This article is timely now that the WWDC 2025 keynote has concluded. Perhaps patience is what is needed now, with the hope that Apple ultimately gets AI right for its market—the average consumer.
Good article. Jason Hiner is right that AI on personal devices is still very new. However, one potential hurdle that Apple may face is its own desire to maintain control of just about everything.
I have been hearing reports that ChatGPT works better when you bypass Siri and connect directly. If Apple is censoring results that probably won’t work for long. OTOH it may be just another Siri misfire.
Good article and I think he’s right. I agree with him that:
While generative AI is racing forward at a breakneck pace, it continues to feel half-baked and overhyped much of the time
I think the statistics he quotes from ZD research that well below 10% of users are at all willing to pay for AI underlines the gap between the AI hype and how useful the technology actually is in the “real world”. Apple’s basic approach, of releasing powerful AI features within their apps and OSs and trying to make sure it all “just works” is powerful and I think he’s right to say that they have until 2027 to get it right for most users.
The risk is that someone out in the hype-driven bubble solves some of the intractable problems (e.g. hallucinations, mining everyone’s data without permission, being able to place results in context and to allocate likelihood to them) soon, but those don’t look like the kind of issues that will be solved by iterating on current approaches. Apple’s “embedded” approach will work whether or not those breakthroughs are found.
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It’s also possible that OpenAI are using a lesser model or censoring responses due to contractual agreements and the desire to convert “free” users via Apple into paying ChatGPT users.
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Today, I think I saw the first example of how machine learning could be helpful for me:
In Bear, I had a list of components for a client’s system. I had selected it and then all of a sudden I saw a blue bubble to the upper left of the selection. I clicked the bubble and there was an offer to turn it into a table. I think it was from Writing Tools.
Out of curiosity I clicked on it and I received a beautiful table with components in the first column and the list of this client’s actual components in the right column.
It took almost no time at all. Most pleased.
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