Ok… this is what it is I suppose, every business wants to be on the AI train, but, this seems like an opportunity to make the next iPhone, or at least a version of it, without AI as a selling point.

I’d be very happy indeed to have an option that was entirely devoid of, and incompatible with, any form of AI and I know I’m not alone in that. Sell it as prioritizing privacy or respecting consumers desire to opt out, whatever the marketing folks come up with. But that would be my next phone in a heartbeat.

Apple Intelligence hasn’t been much better than old Siri on unsupported devices.

For a third of the time, she has a hard time recognizing the trigger word the first time (usually “Siri” rather than “Hey Siri”), and not perform my commands when all I want her to do is act as a voice-activated light switch.

What exactly is the trillion dollar company struggling with here?

I can careless for Ai Siri. There’s no real need. I barely use Siri anyways.

AI isn’t the answer. Plain and simple.

they should embrace it and be the anti AI tech giant

I don’t fucking want AI in my phone, so take it out and be done with it.

A while ago I set up a Siri shortcut that opens ChatGPT in voice mode. Now I can just say “hey siri, ask the demon” and in a moment start talking to ChatGPT with no further commands and zero buttons pressed throughout. It answers in voice mode.

This is pretty useful for things like doing units conversions while my hands are sticky during cooking, or just doing simple information lookups while my hands are busy. I use ChatGPT responsibly, never trusting it for things that aren’t one-dimensional information retrievals and summarization. It works great for me for like 50-60% of the things I used to Google. Internet search is, once again, just for finding websites, like it should be.

What’s my point? We don’t need Siri Apple Intelligence to ship. There’s already something better. And it runs on my iPhone 14, which isn’t even compatible with Apple Flatulence.

Apple fucked up no doubt. Given how hard they pushed AI as a key feature of IPhone 16 I wouldn’t be surprised if they get a class action lawsuit for this.

But it’s also interesting to read a few things from the article that makes me hopeful for when Apple finally releases the features:

1. Let’s be honest, AI by Google, MS is shit right now. They are claiming the same promises which most of the time don’t work, but Apple chose to delay release until they could get better consistency.
2. The executives are taking personal responsibility? I hope that’s the case and no developers are thrown under the bus for this. I’ve rarely seen an article mention personal executive responsibility from a tech firm for delays and qa issues.
3. I hope marketing gets reigned in so they won’t push other unready features the next few years.
4. I hope Apple releases some open source AI tooling to re-gain good will. Would love to see some more competition in the AI space.

Anyone who isn’t completely high from huffing AI brainfarts saw this coming.

AI is overrated in almost every implementation that isn’t scientific research. The buzzword stock hype machine fake growth cycles are going to kill the tech industry.

these features to malfunction up to a third of the time

That’s “ai” for you lol

Features like Siri understanding personal context and taking action based on a user’s screen are still not ready and may not make it into iOS 19.

Tech companies not understanding exponential complexity is one of the funnier things to come out of recent years.

I don’t want that on my phone. I just want a dumb program that sets alerts and schedules, I don’t want it interpreting information and I doubt most people really need that function on a phone.

The whole industry is a shit show right now with the “AI race”

I don’t want to be a software developer anymore because it’s become a permanent deathmarch toward the next buzzword.

baffles me why anyone supports a company that’s a decade behind their competitors