[svaha1728]

I don’t see a compelling reason for Apple to jump into the AI game. The MacBook Pro M4 is a dream to work with, and it works great with Claude Code. Creating quality products is a niche market, but that strategy still has merit.

[benoau]

I think it's a combination of three things:

1) AI threatens to take-over how you use your phone, it threatens to reduce apps to an API that it will use on your behalf so you don't use the apps yourself

2) By doing that it commoditizes the hardware because the software experience is virtually identical across platforms, you say make a dinner reservation and it doesn't matter what calendar you use, what restaurant app etc

3) Apple is no longer assured to be able to gatekeep or ban these things so if they aren't producing the most useful or entrenched assistant someone else could become people's primary interface for iPhones

There's a lot of parallel with "super apps" -

> Apple’s fear of super apps is based on first-hand experience with enormously popular super apps in Asia. Apple does not want U.S. companies and U.S. users to benefit from similar innovations. For example, in a Board of Directors presentation, Apple highlighted the “[u]ndifferentiated user experience on [a] super platform” as a “major headwind” to growing iPhone sales in countries with popular super apps due to the “[l]ow stickiness” and “[l]ow switching cost.” For the same reasons, a super app created by a U.S. company would pose a similar threat to Apple’s smartphone dominance in the United States. Apple noted as a risk in 2017 that a potential super app created by a specific U.S. company would “replace[ ] usage of native OS and apps resulting in commoditization of smartphone hardware.”

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.njd.544...

[nicoburns]

> AI threatens to take-over how you use your phone, it threatens to reduce apps to an API that it will use on your behalf so you don't use the apps yourself

It threatens to do that, sure. But the reality will likely be significantly less dramatic. The most likely outcome is AI (like every other hyped technology) finds a niche and that everything else carries on as it was.

[JasonBee]

How does that future work when the AI providers lose so much money on every monetized transaction?

[st3fan]

the number one reason is that Siri is an embarrassment. And that has become so much clearer now with ChatGPT and Claude next to it. Everyone is simply thinking: why can't we have that. Why do we have to talk to a low quality agent that can't answer basic questions while i can also walk around with my airpods in having a full conversation with ChatGPT.

I understand it is not that easy. But Apple has been neglecting Siri, or maybe failed to improve it, for so many years. And now the perception is that there is just no excuse anymore.

[JasonBee]

Maybe it’s due to cost? I’m curious to know whether Apple fine tuned the Siri LLM to run lean in order to save money, and in the same vein that OpenAI loses money on even the paid queries. It has to break even somewhere unless hydro becomes miraculously free.

[scarface_74]

There is no Siri LLM. It’s a dumb pattern matcher on a static list of phrases and intents.

[cosmicgadget]

AI is being integrated with everything. Web, applications, cloud, mobile - everything. Any company that neglects this is going to be forced to license and dealmake.

[acedTrex]

I think its moreso their siri strategy is lacking. The personal assistant on IPhone game is what everyone is talking about.