Apple's AI failure could be its best product in years

One of the most frustrating threads of commentary in the tech world over the past week has been the idea that – in the wake of Google smearing everything it touches with AI and former designer Jony Ive vomiting empty accolades at OpenAI's Sam Altman in one of the most cringe-worthy videos of the year – Apple's lack of a real AI product means the company is done.

There's a lot of it. Here's M.G. Siegler:

Apple needs to get their shit together. If one of their highlights coming out of WWDC is a couple new scenes and themes for Image Playground, I'm going to lose it. Because Apple clearly will have lost it. The plot.

Again, I know that I'm going to hear in response to this that I need to calm down, that it's early, that Apple's slow-and-steady approach always wins in the end. And what I'm saying is that this is not going to work this time with AI. While it is, in fact, still early, it's moving so fast that if they don't start executing on it right now, they're going to get lapped. I mean, they already have been, they just don't see it yet. But I suspect we're all going to start to see it in the coming years…

Then there's Blake Montgomery over at The Guardian:

Apple promised a suite of features branded Apple Intelligence at its annual developer conference in 2024 that has yet to make a splash beyond botched notification summaries. Insiders are leaking details of internal chaos in Apple’s AI department to the press, a rarity for a company that prides itself on aggressive secrecy. Apple’s competitors are suffusing every aspect of their new flagship phones with AI that the iPhone maker can’t match. Siri remains nearly as incapable as when she made her debut fifteen years ago. The Vision Pro, though not in the realm of AI, has been a flop, blemishing Apple’s sheen.

Macworld's Mahmoud Itani is a bit dramatic:

Google is slowly setting this new standard with Android, and if Apple can’t keep up with the times, the iPhone’s relevancy will face the same fate as so many Nokia and BlackBerry phones. And if Apple doesn’t act fast, Siri will be a distant memory.

You get the idea. It has been a common argument made by technology writers across the world over the past week.

But as I’ve been sitting back, pondering what Google’s AI announcements will mean for the Internet as a whole (and me as a publisher), I’ve come to the conclusion that Apple, in this instance, is approaching AI better than any other big tech company right now.