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I feel like the difference between Steve Jobs’ and Tim Cook’s leadership styles is that Cook is really good at optimizing existing processes, but does not have

by dabinat 9mo ago

I feel like the difference between Steve Jobs’ and Tim Cook’s leadership styles is that Cook is really good at optimizing existing processes, but does not have the vision to capitalize on what’s next. Apple got into the smartphone game at the right time with a lot of new ideas. But whatever the next big shift in technology is, they will be left behind. I don’t know if that is AI, but it’s clear that in AI they are already far behind other companies.

2OEH8eoCRo0 9mo ago
It's easy: make my life easier. Instead they choose to optimize for shareholder value.
sampton 9mo ago
To be fair no one has solved ai assistant at consumer level yet.
- 0x4e 9mo ago
  I agree. It’s still being figured out. My prediction is that Apple is the hardware and platform provider (like it’s always been). We’re not asking them to come up with a better social media, or a better Notion or a better Netflix. I think their proprietary chips and GPUs are being undervalued. My feeling is that they’re letting everyone move fast and break things while trailing behind and making safe bets.
  - coolandsmartrr 9mo ago
    Funny you should mention social media in the context of Apple, because they seem to have been attempting that with iTunes Ping[1] and then Apple Music. iTunes Ping was a Jobs-era attempt to create a social network for music. It seems that they were trying to rely on integrating with Facebook, who pulled out of the collaboration in the last minute before Ping's release. Apple hasn't seem to have given up on social networks for music. Apple Music presents a nascent networking feature where users can see what their friends are listening to.[2] It seems that Apple has learned their lesson from Ping and does not rely on a third-party for a social graph, which is instead powered by iOS contacts. While social media is not Apple's bread and butter, they have maintained their interest in having presence in this market. I would assume that this stems from Apple's overall desire to maintain influence over on-the-top services that define the iOS experience. If they let third parties flourish even further, thirds parties gain leverage that they can use during negotiations with Apple. If third parties successfully negotiate for more features that creates parity with apps on non-Apple devices, Apple loses its differentiation on the device markets, thereby losing revenue. (I think Stratechery wrote about Apple's service strategy that was motivated by its past relationships with Adobe and Spotify. Couldn't find the link.) > We’re not asking them to come up with a better social media, or a better Notion or a better Netflix. You're right that we haven't asked them for better on-the-top services. But it seems to be in Apple's interest to compete with third party services providers and make sure they do not supersede Apple in terms of their influence over on-the-top experiences. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITunes_Ping https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITunes_Ping [2] https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/iphone/iphdf490a9e9/ios https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/iphone/iphdf490a9e9/io...
    - alex43578 9mo ago
      Just as an aside, I do not get a social media platform for music. I don’t need a separate social network to manage, and certainly wouldn’t care what 99% of the people I know are listening to 99.9% of the time.
  - tonyedgecombe 9mo ago
    >My feeling is that they’re letting everyone move fast and break things while trailing behind and making safe bets. That's what is happening but I don't think it was by choice. They clearly had plans to deliver a lot more and have repeatedly failed.
    - 0x4e 9mo ago
      Of course they jumped into the race as soon as possible by mentioning ‘Apple Intelligence’ and working on it. But, I think this was more peer pressure than anything else. Apple’s reliably late to the party most of the time, but they also reliably steal the show. I’m doubtful about OpenAI’s hardware just taking over. I rather wait and keep using 3rd party models that keep leap frogging themselves and adding features every once in a while, than them just publicly beta testing a bunch of things on my iPhone. If this was the case, we’d see a bunch of people complaining about how terrible the product is and how Claude or GPT or OpenClaw is so much better.
- flyingzucchini 9mo ago
  They should start at getting very basic speech recognition working in cars would be a big help.
vineyardmike 9mo ago
I feel like, today, most of the other LLM providers can do what "Apple Intelligence" promised - it'll link with my email/calendar/etc and it can find stuff I ask with a fuzzy search. That said, I don't really use this functionality all that often, because it didn't really (effortlessly) solve a big need for me. Apple sitting out LLMs means they didn't build this competency along the way, even when the technology is now proven. I think the same thing is true was VR - except Apple did invest heavily in it and bring a product to market. Maybe we won't see anything big for a while, and Silicon Valley becomes the next Detroit.
- SoftTalker 9mo ago
  You mean you don't have an everyday need to find an authentic Italian restaurant and make dinner reservations? Without actually doing it yourself?
- FranklinJabar 9mo ago
  > it'll link with my email/calendar/etc Wait, how does that work? I've never heard of this outside of closed ecosystems (iPhone is obviously the best at this, but I guess also google crap if you're invested into gmail/gcal/etc)
  - i386 9mo ago
    yeah this product does not exist
  - vineyardmike 9mo ago
    Gemini can read your personal info if you use google products, obviously. Beyond that, Claude and ChatGPT (the other major chat providers) both support integrations that let you link your email etc. to allow the chat bot to search through them.
al_borland 9mo ago
I think the issue here is the public promises that were made. Jobs tended not to do that. Things were announced and released when they were ready, which gave them the time to do it right, without any delays. Sure, there were things like AirPower and the MobileMe widgets… things that were announced, but never shipped. However, by and large, a big new thing was announced, and a week later it would ship. The iPhone was only announced 6 months early to avoid it being leaked by compliance filing (or maybe it was patents). Cook would be wise to go back to this instead of promising the shareholders things he can’t deliver on. I think slow playing AI is the right move for Apple. Third party apps give their customers access today, and Apple can take the time to figure out how AI fits into a large cohesive vision for their products and ecosystem… or if it fits at all. Rushing something out doesn’t do anyone any favors, and has never been Apple’s competitive advantage.
- hackingonempty 9mo ago
  > The iPhone was only announced 6 months early to avoid it being leaked by compliance filing (or maybe it was patents). Is there evidence of this? I think the phone and watch were announced early because Apples vertical integration strategy and quality standards require them to reveal the existence to the rest of the company so they can get everything else working well with the new product category on release. It wouldn't be possible to keep it secret after revealing it internally so they did a simultaneous internal/external reveal to control the message, to maximize impact, to deny rumor sites, etc...
  - tylerchr 9mo ago
    Yes, or at least that’s the reason Jobs gave in the original Jan 2007 keynote: > We’re going to be shipping these in June. We’re announcing it today because with products like this we’ve got to go ahead and get FCC approval which takes a few months, and we thought it would be better if we introduced this rather than ask the FCC to introduce it for us. So here we are.
    - silvestrov 9mo ago
      He says it at 1:06:55 in the introduction: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQKMoT-6XSg&t=4017s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQKMoT-6XSg&t=4017s
nilkn 9mo ago
Just my opinion: Apple doesn't need to solve AI. It's not core to their business in the same way that search engines aren't core to their business. What Apple does best lies at the combination of hardware, software, physical materials, and human-computer interface design. This is why they're spending so much more on mixed reality than AI, even knowing that a product like the Vision Pro today isn't going to be a big seller. It's why they're investing in their own silicon. This strategy tends to yield unexpected wins, like the Mac Mini suddenly becoming one of the hottest computers in the world because it turns out it's amazing for sandboxing agents if you don't want to use the cloud, or the Mac Studio becoming arguably the best way to run local AI models (a nascent space that is on the cusp of becoming genuinely relevant), or the MacBook Pro becoming by far the best laptop in the world for productivity in the AI age (and it's not even close). Your conclusion is that they're going to be left behind, but the evidence is that they're already well ahead in the areas that are core to their business. They can trivially pay Google a billion a year for Gemini. Nobody else can do what they can in the fusion of hardware, software, and materials as long as they stay focused. Where they genuinely slipped up was their marketing -- an unusual mistake for Apple. And that does indeed lie with the CEO.
- torben-friis 9mo ago
  >They can trivially pay Google a billion a year for Gemini. But they can’t vertically integrate the feature, not with acceptable levels of reliability and security. That’s the key issue here, an apple AI would be something that can read and interact with your mail, pictures, contacts, location, and so on, but right now giving such access to an LLM would be a ticking timebomb. And those kind of integrated products are probably coming to competitors, even if their security plan is just YOLO.
  - nilkn 9mo ago
    You're not wrong, but you can also get most (or even nearly all) of that right now today on any device by just getting a Google AI subscription. Gemini already does most of that through its own personal intelligence feature. You do need to use Gmail at minimum for it to be useful, but the vast majority of iPhone users do already.
falkensmaize 9mo ago
All I really want from Apple is to continue perfecting their computers, phones and tablets to be the absolute best computing devices possible. As long as they keep iteratively improving those things I don’t care if they’re thought or innovation leaders in whatever hot new thing comes along.
chaostheory 9mo ago
Right or wrong, at least he takes risks. Apple Vision Pro was launched two years too early, but you can’t say that he just realized on existing products.
- microtonal 9mo ago
  Was he taking risks or just reactionary after Facebook going all-in on the Metaverse (and by the time the product was done, the Metaverse was pretty dead already)?
  - chaostheory 9mo ago
    Have you used either one for long periods of time? Both are revolutionary and were worth the risk. I don’t feel it was reactionary
- alex43578 9mo ago
  2 years early? I don’t think the time for Vision is now, or even 3 years from now based on the hardware and use cases.
  - chaostheory 9mo ago
    My point is that the product they marketed only matches the product they released recently. In terms of something that adults want, you’re right. It would take about 10 years before the only generation who is into it, Gen Alpha, would come of age and be able to make that transition to AR/VR like how Gen X did with high speed internet.
GeekyBear 9mo ago
I'd say that after the Apple Maps launch, Tim Cook learned a lesson about allowing features that need additional work the time they need to fully bake. Google just launched the Pixel 10 with several promised AI features broken, and could really stand to learn the same lesson. https://www.androidauthority.com/google-pixel-10-magic-cue-one-month-later-3598684/ https://www.androidauthority.com/google-pixel-10-magic-cue-o... https://arstechnica.com/google/2025/09/google-pulls-daily-hub-ai-feature-from-pixel-10-phones/ https://arstechnica.com/google/2025/09/google-pulls-daily-hu...
- chaostheory 9mo ago
  Not sure of that since Vision Pro needed the M5 to work as promised, instead of the blurry mess that ran on the M2
- Lio 9mo ago
  Apple Maps is still such a sucky service, at least where I live and where I travel to. It regularly directs me to incorrect addresses and businesses and labels places obviously incorrectly. Every use of the search function promotes guide content for a single city I'm not currently in, with no way to configure or turn them off. Good products should go out of their way to annoy you IMHO. They only managed to get their cycle routing for the UK and Ireland working in 2025 after years and years of complaints. I'm not a fan of Google but I feel compelled to keep Google Maps because Apple Maps is still so unreliable. I'd offer the balance here that I still don't enjoy using Android and generally prefer iOS to it, warts and all.
  - dpkirchner 9mo ago
    Google Maps regularly sends contractors, delivery drivers, etc to a blocked off utility "road" that has never allowed traffic. Apple Maps doesn't. I've given up reporting the problem to Google. (And besides, Google eventually took away the report feature from either desktop or mobile, I forget which, telling me their engineers don't care at all about quality.) So at least for me Apple Maps wins.
FranklinJabar 9mo ago
> it’s clear that in AI they are already far behind other companies. I think it's exactly the opposite, actually. They've integrated AI flawlessly into existing products to an extent nobody else has even come close to. Photos, for instance, makes better use of AI than any other photo management app in existence. If anything, ChatGPT/Microsoft/Google/etc are absolutely crippled because they don't have access to the data people actually use on a day to day basis—instead, it's scattered across a million browser apps and private silos. And, you don't have to use an asinine chatbot integration looking like a fool to use it. Perhaps Google comes the closest to being able to capitalize on this, but I can't say I can remember using any AI integration they have, and I stopped giving them my data over a decade ago.
- neya 9mo ago
  "I think it's exactly the opposite, actually. They've integrated AI flawlessly into existing products to an extent nobody else has even come close to. Photos, for instance" Have you used a Samsung? Apple's AI miserably fails in every comparison out there in the photos app. There's also Google Photos with Gemini which helps you find any photo you want with AI better than anyone else. But sure, Apple has the best AI integration
  - seec 9mo ago
    That's just the typical Apple distortion field. I have been using Apple devices and supporting many of their users for over 20 years, and they are all extremely invested in their choice of computing device. It's really a source of pride for many of them, weirdly. For this reason, anything Apple does is necessarily better than everything else on the market. It's a bit pointless to argue because they come from an emotional standpoint; if you point at the many things not working properly, they always have an excuse to handwave it away. It's really funny because I use Apple stuff, and I find many qualities in it, but I'm unwilling to be blind to the faults and weaknesses. This sort of ego investment exists for other brands as well; I think it is a lack of emotional maturity and an inability to realize that a brand does not care if you do not fully "love" their products.
neya 9mo ago
100% agreed. You speak the truth, but already the apologists are writing textbooks justifying Apple's failed strategy :)) and this is why the company thrives. Just blind loyalty to a company that couldn't care less about them.
- NetMageSCW 9mo ago
  That is a delusional take on why millions continue to purchase Apple products and services. They expect Apple to provide services that work well and are not willing to put up with the terrible products other companies produce.
  - bigyabai 9mo ago
    That is even more delusional than the parent comment. There is no dialectic law of business that guarantees a better experience with a competitor's product. If you traded your Nintendo Switch for a gaming iPad, for example, you'd be making a horrible mistake. The iPad's presence as a gaming machine is synonymous with online gambling. If Apple's products and services were heads-and-shoulder above their competition, we'd know. The iPhone is the only modern example, and it relies on lock-in that is considered illegally anticompetitive in multiple jurisdictions worldwide.
    - Nevermark 9mo ago
      There are only two real choices in mobile. Simple diversity of what people want means lots of people buy Apple because it is better for them. It isn't like anyone gets what they really want across many features, whatever they buy. And iPad's are optimized for different uses than the switch. Those are entirely different form factors. (You can turn an iPad mini into a switch like device with controller add ons. But those are add ons so the software does not put that form factor first.)
snowwrestler 9mo ago
I think comparisons between Jobs and Cook are trite and cliche by now, and also pointless. Jobs was a generational talent; everyone looked up to him when it came to defining products. Of course Cook is not able to do what Jobs did. No one can. Apple has already been left behind by many tech shifts: web, search, social, crypto, metaverse, etc. At various times popular opinion had them left behind by netbooks, by tablets, by smart phones, by Windows, by web browsers… until they weren’t. Apple does not have to lead all categories of tech to be a very successful company.
profsummergig 9mo ago
Steve Jobs had the AI vision. Siri was a (sorta) early AI. And it was acquired under his watch.
pjmlp 9mo ago
Apple is in a better situation now than with Gil Amelio, thanks to printing money with iDevices. However everything else is quite similar for those of us that were around. Except now there isn't a Be or NeXT to acquire, nor the former founder to get back.
- lolive 9mo ago
  They can buy Open AI.
  - pjmlp 9mo ago
    First they have to buy NVidia and Microsoft into it.
csomar 9mo ago
They have a software issue (I mean who doesn’t) but Cook has tried his hand in lots of products. Some worked like the airpod, airtag and watch; and a particular one flopped: vision. It’s a marvelous tech device that unfortunately had no demand. Also the m series can be attributed to him and it’s as good as innovation can get.
Lio 9mo ago
It seems to me that people have been saying that Apple will be left behind since the Apple II. That they keep doing non-obvious things that somehow succeed is what makes them an interesting company. I don't know that Apple will dominate AI, personally I dislike Siri and iOS, but I think Apple have a very good shot at delivering workable local AI for professionals. If Apple can lift the inference performance of their forthcoming M5 Ultra chip I think they may become an off the shelf standard for those that want to run large models locally. That in itself is probably enough to keep them relevant until actual useful uses of Apple Intelligence come to light.
- alex43578 9mo ago
  I don’t think Apple or Microsoft (via Windows) will dominate AI. There’s just too much value in the AI being in the cloud (big powerful models vs local) and across your devices (more context on you, running on low powered edge devices like watches, glasses, smart home devices), and the idea of an OS being a decisive factor is already fading with how much work people do in a browser or cloud app.
  - Lio 9mo ago
    I think there's room for multiple approaches here. Cloud based AI obviously has a lot of advantages e.g. batched proccessing on the best hardward, low power edge devices, data sharing, etc. There's still room for local inference though. I don't know that I want "more context on me" all the time. I want some context, some of the time and I want to be in full control of it. I'd pay for that. I don't think it will be for everyone but a number of people would pay a premium for an off shelf product that provides privacy and control that cloud vendors by their nature just can't offer.
    - alex43578 9mo ago
      Definitely room for multiple approaches, including local LLMs. But I just don't think for most users that local LLM capabilities will be a deciding factor in either hardware or OS choices. A cloud subscription model will be the premium offering ($20 for consumers, $100 to $1000 or pay-per-token for businesses), and inevitably something ad-supported at a lower price or free for low-end consumers. Once Joe Consumer has access to that subscription ChatGPT or free tier, are they really going to run a far-less-powerful model on their laptop? Outside of a few simple tasks like semantic search in your email, notes, photos; or localized transcription, local models will just be too far behind the curve for the public to make much use of them.
worldsavior 9mo ago
Uh, I think Apple had proven themselves many times that they're the one to bring something new and advanced. It started with MacBooks, then iPhones, a digital assistant, TouchID, Airpods, FaceID, fan-less MacBooks and probably more stuff. Is it not enough?
- ragazzina 9mo ago
  You have only listed hardware, no software (I don't count "A digital assistant" because I don't know what it refers to).
  - worldsavior 9mo ago
    > I don't count "A digital assistant" because I don't know what it refers to You haven't heard of Siri? I don't see the OP stating he only talked about software, and what I mentioned also software in it.
    - ragazzina 9mo ago
      I have heard of Siri, I would never expect anyone to mention Siri while enumerating "new and advanced" things Apple developed. OP said whatever the next shift in technology, Apple will be left behind. You said Apple actually developed new advanced products, but only mentioned hardware examples. If the new big shift in technology is in software (such as AI), we have no reason to predict Apple will fare well there.
      - worldsavior 9mo ago
        It was new and advanced back then. AI is not only software but also hardware. Apple were the first to develop a (good) chip specifically for AI computation (ANE), and their MacBooks are very good for running AI models locally. Apple are not like Google or Facebook (they're mainly software, and Apple are titled more towards hardware), their vision isn't the same as theirs, but their vision will hold for a very long time.
renegade-otter 9mo ago
Supply chain optimization WAS Cook's original role. This is what made Apple the juggernaut it is today, so your observation is not totally random.
dgxyz 9mo ago
This not about leadership. It's about product specification. There's no way it fits into their ecosystem without compromising it. Everyone else has compromised theirs and their customers. Apple do not want to do this. I suspect they will fail on AI but will win in the long run as competitors screw their customers over.
- onlyrealcuzzo 9mo ago
  I suspect they'll win on AI by not investing $200Bn in CapEx and waiting 5 years until good enough models can be trained for <$1Bn and then just doing that - blocking all other AI models on their hardware beside their own (which their users seem to like) - and saving $200Bn and getting an experience that's good enough for almost everyone and spending enough on marketing to convince everyone it's 10x better. Apple has BY FAR the best chips at this level. I don't see anything changing that in less than 5 years. That will be a pretty big advantage in the near future.
  - dgxyz 9mo ago
    That's feasible but I think the whole thing will collapse in a heap when the obviously iffy funding structures fall apart due to a mix of lack of declinging investor interest and drunk assery by the US gov resulting in distrust and higher risk profiling of the associated investments. At least Apple has other products that make money.
LightBug1 9mo ago
You're dreaming. I'm not an Apple fanboy, but Apple have an almost infinite runway to get AI right if they wanted to ... but just like they haven't invested billions to chase Search, so they'd be fine riding the AI wave getting paid billions to have third party AI put on their device.
willio58 9mo ago
The other difference between Steve and Tim is Steve would have never been caught dead giving a gold gift to a sitting president. It comes off as desperate and evil, two things Steve would have hated associating with Apple.
Nevermark 9mo ago
i have said it before: the Vision Pro with Mac screen linking is a tease for a complete Mac-superior spacial interface. The new high end device from Apple for the future. An interface that levels up a MacBook Pro’s or Studio’s power and productivity. Except no. After getting the hardware right, Tim gave us an another iOS toy / media kiosk (in 3D!) for $3500. I would have paid $5000 if it was the new developer friendly, macOS spacial, pro software, room-scale interface machine. I would have thought Tim Cook would have been proud to push the product line / user interface, bicycle-for-the-mind bar higher during his tour of duty. An historic computing advancement. But I guess raising the media kiosk, novelty apps and purchases, third party creator tax, service subscriptions and scammy ads with no ad-free tier revenue bar, is what he wants to be remembered for.

by dabinat 9mo ago

2OEH8eoCRo0 9mo ago

It's easy: make my life easier. Instead they choose to optimize for shareholder value.

sampton 9mo ago

To be fair no one has solved ai assistant at consumer level yet.

0x4e 9mo ago
I agree. It’s still being figured out. My prediction is that Apple is the hardware and platform provider (like it’s always been). We’re not asking them to come up with a better social media, or a better Notion or a better Netflix. I think their proprietary chips and GPUs are being undervalued. My feeling is that they’re letting everyone move fast and break things while trailing behind and making safe bets.
- coolandsmartrr 9mo ago
  Funny you should mention social media in the context of Apple, because they seem to have been attempting that with iTunes Ping[1] and then Apple Music. iTunes Ping was a Jobs-era attempt to create a social network for music. It seems that they were trying to rely on integrating with Facebook, who pulled out of the collaboration in the last minute before Ping's release. Apple hasn't seem to have given up on social networks for music. Apple Music presents a nascent networking feature where users can see what their friends are listening to.[2] It seems that Apple has learned their lesson from Ping and does not rely on a third-party for a social graph, which is instead powered by iOS contacts. While social media is not Apple's bread and butter, they have maintained their interest in having presence in this market. I would assume that this stems from Apple's overall desire to maintain influence over on-the-top services that define the iOS experience. If they let third parties flourish even further, thirds parties gain leverage that they can use during negotiations with Apple. If third parties successfully negotiate for more features that creates parity with apps on non-Apple devices, Apple loses its differentiation on the device markets, thereby losing revenue. (I think Stratechery wrote about Apple's service strategy that was motivated by its past relationships with Adobe and Spotify. Couldn't find the link.) > We’re not asking them to come up with a better social media, or a better Notion or a better Netflix. You're right that we haven't asked them for better on-the-top services. But it seems to be in Apple's interest to compete with third party services providers and make sure they do not supersede Apple in terms of their influence over on-the-top experiences. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITunes_Ping https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITunes_Ping [2] https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/iphone/iphdf490a9e9/ios https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/iphone/iphdf490a9e9/io...
  - alex43578 9mo ago
    Just as an aside, I do not get a social media platform for music. I don’t need a separate social network to manage, and certainly wouldn’t care what 99% of the people I know are listening to 99.9% of the time.
- tonyedgecombe 9mo ago
  >My feeling is that they’re letting everyone move fast and break things while trailing behind and making safe bets. That's what is happening but I don't think it was by choice. They clearly had plans to deliver a lot more and have repeatedly failed.
  - 0x4e 9mo ago
    Of course they jumped into the race as soon as possible by mentioning ‘Apple Intelligence’ and working on it. But, I think this was more peer pressure than anything else. Apple’s reliably late to the party most of the time, but they also reliably steal the show. I’m doubtful about OpenAI’s hardware just taking over. I rather wait and keep using 3rd party models that keep leap frogging themselves and adding features every once in a while, than them just publicly beta testing a bunch of things on my iPhone. If this was the case, we’d see a bunch of people complaining about how terrible the product is and how Claude or GPT or OpenClaw is so much better.
flyingzucchini 9mo ago
They should start at getting very basic speech recognition working in cars would be a big help.

vineyardmike 9mo ago

I feel like, today, most of the other LLM providers can do what "Apple Intelligence" promised - it'll link with my email/calendar/etc and it can find stuff I ask with a fuzzy search. That said, I don't really use this functionality all that often, because it didn't really (effortlessly) solve a big need for me. Apple sitting out LLMs means they didn't build this competency along the way, even when the technology is now proven. I think the same thing is true was VR - except Apple did invest heavily in it and bring a product to market. Maybe we won't see anything big for a while, and Silicon Valley becomes the next Detroit.

SoftTalker 9mo ago
You mean you don't have an everyday need to find an authentic Italian restaurant and make dinner reservations? Without actually doing it yourself?
FranklinJabar 9mo ago
> it'll link with my email/calendar/etc Wait, how does that work? I've never heard of this outside of closed ecosystems (iPhone is obviously the best at this, but I guess also google crap if you're invested into gmail/gcal/etc)
- i386 9mo ago
  yeah this product does not exist
- vineyardmike 9mo ago
  Gemini can read your personal info if you use google products, obviously. Beyond that, Claude and ChatGPT (the other major chat providers) both support integrations that let you link your email etc. to allow the chat bot to search through them.

al_borland 9mo ago

I think the issue here is the public promises that were made. Jobs tended not to do that. Things were announced and released when they were ready, which gave them the time to do it right, without any delays. Sure, there were things like AirPower and the MobileMe widgets… things that were announced, but never shipped. However, by and large, a big new thing was announced, and a week later it would ship. The iPhone was only announced 6 months early to avoid it being leaked by compliance filing (or maybe it was patents). Cook would be wise to go back to this instead of promising the shareholders things he can’t deliver on. I think slow playing AI is the right move for Apple. Third party apps give their customers access today, and Apple can take the time to figure out how AI fits into a large cohesive vision for their products and ecosystem… or if it fits at all. Rushing something out doesn’t do anyone any favors, and has never been Apple’s competitive advantage.

hackingonempty 9mo ago
> The iPhone was only announced 6 months early to avoid it being leaked by compliance filing (or maybe it was patents). Is there evidence of this? I think the phone and watch were announced early because Apples vertical integration strategy and quality standards require them to reveal the existence to the rest of the company so they can get everything else working well with the new product category on release. It wouldn't be possible to keep it secret after revealing it internally so they did a simultaneous internal/external reveal to control the message, to maximize impact, to deny rumor sites, etc...
- tylerchr 9mo ago
  Yes, or at least that’s the reason Jobs gave in the original Jan 2007 keynote: > We’re going to be shipping these in June. We’re announcing it today because with products like this we’ve got to go ahead and get FCC approval which takes a few months, and we thought it would be better if we introduced this rather than ask the FCC to introduce it for us. So here we are.
  - silvestrov 9mo ago
    He says it at 1:06:55 in the introduction: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQKMoT-6XSg&t=4017s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQKMoT-6XSg&t=4017s

nilkn 9mo ago

Just my opinion: Apple doesn't need to solve AI. It's not core to their business in the same way that search engines aren't core to their business. What Apple does best lies at the combination of hardware, software, physical materials, and human-computer interface design. This is why they're spending so much more on mixed reality than AI, even knowing that a product like the Vision Pro today isn't going to be a big seller. It's why they're investing in their own silicon. This strategy tends to yield unexpected wins, like the Mac Mini suddenly becoming one of the hottest computers in the world because it turns out it's amazing for sandboxing agents if you don't want to use the cloud, or the Mac Studio becoming arguably the best way to run local AI models (a nascent space that is on the cusp of becoming genuinely relevant), or the MacBook Pro becoming by far the best laptop in the world for productivity in the AI age (and it's not even close). Your conclusion is that they're going to be left behind, but the evidence is that they're already well ahead in the areas that are core to their business. They can trivially pay Google a billion a year for Gemini. Nobody else can do what they can in the fusion of hardware, software, and materials as long as they stay focused. Where they genuinely slipped up was their marketing -- an unusual mistake for Apple. And that does indeed lie with the CEO.

torben-friis 9mo ago
>They can trivially pay Google a billion a year for Gemini. But they can’t vertically integrate the feature, not with acceptable levels of reliability and security. That’s the key issue here, an apple AI would be something that can read and interact with your mail, pictures, contacts, location, and so on, but right now giving such access to an LLM would be a ticking timebomb. And those kind of integrated products are probably coming to competitors, even if their security plan is just YOLO.
- nilkn 9mo ago
  You're not wrong, but you can also get most (or even nearly all) of that right now today on any device by just getting a Google AI subscription. Gemini already does most of that through its own personal intelligence feature. You do need to use Gmail at minimum for it to be useful, but the vast majority of iPhone users do already.

falkensmaize 9mo ago

All I really want from Apple is to continue perfecting their computers, phones and tablets to be the absolute best computing devices possible. As long as they keep iteratively improving those things I don’t care if they’re thought or innovation leaders in whatever hot new thing comes along.

chaostheory 9mo ago

Right or wrong, at least he takes risks. Apple Vision Pro was launched two years too early, but you can’t say that he just realized on existing products.

microtonal 9mo ago
Was he taking risks or just reactionary after Facebook going all-in on the Metaverse (and by the time the product was done, the Metaverse was pretty dead already)?
- chaostheory 9mo ago
  Have you used either one for long periods of time? Both are revolutionary and were worth the risk. I don’t feel it was reactionary
alex43578 9mo ago
2 years early? I don’t think the time for Vision is now, or even 3 years from now based on the hardware and use cases.
- chaostheory 9mo ago
  My point is that the product they marketed only matches the product they released recently. In terms of something that adults want, you’re right. It would take about 10 years before the only generation who is into it, Gen Alpha, would come of age and be able to make that transition to AR/VR like how Gen X did with high speed internet.

GeekyBear 9mo ago

I'd say that after the Apple Maps launch, Tim Cook learned a lesson about allowing features that need additional work the time they need to fully bake. Google just launched the Pixel 10 with several promised AI features broken, and could really stand to learn the same lesson. https://www.androidauthority.com/google-pixel-10-magic-cue-one-month-later-3598684/ https://www.androidauthority.com/google-pixel-10-magic-cue-o... https://arstechnica.com/google/2025/09/google-pulls-daily-hub-ai-feature-from-pixel-10-phones/ https://arstechnica.com/google/2025/09/google-pulls-daily-hu...

chaostheory 9mo ago
Not sure of that since Vision Pro needed the M5 to work as promised, instead of the blurry mess that ran on the M2
Lio 9mo ago
Apple Maps is still such a sucky service, at least where I live and where I travel to. It regularly directs me to incorrect addresses and businesses and labels places obviously incorrectly. Every use of the search function promotes guide content for a single city I'm not currently in, with no way to configure or turn them off. Good products should go out of their way to annoy you IMHO. They only managed to get their cycle routing for the UK and Ireland working in 2025 after years and years of complaints. I'm not a fan of Google but I feel compelled to keep Google Maps because Apple Maps is still so unreliable. I'd offer the balance here that I still don't enjoy using Android and generally prefer iOS to it, warts and all.
- dpkirchner 9mo ago
  Google Maps regularly sends contractors, delivery drivers, etc to a blocked off utility "road" that has never allowed traffic. Apple Maps doesn't. I've given up reporting the problem to Google. (And besides, Google eventually took away the report feature from either desktop or mobile, I forget which, telling me their engineers don't care at all about quality.) So at least for me Apple Maps wins.

FranklinJabar 9mo ago

> it’s clear that in AI they are already far behind other companies. I think it's exactly the opposite, actually. They've integrated AI flawlessly into existing products to an extent nobody else has even come close to. Photos, for instance, makes better use of AI than any other photo management app in existence. If anything, ChatGPT/Microsoft/Google/etc are absolutely crippled because they don't have access to the data people actually use on a day to day basis—instead, it's scattered across a million browser apps and private silos. And, you don't have to use an asinine chatbot integration looking like a fool to use it. Perhaps Google comes the closest to being able to capitalize on this, but I can't say I can remember using any AI integration they have, and I stopped giving them my data over a decade ago.

neya 9mo ago
"I think it's exactly the opposite, actually. They've integrated AI flawlessly into existing products to an extent nobody else has even come close to. Photos, for instance" Have you used a Samsung? Apple's AI miserably fails in every comparison out there in the photos app. There's also Google Photos with Gemini which helps you find any photo you want with AI better than anyone else. But sure, Apple has the best AI integration
- seec 9mo ago
  That's just the typical Apple distortion field. I have been using Apple devices and supporting many of their users for over 20 years, and they are all extremely invested in their choice of computing device. It's really a source of pride for many of them, weirdly. For this reason, anything Apple does is necessarily better than everything else on the market. It's a bit pointless to argue because they come from an emotional standpoint; if you point at the many things not working properly, they always have an excuse to handwave it away. It's really funny because I use Apple stuff, and I find many qualities in it, but I'm unwilling to be blind to the faults and weaknesses. This sort of ego investment exists for other brands as well; I think it is a lack of emotional maturity and an inability to realize that a brand does not care if you do not fully "love" their products.

neya 9mo ago

100% agreed. You speak the truth, but already the apologists are writing textbooks justifying Apple's failed strategy :)) and this is why the company thrives. Just blind loyalty to a company that couldn't care less about them.

NetMageSCW 9mo ago
That is a delusional take on why millions continue to purchase Apple products and services. They expect Apple to provide services that work well and are not willing to put up with the terrible products other companies produce.
- bigyabai 9mo ago
  That is even more delusional than the parent comment. There is no dialectic law of business that guarantees a better experience with a competitor's product. If you traded your Nintendo Switch for a gaming iPad, for example, you'd be making a horrible mistake. The iPad's presence as a gaming machine is synonymous with online gambling. If Apple's products and services were heads-and-shoulder above their competition, we'd know. The iPhone is the only modern example, and it relies on lock-in that is considered illegally anticompetitive in multiple jurisdictions worldwide.
  - Nevermark 9mo ago
    There are only two real choices in mobile. Simple diversity of what people want means lots of people buy Apple because it is better for them. It isn't like anyone gets what they really want across many features, whatever they buy. And iPad's are optimized for different uses than the switch. Those are entirely different form factors. (You can turn an iPad mini into a switch like device with controller add ons. But those are add ons so the software does not put that form factor first.)

snowwrestler 9mo ago

I think comparisons between Jobs and Cook are trite and cliche by now, and also pointless. Jobs was a generational talent; everyone looked up to him when it came to defining products. Of course Cook is not able to do what Jobs did. No one can. Apple has already been left behind by many tech shifts: web, search, social, crypto, metaverse, etc. At various times popular opinion had them left behind by netbooks, by tablets, by smart phones, by Windows, by web browsers… until they weren’t. Apple does not have to lead all categories of tech to be a very successful company.

profsummergig 9mo ago

Steve Jobs had the AI vision. Siri was a (sorta) early AI. And it was acquired under his watch.

pjmlp 9mo ago

Apple is in a better situation now than with Gil Amelio, thanks to printing money with iDevices. However everything else is quite similar for those of us that were around. Except now there isn't a Be or NeXT to acquire, nor the former founder to get back.

lolive 9mo ago
They can buy Open AI.
- pjmlp 9mo ago
  First they have to buy NVidia and Microsoft into it.

csomar 9mo ago

They have a software issue (I mean who doesn’t) but Cook has tried his hand in lots of products. Some worked like the airpod, airtag and watch; and a particular one flopped: vision. It’s a marvelous tech device that unfortunately had no demand. Also the m series can be attributed to him and it’s as good as innovation can get.

Lio 9mo ago

It seems to me that people have been saying that Apple will be left behind since the Apple II. That they keep doing non-obvious things that somehow succeed is what makes them an interesting company. I don't know that Apple will dominate AI, personally I dislike Siri and iOS, but I think Apple have a very good shot at delivering workable local AI for professionals. If Apple can lift the inference performance of their forthcoming M5 Ultra chip I think they may become an off the shelf standard for those that want to run large models locally. That in itself is probably enough to keep them relevant until actual useful uses of Apple Intelligence come to light.

alex43578 9mo ago
I don’t think Apple or Microsoft (via Windows) will dominate AI. There’s just too much value in the AI being in the cloud (big powerful models vs local) and across your devices (more context on you, running on low powered edge devices like watches, glasses, smart home devices), and the idea of an OS being a decisive factor is already fading with how much work people do in a browser or cloud app.
- Lio 9mo ago
  I think there's room for multiple approaches here. Cloud based AI obviously has a lot of advantages e.g. batched proccessing on the best hardward, low power edge devices, data sharing, etc. There's still room for local inference though. I don't know that I want "more context on me" all the time. I want some context, some of the time and I want to be in full control of it. I'd pay for that. I don't think it will be for everyone but a number of people would pay a premium for an off shelf product that provides privacy and control that cloud vendors by their nature just can't offer.
  - alex43578 9mo ago
    Definitely room for multiple approaches, including local LLMs. But I just don't think for most users that local LLM capabilities will be a deciding factor in either hardware or OS choices. A cloud subscription model will be the premium offering ($20 for consumers, $100 to $1000 or pay-per-token for businesses), and inevitably something ad-supported at a lower price or free for low-end consumers. Once Joe Consumer has access to that subscription ChatGPT or free tier, are they really going to run a far-less-powerful model on their laptop? Outside of a few simple tasks like semantic search in your email, notes, photos; or localized transcription, local models will just be too far behind the curve for the public to make much use of them.

worldsavior 9mo ago

Uh, I think Apple had proven themselves many times that they're the one to bring something new and advanced. It started with MacBooks, then iPhones, a digital assistant, TouchID, Airpods, FaceID, fan-less MacBooks and probably more stuff. Is it not enough?

ragazzina 9mo ago
You have only listed hardware, no software (I don't count "A digital assistant" because I don't know what it refers to).
- worldsavior 9mo ago
  > I don't count "A digital assistant" because I don't know what it refers to You haven't heard of Siri? I don't see the OP stating he only talked about software, and what I mentioned also software in it.
  - ragazzina 9mo ago
    I have heard of Siri, I would never expect anyone to mention Siri while enumerating "new and advanced" things Apple developed. OP said whatever the next shift in technology, Apple will be left behind. You said Apple actually developed new advanced products, but only mentioned hardware examples. If the new big shift in technology is in software (such as AI), we have no reason to predict Apple will fare well there.
    - worldsavior 9mo ago
      It was new and advanced back then. AI is not only software but also hardware. Apple were the first to develop a (good) chip specifically for AI computation (ANE), and their MacBooks are very good for running AI models locally. Apple are not like Google or Facebook (they're mainly software, and Apple are titled more towards hardware), their vision isn't the same as theirs, but their vision will hold for a very long time.

renegade-otter 9mo ago

Supply chain optimization WAS Cook's original role. This is what made Apple the juggernaut it is today, so your observation is not totally random.

dgxyz 9mo ago

This not about leadership. It's about product specification. There's no way it fits into their ecosystem without compromising it. Everyone else has compromised theirs and their customers. Apple do not want to do this. I suspect they will fail on AI but will win in the long run as competitors screw their customers over.

onlyrealcuzzo 9mo ago
I suspect they'll win on AI by not investing $200Bn in CapEx and waiting 5 years until good enough models can be trained for <$1Bn and then just doing that - blocking all other AI models on their hardware beside their own (which their users seem to like) - and saving $200Bn and getting an experience that's good enough for almost everyone and spending enough on marketing to convince everyone it's 10x better. Apple has BY FAR the best chips at this level. I don't see anything changing that in less than 5 years. That will be a pretty big advantage in the near future.
- dgxyz 9mo ago
  That's feasible but I think the whole thing will collapse in a heap when the obviously iffy funding structures fall apart due to a mix of lack of declinging investor interest and drunk assery by the US gov resulting in distrust and higher risk profiling of the associated investments. At least Apple has other products that make money.

LightBug1 9mo ago

You're dreaming. I'm not an Apple fanboy, but Apple have an almost infinite runway to get AI right if they wanted to ... but just like they haven't invested billions to chase Search, so they'd be fine riding the AI wave getting paid billions to have third party AI put on their device.

willio58 9mo ago

The other difference between Steve and Tim is Steve would have never been caught dead giving a gold gift to a sitting president. It comes off as desperate and evil, two things Steve would have hated associating with Apple.

Nevermark 9mo ago

i have said it before: the Vision Pro with Mac screen linking is a tease for a complete Mac-superior spacial interface. The new high end device from Apple for the future. An interface that levels up a MacBook Pro’s or Studio’s power and productivity. Except no. After getting the hardware right, Tim gave us an another iOS toy / media kiosk (in 3D!) for $3500. I would have paid $5000 if it was the new developer friendly, macOS spacial, pro software, room-scale interface machine. I would have thought Tim Cook would have been proud to push the product line / user interface, bicycle-for-the-mind bar higher during his tour of duty. An historic computing advancement. But I guess raising the media kiosk, novelty apps and purchases, third party creator tax, service subscriptions and scammy ads with no ad-free tier revenue bar, is what he wants to be remembered for.