Apple could probably run a Mac vs PC billboard on this tweet alone.
Granted, I think Apple has slightly better execution, but that's pretty subjective, I suppose.
Not to the level of Microsoft, but initially Apple Intelligence would default to on and you'd have to disable it (thankfully it needs to download gigabytes worth of ML models, which gives you a few minutes after initial OS install to toggle it off before it activates). For a while after every OS update you'd also have an onboarding screen that would try to pitch it to you with an option to "skip" in the fine print (I don't want to "skip", I want a "fuck off forever" option personally).
There's a good joke in there somewhere
Microsoft's tagline is "Windows is evolving into an agentic OS, connecting devices, cloud, and AI to unlock intelligent productivity and secure work anywhere"
If you visit https://www.apple.com/os/macos/ , Apple touts Apple Intelligence (AI), connecting devices, cloud to increase productivity and, this time a direct quote, "accelerate your workflows". This is more or less the same tagline as Microsoft is pitching.
Somewhat humorously, Apple doesn't seem to mention their agent, Siri on the page at all, but it's being reported a revamped Siri is coming in 2026.
I’m currently evaluating a move to Linux from macOS for this reason. Unless they speed up a major internal shakeup they don’t seem to be in a position where their products will be interesting. Amazing hardware though.
It's because, rightly or not, they don't trust Linux in comparison to MacOS and view it as a piracy vector.
If it wasn't going to get blocked by some prominent factions on principle, I think you could build some trusted web technologies that allowed secure video delivery pipelines. But there's too much of a position that nothing like that should exist from some quarters that it'll never happen.
Are Microsoft's AI products built into the OS any better?
It may very well be that the reason Apple got such bad press for their AI efforts is that people genuinely wanted to try them and hoped they'd be good, where as nobody wants to try Microsoft's and already expects it to be bad, thanks to their stellar reputation since Windows 8.
I’m not saying that to defend Microsoft, but at least they have _some_ measure of product success leading them to push further. With apple the leadership push for ai seems an entirely divorced from the current reality of the company.