William Gallagher
Ahead of it rolling out to users, Tim Cook says that Apple Intelligence is already changing lives — including his own.
Apple has been reported to be as much as two years behind the rest of the artificial intelligence industry, and CEO Tim Cook does not care. On the one hand, Apple has actually been doing AI under the name Machine Learning for at least a decade, but on the other, Apple doesn't look to be first.
"We weren't the first to do intelligence," Cook told the Wall Street Journal in a new interview. "But we've done it in a way that we think is the best for the customer."
"We're perfectly fine with not being first," he continues, speaking not just of Apple Intelligence but all of the company's efforts. "As it turns out, it takes a while to get it really great."
"It takes a lot of iteration. It takes worrying about every detail. Sometimes, it takes a little longer to do that," he continued. "We would rather come out with that kind of product and that kind of contribution to people versus running to get something out first."
"If we can do both, that's fantastic," says Cook. "But if we can only do one, there's no doubt around here. If you talk to 100 people, 100 of them would tell you: It's about being the best."
In the case of Apple Intelligence, Cook says that he is using its summaries extensively. He now relies on the Apple Intelligence summaries of his email inbox, and says that has changed his daily habits.
"If I can save time here and there," says Cook, "it adds up to something significant across a day, a week, a month. It's changed my life. It really has."
Cook is of course just one person, and he's also one person who gets a lot of email. But he maintains that the benefits he has seen already will be the same for everyone — and that it will make life different.
"Profoundly different," he said. "I think we'll look back [at Apple Intelligence] and it will be one of these air pockets that happened to get you on a different technology curve."
Cook doesn't mean he expects everyone to have their lives changed right away. "But it will happen. It will happen for all of us," he concludes
Apple has said that Apple Intelligence will be rolling out in stages, and in different territories, over the next few months. It's expected that the first major release will be on October 28, 2024.
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42 Comments
we shall see.
1) Apple Car
2) Apple Vision Pro
3) iPhone 16
Apple needs a few hits to help us forget the duds.
Tim has to talk it up. It's his job but sometimes he does go overboard.
We think it's the best. Yeah! I can't imagine him going on record as saying anything else, so long as 'think' is in there somewhere.
At least he is admitting that they are behind.
Yes, they have done ML for a long time but so has everybody else, and arguably better and more far reaching but I'm sure he'd still say he thinks it's the best.
I can't blame him for that but Apple made a strategic goof here and that's why it is behind and only the very latest hardware will be able to run it. If this were some kind of long term, well thought out strategic plan, at the very least, iPhones would have shipped with more RAM for the last few generations.
The reality looks more like' Yikes! We need to get rolling on this fast!'
That's why we got the initial response of not even uttering the letters 'AI' and doubling down on ML instead. In hindsight that was foolish but Apple literally had nothing to offer up back then so at least it is understandable.
One year on, AI was at least utterable and even became the star of WWDC but still there was nothing to show for it until 'later'. The new iPhones came and still AI was the star and STILL there was nothing to show for it and now the complete feature roll out isn't expected until 2025.
From the moment that the generative models became news and quickly stormed to over 100 million users, Apple has been on the back foot.
It’s hilarious how the folks here who keep saying Apple is playing catch-up don’t remember all the other things that Apple did “late” that then became the thing that everyone else had to catch up to.