware and even possibly smartphones. Jony Ive wandered around for years before he ended up on the opposite side of Apple, while these new joiners now move to a company that may become Apple's direct rival with barely any gap in their career.

Why didn't Apple take action at the very beginning? Tim Cook might be unwilling to confront Jony Ive, nor to confront Steve Jobs' widow Laurene Powell, who invested in Love From, Jony Ive's earliest design firm, and also in IO. When OpenAI announced the acquisition of IO, Powell and Ive jointly gave an interview to the Financial Times of the UK, and the two of them criticized the current Silicon Valley culture together.

Ive said he moved to Silicon Valley back then because people there truly took serving humanity, inspiring others and driving creation as their goals, and that such an atmosphere no longer exists in today's Silicon Valley. He has mentioned this feeling many times, including when he left Apple.

Can OpenAI give him that exact feeling? OpenAI has spent a total of more than 6 billion US dollars to acquire a startup composed of around 30 Apple core design and engineering team members. Ive and Sam Altman shot a short video, where they talked a lot about their concepts, but barely revealed any clues about specific products.

Was *Intelligent Things* the first public outlet to mention the appearance of this product? It fits Ive's consistent aesthetic, looking like a donut on an American dining table. Back when Ive was designing the first liftable and pullable iMac, it was the sunflowers planted by Powell that inspired him. Is this time's inspiration also from the American dining table?

A screenless smart speaker doesn't sound very exciting. Google, Amazon, Apple, as well as Chinese companies Xiaomi and Baidu have all made similar products. It is indeed a very good voice interaction entry. In fact, Google, Amazon and Baidu all once had the opportunity to build this business into a huge platform entry.

Devotion to the original mission has faded, Apple is standing against the tide of history

Morgan Stanley once suggested that Google give such devices to American households for free, to avoid being charged long-term high binding fees by iPhone. Some people also once suggested to Robin Li and his wife that they could distribute Baidu's speakers for free, but the Lis cared more about the business model.

The problem faced by both Google and Baidu is that if users use voice Q&A instead of web search, the two companies will not be able to make profits from their highly profitable pay-per-click display ads.

Another problem is user usage rate. As for the usage of Baidu's speakers, after Baidu added a screen to the speakers, the usage rate of this product was greatly improved. Many users of Baidu's speakers are elderly people who stay at home. With the screen, they can interact remotely with their children who live far away. More importantly, they can order video content via voice.

But Ive does not like screens. As one of the main promoters of the large touch screen, he has repeatedly mentioned his regret over this invention after leaving Apple.

When he and Powell accepted the interview with the Financial Times, he mentioned again that tech inventions have brought some negative consequences, which makes him feel obligated to try his best to make a change.

One of his former subordinates and colleagues at Apple founded a company called Ai Pin two years ago, which also had the same ambition.

OpenAI will definitely be able to make a better speaker. The previous speaker products have a big problem: they are often woken up by mistake. In order to respond in time and not miss the user's call, these speakers are overly sensitive and active.

Ive's team will definitely be able to find a proper way to solve this problem. Maybe they can add active user perception hardware such as cameras to observe and analyze whether the user really wants to wake up the smart voice assistant. But this involves the issue of privacy protection, which is also the top concern of Ive.

A better hardware product does not necessarily mean commercial success. According to the earliest rumors, the output of this speaker will exceed 10 million units. Ive has fully experienced the development process of Apple's first generations of products, and he should know that even his most perfect designs, including the iMac and iPod, were not very popular in the first few generations.

OpenAI's donut-shaped speaker also needs running-in. The most confusing part is how this product will solve the problem of usage rate. ChatGPT is by no means a high-frequency use product, especially if it is placed at home instead of on a mobile phone.

There is another question that Robin Li always likes to ask: how does this product make money? Through ChatGPT's subscription fee?

People at Apple who are aware of OpenAI's product plans said that Ive's team is still working on several products. In addition to speakers, they will also consider wearable pendants like Ai Pin, watches worn on the wrist, and smart glasses.

The biggest variable is still the smartphone. If OpenAI develops watches, glasses and smartphones, it will directly compete with Apple, which may be the reason that makes Apple's new CEO fly into a rage, turn against Ive and Powell, and sue them in court.

The current scenario is just like the year when Steve Jobs left Apple, and Apple sued Jobs.

Facing the reality, in today's smartphone industry, even storage business cannot compete with large AI manufacturers, let alone top outstanding talents. Apple, Huawei, Xiaomi and the OV brands are all facing the reality that their best talents will leave. In the next few years, these large smartphone manufacturers will only retain stable profits and revenues.

Apple's designers are working hard to equip the iPhone with better cameras, better screens and better batteries. But in the end, all these efforts only help sell more iPhones, so that users can see more Google pay-per-click ads on the screen, and Apple can get more ad revenue sharing.

In the tone of Steve Jobs, are you willing to help your boss sell garbage ads all your life, or devote yourself to AI hardware, change history and earn more money than you did in the smartphone factory?

Ive and Altman want to do something different. Isn't this similar to NeXT in the old days? The CEO that Steve Jobs personally invited back then wanted to sell more PCs, while Steve Jobs kept trying to develop new PCs inside Apple, though he never made great success, and the 1984 Mac was not a hit product either.

So he founded NeXT. The latest new book *The Exiled Steve Jobs* tells the whole story from an insider's perspective. He poached Apple's system, hardware and even education business teams to develop a brand new operating system and hardware.

OpenAI and Ive are facing the same problem that Steve Jobs once faced: wrapping new software with hardware, making it accepted by consumers, making developers more profitable, and enabling the internet ecosystem to integrate smoothly.

For this kind of full-stack, whole-industry-chain challenge, Apple, Google and Huawei seem to have more advantages.

This article is from the WeChat official account "Intelligent Things Tech Review" (ID: IntelligentThings), written by Intelligent Things, and republished with authorization from 36Kr.