Tim Cook Defends Apple's AI Delay: 'We've Rarely Been First'

[sevoneone]

Apple's problem is that they like to build walled gardens and have control of the entire experience. I think it is impossible to build an AI platform that is going to be useful to consumers if it is not open and capable of talking to any system. The hypothetical on device AI on my iPhone cant be sandboxed to iCloud if some one is sharing data with me from Google Drive or Box. The average consumer does not want to understand what an MCP server is, or the nuances of prompting for getting the results they actually want from an LLM. That's the opportunity in front of the whole industry and exactly where Apple's classic legacy of making something fluid that just works comes in. They are going to have to have enough 'courage' to get out of their own way though and only time will tell if they can do it.

The closest thing I can think of in Apple's history is Disc (CD/DVD) burning. They resisted what was essentially an industry standard so hard to try to sell the idea that the iPod was a superior solution. When they finally gave in and started shipping Macs with CD and DVD burners, Steve Jobs said "We're late to this party, but we're here." And they ended up making up one of the best/easiest user experiences for disc burning there was in the Finder, iTunes and iDVD.

 

[sevoneone]

If they can acquire someone like anthropic that would be the best bet, as it’s tech is good but they just haven’t got the public profile and awareness (and presumably the usage figures) outside of the coding community.

Apple and Anthropic seem like such a good fit. If not an acquisition, a very high profile investment and public partnership like MS has with OpenAI. Besides being really good at code, and maybe not the top choice for some other use cases, for whatever reason Claude feels like the most pleasant LLM to use. IMO at least.

 

[wbeasley]

Tim.. Don´t talk. Deliver. Show your action if you think you are a real man. Siri from WWDC 2024 is already overdue.

We all know Siri needs to improve but there is lots of AI already happening.

Image clean up works, speech to text is pretty accurate these days and changes spelling on content and context. So much better than initially.

I'm happy they pulled the plug on Siri if the scalability wasnt there.
Sometimes IT work needs to make a hard decision and NOT role out something bad.
Seen that in too many workplaces and lets face it, most games need an update the day you buy them.
Some struggle for years to become decent...

 

[TJ82]

Hardware is not software.

Cook is cooked on this one. They couldn’t even get Siri to basic functions well.

Acquisition is their *only* path forward. And even then they may end up stifling the acquisition with Apple’s culture.

 

[Apple Knowledge Navigator]

Just let my Mac be a Mac and don’t force this c**p onto me.

I turned Apple Intelligence off and feel like I’ve gotten my devices back.

 

[bobbyjack]

What he's referring to are devices; AI isn't one, so it doesn't apply at all. That's damage control, and based on those comments, it's working.

 

[macbookj0e]

Yes Tim has missed the point here just like they missed the AI launch, though I guess this was by design.

 

[akash.nu]

The problem is not general investment in AI, it’s about defining what it’s supposed to do within Apple ecosystem. Right now they’re just copying some and handing over to ChatGPT some.

 

[Dark_Omen]

The bubble pops when these AI startups begin running out of investor funding and realise that they don’t have a product consumers are willing to pay for.

The mass market simply doesn’t care about AI, much less AI on their phones. I feel there is this unrealistic optimism in tech circles that isn’t representative of how AI is perceived by the general public.

There is too much focus on the raw power found in LLMs like ChatGPT, and not enough on to turn this into a product that people are willing to pay money for. It’s a trend similar to when I was arguing that people fixated too much on raw specs in a smartphone, and not enough on the end user experience.

The product is your information. You don't need to pay for AI for it to be profitable. How do you think companies like Meta have become so successful and don't charge a monthly fee.

You underestimate how much Gen-Z uses AI.

The target market of smartphones is shifting farther and farther away from boomers, and companies are smart to strategize that way since many in that generation refuse to learn anything new. Just look at ios 26... It's not designed to cater to the older population with its translucent menus and designs.

I'd say the shift is years past due.

 

[etichi]

AI Will look different than all the marketing we have been forced to view. It will be hidden and out of sight. It will be meek and mild not FLASH BOOM POP like everything else that sells. And once the party is over it will make the dot com bubble look like child’s play.

 

[Abazigal]

The product is your information. You don't need to pay for AI for it to be profitable. How do you think companies like Meta have become so successful and don't charge a monthly fee.

You underestimate how much Gen-Z uses AI.

The target market of smartphones is shifting farther and farther away from boomers, and companies are smart to strategize that way since many in that generation refuse to learn anything new. Just look at ios 26... It's not designed to cater to the older population with its translucent menus and designs.

I'd say the shift is years past due.

Meta serves ads. How exactly are LLMs supposed to serve ads to me?

And even if services like ChatGPT become commonplace in the future, how exactly does that impact the sales of Apple devices? There are a ton of tasks that I perform on my smartphone that don’t involve me generating essay-length responses at the push of a button.

I still believe AI is being overhyped, as are claims that Apple is doomed simply because it doesn’t have a compelling AI narrative.

 

[Pezimak]

lol, in other business the CEO would have been sacked long ago by investors for wasting billions on a ditched project, this being the Apple car in Tims case. But in Apple no you all keep him going, despite the fact he has now failed in the car and failed in Ai, they knew what the market was doing, where it was going, that Ai was going to explode and yet they did absolutely nothing about it, and seemingly concentrated on the failed car and a headset barely anyone has bothered with.

Only good thing Cook has done is the Apple chip. And freshened up the entire computer range. Oh and the Apple Watch too if that wasn’t Job’s idea. IMO.

 

[Gioser]

Tim Cook is an idiot, point blank.

Only an idiot gets outdone by a competitor by over a trillion dollars in market cap when they have the products Tim had put right in their lap. Apple should be where Microsoft is right now.

Only an idiot approves this ugly Liquid Glass software theme.

Take responsibility to your superiors and admit you’re a screw up. We’ll all forgive you and move on with less hate towards you, Tim. Everyone knows you’re a terrible leader and shouldn’t be in charge of a tech company.

Personally, I'm extremely satisfied with Liquid Glass. At first, I wasn’t really feeling it either, but as I got used to it day by day, the old interface started looking outdated to me... and the same thing happened back when iOS 7 came out — it was initially awful, but eventually became a major inspiration for everyone.

Microsoft is doing well with AI mainly because they have 100% OpenAI behind them. In fact, with GPT-5 on the horizon, you can bet Copilot will suddenly get a major upgrade at the same time. The point is, Microsoft is simply relying on something already built in the cloud by someone else — their job is mostly to adapt it to their own services. It's a whole different story to build something from scratch, like Apple is doing, and make it run directly on-device using the NPU in Apple Silicon.

If you try experimenting with Apple Intelligence through Shortcuts, you'll see they're actually not in such bad shape as some people make it seem. The real work now is in rebuilding Siri’s core to connect that intelligence throughout the entire OS.

To be fair, I agree that Apple could use some fresh new leadership... but I don't see it as a disaster right now. iPhones are still selling like crazy with no sign of slowing down — so that tells you just how much the average user really cares about AI at this point.

 

[ID0]

Sleepy Tim, people are running from your AI department, but the Emoji department is full staffed!

 

[MilaM]

Meta serves ads. How exactly are LLMs supposed to serve ads to me?

Apparently people use LLMs a lot to make buying decisions or to plan trips. Which makes some sense, because it takes a lot of time to do proper research when you're not a domain expert for the thing you're buying. It shouldn't be difficult to manipulate chatbot responses to include paid recommendations. The ethics of doing this are of course dubious, but something tells me most companies won't have a problem with this.

 

[3xBoom]

If Apple can figure out the best use case for AI on a mobile or wearable, they will be the first to do so. I am immensely impressed with LLMs capabilities as a technology and its coding/writing/analytical capability but there is little to be impressed about AI when one focuses on the user holding a phone or wearing a watch or glasses. The current stage of AI is still an early one, still submerged into addressing fundamental problems related to overcoming hardware limitations. Apple's best bet should be in creating best implementation of AI use. Apple's misses related to Siri and Apple intelligence are the reflection of the massive task that all players need to address. We know what Meta thinks now - glasses, Google and MS will do their thing as before. OpenAI and Johnny are trying to create a new device to integrate AI in our lives but nobody has a full answer at the moment.

 

[DMG35]

There's late to the party and then there's late to the party and showing up drunk. Apple was late and showed up drunk to the AI party.

 

[Dr McKay]

Yes Apple are rarely first, they let competitors work out the flaws and when they finally come to market, they normally knock it out of the park.

With AI, not only were Apple far from first, they tripped over their own feet and faceplanted the concrete out of the gate.

 

[Bogstandard]

First when it matters to ya though, eh? Mr Apple.
$$$.

 

[AppliedMicro]

Except they weren't. Siri was out long before Apple bought it and absorbed it into iOS...

That’s why I said “pretty much”.

Considering Wikipedia tells me it was released as an iOS in 2010, just two months before being acquired by Apple and re-released as part of iOS the following year, it wasn’t out that long before.

Apple popularised the concept as one of the earliest implementers of AI/digital voice assistants in mobile devices. And today, 15 years and hundreds of millions of sold iPhones later, it’s astonishing how they’ve become the laughingstock among AI companies and the general public for failing to improve on it.

 

[PS8409]

I have been an apple fan for years. However they had YEARS to get ahead of everyone with Siri and they dropped the ball. They are lost in the woods with AI with things like Image Playground that, imo, is just a gimmick. They’re not the company to spearhead this technology. Do I think AI is the future? I think it’s here to stay but I don’t think Apple is capable of being a major player in it unless they get someone with vision again. And Tim doesn’t have the Vision (pun intended)

 

[springsup]

Just because the same company wasn’t first before and managed to still pull it off, that doesn’t mean they’re immune from falling behind. It doesn’t mean they can walk in to any market and dominate it.

This is such stupid reasoning, but people are prone to fall for it. If someone manages to get something right ever, we call them an oracle and insist they have a method to see the future.

I will also note that the real barnstorming successes in his lineup were launched by Steve Jobs, Johnny Ive, and a very different product team. We haven’t seen these kind of comebacks under Tim Cook’s leadership.

 

[Systra72]

Glad that they finally have wakening up. Have been waiting for years for this, that they start ttake it seriously. Apple have so far missed the LLM/AI-race as much as Microsoft missed the smartphone race in the 2000’s.

 

[Abazigal]

If Apple can figure out the best use case for AI on a mobile or wearable, they will be the first to do so. I am immensely impressed with LLMs capabilities as a technology and its coding/writing/analytical capability but there is little to be impressed about AI when one focuses on the user holding a phone or wearing a watch or glasses. The current stage of AI is still an early one, still submerged into addressing fundamental problems related to overcoming hardware limitations. Apple's best bet should be in creating best implementation of AI use. Apple's misses related to Siri and Apple intelligence are the reflection of the massive task that all players need to address. We know what Meta thinks now - glasses, Google and MS will do their thing as before. OpenAI and Johnny are trying to create a new device to integrate AI in our lives but nobody has a full answer at the moment.

I think the main issue right now is security.

Apple Is Delaying the ‘More Personalized Siri’ Apple Intelligence Features

Apple told John Gruber (and other Apple press) this about the new "personalized" Siri: It’s going to take us longer than we thought to deliver on these features and we …

simonwillison.net

This is the worst possible combination for prompt injection attacks! Any time an LLM-based system has access to private data, tools it can call, and exposure to potentially malicious instructions (like emails and text messages from untrusted strangers) there's a significant risk that an attacker might subvert those tools and use them to damage or exfiltrating a user's data.

Which also raises the question - a number of companies are reportedly ahead of Apple when it comes to advances in AI, and at what cost, and what compromises to our privacy and security, and is this really a compromise we want Apple to make?

 

[AAPLbuyback]

There is no rush.

What is the average person missing from Apple in terms of AI today? Apple sold more iPhones in the June quarter than ever, so consumers get whatever AI they need from the iPhone today.

Could it be better? Sure. Will it be better? Of course.

AI is a buzzword that has no real meaning to consumers on any broad scale. You can’t demonstrate anything compelling the average user is missing from the iPhone. I can search photos, translate, ask questions, etc.

This isn’t iPhone vs Blackberry where the difference is crystal clear. I can use Gemini, Grok or Chat GPT on my iPhone anyway.

Apple can take their time get this right with no problem to their customer base. They just demonstrated in their results that iPhone remains more popular than ever, services at a record and sales growth in literally every region in the world.