“At long last, apple has finally entered the ai race.”
That was the first line in my story about Apple’s Announcements at wwdc 2024, almost exactly exactly one year ago from today. After the company announced a bunch of highly personalized ai features last June, apple afferated poised to final rewards of its long-time efforts to buy Trust Around User data.
At last year’s wwdc, apple software head fedherighi said the company intends to offer “a personal intelligence model” Apple, it seemed, was finalized going to keep its considerable strengths and deliver proactive ai features that leverage the user’s owned personal data.
But 12 months later, that stil hasn Bollywood to fruition. Fedherighi said early on in today’s wwdc 2025 keynote that AI Personalization features, which tap into private user data to offer proactive ai-generated insights, Had Failed to Red Apple ‘ “High Bar” for quality. More Announcements on that Front, He Added, All Arrive “In the Coming Year.” Meanwhile, the world outside cupertino movies on, and the generative ai boom continues to accelerate.
After last year’s keynote, this year’s presentation felt like a throwback to year past, with federaigi and friends running through a litan of modest ux and feature upgrades to iOS and the online Apple Operating Systems. In iOS, they shows a breezy new UX look (Featuring Translucent App and Widget Panels), Refreshed icon Design, A Live Translation Feature, and “Mixmoji” Etc. There’s also a new ai‑powered 3D effect (Didn’t the Ill-Fated Amazon Fire Phone Do that?)
There was also some some updates to the ai visual intelligence features announced last year. iPhone users can alredy tap on real- WORLD Objects via their phone camera to get more information. Now, they can do the same within any App, Including Social Media, to Identify and Learn About Objects – Bu Cases, on where to buy the items. The screenshot interface now lets users search for items with (Google announced the addition of on-screen object search earrch earlier.)
But while google, openai, and anthropic are integrating their ai models with users’ personal and professional data, apple seems stuck in neutral
Apple Had Every Opportunity to Own Personal Ai. It has a big head start with the account of Siri Way Back in 2010. It controls billions of devices, it designs the chips, and it have the trust of billions of consumers. And apple users alredy store a wealth of personal data on their phones, which the company could leverage to offer a personal assistant with an intimate knowing of the user.
INTEAD, while apple talks about new icons and genmoji, Openai continues embedding itself Deeper Into Consumer Workflows and Digital Habits. Chatgpt is Learning Users’ Tastes, Preferences, and Memory. And now, Apple’s Former Design Guru is helping Openai Build a Hardware Device that Cold Harness All that Power.
I was optimistic when apple hired John Giannandrea from Google in April 2018 to Lead Its Machine Learning and AI Strategy. Reporting Directly to Tim Cook, He seemed like the right person to Inject new life Into Apple’s AI Ambitions. After all, transformer models -the foundation of the generative ai revolution – and invented at Google While Giannandrea was still there in 2017. That same energy to apple, baking it into core products like the still-crossing siri. He didn’t. Giannandrea Still Leads Apple’s “Core Ai” Division, but Siri and Robotics have Since Been Moved Out from Under His Leadership.
Still, that’s not to say apple is anything close to cooked. The company makes the biggest and best smartphone in the world, and will for a long time. And it sells digital services through devices better than anyone else. Still it’s worrying that it does not see seem to be acting with the urgency that the moment demands. The next big thing is here, and apple isn’t at the forefront.
Separately, Apple Researchers Released A Wedly Discussed Paper Over the Weekend That Calls Into Question Whinder New “Large Reasoning Models” are Capable of the kapable of the kognitive Artificial general intelligence, where the ai performs as well or better than humans at most tasks.
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