Has Apple, the biggest company in the world, bungled its generative artificial intelligence strategy?
Doubts blew out into the open when one of the company's closest observers, tech analyst John Gruber, earlier this month gave a blistering critique in a blog post titled "Something Is Rotten in the State of Cupertino," which is home to Apple's headquarters.
The respected analyst and Apple enthusiast said he was furious for not being more skeptical when the company announced last June that its Siri chatbot would be getting a major generative AI (genAI) upgrade.
The technology, to be released as part of the Apple Intelligence suite of iPhone software, was to catapult the much-derided voice assistant's capabilities beyond just giving the weather or setting a timer.
Investors hoped the upgrade would launch the iPhone on a much-needed super-cycle, in which a new feature on the smartphone proves so tantalizing that users rush to snap up the latest and most expensive models.
Apple Intelligence and its promised Siri upgrade was very much supposed to fuel that demand, starting as soon as the release of the iPhone 16, which came out in September.
Instead Apple quietly announced on March 7 that the highly personalized Siri would not be coming as early as hoped.
Adding to the pressure, Amazon in February announced a new version of its Alexa voice assistant that is powered by genAI.
"It's going to take us longer than we thought to deliver on these features and we anticipate rolling them out in the coming year," Apple said.
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