They did do the smart thing of not throwing too much capital behind it. Once the hype crumbles, they will be able to do something amazing with this tech. That will be a few years off but probably worth the wait.
Apple seems to follow the values that Steve laid out. Tim isn’t a visionary but he seems to follow the principles associated with being disciplined with cash quite well. They haven’t done any stupid acquisitions either. Quite the contrast with OAI.
Firefox is also marketing how easy it is to disable AI.
Decently accessible automation and discovery, without having to go figure out a bunch of stuff
The user does not give two shits if the new laptop "has AI". This is how Apple has been killing it lately, they market the macbooks being powerful, cheap, with long batteries, and a premium feel. Things the user cares about. Most of the stuff marketers are just blanket labeling "AI" will eventually be shuffled to the background and rebranded with a more specific term to highlight the feature being delivered rather than the fact it's AI".
I reckon most humans never learn the valuable lessons of the past.
As you put it - nobody cares about the technology in and of itself. They care about “ok cool what’s in it for me?”. That’s what determines their decision to purchase/use a thing.
Sure, but is this actually happening? Last time I tried, Atlassian's heavily-pushed AI couldn't even turn a Jira ticket number of Confluence into a clickable link. Similarly, Windows has been actively moving away from providing locally-installed applications in the Start menu search towards offering random internet garbage.
I'm all for using a LLM to make something like Siri able to understand both "Siri, turn off the lights" and "Siri, make it dark!" - but that's not what's being pushed onto consumers, because there is no way anyone is going to pay $100/month for any version of that.
Everyone seems well convinced AI can just replace 90% of software out there but I've yet to see any evidence of that. Sure it can stand up a blog, get a simple app together pretty quick but once you get into larger scale software it's not capable of doing it by itself and you still need teams of developers working together.
Apple Intelligence was a rebrand, and Apple has made some unique decisions rolling it out.
For instance, the new chatbot version of Siri's hallucinations were seen as unacceptable, so its release was delayed.
Is a chatbot that provides false information regularly really an advancement?
Apple chose not to do photorealistic generative images, so they can't be used for deepfakes.
Apple chose not to add a feature to write text for you, just one to clean up what you write, because they don't want to help kids in school cheat.
Hell, there are chatbots out there trying to convince kids that suicide is a great idea.
How is prioritizing pushing out slop as quickly as possible with no consideration of the consequences acceptable?
My parents use Android to ask “What are the 5 biggest towers in Chicago” or “Remove the people on my picture” while apparently iPhone is only capable of doing “Hey Siri start the Chronometer / There is no contact named Chronometer in your phone”.
My iPhone is lagging a ridiculous 10 years behind. It’s just that I don’t trust Google with my credit card.
The only reason to care about it being OS integrated is to interact with functions of the OS, which siri does fine.
Likewise, the phone does not understand removing people from a photo. It is a feature specific to the photo app, and Siri allows you to wire in commands for the features in your app just fine and has for years. If Google decided for competitive reasons to not ship this feature to non-Pixel or non-Android users, thats not a Siri fault. That Apple did not integrate this as a voice command into their Photos app is also not a Siri fault (is it really common to remove all people from a photo, vs specific people?)
Is what I was referring to, Siri often fails at even opening apps which is an OS feature. Regardless, even for your examples at a certain point an AI assistant not being able to do certain things while others can does become the fault of that AI.
There's a lot clearer message to consumers on iPhone, since so many features are available on "every phone made in the last five years, once you update the software."
On Android, that feature might be bound to an OS version, or might be rolled out in a Play Store update, it might be specific to just Google or Samsung, or even just to one of their phones. There's much less word of mouth "have you tried this new thing?"
But when Apple added it in iPhone 14 (2022)...
IMO Android suffers from not controlling it's hardware. I can't ever be sure if the hyped new feature will come to my phone because I'm not using a Pixel or a Samsung.
And I imagine that like-minded consumers are a pretty large market.
We will see if they ever release a new VisionOS device, but it's not the first time they did that; see also the Apple Watch.
This wasn't like HoloLens or Google Glass. They marketed these devices to consumers and then sold these devices to consumers.
Chicken and egg problem, if no-one buys it, no-one will develop any killer apps.
Whether it’s pleasant to have any screens that close to your eyes - or ever will be - is maybe the bigger question for VR.
Disagree on this. Going back as far as VisiCalc, it's about a device making space for a killer app, and that killer app selling devices. Apple has torched so much developer good-will that even a lower price wouldn't make the space for a killer app.
When was the last time a new, mobile-first killer app came out?
- Apple Watch
- AirTag
Those are a few that come to mind. All do multi-billions in revenue per year.
And since iPhones form the largest single company's device network in the rich countries, that is a pretty big advantage.
In your other thread you mentioned people don't necessarily want iPhones but they buy them to not be excluded from iMessage. I think you vastly underestimate how much regular people want low-bullshit tech experiences and are willing to pay for that.
But this approach may not work in other areas: e.g. building electric batteries, wireless modems, electric cars, solar cell technology, quantum computing etc.
Essentially Apple got lucky with AI but it needs to keep investing in cutting edge technology in the various broad areas it operates in and not let others get too far ahead !
Obviously that was built upon years of iPhone experience, but it shows they can lag behind, buy from other vendors, and still win when it becomes worth it to them.
They could change the architecture again tonight, and start releasing new machines with it. The users will adopt because there is literally no other choice.
Every machine they release will be fastest and most capable on the platform, because there is no other option
You can also voluntarily cut off huge chunks of your own app ecosystem intentionally, by giving up 32bit support and requiring everything to be 64bit capable.
...because users have no other choice when only one vendor controls the both the hardware+software. They can either use the apps still available to them, or they can leave. And the cost of leaving for users is a lot higher.
Microsoft and Qualcomm already knew the performance of x86 app emulation on windows was killing the ARM machine lineup, so Qualcomm was working on extensions to their chips and Microsoft on having Windows support them already, but ARM64EC and Prism didn't launch for two years after the M1 shipped.
I had the initial m1 air, and it was remarkable how useable it was. You'd expect all sorts of friction and issue but mostly things just worked (very fast). Even with some Rosetta overhead it was still fast compared to intel macs.
They do the things they think they can do very well.
Why would they try to build electric batteries, wireless modems, electric cars, solar cells, or quantum computers, if their R&D hadn't already determined that they would likely be able to do so Very Well?
It's not like any of those are really in their primary lines of business anyway.
They (Apple) bought out intel's wireless modems and are using them instead of Qualcomm's chips. IIRC, they aren't the best in class when it comes to raw throughput, but quite good in terms of throughput vs power consumption.
They do not make their own screens because they can source screens from multiple sources and work with those manufacturers to create screens with the properties they want. Same thing with them relying on others for electric batteries - there are plenty of manufacturers to provide batteries to Apple's spec.
They created their own wireless modems because there's only one company they were able to purchase modems from, and those modems did not necessarily have the features Apple wanted.
Apple hasn't announced any interest in selling electric cars, solar cell technology, or quantum computing platforms. I wouldn't expect them to do so until they had a consumer product ready for sale. I doubt they are planning to come out with products in any of these categories soon.
The part that doesn't work is having Siri locally smart enough to use it as a tool.
It feels like we're rewriting history. There was a lot of blowback at the time.
I thought the original iPhone was basically first.
Do you count blackberry and palm pilot as Apple waiting to see?
They were not waiting for smartphones, but they did wait for the technology to enable them. They had been working on prototypes for a couple of years before releasing the first iPhone, and smartphones were not really a new thing at that point. What made it possible is improvements in digitisers and batteries (and they were not the first users of the capacitive digitisers in the first iPhones, they were the first to use it at that scale for a full screen), as well as progress on the software side, which took some effort.
It was the same for the first iPod. They jumped when they got a hard drive they thought was small enough to fit in a product they believed was good.
So yeah, they tend to wait and see, but they consider technologies, not only final products.
Windows CE was introduced on PDAs around 1996, and was on phones by 2003, so the iPhone was arguably between four and eleven years late depending on how you define the space.
Microsoft’s dominance was a safe bet because they had never really failed to dominate any market at that point in history. Also nobody imagined that the size of the mobile market would eclipse laptops, so “Windows CE already won” wasn’t an absurd statement at all.
And even other factors like the music and videos was so poor, granted they were built for business use which didn't really need a good media consumption experience.
You’re taking for granted that we know how things panned out in hindsight. A complete touch screen phone with no fixed buttons at that time seemed nuts.
I watched it live and I bought one right when they came available. To me it delivered a user experience unlike anything else that existed.
And yes I had used some palm pilots and blackberries as well.
The difference, if any, was focus. The premium on smartphones before Apple hit the market was on business/professional users who could afford the high premium. Apple instead targeted making a premium consumer product - that professionals then started to jump to over time, depending on how addicted they were to their blackberry keyboard.
When they made the iPhone, iPod, and Apple Watch they had no specific hardware advantage over competitors. Especially with early iPhone and iPod: no moat at all, make a better product with better marketing and you’ll beat Apple.
Now? Good luck getting any kind of reasonably priced laptop or phone that can run local AI as well as the iPhone/MacBook. It doesn’t matter that Apple Intelligence sucks right now, what matters is that every request made to Gemini is losing money and possibly always will.
This is especially true in 2026 where Windows laptops are climbing in price while MacBooks stay the same.
In hindsight it’s obvious why they pulled it off - nobody else could do it. They all had pieces missing.
It's not. People make this claim with zero evidence.
But Google made around $20B profit on Google search in 2025 Q4, and that includes AI search.
But to quote:
> Overall, we’re seeing our AI investments and infrastructure drive revenue and growth across the board.
and
> Revenue from AI solutions built by our partners increased nearly 300% year-over-year, and commitments from our top 15 software partners grew more than 16X year-over-year.
https://blog.google/company-news/inside-google/message-ceo/a...
Lmao don’t talk about subjects you clearly are not an expert in.
The only real metric one can use to gauge new investment is the marginal ROIC. Which is very noisy to say the least.
So as I said: Google made around $20B in profit on 2025 Q4 which includes AI search.
Both revenue and profit grew with the introduction of AI search.
So where exactly is this big loss you speak so confidently of?
“Until the day comes that they properly break out the financials you, nor the other poster have any idea as to what the numbers are.”
Until one of the private firms goes public nobody has a clean view of what the financials of a model business look like.
Operating margin has been declining since approximately 3/2025 at Alphabet.
You think Google has no ability to tell us whether a traditional search makes more revenue than an AI Summary search? I think we would be naive to assume they don't know that.
At iPhone launch, I seem to remember Apple still having quite a bit of the flash ram market tied up from their exclusive iPod contracts - Apple basically helped finance new factories to be spun up in return for exclusive access to their production.
The Apple Watch had the S1 system on package, which included an Apple custom CPU. There were a number of miniaturization techniques and custom parts Apple used which I remember competitors lagging on being able to replicate due to the broader market tendency to integrate off the shelf products (but I don't have more part examples or timelines).
Since they try to stay secretive about upcoming products, competitors may only get hints about what Apple is doing through your typical industrial espionage channels until the product comes out. That creates quite a bit of lag then you are starting a new product design cycle based on a product your competitor just hit the market with.
Samsung literally makes flash memory and was one of the primary competitors of the iPhone along with its Microsoft Windows Mobile/Phone and/or Android products of that era.
Are you saying that iPhone competitors couldn’t have made similar investments in factories and couldn’t have secured flash chips? These were all mega-corporations like Microsoft, Samsung, LG, and Nokia.
Android had been in negotiations with companies like Samsung and LG in 2005 before Google acquired them. In a very slightly alternate universe, Android could have been acquired by a powerhouse phone OEM like Samsung rather than Google, who I would argue squandered Android’s potential. To this very day Google struggles to make competitive hardware with their platform.
The iPhone launched as one of the most expensive smartphones on the market. The iPhone launched from a company with zero experience in selling cellular devices and a very small list of cellular networks who would even work with them.
Their competitors had ample opportunity to respond, but simply could not execute. In a very very slightly alternate universe, something like the Nokia/Microsoft partnership would have obliterated Apple.
The Apple Watch had no hardware advantage in the sense that it had no special capabilities above competitors. Yes, Apple custom-designed the SoC, but it wasn’t considered ahead of its competition. The LG G Watch and Moto 360 were available contemporaneous or earlier than the Apple Watch and the Apple Watch had no specific advantage in terms of performance, battery life, etc.
What made the Apple Watch a lot different from the iPhone was the ecosystem that Apple had built up to this point, Apple’s focus on watches as a fashion purchase and failure of competitors to recognize the same, and Apple’s arguably-illegal restriction of competing smartwatch devices on their dominant mobile platform (which the EU is forcing them to open up on now).