The Apple factory: What perfect coordination feels like
12 comments
·October 22, 2025boulevard
The feedback is loud and clear and honestly it's fair, though I feel sad.
My intent was to use Apple as a metaphor for interoperability, but it came across as a fantasy post totally disconnected from the real world hell of industrial automation. I skipped the why (legacy hardware, safety, vendor lock-in) and it made the whole post feel naive. That's on me.
As for the AI feel everyone picked up on, You're not wrong. I wrote the original draft and all the core ideas, but I did use an LLM to help review and polish the language.
I see now that was a huge mistake. It polished away all the personal voice and in the trenches, grit that made my previous posts work. It turned a real idea into that slick, empty keynote feel you all hated.
It's a painful but really valuable lesson in authenticity. Thanks for keeping me honest. I'll stick to the gritty, unpolished engineering problems from now on.
everlier
Opus 4.1 is not great at writing articles and LLMs are terrible at generating new ideas.
hasperdi
Reading the article, I get the feeling that the author is not in the manufacturing (automation) business. Just fantasizing.
hashtag-til
Seems AI re-written or reviewed at least.
MisterTea
This person clearly does not work with industrial automation. This is just a fantasy post with no grounding in reality.
hyperhello
It’s AI which is another way of saying what you just did.
dmbche
What is this? An ad for the apple ecosystem?
stronglikedan
An AI generated article that is just about to be flagged into oblivion.
constantcrying
This is just what "Industry 4.0" wants to be. This concept of manufacturing is over a decade old.
The problem is that this is relatively easy if you have 5 devices, but extremely hard if you have 10.000 devices and as many humans in the mix.
MisterTea
And unfortunately most of those humans barley understand what they are touching.
wizardforhire
Ai written article is obviously written by ai… news at 11
This would actually be more readable if they'd put the em dashes back in.