As somebody already mentioned, they already had a big product named after their CEO. IBM Watson was the next big thing after Deep Blue, and it went pretty viral after defeating Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter on Jeopardy back in ~2011.
It was a bit of a market play and of course has since been completely upstaged by the invention of LLMs, but it still definitely got them the attention they wanted at the time.
Yes, I know, I got a job offer to work in the Watson research lab around that time, at the T.J. Watson facility. I declined because they weren’t remote-friendly, among other things.
But IBM Tom would at least have a rationale. WTF is IBM Bob and why does it have the same name as an old Microsoft product?
"Just" feeding paper is extreme engineering. And a disposable vape has more compute in it than a toner cartridge. (Though there is insane non recurring engineering in an inkjet cartridge. But I bet just the warehousing of a printer is a significant part of the total cost of a printer.
After the company rebranded itself to Lenovo, it merged with IBM's PC business which produced its ThinkPad line in 2005, after which it rapidly expanded abroad. In 2013, Lenovo became the world's largest personal computer vendor by unit sales for the first time, a position it still holds as of 2024.
As a fun addition, I think the atomic clock/time standards division went HP → Agilent → Symmetricom → Microsemi → Microchip. You could have bought a HP 5071A Cesium Frequency Standard under all of these badges!
It kind of is - when I looked at it 6 months ago it was just a fork of vscode with old ass versions of Claude and the only unique things were java and ibm I mcp clients or servers or something built in. For those works I'd rather just have the skill or mcp for my harness of choice. I think they weren't allowed to use external AI so they run the models in house and remade cursor. Not bad to have competition but the name is awful - as others have said it's been used before by Microsoft in the 90s to make a friendly desktop giving us the winxp search dog and clippy.
This sounds a lot like Spotify's XIRP. They managed to vibe something useful for their own engineers, were super hyped, and decided to release it in public. However what are the odds this harness will stand the test of time against actual harness makers like OpenAI or Anthropic? Neither Spotify or IBM are focused on making models or harnesses, these are just side-products.
To be fair Codex and Claude Code don't have a lot of secret sauce either. This is not to say that the harness doesn't matter at all or that you can't do any better, but whenever they benchmark it always turns out that you don't lose that much with even a very minimal agent. If a different harness makes better sense for your workflow I don't see why you wouldn't switch (or make your own if you have the resources to do so).
I'm also sticking to first-party agents, but that's more because I feel no compelling reason to switch and CLI agents fit well with my spartan technology choices. YMMV.
IBM is training their own models (for instance IBM granite) as well as watsonx as a platform. They are trying to build a products for enterprise as well as their specific AI modernization models.
Sure! IBM and Spotify, two companies united in being famous for not being software consulting businesses and definitely not ever developing software development tools.
Interesting they are renting out agent skills. You can pick up "Java Modernization" at $20 a month for "Specialist workflows to help with modernizing Java applications", or "IBM i" for "Specialist modes, workflows, and skills to work with IBM i applications".
No, you are wrong. IBMer here. I was at first agains it, my background is for 2 decades startup(s) before I joined IBM, and I started slowly using IBM Bob and I must say it is really good and helping. With many integrations that works :)
What is good about it then? What model do you use? Which integration are we talking about? Is it open source? How much the "transparent pricing" "bobcoin" is worth?
What makes you proud about IBM currently? IBM’s “RA” culture fostering Machiavellian politics, singleminded view of next quarter’s success, and asinine yet draconian bureaucracy are three out of MANY reasons why I’m embarrassed to have had IBM forced into my career and got the hell out as fast as possible each time.
I don't work at IBM but there are many things to admire. e.g. You can take software written 40 years and run on a new IBM system today without even recompiling it thanks to the Machine Interface.
Have fun trying to run a 40 year old C++ program.
Not an IBMer, but IBM MQ and Sterling Connect:Direct are both solid, I use them daily and they work wonderfully, although they can be a real bitch to set up and use in certain scenarios.
A bit of hyperbole by me since db2 was made in 1983. But MQ was created in 1993. Sterling was an acquisition. The majority of products that actually work were acquired. Very little if anything of value since 2005+ that was actually IBM created. (Bob appears fully IBM created)
depending on what the skill does, it can be a whole collection of python/other code files, resource files (i.e., js libs, css/html templates) and markdown files with orchestration instructions
I believe it sends to various models in the background, So largely a harness / framework. Ibm does have its own model which is one of the options for Bob to use.
(Note, I'm an IBMer but nowhere near this so my comment is strictly from my public knowledge/awareness:).
The companies who are hoarding RAM to produce pointless products should be called out. Deprive working class from computing resources to sell some corporate crap. Get fucked.
So it's just a vscode wrapper around a mystery open weights LLM I'm guessing?
> Can I choose which model Bob uses?
> No. Bob automatically selects the most appropriate language model for each task based on complexity, required capabilities, and cost-efficiency. This intelligent routing ensures you receive high-quality responses while optimizing resource usage.
Is this just a harness or using a proprietary model in the background? Anthropic and OpenAI are already very well trained in IBM system i and z knowledge. Unless Bob is somehow improving the integration to these midrange and mainframe systems I literally dont see any benefit to using Bob. IBM will just kill this proprietary tech in 5 years as they are currently doing with RDi or forget about updating it like SEU.
I think it's just a harness that uses proprietary (or maybe IBM is hosting open weight?) models. They say on the site (in the FAQs) that you can't even choose which model!
So it seems to be a harness that auto-routes your queries with no way to change this.
IBM has models trained for older mainframe usage (RPG II, RPG/400, COBOL, etc) so I imagine it would be very good for that. Bob looks like a branded fork of vs code or vscodium.
Working with any AI tool means you trust the vendor, sometimes you don't have a choice because the best models/tools are from specific providers. IBM isn't a company I would ever trust.
The "What developers say" carousel has a single Java dev and dev advocate. They got lots of quotes from managers, directors, CEOs, and an "AI strategist".
Lots of "performance review boilerplate, I don't want to say anything _bad_ about this person but there's nothing particularly good I can say" energy there.
Someone decided that this feedback was worth highlighting:
"Bob demonstrated a level of intelligence and contextual understanding that goes beyond anything I've seen in other tools. Bob goes beyond anything I've seen in other tools."
You should never name a tech product Bob in the UK, because the moment it isn't perfect, it'll just get called "Bobbins" [0], especially where I'm from.
I wish IBM got better at product again, and took themselves off the services and consulting morphine they've been on for ~35 years now since OS/2 Warp flopped. Their 1980s/1990s hardware was great. Their software actually was great until Win95 took their lunch money. They've just slunk off into a corner hugging their old architectures they have a moat around, and thrown out some audacious nonsense like Watson now and again, but nothing has stuck. When is somebody in that organisation going to try and innovate properly again?
I'm not sure this is the answer I'd be rooting for.
As with most things on the UK, probably. I definitely used Bobbins.
I used to think everyone called (cobs|bread cakes|rolls|barns) muffins, and it turns out it was just my small town that did it. As in, just my small town, not region, county, etc.
If you call it a teacake, and I say no those have raisins in, and you protest that's a fruit teacake, I know you're probably from Burnley: https://www.ourdialects.uk/maps/bread/
>> I used to think everyone called (cobs|bread cakes|rolls|barns) muffins
UK regional dialects are summed up really well here because despite listing five different names for a specific thing you still neglected the word I use (baps).
It’s barm, with an m, from barm cakes. Barm is the frothy scummy stuff you get on top of fermented beer, and it contains yeast. Back in the day bakers would take the barm from local brewers to make weakly fermented bread rolls… barm cakes.
(So obviously those calling them cobs or rolls or whatever else are just wrong!)
Might also mark you out as a certain age if not from the right region - I’m familiar with it as a word for “a bit rubbish” because of listening to Mark & Lard’s late night show on Radio 1 in the 90s
You should also never name your faulty/flaky Dell server Bob when Bob is also the name of your company president (though the president came after the server).
Calling Bob (the server) a piece of shit ("Bob is a piece of shit") because it crashed again was a very risky move that we often didn't fully think through.
We did a deal with IBM back in the day to adapt our tech as the code generation for enterprise java beans.
The commercial guy I dealt with made it very clear that a primary concern was IBM not being humiliated and shafted like their MS dealings. It colored our commercial arrangements, which had to include "break glass" arrangements for them to gain full access to our source code.
How to not learn from your mistakes and actually make them worse. I wonder how many valuable alliances they lost just because of that fear. Whoever was willing to sign was already probably not going to be a threat.
Speaking of UK, I was immediately reminded of the Blackadder episode where the men-servant calls herself “Bob”. Rowan Atkinsons pronunciation is how I imagine this Bob to pronounced, with the same look of course!
OS/2 was the only thing I remembering being great. If they practically gave it away I think we'd be living in a different world. Pre-emptive multitasking long before OSX/Windows. I mean Microsoft essentially had to force windows (eg. 3.1) down our throats until it become tolerable.
It's puzzling, considering they made some strides towards improving their design language and systems in past years, which produced IBM Plex etc. under Mike Abbink.
They have a decent component system with Carbon[0] and a whole design principles website[1] which they could have easily pointed their LLM of choice to.
Even the ibm.com landing page isn't close to the design system spec, rounded corners and whatnot...
That’s partly why they are giants. Let the startups take the arrows necessary to figure out or create the market. Then they can buy or build the gen 2 system that meets the needs of the market.
Microsoft got this right once, and it cost them big to turn up late - that was the Internet and Windows 95 and the massive u-turn. Otherwise, they've been defining stuff early a lot I think. It's hard to explain how big a turnaround they had to do back then, but then it says a lot that until they made that u-turn the leadership was so confident in their own hubris they thought they could take on the entire internet with their own crap version of AOL.
IBM invented the PC and then lost control of that identity. Figuring out how that happened is something they are going to have a meeting about, but they're still working through the meetings to plan that meeting, and the Gantt chart for those meetings takes meetings to adjust, and everybody is in meetings so doesn't have time for those meetings. They'll get to them though.
Apple consistently turn up late, but redefine and improve the status quo. They sometimes prototype early in public (for example, the Newton), but normally they show up with the version 3 that everyone else wished they'd thought of that then goes on to define a sector quite cleanly (Mac, iMac, Mac OS System X, iPod, iTunes, iPhone, iPad, AirPods, Mac Mini). They Newton'ed Siri, but I'm pretty sure they're going to come back strong in the next 18 months, unless the enshitification we've all witnessed over the last few years really has taken hold and Siri is just going to automate that at scale. Maybe we will all be killed by AI, but not through malevolent evil, but widely distributed incompetence.
Meta are constantly taking swings at the latest thing the founder is excited by - the Metaverse (now with legs!), pervert glasses, and so on - but they mostly prop up a bunch of expensive failures on the back of a hugely successful advertising business. I don't think they come late to the party per se, they're just not very good at anything that isn't killing & harming children, or undermining democracy. They should stay in their lane and keep doing that, I guess.
“Bobcoins are the consumption-based billing metric used for Bob subscriptions. They provide a transparent, predictable way to measure and bill for your Bob usage.”
I’m getting sick of these mobile game currency style credits/coins that obfuscate costs or usage. It’s honestly pretty gross.
Just telling us exactly what we get for our money.
honestly that would still probably mean more than story points. maybe all this AI insanity has an upside that the new cargo cult washes out the old one.
The copy is "clearly" written with AI… too bad. Some organizations "can't go wrong with Big Blue," so this will probably be a success. Perhaps it's even good, but that's not the case with this sloppy copywriting.
First paragraph: focused, what matters, clean. Shame they didn't throw in a "load-bearing" example and a few pelicans to boot.
Bob has been out for a while. It just never got a lot of press. IBM has also been developing more "enterprise" flavored LLMs through their Granite series. In fact they were trying to make small, mission-specific LMs a thing for the last two years or so.
Why so negative? I for one cannot wait for IBM Bob to become the most successful AI solution - nay, product - ever, and eagerly await petrobobcoin eclipsing the petrodollar to become the only truly global currency. They have a CLI with giant ASCII art text for heavens sake! When has anything with giant ASCII art text ever been of poor quality? They made a fork of Visual Studio Code and everything!
Hey now, sure, Microsoft Bob didn't get us ordinary users a "partner that helps you by making it easier", but it DID help MS Bob product owner Melinda French get a "partner that helps you by getting 10+ billion dollars" in the end, amiright?
<joking>
Maybe IBM is signalling it is likewise hoping for 10 billion dollars while also realizing the (AI) partner might not end up being that helpful either??
MS Bob was for adults… although there were kid dedicated areas, like the den, and I seem to remember packard bell navigator being a kid-friendly reskin.
There is so much business software out there and ecosystems that have evolved around it. Systems still running cobol on IBM mainframes; or, more "modern" stacks like Java apps running in IBM websphere. There are relatively small numbers of HN reading folk that went to some of the best CS programs and/or work(ed) at FANG caliber companies (whatever you call them now). The rest of the software engineer types are a diverse crowd and turning to IBM Bob might be more natural than some creepy looking orange starfish offering. That's my hypothesis anyway.
I'm sure tons of companies have retainer spends with IBM for software, hardware, consulting, etc., and this is another way for their corporate clients to spend down / increase their retainers faster
Is anyone out there paying for this? I know you are there. Come out explain yourself. And also explain the value of a Bobcoin, and if can be scalped and resold on eBay.
Feels like a manager with no branding skills had an initial “vision” and everyone working there probably hoped marketing/branding would get pulled in later.
When I was in the final year of college in 04-05 my dream would be to work at IBM. It still had the kind of prestige of R&D in the world. Fast forward a couple of years to 08-09, I don’t recall the event but IBM perception went down and a stone. Was that when they sold the hardware business and became fully consultant?
I think they started on a long slide starting in the late 90s when they tried to couple research more and more tightly to product deliverables, and then as they pivoted to being a services company, including selling off non-mainframe hardware to Lenovo, to coupling r&d to, uh, I guess services revenue, whatever that means. They had some research layoffs in 2008, at the same time that MSR and Google were really blossoming in research spend and perception, and I think they kind of got left behind.
I had a former student go there around 2008 and it seemed like the vibes were starting to sour around then. They maintained some awesome researchers in, e.g., databases, but I think the "make sure you are showing closely how your research directly contributes to services revenue" thing was strong by then and somewhat ruinous for how pleasant a work experience it was for many.
Same. My first real job out of college was at IBM 2004 to 2005. I was so proud to be an IBMer. Hated it. Lots of good people, but the bureaucracy, the pace, the whole thing, not fun.
> Bobcoins are the consumption-based billing metric used for Bob subscriptions. They provide a transparent, predictable way to measure and bill for your Bob usage. Each action you take in Bob—such as generating code, reading files, or running commands—consumes a certain number of Bobcoins based on the computational resources required.
transparent, predictable ... "a certain number of Bobcoins" ... so not that transparent then?
colesantiago | 15 hours ago
But it is IBM after all.
lirolero | 14 hours ago
Then how did you not see that coming?
zenethian | 14 hours ago
Geonode | 14 hours ago
dmd | 14 hours ago
quietsegfault | 14 hours ago
brk | 14 hours ago
a012 | 14 hours ago
someguyiguess | 14 hours ago
hn_throw2025 | 14 hours ago
pestatije | 14 hours ago
glitchc | 13 hours ago
a012 | 13 hours ago
archonis | 5 hours ago
antonvs | 14 hours ago
vablings | 13 hours ago
vunderba | 11 hours ago
It was a bit of a market play and of course has since been completely upstaged by the invention of LLMs, but it still definitely got them the attention they wanted at the time.
https://www.ibm.com/history/watson-jeopardy
antonvs | an hour ago
But IBM Tom would at least have a rationale. WTF is IBM Bob and why does it have the same name as an old Microsoft product?
DonHopkins | 9 hours ago
saberience | 14 hours ago
znpy | 14 hours ago
criddell | 14 hours ago
andsoitis | 14 hours ago
bob1029 | 14 hours ago
mrbluecoat | 14 hours ago
https://youtube.com/watch?v=9ntPxdWAWq8
joleyj | 14 hours ago
dyzone | 14 hours ago
azinman2 | 12 hours ago
kingleopold | 10 hours ago
nateglims | 10 hours ago
zimbu668 | 10 hours ago
JAlexoid | 9 hours ago
actionfromafar | 4 hours ago
kylecazar | 10 hours ago
Only beaten by Lenovo.
philipov | 10 hours ago
SahAssar | 9 hours ago
jonwinstanley | 9 hours ago
phyalow | 9 hours ago
jolt42 | 7 hours ago
SahAssar | 4 hours ago
They basically bought IBM's good reputation name and style and used it for both IBM-alikes and budget machines.
Some of it was good machines, some of it was crap.
p_l | an hour ago
So Thinkpads are still designed in ex-IBM Lenovo Japan
kingleopold | 9 hours ago
jatora | an hour ago
flo123456 | 10 hours ago
CamperBob2 | 9 hours ago
It's as if I bought an old telephone exchange building and called it Bell Labs.
JAlexoid | 9 hours ago
CamperBob2 | 8 hours ago
formerly_proven | 6 hours ago
InvisibleUp | 7 hours ago
nxobject | 6 hours ago
https://www.microchip.com/en-us/products/clock-and-timing/co...
etc-hosts | 4 hours ago
fmajid | 3 hours ago
hypercube33 | 8 hours ago
Ciantic | 14 hours ago
qsort | 14 hours ago
I'm also sticking to first-party agents, but that's more because I feel no compelling reason to switch and CLI agents fit well with my spartan technology choices. YMMV.
abtinf | 13 hours ago
I agree IBM Bob is not the revolution, but…
We are still in the punch card era of LLMs. Maybe even the Altair era.
None of this stuff has really been figured out yet.
natsucks | 13 hours ago
xemdetia | 12 hours ago
lowbloodsugar | 5 hours ago
walrus01 | 14 hours ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Bob
Stevvo | 14 hours ago
qsort | 14 hours ago
closetheloopdev | 14 hours ago
azinman2 | 12 hours ago
gspr | 5 hours ago
getatme32 | 14 hours ago
pytlicek | 13 hours ago
sroerick | 12 hours ago
aslkajdfklnlkwn | 10 hours ago
Saline9515 | 10 hours ago
EgregiousCube | 10 hours ago
quietsegfault | 7 hours ago
quietsegfault | 7 hours ago
getatme32 | 6 hours ago
insane_dreamer | 7 hours ago
jatora | an hour ago
_zoltan_ | 9 hours ago
signed: a proud IBMer
quietsegfault | 7 hours ago
Stevvo | 7 hours ago
jatora | an hour ago
"claude, get this c++ program working"
these types of moats are all but obliterated.
shellwizard | 6 hours ago
getatme32 | 6 hours ago
SSLy | 10 hours ago
9cb14c1ec0 | 8 hours ago
sajithdilshan | 10 hours ago
valleyer | 9 hours ago
Someone | 9 hours ago
When you stop paying but keep using the skill, that’s called pirating.
aranelsurion | 8 hours ago
fnord77 | 8 hours ago
insane_dreamer | 7 hours ago
redhale | 7 hours ago
h_mirin | 14 hours ago
sajithdilshan | 14 hours ago
NikolaNovak | 13 hours ago
(Note, I'm an IBMer but nowhere near this so my comment is strictly from my public knowledge/awareness:).
getatme32 | 13 hours ago
aslkajdfklnlkwn | 10 hours ago
_zoltan_ | 9 hours ago
(I'm also an IBMer.)
m_w_ | 14 hours ago
DeathArrow | 14 hours ago
someguyiguess | 14 hours ago
ginko | 14 hours ago
Nelson69 | 13 hours ago
Apocryphon | 10 hours ago
varispeed | 14 hours ago
argentinian | 12 hours ago
varispeed | 12 hours ago
taspeotis | 14 hours ago
self_awareness | 14 hours ago
Maybe this time it'll work.
swiftcoder | 14 hours ago
r2ob | 14 hours ago
chuckadams | 10 hours ago
globalise83 | 9 hours ago
selfawareMammal | 14 hours ago
jrflo | 14 hours ago
> Can I choose which model Bob uses?
> No. Bob automatically selects the most appropriate language model for each task based on complexity, required capabilities, and cost-efficiency. This intelligent routing ensures you receive high-quality responses while optimizing resource usage.
cisrockandroll | 14 hours ago
kbwal7 | 12 hours ago
So it seems to be a harness that auto-routes your queries with no way to change this.
EagnaIonat | 12 hours ago
The only positive versus others is that at an enterprise level you have more control of the costs with the coins.
getatme32 | 11 hours ago
jenkstom | 11 hours ago
xyst | 14 hours ago
woggy | 14 hours ago
pram | 14 hours ago
https://bob.ibm.com/pricing
annoyingnoob | 9 hours ago
UncleSlacky | 8 hours ago
yapyap | 13 hours ago
psygn89 | 13 hours ago
https://imgur.com/a/3PQXIsQ
throwfaraway135 | 13 hours ago
mvk666 | 13 hours ago
aslkajdfklnlkwn | 10 hours ago
robteix | 9 hours ago
infamouscow | 6 hours ago
exakoustos | 13 hours ago
PaulRobinson | 13 hours ago
Skwid | 12 hours ago
I realise LinkedIn is a surrealist caricature of corporate reality, but just imagine proudly displaying your #1 shill award for all to see
esseph | 12 hours ago
I don't think it's a caricature of reality at all, it very much is like the large US corps I've worked at.
schiffern | 11 hours ago
throwyawayyyy | 12 hours ago
Someone decided that this feedback was worth highlighting:
"Bob demonstrated a level of intelligence and contextual understanding that goes beyond anything I've seen in other tools. Bob goes beyond anything I've seen in other tools."
looksjjhg | 9 hours ago
humodz | 8 hours ago
emddudley | 8 hours ago
TheOtherHobbes | an hour ago
PaulRobinson | 13 hours ago
I wish IBM got better at product again, and took themselves off the services and consulting morphine they've been on for ~35 years now since OS/2 Warp flopped. Their 1980s/1990s hardware was great. Their software actually was great until Win95 took their lunch money. They've just slunk off into a corner hugging their old architectures they have a moat around, and thrown out some audacious nonsense like Watson now and again, but nothing has stuck. When is somebody in that organisation going to try and innovate properly again?
I'm not sure this is the answer I'd be rooting for.
[0] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/bobbins
basisword | 13 hours ago
podgietaru | 13 hours ago
I used to think everyone called (cobs|bread cakes|rolls|barns) muffins, and it turns out it was just my small town that did it. As in, just my small town, not region, county, etc.
PaulRobinson | 13 hours ago
serf | 13 hours ago
I ask because i'm only familiar with a thread/yarn bobbin, I wonder if it derived from that.
podgietaru | 13 hours ago
jonwinstanley | 9 hours ago
basisword | 13 hours ago
UK regional dialects are summed up really well here because despite listing five different names for a specific thing you still neglected the word I use (baps).
makerofthings | 11 hours ago
jonwinstanley | 9 hours ago
podgietaru | 9 hours ago
wrboyce | 9 hours ago
(So obviously those calling them cobs or rolls or whatever else are just wrong!)
podgietaru | 9 hours ago
wrboyce | 7 hours ago
PaulRobinson | 13 hours ago
Nursie | 16 minutes ago
gertrunde | 13 hours ago
[Link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_the_Builder_(character) ]
torgoguys | 11 hours ago
zorked | 9 hours ago
Angostura | 11 hours ago
LgWoodenBadger | 11 hours ago
Calling Bob (the server) a piece of shit ("Bob is a piece of shit") because it crashed again was a very risky move that we often didn't fully think through.
beachy | 8 hours ago
The commercial guy I dealt with made it very clear that a primary concern was IBM not being humiliated and shafted like their MS dealings. It colored our commercial arrangements, which had to include "break glass" arrangements for them to gain full access to our source code.
cgio | 24 minutes ago
Towaway69 | 8 hours ago
jolt42 | 7 hours ago
throwaway81523 | 7 hours ago
queenkjuul | 4 hours ago
shellwizard | 6 hours ago
They have been expanding their portfolio through acquisitions: Red Hat, HashiCorp, Confluent...
absoluteunit1 | 13 hours ago
Looks awful from a design perspective. Had to double check that this was the actual IBM domain
nadnad | 12 hours ago
They have a decent component system with Carbon[0] and a whole design principles website[1] which they could have easily pointed their LLM of choice to.
Even the ibm.com landing page isn't close to the design system spec, rounded corners and whatnot...
[0] https://preview.carbondesignsystem.com/ [1] https://www.ibm.com/design/language/
AlexCoventry | 5 hours ago
meerita | 13 hours ago
mbreese | 13 hours ago
PaulRobinson | 13 hours ago
IBM invented the PC and then lost control of that identity. Figuring out how that happened is something they are going to have a meeting about, but they're still working through the meetings to plan that meeting, and the Gantt chart for those meetings takes meetings to adjust, and everybody is in meetings so doesn't have time for those meetings. They'll get to them though.
Apple consistently turn up late, but redefine and improve the status quo. They sometimes prototype early in public (for example, the Newton), but normally they show up with the version 3 that everyone else wished they'd thought of that then goes on to define a sector quite cleanly (Mac, iMac, Mac OS System X, iPod, iTunes, iPhone, iPad, AirPods, Mac Mini). They Newton'ed Siri, but I'm pretty sure they're going to come back strong in the next 18 months, unless the enshitification we've all witnessed over the last few years really has taken hold and Siri is just going to automate that at scale. Maybe we will all be killed by AI, but not through malevolent evil, but widely distributed incompetence.
Meta are constantly taking swings at the latest thing the founder is excited by - the Metaverse (now with legs!), pervert glasses, and so on - but they mostly prop up a bunch of expensive failures on the back of a hugely successful advertising business. I don't think they come late to the party per se, they're just not very good at anything that isn't killing & harming children, or undermining democracy. They should stay in their lane and keep doing that, I guess.
Hypergraphe | 13 hours ago
basisword | 13 hours ago
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Bob
amelius | 13 hours ago
amelius | 13 hours ago
No thanks, that's what I like about AI so I'll just stay with the raw tokens.
unleashhale | 13 hours ago
butterisgood | 13 hours ago
jmward01 | 13 hours ago
Throudin | 13 hours ago
acomjean | 10 hours ago
Probably by design considering the songs subject matter.
ChrisArchitect | 13 hours ago
jgbuddy | 13 hours ago
pytlicek | 13 hours ago
nielsbot | 13 hours ago
villish | 13 hours ago
I’m getting sick of these mobile game currency style credits/coins that obfuscate costs or usage. It’s honestly pretty gross.
Just telling us exactly what we get for our money.
dainiusse | 12 hours ago
SkyeCA | 9 hours ago
legitster | 12 hours ago
0xWTF | 12 hours ago
thunderson | 10 hours ago
roncesvalles | 10 hours ago
Henchman21 | 10 hours ago
rahulmax | 9 hours ago
jolt42 | 7 hours ago
eleventen | 7 hours ago
Henchman21 | 10 hours ago
hmokiguess | 10 hours ago
1970-01-01 | 10 hours ago
I promise you Bob isn't going to fix the long-term stupidity.
altmanaltman | 10 hours ago
TYPE_FASTER | 10 hours ago
hermitShell | 9 hours ago
karim79 | 10 hours ago
Stitch4223 | 10 hours ago
The copy is "clearly" written with AI… too bad. Some organizations "can't go wrong with Big Blue," so this will probably be a success. Perhaps it's even good, but that's not the case with this sloppy copywriting.
First paragraph: focused, what matters, clean. Shame they didn't throw in a "load-bearing" example and a few pelicans to boot.
nunez | 10 hours ago
GaryBluto | 10 hours ago
ltbarcly3 | 10 hours ago
tims33 | 10 hours ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Bob
guy4261 | 9 hours ago
5G_activated | 8 hours ago
mrandish | 7 hours ago
gregw2 | 7 hours ago
<joking>
Maybe IBM is signalling it is likewise hoping for 10 billion dollars while also realizing the (AI) partner might not end up being that helpful either??
<further joking>
snickerbockers | 2 hours ago
madaxe_again | 7 hours ago
archonis | 5 hours ago
zabriel_goss | 6 hours ago
arpanghoshal07 | 10 hours ago
ctoth | 10 hours ago
crash-universe | 10 hours ago
I wonder what their target customer is. They must have analyzed and projected this. I'm genuinely interested.
steve-atx-7600 | 9 hours ago
throwitaway222 | 9 hours ago
steve-atx-7600 | 9 hours ago
kitd | 9 hours ago
kfarr | 9 hours ago
cube00 | 4 hours ago
alchemism | 4 hours ago
karim79 | 9 hours ago
maxbobby | 9 hours ago
bigmattystyles | 9 hours ago
gowld | 9 hours ago
throwitaway222 | 9 hours ago
mv4 | 9 hours ago
jolt42 | 7 hours ago
DonHopkins | 9 hours ago
tanseydavid | an hour ago
woah | 9 hours ago
brzz | 9 hours ago
tamasnet | 8 hours ago
stefangordon | 9 hours ago
jonwinstanley | 9 hours ago
Never happened.
globalise83 | 9 hours ago
Surac | 9 hours ago
TheAtomic | 9 hours ago
mattmcbrien | 8 hours ago
dgacmu | 8 hours ago
indeed, child, indeed.
mrbonner | 8 hours ago
ofrzeta | 7 hours ago
dgacmu | 7 hours ago
I had a former student go there around 2008 and it seemed like the vibes were starting to sour around then. They maintained some awesome researchers in, e.g., databases, but I think the "make sure you are showing closely how your research directly contributes to services revenue" thing was strong by then and somewhat ruinous for how pleasant a work experience it was for many.
powvans | 2 hours ago
kyle-rb | 8 hours ago
madspindel | 8 hours ago
colordrops | 7 hours ago
bluerooibos | 6 hours ago
If you're launching something 2 years late, you've got to do better than this.
kakapo5672 | 4 hours ago
mansilladev | 6 hours ago
> I’m not able to find a definition for BobCoin in IBM’s content. If you have another term or topic you’d like to explore, let me know!
dudeWithAMood | 2 hours ago
getatme32 | 6 hours ago
perarneng | 5 hours ago
lowbloodsugar | 5 hours ago
cmiles8 | 5 hours ago
cbsmith | 5 hours ago
cube00 | 4 hours ago
transparent, predictable ... "a certain number of Bobcoins" ... so not that transparent then?
alchemism | 4 hours ago
kazinator | 3 hours ago
karim79 | 3 hours ago
delfugal | 2 hours ago
That name's a gamble. Go Bob it? I need to ask Bob. Let's Bob for answers. Bob's your uncle. I'll stop now.
formvoltron | 2 hours ago
NickHirras | an hour ago
NickHirras | an hour ago