Apple Realizes There Should Be An App For That

Look, let's try to be nice to Apple. They're a little slow on this whole "AI" thing. After spending years and years downplaying the role of the technology, most notably with several senior executives reported to have directly disparaged the whole "chatbot" movement as a passing fad, they're now playing catch up. Including, naturally, racing to build their own chatbot.

But those initial reports about how they would implement their upgrades to Siri indicated that there wouldn't be a stand-alone app for the service – again, that was undoubtedly too chatbot-like for Apple's taste – and instead it would be a system-wide integration, just like the current Siri. You know, Apple's "AI" system which has completely and utterly sucked for the past 15 years running.

Granted, Apple would be upgrading the technology powering Siri – going so far as to outsource the work largely to Google, their Big Tech frenemy which was also caught flat-footed in the early days of the current Age of AI. But their miss wasn't due to a lack of belief, but rather a corporate timidity and culture that they had to overcome. Which they seemingly now have. As such, they're right there in the thick of the AI race, miles – no, lightyears – ahead of Apple. So it was obviously wise of Apple to partner with one of the leaders in AI to give Siri a brain transplant. It was there own way to jump back into the race, at least from a product-perspective.

Just one little problem. The product itself.

Again, all the reports (and previous work) on Siri indicated it would remain this nebulous AI thing running in the background. But that's just not the way people are now trained – from the get go – to interact with AI. Much to the chagrin of Craig Federighi (now leading up Apple's AI efforts) and John Giannandrea (now since "retired" from Apple's AI efforts), the chatbot won.

But as Meta, Google, and others have learned, it's not enough to have a chatbot that resides amorphously everywhere. Users needs a centralized place to go to use AI. At least for now, in these early days. Which is to say, there needs to be an app.

You might have thought the company most synonymous with apps would have understood this from the get-go. But again, all indications were that they did not. They were clearly going to have to learn the hard way, a likely mistake that I noted over and over and over again. But I'll highlight what I wrote all the way back in June 2024, right after Apple unveiled Apple Intelligence:

The one thing I still wonder/think about post-WWDC is if Apple does still have a go-forward plan on the chance that the chatbot paradigm isn't just a fad. I'm using "chatbot" as a catch-all here – I also believe chatbots are a feature – but it's more about the overall interaction paradigm. That is, what if ChatGPT has taught a new generation that the best way to interact with AI is to ask "it" something (be it via text, voice, images, etc) and get something back – not just from your content, but from beyond. Apple doesn't currently have a way to do that – aside from the ChatGPT fallback. What if Apple needs to answer this call still?

Logically, this would be through Siri – assuming they can get Siri up to snuff, which is still a big assumption. And maybe we get to the point where "she" merges with Spotlight? And then Apple could just swap-out ChatGPT/Gemini/Claude/etc with their own LLM output. But the brilliance of their model here is that they can do this slowly and subtly over time. This doesn't have to be a rip-out Google Maps and shove a wonky Apple Maps in users' faces situation. The query routing system Apple has built should allow them to just slot in their own results as they're confident in them.

Or perhaps they do decide that this is just like the web search paradigm. In that case, they strike a deal with one of these players to be the default chatbot in exchange for a handsome fee and/or revenue split.

Well, it's happening. (Right down to striking those deals.) And it didn't even require getting it wrong (again) in iOS 27 before inevitably doing it correctly in iOS 28! Here's Mark Gurman reporting for Bloomberg:

As part of the shift toward this approach, Apple is testing a dedicated Siri app for the iPhone, iPad and Mac later this year. It rivals outside AI tools while also giving users a central place to access their past interactions.

Yeah, so just like every other AI service. Thank you.

But perhaps the most wild element of this report is that Gurman has either seen the new app or been in touch with someone who has and can describe it in great detail. (The leaks he's able to pull out of Apple remain increasingly wild to me.)

The app’s main interface will display prior conversations in either a list or a grid of rounded rectangles with text previews. Users can pin favorite chats, save older conversations, search across interactions and start new chats via a prominent plus button.

The conversation view resembles a thread in Apple’s Messages app, with chat bubbles and a text entry field. It also includes a toggle for switching in and out of voice mode and an option to upload attachments — such as documents and photos — for analysis. These features have already become standard in modern chatbot interfaces.

When starting a new conversation, Siri will offer suggested prompts based on prior usage. The interface adapts to light and dark modes, with a white background and dark text or the inverse.

Again, all of that sounds good/standard. And amazingly, he goes even more in-depth on the UI Apple is clearly at least testing:

Users will still be able to trigger Siri via the power button or voice command, but Apple is testing a redesigned interface that replaces the glowing edges effect introduced in iOS 18.

One new design in testing places Siri at the top of the screen within the Dynamic Island, the mini-interface that Apple introduced in 2022. After it’s activated, Siri will prompt the user to “Search or Ask.”

When processing a request, a pill-shaped indicator labeled “Searching” appears, alongside a glowing Siri icon. Once results are ready, the interface expands into a larger translucent panel with Apple’s Liquid Glass design. Users can pull the menu down further to begin conversing back and forth.

This points to the stuff that other AI apps/services can't do because they don't control the iPhone, Apple does. Again, Apple went about this at first all wrong because the chatbot interface won, but being able to do both will likely be pretty killer here. I "hack" this together by using the iPhone "Action Button" to invoke ChatGPT, but it just launches the app, it's not as seamless as, say, hitting a button and talking to Siri.¹ Assuming Siri actually works now – thanks, Google – we could be getting the best of both worlds from Apple. And that could actually push the AI interaction paradigm forward. Beyond the chatbot!

This points directly to Apple's potential power here. Yes, in AI. Yes, despite years of missteps and setbacks. If they can come in now with an actually working Siri – I know, I know! – in both app and system-wide form, they could actually vault right back to the top of the AI conversation.

The other players are all working on hardware to try to counter the hold Apple has with the iPhone. But they're not going to replace the iPhone – at least not anytime soon, so... Again, there's a world in which Apple, despite the endless wandering through the AI desert, spending basically nothing on CapEx while their peers spend hundreds of billions, wins. Again.

The bigger issue remains that if by outsourcing the core work to Google, Apple never is able to catch up from a pure technology stand-point and this encumbers the true "what's next" shift in hardware. But again, that's likely years away. The hope would be that Apple is simply buying themselves more time to meet that moment as well. I'm more skeptical of that longer term if AI really does change everything, which is why I don't think it's completely insane to try to buy Anthropic right now. (It's just mostly insane.)

Anyway, it all starts with getting Siri right. And that includes implementing Siri right. And that means there needs to be an app for that.

One more thing: Back to Gurman's report:

Apple is also working to replace its existing on-device search system, Spotlight, with Siri. The new unified interface helps users find local content or submit broader queries in one place.

Yes, this obviously needs to happen. Per my point two years ago, Siri and Spotlight should merge into the one search to rule them all.

I don't know about the reported "Search or Ask" functionality per above – sounds sort of like the 'Dr. Know' system from the movie actually called A.I. which confuses the user. In this case, an AI android. "Flat fact?"

¹ You can sort of "hack" this together too thanks to Apple's Shortcuts app, but it's still a bit more wonky than a true system-level integration. ↩