What the heck is going on at Apple?

>as critics say Apple, once a tech leader, is behind in the next big wave: artificial intelligence.

Most critics I see deal with the fact that they’re fad chasing and delivering without their flagship polish (for both new products and updates). This narrative is likely to push apple deeper into the well if it becomes the mainstream spin.

As someone who has Apple-everything (just about) and has since 2013 or so, every time I see a headline about Apple being in serious trouble over their “AI failure” I can’t even understand what they’re talking about. Nothing I’ve seen yet is compelling enough I need it in my OS. People can reach Chatgpt on the iPhones just fine. Who cares? Who are these people like “idk might switch to Windows because of Apple’s failed AI strategy” making this an actual problem? I’ve never even understood what their supposed strategy was trying to do (at which it evidently failed? How did it fail? I also don’t follow that.)

>Who are these people like “idk might switch to Windows because of Apple’s failed AI strategy” making this an actual problem?

It’s not about users but about investors who rely on the greater fool theory. If Apple is not adopting the current thing, people won’t FOMO in, so it’s better to buy other stock.

>Nothing I’ve seen yet is compelling enough I need it in my OS

I'd put it more strongly, as someone who hasn't bought an Apple device in over a decade, I have contemplated buying one now because it seems to be the only way to escape the enslopification. Them being behind on this crap is an active selling point for me

> Who are these people like “idk might switch to Windows because of Apple’s failed AI strategy” making this an actual problem?

If anything, I know people that are getting pissed off about all the AI stuff in windows and are considering switching.

As a mac user since 2006 I see the problem as twofold.

  1. Siri has always been terrible. The rise of chatbots has made that fact even more obvious. It's such low hanging fruit to integrate some sort of llm chatbot. Why didn't they do it years ago?
  2. Their advertisements all mention Apple Intelligence. Costco today was advertising "Macs with Apple Intelligence" as a headline feature. I use MacOS and iOS everyday and I'm not even sure what they are referring to. It's probably fine if their AI strategy isn't clear yet, but stop letting marketing act like they've already shipped it. That they have been promoting this non-existent feature since 2024 is embarrassing.

Literally every single person in my life is using AI on an almost daily basis. Not just like my co-workers, or some nerdy discord chat, like every single person I regularly interact with from my niece to my mother, my boss to my barista.

People complain about it, it's short falls and idiosyncrasies, but it's only been getting better, both the models and the integration.

There is no future now where LLMs aren't playing a big role. We'll have our CLI luddites who believe computing peaked in 1992 forever, but the rest of society is running full speed towards computers that they can talk to in natural language.

That's why Apple is uneasy. The god-tier technology usability company is on the verge of totally missing out on the greatest revolution in human-computer usability ever. My mother isn't going to want an Apple UI anymore when you just talk to the new computers.

What are they doing with AI besides an improved search if they aren’t developers?

According to OpenAI, ~4% of tokens generated are for software.[1]

LLMs are not a tech tool. SWE is practically a fringe use of LLMs.

See page 16: [1]https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w34255/w342...

I've seen product manager type people use LLMs to auto-generate product requirements docs. I know people who use AI to separate instruments from music tracks in order to learn them.

What device would she use though, and how are they doing AI more meaningfully than can be an app on the device?

I guess I should have been more precise with the actual question - what do people do with AI that would cause Apple to be behind as long as they can access chat from their phone? Apple doesn’t need an “AI strategy” just to be able to run a third party chat interface.

Whose chatbots are actually better, though? I have yet to hear from an Android, Alexa, or Windows user who uses the voice controls for more than what Siri does. The people raving about LLMs are using things like ChatGPT which work just fine as apps on Apple devices, so it’s not clear when this turns into an important OS feature other than exposing the hardware acceleration features on modern devices.

I'm with you. The fact that Apple isn't yet pushing AI in everything is a feature for me.

Issue with LLM with Siri is bad press. There are articles every day about LLM pushing suicide, drugs, violence and the like. Stability and security are issues too if it was given any sort of system write access.

However much value it may add it is guaranteed to do greater long term reputational damage in the current state.