They almost assuredly have and will continue to. But it may not be ready fast enough. Putting an AI assistant in every Apple product (it would have to be ecosy

They almost assuredly have and will continue to. But it may not be ready fast enough. Putting an AI assistant in every Apple product (it would have to be ecosystem wide) is nowhere near the same use case as dropping a model like llama on the web and saying it’s for research only. Apple has successfully leaned on other company’s services for core features (Google maps) and even then it took years and years to create a reasonably compelling first party, privacy preserving alternative. The Vision Pro is the company’s most risky bet in some time releasing a product that is not quite there. Reporting is there was great rancor over whether to continue to wait. The company is exceedingly conservative about major changes to how its consumer-facing products behave and releasing anything new that isn’t ready. This is true inclusive of the VP (which I think was well baked), AirPower (which clearly was not) the original iCloud and a handful of other stand out miss-calculations and failures. A deal with OpenAI provides leading edge expectations of today’s consumers for AI assist. So, they won’t lose ground while Apple works quietly in the background. Instead the company can watch behavior, develop their idea for how it aught to be and build in the background on their own timeline. It's a good approach given the company was caught as flat footed as everyone else.