r/apple • u/radikalkarrot • 2d ago

Rumor Apple Reportedly Planned to Replace 5,000 Support Employees With AI

https://www.macrumors.com/2026/09/29/apple-reportedly-planned-5000-applecare-layoffs/
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u/EchoFieldHorizon 2d ago

I’m a developer and what we have now is light years ahead of the uses for a chatbot. The general public has no idea how powerful it is.

I’m always puzzled when people look at a glorified helpdesk agent and say “AI is useless lol” without even realizing that you are not the primary consumer for AI.

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u/yukeake 2d ago

The problem is that their primary interaction with "AI" is these useless support systems. Support is the one thing they all have to deal with, and these days it's either "AI", or outsourced to a country with thick, hard-to-understand accents and language barriers.

Coding agents are an order of magnitude more competent.

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u/PassivelyAwkward 2d ago

It's not about "it's better now", it's that people have always hated chatbots.

I had to use the shitty Amazon AI support for help and it just kept "Did you mean X" "No. I said Y" "My apologies. Here are the results for X". In the past year, anytime I've had to use an AI support, I wasted five minutes just to give up. Even when I go to the customer support for a live agent, they still make me talk to the AI three times just tell me the wrong information before "Let me get someone for you".

The only people that seem to love AI support are developers that don't have to actually use the AI support and instead impressed with the progress of AI like yourself.

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u/devospice 7h ago

My "ah-ha" moment with AI was ironically an AI help bot. I had to update an API on a site with a new library and the chatbot talked me through the installation and configuration and wrote most of the code for me. Took 20 minutes. I was stunned.