> when they finally execute on the blindingly obvious strategic play that they are naturally positioned for
What's that? It's not obvious to me, anyway.
What's that? It's not obvious to me, anyway.
A beefed up NPU could provide a big edge here.
More speculatively, Apple is also one of the few companies positioned to market an ASIC for a specific transformer architecture which they could use for their Siri replacement.
(Google has on-device inference too but their business model depends on them not being privacy-focused and their GTM with Android precludes the tight coordination between OS and hardware that would be required to push SOTA models into hardware. )
Privacy is already a key differentiating feature for iPhone which is why I think they will continue to try to make this option viable. (They already do ChatGPT fallback which is a pragmatic concession to the reality that you highlight here.)