John Gruber also ripped Apple a new one: <a href="https://daringfireball.net/2025/03/something_is_rotten_in_the_state_of_cupertino" rel="nofollow">https://daringfireball.net/2025/03/something_is_rotten_in_th...</a><p>Personally, I don't really care if they <i>ever</i> ship a working AI feature as long as they don't neglect and shittify the rest of iOS/macOS in the process.
Taking a wild guess here: I think the number of Apple customers who are seriously interested in Apple Intelligence are outnumbered by the number of Apple customers who face various other bugs and issues across Apple’s platforms and want those to be resolved quickly.<p>Sadly, it seems as if Apple Intelligence has sucked the air out of the room as far as spending any effort on other matters is concerned. ScreenTime doesn’t work correctly since iOS 18 (showing random and incorrect durations). It’s become basically useless. All the catalyst apps on macOS are garbage as far as user experience is concerned (can’t use the keyboard effectively or as expected for navigation with those apps). AirDrop works sometimes, but won’t sometimes. Same with continuity and other features introduced a long, long time ago.<p>With all these issues, no improvements have been done over the years. The <i>ossification</i> of macOS, or rather the <i>iOSsification</i> of macOS is diminishing the uniqueness of each platform and its strengths.<p>Top level heads need to roll right this month if Apple wants to show that it’s serious about software. Apple Intelligence can be released in 2030 or never, for all I care.
One thing that I find very interesting is that in the past year Apple marketed new iPhones mostly through its supposed AI features while consumers in two major markets (EU and China) can’t use these features. It appears like Apple hastily tried to jump on the AI bandwagon without having a real strategy.
What a colossal waste of money that could have went towards tackling bugs, improving the Siri we have now, etc. I know many consumers want new shiny, but so many of us just want them to improve testing/bug hunting. For a while I almost thought they wouldn't get baited by the hype, or at least have their product actually working before announcing it to the world with the dumbest name possible.
Apple has the best consumer local hardware for AI, and then ... Siri. How did the gap between hardware and software that could fully utilise it grow so large?
Take the L man, you are sitting on 3 countries worth of GDP in cash. Buy Mistral, move on. That's what Amazon (basically) did and they're about to ship [1].<p>[1]: <a href="https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/devices/new-alexa-generative-artificial-intelligence" rel="nofollow">https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/devices/new-alexa-generativ...</a>
Here's the bit that stood out to me:<p>> Walker said the decision to delay the features was made because of quality issues and that the company has found the technology only works properly up to two-thirds to 80% of the time. He said the group “can make more progress to get those percentages up, so that users get something they can really count on.”<p>Sounds about right for generative AI running on smaller local models. For consumer tech having it fail in weird ways 1/3 to 1/5 of the time is unacceptable.
This is a great example of when a company needs to make a new product and not simply add capability to an old one. They decided to go with Apple Intelligence, which was partway there, but leveraging Siri branding is a mistake. It's also an organizational nightmare. Ok Siri people, go continue to support all the zillions of users you currently have and all their bizarre use cases, and we'll just one day make Siri smarter? Bad idea.<p>They need to leave Siri behind and make a whole new thing, roll it out to their most loyal and spendy customers, and then let it make its way down the customer chain as it gains more capability.
How hard can it be? Models like Deepseek R1 are state-of-the-art and open source. Apple could just take one of these, tune it, and put a nicer user interface on top of it.<p>Sure, maybe it is embarrassing for Apple that they haven't made their own model, but the price of LLM AI is dropping like a rock, and eventually, Apple's large user base, distribution, UI design, and convenience will win the day.
This is just a director level person. Either<p>1. This is not important enough that a senior person (VP or above) is assigned to take care of Generative AI (the biggest shift since Mobile/Cloud) or<p>2. Robby Walker is cannon fodder and is polishing his resume.
Siri did basically not change since it was released, it can barely create timers and dictate really really basic text, but still fails 50% of the time.<p>Their fake AI promises are just embarrassing.
My Siri experience last night as I was going to bed, not wanting to look at my device before I closed my eyes: 'set my alarm to 10am'<p>Rather than realize it was late at night and I was referring to my normal wakeup alarm, Siri added a second alarm.
It's a demonstration of what an entity can do, and will do. The only innovation from Apple since Job's died were unfinished efforts that completed under Cook. There will be no future innovation from Apple. There maybe acquisitions and optimizations around current and existing positions, nothing more. Apple is IBM now and has been for some time. Apple doesn't know how to develop software or deliver it to market. It has no leadership, only management, and managers are not known for relinquishing their position so I don't see any reason this will ever change. This pattern is endemic in Silicon Valley as old products have run their course. It's like the automobile from the 1900s just playing itself out. Phones and computers are a commodity I don't expect any differentiation within anymore. As to Siri and AI it's an emerging space that Apple can't even deliver on a strategic partnership for within 2 complete phone and iOS release cycles. I'm not sure how an institution like Apple can or will ever overcome its own misaligned culture. Which brings me back to it being IBM.
IMO the last decade has mostly been a stagnation in software quality at Apple, both in design and code quality. Apple used to have to focus on users and quality because they were both an underdog and premium priced. Now it feels like they're slowly turning into Disney in the sense that most decisions are how to extract as much money as possible from you.<p>* WebGL is half-assed in safari because of "security" risks, but reeks that they don't want to risk mobile gaming bypassing the app store.<p>* They've let mobile gaming be ruined by abusive micro-transaction games.<p>* Apple ignores user bugs unless they get a lot of press ( my current frustration: <a href="https://discussions.apple.com/thread/255473542" rel="nofollow">https://discussions.apple.com/thread/255473542</a> )<p>* iTunes Genius was SO GOOD at recommending new music, but now that they can just grab a monthly fee music discovery on Apple music is very meh.<p>It doesn't surprise me in the least that that their top-down product driven development cycle can't handle a sudden, new technology (that is arguably overhyped).<p>The tragedy is that the only mobile alternative is an operating system run by an adtech company and windows is...regressing again after some promise.<p>At least there's always linux? :-/