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Kuo: Apple Knows Apple Intelligence is 'Underwhelming' and Won't Drive iPhone Upgrades
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I really tried to make sense of the writing tools, but the limits Apple gave them, without getting access to the system prompt to get rid of the completely nonsensical kindergarten settings, the screaming tools are just not usable. All you have to do is write about the wrong topic, or text gets a bit longer, and the writing tools will exit, blink for a while, possibly bring up a copy of the text you want to have checked or show one of several pointless error messages.
I’d love to use it on my iPhone 15 Pro Max, if only it actually worked!
I recently mentioned on MacRumors that I asked Apple Intelligence-enabled Siri a simple question: how much RAM does the iPad 9 have? Instead of an answer, I got a fancy glow effect around the edges of the screen for 30 seconds… and then nothing. Meanwhile, ChatGPT and Perplexity responded instantly, no drama required.
Not that I’m shocked. Just another misstep under Tim’s leadership, and hopefully, shareholders start making some noise about it. After all, if one Southwest Airlines shareholder can push for change, surely Apple’s investors can do the same.
Just asked DeepSeek the same question:
The iPad 9, released in 2021, comes with **3 GB of RAM**. This is sufficient for most everyday tasks, such as browsing, streaming, and light productivity work. However, it may struggle with more demanding multitasking or heavy apps compared to newer models with more RAM.
Yes, so much for those "Apple Didn't REALLY Miss the Boat on AI" articles. This will cost them. I'm sure they'll be fine in the long run, but they need to be honest in the future.
The Apple Intelligence features that Apple introduced with iOS 18 are not pushing people to upgrade their iPhones, Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo reiterated today. Apple's recent Siri failures are also going to have an impact on 2025 iPhone shipments, which the market is beginning to realize.
As early as last July, Kuo said expectations that Apple Intelligence could drive iPhone upgrades were likely "too optimistic," and in January, he was even more explicit and said that the appeal of Apple Intelligence had "significantly declined" because of the delay between when Apple showed off Apple Intelligence features in June and when they launched starting in October.
Kuo is maintaining his cautious view in light of Apple's Siri debacle, which has seen the company delay heavily advertised Apple Intelligence Siri features that it initially said would come in iOS 18.
According to Kuo, Apple is already aware of Apple Intelligence's "underwhelming performance," and has provided suppliers with conservative iPhone shipment forecasts as a result.
The negative public sentiment that Apple is facing due to the Apple Intelligence Siri delay could further impact sales of the iPhone 16 and iPhone 17 models in the coming months. Apple last week said that Siri personal context and App Intents are being pushed back until the "coming year," and it doesn't seem like the company expected such a critical reaction from the tech community and its customers.
Longtime Apple reporter John Gruber, for example, recently published an in-depth report calling out Apple's Siri shortcomings, and his commentary has resonated with many who have the same feelings about Apple's longtime struggle with Siri improvements.
Many others have also spoken up on the very public demonstrations of Apple Intelligence Siri features that Apple provided over the course of the last year and the subsequent delay that has shaken public confidence in the company's ability to deliver AI features that can compete with OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, and others.
Article Link: Kuo: Apple Knows Apple Intelligence is 'Underwhelming' and Won't Drive iPhone Upgrades
Yes, there are a lot of Android smartphones coming out these days with 12 GB RAM + 256/512 GB for apps/datas. And often these phones provide SD card slots.
I think people fixate too much on the idea of a “supercycle” by and large. The longevity of Apple devices has improved noticeably over the past few years, and this is a good thing. People may hold on to their Apple hardware longer, and upgrade less often, and that is perfectly fine by Apple. Because the implication is that while people may not keep buying Apple products (especially iPhones), they can expect to keep using them.
SD card slots heh? Maybe a niche phone, but the big players dropped those a while back, your OnePlus, Samsung and Pixels plus many others
Both Samsung (No. 1 on the market with 19% market share) and Xiaomi (No. 3 on the market with 14% market share) equip many of their devices with dual SIM slots, which can also accommodate an SD card with 1 or 1.5 TB. They have been removed from the flagships, but if you have, for example, a Xiaomi Poco X7 Pro with 12GB+512GB and an additional 1.5TB in the second SIM slot, then you are looking at a price of €600. The Samsung Galaxy S25 is available with 12 GB in the West and 16 GB in some Asian markets, with up to 1 TB of app/data storage.
I wasn't really speaking to dual sims but I think I see what you're saying. That said SD cards are becoming increasingly uncommon. Xiaomi is an interesting case though. They don't do much in the states (regulations and whatnot) but are bigger in the EU and their home market in China. SD card slots aren't a norm anymore though, because it's not widely used- it's more a niche thing. I've got an S25 Ultra 1TB which is roomy, if a little too much. But more and more manufacturers are dropping SD or have already dropped it, it's about security, it's about performance it's a lot of little things.
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Lied? I am not sure you could get them convicted in court. There’s a difference between lying and showing a rigged demo. There probably shouldn’t be, but there is.
Some VP and SVP level people should have been fired after Federighi’s fake demo and false statements about a contextually based Siri. Honestly, Federighi should have been fired when it came out that he only learned about GitHub Copilot by testing it while on Christmas vacation. As the head of all Apple software, he should have known what competitors were up to before then. He should have seen the trends that mere mortals in the industry were talking about whenever they got together.
Since we haven’t gotten news of that level of shake up, I’m becoming sympathetic to the calls for Cook’s replacement. This is especially since Cook’s expertise, supply chains in the far east, is becoming moot in an era of trade wars and trade-alliance reshuffling.
Other than the automagic summaries for notifications and emails, I have not touched any of the Apple Intelligence features other than to have a quick play in Image Playground.
I run ChatGPT as a standalone app and it's open all the time.
Personally - and this is just my opinion, I think it would have actually been refreshing if Apple DID NOT push AI in their system software for now. It feels like a 'me too' approach, when Apple is at its best when it uses the 'not me too' approach.
Give us an always AI assistant that uses voice, converses with us, and has constant awareness of what we are doing on our screens. Allow it to 'speak' to us via text on screen in the Siri popup, or as audio voice when desired. Make it fully transparent into the system rather than another bunch of UI tools that just add more clutter. LESS is MORE.
I know that the technology to do the above is probably not QUITE there insofar as being able to do a lot of that type of thing locally in a performant way. But we should be close. Be pretty neat if we could run an M3 Ultra headless Mac mini as our home AI processor.
WHAT I WANT FROM AI FROM APPLE:
Imagine just firing up your computer for the day, and Siri greets you good morning, lets you know that you have a couple of appointments today, and asks if you would like to start your day with some coding that you were working on yesterday, or something else? You reply that you are not ready to start work yet, and that you're going to cook breakfast for your kids. Siri transfers the conversation up to the kitchen HomePod (which has a camera and screen on it), and it watches you make breakfast and throws a few great ideas at you for spicing up the breakfast recipe. While cooking, it tells me that my son is awake because Siri is aware of family members' device activity and that he's on his phone. I tell Siri to tell him to come down for breakfast and lend a hand. She sends him a message. The message appears on his device from the local home Siri AI, and not from me. At 9am, Siri advises me that 2 people had called while I was making breakfast, however she didn't bother me with them because I'd set my focus settings such that only specific people's phone calls would be answered. She summarised the voice messages they left for me and automatically set reminders for later in the day to call them back.
I run ChatGPT as a standalone app and it's open all the time.
Personally - and this is just my opinion, I think it would have actually been refreshing if Apple DID NOT push AI in their system software for now. It feels like a 'me too' approach, when Apple is at its best when it uses the 'not me too' approach.
Give us an always AI assistant that uses voice, converses with us, and has constant awareness of what we are doing on our screens. Allow it to 'speak' to us via text on screen in the Siri popup, or as audio voice when desired. Make it fully transparent into the system rather than another bunch of UI tools that just add more clutter. LESS is MORE.
I know that the technology to do the above is probably not QUITE there insofar as being able to do a lot of that type of thing locally in a performant way. But we should be close. Be pretty neat if we could run an M3 Ultra headless Mac mini as our home AI processor.
WHAT I WANT FROM AI FROM APPLE:
Imagine just firing up your computer for the day, and Siri greets you good morning, lets you know that you have a couple of appointments today, and asks if you would like to start your day with some coding that you were working on yesterday, or something else? You reply that you are not ready to start work yet, and that you're going to cook breakfast for your kids. Siri transfers the conversation up to the kitchen HomePod (which has a camera and screen on it), and it watches you make breakfast and throws a few great ideas at you for spicing up the breakfast recipe. While cooking, it tells me that my son is awake because Siri is aware of family members' device activity and that he's on his phone. I tell Siri to tell him to come down for breakfast and lend a hand. She sends him a message. The message appears on his device from the local home Siri AI, and not from me. At 9am, Siri advises me that 2 people had called while I was making breakfast, however she didn't bother me with them because I'd set my focus settings such that only specific people's phone calls would be answered. She summarised the voice messages they left for me and automatically set reminders for later in the day to call them back.
It's clear they need to get out of their compound more often and hang out with the plebs, which I'm sure they would wrinkle up their nose at such a suggestion. It is disturbing that they are insulated and isolated such that this is the case. Reality to the executive class, it seems, is like sunlight to a vampire with all the hissing and smoke that ensues.
I don't have much frustration against apple intelligence because of all the available alternatives on even prior iphone models. Happily using gpt/grok/claude right now on my iphone 15.
While it's disappointing to see apple fails to bring first party ai, it forced them to raise base ram on Mac. I happily bought the base Mac mini and turn off apple intelligence. As long as apple doesn't block 3rd party solutions, I feel great and can hold on to my existing device for longer. Cloud computing ftw.
While it's disappointing to see apple fails to bring first party ai, it forced them to raise base ram on Mac. I happily bought the base Mac mini and turn off apple intelligence. As long as apple doesn't block 3rd party solutions, I feel great and can hold on to my existing device for longer. Cloud computing ftw.
That’s a great storyboard. I’d bet a million dollars Apple could run with it and make a great fake concept demo. 🤬
Prepare for them to turn AI back on with each update. That RAM came so you can be a public beta tester, not to have more RAM!
Tim Cook should never have been a long-term option after Job’s passing.
The CEO seat at Apple should always be occupied by a visionary maverick who knows what greatness Apple is capable of and can drive it in that direction.
Supply chain expertise atop a woke-embracing mindset is, in my opinion, a recipe for disaster.
The RMS Apple has been receiving telegrams about the ice field ahead of it and has chosen to ignore them.
SOS AAPL
AI is a speculative bubble brought on by the tech industry bereft of ideas that could be like what the smartphone and associated apps and services made possible by smartphones brought to the industry.
I am not saying this AI bubble is lacking in good or useful ideas. I am saying that it is a faulty speculation amongst investors because the claims and promises are not going to be met. The AI industry is promising "you are going to stop needing to pay for expensive white collar workers." What the AI industry going to actually deliver is a tool that augments an organization's workforce not largely replace it. AI is going to make existing labor more efficient in many fields but I have my doubts it is going to dramatically cut payroll.
I am not saying this AI bubble is lacking in good or useful ideas. I am saying that it is a faulty speculation amongst investors because the claims and promises are not going to be met. The AI industry is promising "you are going to stop needing to pay for expensive white collar workers." What the AI industry going to actually deliver is a tool that augments an organization's workforce not largely replace it. AI is going to make existing labor more efficient in many fields but I have my doubts it is going to dramatically cut payroll.
Current AI is a bad parlor trick that should never be taken seriously.
Talk about an overblown reaction. Equating Apple Intelligence to other pieces of software, I don’t expect Shigeru Miyamoto to publicly apologise for the 8 year delay in Metroid Prime 4 and I don’t expect Tim Cook to do a similar thing.
The adverts clearly states it was coming in a future update. If you bought an iPhone 16 or similar device on the premise of what it might do tomorrow rather than today then frankly you made a mistake.
Or put your money where your mouth is and ditch the iPhone for a Pixel. No, didn’t think so.
The adverts clearly states it was coming in a future update. If you bought an iPhone 16 or similar device on the premise of what it might do tomorrow rather than today then frankly you made a mistake.
Or put your money where your mouth is and ditch the iPhone for a Pixel. No, didn’t think so.
100% they'll spin this by omitting certain statistics that they might normally report on. They've been modifying how they sell us all on how successful iPhone sales are for a few years now. Thing is, they're really having to cook the books now to sell the success story (and lie about features to sell hardware).
Exactly, this feels like these tech writers and people have become a bunch of school children throwing tantrums because they didn’t get what they want right now and they’ll have to (God forbid) wait some more (probably about a year or less since Apple said they anticipate releasing the features in the coming year) for these features… 🤦🏼♂️. Some people just need to get a grip… A delay in releasing features due to unforeseen issues that cropped up at the last minute doesn’t equal they’re “misleading”, “lying”, “smoke and mirrors”, “vaporware”, etc. It just means problems arose that will take time to resolve and fix, and they’re fixing these features… No deception involved…
It's close to sacrilegious to put Miyamoto-san in the same sentence as Cook. Anyway you're thinking of a quote he said about delayed games. But his point was you have to ship, it can't be vaporware. And, this is KEY, A BAD GAME released before it is ready is always gonna be bad in terms of perception. That's true with only a handful of notable exceptions like No Mans Sky.
The original metroid wasnt made by him and Prime was made by Retro studios. Prime 4 was in bad shape with another 3rd party dev and Nintendo openly said they scrapped it and gave it to Retro to start over on. None of this dodgy nonsense Apple is doing they were quite transparent.
Cook doesn't have the truck peanuts to actually take accountability because he has no honor unlike Miyamoto-san.
I wouldn’t be surprised if there are plenty of people who would upgrade from their iPhone 11/12/13/14 right now, but just dont see any major reason to.
If Apple AI came when it was announced and showed off some decent examples of its integration the. Our household would have upgraded from a 12mini and 13pro already.