Here’s why Apple Intelligence is a disappointment, starting with minor nitpicks and ending with the big hitters:
1. Writing Tools: Not awful
It offers similar text-rewriting functionality you’d get from Microsoft or OpenAI, but done on-device, which is nice. Once you get past its clunky interface, it'll let you rewrite/proofread text with an LLM, but its effectiveness feels on par with GPT-3.5—occasionally helpful, often making mistakes, and sometimes ignores your intent.
For example, in the Notes app, it can’t convert a hyphenated list into a checkbox list, which suggests it doesn’t integrate well with Apple’s own apps. Overall, Writing Tools is somewhat useful, but shouldn't sway your decision in buying a new iPhone.
It gets kudos for being on-device though. It does add some convenience to your life, but could be better.
2. Genmoji: Great idea, but half-baked
The concept of generating custom emojis is fantastic, but Apple doesn't execute too well here. Genmoji frequently misunderstands prompts, struggles to replicate faces from photos (e.g., it always gives me a clef chin, which I don't have), introduces visual artifacts, and often deviates from the standard emoji style.
I initially enjoyed playing around with it, but I quickly realized that getting a decent result took way too much trial and error. It works okay for simple things, but overall, it’s too limited. For comparison, Instagram recently introduced AI-generated stickers, and they look fantastic. Genmoji's quality just isn't what we expect from Apple--it lacks polish.
3. Image Playground: Useless beyond five minutes of novelty
This feature lets you generate small, 1:1 aspect ratio images in one or two uninspired art styles. The quality is mediocre, and there’s almost no practical use for it. Maybe kids would have fun with it, but for most people, this is a forgettable addition.
4. Visual Intelligence: Embarrassing
The "AI-powered" Visual Intelligence feature consists of two options: "Ask", which sends your image to ChatGPT, and "Search", which does a Google reverse image lookup.
That's literally all it does.
Apple’s flagship AI feature is literally just a wrapper around two third-party products that you already have access to for free. Apple is outsourcing to its competitors. I don't think this point gets enough attention. That is insane coming from a multi-trillion dollar company.
There’s nothing novel here, and it’s barely even useful. Uploading an image to ChatGPT or Google yourself is just as fast, if not faster. It's a rainbow-colored joke.
5. Siri: Somehow got worse!
Siri was already bad--decent for setting reminders and timers, but that's about it. Apple promised a major improvement with this update, but she's still clueless.
Siri still can't answer most questions, and when it does, it just offloads to ChatGPT—but slower. For example, I asked, "When will it stop snowing?" and Siri responded with, "Yes, it is snowing." Nice. Siri is genuinely awful.
6. App Integration: It doesn't exist
I think this was promised to be released in future iterations, so I won't pick this apart too much. However, I think it's safe to say whatever they brew up won't be worthwhile. If Siri can't tell me what the weather is, I don't see how we'll be making Keynotes with voice prompts any time soon.
