Is Apple Intelligence the new Apple Maps?

Following widespread speculation about ongoing problems, Apple has announced that one of the key features of Apple Intelligence will be delayed — perhaps until 2026. The delay could harm Apple’s brand during a critical time for the tech industry. It remains unclear whether the company will be able to successfully manage its way through these choppy waters.

What Apple said

Apple initially promised it would introduce contextual intelligence in Apple intelligence about now. But Apple spokesperson Jacqueline Roy recently told Daring Fireball:

“Siri helps our users find what they need and get things done quickly, and in just the past six months, we’ve made Siri more conversational, introduced new features like type to Siri and product knowledge, and added an integration with ChatGPT. We’ve also been working on a more personalized Siri, giving it more awareness of your personal context, as well as the ability to act for you within and across your apps. 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.”

The coming year could mean quite a lot here, including pushing the rollout back into 2026.

When it didn’t make the grade

Apple Intelligence currently combines two systems: an older one based on machine intelligence and pattern matching and a new system based on a large language model (LLM). The new system can handle changes in your questions in Siri, for example, but the existence of two forms of AI on the device makes successful deployment more complex.

Apple had originally planned to introduce these new tools with iOS 18.4, but this was delayed into May. It now seems those efforts have fallen short, despite efforts from Apple’s top developers who were airlifted in to bail things out.

Failure was sealed when Craig Federighi, Apple senior vice president of software engineering, slammed the brakes on public introduction of the tools because the features just weren’t up to speed. Results are inconsistent and fail to meet the promises Apple has made. This is reminiscent of previous failures.

From A to B and back again

Way back when Apple introduced Apple Maps, it did so with a blaze of glory. But the system quickly failed to live up to the hype. A variety of issues plagued the nascent Apple service, critics went crazy and top software leader Scott Forstall lost his job. Apple Maps quickly became a joke, with Apple fans and critics alike choosing alternative services. They didn’t see Maps as a serious option, a view that took years of development and millions of dollars to break. Apple today arguably offers the best mapping service in the world.

The sin Apple committed with Apple Maps was to promise more than it could actually deliver. Once the service hit the market, its weaknesses were quickly identified, leading to the reputational hit that took years to recover from. 

Apple’s existing AI assistant, Siri, has a similar reputation — this time, by starting as something fantastic and quickly becoming something of a joke when compared to competing services. Apple Intelligence was meant to change that, but the latest delay threatens to make it worse, cementing in public opinion the idea that Apple doesn’t know how to do AI at the very worst moment in industry evolution.

An unforced error?

We know that Apple recognizes the importance of AI. That’s why the company has been promoting Apple Intelligence so urgently in nearly all its hardware advertising. (That includes the ads the company pulled over the weekend promoting the now delayed contextual intelligence in Siri.) Hoping that the future would seem better tomorrow, Apple bet its marketing push on services it hadn’t yet made.

Apple’s hype machine sang out the coming benefits of Apple Intelligence loudly. While the choir sang, teams inside the company made progress on preparing the company’s ecosystem for the new AI features. That included introducing entry-level products equipped with enough memory to run the promised new AI features. Outside Apple, the company was energetically promoting the new features among customers and developers and maintaining belief in the company trajectory among its customers and advocates. 

You could argue that every root and branch of the company was focused on setting the scene for this new super smart Siri, the introduction of which was intended to be the point in time at which the company absolutely nailed AI.

After months (and years) of steady planning and execution, this was to be the flourish, the time when others sharing the tech chess board moved their kings aside.

That’s was the plan, at least.

Grabbing the wrong puck

While you can argue it’s good Apple didn’t introduce a flawed product, it will be judged as if it did so. Because the company chose to focus so much energy promoting Apple Intelligence on the basis of a set of features it has not been able to deliver in time.

In promoting this vaporware, Apple created expectations it couldn’t meet. That’s always bad business, but on a product as strategically important as AI it could pose an existential challenge. Overcoming that challenge is going to take all the time-tested approaches we’ve seen Apple use before when it gets things wrong: High-level changes, public apology, interviews, and possibly a resignation or two before the company gets it right.

Meanwhile, as a result of the blunder, Apple will need to squander its energy battling the idea that Apple Intelligence isn’t smart enough. That’s a perception directly fed by all the AI-focused marketing over the last year or so. (There’s a reason Steve Jobs said the real artists are the people who ship).

This is a big problem for Apple and it knows it.

I fear heads will roll, and in the context of the many other challenges the company faces, this weakest link erodes the capacity of the team. And Siri still doesn’t have a clue.

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