For reasons I have previously outlined in another thread, as well as concerns regarding privacy, I have no intention of utilizing Atlas. However, Atlas appears to be a potential model for the future of web browsers. Ideally, Apple could implement similar features, but with a significantly enhanced emphasis on privacy.
While I do not intend to succumb to the widespread negative doom surrounding Apple and Apple Intelligence, I must admit that it appears as though Apple is not only behind, but may not be able to keep up. If Apple doesn’t make significant progress over the next 12 months, I’m not sure how long they can retain customer loyalty for those who care about such things.
Apple’s market cap crossed the $4 trillion mark earlier today, so they are doing OK. And if they can do anything to get people to upgrade their iPhone more often the market is probably going to be thrilled.
But they continue to lose AI workers, the latest being Ke Yang, the Apple executive leading the company’s effort to build AI-powered web search and enhance Siri. From what I’ve read that makes more than 100 AI employees that have jumped ship in the last three years.
I concur regarding Apple’s current financial health and hardware sales. I think the potential larger issue, and I readily admit no expertise in this area, is that as the marketplace shifts more and more toward robust, deeply integrated artificial intelligence services, if Apple’s hardware, operating system, or applications cannot utilize AI at a competitive level, people will feel less locked into its ecosystem. They may begin exploring other options and moving increasingly toward web-based services and applications, which is already happening. This is the larger threat I see as a complete amateur in such matters.
I don’t want Safari to tightly integrate what Atlas is doing. I hope that means it’s just on a parallel path, not behind. It would be sad if manual browsing became obsolete.
There are already MCPs and extensions to manipulate Safari, too.
I agree. I’m not concerned about their value. Which is to say it’s not my concern.
I do think it’s hurting their user experience and long-standing trust. I’ve trust lost in their ability to keep up with a user experience that’s built around Siri. I also lost trust in them as a company when they sold hardware around the promise of features (Siri) that they couldn’t deliver on, especially when it felt like that was done to protect their market value.
The privacy concern is real. It would be huge if they could compete on performance with added privacy. So far, not so much.
One thing to keep in mind when it comes to the “Apple will be fine, they got 4 billion market cap” crowd. Many of those same claims were made about Blackberry, IBM, Intel, etc.
I read that Losing Signal book about the rise and fall of Blackberry. In 2008/2009 timeframe they were selling more phones than ever to the carriers and minting money. 18 months later they were pretty much done. Innovation can happen quickly and consumers can be finicky. I’m still not sold that AI will doom Apple but they’re approach might not be the best path to maintain and grow their marketshare. I hope it works but I spent 6 weeks with the new Pixel 10 and while I switched back to the iPhone, I miss the AI features and the promise of what’s to come. Google will deliver but I’m not yet convinced Apple will.
I know how fast companies can change. But BlackBerry had around 85 million users at their peak and Apple has around 1.5 billion so I figured they wouldn’t disappear overnight.
I find the Atlas approach repellent. “Do everything in your web browser and have me follow along so I can track everything you say and do and be your helpful assistant” - no thanks. In the days of the “gentleman’s gentleman”, one could rely on the discretion of said assistant. But how on this earth can I rely on any kind of discretion from OpenAI or any of its ilk? If this is the future, Apple isn’t falling behind quickly enough.
We haven’t had a good “Apple is Doomed!” Post in a month or so. I swear, the tech publications have a quota of at least one of these stories every month.
The new approach is to put a third party AI tool (ChatGPT) directly at the user’s forefront.
Apple may someday do the same in Safari, whether with a third party AI or with their own AI.
The five to ten percent of the world that suddenly now needs a browser AI fix directly at their fingertips will promote a crystal clear doom and gloom downfall scenario for any development now not giving predictions of such main line joy as their immediate next news report. The rest of us should moderate the thoughts of dismay and get back to work with the AI tools we already trust to do the same things in ways we already know how to do at our own pace.
Safari isn’t the thing that keeps me loyal to the Apple ecosystem: I use a different browser for most of my work already. If I decide I need an AI-powered browser, I’d be just fine with using one that doesn’t come from Apple. In fact, none of Apple’s stock apps have locked me into its ecosystem.
On the other hand, Apple needs to be necessarily cautious about these types of innovations. One thing is that Atlas, Comet or Dia releasing browsers that can expose user data through MCP or what not… another thing is Apple releasing a browser that compromises their whole user base.
For the record, I have used Dia for some automation goodness and it takes seconds to do some tasks that would require copy & pasting or downloading a page and manipulating it in Excel. So I can say integrating agentic capabilities into a browser engine is useful and I want those same features in Safari. But if I half know Apple, they will take their sweet time and probably will integrate it not directly into Safari, but into macOS itself through Shortcuts.
I’m not holding my breath though: if they can’t have the basics of Apple Intelligence out, they can’t move forward at the speed everybody else is doing and even MS Edge copilot sidebar is better.
But from the adoption standpoint what concerns me the most is that Safari is somewhat stagnating. Don’t get me started: why can’t I use Safari’s Profile button to switch to another already existing Safari window with another profile? It’s like Apple considers Safari a finished product and refuse to add more advanced features just to keep it simple for most users.
Unless Apple improves its performance in the AI arena over the next twelve months or so, including effective yet private integration into Safari, people will increasingly begin to migrate to other ecosystems or rely on hybrid app stacks. I expect younger generations to lead this migration. This has the potential to loosen loyalty to Apple’s services, apps, and over time, even hardware. Apple, Google, and Microsoft have worked hard over the decades to create products and services that lock consumers, businesses, and other organizations into their app and service ecosystems. AI has the potential to disrupt the “integration glue” that adheres consumers and organizations to tech companies’ products and services by creating new AI-based operating systems and services that render traditional platforms and applications obsolete.
Ah, the kids. I guess at some point a significant sample of them will just ask: “What’s this web browser thing you keep talking about?” My 20-something relatives seem to do just fine inside their Whatsapp and TikTok walled gardens and I wonder what’s in store for the incoming teenager cohorts. Perhaps they will live inside a ChatGPT bubble? Not a very bright future if that’s the case imho.
By way of a quick topic diversion, tech commentators far more informed than I on the matter of AI, are already flagging AI as a burgeoning societal challenge in many aspects.
This is not purely for the potential impact on employment, often a common concern but increasingly for; economic reasons ie AI hype is seeing investment funds pour into speculative AI endeavours skewing economic output (dot.com anyone) and significantly, privacy.
The major AI entities Open AI, Copilot, Google Gemini, Deepseek etc are scraping/hoovering data globally, usually free of charge, ignoring copyright and data privacy to feed/inform their AI models, which effectively positions them as not only the future arbiters of “truth” but also the major owners/sellers of your data which could dwarf the efforts of Meta/google previously (yes they are in the AI race too).
The current president of Signal (secure app) a former long term Google employee is highly critical of Agentic AI, the fanciful view that AI will gives us robotic gentleman’s gentleman (Jeeves) to quote an earlier comment, which will do our biding yet without respect for privacy or discretion, one would expect of Jeeves.
I am not trying to be a Luddite and condemn AI but sometimes being behind the lead, and aiming for better privacy controls is IMHO not a bad thing. Of course that assumes one can trust Apple, which I appreciate is a matter of debate. To date I consider they are best of the bunch, and seem to be very privacy focused.
So whilst Safari is lagging behind, I am hoping Apple’s more considered yet tardy approach may yield benefits in other way.
I I tend to agree. Although I am a committed Apple product and services user, I am not necessarily a fanboy. At the end of the day, I do not really care who produces what. My concern is the quality of the offerings and, to the extent I have any say in the matter, the values and ethics that undergird their development and deployment, as well as their use.
As to revolutions, I am a pretty big fan of some revolutions. With apologies to my British and Catholic friends, I am a pretty big fan of the American Revolution and the Protestant Reformation (revolution).
