Good Vibrations Between Apple & Anthropic
Mark Gurman
Well, one big internal change around Apple and AI didn't take long...
Apple is teaming up with startup Anthropic on a new “vibe-coding” software platform that will use artificial intelligence to write, edit and test code on behalf of programmers.
The system is a new version of Xcode, Apple’s programming software, that will integrate Anthropic’s Claude Sonnet model, according to people with knowledge of the matter. Apple will roll out the software internally and hasn’t yet decided whether to launch it publicly, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the initiative hasn’t been announced.
This seems like exactly the type of thing they might want to announce at a certain developer-focused conference in June... Then again, we're only weeks away and presumably Apple won't have enough time to fully integrate the functionality by then (hence why it's perhaps internal-only, for now). Do they dare risk pre-announcing something again? After all:
Last year, Apple announced its own AI-powered coding tool for Xcode called Swift Assist. The company had intended to roll it out in 2024 but never actually shipped it to developers. Internally, engineers have complained that the company’s own system could hallucinate — or make up information — and even slow down app development. The Anthropic partnership is an acknowledgment that Apple could use some outside help, though the two systems could ultimately work together.
Then again, Claude is fairly well tried and tested at this point. And many consider it to be the best model for "vibe coding". And this is a particular problem for Apple right now amongst their developer set. Riffing on this piece by Bryan Irace, I wrote the following back in March:
This feels especially timely given that the dates for WWDC – Apple's developer conference – were just announced. Apple has already taken the hit for postponing at least some of those user-facing AI features until later this year or next (or later), so it will put extra pressure on them to showcase to developers what their AI can do for them. They now have just over two months to polish that narrative – and they have to be extra careful here, because they really can't afford to show things that aren't ready to ship – in the fall, at the latest.
Beyond the consumer AI vaporware, Apple also somehow managed to bungle the roll-out of Swift Assist, shown off at last year's WWDC and still basically nowhere to be seen in the wild. Not great, Tim.
Again, this might give them a relatively straightforward way to rectify the situation. And it continues Apple down a rather interesting path of partnering on AI, rather than trying to go it alone. First, of course, came ChatGPT. And now, it seems, Gemini is closer to launching as well as a part of Apple Intelligence (we'll almost for sure hear more about it at WWDC). An Anthropic partnership on coding makes a lot of sense on the surface, the question is if Claude would also be a part of the more general "world knowledge" Apple Intelligence features – presumably Anthropic would want such a deal alongside the use of Claude for coding?
Then the question shifts back to my old favorite one: what kind of deals might Apple strike for these features and functionality? The OpenAI partnership nearly shifted from free (as in beer) to paid for via an investment before that fell apart. But now there's seemingly some sort of rev share agreement in place? For Google, all you can be sure about is that whatever the deal is, it will not be exclusive! For Anthropic, might there be some sort of investment angle there? Or just straight cash, homey?
One more thing: Another section from my piece back in March suddenly feels a lot different given some recent App Store updates:
You'd think all of this plus the ongoing regulatory pressures would make Apple change their tune. But instead, even though several macro trends were clearly aligning against them years ago, they've largely dug in their heels. They change things when they absolutely must, legally, but usually only the bare minimum that's required by law. And so now we have this increasingly piecemeal system of App Store rules and policies depending on where a user lives and a developer operates. It's completely untenable, but again, it has been for years. Now it's just a mess.
Well, one scathing ruling later and we have some actual change! How about some more, perhaps less forced, at WWDC, Apple?
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler