But will Apple’s understandable desire to promote its big bet on mixed reality be enough to satisfy company watchers? I don’t think it will.
Will Apple shine a light on AI?
That’s because the tech agenda is being set by artificial intelligence, particularly generative AI.
We’ve been hearing speculation about Apple developing plans to implement genAI across its platforms for months. Most recently, it seems Apple has reached deals with OpenAI and potentially others in the space to make their AI tools available to the iPhone in some form. These will backed up by Apple’s own AI solutions, expected to be elegant tools for specific tasks capable of running on the devices themselves, along with beefier solutions that require cloud support, potentially hosted on Apple’s own M-series servers.
The company is no doubt hoping that this partnership-friendly approach to genAI will give its customers to tools they need while securing customer privacy, at least some of the time.
Data privacy and security will no doubt be part of the company’s customer promise when it comes to the application and future development of these tools. The idea that you can transcribe voice memos without risking sharing the data with the cloud will be compelling to those in regulated industries.
The cost and consequence
All the same, somewhere an industrialist is smiling over the energy use and environmental consequences of genAI solutions. Electricity grids worldwide are already feeling the strain — nearly a fifth of Ireland’s electricity is used up by data centers, and global demand is expected to increase sixfold in the next decade.
