Recently a story made headlines concerning a potential seller finding out just how bad Microcenter’s trade-in value is for a Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 graphics card.
The retailer only offered $700 for a card that’s currently priced at nearly $2000 on its own online store, less than half its original value. And keep in mind that this is a current-gen high-end component, easily the best graphics card out there right now, not something from two generations ago.
(Image credit: Wccftech / Mr. Biggie Smallz)
Of course, there are several factors involved in trade-in value, including the condition of the product in question. However, Wccftech reported that this was a simple look-up through Microcenter’s website, meaning that this value is the standard one. Compare this to what Newegg is offering, about $1,500 or over twice as much, and you see quite the discrepancy between the two amounts.
Microcenter is also a brick-and-mortar retailer unlike Newegg, which means its reach extends beyond online shoppers and to more casual shoppers who may not be aware of how terrible that trade-in amount is compared to its competitors. Which is something it shares with another massive chain that buys and sells used products — Gamestop.
Though far from its peak as the most popular chain gaming retailer in the US, Gamestop is still widely known and attracts plenty of customers, including casual shoppers who simply want to buy whatever’s the most popular game or console and are willing to trade in older used products for it.
Gamestop has always been infamous for just how little it offers customers for trade-ins, even becoming an internet meme, and yet despite that still attracts quite a bit of business. At one point, it was estimated that the retailer made nearly $1 billion in profit off the used trade-in market alone. The company earned 48 cents of gross profits from every dollar earned in its pre-owned games and consoles, which it accomplished by reselling purchased used products at a much higher price.
So when I see a large retailer offer such an abysmal trade-in value for a very recent product that it’s guaranteed to resale at a premium, I get flashbacks to a Gamestop employee cheerfully announcing to me that my combined trade-in value of Final Fantasy X and Madden 2005 would be just over $3.
Hopefully, news will spread and it will inform more buyers to shop for better prices rather than take Microcenter’s paltry offer, and maybe even dissuade Microcenter from trying to low-ball its customers like this. This is behavior that needs to be nipped in the bud now, before it poisons the well and makes it that much harder to sell and purchase used components in the future.
Twelve years on from its launch, Siri now feels like a modern-day Apple Newton. Both started life as bold new personal assistants, only to stagnate and fall by the wayside. And both have been the butt of jokes on big comedy shows – the Newton was famously skewered on The Simpsons, while Siri has more recently ‘starred’ in the latest season of Curb your Enthusiasm (warning: the scene in question contains a tirade of expletives).
Yet while the Newton was put out of its misery and canceled in 1998, Apple has kept Siri ticking over in our iPhones. Well, barely – anyone who’s used Siri will have their own tale of frustration about its seemingly diminishing IQ. Apple can’t let this continue. And fortunately, the evidence is mounting that we’ll finally get a Siri reboot (or at least, a makeover) at WWDC 2024.
Apple is strongly hinting that AI and, to a lesser extent, Siri will be at the forefront of its annual developer’s conference. Its SVP of Marketing Greg Joswiak posted on X (formerly Twitter) that the event will be “Absolutely Incredible”, with the capitalization unsubtly spelling AI. Plus, the promo’s typography (below) also has echoes of Siri’s color scheme.
(Image credit: Apple)
But a wave of credible rumors and Apple’s own machine learning research also support the theory that Siri could soon become, if not great, then at least not an anachronistic embarrassment.
How exactly might Apple reboot Siri in June? It’s a long road back. Every time I’ve spoken to ChatGPT‘s baked-in Voice function I’ve marveled at how natural it feels in comparison. The trouble is, ChatGPT doesn’t have direct access to iOS for controlling my phone (unless you use Shortcuts). And Apple seemingly doesn’t have the generative AI chops – or the willingness to compromise on privacy – to do proper cloud-based AI.
The solution is likely to be a compromise, combining Apple’s latest on-device machine learning with third-party AI models like Google Gemini. That might result in a full Siri reinvention, but if it rescues the voice assistant from its current malaise, that’d be good enough for me…
A private chat
A Siri reboot isn’t certain at WWDC 2024, with the latest rumors a little confusing. This week, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman claimed that Apple “isn’t planning to debut its own generative AI chatbot” at WWDC 2024.
But that doesn’t mean Apple isn’t planning some Siri upgrades. Apple has never seen Siri as a chatbot like ChatGPT – since June 2021, the voice assistant has processed our questions on-device by default. “This addresses one of the biggest privacy concerns for voice assistants, which is unwanted audio recording” Apple said in a press release at the time.
Apple almost certainly won’t have changed its mind since then. So the improvements to Siri’s on-device performance will have to come from Apple – and there’s evidence that the tech giant has been exploring this.
Mark your calendars for #WWDC24, June 10-14. It’s going to be Absolutely Incredible! pic.twitter.com/YIln5972ZDMarch 26, 2024
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Last week, Apple researchers published a March 2024 paper that tested whether or not it’s possible for voice assistants to ditch trigger words like ‘Siri’ and instead use on-device AI to tell whether you’re speaking to your phone or someone else. This followed Apple’s quiet publication of a family of multimodal models (AI models that can simultaneously interpret different types of data) called MM1.
For the voice assistant paper, Apple’s researchers trained a large language model (LLM), based partly on OpenAI‘s GPT-2, to look for voice patterns that signify whether or not we’re asking for help from our phone. That’s pretty futuristic stuff. While the results were promising, it’s likely too soon for this kind of tech to find its way into iOS 18 or our iPhones.
Still, Apple is clearly working hard on voice assistant tech and we’ll likely see some of the fruits of this at WWDC 2024. Only six months ago, Apple was rapidly increasing its spending on conversational AI to “millions of dollars per day”, according to a report from The Information. Given the rapid advances of its rivals, some of this investment will surely go towards improving Siri.
(Image credit: Apple)
New Siri announcements also haven’t been completely extinct in recent months. In December 2023, Apple announced that its new S9 SiP (system in a package) meant the Apple Watch Series 9 and Watch Ultra 2 could “now process Siri requests on device”. This meant you could now ask Siri about over 20 health data markers, because your data wouldn’t leave the smartwatch.
None of this is the work of a company that’s given up on its voice assistant. The question is what Apple will do about the bigger part of the puzzle – answering queries that on-device Siri won’t be able to answer…
I’m not sure I understand…
If Siri can’t answer a question, you can ask it to search the web for you. This is where Apple might be looking to outsource to an external AI model to help with more challenging queries – with Bloomberg predicting that this could be Google Gemini in the US and Europe, with Apple also in talks with Baidu in China according to the Wall Street Journal.
Bloomberg’s report says this generative AI “heavy lifting” could include functions like “creating images and writing essays based on simple prompts”. But these AI features will be delivered via the cloud, with Apple still using its own AI models to process on-device functions and Siri actions.
(Image credit: Shutterstock/Tada Images)
This mooted Google Gemini deal wouldn’t be unusual for Apple. The tech giant doesn’t have its own search engine, so it’s long had an agreement (reportedly worth $18 billion a year) with Google for it to be the default option on Safari. That deal is now under threat from EU regulators.
Bloomberg says that a similar deal for Google’s Gemini AI models would simply build on this existing partnership between Apple and Google – again, if regulators allow it. It could even be a convenient replacement for that current deal between the tech giants, if it doesn’t crumble from the pressure of regulatory scrutiny.
Whatever happens with these talks, Apple seems unable to solve the whole generative AI puzzle on its own – and unwilling to shift its stance on privacy. That will likely mean some compromises for an upgraded Siri, rather than a giant leap.
Baby steps
The thing is, I’m not demanding (or expecting) a full Siri relaunch at WWDC 2024. All I want is for Apple to acknowledge Siri’s existence, make it less cloth-eared, and lay out how it’s going to make it a more conversational iPhone assistant. Right now, Siri is a brake on the potential of products like the AirPods and Apple Vision Pro, but it can start turning over a new leaf in iOS 18.
For years, Siri has been held back by internal squabbles, a lack of tech breakthroughs, and the wider problem that voice assistants don’t generate much revenue. But if Apple does, as the rumors suggest, outsource some of its generative AI features to the likes of Gemini AI, then it could play catch-up while reducing its liability when the occasional controversy inevitably strikes.
(Image credit: Apple)
None of this would rocket Siri towards being a voice assistant leader. But it’d be enough to keep Apple in the AI game, while reinvigorating one of the iPhone’s most frustrating features. At this point, Siri is damaging Apple’s reputation, so WWDC 2024 has to be a tipping point one way or the other.
Tim Cook has already promised during an earnings call with Apple’s annual shareholders that the company will “break new ground” this year in generative AI. While that doesn’t necessarily refer to Siri, could Apple do all of that while leaving Siri as it is? I don’t think so. And while Cook said the technology will “unlock transformative opportunities for our users”, I’m just hoping it’ll turn Siri into more than just a cooking timer.
The US government says Apple is holding back smartphones. Using tactics that make its competitors seem worse, rather than making its own phones better, Apple has unfairly hurt competitors like Samsung and Google, says the Justice Department. Whether or not the government is right, one thing is clear – Samsung has been making terrible software for years, and it can’t blame Apple.
Among all the major smartphone makers, Samsung saw the threat from Apple’s iPhone earlier than most. Among the biggest phone makers of the day (2007), Blackberry execs dismissed Apple as a consumer play, and Nokia stuck to its aging and unfriendly software. Only Samsung changed course quickly to meet the iPhone.
The Nokia N95 was the coolest phone ever before the iPhone came along (Image credit: Future)
Unfortunately, Samsung thought the iPhone was all about features. It never understood that the iPhone’s real advancement was making those features so incredibly easy to use with intuitive software.
The first Samsung competitor to the iPhone was the silly little Samsung Instinct, a feature phone running Samsung’s TouchWiz interface, with a better-than-average web browser, music player, and even simple apps. It was terrible, especially compared to the iPhone. But it looked like an iPhone, if you squinted just right. It was a poor replacement, but it checked most of the same boxes.
With Android came a win, but it was the wrong win
Samsung’s first Android phones were equally terrible. Before the Galaxy came along, we got the Samsung Behold, which was the worst smartphone I ever used. It stacked that TouchWiz feature phone interface on top of Android. On a spreadsheet of features, the Behold could match the iPhone row-for-row, but actually using the phone was a terrible ordeal.
When the Samsung Galaxy phones came along, they represented the first win for Samsung, but this victory only pointed the company more firmly in the wrong direction. What made the original Galaxy phone great, especially compared to the iPhone, was the OLED display. Apple didn’t adopt OLED for its iPhone display panels until the iPhone X. Samsung’s OLED Galaxy phones gave the company a win on paper, and that’s the only win that matters to Samsung.
The iPhone X was the first iPhone to match Samsung’s OLED display (Image credit: TechRadar)
Why is OLED better? First of all, OLED looks fantastic, especially on a small display where you can see the difference in contrast up close. Colors pop on an OLED display, and because black areas are completely dark, the contrast level approaches infinity. Second, OLED provides some minimal battery saving, since the dark parts of the screen are not drawing any power. In practice, it’s a small advantage, maybe 5% per day, but it’s measurable.
Samsung had a spec win. It won with a feature the iPhone wouldn’t match. It still used terrible software, still a version of the same terrible TouchWiz interface that it used on the Samsung Instinct feature phone. Even with hardware that could compete with the best, Samsung was hobbled by software that was born in the days when phones were plastic toys.
Fifteen years of spec improvements and bad software
Over the next 15 years, Samsung would follow the same pattern. It would aspire to beat Apple in terms of specs and hardware features. It would win on paper. It would launch phones with more and more.
First we got phones with larger displays. We got a stylus built in, even though we all knew styli were dead. We got more cameras, zoom cameras, then space cameras. We got glass that curved, then glass that folds. Features upon features. No improvement to the software.
Samsung can make phones that fold in half but not good software (Image credit: Future | Alex Walker-Todd)
In all those years, Samsung never made its software better, not better than Apple. We heard about every superlative spec, every clock-beating feat, but as much as reviewers griped and complained about bad, confusing, and overwrought software, Samsung never budged. It never improved significantly.
Samsung was able to give up glossy plastic phones, removable batteries, home buttons, and everything else, just to beat the iPhone. Somehow, it never cared enough about improving its software. Or else, it never thought beating Apple at software would be possible.
Maybe Apple is winning because … it’s better?!
There are many reasons why Apple has the huge market share it claims, and Samsung lags far behind in the US. I’d say that Apple simply makes a superior product. The iPhone, and I mean every iPhone from the least to the best iPhone, is better than the Samsung Galaxy S24. Unless you are buying the absolute best Galaxy S24 Ultra, you are buying an inferior phone.
The reason is software. Apple’s iOS 17 software isn’t just better, it is an entire experience. The features and the hardware and the software all work together seamlessly. Sometimes it works so well it can be frightening.
Admit it, iOS 17 just looks cooler than anything from Samsung (Image credit: Future / Philip Berne)
Samsung’s Galaxy phones are good in spite of the software, just barely. Its best Ultra phones are so packed with useful features that we must forgive the terrible interface, clogged menus, and overwhelming home screens. However, if you don’t find those features useful, or if you never find those features at all, the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra won’t be a phone you enjoy, unlike the iPhone.
Whatever the Justice Department decides to do about Apple, I hope Samsung turns a blind eye, because its problems have nothing to do with Apple’s market power. Samsung has had the same problems for years, and if it expects sympathy for falling so far behind, it must fix its terrible software first.
