Apple's slow AI pace becomes a strength as market grows weary of spending
439 comments
·December 9, 2025827a
GeekyBear
The thing that people seem to have forgotten is that the companies that previously attempted to monetize data center based voice assistants lost massive amounts of money.
> Amazon Alexa is a “colossal failure,” on pace to lose $10 billion this year... “Alexa was getting a billion interactions a week, but most of those conversations were trivial commands to play music or ask about the weather.” Those questions aren’t monetizable.
Google expressed basically identical problems with the Google Assistant business model last month. There’s an inability to monetize the simple voice commands most consumers actually want to make, and all of Google’s attempts to monetize assistants with display ads and company partnerships haven’t worked. With the product sucking up server time and being a big money loser, Google responded just like Amazon by cutting resources to the division.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/11/amazon-alexa-is-a-co...
Moving to using much more resource intensive models is only going to jack up the datacenter costs.
QuercusMax
It doesn't help that Google also keeps breaking everything with the home voice assistants, and this has been true for ages and ages.
I only have a single internet-enabled light in my house (that I got for free), and 90% of the time when I ask the Assistant to turn on the light, it says "Which one?". Then I tell it "the only one that exists in my house", and it says "OK" and turns it on.
Getting it to actually play the right song is on the right set of speakers is also nearly impossible, but I can do it no problem with the UI on my phone.
I don't fear a future where computers can do every task better than us: I fear a future where we have brain-damaged robots annoy the hell out of me because someone was too lazy to do anything besides throw an LLM at things.
thinkindie
> I don't fear a future where computers can do every task better than us: I fear a future where we have brain-damaged robots annoy the hell out of me because someone was too lazy to do anything besides throw an LLM at things.
THIS!
shalmanese
Rename the name of the light to "the".
Terr_
I had an annoying few weeks where, after years of working properly, Google assistant started misinterpreting "navigate home" as "navigate to the nearest Home Depot™".
myko
I'm positive Google's voice commands worked better when Google Home initially released. No idea why it has gotten so bad. Recognition seemed better when it was internal and called "Majel" though on that one I'm sure that's just rose tinted glasses.
It's weird because Gemini is so impressive multimodally but even the Gemini powered assistant can't figure out which lights to turn out, telling the TV to "play" doesn't mean turning it on (it means unpausing it!), just an incredibly frustrating experience.
slg
I feel like you're getting at something different here, but my conclusion is that maybe the problem is the approach of wanting to monetize each interaction.
Almost every company today wants their primary business model to be as a service provider selling you some monthly or yearly subscription when most consumers just want to buy something and have it work. That has always been Apple's model. Sure, they'll sell you services if need be, iCloud, AppleCare, or the various pieces of Apple One, but those all serve as complements to their devices. There's no big push to get Android users to sign up for Apple Music for example.
Apple isn't in the market of collecting your data and selling it. They aren't in the market of pushing you to pick brand X toilet paper over brand Y. They are in the market of selling you devices and so they build AI systems to make the devices they sell more attractive products. It isn't that Apple has some ideologically or technically better approach, they just have a business model that happens to align more with the typical consumers' wants and needs.
GeekyBear
> I feel like you're getting at something different here, but my conclusion is that maybe the problem is the approach of wanting to monetize each interaction.
Personally, Google lost me as a search customer (after 25 years) when they opted me into AI search features without my permission.
Not only am I not interested in free tier AI services, but forcing them on me is a good way to lose me as a customer.
The nice thing about Apple Intelligence is that it has an easy to find off switch for customers who don't care for it.
wilsonnb3
I feel like this is 5 or so years out of date. The fact that they actually have an Apple Music app for Android is a pretty big push for them. Services is like 25% of their revenue these days, larger than anything except the iPhone.
ManuelKiessling
Call me a naïve fanboy, but I believe that Apple is still one of the very few companies that has an ideologically better approach that results in technically better products.
Where everyone else sells you stuff to make money, they make money to create great stuff.
dangus
I know you're saying that Apple's business model is selling devices but it's not like they aren't a services juggernaut.
Where I think you are ultimately correct is that some companies seem to just assume that 100% of interactions can be monetized, and they really can't.
You need to deliver value that matches the money paid or the ad viewed.
I think Apple has generally been decent at recognizing the overall sustainability of certain business models. They've been around long enough to know that most loss-leading businesses never work out. If you can't make a profit from day one what's the point of being in business?
veunes
That is exactly why Apple's on-device strategy is the only economically viable one. If every Siri request cost $0.01 for cloud inference, Apple would go bankrupt in a month. But if inference happens on the Neural Engine on the user's phone, the cost to Apple is zero (well, aside from R&D). This solves the problem of unmonetizable requests like "set a timer," which killed Alexa's economics
lopis
The greed to lock customers in early on for cheap or free, in hopes to force them on a subscription, absolutely ruined the previous era os assistants. It could have been great with offline inference and foster competition. Instead we got mediocre assistants, thst got worse each year.
bayindirh
On top of it, on-device models increase response times and can be really private if the developer decides.
jordanb
The assistant thing really shows the lie behind most of the "big data" economy.
1) They thought an assistant would be able to operate as an "agent" (heh) that would make purchasing decisions to benefit the company. You'd say "Alexa, buy toilet paper" and it would buy it from Amazon. Except it turns out people don't want their computer buying things for them.
2) They thought that an assistant listening to everything would make for better targeted ads. But this doesn't seem to be the case, or the increased targeting doesn't result in enough value to justify the expense. A customer with the agent doesn't seem to be particularly more valuable than one without.
I think that this AI stuff and LLMs in particular is an excuse, to some extent, to justify the massive investment already made in big data architecture. At least they can say we needed all this data to train an LLM! I've noticed a similar pivot towards military/policing: if this data isn't sufficiently valuable for advertising maybe it's valuable to the police state.
acdha
> Except it turns out people don't want their computer buying things for them.
I think this also hits an interesting problem with confidence: if you could trust the service to buy what you’d buy and get a good price you’d probably use it more but it only saves a couple of seconds in the easy case (e.g. Amazon reorders are already easy) and for anything less clear cut people rightly worry about getting a mistake or rip-off. That puts the bar really high because a voice interface sucks for more complex product comparisons and they have a very short window to give a high-quality response before most people give up and use their phone/computer instead. That also constrains the most obvious revenue sources because any kind of pay for placement is going to inspire strong negative reactions.
onetokeoverthe
[dead]
Animats
> Those questions aren’t monetizable. ... There’s an inability to monetize the simple voice commands most consumers actually want to make.
There lies the problem. Worse, someone may solve it in the wrong way:
I'll turn on the light in a minute, but first, a word from our sponsor...
Technically, this will eventually be solved by some hierarchical system. The main problem is developing systems with enough "I don't know" capability to decide when to pass a question to a bigger system. LLMs still aren't good at that, and the ones that are require substantial resources.
What the world needs is a good $5 LLM that knows when to ask for help.
Useful Douglas Adams reference: [1]
hightrix
This type of response has been given by Alexa from an echo device in my house. I asked, “play x on y”, the response was something like “ok, but first check out this new…”. I immediately unplugged that device and all other Alexa enabled devices in the house. We have not used it since.
This is the monetization wall they have to figure out how to break through. The first inkling of advertising is immediate turn off and destroy, for me.
jmye
> LLMs still aren't good at that
I find this a really interesting observation. I feel like 3-4 trivial ways of doing it come to mind, which is sort of my signal that I’m way out of my depth (and that anything I’ve thought of is dumb or wrong for various reasons). Is there anything you’d recommend reading to better understand why this is true?
overfeed
Some features are not meant to be revenue sources. I'd lump assistive technology and AI assistants into the category of things that elevate the usefulness of one's ecosystem, even when not directly monetizable.
Edit: IMO Apple is under-investing in Siri for that role.
robot_jesus
Steve Jobs famously said, "If you do the right things on the top line, the bottom line will follow.”
Paraphrased: if you do things with the explicit goal to optimize revenue, it harms your business success. If you do things that optimize user experience and delight customers, it will provide more value long-term.
Voice assistants are in that latter camp, I believe. (And I think of this quote constantly as Tim Cook crams more ads into the ecosystem)
quxbar
My mother always enjoyed playing Jeopardy! on alexa, it was a novel format and everybody could participate while sitting around and chatting. She happily would have paid for it, even the dreaded monthly subscription, but it was neglected. The service started being buggy (lagging, repeatedly restarting the day's question series) and now they've moved on.
If anyone knows of an open-source alternative I could stitch together, I am all ears!
ghaff
Voice assistants that were at the level of a fairly mediocre internet-connected human assistant might be vaguely useful. But they're not. So even if many of us have one or two in our houses or sometimes lean on them for navigation in our cars we mostly don't use them much.
Amazon at one point was going to have a big facility in Boston as I recall focused on Alexa. It's just an uninteresting product that, if it were to go away tomorrow I wouldn't much notice. And I certainly wouldn't pay an incremental subscription for.
atonse
As a sibling poster has said, I don't know how much on-device AI is going to matter.
I have pretty strong views on privacy, and I've generally thrown them all out in light of using AIs, because the value I get out of them is just so huge.
If Apple actually had executed on their strategy (of running models in privacy-friendly sandboxes) I feel they would've hit it out of the park. But as it stands, these are all bleeding edge technologies and you have to have your best and brightest on them. And even with seemingly infinite money, Apple doesn't seem to have delivered yet.
I hope the "yet" is important here. But judging by the various executives leaving (especially rumors of Johnny Srouji leaving), that's a huge red flag that their problem is that they're bleeding talent, and not a lack of money.
twoodfin
I’m much more optimistic on device-side matmul. There’s just so much of it in aggregate and the marginal cost is so low especially since you need to drive fancy graphics to the screen anyway.
Somebody will figure out how to use it—complementing Cloud-side matmul, of course—and Apple will be one of the biggest suppliers.
scrollop
You don't have to abandon privacy when using an eye - use a service that accesses enterprise APIs, which have good privacy policies. I use the service from the guys who create the This day in AI podcast called smithery.ai -we are access to all of the sota models so we can flip between any model including lots of open source ones within one chat or within multiple chats and compared the same query, using various MCPs and lots of other features. If you're interested have a look at the discord to simtheory.ai (I have no connection to the service or to the creators)
ebbi
Johnny Srouji sent out an email to his team confirming he is staying.
atonse
That’s huge. Hope they can continue to keep such people because it isn’t just about one person. It’s all the other smart people that want to work with them.
ph4rsikal
On-device moves all compute cost (incl. electricity) to the consumer. I.e., as of 2025 that means much less battery life, a much warmer device, and much higher electricity costs. Unless the M-series can do substantially more with less this is a dead end.
veunes
That's fair for brute force (running a model on the GPU), but that's exactly where NPUs come in - they are orders of magnitude more energy-efficient for matrix operations than GPUs. Apple has been putting NPUs in every chip for years for a reason. For short, bursty tasks (answer a question, generate an image), the battery impact will be minimal. It's not 24/7 crypto mining, it's impulse load
wooger
For me, when the AI service is operatied by the OS vendor, with root... What is the possible benefit of on device processing?
* If you trust the OS vendor, why wouldn't you trust them to handle AI queries in a responsible, privacy respecting manner?
* If you don't trust your OS vendor, you have a bigger problem than just privacy. Stop using it.
What makes people think that on-device processed queries can't be logged and sent off for analysis anyway?
WatchDog
For the occasional local LLM query, running locally probably won't make much of a dent in the battery life, smaller models like mistral-7b can run at 258 tokens/s on an iPhone 17[0].
The reason why local LLMs are unlikely to displace cloud LLMs is memory footprint, and search. The most capable models require hundreds of GB of memory, impractical for consumer devices.
I run Qwen 3 2507 locally using llama-cpp, it's not a bad model, but I still use cloud models more, mainly due to them having good search RAG. There are local tools for this, but they don't work as well, this might continue to improve, but I don't think it's going to get better than the API integrations with google/bing that cloud models use.
Marsymars
Battery isn't relevant to plugged-in devices, and in the end, electricity costs roughly the same to generate and deliver to a data center as to a home. The real cost advantage that cloud has is better amortization of hardware since you can run powerful hardware at 100% 24/7 spread across multiple people. I wouldn't bet on that continuing indefinitely, consumer hardware tends to catch up to HPC-exclusive workloads eventually.
SchemaLoad
Apple runs all the heavy compute stuff overnight when your device is plugged in. The cost of the electricity is effectively nothing. And there is no impact on your battery life or device performance.
typewithrhythm
I don't think the throughput of a general purpose device will make a competitive offering; so being local is a joke. All the fun stuff is running on servers at the moment.
From there, AI integration is enough of a different paradigm that the existing apple ecosystem is not a meaningful advantage.
Best case Apple is among the fast copies of whoever is actually innovative, but I don't see anything interesting coming from apple or apple devs anytime soon.
827a
People said the same things about mobile gaming [1] and mainframes. Technology keeps pushing forward. Neural coprocessors will get more efficient. Small LLMs will get smarter. New use-cases will emerge that don't need 160IQ super-intellects (most use-cases even today do not)
The problem for other companies is not necessarily that data center-borne GPUs aren't technically better; its that the financials might never make sense, much like how the financials behind Stadia never did, or at least need Google-levels of scale to bring in advertising and ultra-enterprise revenue.
[1] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/resident-evil-3/id1640630077
gowld
Grammar-check and clip-art work fine locally. There are local use-cases, but the powerful use-cases are very important.
ceejayoz
> I don't think the throughput of a general purpose device will make a competitive offering; so being local is a joke.
Until the first Cambridge Analytica-sized privacy story hits a major cloud LLM provider, maybe.
rickdeckard
> All the fun stuff is running on servers at the moment.
With "Apple Intelligence" it looks like Apple is setting themselves up (again) to be the gatekeeper for these kind of services, "allow" their users to participate and earn a revenue share for this, all while collecting data on what types of tasks are actually in high-demand, ready to in-source something whenever it makes economic sense for them...
7952
Outside of fun stuff there is potential to just make chat another UI technology that is coupled with a specific API. Surely smaller models could do that, particularly as improvements happen. If that was good enough what would be the benefit of an app developer using an extra API? Particularly if Apple can offer an experience that can be familiar across apps.
energy123
Also why would you want it sucking your battery or heating your room when a data center is only 20 milliseconds away and it's nothing more than a few kilobytes of text. It makes no sense for the large majority of users' preferences which downweight privacy and the ability to tinker.
iqandjoke
Have you ever heard of Doubao mobile phone, specifically the Nubia M153? Would Apple willing to do it to give value to customer but not app developer?
crazygringo
I don't think so.
Consumers don't care about whether an LLM is local, and one that runs on your phone is always going to be vastly worse than ChatGPT.
I see zero indication that Apple is going to replace people going to chatgpt.com or using its app.
All I see Apple doing is eventually building a better new generation of Siri, not much different from Google/Alexa.
snowwrestler
An LLM on your phone can know everything else that is on your phone. Even Signal chat plaintexts are visible on the phone itself.
People definitely will care that such private data stays safely on the phone. But it’s kind of a moot point since there is no way to share that kind of data with ChatGPT anyway.
I think Apple is not trying to compete with the big central “answer machine” LLMs like Google or ChatGPT. Apple is aiming at something more personal. Their AI goal may not be to know everything, but rather to know you better than any other piece of tech in the world.
And monetization is easy: just keep selling devices that are more capable than the last one.
crazygringo
Gemini can know everything in my Google account, which is basically synonymous with everything that's on my phone, except for text messages. And I use an iPhone. And then Gemini will work just as well on the web when I use my laptop.
So I don't see what unique advantage this gives Apple. These days people's data lives mostly in the cloud. What's on their phone is just a local cache.
wiesbadener
I'd loved to see a strong on-device multi-modal Siri + flexibility with shortcuts. Besides the "best consumer AI story" they could additionally create a strong offering to SMBs with FileMaker + strong foundation models support baked in. Actually rooting for both!
danielmarkbruce
How much, at what odds, who will decide if they do, and who will hold the money?
aurareturn
it will become Generally Obvious that Apple has the best consumer AI story among any tech company.
Local LLMs will never be better than cloud LLMs. They can close the gap if/when cloud LLM progress stalls.
Let's not conflate Apple's failure in cutting edge transformer models with good strategy.
LoganDark
Apple Intelligence has absolutely nothing to do with "set[ting] up complicated local LLMs".
bredren
FWIW, AI is not entirely locked down in the Apple ecosystem. Sure, they control it but they've already built the foundation of a major opportunity for developers.
There's an on device LLM that is packaged in iOS, iPadOS and macOS 26 (Tahoe) [1]. They even have a HIG on use of generative AI [2]
Something like half of all macs are running macOS 26 [3] already, so this could be the most widely distributed on-device LLM on the planet.
I think people are sleeping on this, partly because the model is seen as under powered. But I think we can presume it won't always be so.
I've just posted a Show HN of app for macOS 26 I created that uses Apple's local LLM to summarize conversations you've had with Claude Code and Codex. [3]
I've been somewhat surprised at the quality and reliability of Apple's built-in LLM and have only been limited by the logic I've built around it.
I think Apple's packaging of an LLM in its core operating systems is actually a fast move with AI and even has potential to act as an existential threat to Windows.
[1] https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2025/286/
[2] https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guideline...
leftouterjoins
I can second this. I am nearing launch on an app that uses both the new SpeechAnalyzer and on device LLM and it has met or exceeded my expectations. A longer context would always be nice but then I remember its running on a phone.
ericmcer
Are you using to for speech-to-text/text-to-speech? I have been using SpeechRecognizer & SpeechSynthesizer and they have been pretty underwhelming.
bredren
Thanks for the follow-on anecdote. I'd be happy to try out your app. Please email me when it is available: rob@contextify.sh.
wilsonnb3
Don’t a lot of Android devices come with Gemini Nano on the device?
Probably not as many out there as there are Apple devices because it is only the high end ones at the moment. I don’t think they are that far behind in numbers though.
bredren
I'd be curious to see an estimate on the google side.
Here are some real rough estimates in Apple's ecosystem:
For macos alone the install base is something like 110-130 million, and only Apple Silicon macs can run the new model, so maybe 45 million active macs are updated to macos 26 and can run their model.
There are a bunch of details but of the iPhones out there that are new enough to run Apple Intelligence and have iOS 26, something like 220 million can.
For iPad same conditions but for iPados its something like 60 million.
So, something like 325 million active devices are out there ready to run LLM completion requests.
iqandjoke
Also in Chrome.
null
saberience
I've tested almost every LLM which will work on a modern iPhone and Apples models are universally terrible in comparison to almost every open-weights model, they're so bad it's a joke amongst devs who work in this space.
The only thing it's useful is super basic tasks like sentiment classification, summarization (sort of), or stuff like, "Does this message contain toxic/bad language, answer yes or no only".
dickersnoodle
"existential threat to Windows" - from your lips to whoever's ear.
fennecbutt
There is no major opportunity for developers on Apple's platforms when they can just rug pull you as they please.
rickdeckard
It might as well be the visualization of the two strategies:
- Everyone else: "We mainly build huge AI compute clusters to process large amount of data and create value, at high cost for ramp-up and operation."
- Apple: "We mainly build small closed-down AI compute-chips we can control, sell them for-profit to individual consumers and then orchestrate data-processing on those chips, with setup and operational cost all paid by the consumer."
I can't think of any company which has comparable know-how and, most of all, a comparable sell-out scale to even consider Apple's strategy.
No matter what they do, they will sell hundreds of millions compute devices for the foreseeable future. They use this to build out AI infrastructure they control, pre-paid by the future consumers.
THIS is their unique strength.
pzo
> We mainly build small closed-down AI compute-chips we can control, sell them for-profit to individual consumers and then orchestrate data-processing on those chips, with setup and operational cost all paid by the consumer
I wish they did but they don't. They have been for decade so stingy on RAM for iPhone and iPad. There are at current point that only small percent of their userbase have iPhone or iPad with 8GB RAM that somehow can run any AI models even open source and be of any use. Not mentioning they don't compare to big Models.
They don't even provide option to sell iPhone with bigger RAM. iPad can have max 16GB RAM. Those mainstream macbook air also can have max 32 GB RAM.
And for the current price of cheap online AI where e.g. perplexity provides so many promo for PRO version for like less $10 per year and all ai providers give good free models with enough rate limit for many users I don't see apple hardware like particularly bought because of AI compute-chips - at least not non-pro users.
If the loose AI though and because of that won't have good AI integrations they will loose also eventually in hardware. e.g. Polish language in Siri still not supported so my mum cannot use it. OSS Whisper v3 turbo was available ages ago but apple still support only few languages. 3rd party keyboard cannot integrate so well with audio input and all sux in this case because platform limitation.
rickdeckard
Their strategy is not to sell you a device that YOU can use for AI, they sell you a device that THEY can use for AI.
amelius
> Their strategy is not to sell you a device that YOU can use for AI, they sell you a device that THEY can use for AI.
How will that work out with the battery?
I mean, they could have mined crypto on our phones but that would have been a bad idea for the same reason.
bigyabai
Some lot of good that's done them. The Neural Engine is dark silicon on most devices I've seen, and now we're getting another product segment with M5's matmul GPUs.
To me, it feels like Apple should have supported CUDA from the start. Sell the ARM-hungry datacenter some rackmount Macs with properly fast GPUs, and Apple can eventually bring the successful inference technology to cheaper devices. Apple's current all-or-nothing strategy has produced nothing but redundant hardware accelerators, while Nvidia's vertical integration only gets stronger.
robotresearcher
> They don't even provide option to sell iPhone with bigger RAM. iPad can have max 16GB RAM. Those mainstream macbook air also can have max 32 GB RAM.
That's a selective list. High RAM Macs are available. MBPro goes up to 128GB. Mac Studio goes up to 512GB. Not cheap, but available.
jjfoooo4
The existential hope that all the other players have is that AI will drive adoption of a form factor that replaces the phone. Because if in 5 years the dominant device is still the phone, Apple wins.
Consumer hardware chips will be plenty powerful to run “good enough” models.
If I’m an application dev, do I want to develop something on top of OpenAI, or Apple’s on device model that I can use as much as a I want for free? On device is the future
rickdeckard
In 5 years, the dominant form-factor will still be a phone. This is not the risk.
The existential FEAR of the smartphone ecosystem players (Apple, Google) is, that another ecosystem (!) may come along, one that is tighter integrated into the daily lives, is more predictive of the users' needs, requires less interaction and is not under THEIR control.
Because this is not about devices, it's about owning the total userbase of that OS-ecosystem.
Replacing the Smartphone has been attempted numerous times in the past decade, but no device was able to replace it as a consumption device. Now technology has reached a level of maturity that Smart Glasses may have a shot at this. AND they come along with their own ecosystem as well.
Whatever happens, they won't replace all phones within 5 years. But it's possible that such a device would become a companion to an iOS/Android phone and within 5 years gradually eases off users of their phones into that other ecosystem.
And that's scary for Apple and Google.
Because this is not a device-war, this is an ecosystem-war.
jpace121
How late do you think Apple can come to that party and still wind up winning in the end?
Having piles of money when everyone else is lighting it on fire and a brand that would require quite the mistake to ruin gives you a long runway.
Is anyone really profiting from AI yet? I know Google basically saved their search monopoly but any one else?
SoftTalker
Yes, as I said in another thread a few days ago: Apple's strength is in making personal computing endpoint devices for consumers. That's what's in their DNA. They have not done well at anything else.
qzw
While that’s definitely true, I think it’s maybe more fair to say that their actual strength has always been to take a personal computing technology that’s just about “ready-for-prime-time” and make it as accessible and fashionable as possible. Almost all of their failed products have been errors in judging how close a tech is to being ready for mass adoption.
snowwrestler
They do great at consumer services as well. Worth noting that no other company in the world has more credit cards on file than Apple.
bigyabai
That will look just great alongside the other monopoly abuse evidence.
amelius
Like they say: "In a goldrush, sell vendor locked shovels."
fauigerzigerk
I would say that's what Nvidia is doing.
I'm not sure how Apple is enabling anything interesting around AI right now.
That's what this bland article is not even touching on. Yes, having missed the boat is great if the boat ends up sinking. That doesn't make missing boats a great strategy.
Building huge models and huge data centers is not the only thing they could have done.
They had some interesting early ideas on letting AI tap app functionality client-side. But that has gone nowhere, and now everything of relevance is happening on servers.
Apple's devices are not even remotely the best dumb terminals to tap into that. Even that crown goes to Android.
eastbound
May I remind that iPhone can’t remove the crowds from tourism photos, so all Android users have memories without crowds. So, in a goldrush, sell dirt.
platevoltage
There's a thing I didn't know I was missing.
buellerbueller
Although I am an Android user, I am not enough of a narcissist to need to remove the crowds from my tourism photos. So, not all Android users have photos without crowds.
crazygringo
> They use this to build out AI infrastructure they control, pre-paid by the future consumers.
I'm not following. What infrastructure? Pre-paid how?
Apple pays for materials and chips before it sells the finished product to consumers. Nothing is pre-paid.
And what infrastructure? The inference chips on iPhones aren't part of any Apple AI infrastructure. Apple's not using them as distributed computing for LLM training or anything, or for relaying web queries to a complete stranger's device -- nor would they.
rickdeckard
> Apple pays for materials and chips before it sells the finished product to consumers. Nothing is pre-paid.
The AI-capabilities of the devices will be pre-paid, as they will come with the product without delivering any significant value yet. The end-user will bear the cost for that before he is getting anything meaningful in return, because Apple's production volume is at such a scale that they can offset those investments without risking to lose any meaningful sales volume.
Other players can't do that because they don't sell 200mn units per year. If they would add on-device inference chips, they would have to significantly increase the device-price, risking to not sell any product
crazygringo
That's not "prepaid", that's just normal building of hardware. And Apple's AI hardware is pretty general-purpose -- it's already widely used for things like dictation, image recognition, all sorts of stuff. Sure they've upgraded their "neural engine" into a "neural accelerator" to optimize it more for LLM's, but that's still incremental.
What Apple is also doing is investing server-side, just like everybody else, precisely because phones can't handle the serious stuff:
https://www.macrumors.com/2024/12/11/apple-intelligence-serv...
So I'm not really seeing the unique Apple advantage here. Samsung is doing the exact same thing with Android, with LLM-optimized silicon.
toomuchtodo
Sometimes doing nothing is the winning move.
GeekyBear
Look at Magic Cue in this year's Android update
> Magic Cue - Magic Cue proactively surfaces relevant info and suggests actions, similar to how Apple's personalized Siri features were supposed to work. It can display flight information when you call an airline, or cue up a photo if a friend asks for an image.
https://www.macrumors.com/2025/08/20/google-pixel-10-ai-feat...
Google shipped it, despite it not working.
> I spent a month with the Pixel 10's most hyped AI feature, and it hasn't gone well
https://www.androidauthority.com/google-pixel-10-magic-cue-o...
Likewise Daily Hub didn't work but was shipped anyway.
> In our testing, Daily Hub rarely showed anything beyond the weather, suggested videos, and AI search prompts. When it did integrate calendar data, it seemed unable to differentiate between the user’s own calendar and data from shared calendars. This largely useless report was pushed to the At a Glance widget multiple times per day, making it more of a nuisance than helpful.
https://arstechnica.com/google/2025/09/google-pulls-daily-hu...
Apple announced that the Siri uodate didn't work well enough to ship, and didn't ship it.
rickdeckard
...as I wrote, they don't do "nothing".
They roll out hardware to consumers they can use for AI once their service is ready, with users paying for that rollout until then.
Meanwhile they have started to deploy a marketplace ecosystem for AI tasks on iOS, where Apple has the first right-to-refuse, allowing the user to select a (revenue-share-vetted) 3rd party provider to complete the task.
So until Apple is ready, the user can select OpenAI (or soon other providers) to fulfill an AI-task, and Apple will collect metrics on the demand of each type of task.
This will help them prioritize for development of own models, to finally make use of their own marketplace rules to direct the business away from third parties to themselves.
My guess is that they will offer a mixed on-device/cloud AI-service that will use the end-users hardware where possible, offloading compute from their clouds to the end-users hardware and energy-bill, with a "cheap" subscription price undercutting others on that AI-marketplace.
musictubes
It isn’t clear to me that Apple will ever pursue their own chatbot like Gemini, ChatGPT, etc. There’s lots of potential for on device AI functions without it ever being a general purpose agent that tries to do everything. AI and LLMs are not synonymous.
stefan_
You are just making things up in this grand AI strategy you have imagined for Apple. I cannot "fulfill an AI-task" with my phone because the overpaid idiots building it in Cupertino have years ago bought into the trainwreck that is Siri. So now I cannot "select my favorite AI provider" from the "marketplace ecosystem for AI tasks" to "fulfill an AI-task" nor will a meddling middle manager in the Loop collect metrics on the demand for "my AI tasks".
rickdeckard
Assuming that Apple take 30% rev-share from other AI-service providers on their AI-marketplace, once they are ready they can easily offer a lower pricing than anyone else and still retain a higher profit-margin.
But for this to make economic sense, the "AI-bubble" may need to burst first, forcing the competitors to actually provide their services for-profit.
Until then it might be more profitable to just forward AI-tasks to OpenAI and others and let them burn more money.
twsted
"A strange game. The only winning move is not to play."
makeitdouble
> I can't think of any company which has comparable know-how and, most of all, a comparable sell-out scale to even consider Apple's strategy.
I'm not sure where you position Samsung or Xiaomi, Oppo etc. They're competitive on price with chipsets that can handle AI loads in the same ballpark, as attested by Google's features running on them.
They're not vertically integrated and don't have the same business structure, but does it matter regarding on-device AI ?
rickdeckard
Vertical integration matters for sure, but people often underestimate the scale in which this market is already skewed.
- Apple owns more than 50% of this market-segment, the annual sales of iPhones is roughly 200 Million units. In comparison, Samsung Galaxy S-series sits at roughly 20-25 Millions.
- Apple's is alone in the iOS ecosystem, while Samsung, Xiaomi and Oppo have to compete within the Android space every year. iOS is extremely sticky, which makes a certain volume of iPhones almost guaranteed to sell every year, at a lofty profit margin.
In comparison, Samsung always has to consider that the next BAD Galaxy-S might only sell a fraction of the previous one, because users might move horizontally to another Android brand (even to Pixel, a first-party product of their ecosystem provider). So Samsung cannot even make bets based on the sale of 20 million units, they are already at risk to make bets on the initial shipment-volume (~5 millions) because if the device doesn't sell they will have to PAY money to the carriers to get them into the market.
Apple has a much lower risk here. If the next iPhone is not catching on, Apple will likely still sell 200mn iPhones in that year, because the ecosystem lock-in is so strong that there is little risk of losing customers to anything else than ANOTHER (then more-profitable) iPhone.
So even when assuming a MASSIVE annual drop of 25% in Sales, Apple can still make development bets based on a production forecast of 150 MILLION units.
For their supply-chain that's still an average production output of ~400k units per DAY for each component. With that volume you can get entire factories to only produce for you.
That's why I can't think of any company in a comparable position. Apple can add hardware to their device and sell the resulting product to the consumer for profit before delivering any actual value with it.
If any competitor in the Android space attempts that, just the component costs alone will risk the device to be dead-on-arrival just because "some other Android device" delivers the same experience at lower cost.
makeitdouble
I'm with you in that no other company is in the exact same position as Apple.
I read the original comment as positing no other company is positionned to forgot building their own AI platform and instead sell pricey terminals that can run second party local models.
From that POV, sur Samsung and others have competition, and theirargins won't be as large as Apple, but they also have a larger market and can work with less money (Samsung as a whole will never struggle to find more)
> 50% of this market-segment
If we're limiting the segment to phones that have enough RAM to run decent models, Apple users who haven't updated to the upper models (no SE, no 16e etc) recent years are all out of the picture. I didn't check the numbers, but wouldn't have expect them to be much ahead of Samsung and the beasties Android devices.
wiesbadener
I recently tried to figure out what their offerings currently are. I'm hoping for `efficent but performant AI compute-chips` by Apple ever since they kicked out Nvidia in 2015 (for the ML Models / Exploration parts bellow). It will be interesting to see how good their products will feel in this fast-paced environment and how much legroom (RAM + Compute) will be left non-platform offerings.
To my understanding, they market their ML stack as four layers [1]:
- Platform Intelligence: ready-made OS features (e.g., Writing Tools, Genmoji, Image Playground) that apps can adopt with minimal customization.
- ML-powered APIs: higher-level frameworks for common tasks—on-device Foundation Models (LLM), plus Vision, Natural Language, Translation, Sound Analysis, and Speech; with optional customization via Create ML.
- ML Models (Core ML): ship your own models on-device in Core ML format; convert/optimize from PyTorch/TF via coremltools, and run efficiently across CPU/GPU/Neural Engine (optionally paired with Metal/Accelerate for more control).
- Exploration/Training: Metal-backed PyTorch/JAX for experimentation, plus Apple’s MLX for training/fine-tuning on Apple Silicon using unified memory, with multi-language bindings and models commonly sourced from Hugging Face.
elfbargpt
I think one of Apple's strengths since Tim Cook took over is their ability to avoid "gimmicks". As much criticism as people have of apple for not innovating on the iPhone, I appreciate their ability to not screw products up.
I'm not saying AI is a gimmick, but the caution they show is a good quality I think
ewoodrich
They're being sued over an Apple Intelligence gimmick in an ad campaign that turned out to be vaporware at this very moment!
https://www.axios.com/2025/03/20/apple-suit-false-advertisin...
mrtksn
Apple could have avoid that by released it half arsed like all the AI stuff, claim that it does all those things and write somewhere "AI may make mistakes".
culi
Their latest OS design shows they are quite capable of falling for gimmicks
some-guy
I work in UI in enterprise, where slight color shade differences between releases can cause uproar. I cannot imagine the thought process behind liquid glass in any sense.
OSX's Aqua was also an insanely bold UI with a lot of gimmicks, but was still usable for the most part. I'm so very curious about the internal discussions around this.
copperx
It was a different time, too. I remember being starstruck after seeing the UI. Windows looked overwhelmingly grey in comparison.
piskov
The guy responsible is fortunately out of Apple
makeitdouble
That would be fine if he was a lone wolf and nobody supported his vision, or if his whole org moved out with him.
null
adrr
If its a gimmick to have a functioning Siri, please give me gimmicks. Siri is a generation behind Alexa and Hey Google. Siri is next to worthless.
rhubarbtree
I have some good news: I use both Apple and Amazon products, and both voice assistants are equally useless.
blcknight
Gemini, grok, etc all have 100x better experiences with voice. Apple is bad at this.
I’m an hour from Cambridge, MA. Ask the weather? I always get Cambridge, UK. Siri is terrible.
They can’t even make a functional keyboard anymore. The text prediction and autocorrect is worse now than it was in 2010!
These are all solved problems in 2025.
dmix
They haven't really updated Siri though? That's still in the pipeline. So not a very fair comparison. The article states that they are behind and I think everyone knows that
blcknight
They have though, they added the "ask ChatGPT" thing which is friggin useless
pertymcpert
Why would it not assume you meant the best Cambridge?
aurareturn
ChatGPT or Gemini or Claude are gimmicks?
Having to license Gemini from Google and Qwen from Alibaba for Siri isn’t Apple falling severely behind?
null
g-mork
I was going to link you the Apple Vision Pro as a counterpoint, but after clicking the link and being reminded of what that product actually looks like, I really don't know what to say any more. I'm literally dumbfounded anyone could make your comment at all
culi
To their credit, they specifically decided not to make a big deal out of AR like Meta did and keep production small and expensive. They realized the tech wasn't ready for a mass adoption campaign. I'd say Apple, overall, has been pretty cautious with AR. I wouldn't be surprised if they even have the guts to cancel that project entirely like they did with self-driving cars
bigyabai
That's not credit at all. If your strongest defense of AVP is "at least they're not Meta" then you've stopped making grounded observations and gone straight to ad-hominem.
I'd also go as far as to say that Apple knew they could have made the Vision Pro better. It should be running a real computer operating system like the headset Valve is making, and Apple knows that. The arbitrary insistence on iPad-tier software in a $3,500 headset guaranteed it was unlovable and dead-on-arrival.
willis936
I ran into an AVP recently and it actually is a great piece of hardware. It only has two issues: price and software. The former is forgivable because it really is an amazing piece of hardware and the price is justified. The latter is not and is the original sin that has killed it.
There's an unfulfilled promise of spatial computing. I wish I could load up my preferred CAD program and have wide and deep menus quickly traversable with hand gestures. Barring that the least it could do is support games. Maybe if some combination of miracle shims (fex emu, asahi, w/e) were able to get onto the platform it might be savable. The input drivers alone would be a herculean task.
the_gastropod
The AI "features" Apple advertise are largely gimmicky. The Apple Vision Pro is a gimmicky product. The MacBook touchbar was gimmicky.
Cook might be less susceptible to gimmickery than some of his peers. But he's definitely got an imperfect batting average, here.
billti
It was disappointing to see one of the most advertised Apple “AI” features was “Genmoji”, which falls squarely in the “gimmick” category for me.
w-ll
gimmicks like a sock for your phone?
asdff
Seems that this is apples modus operandi since the app store, their last "thing" they've made really.
Hype about self driving cars -> apple chases it with apple car -> investors pleased they kept up with the joneses -> apple car is behind or not good enough or whatever -> quietly cancelled -> investors pleased they culled the deadweight.
You can replace apple car with vision pro or soon apple intelligence and it will play out the same formula. Luckily it allows investors to profit.
GeekyBear
Google's headline new AI feature for this year's Pixel phone, Magic Cue, shipped despite not working.
> “The right info, right when you need it.” That’s how Google describes Magic Cue, one of the most prominent new AI features on the Pixel 10 series. Using the power of artificial intelligence, Magic Cue is supposed to automatically suggest helpful info in phone calls, text messages, and other apps without you having to lift a finger.
However, the keyword there is “supposed” to... even when going out of my way to prompt Magic Cue, it either doesn’t work or does so little that I’m amazed Google made as big a deal about the feature as it did.
https://www.androidauthority.com/google-pixel-10-magic-cue-o...
I'd rather see companies admit that a promised feature isn't ready for prime time than hype it up only to ship it broken.
losvedir
It actually popped up and was useful for me yesterday when I was calling a hotel I had booked. I was kind of surprised because I had forgotten about the feature, but it is there and does occasionally offer helpful info.
johnfn
How does the Vision Pro not qualify as a "thing" Apple made?
kulahan
Because 8 people worldwide own one, and it will stop receiving support shortly, if it hasn't already.
OP doesn't literally mean they haven't made anything, he means that they've made nothing of real substance - which holds true when their biggest recent release is already completely forgotten by the public writ large.
wat10000
"If it hasn't already"? They released a new model not even two months ago.
platevoltage
How do the sales numbers stack up to the first gen iPod?
null
segfaultex
Or the Apple Watch, AirPods, HomePod, iPad, etc.
They’ve made plenty of things. I liken them to the Lexus of consumer electronics; expensive for what they are, thoughtfully designed, and conservative in their approach to adopting new trends.
asdff
>Apple watch
Iphone on your wrist. Most people I know with one have it for two years then once the battery goes they throw it in a drawer and don't buy another one. Most were actually gifted it.
> airpods
They just took the same old earpods they used to give you for free due to ewaste concerns and forced you to buy the disposable bluetooth version if you want to charge your phone and listen to music at the same time.
>homepod
I'm into tech and I'm not sure what this even does. Apple doesn't advertise it at all that's for certain. Its basically a sonos with siri I guess. I know no one with one. I just looked it up. It looks like a chinese air filter, absolutely no signature design language.
>ipad
No one knows why they need one. They get one because there's hype. They use it for three years to look at instagram then its put in a drawer forever. "ipad for education" is a scam/failure; just give kids macbook airs so I don't have to teach new hires what a file is anymore.
All of this is a farcry from the ipod and I feel like apologists like you understand that too.
hinkley
Hank Green mentioned in passing the other day how ungodly much money Apple is making off of airpods. I still have managed not to get one. But the watch and iPad definitely counts as something after the app store.
Which they didn't really invent the app store either. What they did was break the stranglehold cellphone carriers had on cellphone software, and we should kiss their butts every single week for that. Most people didn't work in mobile prior to the app store and holy shit.
WorldPeas
One could say it has a Newtonian gravity about it..
guywithahat
They completely revolutionized laptop processors, were the first to put meaningful health data in watches, and created the first good bluetooth earbuds, but I guess they don't do things anymore.
ajross
> They completely revolutionized laptop processors
Tough love: no, they didn't. 99.9% of consumers simply can't detect a performance difference between an M4 Air and a junky Asus box (and what ones can will announce that games run much better on the windows shipwreck!), and while the Air has a huge power delta no one cares because the windows thing still lasts for 6+ hours.
Apple absolutely ran ahead of the industry technically, by a shocking amount. But in a commoditized field that isn't sensitive to quality metrics, that doesn't generate sales.
There's a reason why the iPhone remains the dominant product but macs are stuck at like 9% market share, and it's not the technlogy base that is basically the same between them.
Laptops are done, basically. It's like arguing about brands of kitchen ranges: sure, there are differences, but they all cook just fine.
jerf
You know I would be happy to offer this service to investors for a mere tens of millions of dollars. I'll send you photos of our weekly money bonfire, built with your money, and when you're tired of pictures of your money on fire, I'll simply... stop.
Heck, in accordance with the several zeitgeists of our age, I'll even do you the solid of fraudulently generating the money-on-fire pictures with AI, so when you get tired of seeing your money on fire I'll even hand, say, 25% of it back to you, as the result of my tireless efforts to bring value to my shareholders. That's a better return than you'll get from most of these investments!
themafia
> Luckily it allows investors to profit.
That's not lucky. That's sad. They never ask the question "could we have earned _more_ profits with a better strategy?"
The market is not rational.
convenwis
This is the thing I've found amazing about people's complaints about Apple and AI.
Historically the strength of Apple was that they didn't ship things until they actually worked. Meaning that the technology was there and ready to make an experience that was truly excellent.
People have been complaining for years that Apple isn't shipping fast enough in this area. But if anything I think that they have been shipping (or trying to ship) too fast. There are a lot of scenarios that AI is actually great at but the ones that move the needle for Apple just aren't there yet in terms of quality.
The stuff that is at a scale that it matters to them are integrations that just magically do what you want with iMessage/calendars/photos/etc. There are potentially interesting scenarios there but the fact is that any time you touch my intimate personal (and work) data and do something meaningful I want it to work pretty much all the time. And current models aren't really there yet in my view. There are lots of scenarios that do work incredibly well right now (coding most obviously). But I don't think the Apple mainline ones do yet.
burningChrome
>> Historically the strength of Apple was that they didn't ship things until they actually worked. Meaning that the technology was there and ready to make an experience that was truly excellent.
They dragged their feet on a host of technologies that other handset makers adopted, released and subsequently improved.
- USB C charging
- 90hz, 120Hz refresh rates
- wireless charging
- larger batteries (the iPhone 17 still lags behind Samsung and Google)
I'm not sure what happened, but the iPhone used to have the most fluid, responsive experience compared to Android. Now, both Google and Samsung have surpassed them in that regard.
I've used both Android and have owned several iPhones and it just seems like its not an issue of releasing something that isn't ready, but more about them not being capable enough to release phones to compete with other phones that are regularly beating them in the specs race.
culi
This isn't necessarily a counterargument. Apple's always been conservative with their specs but their tight link between software and hardware has meant they've been able to do more with less. Batteries are a good example of that. Apple has always had a much smaller battery than flagship competitors but has had similar or better battery life than, say, Samsung
nik736
> Meaning that the technology was there and ready to make an experience that was truly excellent
In general I would agree, but Siri is honestly still so bad.
convenwis
Yep, I agree. Should have been more clear that it used to be their philosophy. It isn't nearly as much.
anonyfox
this night I got accidentially the update to the latest iOS with this liquid glass stuff - and its schockingly bad in any dimension. keyboard input lags, many thing ned MORE clicks/touches then before, weird contenxt menu popovers that don't even register taps 50% of the time, general lags and sluggishness and UI artifacts everywhere. Its really really a degradiation of UI/UX even though I personally am a fan of that glass-style design in itself
some_random
I really wish I lived in the world where Apple didn't ship things until they actually worked, that would be so cool.
mitchell209
I feel like the only people who say that still are people that don't actively or daily use Apple products because macOS Tahoe is a joke. Jelly scrolling on the iPad mini was a noticeable issue that should never have shipped. Antenna-gate on the iPhone 4. iOS 7... etc etc
FireBeyond
iOS 26.1 will regularly blur the "status line" (clock, signal strength, network, battery) while the rest of the phone functions correctly. Just sitting on the home page with the status blurred. Locking, unlocking, switching screen modes, doesn't fix it - just have to reboot the phone. :\
some_random
The fucked up thing is that they're typically all-in on Apple and either don't notice bugs or blame themselves.
ghusto
> Historically the strength of Apple was that they didn't ship things until they actually worked. Meaning that the technology was there and ready to make an experience that was truly excellent.
Tell that to almost anything they've shipped in the last 5-10 years. It's gotten so bad that I wait halfway through entire major OS version before upgrading. Every new thing they ship is almost guaranteed to be broken in some way, ranging from minor annoyance to fully unusable.
I buy Apple-everything, but I sure wish there were better options.
convenwis
Oh, I totally agree that things have changed and that philosophy doesn't exist much any more. Should have been more clear on that point.
supportengineer
I wonder if a new tech company was founded with a quality-first and customer-service mentality, could they succeed? Especially if there are NO investors trying to make a quick buck.
Certainly the company would provide good jobs, good benefits, salary and bonuses.
But none of this "the company is the product".
MBAs would be strictly forbidden.
awestroke
My complaint is that they overpromised and then didn't deliver anything at all. They should have just kept their mouth shut
baq
they had to say something and show they're working on something even if it doesn't work to appease the market spirits so they didn't lose their best people (stock compensation, right?)
now the tides are turning, so they can go back to scheming behind the closed doors without risking their top people leaving for meta for a bazillion dollars.
esafak
When it came out in 2016 Google Assistant was delivering value while Siri was not.
hinkley
What people hate about Apple is that they ship things other people couldn't get to capital-W Work, and they're seen as 'stealing' the idea instead of perfecting them.
Great artists steal.
vadepaysa
The core of Apple's problem boils down to apathy towards their product quality. I just recently switched from using Siri to Google Gemini in my car. The experience is dramatically better.
And this is the case across the board.
My friend's Fitbit works way better than my Apple watch.
Third and final example is how bad Apple's native dictation engine is. I can run OpenAI Whisper models on my Mac and get dramatically better output.
As a long time Apple fan who's had everything since before the first iPhone, I feel this apathy towards product quality cannot be disguised as some strategic decision to fast follow with AI.
yandie
> My friend's Fitbit works way better than my Apple watch.
My husband has a Fitbit and it's so buggy he left it sit on the shelf most of the time - the only times he'd wear it is for exercise.
Siri is bad though, but I have found Google Voice Assistant and Alexa both really have become bad over time, to the point of us just giving up on them completely. My husband is on Android and I'm really surprised how bad voice assistant is despite all the Gemini launches! (mind you he has an Australian accent)
fennecbutt
I have a Kiwi accent and it's fine...probably best to ensure you set correct language in settings too.
mr_toad
> My friend's Fitbit works way better than my Apple watch.
I went through three FitBits. After the third failed just outside warranty I got an Apple watch, which has outlasted all three FitBits.
nunez
The Fitbit is great until it bricks itself. Which it will. Probably in a year or two.
didibus
I'll have to disagree on Fitbit being better.
But for everything else, you literally just said, the handful of AI features are better on Google products... That seldom makes the product as a whole better.
null
enraged_camel
>> My friend's Fitbit works way better than my Apple watch.
That's odd because I've used both, along with a bunch other wearables (e.g. Whoop), and I wouldn't give up my Apple Watch for anything. Massively useful, can take calls, make payments, stream music from my Apple playlists, read and reply to messages, and a ton of other things.
serf
The wearos devices can do all that stuff too, and fitbit is kind of getting blended into those devices piece by piece -- so after years of Fitbit use I can say that the best fitbit device i've had is ... a Pixel Watch 4.
I mention this because , at least for the functionalities that you mention, I think the pixel watches are catching up nicely.
... but they still haven't been able to make me feel less stupid talking into a watch for phone calls like some off-brand James Bond wannabe, even if it works great.
enraged_camel
I never talk into the watch, I just put on my airpods and they connect automatically.
browningstreet
You're arguing about product quality by using product availability examples.
Siri isn't competing with Gemini, yet.. Siri is old tech, Gemini is the new tech.
Same with dictation.
Siri hasn't been updated generationally with SOTA to compete with Gemini yet.. it simply hasn't been updated. This is part of the "slow pace" that the post is talking about (part of, not entirely the slowness though).
For example, Amazon updated my old Echo dots with Alexa+ beta, and it's pretty good. I have Grok in my Tesla, and though I don't like Grok or xAI, it's there and I use it occasionally.
Apple hasn't done their release of these things yet.
vadepaysa
How so? Their brand new Siri _is_ available. I am using their Apple intelligence on my new iPhone. They even have half baked ChatGPT integrations everywhere. They got into lot of trouble last year for running ads for overselling what their new siri can do.
Overselling abilities is for sure a lack of quality.
browningstreet
The new Apple Intelligence version of Siri isn't out yet. It's scheduled to arrive with iOS 26.4 in early/mid 2026.
My assertion is that Apple hasn't yet released a generational complement to Gemini or ChatGPT voice modes. That's a problem, but one specifically of availability and release, which.. again (and despite the downvoters).. matches the assertion of the post ("slow AI pace").
If/when new Siri in 26.4 comes out and it sucks, then that'd be an issue of quality.
Reference: https://appleinsider.com/articles/25/10/30/apple-intelligenc...
eastbound
No, when I bought my first iphone, Siri could start a chronometer. Then it couldn’t for 5 years, and today it can again. It’s a big flaw for a product which can barely do anything else.
I only have Apple product because it’s good build quality. But it’s quite bad products.
I think Apple secretly doesn’t want more market share, to avoid anticompetitive accusations.
mr_toad
> Shares of Apple Inc. were battered earlier this year as the iPhone maker faced repeated complaints about its lack of an artificial intelligence strategy.
Everyone’s shares were battered earlier this year, and it had nothing to do with AI, and everything to do with tariffs.
willis936
I think it was mostly Buffett's dumping. He's a smart guy and the world's best investor, but I think this was a mistake. The winning play is long on Apple, short on Microsoft.
throw0101d
This is from a financial market perspective.
From a user perspective it may not be a strength: users / customers may expect certain functionality that works accurately and responsively.
smith7018
Beyond Hacker News, I haven't seen anyone actively asking for AI features. People have been complaining about Siri for over a decade but it's not like users are turning against Apple because it isn't using an LLM (yet). Rather, it seems like users are increasingly wary of AI features being shoehorned into products they were already using.
theturtletalks
Apple originally planned to power Siri with ChatGPT under the hood. They quickly saw that other models, including open-source ones, were closing the gap fast.
A few months ago, MCP-style tool calling seemed like the clear standard. Now even Anthropic is shifting toward "code-mode" and reusable skills.
For Apple, reliable tool calling is critical because their AI needs to control apps and the whole device. My bet: Apple's AI will be able to create its own Shortcuts on the fly and call them as needed, with OSA Script support on Mac.
threetonesun
One of the reasons I'm heavily biased towards actual Mac native apps is that supporting callback URLs and Shortcuts unlocks so much of what I might ask of an AI tool already. Ironically I often ask AI assistants for line by line steps to create Shortcuts when I need them because actual Shortcut naming and properties can be quite obtuse.
danaris
Sadly, much as I love AppleScript, I think Apple giving it any love at this point in time is likely to be a pipe dream. Much more likely they're just going to try to beef up Shortcuts support across the board.
superfrank
Users aren't really asking for AI features, but they may be asking for features that require AI.
As Google integrates Gemini into their Google Assistant and Google Home products, if it starts to become leaps and bounds better than Siri, customers are going to start wondering why Apple is falling behind. If Apple can't achieve those things without AI and that could cause problems. Customers aren't saying "I want AI features", but they are indirectly asking for them because the features they want require AI to do what they expect.
(I realize Google and Apple have a deal happening to have Gemini integrated into Siri so this isn't the best example, but I think it illustrates the point I'm trying to make)
tim333
I'm in that boat - I'm basically fine without AI features. I can think of a couple of hypothetical things that would be nice though - a smart and functional Siri - I never use it at the moment, and maybe a locally hosted LLM that could look through my documents so I can ask where's that spreadsheet with the housing costs etc.
null
torginus
?? Both normies and tech people seem to have been clued in that AI is a shoehorned in feature that companies focus on instead of fixing existing functionality, and that comes with a siphon that exfiltrates all your data for AI companies to train on.
user34283
Users weary about shoehorned AI features are probably all on Reddit or Hackernews.
I certainly never heard anyone complain in real life.
swatcoder
The people I know in real life, besides those that work in tech and use it for code assistance or for generating never-reviewed archival transcripts of meetings, mostly just laugh at AI foibles and faults and casually echo doomer-media worries about job replacement as a topic for small talk.
But admittedly, most of those people are established adults who've figured out an effective rhythm to their home and work life and aren't longing for some magic remedy or disruption. They're not necessarily weary, and they were curious at first, but it seems like they're mostly just waiting for either the buzz to burn off or for some "it just works" product to finally emerge.
I imagine there are younger people wowed by the apparent magic of what we have now and excited that they might use it punch up the homework assignments or emails or texts that make them anxious, or that might enjoy toying with it as a novel tool for entertainment and creative idling. Maybe these are some of the people in your "real life"
There are a lot of people out there in "real life", bringing different perspectives and needs.
cosmic_cheese
Most of the people I've talked IRL to aren't against AI as a rule, but have grown tired of poorly implemented AI features, especially if they're used as marketing fodder. In my experience, shoehorned AI features have landed themselves in a category similar to that of bundled crapware and useless single-app hotkeys on cheap laptops.
Those of this group who use AI mostly ignore poor rebadges and integrations like MS Copilot and just use ChatGPT and Claude directly. They prefer it to remain intentional and contained within a box that they control the bounds of.
jaredcwhite
I talk to tons of people in real life who are deeply troubled by the AI-pocalypse. I was at a dinner party just the other day where out of the blue (wasn't me, I swear!), the conversation turned to the horrors of genAI and its negative effect on our society.
skeletal88
No, i don't want AI on my phones OS. I dont want any ai search in phone settings or files or anything like this.
It would be like MS is forcing their copilot currently everywhere, it is totally useless and a nuisance.
user34283
Copilot is useful for searching emails and SharePoint. It gives access to GPT-5 with Thinking, making it broadly useful for programming tasks.
It's certainly been useful in my organization.
goalieca
Gmail search has been excellent for 20 years. Outlook search is still terrible even with copilot. LLM isn’t the killer feature, a search that works is.
everdrive
In other words, something they cannot get from AI?
dizlexic
From what I've seen AI isn't driving purchasing of consumer electronics. It's mainly a talking point for reviewers.
dominotw
what functionality is this?
I am yet to see ai functionality ppl are dying for.
PKop
Disagree. It's a win win. As an example, Windows and Microsoft would benefit users if they focused less on injecting useless Copilot everywhere, and more on maintenance and improvement of the core functionality of the OS while not squandering the human resource of their development teams by forcing them to work on these things; bad opportunity cost.
Not to say Apple isn't also degrading their OS with bad design changes, but "more AI" is not something users are clamoring for.
hinkley
From a financial market perspective, AAPL is the second highest valuation for a publicly traded company and #1 is in first place because of the AI bubble.
biophysboy
I genuinely never understood why there was a narrative that Apple is "falling behind" when it comes to AI. They make phones, computers and an ecosystem of services to lock you in. None of this stuff is threatened by AI; with the right integration, it would enhance them!
some-guy
I do think Siri is particularly behind, but they were behind long before the AI craze. I also understand you cannot simply make Siri “be smart” with an LLM without all kinds of consequences and edge cases to deal with.
It’s not the same, but PMs and VPs at my company think we can vibe code our way out of migrating a 1.6 million line codebase to a newer language / technology. Or that our problems can be solved by acquiring an AI startup, whose front end looks exactly the same as every other AI startup’s front page, and slapping a new CSS file that looks like that startup on top of our existing SPA because their product doesn’t actually do anything. It’s an absurd world out there.
some_random
The falling behind was shipping a low quality integration.
biophysboy
What are some good quality AI integrations right now? The chat apps and the IDEs are sort of separate environments. A lot of "AI assistants" in other apps so far have been clunky/useless.
mitchell209
I don't even think Google has particularly good integration and they make Gemini. Although it was early when I was still using my Android phone, I went back to the old google assistant instead of letting Gemini take over because it didn't add anything of value for the basic functions that I need from a voice assistant. Hopefully that's changed and I'm simply uninformed, but I doubt it.
ghusto
As someone who buys Apple-everything and has thought about switching to Android just so I can have Gemini as an assistant, my opinion is their selling of phones is threatened by AI.
I know it's fashionable to shit-talk AI and Google, and lord knows I dislike the latter, but Gemini works and is day-to-day useful.
nightski
You said you don't understand it while explaining it in the second sentence. They don't have a decent integration, hence the vulnerability. Devices that do have a good to great AI experience will win in the long run imho.
biophysboy
What integration features are they missing that people use/want? Genuinely not trying to be dismissive or stick my head in sand - I am out of the loop.
wahnfrieden
They delayed a new product category because of poor AI performance (the iPad/HomePod fusion device)
And they also got slapped with class action lawsuits for failing to meet promised AI capabilities in products they launched
It’s easy to understand from evidence like this why they are falling behind, even if you believe they will pull ahead later
epoch1677
That's not all, my macbook (48 GM VRAM) can run better local LLMs at a workable speed than my RTX 5090 rig can, plus Apple has MLX and neural engines.
The reason there was such a narrative is because Wall Street and Silicon Valley are both narrative machines with little regard for veracity, and they are also not that smart (at least according to people who successfully beat their system, such as Buffett).
"Warren, if people weren't so often wrong, we wouldn't be so rich." – the late great Charlie Munger.
smileson2
yeah tbh it sometimes feels like a lot of moaning from those crowds is more about self-validation than anything concrete
biophysboy
That's pretty cool! What are the advantages of using a local LLM currently? Do you tune them? I suppose it will be more enshittification proof..
creata
> What are the advantages of using a local LLM currently?
You don't have to send all your thoughts to a third party. That's the advantage.
mark_l_watson
I am going to defend Apple: their new built in system model in iOS26 and iPadOS26 is very decent, similar to the small Google Gemma models and the small Chinese models. For complex queries a free API call is transparently made to a secure computed environment on Apple’s servers that are documented to preserve privacy.
A problem is that even though it is super simple to write Swift / SwiftOS apps to use the system model, I don’t see much evidence that many developers are using the model in their apps.
bredren
Hey Mark, I posted about this in another comment [1] but I also think the LLM is decent, and beyond its quality the scale of distribution is a big deal.
I had pondered practical implementations of the model since it was announced and have just released today a new native macos application that uses it to summarize Claude Code and Codex conversations as they occur. [2]
If you use either of these CLI agents and have time to try the app out and provide feedback, I'd appreciate it! I'm at rob@contextify.sh.
mark_l_watson
Good product idea! Nice feature keeping track of Claude Code and codex and doing some syncing. I don’t use Claude code and cancelled my OpenAI subscription a few months ago (I use local models and Gemini) so I am not a possible customer for your product. BTW, I have experimented with storing my own sync info long term for local models - difficult problem.
c16
A good candidate for second mover advantage.
Let everyone else pay for the research and make the mistakes, find out what works and what doesn't. Apple already has the consumers, they might as well save a few (hundred?) bn in the process and later deploy something which doesn't tell you to glue your cheese to your pizza.
hinkley
Or like with the M1 chip: wait until the incumbent alienates so many experts in the field that you can scoop them up and they will succeed partially fueled on spite against their old employer.
georgeecollins
In theory yes, but a lot of the organizational reasons Siri is a flop are also similar to the reasons Apple Music loses to Spotify, Apple can't really get it together for ads.. I think Apple is a great company (disclosure : shareholder) but they have gotten so big and so stretched thin can't always take advantage of the opportunities in front of them.
raw_anon_1111
Why would Apple care about “winning” at Apple Music when the labels get most of the money? Spotify’s first annual profit after years of losses was last year at 1.3 billion.
Apple Music is an ecosystem play.
wahnfrieden
It is a management problem. It’s not because of size. Talk to people who’ve worked there…
kilroy123
Thank you. All these people applauding Apple for not jumping on the bandwagon.
When in reality, they _wanted_ to but have become so dysfunctional organization wise, they weren't able to. Kind of funny how that worked out.
I still think they're really dropping the ball. They could have local models running on devices, interfacing with a big cloud partner (Google, OpenAI, etc.) Make Siri awesome. But no.
I would bet significant money that, within two years, it will become Generally Obvious that Apple has the best consumer AI story among any tech company.
I can explain more in-depth reasoning, but the most critical point: Apple builds the only platform where developers can construct a single distributable that works on mobile and desktop with standardized, easy access to a local LLM, and a quarter million people buy into this platform every year. The degree to which no one else on the planet is even close to this cannot be understated.