Apple has historically been a little behind the curve in technology, but then excelling at execution and user experience.
If they could (quickly) come out with a personal assistant which was really useful for people's planning and shopping and productivity, which knew how to navigate the apps and services on a person's apples phone/computer/cloud data, and do it locally and/or privately... They'd be in a good position even if it wasn't the absolute leader of the pack.
AI is going to be so powerful in the coming years that if apple falls behind AND doesn't give the keys to some other company to integrate AI, then I could see people jumping ship.
I think the reason why Apple hasnt come out with such a useful personal assistant AI is because the underlying technology just doesn't make this so easy.
Apple is the only company so far that seems to be unwilling to accept a poor user experience with generative AI, so their efforts have been "lackluster" in terms of "AI integration" - as if "maximally integrating generative LLMs" is the goal in and of itself!
Of course Nadella is critical of Apple's efforts: he selling the goods! It's like a Steel CEO complementing a new bridge but then "they should have used more steel" - well duh, but since when do we trust the purveyors of components as to what should be added?
The bottom line is "Agentic AI" is just unreliable. If you thought you hated Apple Intelligence now, then if they had gone whole hog, the unreliability would be astounding.
> their efforts have been "lackluster" in terms of "AI integration" - as if "maximally integrating generative LLMs" is the goal in and of itself!
That does feel like the ultimate goal with many of these AI initiatives. I have a suspicion that a lot of the negativity thrown towards Apple's AI integration comes from people hoping Apple will legitimize their product, not from people wanting their phone to be better.