A Critical Review of Apple Intelligence: Unfulfilled Promises and Performance Shortcomings

Apple introduced its new artificial intelligence features, branded "Apple Intelligence," at its annual WBDC event, generating significant excitement for its potential to revolutionize user experience. However, nearly a year later, many announced features remain unavailable or perform poorly, raising questions about the company's AI strategy and execution.

Key Points Summary

• Introduction of Apple Intelligence

  Apple devoted 40 minutes at its annual WBDC event to showcase new artificial intelligence features, branding them 'Apple Intelligence' rather than using the generic term AI.

• Initial Reception vs. Current Reality

  The initial unveiling of Apple Intelligence created high expectations for its transformative impact on iPads, iPhones, and MacBooks, but nearly a year later, many promised features are still unavailable or function unsatisfactorily.

• First Red Flag: Executive Laughter

  Apple's chip designer, Johnny Seruji, and hardware SVP, John Ternos, laughed dismissively in a December interview when asked about Apple being behind in AI, signaling a potential lack of seriousness or confidence regarding their AI endeavors.

• Second Red Flag: Lack of Functional Prototypes

  Apple's historical tendency to announce products without fully functional prototypes, exemplified by the AirPower charging mat, parallels the introduction of Apple Intelligence without ready-to-use demos, indicating potential product immaturity.

• Third Red Flag: Reliance on OpenAI

  Apple Intelligence partially relies on OpenAI's ChatGPT for Siri's advanced queries, suggesting Apple lacked sufficient time to independently develop its own comprehensive AI system, which is uncharacteristic for a company that typically builds its own core technologies.

• Fourth Red Flag: iPhone 16 and iOS 18.1 Feature Absence

  The iPhone 16 was introduced without any new Apple Intelligence features, and the subsequent iOS 18.1 update delivered only a fraction of the promised features, most of which were still in beta mode and unusable.

• Fifth Red Flag: Unconvincing Feature Rollout Delays

  Kirk Federighi explained the slow rollout of Apple Intelligence as a deliberate strategy for gradual integration, but this contradicts prior marketing and the removal of advertised Siri features, which are now delayed for years.

• Text Generation Performance

  The text writing feature of Apple Intelligence performs adequately for tasks like grammar correction, but competing AI models like Grac and GPT deliver superior results, especially given Apple Intelligence's inability to understand Persian and its confusion with mixed-language inputs.

• Notification Summarization and Prioritization Issues

  Apple Intelligence's notification features, including prioritized and summarized notifications, are largely dysfunctional; the BBC even threatened legal action over incorrect news summarization, leading Apple to remove the feature.

• Smart Reply Functionality

  Smart replies, while sometimes functional for specific English inputs, demonstrate limited utility and are not considered a revolutionary feature, raising questions about their overall effectiveness.

• Image and Emoji Generation Quality

  Apple Intelligence's image generation is of lower quality compared to competitors like GPT Fiad, often failing to accurately recognize facial formats for stylization, and its emoji creation feature lacks practical use cases.

• Photo Search Improvements

  The photo search feature has improved, allowing users to make more complex and specific queries, such as retrieving photos based on location and people.

• Photo Eraser Capabilities

  Apple's photo eraser feature functions to some extent for removing unwanted elements but is significantly inferior to Samsung's offering, which more effectively recognizes objects and intelligently reconstructs backgrounds.

• Apple's Strategy Shift from Hardware to AI Software

  Apple's traditional strategy of entering competitions late but excelling in hardware (e.g., iPhones, AirPods) does not translate effectively to AI software, where the company appears to have historically underinvested.

• Siri's Historical Underperformance

  Siri has consistently been criticized for its limited capabilities since its introduction with the iPhone 4S, struggling with simple commands and lagging far behind modern AI assistants that can perform complex multi-step tasks.

• Conclusion on Apple Intelligence

  Apple Intelligence, as currently implemented, falls short of its potential and is critically described as 'Apple Magic' rather than true intelligence, reflecting a significant disparity between expectations and actual performance.

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