Apple's response to AI: manton.org
@manton as usual, a well reasoned take.
I do think it’s a risk for Apple. I also never count them out when they are “late” to anything.
I find it funny all the people who were quite vociferously shouting from the rooftops that Apple “needs to announce something with AI” a year ago are now the same people saying they never should have announced Apple Intelligence if it wasn’t going to be ready.
The mistake was listening to those voices last year. The delay is the course correction they needed.
Like you said, they may very well end up losing this one. But I’m not super worried given the stare of the competition right now. Yes, the tech is getting better. But the product—the real killer app for AI is nowhere to be found yet.
@manton We’ve truly entered Tim Cook’s John Sculley era; too many products, too many promises and too much trying to please shareholders.
@manton It will be interesting to learn how Apple will play it at this year’s WWDC conference. Will they announce a complete reboot efforts? I remember seeing a new high-ranking VP being appointed that has a “get shit down” type of profile… I can’t remember her name. This could be her first visible sign of her involvement since being appointed.
@joec Yeah, the delay is fine. It’s only bad if they’ve made the wrong trade-offs and don’t yet realize it, so they burn another year going down the wrong path. Even then, it’s not “too late”, just need a very clear vision for what to do.
@manton Eloquently put. Apple’s AI strategy announced at WWDC was breathtaking at the time. No one was remotely showing contextual AI experiences like Apple did. It almost resulted in me purchasing an iPhone 16. Now that we are where we are today, I’m glad I hadn’t.
I do think Google is taking a similar approach with their Gemini Nano on-device model on their Pixel devices. Rumors suggest that “Pixel Sense” will be what Apple Intelligence was/is supposed to be.
@manton One of the biggest issues here is that Apple doesn’t ship fast enough for their AI releases to matter, and because they’re on an (qusai) annual hardware/software release cycle this industry just laps them. EVERY new .X update needs to show Apple intelligence improving by X or adding new features if they want to be competitive here. Sure, big OS updates can add tentpole features like reasoning or personal context, but half the reason Apple feels (and is) out of this is because their main competitor not only has a AI platform in Gemini, but also release great open source models at the same time.
Also, Apple Intelligence should be an app on Android’s play store just like Apple music is, and they should market it as the most private AI service possible and if people want the personal context stuff, buy an iPhone. Apple needs to compete in this market with a good standalone product to get out perception hell they’ve created for themselves. If the word “intelligence” is in your service, people can’t think it’s dumb.
Models are commodities at this point and unless someone creates god out of these things, they always will be.