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> This is exactly what Apple Intelligence should have been... They could have shipped an agentic AI that actually automated your computer instead of summarizing

> This is exactly what Apple Intelligence should have been... They could have shipped an agentic AI that actually automated your computer instead of summarizing your notifications. Imagine if Siri could genuinely file your taxes, respond to emails, or manage your calendar by actually using your apps, not through some brittle API layer that breaks every update. And this is probably coming, a few years from now. Because remember, Apple doesn't usually invent new products. It takes proven ones and then makes its own much nicer version. Let other companies figure out the model. Let the industry figure out how to make it secure. Then Apple can integrate it with hardware and software in a way no other company can. Right now we are still in very, very, very early days.

calvinmorrison 9mo ago
Apple literally lives on the "Cutting Edge" a-la XKCD [1]. My wife is an iPerson and she always tells me about these new features (my phone has had them since $today-5 years). But for her, these are brand new exciting things! https://xkcd.com/606/ https://xkcd.com/606/
- lukevp 9mo ago
  How many chat products has Google come out with? Google messenger, buzz, wave, meet, Google+, hangouts… Apple has iMessage and FaceTime. You just restated OP’s point. Apple evolves things slowly and comes to market when the problems have already been solved in a myriad of ways, so they can be solved once and consistently. It’s not about coming to market soonest. How did you get that from what OP said?
  - calvinmorrison 9mo ago
    "It’s not about coming to market soonest. " First Mover effect seems only relevant when goverment warrants are involved. Think radio licenses, medical patents, etc. Everywhere else, being a first mover doesnt seem to correlate like it should to success.
    - drBonkers 9mo ago
      Network effects. See social media, bitcoin, iOS App Store, blu-ray, Xbox live, and I’m sure more I can’t think of rn.
      - calvinmorrison 9mo ago
        Network effects are maybe akin to "phsyical effects". Non-monopoly but physical space is also another 'first mover' type of moat.
  - fennecbutt 9mo ago
    Pointless argument given that android isn't just "android". Never has been. It's a huge, diverse ecosystem of players and that's probably why Android has always gotten the coolest stuff first. But it's also its achilles' heel in some ways.
    - raw_anon_1111 9mo ago
      Except operating system and security updates…
  - wolvoleo 9mo ago
    Android isn't all about Google. Where I live everyone uses WhatsApp and Telegram, both of which have nothing to do with Google.
- dangus 9mo ago
  A very tired “red versus blue” take here. There are plenty of Android/Windows things that Apple has had for $today-5 years that work the exact same way. One side isn’t better than the other, it’s really just that they copy each other doing various things at a different pace or arrive at that point in different ways. Some examples: - Android is/was years behind on granular permissions, e.g. ability to grant limited photo library access to apps - Android has no platform-wide equivalent to AirTags - Hardware-backed key storage (Secure Enclave about 5 years ahead of StrongBox) - system-wide screen recording
  - fennecbutt 9mo ago
    Android is an OS, not hardware tho so some of those can't really be judged equivalently.
    - dangus 9mo ago
      Half of my examples were 100% software based, and this list is by no means comprehensive. Google has been making their own phone hardware since 2010. And surely they can call up Qualcomm and Samsung if they want to.
eykanal 9mo ago
> ...Apple doesn't usually invent new products. It takes proven ones and then makes its own much nicer version. While this was true about ten years ago, it's been a while since we've seen this model of software development from Apple succeed in recent years. I'm not at all confident that the Apple that gave us Mac OS 26 is capable of doing this anymore.
- Pediatric0191 9mo ago
  Airtags were released in 2021, I'd say that counts, but generally I agree.
  - atonse 9mo ago
    Their hardware division has been killing it. The software has been where most of the complaints have been in recent years.
    - Nevermark 9mo ago
      Their software efforts have little ambition. Tweaks and improvements are always a good idea, but without some ambitious effort, nothing special is learned or achieved. A "bicycle for the mind" got replaced with a "kiosk for your pocketbook". The Vision Pro has an amazing interface, but it's set up as a place to rent videos and buy throwaway novelty iPad-style apps. It allows you to import a Mac screen as a single window, instead of expanding the Mac interface, with its Mac power and flexibility, into the spacial world. Great hardware. Interesting, but locked down software. If Tim Cook wanted to leave a real legacy product, it should have been a Vision Pro aimed as an upgrade on the Mac interface and productivity. Apple's new highest end interface/device for the future. Not another mid/low-capability iPad type device. So close. So far. $3500 for an enforced toy. (And I say all this as someone who still uses it with my Mac, but despairs at the lack of software vision.)
      - msy 9mo ago
        Not just lack of ambition, lack of vision or taste. Liquid Glass is a step back in almost every way, that it got out the door is an indictment of the entire leadership chain.
bigyabai 9mo ago
> Then Apple can integrate it with hardware and software in a way no other company can. That's a pretty optimistic outlook. All considered, you're not convinced they'll just use it as a platform to sell advertisements and lock-out competitors a-la the App Store "because everyone does it"?
iwontberude 9mo ago
Can you understand how this commoditizes applications? The developers would absolutely have a fit. There is a reason this hasn’t been done already. It’s not lack of understanding or capability, it’s financial reality. Shortcuts is the compromise struck in its place.
weikju 9mo ago
Personal intelligence, the (awkward) feature where you can take a screenshot and get Siri to explain stuff, and the new spotlight features where you can type out stuff you want to do in apps probably hints at that…
dchuk 9mo ago
This is generally true only of them going to market with new (to them) physical form factors. They aren’t generally regarded as the best in terms of software innovation (though I think most agree they make very beautiful software)
Telemakhos 9mo ago
Apple's niche product, consisting of like 1-4% of computer sales compared to its dominant MacBook line, is now flying off the shelf as a highly desired product, because of a piece of software that Apple didn't spend a dime developing. This sounds like a major win for Apple. The OS maker does not have to make all the killer software. In fact, Apple's pretty much the only game in town that's making hardware and software both.
- neumann 9mo ago
  What are you referring to?
  - LeoPanthera 9mo ago
    Do you want to know how I can tell you didn't read the article?
    - jb1991 9mo ago
      Do you want to know how I can tell that you did not read the hacker news guidelines.
  - Der_Einzige 9mo ago
    [flagged]
    - areoform 9mo ago
      (Yes android users are discriminated against in the dating market, tons of op eds are written about this, just google it before you knee jerk downvote the truth) If someone is shallow enough to write you off for that, is that someone you want as your partner?
    - r14c 9mo ago
      Imo using android is a great way to filter out extremely boring and vapid individuals from my dating pool.
    - 9mo ago
FireBeyond 9mo ago
> And this is probably coming, a few years from now. Because remember, Apple doesn't usually invent new products. It takes proven ones and then makes its own much nicer version. Except this doesn't stand up to scrutiny, when you look at Siri. FOURTEEN years and it is still spectacularly useless. I have no idea what Siri is a "much nicer version" of. > Apple can integrate it with hardware and software in a way no other company can. And in the case of Apple products, oftentimes "because Apple won't let them". Lest I be called an Apple hater, I have 3 Apple TVs in my home, my daily driver is a M2 Ultra Studio with a ProDisplay XDR, and an iPad Pro that shows my calendar and Slack during the day and comes off at night. iPhone, Apple Watch Ultra. But this is way too worshipful of Apple.
- jacinabox 9mo ago
  Remember the time when the former members of the Siri team demoed a prototype for a more capable version of Siri and Apple didn't even use it
- ejoso 9mo ago
  In that list of Apple products that you own, do none of them match the ops comment? You’re saying none of those products are or have been in their time in the market a perfected version of other things? There are lots of failed products in nearly every company’s portfolio. AirTags were mentioned elsewhere, but I can think of others too. Perfected might be too fuzzy & subjective a term though.
  - FireBeyond 9mo ago
    We're talking about Apple Intelligence here and its ... "precursor" ... Siri. Both of which have been absolutely underwhelming if not outright laughable in certain ways. Apple has done plenty right. These two, which are the closest to the article, are not it.
- danielheath 9mo ago
  Perhaps I’m misremembering, but I feel sure that Siri was much better a decade ago than it is today. Basic voice commands that used to work are no longer recognised, or required you to unlock the phone in situations where hands free operation is the whole point of using a voice command.
huwsername 9mo ago
I don’t believe this was ever confirmed by Apple, but there was widespread speculation at the time[1] that the delay was due to the very prompt injection attacks OpenClaw users are now discovering. It would be genuinely catastrophic to ship an insecure system with this kind of data access, even with an ‘unsafe mode’. These kinds of risks can only be _consented to_ by technical people who correctly understand them, let alone borne by them, but if this shipped there would be thousands of Facebook videos explaining to the elderly how to disable the safety features and open themselves up to identity theft. The article also confuses me because Apple _are_ shipping this, it’s pretty much exactly the demo they gave at WWDC24, it’s just delayed while they iron this out (if that is at all possible). By all accounts it might ship as early as next week in the iOS 26.4 beta. [1]: https://simonwillison.net/2025/Mar/8/delaying-personalized-siri/ https://simonwillison.net/2025/Mar/8/delaying-personalized-s...
- anon373839 9mo ago
  Exactly. Apple operates at a scale where it's very difficult to deploy this technology for its sexy applications. The tech is simply too broken and flawed at this point. (Whatever Apple does deploy, you can bet it will be heavily guardrailed.) With ~2.5 billion devices in active use, they can't take the Tesla approach of letting AI drive cars into fire trucks.
  - dmix 9mo ago
    This is so obvious I'm kind of surprised the author used to be a software engineer at Google (based on his Linkedin). OpenClaw is very much a greenfield idea and there's plenty of startups like Raycast working in this area.
    - deleted 9mo ago
      [deleted]
    - ljm 9mo ago
      I'm not that surprised because of how pervasive the 'move fast and break things' culture is in Silicon Valley, and what is essentially AI accelerationism. You see this reflected all over HN as well, e.g. when Cloudflare goes down and it's a good thing because it gives you a break from the screen. Who cares that it broke? That's just how it is. This is just not how software engineering goes in many other places, particularly where the stakes are much higher and can be life altering, if not threatening.
wetpaws 9mo ago
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cromka 9mo ago
File taxes? That's a tall order, especially juxtaposed with managing calendar or responding to emails.
- rl3 9mo ago
  >File taxes? Sure why not, what could go wrong? "Siri, find me a good tax lawyer." "Your honor, my client's AI agent had no intent to willfully evade anything."
  - vips7L 9mo ago
    These people live on another planet.
    - rl3 9mo ago
      It seems to be a common place of residence lately.
- gyomu 9mo ago
  Tax filing is trivial in most countries with a functioning government, it’s only a Big Deal in the US due to Intuit bribing the government.
  - Tagbert 9mo ago
    Even in the US, for most people tax filing it not really a complex process. It only gets complicated if you are trying to itemize deductions and have a complex income story. Most people can do it with a couple of documents and a single form.
    - Kirby64 9mo ago
      It doesn't take a lot of 'complexity' in income to balloon up complexity. Any brokerage activity will generate quite a few additional forms for 1099-B, 1099-DIV, etc. Still not super complicated, but I keep seeing people discuss this as if you only have W2s and nothing else... which isn't usually true, especially for someone who is likely to be using OpenClaw.
raw_anon_1111 9mo ago
Absolutely none of the things you quoted that he said an AI agent could do would I want be done for me and I doubt most other people would.
- Gigachad 9mo ago
  It would be an absolute disaster at Apple scale. Millions of people would start using it, filing incorrect taxes or deleting their important files and Apple would be sued endlessly. Tiny open source projects can just say "use at your own risk" and offload all responsibility.
eboy 9mo ago
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Nursie 9mo ago
> Imagine if Siri could genuinely file your taxes, respond to emails, or manage your calendar > And this is probably coming, a few years from now. Given how often I say "Hey Siri, fast forward", expecting her to skip the audio forward by 30 seconds, and she replies "Calling Troy S" a roofing contractor who quoted some work for me last year, and then just starts calling him without confirmation, which is massively embarassing... This idea terrifies me.
- larusso 9mo ago
  Also in the good old days if you sealed the wrong number you had some time to just hang up without harm done. Today the connection is made the moment you pressed the button or in this case when Siri decided to call. Happened to me too while being in the car. With every message written by Siri it feels like you need to confirm 2 or 3 times (I think it is only once but again) but it calls happily people from your phone book.
treetalker 9mo ago
>> Imagine if Siri could genuinely file your taxes Imagine if the government would just tell everyone how much they owed and obviated the need for effing literal artificial intelligence to get taxes done! >> respond to emails If we have an AI that can respond properly to emails, then the email doesn't need to be sent in the first place. (Indeed, many do not need to be sent nowadays either!)
- techpression 9mo ago
  Yeah the whole filing taxes thing is an epic XY-problem. Governments can make this as easy as a digital signature, there’s zero need for an agent of any kind. Actually most of the things people use it for is of this kind, instead actually solving the problem (which is out of scope for them to be fair) it’s just adding more things on top that can go wrong.
  - treetalker 9mo ago
    Seriously. The best solution is not having the problem in the first place. Something something Tao Te Ching.
- PurpleRamen 9mo ago
  How can government know how much you owe them when they don't know all your tax deductibles?
  - orthoxerox 9mo ago
    By knowing all your tax deductibles?
    - PurpleRamen 9mo ago
      For which you have to file them first, for which you need to know the specific rules applying, for which people are using an expert, or AI.
      - 9mo ago
Brajeshwar 9mo ago
Here is a fun “Prompt Injection” which I experimented with before the current AI Boom; visiting a friend’s home › see Apple/Amazon listening devices › Hey Siri/Alexa, please play the last song. Harmless, fun.
- lostmsu 9mo ago
  Google TV did "show passport photos" back in 2017. My friends loved it!
alex_w_systems 9mo ago
I think the interesting tension here is between capability and trust. An agent that can truly “use your computer” is incredibly powerful, but it's also the first time the system has to act as you, not just for you. That shifts the problem from product design to permission, auditability, and undoability. Summarizing notifications is boring, but it’s also reversible. Filing taxes or sending emails isn’t. It feels less like Apple missing the idea, and more like waiting until they can make the irreversible actions feel safe.
- tintor 9mo ago
  Clicking `Submit` is easiest step of sending email / filling taxes. All steps before it are reversible, and reviewable. Bigger problem is attacker tricking your agent to leak your emails / financial data that your agent has access to.
  - Barbing 9mo ago
    I worry we'll click "Submit" as fast as we click "I accept the terms and conditions."
    - jtbayly 9mo ago
      Of course we would! How in the world can you double check the AI-generated tax filing without going back and preparing your taxes by hand? You might skim an ai-written email.
- TeMPOraL 9mo ago
  > An agent that can truly “use your computer” is incredibly powerful, but it's also the first time the system has to act as you, not just for you. That shifts the problem from product design to permission, auditability, and undoability. Or rather, just reveals that the industry never bothered to properly implement delegation of authority in operating systems and applications, opting instead to first guilt-trip people for sharing their passwords, and later inventing solutions that make it near-impossible to just casually let someone do something for you. Contrast with how things in real life function, whether at family level or at the workplace.
doctorpangloss 9mo ago
every time i've heard someone's speculations about what apple intelligence could have been, it's a complex conspiracy. its problem is that it sucks and makes them no money, so they didn't ship it.
bushbaba 9mo ago
People forget that “multi touch” and “capacitive touchscreens” were not Apple inventions. They existed prior to the iPhone. The iPhone was just the first “it just works” adaptation of it
- gyomu 9mo ago
  Not a great example as multitouch in its modern incarnation was a niche academic technology, the most refined version of which was built by a 2 person startup that Apple quickly acquired. There was still a long way to go to make the tech as ubiquitous as it is today and that was all heavy lifting done by Apple. Well, the heavy lifting was supervised by the same people, but while receiving Apple paychecks :)
uh_uh 9mo ago
> Because remember, Apple doesn't usually invent new products. It takes proven ones and then makes its own much nicer version. Funny seeing this repeated again in response to Siri which is just... not very good.
- bratwurst3000 9mo ago
  hey siri can set the egg timer 90% of the time corectly! Find me another multitrillion dollar company that is able to pull that off! .
rhubarbtree 9mo ago
I would guess, and it is a guess, that there are two reasons apple is “behind” in AI. First, they have nowhere near the talent pool or capability in this area. They’re not a technical research lab. For the same reason you don’t expect apple to win the quantum race, they will not lead on AI. Second, AI is a half baked product right now and apple try to ship products that properly work. Even Vision Pro is remarkably polished for a first version. AI on the other hand is likely to suffer catastrophic security problems, embarrassing behaviour, distinctly family-unfriendly output. Apple probably realised they were hugely behind and then spent time hand wringing over whether they remained cautious or got into the brawl. And they decided to watch from the sidelines, buy in some tech, and see how it develops. So far that looks entirely reasonable as a decision. If Claude wins, for example, apple need only be sure Claude tools work on Mac to avoid losing users, and they can second-move once things are not so chaotic.
PlatoIsADisease 9mo ago
>It takes proven ones and then makes its own much nicer version. I think you repeated their marketing, I don't believe this is actually true.
_se 9mo ago
How do people manage to pick such bad examples? Who in their right mind would ever allow an LLM to FILE THEIR TAXES for them. Absolutely insane behavior. Why would anyone think this is probably coming? Do you think the IRS is going to accept "hallucination lol" as an excuse for misfiling?
- yohannparis 9mo ago
  Because private taxe filling software, like used in the USA, are exempt from filling errors?
- mikkupikku 9mo ago
  If you're quick at responding and fixing the problem, the IRS forgives much..
LoganDark 9mo ago
> Because remember, Apple doesn't usually invent new products. It takes proven ones and then makes its own much nicer version. Apple doesn't take proven ones of anything. What they do is arrive at something proven from first principles. Everyone else did it faster because they borrowed, but Apple did it from scratch, with all the detail-oriented UX niceties that entails. This was more prevalent when Jobs was still around. Apple still has some of that philosophy at its core, but it's been eroding over time (for example with "AI" and now Liquid Ass). They still do their own QA, though, and so on. They're not copying the market, they have their own.
debatem1 9mo ago
> Imagine if Siri could genuinely file your taxes If you trust openclaw to file your taxes we are just on radically different levels of risk tolerance.

calvinmorrison 9mo ago

Apple literally lives on the "Cutting Edge" a-la XKCD [1]. My wife is an iPerson and she always tells me about these new features (my phone has had them since $today-5 years). But for her, these are brand new exciting things! https://xkcd.com/606/ https://xkcd.com/606/

lukevp 9mo ago
How many chat products has Google come out with? Google messenger, buzz, wave, meet, Google+, hangouts… Apple has iMessage and FaceTime. You just restated OP’s point. Apple evolves things slowly and comes to market when the problems have already been solved in a myriad of ways, so they can be solved once and consistently. It’s not about coming to market soonest. How did you get that from what OP said?
- calvinmorrison 9mo ago
  "It’s not about coming to market soonest. " First Mover effect seems only relevant when goverment warrants are involved. Think radio licenses, medical patents, etc. Everywhere else, being a first mover doesnt seem to correlate like it should to success.
  - drBonkers 9mo ago
    Network effects. See social media, bitcoin, iOS App Store, blu-ray, Xbox live, and I’m sure more I can’t think of rn.
    - calvinmorrison 9mo ago
      Network effects are maybe akin to "phsyical effects". Non-monopoly but physical space is also another 'first mover' type of moat.
- fennecbutt 9mo ago
  Pointless argument given that android isn't just "android". Never has been. It's a huge, diverse ecosystem of players and that's probably why Android has always gotten the coolest stuff first. But it's also its achilles' heel in some ways.
  - raw_anon_1111 9mo ago
    Except operating system and security updates…
- wolvoleo 9mo ago
  Android isn't all about Google. Where I live everyone uses WhatsApp and Telegram, both of which have nothing to do with Google.
dangus 9mo ago
A very tired “red versus blue” take here. There are plenty of Android/Windows things that Apple has had for $today-5 years that work the exact same way. One side isn’t better than the other, it’s really just that they copy each other doing various things at a different pace or arrive at that point in different ways. Some examples: - Android is/was years behind on granular permissions, e.g. ability to grant limited photo library access to apps - Android has no platform-wide equivalent to AirTags - Hardware-backed key storage (Secure Enclave about 5 years ahead of StrongBox) - system-wide screen recording
- fennecbutt 9mo ago
  Android is an OS, not hardware tho so some of those can't really be judged equivalently.
  - dangus 9mo ago
    Half of my examples were 100% software based, and this list is by no means comprehensive. Google has been making their own phone hardware since 2010. And surely they can call up Qualcomm and Samsung if they want to.

eykanal 9mo ago

> ...Apple doesn't usually invent new products. It takes proven ones and then makes its own much nicer version. While this was true about ten years ago, it's been a while since we've seen this model of software development from Apple succeed in recent years. I'm not at all confident that the Apple that gave us Mac OS 26 is capable of doing this anymore.

Pediatric0191 9mo ago
Airtags were released in 2021, I'd say that counts, but generally I agree.
- atonse 9mo ago
  Their hardware division has been killing it. The software has been where most of the complaints have been in recent years.
  - Nevermark 9mo ago
    Their software efforts have little ambition. Tweaks and improvements are always a good idea, but without some ambitious effort, nothing special is learned or achieved. A "bicycle for the mind" got replaced with a "kiosk for your pocketbook". The Vision Pro has an amazing interface, but it's set up as a place to rent videos and buy throwaway novelty iPad-style apps. It allows you to import a Mac screen as a single window, instead of expanding the Mac interface, with its Mac power and flexibility, into the spacial world. Great hardware. Interesting, but locked down software. If Tim Cook wanted to leave a real legacy product, it should have been a Vision Pro aimed as an upgrade on the Mac interface and productivity. Apple's new highest end interface/device for the future. Not another mid/low-capability iPad type device. So close. So far. $3500 for an enforced toy. (And I say all this as someone who still uses it with my Mac, but despairs at the lack of software vision.)
    - msy 9mo ago
      Not just lack of ambition, lack of vision or taste. Liquid Glass is a step back in almost every way, that it got out the door is an indictment of the entire leadership chain.

bigyabai 9mo ago

> Then Apple can integrate it with hardware and software in a way no other company can. That's a pretty optimistic outlook. All considered, you're not convinced they'll just use it as a platform to sell advertisements and lock-out competitors a-la the App Store "because everyone does it"?

iwontberude 9mo ago

Can you understand how this commoditizes applications? The developers would absolutely have a fit. There is a reason this hasn’t been done already. It’s not lack of understanding or capability, it’s financial reality. Shortcuts is the compromise struck in its place.

weikju 9mo ago

Personal intelligence, the (awkward) feature where you can take a screenshot and get Siri to explain stuff, and the new spotlight features where you can type out stuff you want to do in apps probably hints at that…

dchuk 9mo ago

This is generally true only of them going to market with new (to them) physical form factors. They aren’t generally regarded as the best in terms of software innovation (though I think most agree they make very beautiful software)

Telemakhos 9mo ago

Apple's niche product, consisting of like 1-4% of computer sales compared to its dominant MacBook line, is now flying off the shelf as a highly desired product, because of a piece of software that Apple didn't spend a dime developing. This sounds like a major win for Apple. The OS maker does not have to make all the killer software. In fact, Apple's pretty much the only game in town that's making hardware and software both.

neumann 9mo ago
What are you referring to?
- LeoPanthera 9mo ago
  Do you want to know how I can tell you didn't read the article?
  - jb1991 9mo ago
    Do you want to know how I can tell that you did not read the hacker news guidelines.
- Der_Einzige 9mo ago
  [flagged]
  - areoform 9mo ago
    (Yes android users are discriminated against in the dating market, tons of op eds are written about this, just google it before you knee jerk downvote the truth) If someone is shallow enough to write you off for that, is that someone you want as your partner?
  - r14c 9mo ago
    Imo using android is a great way to filter out extremely boring and vapid individuals from my dating pool.
  - 9mo ago

FireBeyond 9mo ago

> And this is probably coming, a few years from now. Because remember, Apple doesn't usually invent new products. It takes proven ones and then makes its own much nicer version. Except this doesn't stand up to scrutiny, when you look at Siri. FOURTEEN years and it is still spectacularly useless. I have no idea what Siri is a "much nicer version" of. > Apple can integrate it with hardware and software in a way no other company can. And in the case of Apple products, oftentimes "because Apple won't let them". Lest I be called an Apple hater, I have 3 Apple TVs in my home, my daily driver is a M2 Ultra Studio with a ProDisplay XDR, and an iPad Pro that shows my calendar and Slack during the day and comes off at night. iPhone, Apple Watch Ultra. But this is way too worshipful of Apple.

jacinabox 9mo ago
Remember the time when the former members of the Siri team demoed a prototype for a more capable version of Siri and Apple didn't even use it
ejoso 9mo ago
In that list of Apple products that you own, do none of them match the ops comment? You’re saying none of those products are or have been in their time in the market a perfected version of other things? There are lots of failed products in nearly every company’s portfolio. AirTags were mentioned elsewhere, but I can think of others too. Perfected might be too fuzzy & subjective a term though.
- FireBeyond 9mo ago
  We're talking about Apple Intelligence here and its ... "precursor" ... Siri. Both of which have been absolutely underwhelming if not outright laughable in certain ways. Apple has done plenty right. These two, which are the closest to the article, are not it.
danielheath 9mo ago
Perhaps I’m misremembering, but I feel sure that Siri was much better a decade ago than it is today. Basic voice commands that used to work are no longer recognised, or required you to unlock the phone in situations where hands free operation is the whole point of using a voice command.

huwsername 9mo ago

I don’t believe this was ever confirmed by Apple, but there was widespread speculation at the time[1] that the delay was due to the very prompt injection attacks OpenClaw users are now discovering. It would be genuinely catastrophic to ship an insecure system with this kind of data access, even with an ‘unsafe mode’. These kinds of risks can only be _consented to_ by technical people who correctly understand them, let alone borne by them, but if this shipped there would be thousands of Facebook videos explaining to the elderly how to disable the safety features and open themselves up to identity theft. The article also confuses me because Apple _are_ shipping this, it’s pretty much exactly the demo they gave at WWDC24, it’s just delayed while they iron this out (if that is at all possible). By all accounts it might ship as early as next week in the iOS 26.4 beta. [1]: https://simonwillison.net/2025/Mar/8/delaying-personalized-siri/ https://simonwillison.net/2025/Mar/8/delaying-personalized-s...

anon373839 9mo ago
Exactly. Apple operates at a scale where it's very difficult to deploy this technology for its sexy applications. The tech is simply too broken and flawed at this point. (Whatever Apple does deploy, you can bet it will be heavily guardrailed.) With ~2.5 billion devices in active use, they can't take the Tesla approach of letting AI drive cars into fire trucks.
- dmix 9mo ago
  This is so obvious I'm kind of surprised the author used to be a software engineer at Google (based on his Linkedin). OpenClaw is very much a greenfield idea and there's plenty of startups like Raycast working in this area.
  - deleted 9mo ago
    [deleted]
  - ljm 9mo ago
    I'm not that surprised because of how pervasive the 'move fast and break things' culture is in Silicon Valley, and what is essentially AI accelerationism. You see this reflected all over HN as well, e.g. when Cloudflare goes down and it's a good thing because it gives you a break from the screen. Who cares that it broke? That's just how it is. This is just not how software engineering goes in many other places, particularly where the stakes are much higher and can be life altering, if not threatening.

wetpaws 9mo ago

[dead]

cromka 9mo ago

File taxes? That's a tall order, especially juxtaposed with managing calendar or responding to emails.

rl3 9mo ago
>File taxes? Sure why not, what could go wrong? "Siri, find me a good tax lawyer." "Your honor, my client's AI agent had no intent to willfully evade anything."
- vips7L 9mo ago
  These people live on another planet.
  - rl3 9mo ago
    It seems to be a common place of residence lately.
gyomu 9mo ago
Tax filing is trivial in most countries with a functioning government, it’s only a Big Deal in the US due to Intuit bribing the government.
- Tagbert 9mo ago
  Even in the US, for most people tax filing it not really a complex process. It only gets complicated if you are trying to itemize deductions and have a complex income story. Most people can do it with a couple of documents and a single form.
  - Kirby64 9mo ago
    It doesn't take a lot of 'complexity' in income to balloon up complexity. Any brokerage activity will generate quite a few additional forms for 1099-B, 1099-DIV, etc. Still not super complicated, but I keep seeing people discuss this as if you only have W2s and nothing else... which isn't usually true, especially for someone who is likely to be using OpenClaw.

raw_anon_1111 9mo ago

Absolutely none of the things you quoted that he said an AI agent could do would I want be done for me and I doubt most other people would.

Gigachad 9mo ago
It would be an absolute disaster at Apple scale. Millions of people would start using it, filing incorrect taxes or deleting their important files and Apple would be sued endlessly. Tiny open source projects can just say "use at your own risk" and offload all responsibility.

eboy 9mo ago

[dead]

Nursie 9mo ago

> Imagine if Siri could genuinely file your taxes, respond to emails, or manage your calendar > And this is probably coming, a few years from now. Given how often I say "Hey Siri, fast forward", expecting her to skip the audio forward by 30 seconds, and she replies "Calling Troy S" a roofing contractor who quoted some work for me last year, and then just starts calling him without confirmation, which is massively embarassing... This idea terrifies me.

larusso 9mo ago
Also in the good old days if you sealed the wrong number you had some time to just hang up without harm done. Today the connection is made the moment you pressed the button or in this case when Siri decided to call. Happened to me too while being in the car. With every message written by Siri it feels like you need to confirm 2 or 3 times (I think it is only once but again) but it calls happily people from your phone book.

treetalker 9mo ago

>> Imagine if Siri could genuinely file your taxes Imagine if the government would just tell everyone how much they owed and obviated the need for effing literal artificial intelligence to get taxes done! >> respond to emails If we have an AI that can respond properly to emails, then the email doesn't need to be sent in the first place. (Indeed, many do not need to be sent nowadays either!)

techpression 9mo ago
Yeah the whole filing taxes thing is an epic XY-problem. Governments can make this as easy as a digital signature, there’s zero need for an agent of any kind. Actually most of the things people use it for is of this kind, instead actually solving the problem (which is out of scope for them to be fair) it’s just adding more things on top that can go wrong.
- treetalker 9mo ago
  Seriously. The best solution is not having the problem in the first place. Something something Tao Te Ching.
PurpleRamen 9mo ago
How can government know how much you owe them when they don't know all your tax deductibles?
- orthoxerox 9mo ago
  By knowing all your tax deductibles?
  - PurpleRamen 9mo ago
    For which you have to file them first, for which you need to know the specific rules applying, for which people are using an expert, or AI.
    - 9mo ago

Brajeshwar 9mo ago

Here is a fun “Prompt Injection” which I experimented with before the current AI Boom; visiting a friend’s home › see Apple/Amazon listening devices › Hey Siri/Alexa, please play the last song. Harmless, fun.

lostmsu 9mo ago
Google TV did "show passport photos" back in 2017. My friends loved it!

alex_w_systems 9mo ago

I think the interesting tension here is between capability and trust. An agent that can truly “use your computer” is incredibly powerful, but it's also the first time the system has to act as you, not just for you. That shifts the problem from product design to permission, auditability, and undoability. Summarizing notifications is boring, but it’s also reversible. Filing taxes or sending emails isn’t. It feels less like Apple missing the idea, and more like waiting until they can make the irreversible actions feel safe.

tintor 9mo ago
Clicking `Submit` is easiest step of sending email / filling taxes. All steps before it are reversible, and reviewable. Bigger problem is attacker tricking your agent to leak your emails / financial data that your agent has access to.
- Barbing 9mo ago
  I worry we'll click "Submit" as fast as we click "I accept the terms and conditions."
  - jtbayly 9mo ago
    Of course we would! How in the world can you double check the AI-generated tax filing without going back and preparing your taxes by hand? You might skim an ai-written email.
TeMPOraL 9mo ago
> An agent that can truly “use your computer” is incredibly powerful, but it's also the first time the system has to act as you, not just for you. That shifts the problem from product design to permission, auditability, and undoability. Or rather, just reveals that the industry never bothered to properly implement delegation of authority in operating systems and applications, opting instead to first guilt-trip people for sharing their passwords, and later inventing solutions that make it near-impossible to just casually let someone do something for you. Contrast with how things in real life function, whether at family level or at the workplace.

doctorpangloss 9mo ago

every time i've heard someone's speculations about what apple intelligence could have been, it's a complex conspiracy. its problem is that it sucks and makes them no money, so they didn't ship it.

bushbaba 9mo ago

People forget that “multi touch” and “capacitive touchscreens” were not Apple inventions. They existed prior to the iPhone. The iPhone was just the first “it just works” adaptation of it

gyomu 9mo ago
Not a great example as multitouch in its modern incarnation was a niche academic technology, the most refined version of which was built by a 2 person startup that Apple quickly acquired. There was still a long way to go to make the tech as ubiquitous as it is today and that was all heavy lifting done by Apple. Well, the heavy lifting was supervised by the same people, but while receiving Apple paychecks :)

uh_uh 9mo ago

> Because remember, Apple doesn't usually invent new products. It takes proven ones and then makes its own much nicer version. Funny seeing this repeated again in response to Siri which is just... not very good.

bratwurst3000 9mo ago
hey siri can set the egg timer 90% of the time corectly! Find me another multitrillion dollar company that is able to pull that off! .

rhubarbtree 9mo ago

I would guess, and it is a guess, that there are two reasons apple is “behind” in AI. First, they have nowhere near the talent pool or capability in this area. They’re not a technical research lab. For the same reason you don’t expect apple to win the quantum race, they will not lead on AI. Second, AI is a half baked product right now and apple try to ship products that properly work. Even Vision Pro is remarkably polished for a first version. AI on the other hand is likely to suffer catastrophic security problems, embarrassing behaviour, distinctly family-unfriendly output. Apple probably realised they were hugely behind and then spent time hand wringing over whether they remained cautious or got into the brawl. And they decided to watch from the sidelines, buy in some tech, and see how it develops. So far that looks entirely reasonable as a decision. If Claude wins, for example, apple need only be sure Claude tools work on Mac to avoid losing users, and they can second-move once things are not so chaotic.

PlatoIsADisease 9mo ago

>It takes proven ones and then makes its own much nicer version. I think you repeated their marketing, I don't believe this is actually true.

_se 9mo ago

How do people manage to pick such bad examples? Who in their right mind would ever allow an LLM to FILE THEIR TAXES for them. Absolutely insane behavior. Why would anyone think this is probably coming? Do you think the IRS is going to accept "hallucination lol" as an excuse for misfiling?

yohannparis 9mo ago
Because private taxe filling software, like used in the USA, are exempt from filling errors?
mikkupikku 9mo ago
If you're quick at responding and fixing the problem, the IRS forgives much..

LoganDark 9mo ago

> Because remember, Apple doesn't usually invent new products. It takes proven ones and then makes its own much nicer version. Apple doesn't take proven ones of anything. What they do is arrive at something proven from first principles. Everyone else did it faster because they borrowed, but Apple did it from scratch, with all the detail-oriented UX niceties that entails. This was more prevalent when Jobs was still around. Apple still has some of that philosophy at its core, but it's been eroding over time (for example with "AI" and now Liquid Ass). They still do their own QA, though, and so on. They're not copying the market, they have their own.

debatem1 9mo ago

> Imagine if Siri could genuinely file your taxes If you trust openclaw to file your taxes we are just on radically different levels of risk tolerance.