One of my editors once told me that a cynic will always sound more rational, but that doesn’t mean they’re right. French statesman Francois Guizot basically said the same thing from another POV: “The world belongs to optimists. Pessimists are only spectators.”
Apple’s AI strategy has a lot of cynics and pessimists right now — and they sound pretty rational based on what we’ve seen during the past 12 months. The long-awaited revamp of Siri never materialized. Apple’s vision of your own custom AI-powered assistant with your “personal context” has been little more than a hopeful vision. And the AI features that have arrived — such as summaries of a string of text messages — have been both game-changing and, at times, super frustrating to use.
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Still, the new AI revolution that is sweeping the tech industry — and soon the planet — is in desperate need of many of the qualities that Apple usually exemplifies in its approach to products. I’m talking about qualities like polish, attention to detail, user trust, and patience.
While generative AI is racing forward at a breakneck pace, it continues to feel half-baked and overhyped much of the time. I’m confident that’s why ZDNET/Aberdeen research showed that only 8% of the broader public say they’re willing to pay for AI features on their devices. Even more challenging, 69% said they would stop using a product or consider stopping if it had AI features that they couldn’t turn off.
It’s still early for AI
In other words, our research shows a massive gap between the next-big-thing narrative that companies like OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, and others are telling us about the AI revolution and the lack of enthusiasm from the people who are learning about these new AI features and trying to use them in the real world.
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Don’t get me wrong, there’s a lot to be excited about. If you’ve used one of these generative AI tools to summarize a 500-page document for you, help you write a recommendation letter, or translate a document from a relatively obscure language into English, then you’ve gotten a taste of how useful they can be in the right circumstances. And if you’re a coder or a programmer, generative AI is a life-changer.
But if you’ve used chatbots for much time at all and started double-checking their accuracy, then you’ve likely also come across the fact that products like ChatGPT regularly hallucinate, make stuff up, and simply get things wrong. In short, they can’t be fully trusted, and that limits a lot of their usefulness because you often have to double-check their work.
(Disclosure: Ziff Davis, ZDNET’s parent company, filed an April 2025 lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.)
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Last year at WWDC 2024, Apple spent a lot of time trying to convince us that it’s an AI leader, that it’s been working on AI for years, and that it had exciting new AI breakthroughs on the way that only Apple could deliver because of its broad ecosystem of devices and platforms and its strong privacy stance.
It was a bold move since Apple rarely talks about future products and features until they are nearly fully baked. In retrospect, last year’s AI blitz at WWDC was unnecessary.
Apple didn’t need to enter the AI features arms race, in which OpenAI, Google, and a constellation of tech giants and cash-rich startups are playing a relentless game of one-upmanship.
That’s not where Apple can compete, and it’s not where Apple can make the biggest impact in tech’s next big wave of innovation.
What Apple can bring to the table
Apple simply needs to run the Apple playbook. One example that was on the right track at last year’s WWDC was when Apple focused on integrating AI feature-by-feature into its existing software, such as Messages, Genmoji, and the Mail app. There are a lot of existing features on the iPhone, for example, that could be enhanced, streamlined, and made more powerful — all outside of the chatbot.
When it comes to Siri, Apple has likely realized that it needs to start over from the ground up. The codebase for Siri goes back decades to old government projects in DARPA, and my understanding from people with knowledge of the code is that retrofitting it for today’s uses has created a classic innovator’s dilemma that has hindered Siri for a decade and kept it from
Also: According to ZDNET-Aberdeen research, only 8% of Americans would pay extra for AI. According to ZDNET Aberdeen research, only 8% of Americans are willing to pay more for AI.
This is also true: Only 8% would pay more for AI.
But that doesn’t mean Apple has to buy its way to compete with LLMs or the latest chatbots. Anthropic’s Claude is often mentioned as a great fit for Apple due to Anthropic’s focus on privacy, AI safety and security. However, Anthropic was worth $61.5B in March of 2025so an acquisition would cost more than $100B. Anthropic is unlikely to be purchased by Apple or anyone else. Apple has AI talent, and it has the time. The generative AI revolution has only just begun to take off. Even if it takes two years to rebuild Siri for the age LLMs, the effort will be worth it. And many users will still be starting their journey with AI by 2027.
Apple could continue using LLMs to improve individual features on the iPhone and across its various products, but do it the Apple way. Wait until all features are ready before telling us why we should get excited.
Don’t forget that the best generative AI products, chatbots, and features are already running on Apple laptops, phones, and tablets and will continue to run for years. According to Crunchbase, there are over 50,000 AI startup companies. According to the New York Timesover $27B is being invested in AI. Apple’s chips are ready to handle AI, and all of these new tools and apps will give people more reasons to use the devices they already own.
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While OpenAI and Jony Ive made a lot noise about creating their AI hardware device, they have admitted that it won’t replace your phone or laptop for running the most recent AI tools.
Apple is well-positioned to lead the AI innovation wave. Apple’s patience, user-centric focus, and discipline are needed by the AI world to play the longgame. Let’s face it — the AI world will need Apple’s most powerful hardware, regardless of whose software runs on them.
