What the heck is going on at Apple?

Poor analysis. Apple is doing quite well as a Big Tech company that simply doesn't need to "pivot to AI" like everyone else. Their missteps in "Apple Intelligence" have in fact demonstrated that they don't actually need to have much of a "strategy" here at all. In fact, if they simply link out to other people's chatbots and make it totally opt-in, that would be ideal.

The much bigger problem is that they've lost the wow factor in their software design, and in some regards the hardware as well even though the internals and build quality has never been better. Apple needs a design shakeup far more than it needs anything to do with AI, a poison pill which will bring the entire industry down in 2026.

I have intentionally withheld updating my daily drivers to iOS 26 because of Liquid Glass. But if I had to pick between two evils - diminishing UX quality and shoving AI into every corner where no one asked for it - I’d still pick Liquid Glass.

The Apple Intelligence features are some of the more subtle ones overall compared to other companies like Google and Microsoft IMO