I can explain more in-depth reasoning, but the most critical point: Apple builds the only platform where developers can construct a single distributable that works on mobile and desktop with standardized, easy access to a local LLM, and a quarter million people buy into this platform every year. The degree to which no one else on the planet is even close to this cannot be understated.

There's an on device LLM that is packaged in iOS, iPadOS and macOS 26 (Tahoe) [1]. They even have a HIG on use of generative AI [2]

Something like half of all macs are running macOS 26 [3] already, so this could be the most widely distributed on-device LLM on the planet.

I think people are sleeping on this, partly because the model is seen as under powered. But I think we can presume it won't always be so.

I've just posted a Show HN of app for macOS 26 I created that uses Apple's local LLM to summarize conversations you've had with Claude Code and Codex. [3]

I've been somewhat surprised at the quality and reliability of Apple's built-in LLM and have only been limited by the logic I've built around it.

I think Apple's packaging of an LLM in its core operating systems is actually a fast move with AI and even has potential to act as an existential threat to Windows.

[1] https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2025/286/

[2] https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guideline...

[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46209081

- Everyone else: "We mainly build huge AI compute clusters to process large amount of data and create value, at high cost for ramp-up and operation."

- Apple: "We mainly build small closed-down AI compute-chips we can control, sell them for-profit to individual consumers and then orchestrate data-processing on those chips, with setup and operational cost all paid by the consumer."

I can't think of any company which has comparable know-how and, most of all, a comparable sell-out scale to even consider Apple's strategy.

No matter what they do, they will sell hundreds of millions compute devices for the foreseeable future. They use this to build out AI infrastructure they control, pre-paid by the future consumers.

THIS is their unique strength.

I'm not saying AI is a gimmick, but the caution they show is a good quality I think

Hype about self driving cars -> apple chases it with apple car -> investors pleased they kept up with the joneses -> apple car is behind or not good enough or whatever -> quietly cancelled -> investors pleased they culled the deadweight.

You can replace apple car with vision pro or soon apple intelligence and it will play out the same formula. Luckily it allows investors to profit.

Historically the strength of Apple was that they didn't ship things until they actually worked. Meaning that the technology was there and ready to make an experience that was truly excellent.

People have been complaining for years that Apple isn't shipping fast enough in this area. But if anything I think that they have been shipping (or trying to ship) too fast. There are a lot of scenarios that AI is actually great at but the ones that move the needle for Apple just aren't there yet in terms of quality.

The stuff that is at a scale that it matters to them are integrations that just magically do what you want with iMessage/calendars/photos/etc. There are potentially interesting scenarios there but the fact is that any time you touch my intimate personal (and work) data and do something meaningful I want it to work pretty much all the time. And current models aren't really there yet in my view. There are lots of scenarios that do work incredibly well right now (coding most obviously). But I don't think the Apple mainline ones do yet.

And this is the case across the board.

My friend's Fitbit works way better than my Apple watch.

Third and final example is how bad Apple's native dictation engine is. I can run OpenAI Whisper models on my Mac and get dramatically better output.

As a long time Apple fan who's had everything since before the first iPhone, I feel this apathy towards product quality cannot be disguised as some strategic decision to fast follow with AI.

Everyone’s shares were battered earlier this year, and it had nothing to do with AI, and everything to do with tariffs.

From a user perspective it may not be a strength: users / customers may expect certain functionality that works accurately and responsively.

Let everyone else pay for the research and make the mistakes, find out what works and what doesn't. Apple already has the consumers, they might as well save a few (hundred?) bn in the process and later deploy something which doesn't tell you to glue your cheese to your pizza.

A problem is that even though it is super simple to write Swift / SwiftOS apps to use the system model, I don’t see much evidence that many developers are using the model in their apps.

Trying and failing to make a SoTA foundational model is not a strategic move. It's similar to Amazon and Meta, they also have tried and not succeeded.

I hope they adopt the same model with AI - leverage whatever frontier model is best and provide their own privacy infrastructure in front.

At some point Apple will figure out a way to provide the right info from your calendar, messages, email etc as context and couple this with a bunch of secure tools for creating calendar entries, etc. Agentic AI will then be something I personally benefit from.

Microsoft has been criticized for investing in AI heavily. But it actually makes sense for Microsoft if you consider the nature of their business. The problem is not with the investment per se but with what they got out of it. Unfortunately, Microsoft sucks at product management, so instead of creating useful stuff that users want and are ready to pay for, they created stuff that no one understands, no one can use, and no one wants to pay for. Github copilot is an exception of course. I'm talking more about their Office 365 AI.

When and if Apple pulls the plug on AI, we can declare it dead for this cycle. See you all again in 2040.

Now, after a few months (!), reality sets in and those hyped-up investors realize that it's not as much of a short-term game as they told themselves it would be...

Apple clearly takes a 'Measure Twice, Cut Once' approach.

It seems to me that tech and business analysts mostly supply uninformed nonsense opinions around whatever the popular rhetoric of the day is to generate more clicks :-/

How many times do we have to listen to tech and business analysts talking about lacklustre iPhone releases and how Apple hasn't done anything interesting since the original iPhone? But yet the iPhone 17 is flying off the shelves in China.

Consumers of Apple's core businesses do not stand to gain much, if anything, from so-called "AI." The failure of pundits and "analysts" to recognize and call that out just testifies to their laziness. They can never say exactly WHY or HOW this "behindness" is hindering Apple or its user base.

It's sad that Apple has capitulated to them at all by even talking about "AI."

Why do papers do this. I can achieve any numbers by cherry picking the date for the random brownian motion.

The revenue from AI is growing at a much slower rate than recurring capex and depreciation is accumulating. This will create distress opportunities that cash-rich companies like APPL may seize. Might be a private equity deal, might be in the public markets as some of the players dip hard after IPO.

As this plays out, APPL's silicon has unified memory, power consumption and native acceleration that gives it an edge running SLMs and possibly LLMs at scale. Wouldn't shock me to see APPL introduce a data-center solution.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46200819

Is that so much to ask?

lmao, even

They are flat-out incompetent. Siri has somehow regressed over the years and visual intelligence only works in demos. They have the most abominable integration with ChatGPT imaginable.

At least the MLX team has been shipping an impressive product.

Has it ever, for anyone?