The phrase "machine learning journal" strongly implies academic journal to most machine learning researchers though, in part because that is actually in the name of several journals in the field. I don't think Apple is unaware of that either. This reads to me as quite deliberately playing on that association, to upgrade the prestige of the stuff published here vs. what it'd have if it were just a blog.

The first post is actually a summary of a CVPR paper by Apple employees. For those not familiar with it, CVPR is a top conference in computer vision.[0] Recall, of course, that "conference" for much of computer science implies the same length and degree of peer review as "journal" does in non-CS fields.

[0] http://cvpr2017.thecvf.com/

I don't think that really matters. If I only post really worthy articles in my blog it doesn't become a scientific journal. I'm not saying that I believe peer-reviewed journals are the end-all-be-all for science but it does seem like Apple is being misleading with this.

edit----------

Although, a company publishing a peer-reviewed scientific journal like Nature would be surprising. So maybe that isn't the common interpretation when they see the title. Maybe it isn't totally misleading. I guess I'm split on it. :)

It's not common, but also not unheard of for companies to organize properly peer-reviewed journals for their internal research. The two most famous are probably the Bell System Technical Journal and the IBM Journal of Research and Development. From the title I was expecting Apple to be continuing in that tradition, but it seems they aren't.

I should have quoted. The person I was replying to originally said that "apple won't let it's researchers publish in real journals", and then stealth-rdited their post.

It isn't 1: They're not publishing their ML researchers' daily activities and experiences.

It isn't 2: This isn't what would be generally understood as a 'periodical' or 'magazine'. It doesn't even resemble the trade publications that are often published by larger businesses.

It certainly isn't 4 - Apple isn't giving away terribly detailed accounts of their research activities.

The meanings of words isn't set in stone, rather they change over time. As long as people generally interpret the message close to how it was intended to be interpreted, it's fine.

If nobody called it scientific journal why it has volumes and issues? I think Vol. 1, Issue 1 simply suggest they see it as a scientific journal.