That’s kind of the point here: Apple has to get this right this year because it’s so far behind but, more importantly, because it made a promise. As a company, you have to keep your promises. — Reuters
In life, there are few things as certain as Apple releasing a new iPhone every year. Come fall, the world’s largest company will put out another version of the world’s most popular consumer product with new features and, occasionally, an updated design. We know this is true, and there is a huge slice of the economy that is based on the reliability of this fact.
It makes sense: Apple is the world’s largest company almost entirely because of the iPhone, and its profits and stock price depend on putting out a new device that a hundred million or so people will buy. It is not surprising that Apple sees the iPhone as the most important thing it does every year.
In 2025, however, I think I can make the argument that there is a more important product it has to get right: Apple Intelligence. Or, more specifically, the part of Apple Intelligence that makes Siri substantially better. In fact, I’d argue that if Apple does not ship a new iPhone, that would be less detrimental than if it fails to release a good version of Siri. You know, the version it has been promising since last summer when it demoed all the things you’ll be able to do with your iPhone. Giving people not just a smarter Siri, but one that is able to do real tasks on their behalf on their iPhone is the holy grail.
Look, I know that Apple would argue it has improved Siri. Apple would tell you that Siri can now better understand you when you speak and can even handle follow-up questions. That’s fine, but it’s a long way from what Apple showed off earlier this year at WWDC, and then again during the iPhone introduction in September.
Of course, delivering on that has a few problems. First, Apple is behind on this. It seemed to be caught entirely off guard by the generative AI arms race, and the features it has released so far – with the sole exception of the ChatGPT integration – haven’t even come close to putting it on part with the competition.
Even the ChatGPT integration is more of a condemnation than a win for Apple. It’s not a great sign that the best thing about Apple Intelligence currently is that Siri will send queries to ChatGPT. There’s already a perfectly good app for that, and it’s actually a much better experience since you can do things like copy or save the results.
Second, making Siri truly good depends on third-party developers to expose the information in their apps to Apple, which isn’t a given. Just look at how slow developers have been to adopt Vision Pro. Apple seems to have burned a lot of the goodwill it built up, especially with smaller independent developers.
Finally, exposing an app is different than obfuscating away your entire business because Siri just does it all. If Siri is going to be able to interact with the apps on your iPhone, it needs those developers. It’s not entirely clear they are willing to put in the work just to make Apple’s voice assistant better without much of a return themselves. And, for larger apps, it doesn’t seem likely that they’re going to give up their customers to Apple.
The dream scenario is to be able to say to Siri something like, “Find out when my flight lands and reserve an Uber to my hotel.” The problem is that this request requires that Siri has to be able to look at your calendar or a flight app to figure out when you’re flight lands. It needs to be able to read your email to find the hotel confirmation, and then it needs to be able to interact with the Uber app to book a car based on that information. That means it needs access to your calendar, your email, Uber, and probably your airline app. Only the email and calendar are likely first-party apps, but even that’s not a given.
The point is that it’s hard, but it’s also what Apple promised. I’m not asking for anything more than the thing Apple showed off at WWDC.
That’s kind of the point here: Apple has to get this right this year because it’s so far behind but, more importantly, because it made a promise. As a company, you have to keep your promises.
I don’t think we’re at the point yet where people are going to start ditching their iPhones because Gemini is so great on Android. But, we are at the point where the story Apple is telling about Apple Intelligence does not at all line up with the experience people are actually having. If it doesn’t fix that gap in 2025, the story might end up turning out a lot worse. – Inc./Tribune News Service
