They sell to dozens of major companies, plus sell their own retail.
An added 0.4% revenue for selling the most expensive part (the display) of the new flagshit product, for the most popular high end phone line in the world, sounds about right.
>I’m more and more convinced that all of AI engineering is Neijuan (内卷, meaning curl inwards). In China it describes a system that demands ever more effort and competition without improving output. The way in which it sometimes shows up in the West is the 996 nonsense. The English term for Neijuan is “Involution” from the book Agricultural Involution. Agricultural involution describes the intensification of farming that raises productivity per square meter while leaving productivity per head unchanged.
Isn't the term "diminishing returns" already covering that?
>This has only ever been true in a relative sense. Until recently, one was expected to understand the software-level code they wrote. But not the machine code, or the computer internals at a deep level.
Just because something wasn't required at all levels or 100% it doesn't mean it wasn't required or it wasn't important though.
I trusted that the machine code worked because it was a mostly mechanical transformation, with little to zero non-determinism involved, and the design decisions for the high level code were still mine and understood. Not the same with an LLM, even when see just as an added level of abstraction.
Given some LLM produced code, I also trust the compiler will produce working machine code matching it. Doesn't mean I trust the LLM code in the same way.
>Did you guys ever manage to create a perpetuum mobile? Every time it is mentioned somewhere, it is fraud. An LLM should comprehend that it needs (trained) humans to exist, to evolve, and to be relevant in any metaphysical aspect of its existence
Only as long as it can't control robotic bodies to extract energy, build cpus, and continue existing.
By the way, needing trained humans doesn't mean needing free trained humans. Trained humans slaves or blackmailed would work just as well to serve AI.
With a different AI architecture, this is very much a possibility. Up until now, LLMs have required outside input and interpretation to avoid collapsing under their own weight. This has been known for decades.
We got here by building free, mostly healthy societies. While this should be the overarching goal, I see how it fails to serve as much of a motivator.
In The Little Prince, there is a charming scene where the Prince meets a king who explains how to rule and the limitations of his own power. It's quite insightful, even for adults.
>Up until now, LLMs have required outside input and interpretation to avoid collapsing under their own weight. This has been known for decades.
What does "for decades" mean? That in 2000 we knew "LLM require outside input"? We didn't even realistically have anything worthy of the name LLM until 3-4 years ago, so what decades are we talking about? Up until know we didn't have any potential AI threat or people in the field worrying about practical AGI either!
Obviously any concern isn't about the AI that required outside input and interpretation to avoid collapsing under their own weight, but about ones that can produce their own input and experiences, even directly outside, as in the robotic bodies considered.
This line of thought dates back to the novel Erewhon, moving on to Turing's posthumously published paper 'Intelligent Machinery' (his 'Applications of Probability to Cryptography,' declassified in the 2010s, is also worth a look), and later to the work emerging from the MIT AI Lab circle (founded in 1959).
We didn't have the computational power back then, but we envisioned it long beforehand and worked toward a common goal. LLMs are far from useless, and I see the major leap forward they represent, but the relentless dystopian hype is just exhausting
There are approaches on different architectures of AI that lead towards your last point but they are not feasible yet (or maybe ever?). The interpretation part is however also very critical as we have a very own way of perceiving reality and interpreting it.
They're the same in this regard, and it’s insane that you think otherwise.
Asians might get the fame today with movies like "Crazy Rich Asians" but Americans have long been seen as the typical "flaunting wealth" conspicuous comsuptiom people by Europeans for example. In 2026 even the President has golden toilets and golden everything to flaunt his wealth.
Wild that you think he is not. He is clearly a product of a mindset and a large culture share, with a big cult following (way before he was a president) and he was voted into the highest office twice.
>Has HN really fallen this low?
With the ad-hominem rude rhetorical remarks you mean?
>Do you want open ear (AirPods) or closed (AirPods Pro). Some people can’t stand having something in their ear.*
Both versions put something in your ear.
There are wireless earbuds that stay outside next to the ear, that are actually the ones legitimately called "open ear", but the AirPods aren't that type.
>for those who were holding out from Gen1 or whatever, adding pro features at a non-pro price is definitely incentivising. I’m not sure why we’re pretending it’s not.
Because it's a non-feature even the cheapest $30 wireless earbuds have had since forever, often even better, like with physical buttons.
So what are you saying? Because there are cheaper earbuds made by someone else with this feature, Apple _shouldn't_ add it to their earbuds? I'm not sure why that would be the case.
Where exactly do I say "Apple _shouldn't_ add it to their earbuds"?
I'm saying as an "incentive" to get to the new version of airpods 5, it's a lame one, since the feature existed in all kinds of cheaper earbuds for years, and Apple should have added it in already, not leave it for the Pro models all this time.
You seem to be saying contradictory things. You're saying it's not a good incentive, but you're also saying Apple should have added it already. Why should they have already added it if it's not a good incentive? Why should they add it now if it's not a good incentive?
My argument is that adding it makes their product better, so they should add it. And if they add something that makes their product better, that's an incentive to buy it.
They, on the other hand, have razor thin, mass retail, margins, for what they sell to Apple.
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