Liquid Glasslighting
Well this is a first. I'm going to re-purpose a URL slug for a new post title. Both because it was good but more so because it's the right title for what seems to be going on here. That is, Apple executives making the interview rounds post-WWDC keynote and suggesting that there's no problem here with Apple and AI. Sure, they'll admit – because they already have had to do that publicly – to a delay, but everything could have shipped as promised, they suggest, it just would not have been up to Apple's famously high standards, you see.
The underlying message that they're trying to convey in all these interviews is clear: calm down, this isn't a big deal, you guys are being a little crazy. And that, in turn, aims to undercut all the reporting about the turmoil within Apple – for years at this point – that has led to the situation with Siri. Sorry, the situation which they're implying is not a situation. Though, I don't know, normally when a company shakes up an entire team, that tends to suggest some sort of situation. That, of course, is never mentioned. Nor would you expect Apple – of all companies – to talk openly and candidly about internal challenges. But that just adds to this general wafting smell in the air.
The smell of bullshit.
God bless Joanna Stern. If there's one interview to watch, it's her's. She pushes Craig Federighi and Greg Joswiak hard on a number of these topics. To the point where Federighi is visibly and literally squirming in his seat. She even gets them to drop the "Apple Intelligence" marketing speak and just say "AI" like everyone else – I mean, she even gets Joz, the head of marketing, to do that!
It was hard enough of an interview that I'm surprised Apple agreed to it. After all, they seemingly side-stepped sitting down with John Gruber this year – for the first time in a decade – because he was being too hard on them. But the Stern sit-down actually may reveal why they snubbed Gruber. At one point, Joz sort of snidely remarks that some people had been suggesting the Siri features showed off on stage last year weren't real. That would seem to be a very literal reading of Gruber's "There's Something Rotten in the State of Cupertino" piece (amongst many others that said the same basic thing), but it's pretty clear that it pissed Apple off. Because it suggests that Apple was lying to their users.
The reality, of course, is that both things can be true and Apple, as a $3T company, should grow up. The company should be acutely aware that if a product doesn't actually ship, it's not real. They've famously shied away from vaporware over the years and made fun of such things many times for the obvious reason that Apple doesn't do that. And that's because they did do that back in the day – the "Knowledge Navigator" being one fun example of a completely bullshit concept video – but it was the era where Steve Jobs was in exile. When he came back, that stuff and strategy flew out the window. Apple was going to focus on real products and shipping them into real peoples' hands.
And they more or less did that in the subsequent years and years aside from a few hiccups here and there – hello and goodbye, AirPower. And no one has documented Apple's aversion to vaporware more than Gruber. Which must have made his post especially hard for the company to read. But their response was just so wildly out of tune and proportion.
Guess what, Apple? A lot of other products from other companies that were labeled as "vaporwear" also existed internally at those companies in various states at various points. I'm sure that's true of even most of the classification – certainly many things existed more than the Knowledge Navigator ever did!1 And so you can't have it both ways in making fun of other companies that do this and then when you do it, think it's an unfair framing and stonewall anyone suggesting such blasphemy. If you didn't ship it, it's not really a product. It's a concept. It's a promise broken. You want to change that? Change it. Ship it. And if you can't, don't talk about it. I don't make the rules. You do! Or did.
Anyway, back to the matter at hand (but notably not in hands). Beyond the specific Siri delay issue, it all just feels so disingenuous for Apple to keep insisting that everything is just fine with regard to Apple and AI. That may ultimately prove true in the long arc of time, but you simply don't go through the internal turmoil – and again, shakeups – if everything is going great. Just ask Meta.
Apple clearly wants to frame this as people perhaps being upset because they simply don't understand their intentions here. They don't want to ship a "chatbot", as Joz keeps derisively repeating in all of these sit downs over and over again. They want to do much more than that, baking AI into every product. I think that's actually a fine strategy! But only if your AI works really well. And well, the state of Siri – not just the still-currently-vaporware stuff – but the actual shipped stuff over the past 15 or so years, suggests that it doesn't.
And when Stern pushes them that even with the AI stuff that has shipped within the products, that she's not really using any of it, Joz implies two things: first, that she might not even be aware that she's using some of it, because it's behind-the-scenes (I'm going to go ahead and guess she's aware) and second, that while she may not be getting utility out of Apple's AI tools, many others are – such as you know, himself. This is the new "you're holding it wrong".
The best answer in Stern's sit down – maybe the only good answer out of Apple – was given by Federighi towards the end:
But right now Apple Intelligence tools aren’t very good. When I asked why that is and why I find myself using competitor AI products all the time, Federighi had the most honest answer I’ve heard from the company.
He said when the internet came along, no one was asking Apple why it didn’t have a search engine or an e-commerce site like Amazon.
“The internet was vast,” he said. “It was an opportunity for many, many companies and for users to do a wide diversity of things. It was also a huge enabler for Apple. Apple made the internet accessible in a lot of ways—more than anyone. That didn’t mean every experience that you take on was going to happen inside of Apple.”
This is perhaps the approach Apple actually should be taking here, to focus on their devices being the springboard for the AI tools and services built by others, as Ben Thompson has argued. To be a platform. But that also goes against basically every other move by Apple of late to further lockdown the platforms they do control, and to increasingly try to do it all themselves. I'm just not sure Apple's collective head is in the right place any more to actually be that type of company providing that type of opportunity to others.
Certainly not without their cut. And I'm sorry, the hardware sales won't be enough here. They need new vectors of growth with the iPhone plateauing. Mark my words, if and when they get their AI offerings up to some level of speed, they're going to start searching for ways to monetize it directly.
But first things first, they have to get their AI house in order and catch up. Or, I'm sorry, to hear Apple tell it, there's nothing wrong. Just a minor delay and internally at Apple it's better than it has ever been. You're crazy to think otherwise.
One more thing: Gruber's episode of The Talk Show Live took place last night without those aforementioned guests from Apple. Instead, he was joined by Nilay Patel and who else: Joanna Stern.2
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
1 While Knowledge Navigator may have never launched, that concept was remarkably prescient of what computing now more or less looks like – well, maybe minus the literal talking head. But it's really sort of an iPad with Siri – or really, an iPad with ChatGPT because Siri can't do any of that stuff.
2 I haven't had a chance to watch yet as it was live at around 3am my time in London. But I'm looking forward to booting up my Vision Pro for the first time in a few weeks to watch the replay of in 3D again this year!