Everybody wants a platform but nobody wants to spend what it takes to make a platform. That includes things like Windows Phone, Fire Phone, all the glasses, Humane, etc.
As much as everybody hates on OpenAI for chaotic management, they did buy Jony Ive and are presumably giving him everything he wants to build a platform for them. Even though it probably only buys them a 20% chance of success, they haven't doomed the project by underestimating what it takes budget-wise.
And they blew it. Maybe they blew it by not realizing that even long time Apple employees could get arrogant about security. Or maybe it was a loose ethical environment in general. Whatever is it the root or the problem, they set billions of dollars on fire maybe tens of billions, by being unnecessarily cute about Apple proprietary information when they could've been above reproach. They had the resources to hire all the right people with the right knowledge and probably already had them on board.
When Intel was on top of the world I was fortunate enough to work at one of the partner companies on a project that was a pet project of Andy Grove. I would nominate him and his whole C suite as a beacon of ethics and fair dealing.
They exist but their defining characteristic seems to be that they are not well-known and generally much less wealthy than celebrity CEOs.
Similar to the music world, the better you are, usually the more obscure you are as well. (e.g., Allan Holdsworth is a name known to most pros but the average Jack or Jill have no idea who he is or why he's considered important.)
Every Wall Street bank is run by guys who get that there are rules to this game and you don't squeeze the unsophisticated the same way. The same can't be said for Silicon Valleys contribution to the brokerage world.
At this point in his career, Jony Ive is best suited for doing deep dive studies on the corner-radius of new products. And even then, you might as well just default it to that of an ipad, because that seems to be his preference for all things, including $650k Ferraris.
I would say he isn't what he once was, age will get us all. However 'has no taste anymore' is too far the other way AND 'tasteless boomer' is in itself a tasteless comment.
I think the other thing folks underestimate is how important Jobs was as an editor for Ive's designs. Ive always leaned more to form over function IMO, and Jobs (or the Apple environment in general as it existed under Jobs) helped temper that. I don't think the butterfly keyboard would have seen the light of day under Jobs, and the released Ferrari interior doesn't seem like a stroke of genius to me. Easy to say from the peanut gallery I know, but I still think Jobs was best able to harness Ive's greatness.
AI model providers have zero "moat", clients change them as they see fit. This week ChatGPT, next week Claude. The real value is and going to be in hardware - as long as China doesn't enter the GPU/RAM race.
I increasingly see AI investment, generally speaking, as a lost cause. It has very little chance to pay off.
Yup. Model capabilities seem to keep converging quickly, not leaders breaking away for long.
Frontier labs are racing towards SaaS commoditization at incredible speed. And while there might possibly be $Trillions in productivity gained from their use, there's no reason to think those gains get captured by the model makers or inference providers at this point.
Maybe the Claude or ChatGPT desktop apps will dominate as the new MS Excel, but that's hard to do without already having locked the whole market into Windows.
There's virtually no platform play available to them.
> there's no reason to think those gains get captured by the model makers or inference providers at this point
Yeah it almost certainly won't be captured by them. That value is going to be captured by the folks/companies that shrink wrap the capabilities into a nice SaaS or other tool, that a business can buy off the shelf and give to their employees.
The model makers are on a fast track to just becoming dumb pipes, not unlike ISPs.
> AI model providers have zero "moat", clients change them as they see fit.
That might be true in tech-savvy industries -- but in non-tech industries where the biggest software purchase might be the office suite or the ERP, inertia means the GSuite shops stick with Gemini, and the Exchange/Office 365 shops stick with Copilot.
I tend to agree with this sentiment. I'm not in the tech sector. As an outsider, it seems to me that OpenAI and Anthropic are chasing government and the defense industry as their main clients. Google and Microsoft are chasing business clients and educational institutions. Amazon and Apple are chasing consumers.
No, what I mean is that the pentagon is still labeling anthropic a supply chain risk, meaning it shouldn’t be used for government contract work and anything military related. I don’t see how they can have a strong presence in the defense sector when that’s the case
At least from some smaller marketing companies I know that isn't necessarily true. They often have Gemini or Copilot and Claude nowadays and before Claude it was ChatGPT.
The moat is way smaller than with Office or Gsuite because they feed data into the chat interface and it gives them an answer. The moat for Gsuite and Office is higher because you have to move all your data and reorganize it. Oh and everyone has to learn how to use the new software clients.
Copilot isn’t a model per se, no? It’s a harness that can use any model that supports tool calls from what I understand. It’s the way Microsoft commoditize ai models
Just out of curiosity, what is the change and how are you measuring its rate?
From no internet to internet the change is pretty profound. But my job is already very automated for the most part. It's true AI might automate it a bit more, but it's not like I'm going from zero automation to full on automation. That's not nothing, and it is worth something, but it's also not internet from no internet level of change either.
The trick is antitrust style bundling. The massive pile of documents and processes tied to GSuite is a moat which makes it hard to switch to something like o365. Since a company might effectively be locked into GSuite (the primary product), if Google forces companies to buy Gemini (the secondary product) by bundling it with GSuite, they've given themselves a moat in the LLM space using their document/email moat from GSuite.
This is essentially what Google has done, and it's a shame the US is so weak on enforcing antitrust laws.
It can be if it’s really sticky. But I don’t think ai models themselves will ever be sticky, the harnesses might be. But there is very little money to make in the harness itself, and they are also very easy to copy, so yeah, no moat
I'm just happy we get to reap the rewards "for free" (i.e open models are slowly becoming usable, and the winner of the arms race will definitely stand on the shoulders of their competitors that didn't make it)
Not to mention with each iteration of every model you get lower cost per token. It’s really a race to the bottom for hyperscalers and neoclouds at this point, with technically only two paying customers.
I'm privy to dozens of people working on this problem every day and I imagine there's many more people working on this problem out of sight. I'm bullish on this idea, but it's going to be a slow burn.
This is hilarious. The company run by sama? The company that started as the largest copyright violation ever? How can you be above reproach when you start with such disregard like that?
Ferrari tends to sell well, partially due to allocation requirements so you have to factor that in.
There will be a market for the car, but Ferrari is a mix of a car company, a lifestyle brand, and a jewelery company. The Luce doesn't really fit the image they've cultivated and is not distinctive enough from the rest of the market. It's almost too pedestrian. The inside is nice, but you can't flex on others with a nice interior. It also doesn't have fun features that are proving to be desirable, like the faux shifting that the Hyundai has and that other brands are gonna start adopting. It feels like a car Ferrari made to say they made an EV. Its like they felt they had to, either due to internal or external pressures.
If I am understanding you correctly, it seems the Luce does not factor in to that equation. There are no requirements for anyone to buy a Luce in order to unlock the privilege of buying higher tier models.
Both the cybertruck and apple vision pro basically sold out upon release... Selling out does not mean shit. Just proves there are many fools out there with too much money.
That’s extremely easy for Ferrari to do, here is how it works:
“Hey, it’s your friendly Ferrari dealer. About your position on the list for an F80… we’re going to need you to buy a Luce to maintain your position and ensure you are eligible to purchase an F80 when we get an allocation.”
And that’s how you sell out a production run for a Ferrari that looks like a Kia. Force rich people to buy it to get the car they actually want, just like a Rolex AD does with Lady Datejusts if you want a Daytona allocation.
> they did buy Jony Ive and are presumably giving him everything he wants to build a platform for them
If they hired Jony Ive to build a "platform" they will be very disappointed. He has no experience in doing that. They hired him to design a device, probably comment on the UI (if there is any, though I don't think he is qualified to direct either UI personally).
Aside from that, yeah, they royally screwed up here. Either by hiring unsavory people who think this acceptable behavior and/or by not managing/supervising them.
I've said it before on this topic: this goes _way_ past non-competes and the like. If you learn a novel method for doing something you are free (in my book) to recreate it at another company. You are not free to steal code/designs/etc verbatim and you are absolutely not ok to encourage people you are poaching (poaching is fine itself) to steal secrets/ideas on their way out. Also the whole "lying to a manufacturer to say Apple gave OpenAI permission to use the same proprietary technique" is really gross.
> Either by hiring unsavory people who think this acceptable behavior and/or by not managing/supervising them.
Is there any reason to think this is roque employees doing something? We know Altman is ethically challenged. It is equally or even more likely that management welcommed employees to doing this.
This could be a blessing in disguise for OpenAI. This mess was conducted under Altman’s watch—it could be an opportunity to Kalanick him.
The Board could elevate Altman to Chairman emeritus or something, choose a new CEO and settle with Apple. That will probably involve shutting down the hardware project and clawing back comp from its employees who helped make this mess.
I maintain that if Humane wasn’t arrogant as hell and had just put a screen on their device, theyd have been PERFECTLY placed to become the open-platform AI Phone
Hell they might’ve been bought by OpenAI for billions instead of… HP lol
> Everybody wants a platform but nobody wants to spend what it takes to make a platform.
Ahistoric jibber jabber. Microsoft gave it their very best shot with Windows Phone. Facebook renamed the entire company to make VR happen. These companies have shoved everything they got into making these platforms, and their fate would not have been different if they had been given another billion.
Platforms are hard to make, and wanting it bad enough is not enough to make one.
Stealing from the one company that has managed to court success makes a lot of sense. They are the only company with any successful experience.
Fair enough, but I'd point out that, unlike Second Life, Meta didn't buy pants. If you want a chronicle of wasted spending regarding Microsoft and mobile devices, Google "Tomi Ahonen."
They also succeeded in the monumental task of making VR look boring.
VR platforms are an escapist's dream: you can be anything you want doing whatever you want. And how did they show off their fantasy world machine? They did office meetings in avatars of their real life selves.
Just spend one night in VRChat and everything Meta did will look like Plato's cave shadows.
Ehh, Tomi Ahonen always came across as someone who was letting his emotions cloud his judgment (maybe the N9 was his pet project?) which was not great for a "consultant." Sure enough when I looked around there was substantial criticism to be found, e.g. https://dominiescommunicate.wordpress.com/2014/06/25/top-ten...
Also wasted spending is not quite the same as "not wanting to spend" -- it's more, to GP's point, "spending a lot unsuccessfully." I got the sense a lot of the friction Nokia and Windows Phone faced were due to Google (and to some extent Apple) using the market dominance of their properties (Android, YouTube, Search, Maps) to suppress competition.
I suppose it's fair play for what MSFT did in the OS and browser wars, but they got dinged pretty hard by Antitrust and played nice for a decade+ after that. Google is starting to see the antitrust blowback for it's actions only now, long after the competition has been crushed.
I don't think they intended for that part to happen. Once that becomes an eventuality, it is obviously no longer a good idea, but you don't get to know if you hit the jackpot before you pull that lever.
The Fire Phone did exactly what it was designed to do. It contained technologies that Apple fans were crowing about a decade later! Its major problems were the braindead carrier lock-in and the moronic pricing.
While I agree that OpenAI is run by thieves, you can't tell me that Apple wouldn't have tried the same shit on a more scrupulous attempt at building a platform competitor?
Like, this is the same Apple that tried to tell a judge "a touch is a zero-length swipe" when suing the shit out of Android vendors, right? In their eyes, all the competition was supposed to stick with styluses and Windows Mobile 6.x.
A decade ago Uber seemed poised to be the big tech powerhouse. Maybe not a platform per se (certainly not an ecosystem as other companies had it) but a major provider of software for all kinds of verticals beyond their core business. What happened to that?
Uber managed to make the business by lobbying so hard. In some countries they broke the regulation of tax drivers and made the environment like wild jungle. Now, people don't feel "safe" anymore for random Taxis and prefer Uber in many places.
[Citation Needed]. Demand letters are one thing. Proof is another. And California laws are, to my understanding, pretty employee friendly as a matter of policy. We'll see where this ends, but I wouldn't assume right now this is anything but typical corporate engagement.
Yes, but how do we know specific manufacturing processes weren’t in employee contracts like, “If you leave Apple you can’t utilize the invisible weld process invented here for the iMac.”
I mean regardless of whether it’s a trade secret, you’re going to know how to do specific things that can’t be protected against copying.
There are no practical laws against understanding the laws of physics, chemistry, and metallurgy when it comes to anodizing.
Legally, no. Reasonably, for purposes of discussion, I think it has. The “LOL” dumbfuck who airlifted files into OpenAI isn’t particularly ambiguous [1].
It is ambiguous still at this stage though. There's no proof he used this info at his job or that he was directed to take it by anyone (he may have thought it helpful to his career in a way OpenAI never asked for or even invited).
LOL Liu hasn’t—to my knowledge—been fired. When OpenAI was notified of his conduct, they didn’t confidentially settle. Instead, OpenAI’s legal went cold on Apple.
It’s not legally certain. But you really have to stretch the facts to make this seem ambiguous.
The court of public opinion is a thing, and the onus isn't on us to not trust a rich tech bro to not be an unethical person. That's on them to fix their image + avoiding jail time.
The rest of us are allowed to rightfully laugh at them.
Why are we taking Apple’s side here? They made accusations, nothing had been proven yet.
Who is to say Apple employees (at Apple) haven’t been vibe coding or asking gpt for technical topics? Also, funny timing from Apple - there is a lot of PR and optics riding on this lawsuit.
FT frames this as some aggressive escalation tactic, but document retention letters are extremely standard practice. At this point they're basically a formality, as any former Apple employee at OpenAI really ought to know by now that they could get dragged into this. Hold letters can be aggressive if you send them before you've even filed a complaint, but if anything, Apple is late to the party with these.
Something similar happened to me when I left Microsoft for Apple (I moved from the Visual Studio team to the Xcode team). MS spent six months trying to prove I'd taken "industry secrets" with me. I hadn't. The entire thing felt like a personal attack and was extremely stressful.
It sounds like, in this case, Apple has hard proof that documents were stolen.
This seems like an important post. It looks like these letters are occasionally used to as a tactic, and i can see how such a tactic can really scare employees in a country where legal bills can climb really fast.
> in a country where legal bills can climb really fast
Honest question: Are there countries where this is not the case? I'd be interested to read more about how that manage that. If it's some sort of "protecting the little guy"-type thing or a general suppression of legal costs. Or maybe I'm reading too much into your comment.
Regulated legal insurance market coupled with „looser pays all the costs“ system.
The insurance doesn’t mind fighting for you because they will get paid by the company making the frivolous suit. You don’t pay much, 10$/month.
Although in this particular case, you wouldn’t even need that, since either you took the documents and that is criminal fraud prosecuted by the state or you didn’t take the documents and then the company would be in hella trouble if they perjured themselves to the public prosecutor claiming you did.
It is more that labor protections in most of the industrialized world actually mean something, such that this sort of behavior is generally not even to be considered an option by an employer.
Doesn't that mean that if you have a slam dunk case you can get a super expensive lawyer just to run up costs as much as possible? Hell, could you ask your friend to be your legal representative and have him charge you a gorillion dollar in legal fees? Then when you win you split the loot?
Civilized countries regulate the rates that lawyers can charge for standard work. Also lawyers get only reimbursed for reasonable costs by the loser. Still expensive, but not absurdly so.
It does, and it absolutely has a chilling effect in countries which don't do things this way.
Sue someone who can spend millions of pounds (for the sake of argument) on defence? Better be certain you can win... against someone who can spend millions of pounds, and probably went to the same public school as the judge.
In America, legal fees can be awarded as additional damages. We should do it more than we do. But given those two options? I'm on Team American Rule, 100%
No. The fees must be objectively reasonable and usual and customary for the effort and level of skill required. To get fees, you must submit an itemized billing statement that gets picked apart by the other side.
They did. That said, I don’t know how much “defending” they had to do given that I was never even told what, exactly, I was supposed to have stolen. But, like I said, it was both surprising and anxiety inducing.
> It sounds like, in this case, Apple has hard proof that documents were stolen.
I believe some articles mentioned about employees bragging to their former colleagues about accessing documents. Also I believe they lied to Apple about being employed elsewhere so they can continue using their access and hardware, etc.
If these are correct, the whole OpenAI playbook is very dirty, and I won't pity them a bit.
Apple also has server logs that track these former employees downloading confidential docs. It doesn't prove that they shared them over to OpenAI, but Apple has pretty solid proof that the former employees saved them without authorization.
I'm not a lawyer, but I would also guess they need to "flip" these folks against OpenAI and get them to cooperate in the lawsuit against the actual folks with big pockets. I think they're essentially alleging a conspiracy by OpenAI and they need as many examples as possible to make the case that this was a pattern and standard practice, not just one or two idiots acting on their own.
So if I'm a former Apple employee and I get one of these scary letters, I'm asking my attorney if I could get out of a lawsuit by sharing any information I have about any potential OpenAI shady practices.
You shouldn't ever willingly give up information to a plaintiff if it could implicate you. If the information exists, it's going to come out in discovery. Admitting to theft of trade secrets is probably not going to help you, it's not like the cops offering you immunity for turning state's witness.
You talk to a lawyer and do what they say, not what Apple demands of you. No one but a judge can demand anything of you.
Seems kinds dramatic. Legal holds are common in my industry, not really a big deal. Most of my senior colleagues have been deposed or testified. Stressful but shouldn't be scary unless you did something criminal
It's not scary. I received one of these letters for the DOJ vs Microsoft trial while working at Netscape and it was less scary opening it than the email from my cube mate titled "you won't believe it."
The lawyers told us ahead of time we'd be getting the letters. They told us what we needed to preserve and what we could comfortably trash. There was never any follow-up or specific requests for what I had on my machines. That was that.
The idea that getting a legal request is scary is silly. We were employees getting employee guidance from our employer on what to do at every step of the way. We weren't individuals fending for ourselves, wondering about getting something wrong, being taken in for questioning. We were doing what we always do, work hard and listen to the company lawyers if they have something to say.
They’re not late to the IPO party, which was postponed by OpenAI, It may turn out that that was a mistake. OpenAI probably should’ve gone ahead, particularly in light of the pending court case.
Apple must have hard evidence on this. I can’t believe they would take it this far without already knowing they are going to win. If they have to fire a huge chunk of their hardware employees it’s going to throw their IPO plans into chaos.
They literally do have hard evidence. They have records of an employee (Chang Liu) who left for OpenAI copying dozens and dozens of files off of their server after he left.
Also, Apple confronted OpenAI about LOL Liu. OpenAI’s response wasn’t to fire him, conduct an investigation and confidentially settle with Apple. It was to go cold.
> these are letters to individuals about the existing lawsuit with OpenAI, not new lawsuits against individuals
My guess is these employees weren’t chosen randomly. If they refuse to coöperate with Apple, they’ll get personally sued as well.
And the reality of the matter is, given Altman’s public persona and reputation, there is a good chance an AG somewhere starts looking at whether these folks broke any laws.
They will find out what Altman really cares about, my guess at this point, he only cares about the impending IPO throwing baggage overboard (new hires), probably won’t be a problem in the end.
They can easily be found to have violated the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, like this is a slam dunk. Highly possible too seeing the massive public hatred against companies like OpenAI. DAs like easy political wins too and what better win than sticking it to OpenAI and its lackeys?
Might have to make some phone calls to my local representatives now...
Definitely not randomly chosen--Apple would have chosen people it believes may have evidence that relates to the case. It's a legal request to preserve that data.
But it doesn't follow at all that Apple is threatening to sue them. A long time ago, in an unrelated case, I got a letter like this because I was in the room when a certain decision was made and happened to have some notes about that meeting. But there was no chance I would be sued. I wasn't the decider, and was basically a third-party involved.
You are getting downvoted because, I guess, people didn't read who the defendents who are getting sued, and that it literally starts with sueing two employees:
CHANG LIU, TANG YEW TAN, OPENAI
FOUNDATION f/k/a OPENAI, INC., OPENAI
GROUP PBC, and IO PRODUCTS, LLC f/k/a IO
PRODUCTS, INC.,
The accusations are incredibly clear/defined (and serious!) and have a very simple burden of proof. These things either happened or they didn’t, and they have material evidence or they don’t. It’s incredibly unlikely that they filed such big, concrete accusations without concrete proof to back them up.
And while I am far from an Apple fan boy, yes a lot of big corporations file frivolous lawsuits but Apple typically does not engage in that behavior against other companies. Also bear in mind that open AI is a huge name so there is a public/political element that goes along with this for Apple. There are going to be a lot of people who do not want Apple to win this regardless of how true their claims are and will figut like hell to protect openAI
Apple doesn't engage in that behavior against other companies? Apple doesn't abuse the legal system for business gain?
Apple Computer, Inc. v. Microsoft Corp. and Hewlett-Packard Co. (1988–1994)
-- Apple lost its ass on this one, entirely frivolous. Every single major claim failed.
Apple Inc. v. HTC Corp. (2010–2012)
-- Apple patents wiped out over frivolity
Apple Inc. v. Motorola Mobility, Inc. (2010–2014)
-- Mutually destructive patent fight, Apple's loss
Apple Inc. v. Samsung Electronics Co. (2011–2018)
-- Pretty suspect. Lawyers still undecided
Apple Inc. v. Qualcomm Inc. (2017–2019)
-- Apple settled, needed QC modems more than a win
Apple Inc. v. Epic Games, Inc. (2020–present)
-- Apple was ordered to stop anti-steering rules, won little
Look, Apple sued Samsung over the corner radius on piece of hardware. It's currently suing a YouTuber for publishing renders of pre-release iOS.
And that's just the tip of the iceberg for Apple suits, many pretty unconvincing. Here are a few more.
Apple Computer, Inc. v. Franklin Computer Corp. (1982–1983)
Apple Computer, Inc. v. Apple Corps Ltd. (1978–2007)
Apple Inc. v. Psystar Corporation (2008–2011)
Apple Inc. v. Corellium, LLC (2019–2023)
Apple Inc. v. NSO Group Technologies Ltd. (2021–present)
Apple Inc. v. Rivos Inc. (2022–2025)
Apple Inc. v. Andrew Aude (2024–2025)
So don't tell us Apple doesn't abuse the legal system for business gain. It's obvious to anyone with eyes that it regularly does so.
without knowing the full extent of law suits initiated by apple this cherry picked set means nothing. a little over a dozen lawsuits you mentioned in a 40 year period. I mean so what, lol.
You see how that’s an entirely different kind of legal action, right? It’s a resistance to regulation, which is entirely different than this accusation of malfeasance.
I think it is clear that if Apple were going to deal with OpenAI on that level, they already would have. What they wanted for their AI products is a measure of control over their destiny that OpenAI clearly did not want to give them that badly. It's also pretty clear that Apple is willing to work with arch-rivals to supply components of their products, both software and hardware, but values consistency alongside trustworthiness.
This stuff happened years ago, right? Something tells me that discussion has already happened, and they went with Google.
Besides: Apple is a "real" company that will definitely still be around in five years. They've already fumbled Siri multiple times. IMO Google was certainly the right choice for actually executing well on Apple's own terms for the foreseeable future.
You’re underestimating how much Apple Legal goes after anyone and everyone they feel a slight wrong sniff about.
I know some insane stories that will never be publicly disclosed for one reason or another, and…it’s not a legal team I’d ever want to cross paths with.
It’s also not the first time Apple has cried wolf at employees leaving the company to do bigger and better things, while trying to take responsibility for their successes.
Oh, in that case, I just happen to have some insane stories that will never be publicly disclosed, and every one of my stories rebuts every one of your stories.
Then share some of those insane stories with sources I guess. Because this seems to directly contradict my understanding of Apple (post-Jobs in particular).
I do not love Apple, as I said another comment I am so far from an apple fanboy, but frivolous lawsuits against other companies is not really typical for them. Also, these accusations are far from frivolous and they either have proof or they don’t. It would be very strange for them to file this thinking they would win with some sort of gray area argument
It's interesting that you say they must have hated each other, but assume only Ternus is acting on that. What makes you think Tan's hatred of Ternus or animosity toward Apple for picking Ternus over him didn't lead Tan to do the alleged behavior?
Maybe a naive take, but if there's one team in a large corporation that does not bend to "the CEO(-to-be) wants it", that is the Legal team. Particularly when the ask is a lawsuit of this scope and relevance, and potential costs (of all kinds). The head of Legal can just hint to the board how expensive (in all senses) the vendetta would be and the CEO is likely "not to be" anymore, or "to be temporary".
Tim Cook is the current CEO. Tim Cook is doing this. Any assertion otherwise is 100% wrong.
John Ternus doesn't become CEO until September 1st. If you think that this is still John Ternus' play, Tim Cook is still the one in charge and signed off to start this, meaning "Tim Cook would never have started this" is still 100% wrong.
Weird take. With as much evidence as they have (unless they're just wildly fabricating everything in their lawsuit complaint, which... really? All Apple's lawyers are just making up claims in court documents? Sounds very career-ending, why would the lawyers do that?) they would be complete idiots not to sue.
There is absolutely no evidence at all. Apple is going to loose this. The beef is real, and though Tim is acting CEO till the 1st of September I am ready to bet anything that the order to sue comes from Ternus. Specially considering that there is no evidence of wrongdoing or stealing.
And if there is, tell me what.
John Grubes might be a better authority than me in these matters and he seems to share my opinion. You can listen to it here:
These letters are simple "If you have evidence related to this lawsuit, you must preserve it" letters. And entirely routine in this kind of action. There are more of them than in most cases, because this is such a big case. But the gist is entirely routine.
Based on the previous thread, Apple seems to have damning evidence of wrongdoing by the (ex)employees before-and-after they left their positions at Apple: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48865019
Seems very similar to Google/Waymo winning its case against Uber (ex-Googler Anthony Levandowski) stealing corporate data.
Apple has the employees' emails history, the server access logs, etc. Really don't see Apple pursuing this unless they had a mountain of evidence against them.
Generally speaking, I think Apple tends to win on anything related to ex-employees. I am not sure if this is normal across Big-Tech. But surely is for Apple.
Depending on what is at stake. Example the one with Nuvia and Qualcomm I believe they just settled.
I don’t think Cupertino will settle for stock. I think they’ll demand cash and an agreement that OpenAI abandon or reboot their hardware project. In the meantime, Apple gets an open kimono into everything OpenAI has planned.
This could actually be the fuckup that kills OpenAI as an independent company. The threat of a cash judgement gums up not only an IPO, but also debt-based fundraising. (We equity guys are idiots, so we’ll probably keep writing cheques until the market turns.)
This could go way beyond any potential hardware project, depending on whats actually true from the allegations and how much of Apple's trade secrets have been used or shared within OpenAI.
There were rumors a while back of OpenAI building some integrations into macOS akin to the Shortcuts app, and who knows what other computer use type projects. They could very well have been using information from within Apple for that.
It's kind of a fruit of a poisonous tree problem. If OpenAI used any of Apple's secrets broadly, Apple could ask the court for an injunction to block the deployment of any software from OpenAI. If discovery proves the IP contamination spread into other areas within OpenAI, it could completely freeze all of their deployments.
If Apple actually has the receipts here they could realistically bring down OpenAI entirely.
If OpenAI used any of Apple's secrets broadly, Apple could ask the court for an injunction to block the deployment of any software from OpenAI. If discovery proves the IP contamination spread into other areas within OpenAI, it could completely freeze all of their deployments.
I find this so funny. Can you share an example or two of where something like this has ever happened to one of the largest companies in the world? There is no universe where some judge orders that OpenAI can no longer deploy any software, for anyone (including huge swaths of the federal government) because of the alleged actions of a few people, and it’s allowed to stand. Zero chance.
I’ll say one thing for Sama: he might have a lot of haters, but it’s not that hard to prove them wrong with predictions like these.
> Can you share an example or two of where something like this has ever happened to one of the largest companies in the world?
Waymo (Google) vs. Uber & Anthony Levandowski. Google was granted an injunction that ordered Uber to immediately halt all development on self driving tech.
Apple also bankrupted Pystar for stealing trade secrets.
Levandowski would have served actual jail time if he didn't get a pardon.
Property rights and trade secret laws don't just magically vanish because a company has government contracts or a high valuation.
My prediction: this will result in a relatively modest undisclosed settlement and OpenAI won’t abandon, or even modify, their hardware product because of this. And Apple definitely won’t get an “open kimono” to everything OpenAI has planned.
This is two of the largest, most powerful, most well-capitalized companies on the planet in a legal fight. People are taking sides because of their hatred of Sama, and it results in these bizarro takes that OpenAI is finished as a company lol.
Huh what? Since when is OpenAI's IOU's and paper money worth more than Apple's cold hard cash? They have been backing away from their infrastructure commitments and literally pushing their IPO out.
Their "value" might fly with idiot VC's that are willing to throw money at them based on vibes. They are "big" on paper, nothing close to the financial heft of Apple. If anything this is where Sam Altman’s reality-distortion-field isn't going to fly.
> ... it results in these bizarro takes that OpenAI is finished as a company lol.
Meanwhile there's repeated news of OpenAI barely making ends meet and poised to run out of money mid next year. Unfortunately, OpenAI being 'well-capitalized' just doesn't hold up to what we've been actively seeing.
Why would Apple settle? They probably want the same outcomes of the Waymo v Uber trial that forced Uber out of the market. Apple's accusations imply that every part of OpenAI's hardware effort has been tainted with Apple's trade secrets and is therefore illegitimate. They also have more money than God so they can keep the suit going as long as they want.
This is an interesting point here. Due to having infinite money already, that's a possible dynamic we might see. OAI admits "Yup, obviously you got us. Let's write a check." And Apple might just respond "Nah, we are obviously going to win at trial, the legal fees don't bother us a bit, and honestly we don't really need the money, we'd rather destroy you as heavily as possible, for some combination of making an example out of all the criminals involved, plus there's a tiny chance you could threaten us someday considering you hired 'our boy' Jony Ive to build hardware."
There's also just the possibility that the use of stolen IP has contaminated most work within OpenAI to the point that an injunction could realistically stop all deployments by OpenAI and grind the company to a halt during discovery, before a trial even happens if Apple is granted the injunction.
If Apple has receipts, this could spell the end of OpenAI anyway. Even if Apple doesn't go to trial, at minimum, OpenAI will need to discard any work that even remotely touched or was influenced by Apple's IP here. If it was shared broadly within OpenAI across multiple projects, it could be quite substantial. Fruit of a poisonous tree and all that.
Uber was not forced to leave the self driving car market by Waymo's litigation. The litigation ended in February 2018 and Uber left the market in December 2020.
They will just settle if a settlement gets them what they want for less than fighting this to legal completion would cost them (on a risk-adjusted basis).
People are forgetting that the kind of conduct alleged is also likely illegal.
In the not-so-distant past, Uber's head of self-driving was indicted and sentenced to jail time for similar conduct. The criminal case didn't start until ~2.5 years after the civil case was filed.
It's insane to cross Apple. In the worst case Apple could take the ChatGPT app down like they did to Fortnite. They are probably waiting for discovery to find out how high this goes.
IIRC Apple have been allowed to remove Fornite from the Apple Store, they just fall foul of the EU Digital Markets Act / DMA (?) when also blocking the Epic Games Store as a route to add/sideload it.
Removing ChatGPT due to ToS violations seems like it would be ok.
1. Maybe OpenAI is preparing a lawsuit against Apple to secure an antitrust ruling that would select OpenAI models for Siri.
2. Maybe Apple is preparing a lawsuit against OpenAI to force them to disclose their developments during the discovery process.
either openai carelessly stole stuff from apple or apple is trying to slow/hobble a competitive threat. why are people taking sides in the comments? either is equally likely at the moment. discovery could be interesting.
How can I say this…? Some companies come across like a neon sign flashing "EVIL!".
It's been nothing but warning signs from this company for at least a year now. I'm so happy to have nothing to do with them (having deleted my account a year or so ago).
Their marketing dept is going to have to really dig to get them out of this hole they've made for themselves.
The idea that I would trust any device they might roll out that is as personal as a personal AI assistant… It's no better than Meta and their creepy glasses.
Yeah, no thanks.
EDIT: I don't mind the downvotes—it means I touched a nerve—whether I am on the right or wrong side of the issue is not as interesting.
Apple, for its flaws, has not lost my trust with regard to my personal data—Meta and others are likely to never gain that back. OpenAI continues to do things to signal that they will not have that trust with me as well.
- U.S. Department of Justice antitrust lawsuit Accuses Apple of monopolizing
smartphone markets and anticompetitive behavior.
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-sues-apple-monopolizing-smartphone-markets
- EU Commission DMA breach The European Commission found Apple in breach of
the Digital Markets Act regarding steering rules.
https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/news/commission-finds-apple-and-meta-breach-digital-markets-act
- Epic Games injunction sanctions Court rules Apple defied App Store order
regarding external payment links.
https://apnews.com/article/69b16572d2b2c990f6b69d4bbad9b57b
- EU €1.8B App Store fine Fined for abusive music-streaming rules and
preventing cheaper alternative information.
https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_24_1161
IPHONE PERFORMANCE AND "BATTERYGATE"
- Apple Will Finally Pay for Throttling iPhones (WIRED) Apple settled the
throttling lawsuit for up to $500 million (without admitting guilt).
https://www.wired.com/story/apple-batterygate-settlement-payments-finally-coming/
RIGHT TO REPAIR AND PARTS PAIRING
- The End of Parts Pairing? Almost (iFixit) On how software component linking
forces warnings and loses functionality.
https://www.ifixit.com/News/100266/the-end-of-parts-pairing-almost
- Self-Repair Programme Critique (Right to Repair Europe) Critiques
serialization, remote authorization, and part restrictions.
https://repair.eu/news/apples-self-repair-programme-is-not-the-right-to-repair-we-need/
- France is Fighting to Save Your iPhone from an Early Death (WIRED) Regarding
France's probe into planned obsolescence and parts pairing.
https://www.wired.com/story/right-to-repair-apple-france/
PRIVACY AND SURVEILLANCE
- Apple to pay $95 million to settle Siri privacy lawsuit (Reuters) Lawsuit
alleging accidental Siri recordings and sharing with third parties.
https://www.reuters.com/legal/apple-pay-95-million-settle-siri-privacy-lawsuit-2025-01-02/
- Apple's CSAM On-Device Scanning Critiques (EFF) The Electronic Frontier
Foundation's critique of Apple's plan to scan photos on-device (later
dropped).
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/08/apples-plan-think-different-about-encryption-opens-backdoor-your-private-life
LABOR CONDITIONS IN SUPPLY CHAINS
- Apple Reveals Supply Chain, Details Conditions (Reuters) Early reporting on
audit findings of child labor and work violations.
https://www.reuters.com/article/world/uk/apple-reveals-supply-chain-details-conditions-idUSTRE80C1KV/
- Rights Group Says Apple Suppliers in China Broke Labor Laws (Reuters)
Reports of excessive overtime and labor violations in Chinese factories.
https://www.reuters.com/article/business/rights-group-says-apple-suppliers-in-china-breaking-labour-laws-idUSBRE85R0EF/
TAX PRACTICES
- State aid: Ireland gave illegal tax benefits to Apple worth up to €13
billion (European Commission) The EC ruling that Ireland gave illegal tax
benefits to Apple, later upheld.
https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_16_2923
I’ll defend batterygate. If you know anything about batteries (especially the tendencies of those in that era), the actions taken by Apple were reasonable, though they should have considered the light in which throttling would be taken. The claim against them was valid but I don’t think the actions were ever malicious.
> Apple knew a supplier was using child labor but took 3 years to fully cut ties (yahoo.com)
Apple routinely terminates relationships with suppliers when they identify abusive practices, sometimes they’re slow about it.
> Apple's Cooperation with Authoritarian Governments (jessesquires.com)
> Apple removes nearly 100 VPNs used by Russians to bypass censorship (elpais.com)
Apple obeys local laws
> Apple's Browser Engine Ban Persists, Even Under the DMA (open-web-advocacy.org)
Apple chooses to maintain control over a specific implementation detail of their platform that a handful of nerds object to.
> Apple defined ICE as a "protected class" in blocking anti-ICE apps (boingboing.net)
The claim made in this headline is just straight up false.
I don’t know, I don’t think their less-than-ideal behaviour is anywhere bad enough to reasonably be described as “evil”. Otherwise, we’re probably all evil.
A list of very normal capitalistic practices. Borderline, sometimes ruthless, sometimes opportunistic. Evil is enabling genocide in Myanmar, which Meta provenly did.
Evil is voluntarily steal millions of artworks for your own benefit, which OpenAI has provenly done.
Etc…
What about the kids they intentionally get driven to suicide by keeping the blue bubbles for no other reason than child indoctrination due to bullying from other kids.
My first reaction was that it was ridiculous, or at least hysterically framed. But the claim is that the whole point of the bubble colour thing, from Apple's perspective, is to take advantage of status games among (largely) kids. If that's true, then it's probably fair to hold Apple partially responsible for the predictable negative consequences. I'd be surprised if something so silly was actually decisive in the worst cases, but I guess if this is playing out among millions of kids, it may be having outsized effects occasionally.
Yes it was more of a jest than a critique, the comment didn't explicitly say which one it was. In this case, it seems quite clear that Apple has a case.
You're right—I didn't mean to suggest they've never sued competitors. Some companies are just known to be litigious—I've never put Apple in that bucket. (And maybe I have blinders on. It's certainly fair to blame me for being biased.)
I worked at Apple on Schoolwork for the last few years of my career and saw firsthand how Apple handles data it gathers. As an example, every device was given a unique identifier that in no way identified the user of the device (I mean it was simply a UUID). Additionally, it was tossed and a new one recreated every 11 months.
Because I am inclined to give Apple the benefit of the doubt (your mileage may vary), I am assuming the binary hash they send is intended to protect users from malicious binaries (once their hash is identified of course). And if Apple in this case also rotates the UUID every 11 months, I don't have to worry about them targeting me and my habits specifically (well, not beyond 11 months windows in any event).
Additionally, when at Apple, we had privacy teams walk through things like error logs that our app and framework wrote—making sure there was no PID (personally identifiable information) in the logs. A naive engineer might, in a URL-fetch timeout, for example, log something like, "Timeout for URL request: 'myblog.blogsite.com'". Privacy would ask, "Is it important we log the full URL? Might we instead just log the domain?"
In Samsung’s case, they are evil buy something from them, and you are dead to them after the sale mind you, that probably would be the case with many Korean and Chinese companies too.
Looks like a bunch of OpenAI employees involved in the theft are going to see prison time and nobody is going to hire them other than shady startup founders who will probably ask "is this guy going to steal from me "
I think this is a good reminder that no company is going to put their neck out for you. IF you go above and beyond whether, whatever the carrot is on the end of the stick you chase, you are only good as what you give back.
Never stay loyal or go all out for your employers, I think the new gen z are far more wiser. It's simply not worth it and I don't feel guilty for working three different employers via remote. Would they get mad and fire me if they found out? Sure. But then I'd just replace them with the next one.
YOU are the only person you should be loyal to. Don't steal for companies, don't lie for companies, don't work extreme hours for some "startup equity" that won't mount to shit (note those are extremely rare)
Collect your pay check, do the minimum, if possible find more pay checks.
> Looks like a bunch of OpenAI employees involved in the theft are going to see prison time
Very likely, and I don't see this brought up often. The discussions are always focused on Apple v. OpenAI, but there are very real, serious criminal charges here potentially. This goes well beyond just a civil lawsuit.
Would not be surprised at all to see criminal charges soon.
Right, just like you think that Apple is somehow going to magically get an injunction that freezes ALL software deployments at OpenAI and drives them out of business.
People’s inability to reason in the face of their hatred for Sama is wild.
Wait until it comes out that OpenAI stole trade data through their deal with Atlassian. Seems inevitable. The company is fundamentally criminal in nature.
I’m a huge fan of Apple but this kind of thing leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
Regardless of whether OpenAI poached some of their talent or is the one in the wrong, Apple has such a massively dominant hardware business (some might say monopoly level in some areas) that for them to be publicly acknowledging how scared they are of OpenAI…it’s just…pathetic.
They’re a $5T company and can’t muster up the motivation to get in the game and compete in the next computing frontier.
Apple fanboys will invent some narrative about them swooping in with the best product as a laggard and claim it’s always their strategy, but I see zero evidence they have the capacity to do that anymore.
The Siri situation is just absolutely pathetic and no amount of bad press about OpenAI is going to change the fact that Apple neglecting Siri for a decade now has been a big F-U to their customers.
You may want to read the related articles first. I'm personally quite anti-Apple on several fronts, but the evidence so far seems damning if it holds up in court.
Which goes beyond a civil lawsuit as well, if true, these employees are going to face real, serious criminal charges and possibly jail time. Up to 10 years in federal prison, and Apple has a history of pressing criminal charges.
If Liu actually did exploit a vulnerability to bypass Apple's network security, they may also see federal charges for CFAA as well.
This isn't just them being scared of a competitor because they're able to outperform Apple, according to Apple they have proof of an active plan not just to poach talent, but to get that talent to syphon out information as they leave, as well as former employees keeping Apple hardware and using it to access confidential information. If what Apple claims is true, this is straightforwardly illegal. Could Apple be lying? Maybe, but that's a very risky move.
It totally could be illegal, and I don’t care. Those laws exist to entrench dominant incumbents, and make our economy less dynamic.
The history of Silicon Valley and most of its innovation come from this kind of thing, and we eliminated non-competes in California for exactly this reason.
Apple having a serious competitor in hardware would be a good thing for consumers all over the world.
Apple’s overzealous secrecy culture starts to become insidious once you become such a dominant force in the marketplace.
At what point do we allow their innovations to bleed into the rest of humanity and lower their margins so humanity doesn’t pay out a 60% tax to them anymore. I think they’ve made enough profits for investors at this point. Id be happy if my Apple stock went nowhere if it meant 20 other companies could grow and innovate new products off the back of it.
Also, I’ve observed a rhetorical trend among the “anti-bigness” crowd towards defining “monopoly” down:
“You may think a monopoly is an overwhelmingly dominant position as a supplier of a good or service, but that’s just naive popular economics! Acshually, according to the latest economic theories (by economists who share our politics), a monopoly is any firm that is big enough to have market power—like pricing power—to do things that can harm a competitor unfairly.”
While the misuse of the term monopoly is annoying, that's quite the misleading comment. You're allowed to disagree with what policy is a good idea, but laws like the linked do exist, and they were seen as pro-competitive in their time.
Today you can consider that "just business", and therefore "part of competing", but the were laws with the intention of allowing/disallowing types of tactics. E.g., you can't compete by leveraging your volume (see attached link), so you have to focus on making your service good.
The assumption made by a these people is that if there are so majy companies getting that big, there must be general disrespect of these laws. And correlating with the undisputed fact that antitrust enforcement did change.
What does Robinson-Patman enforcement have to do with the economic definition of a monopoly?
Robinson-Patman applies to every supplier and every retailer, not just monopolies, which is what makes it so difficult to equitably enforce. So it hasn’t been.
Blue bubble discrimination so bad that android users are the vast majority of incels. Even if that’s not technically a monopoly breaking up Apple would materially increase USA birthrates. Unironically!
So the ex-employee has to pay up or something, whats this got to do with OpenAI the company, seems like desperate attempt to slow down the company that will likely take Apple market share for dropping the ball on AI, they should look inwards rather than lashing out litigiously.
OpenAI the company really is as scummy as they come and that is probably why Apple gave them nothing unlike Microsoft, the Chinese model makers are currently proving that ultimately there is no moat around AI. Every day the cost of entry, software and hardware wise keeps getting smaller.
Note: The only thing Google got out of Apple was a one billion dollar refund on an existing search engine agreement, AI real value in the future is as a new addition, to the existing programming stack or toolkit used by programmers. That value does not add up to spending $1 trillion dollars on capex.
If Apple spends any big money in the next 2 to 4 years, they had better spend it on bringing the design and engineering of memory in-house to the Apple Silicon Group and TSMC.
