canukstorm

mpantone said:

It's clear that Apple senior management has come to the forlorn conclusion that the more ambitious use cases for Apple Intelligence aren't reliable enough for everyday use by Joe Consumer yet. They vaguely mentioned it "coming in 2026" but that could easily be Q4 2026 in iOS 27.2.

There's a growing consensus that LLMs (from all producers) don't have any reasoning capabilities. It's becoming more evident where LLMs fall short and have more limited usage cases that originally hoped for.

Apple can't release an LLM-powered Siri AI chat assistant that's only as good as ChatGPT or Claude. There's no differentiation no value add. The main benefit from Apple in that case would be privacy but Joe Consumer wants something that works better. So Apple needs to deliver both of functionality AND privacy. And building the AI model for that is hard especially if Apple is ethically sourcing data (i.e., licensing/paying content creators rather than stealing it).

There is also more talk these days of "model collapse." My guess is that Apple is very wary of this problem. We're already seeing some evidence that today's newer consumer-facing LLM models aren't really much better that those from just 12-18 months ago in overall performance except for a handful of edge cases (like programming).

In the long run, it's better for Apple to be cautious about its AI approach and prioritize reliability, accuracy and privacy over being Headline Of The Week. I really don't need another AI chatbot assistant that's wrong 40% of the time or one that suggests eating rocks or using glue as a pizza topping. That's just a wasted effort because it forces the end user to double- or triple-check everything (not just the blatantly wrong answers).

Consumer facing AI still has a handful of useful features. Some of the basic spell/grammar checking and basic message composition seems to be adequate. It's good at dealing with math and physics homework (it won't make you smarter at either subject). On iOS 18, Image Cleanup does a passable job as an integrated, on-device service. Yes, there are third party tools that do this. Yes, a Photoshop wizard can do this. But I'm not sure how trustworthy third-party tools are (in terms of privacy) and like many, I'm no Photoshop wizard.

Anyhow, I expect little new developments until WWDC 2026. I think what we saw in yesterday's keynote is all we're going to see for another 51 weeks. There will be new hardware before then but it's likely that they won't have any stunning new functionality.

At this point it's more important to me that Apple protects user privacy and security over fancy new features. I'll wait for those when they are fully baked with privacy and security at the forefront.

Disclaimer: I plan on installing iOS 26, iPadOS 26, Mac OS 26 around 9-10 months after they debut so not until June 2026 at the earliest. This is my usual M.O. I'm still on iOS 17, iPadOS 17, and Mac OS Sonoma. At this point, there's a chance I'm going to skip iOS 18 and Mac OS Sequoia (I skipped Crapalina).

netrox said:

Apple can do the same, really with Home. 

Just create a device with sensors and let new HomePod do the AI and help you. 

camber said:

From the excellent article: "Trump cited a "lack of respect" from China" Let me get this straight. The schoolyard bully got called out, and he says that is disrespectful? He should hope he never finds out what disrespectful really is!

9secondkox2 said:

Stabitha_Christie said:

9secondkox2 said:

Mike Wuerthele said:

9secondkox2 said:

The art of the deal in action. 

It's only a deal if you consider somebody stabbing you six inches in the chest, and then pulling the blade back three inches a deal where you just had paper cuts before.

Idk. I never knew about the tariffs applied to us before now. 

 

I think anyone that has read your commentary hear figured out that you aren't a particularly well informed person.  Good to see you admit it though. 

And that would be a grossly inaccurate assumption. Let’s be grown ups and keep the insults and personal attacks out of the forum. Actually I think that’s part of the rules. 

macplusplus said:

More personalized Siri... Easy to utter, extremely hard to conceive and implement. The biggest drawback of current LLMs is their lack of "context retention". Ask any of the most powerful LLMs they will list that among their limitations. Even in a single session they have difficulty on maintaining an established response pattern in repetitive tasks. A Siri that responds with a different personality everytime is intolerable. Maintaining the context is crucial even for an avatar-level "personality". Apple's refusal of a premature jump lnto the "AI smartphone" bandwagon has certainly serious technical reasons. Remember that Apple has already laid out a very solid foundation with the A18 chip designed specifically to run on-device LLMs, and before that, the Neural Engine. In that sense, the "lack of context" shared by Gruber and the author is even more amazing than that of LLMs.