The Apple AI Crisis: How the Tech Giant Fell Behind in the AI Race

Craig: apple is having an ai crisis. let's talk about what's going on with apple and how they lag behind so far.

Jon: well, i'm not surprised with apple. their siri has been absolute crap since they first launched it, and i don't think they really worked on it. i don't know why people tout it. like, the second you put it up to anything else, it's even back then, you would ask it a simple question, and all it would do is give you it was an easy way to get google search results essential essentially. right? so yeah. so, apparently, there's this there was this article by bloomberg that came out and, really saying apple needs to essentially shit or get off the pot, which makes a lot of sense. but they've it's weird because they put in significant investments in ai research, talent acquisitions, like, a whole bunch of stuff, but yet they can't match anything close to anything to, like, the very first models that came out, i would say. and so, like, they're touting this apple intelligence, but, like, what even is apple intelligence? so i don't have ios. so i think they've now, with our latest upgrade on our macbooks, there's apple intelligence, but i don't care to use it. i feel like it's just gonna be like another siri, but they're facing challenges in scaling ai across their their product lines while maintaining their focus on privacy, i think. i think that's one of the biggest issues, which is good in a way. unlike google, which can leverage vast amounts of user data, apple must rely on more limited datasets. right? so what are your thoughts on this whole debacle? i know you're more of a goo apple, ecosystem user.

Craig: yeah. and apple ai has been, you know, a nonexistent siri. you know, we talked about it all the time where i barely use it for anything, just because it fails more often than it delivers what i want. and so it's just easier to do other things. so we are now using voice ai bots on our, phones now instead of siri. i was just trying three app out this morning, but i slipped it in unhinged mode, and i said, yeah. this is unusable. so, i don't know if you've tried it, but no. it's not safe for work. lots of swear words, lots of sex stuff, lots of, you know, yeah. so just be aware. when you ask it a question, it's coming back hard. and, that's unhinged mode on grok, with the grok three. i haven't tried the other modes yet. i thought it

Jon: is that also called elon mode? or

Craig: it probably. there's probably a voice that would default it to a lady talking, but it was really, you know, what are you asking me, you m f or blah blah blah blah blah. like, literally just comes right at you. and, so you gotta be prepared for that. other than that, everyone's using these ai agents more than they're using the onboard voice assistants. because they're better, they're just better. and i agree with you a hundred percent that when siri was better before apple bought it. and once apple bought it, it took a major downgrade. and, you know, siri ai launched in two thousand eleven, and it, you know, was groundbreaking. we could talk to our phone. it could do some stuff. we were all really happy with it. and now, you know, things have just gone. like, they've lost the lead. and i agree with you that there's a number of issues, but i believe the hundred percent biggest issue is everyone else is have hoards and hoards of data to train on, and apple refuses to do a lot of that. and two, they focus on device. the all the translation, all the ai stuff needs to take place on device so you're not handing it off to the cloud. and so that compute power has been a major limitation to apple's ai, and that's why we're seeing with m four and whatnot, these newer, neural network chips for ai and the new phones and stuff, the, that are capable of apple intelligence because they have these extra chips that are capable on processing that apple's doing versus the cloud processing that everyone else is doing. so those two things are the major limiters for them to yeah. be jumping ahead. plus, there's some structural issues inside the company. they're implementing ai in different ways. it's not going across the board. so they got some issues, with it, and they're falling behind. unless they decide to take the road that other people have taken and find some way to use whatever data is out there to train their ai, it's just not gonna work for them. like, we've seen groc jump ahead and google jump ahead, and that's because they've got millions and millions of peep of, systems out there that they can pull the information from and train their ai on. like, google can use youtube till the cows come home because they own it. they can, you know, never mind all the emails going back and forth and youtube, google searches and everyone interaction with the chrome browser, all the stuff data they can use. and apple was like, yeah. we don't wanna use that data. so do?

Jon: well, i think what they were looking to do originally was bring on another llm. like, if they're not willing to compromise, which is great. like, you can't fault them for not wanting to compromise their their policies, internal policies when it comes to privacy. i love that. and the question is do they really need to have an ai based on their current ecosystem and all the other options available right now? right? do they really need to? because once like, you have these people who are apple fanboys for life, and you've got these people who are or within the apple ecosystem forever. and maybe that's why they're not so quick to to jump to get to this and to solve their problem. what i was reading is that they are touting a a lot more advanced features in their m seven macbook air and ipad air or their m seven chip itself, which i think would be two years away. so what like, what do you think? do you think apple needs to solve this problem quickly, or what do you think?

Craig: it's, you know, it's been rolling out in stages, and it's just not good. and so what apple is integrated. they've integrated chatggp. they've integrated, i think, google gemini as well. and i've seen they're integrating, their latest alibaba model for china.

Jon: yeah.

Craig: so they are implementing third parties, which is great, but i think this is a brave new world that if you don't dominate or lead in the ai space in tech, you are in trouble.

Jon: yep.

Craig: and i think that is a position that apple doesn't wanna be in.

Jon: no. but are people really getting apple devices because of their ai capabilities? are they getting apple devices just because it's an apple

Craig: device? well, let me put it to you a different way. apple people are apple people, and that's fine. and there are tech people who will jump back and forth because they like this platform, and they like that platform. and once you're locked in, you're kinda locked in. if you're not one of those people, you'll jump back and forth, and then you might not be even in this category. right? because if you're not locked in by apps, you're not necessarily a heavy user, and you might not be our target market. but you talk about this kind of functionality. we're going into a brave new world. search is becoming ai. we're asking ai instead of searching the internet. mhmm. when we talk about protein and medicine and the breakthroughs and some of the stuff coming up, it's all due to ai and being able to, you know, hundreds of thousands or millions of parameters that humans just couldn't do before and come up with this competition. so, come up with this new solution. so i'm not saying that, you know, they need to have the best consumer facing ai. i mean, they need to have a strong ai because the competition is doing that. what does the consumer want? we're analyzing that millions and millions of times to come up with our best product, come with the best marketing, become up all the best stuff. if you don't have your own tools to do that in the future at this level, you're gonna be in trouble. so that's what i'm saying.

Jon: but the thing is people can download all of these chatbots and use them as apps. right?

Craig: yes.

Jon: so, like, is it really gonna harm them if they don't get, get something that's on par with openai or or claude? or

Craig: well, i think it will for a number of reasons. but i think it'll be slow because i think as we move, we've seen it. opera's come out with a new ai browser, though i went through the thing and, like, it doesn't look like we can grab it just yet on their public site where ai can control these things. yeah. it's harder to control this stuff in mac, so this stuff needs to start being built in at level to say, okay. how does ai interact with my apps and do things? it's not enough anymore to be able to chat with it. that is two years ago. i can chat with my stuff, and and it can give me some responses. now it's all about automation. i wanna tell you to say, hey. take that data that just came in from that email and the three emails before and that google spreadsheet and create this with a pivot table and go do it. yeah. and so everyone else is getting to that point. by the end of this year, they'll all have that built into their system. so if apple can't do that, they're gonna find themselves way behind. so, yeah, i think it's a problem. you're laughing, but we are

Jon: do you know no. i laugh because do you know of an app called then that?

Craig: of course.

Jon: well, then there is your automation that you could integrate on your apple device.

Craig: yeah. but let's face it. that's not okay anymore. like, we can do if this and that. we can do zapier. we can do n a to n and do some amazing things. yeah. no problem. but that doesn't, you know, the interfaces, the apis, the control stuff isn't there. so you have to now use browser interfaces and clunky stuff versus actually driving it home. and that's why i mean what? it needs to be built in, and apple is famous for not allowing developers access to those types of things, never mind ai. true. so that's why they need to start getting ahead. i'm sure you can do if this, then that, but, you know, you want my ai and my system to logically work with my data and the things that i'm working on, not have to, rely on some third party trigger that doesn't understand what i want really. that is some like, great. i build automations all the time, and i love them. but the future of ai is an ai that really knows me. these ai agents that understand when i say send a proposal or respond to john or do this, what i mean. yeah. and that's gonna take a while to get there. but that happens on the device with that processing, with that agent that knows you. i think we're gonna be, they're gonna be way behind because relationships are now developing with these ai tools, and we're worried about it. you know? are you gonna have ai dates and this and that and everything? people are falling in love, whatever. because we're communicating with them all the time, and that's gonna become more and more and more prevalent. so i think, yes, if they fall behind, you know, apple's not gonna be your companion anymore.

Jon: yeah. and who knows? maybe they could be working on something. i can't believe i'm actually on the side of apple on this one for once. not really on the side of apple, but, you know, you know how google was super far behind in the ai race, and then they released gemini two point o and boom, they were on top, and then deepseek released this out of nowhere. yep. maybe apple will do the same thing. who knows?

Craig: that's what i'm saying is they leapfrog each other. so it's if they have a good data source and they're training on the back end, according to, research, apple's got five billion dollar in annual investment specifically in artificial intelligence capabilities. mhmm. i know they're working on a bunch of machine learning stuff. as research at primate ai research bluntly put apple twenty twenty four is apple's last chance to lead ai. so i think it's twenty twenty five, but that's okay. and we talked about the bloomberg article. so yeah. it's a little apple prioritize on device for data protection and limiting cloud storage and stuff, which is a problem. so they'll either have to which is a huge difference. right? because these other companies have these multi gigawatt data centers that are processing processing processing. apple's doing it on your phone. so we'll have to see. like, the apple intelligence cable devices are just starting to come out now. so will it be interesting to see if they do make that leap forward as the devices start to become on the market?

Jon: yeah. yeah.

Craig: so i'd love to know what you think out there. let us know. do you think apple ai is rotten to the core and it's gonna die on the tree, or do you think they have a chance to keep in the marketplace, or do you think they're gonna partner with some other company? we'd love to hear your feedback and comments below.